Aegon released his left hand, allowing the blood to flow freely down his vambrace.
It was not a simple drip, but an uncontrolled surge.
The warm spring of life quickly spread across the cold obsidian ground, pooling into an ever-expanding, viscous dark red lake.
The weakness and cold brought by blood loss, like the rising tide, instantly washed over his limbs, causing his already trembling body to nearly collapse.
But at the same time, another, more terrifying sensation was frantically breeding and converging from all directions—from beneath his feet, from the air, and even from the blood flowing out of him.
It was malice.
Viscous, cold, pure, directed at all living beings—an overwhelming malice that had settled for hundreds of years!
This malice seemed to possess weight, suffocating him, and also seemed to materialize into a chilling coldness that pierced through the Valyrian Steel armor, straight to the bone marrow.
Aegon raised his head, looking through the visor slit stained red by his own blood, toward Crows Eye, who had paused a few steps away in surprise and suspicion.
He cracked a smile—a sneer mixed with pain and weakness, yet full of immense satisfaction and madness.
"Do you think... I'm mad? Cough..." He coughed up another mouthful of blood foam, his voice hoarse, yet carrying a strange, declarative penetration.
"Crows Eye... do you know where those thousands of captives on the murals... ended up?"
Euron Greyjoy's single eye was fixed on him. His dagger remained raised, but his body had instinctively tensed slightly, wary of this scene that defied common sense.
Aegon didn't need an answer. To himself, he spoke slowly in a tone almost like reciting a death poem: "They... were all 'digested' here. Right beneath our feet, every inch of this land... is soaked with their blood, their souls, and their... undying hatred."
He gasped, using his bleeding right arm to point tremblingly yet firmly at his surroundings.
"Can you feel it? This coldness... this sickening resentment? These are the tens of thousands... perhaps even more... of sacrificed and slaughtered dead souls..."
"Their resentment..." Aegon's voice suddenly rose, carrying a heart-stopping tremor, "has long merged with this land, transforming into the most vicious curse! They haven't dispersed; they are merely sleeping... waiting!"
"Waiting for what?" Crows Eye's voice lost its absolute sense of control for the first time, tinged with a subtle dryness.
He felt it—a deeper tremor coming from the ground beneath his feet, not caused by an earthquake.
Aegon smiled, his grin looking particularly hideous amidst the bloodstains and shadows.
"Waiting for... a 'key'." He raised his blood-soaked wrist. "Waiting for a familiar and 'noble' scent to awaken them from their eternal nightmare!"
"You thought the dragon lord bloodline meant honor here? No..." He gasped, his purple eyes burning with a martyr-like glow. "Here, it is proof of guilt! It is the horn that awakens the vengeful dead! It is the sacrifice... they prioritize devouring!"
He paused, as if to give Crows Eye, and the unsettled Ironborn who were beginning to back away nervously, one last clear realization.
"Allow me to reintroduce myself," Aegon's voice suddenly became extraordinarily calm, yet held a resolve more terrifying than a roar, "My name is Aegon Targaryen!"
"And I am also a descendant of the ancient Valyria's... dragon lord bloodline."
The moment his voice fell—
"Whoosh—!"
It was not the sound of wind, but the sound of some invisible presence being completely ignited!
The pool of blood beneath Aegon's feet, formed by his own essence, suddenly erupted in flames without warning!
But that flame was unlike any light found in the mortal world.
It was a color woven of black and red, like congealed blood smoldering in the darkness.
It brought no warmth whatsoever; instead, it emitted a biting coldness more severe than Ten Thousand Year Black Ice!
The flames flickered, silently expanding, instantly spreading along the winding blood trails on the ground.
It ignited more blood-soaked flagstones, ignited the piled-up corpses, and ignited the malice in the air that was too dense to dissipate!
The entire surviving underground space, half-buried by ruins, was instantly enveloped by this eerie, bone-chilling black and red Blood Flame!
The flames no longer illuminated objects, but countless churning shadows filled with extreme resentment and hatred.
"Ghosts! Ghosts!" An Ironborn screamed hysterically, trying to swat away a wisp of Blood Flame that had touched his trousers. The flame had no temperature, yet it made him feel as if his soul was freezing and tearing apart.
In the flickering, cold light of the Blood Flame, light and shadow began to twist, stretch, and coalesce.
The blurry figure of a woman huddled and clutching something flashed past in the flames to Crows Eye's left, her eyes filled only with hollow despair.
The silhouette of a small child reaching out as if to grasp something appeared on the wall behind Aegon, only to be instantly swallowed by the flames.
Following that, came more and more... soldiers holding rusty weapons, their eyes crazed;
ragged, emaciated old people, murmuring curses;
terrified commoners clinging to each other... Face after face, figure after figure, flickering in and out of the cold Blood Flame, layer upon layer, filling every gap in their vision.
They were not physical entities, yet they were more terrifying than anything solid.
Hundreds of thousands, millions of gazes filled with pure malice pierced through the flames, focusing relentlessly on every living being present—
The air solidified; even breathing felt like inhaling ice shards.
The dead souls had not yet lunged, but the concentrated hatred, enough to freeze the soul, had already formed a tangible oppression.
"Ugh..." Aegon let out a painful groan. The dual assault of blood loss and coldness made his vision blacken.
But he gritted his teeth, using his last ounce of strength to press his left hand into a pool of his own warm blood on the ground that had not yet fully ignited!
"Sizzle—!"
Like cold water thrown into boiling oil, the pool of blood violently boiled, then burst into an even more intense black and red Blood Flame, rolling backward up his left arm!
Aegon used the strange, life-burning support provided by the cold flame, trembling, to plunge the bloodstained longsword into the ground as a crutch, and, inch by agonizing inch... stood back up!
The Valyrian Steel armor reflected a hideous light under the illumination of the Blood Flame.
He was covered in blood, his left hand wreathed in cold Blood Flame, and the wound on his right wrist was still gushing, but he stood tall.
He raised his left hand, wreathed in black and red Blood Flame, and grasped the air—the spreading cold flame seemed to be drawn, separating a wisp to wrap around the longsword he was using as a support.
Ordinary Steel could not withstand this power, issuing a groan of unbearable strain.
Countless fine cracks appeared on the sword's body, but from these cracks erupted a denser, colder black and red Blood Flame, as if the sword itself had become an extension of hatred.
Aegon gripped the rapidly shattering longsword, which was burning with "Cold Fire." The tip trembled, yet it was aimed unflinchingly at Euron Greyjoy, whose pupils were constricted and whose face finally showed horror for the first time.
He opened his mouth, blood constantly seeping from between his teeth, but every word, mixed with the wails of the dead and the coldness of the Blood Flame, rang out like the final bell of judgment in this cursed tomb of ruins:
"Blood... debt..."
The blood from his wrist was still dripping, and the Blood Flame on the sword tip emitted a "sizzling" sound, a phantom noise like the searing of a soul.
"Must be..."
In the surrounding flames, the faces of countless dead souls simultaneously let out silent screams, and the cold malice peaked!
"Paid in blood!!!"
The last two words seemed to merge with the venomous roar accumulated by thousands of dead souls over hundreds of years, transforming into a sound that tore through all silence and reason—
"Awaken—!!!!!"
"Boom!!!!"
The black and red Blood Flame devoured everything.
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