Aegon dragged his injured leg, leaning on his long blade as he trudged through the eternal darkness.
The passage beneath his feet sloped upward, far from the cramped rat-run he had imagined.
Instead, it was exceptionally wide and high, with a massive black stone vault disappearing into the deep darkness above, like the ribcage of a giant dragon; he was walking inside the skeletal remains of a prehistoric behemoth.
Silence was the sole master here, so heavy it could crush eardrums.
Only his own heavy breathing, the thumping of his heart, and the rustling sound of his injured leg dragging against the ground remained, making the deathly stillness feel even more suffocating.
Every step triggered a piercing, dull pain from the fracture in his left calf, and cold sweat had long since soaked through his undershirt.
He didn't dare stop; the golden light on the system interface flickered steadily somewhere ahead, drawing closer and closer.
Memory fragments of the Torregar survivors replayed in his mind.
Broken path guides, potential trap markers, and... the vague location of the family 'legacy.'
This was almost his only hope in despair.
That eerie rustling sound followed him like a shadow, not coming from a fixed direction, but rather permeating the air and flowing along the stone walls.
Aegon forced himself to attribute it to the whistling of airflow through countless holes, but his sharp perception—a result of his high Spirit attribute—kept issuing shrill warnings: something, countless malicious things, were lurking in the darkness beyond the light, licking his spine with cold 'gazes.'
His violet eyes were as sharp as an eagle's in the gloom, constantly scanning every corner and shadow ahead.
Suddenly, Aegon stopped abruptly, pressing his body against the cold, damp stone wall and holding his breath.
From around the corner ahead came a new sound—not the wind, but the sticky dragging of some slippery object, occasionally punctuated by a very faint 'click' like the friction of bone.
An indescribable scent, a mix of sulfur and a deeper, rank fishiness, wafted toward him.
The hair on Aegon's neck stood up instantly; that familiar feeling of being watched reached its peak at this moment.
Without the slightest hesitation, relying on instinct, he quickly and silently shrunk into the shadow of a large stone crack nearby, minimizing his presence.
The sound gradually approached, lingered at the corner for a moment, and finally slowly receded.
Aegon didn't exhale a breath of turbid air until the feeling completely vanished, cold sweat having nearly soaked his inner shirt.
He proceeded with even greater caution.
Finally, at the end of the passage, a massive black gate, neither metal nor stone, blocked the way.
There were no decorations on the door, only a deep palm-print indentation in the center.
Aegon stared at the indentation as a throb from deep within his bloodline reached him.
Recalling a fragmented ritual scene from a death replay, he hesitated for a moment before slowly pressing his palm, stained with mud and dried blood, onto it.
Silently, the massive gate slid to one side without making the slightest sound.
The sight behind the door made Aegon's breath hitch.
The secret chamber was vast beyond imagination; it was less a room and more a forgotten underground palace.
Giant stone pillars, so thick it would take five or six men to encircle them, supported a vault hidden in the darkness that seemed to have no ceiling; the air was thick with the cold, stagnant scent of a thousand years of seclusion.
The floor was paved with massive, polished obsidian slabs, smooth enough to reflect light.
In the center of the hall, on a circular stone platform clearly higher than the ground, two objects stood quietly.
The first thing to catch Aegon's eye was a suit of full plate armor hanging on a metal rack in the center of the platform.
The armor was a profound dark black all over, yet under the starlight, it flowed with a dark red luster like ripples on water; it was the legendary Valyrian Steel.
Its design was not as heavy and clumsy as the knightly plate armor common in Westeros.
Instead, it presented sleek and sharp lines; the pauldrons were cleverly shaped into roaring dragon heads, the breastplate was carved with intricate, seemingly natural patterns of flames and dragon scales, and the joints were ingeniously connected, ensuring protection without hindering flexibility.
A sense of calm and powerful strength rushed toward him.
On the stone platform beside the armor lay a strange horn.
The material looked like black jade yet also like some kind of metal, its surface entwined with stripes of red-gold and dark steel, inscribed with twisted Valyrian runes that seemed to possess a life of their own.
Even while lying still, it emitted a heart-palpitating wave of ancient magic; the opening of the horn was deep and dark, as if leading directly to a burning abyss.
A guess surfaced in his heart—
"Is this the dragon horn?"
Aegon's heart began to pound wildly.
Suppressing his excitement, he stumbled onto the stone platform.
He first carefully touched the set of Valyrian Steel armor; his fingertips felt a cool yet warm sensation that resonated faintly with the cursed bloodline within him.
The soaked armor he wore was constantly sapping his body heat; Aegon no longer hesitated and quickly and with difficulty stripped off his old, tattered, and filth-stained armor and damp clothing.
When his skin touched the cold inner lining, he couldn't help but shiver.
But as he put on the steel armor piece by piece—greaves, cuisses, tassets, breastplate, vambraces, gauntlets, pauldrons... and finally donned the ferocious-looking, fully enclosed dragon-head helmet that only exposed his eyes and chin—an indescribable feeling flowed through his entire body.
The armor was incredibly light, like a second skin, yet it felt indestructible.
The lingering cold moisture was completely blocked out, and his body temperature rose rapidly.
More wonderfully, the sharp pain in his left leg and the aching fatigue of his entire body seemed to have lessened considerably.
He walked to a relatively smooth obsidian wall that could vaguely reflect an image.
In the mirror, a figure stood tall, covered in heavy dragon-scale armor woven with dark black and dark red; the dragon-head pauldrons rose proudly toward the sky, revealing only a pair of violet eyes burning with cold flames.
The originally bedraggled silver-haired boy had vanished, replaced by a majestic and dangerous warrior from the era of the ancient Dragonlords.
Just then, the sound of footsteps and noisy voices approached from a distance, shattering the silence of the hall!
Aegon's heart skipped a beat.
He instantly extinguished the torch in his hand, moving as fast as lightning to quickly stuff the dragon horn into an inconspicuous crevice in the shadow beneath the stone platform.
He then retreated rapidly, pressing himself into the shadows of the innermost corner of the stone chamber, his hand gripping the hilt of the long blade at his waist.
Even though this common steel seemed meaningless in the face of Valyrian Steel.
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