The last thing Euron remembered was the South Sea—specifically, a black wall of water that seemed to connect the ocean to the sky.
One moment, it was just distant thunder rolling through lead-gray clouds. The sea breeze brushed against his skin, heavy with salt and humidity. The water was still tame, gently buoying his lean, swimmer's physique.
The next moment, the sky tore open as if ripped by an invisible giant's hand. Rain fell not as drops, but as a deluge of ink, freezing and bone-chilling, blurring the world into chaos. The wind ceased to be wind; it became a thousand invisible, violent lashes flaying the surface of the sea, whipping up hideous peaks. The ocean, once familiar and welcoming, transformed into a roaring beast. Every wave carried the weight of a mountain, crashing down with crushing force, greedily dragging him toward the abyss.
The will to survive burned in his blood, squeezing energy from every fiber of his muscles. Euron kicked frantically, but every stroke felt like struggling through cooling asphalt. Icy brine forced its way into his nose and mouth, the stinging salt rushing straight to his brain, bringing him to the edge of suffocation. He summoned every ounce of strength to break the surface, only for a terrifying mountain of water to crash down on his head, hammering him back into the depths.
His ears were filled with a dull, thundering roar. His vision was a murky darkness filled with chaotic bubbles. His lungs felt like they were being crushed by iron pliers, burning with agony. Relying on pure instinct, he clawed upward, breaking through the heavy curtain of water. But just as his lips grazed the thin air, a more insidious force grabbed hold of him.
Less than a hundred yards from the golden beach now shredded by the gale, the ocean surface collapsed.
A massive whirlpool opened its dark, silent maw. The sea spun madly, sinking into a bottomless funnel. The suction defied physics, pulling with a greed that seemed to freeze the soul. Euron felt his body go weightless. All his struggles became instantly, laughably futile. He was dragged down by an irresistible force, falling like a helpless leaf into the infinite deep.
The freezing pressure crushed him from all sides. His bones groaned under the weight. The last pocket of air in his lungs was ruthlessly squeezed out, turning into a string of desperate bubbles that vanished into the dim, unreachable light far above.
Absolute darkness embraced him. Heavy. Suffocating.
On the border where consciousness fades into nothing, in the depths of that all-consuming cold and silence, a voice—or rather, a will—echoed. It was ancient, as old as the bedrock beneath the sea, smelling of salt rust and something inhumanly vast. It branded itself directly onto his disintegrating mind:
"What is dead... may never die..."
"But rises again..."
"Harder... and stronger..."
It wasn't a sound heard by ears, but a seal stamped upon the soul. It had no direction, no source. It was simply an indifferent, eternal declaration.
---
At that same instant, on the other side of the world.
The heart of the Iron Islands—beneath the craggy fortress of Pyke, seat of House Greyjoy.
A biting gale screamed over the jagged black rocks, whipping up freezing sea spray and lashing the faces of the small group standing on the shore. The air was thick with the smell of brine, rotting kelp, and a grim, almost solid tension.
At the center of the group stood Quellon Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke. He was a towering figure, his face deeply etched by the wind and years. His eyes were hard as flint, yet they held a trace of nervousness and anticipation.
Beside him stood his eldest son, Balon Greyjoy. Balon was only twelve, scrawny but already showing the sharp, angular features typical of his house. He pressed his thin lips together tight, his sharp eyes—inherited from his father—staring dead ahead. He was trying to mimic his father's stoic calm, but his clenched fists and slightly rapid breathing betrayed the turmoil inside.
This was the moment his brother would be born—and tested.
There were only a few others present: two solemn Drowned Men, and Quellon's most trusted captain, Harlagh.
The altar was a natural trough in the massive reef, polished smooth by centuries of tides. Right now, it was filled with freezing, frothing seawater.
The presiding priest, a Drowned Man with white hair and beard, soaked to the bone and eyes burning with fanaticism, stood barefoot in the waist-deep water. In his rough, bark-like hands, he held an infant wrapped in coarse, dark-grey seaweed cloth—Quellon's second son, the newly born Euron Greyjoy.
"Lord God who drowned for us!" The old priest's voice was raspy and high, cutting through the howling wind. "Look down upon your humble creation! Grant him the hardness of the Ironborn! Grant him the breath of the sea! Let him endure your baptism, and return from death—harder! Stronger!"
The chant reached its fever pitch. The old priest took a deep breath and shoved his arms down!
The icy, death-filled water instantly swallowed the small bundle, submerging the newborn's tender, pink face. There was no cry. Only a few weak bubbles struggled up from the folds of the cloth and burst on the surface.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Time seemed to freeze amidst the roar of the wind and waves. Lord Quellon held his breath involuntarily, his broad shoulders leaning forward slightly, his gaze locked on the churning water. His anxiety was written in his furrowed brow and white-knuckled fists. Twelve-year-old Balon didn't dare blink, his small body rigid as stone, fingernails digging into his palms. Captain Harlagh looked grim, his hand resting on the hilt of his dirk. The younger priest swallowed nervously.
Beads of sweat oozed from the old priest's forehead, mixing with the cold sea spray. He felt the tiny body in his arms stop struggling completely. It went limp and cold, like a dead fish pulled from the deep. A heavy despair began to cloud his fanatical eyes.
---
Cold. Darkness. Suffocation.
Euron felt himself being crushed, dissolved, his consciousness like a wisp of smoke about to scatter. Just as he was about to fade into the void, the suction that had dragged him into the whirlpool suddenly reversed!
It was as if an invisible giant hand reached into the icy abyss, grabbed his soul with precision, and yanked him out with a tearing, irresistible force!
BOOM!
It wasn't a sound, but a violent collision on the spiritual plane.
He felt himself being forcibly stuffed into a container—one that was incredibly cramped, freezing, stiff, and rapidly losing the last spark of life. The rejection was agonizing, like millions of red-hot steel needles piercing every crack of his soul. Strange nerve endings transmitted the sensation of near-death suffocation and cold. There was also a faint, primitive, residual consciousness—violent and unwilling—madly biting and resisting his intrusion.
"Urgh… gu…"
Just as the infant's body in the priest's arms turned rigid, just as the light of hope in Quellon's eyes began to die, and just as Balon took a subconscious half-step back... a tiny, bizarre noise came from the water-logged bundle.
The old priest's arms trembled violently!
Suddenly, the small, purple-bruised body convulsed!
"Pfft—Cough! Waaah!"
The grey seaweed cloth was kicked open. A stream of murky seawater mixed with mucus shot out like a small fountain from the infant's nose and mouth, spraying the unsuspecting priest right in the face.
Immediately after, a true infant's cry—piercing and loud—tore through the howling wind, exploding in everyone's ears!
"WAAAAH—!!"
The cry was filled with shock, pain, and the indescribable confusion of a survivor.
The deathly silence around the altar shattered.
Lord Quellon sucked in a sharp breath. His tall frame swayed, the color draining from his face before being replaced by a rush of overwhelming ecstasy and disbelief. He instinctively took a step forward.
Young Balon looked paralyzed by the sudden wail. His face went pale, eyes wide and round, all his imitated composure gone, replaced by the sheer terror of a child witnessing something beyond understanding. Captain Harlagh let out a low gasp, while the younger priest shook with excitement.
The despair on the old priest's face vanished, replaced by a near-mad crimson flush. He shook like a leaf in a storm. He thrust the infant high above his head, screaming with every ounce of strength, his voice cracking with hysteria and awe:
"Behold! Ironborn! Behold! The Drowned God has spoken! He has granted a miracle!"
Icy water ran down his raised arms, dripping onto the infant's heaving, mucus-covered chest. The baby's cries faded into rapid, desperate gasps.
Under the horrified gaze of the crowd, the infant opened his eyes. They were a terrifying sight to behold.
The left eye was pitch black—a deep well that seemed to swallow all light.
The right eye was a cold, crystalline azure—like the sea before a storm.
"The Drowned God has chosen this child!" The old priest's voice sounded like a weeping war horn. "He grants our lord rebirth! This is the avatar of the God walking among men! The future hope of the Iron Islands! The proof that what is dead may never die!"
"What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!" the priest screamed again.
Captain Harlagh and the young priest dropped to their knees, foreheads slamming against the wet, cold reef, chanting the holy words: "What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!"
Lord Quellon did not kneel immediately. He strode forward, practically snatching the gasping infant from the priest. His rough fingers carefully wiped the slime and brine from the baby's face. When his fingertips touched the cold, slippery skin, his hand trembled slightly.
His gaze, sharp as a veteran captain reading a chart after a storm, swept over the infant's mismatched eyes. The abyss of the left, the storm of the right. There was no fatherly warmth in that look—only a heavy, complex scrutiny, as if he instantly bore the weight of the entire Iron Islands' future.
Quellon Greyjoy's deep voice drowned out the priest's fanaticism. He held the kicking, squirming baby high, declaring with unquestionable authority and the thrill of survival:
"This is my son! Iron of House Greyjoy! Euron Greyjoy!"
"Euron Greyjoy!" The others echoed the name, celebrating the rebirth of the second son.
Quellon turned and handed Euron to Balon. "Take your brother back to the castle. Wrap him in warm lambskin and give him to your mother."
Twelve-year-old Balon stared at the heterochromatic brother in his arms, standing like a frozen statue. He had watched his father take the resurrected baby from the priest. He had seen the complex light in his father's eyes—a mix of ecstasy and heavy worry he had never seen before.
Looking into his brother's eerie, unsettling eyes, a cold, strange feeling washed over Balon's heart like a deep-sea undercurrent. It was a tangled knot of emotions: the excitement of a new blood relative, but also a vague, instinctual alarm. It was the feeling of territory being invaded, of attention being stolen.
The cold waves slapped against the reef altar. The murky water sloshed in the stone trough, reflecting the kneeling priests, the solemn Lord Quellon, and the isolated, conflicted figure of the eldest son, Balon.
Deep inside that tiny body, fresh from the cycle of life and death, two distinct souls—Euron from another world, and the infant Euron Greyjoy who had died at birth—were slowly, irreversibly merging in this cold, salty hell.
Their fate was sealed the moment they arrived, wedging itself deep into the future of House Greyjoy. It hung over the heart of Quellon, a father seeking reform but now holding a "miracle," and cast its first long shadow over the young, hardening heart of Balon Greyjoy.