Tap. Tap. Tap.
In the vast darkness swallowing the stairwell, Baelon could hear nothing but the hollow echo of their footsteps as they descended into the belly of the temple.
The mechanism they had triggered had revealed a narrow spiral staircase, coiling downward into the earth like the throat of some buried beast.
Naturally, upon seeing that eerie sight, Baelon wisely decided to throw himself down there.
He simply could not help himself.
Ever since he was a child, he had been cursed with curiosity roughly the size of his Uncle Daemon's ego.
"What do you think is down there?"
The muffled voice behind him, brimming with anticipation, nearly made his heart leap straight into his throat.
Baelon jerked slightly before realising who it was.
Helaena.
Phew.
He wiped imaginary sweat from his brow.
Not that he was afraid, of course. Certainly not. But suddenly hearing a voice in this abyssal darkness could startle anyone.
"Who knows?" He replied as they continued downward. "Though I would not complain if we found some novel spells."
His voice brightened slightly at the thought.
"Or perhaps some Valyrian treasures beyond the usual swords and daggers. I confess…I am rather tired of those."
A quiet groan nearly escaped him as he thought of the small hill of Valyrian steel weapons he had accumulated over the years.
Was he thrilled at first?
Of course he was.
It was Valyrian steel. Entire noble houses in Westeros could only dream of possessing such a blade.
Cough! House Lannister Cough!
Unfortunately, they had proven rather useless once in excess. After all, Baelon only had two hands.
Furthermore, Baelon already had his trusted greatsword strapped across his back, and one was more than enough for both his hands.
"Hm."
Helaena hummed thoughtfully somewhere behind him. "Perhaps after all this is done… we could return home."
Baelon almost missed a step.
"Westeros?" He asked, forcing his legs to keep moving down the staircase.
His voice remained steady. His thoughts? Not so much.
"Father seems to be bedridden," Helaena said quietly.
She had not truly answered his question, yet each word pricked at the small, stubborn piece of conscience Baelon still possessed.
"Mother is said to be acting as regent."
"Well," Baelon scoffed lightly, "isn't she pleased."
After that, he fell silent.
His mind drifted unwillingly to a rather old memory.
Or rather, a dream.
He could still see it as clearly as the day it came to him. His father lying upon a bed, motionless. His chest was rising and falling in shallow, broken breaths. The man looked like a corpse that had somehow forgotten to stop breathing.
Each time Baelon remembered that vision, the same feeling crept into his chest.
Cowardice.
He did not want to see his father like that.
The great king of his childhood was reduced to a dying husk clinging to the last threads of life.
It was easier to remain here.
Across the sea.
Exploring ruins. Chasing legends. Pretending time was not quietly marching on.
But if he continued to hide away…
Then one day, a message would arrive.
And instead of a sickbed, he would only be greeted by a funeral.
Whether that came in a few moons…
Or a few years.
It is, nevertheless, inevitable.
Worse still, seeing his father in that state would force him to confront those dreams again in earnest.
Baelon had long told himself he had grown past them.
But had he really?
What man could simply shrug off visions of his father's death, the loss of his sister, and the possible end of a dynasty that had ruled for a century?
Perhaps Helaena's death would never come to pass. Much had changed since that first dream. The world had shifted in ways neither of them could have predicted.
Yet what if it had not changed enough?
What if fate still sought to correct itself?
Just as it had with Aemond.
Click.
Baelon froze.
His boot had come down upon the next step of the staircase, and something beneath the stone had shifted.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The darkness pressed around them as all they could hear was their own breathing.
Then—
Fwoosh!
A sudden hiss cut through the silence.
And fire bloomed.
Baelon's eyes narrowed as he slowly stepped forward, leaving the final stair behind.
Only then did he realise the staircase had ended and they had emerged into a vast hall. At first, only two torches ignited, one on each side of the chamber.
Then another pair.
Fwoosh!
Then another.
Fwoosh!
And another.
Fwoosh!
Torch after torch roared to life along the length of the chamber walls, as though the hall itself had awakened after centuries of slumber.
Their flames burned with a steady orange-gold glow, chasing away the darkness and filling the immense room with their glow.
At last, Baelon could see the chamber in earnest.
And, by God, was it large. Baelon was half-certain Vermithor could lounge about in here without the slightest worry of feeling cramped.
Above him, the ceiling arched high in a smooth volcanic dome, the black stone polished so perfectly it reflected the torchlight like dark glass.
Massive pillars carved from the same obsidian-like rock lined the hall in two long rows.
The torches themselves were mounted in elegant dragon-headed sconces along both walls, each bronze dragon clutching a burning brand in its open jaws.
And, at the very heart of the chamber stood a pedestal.
Upon it rested an open book.
Its pages were thick and pale, far larger than any tome Baelon had ever seen.
Yet, it was the walls of the chamber that truly captured the eye.
Murals stretched across every surface of the hall.
Vast, sweeping depictions of Valyria at the height of its glory.
Dragons soared across painted skies, their wings casting shadows over cities of impossible beauty, towers of black stone and crimson glass rising beside rivers of molten fire.
Armies marched beneath banners marked with the dragon sigil while great dragonlords soared above them like living gods.
And among them walked the mages.
Figures clad in flowing robes, their hands wreathed in crimson flame as they walked past fountains of blood and mountains of bodies.
The murals told the story of a civilisation that had mastered both dragon and magic. Of a civilisation lost to time.
One that had ruled the world.
"Seven hells…" Baelon murmured.
His voice faded into stunned silence.
How many years had it been since the Doom?
Two centuries?
And yet this chamber had remained preserved as though its builders had departed only yesterday.
Once again, Baelon felt the overwhelming weight of the Valyrian Freehold's dominance.
Perhaps wonders like this had been commonplace to them.
But Baelon could not name a single person alive who could replicate it.
Even the great castles of Westeros required constant maintenance.
Give them ten years without care, and their timber would rot, iron would rust, and water would slowly gnaw away at their foundations beneath.
A century?
Most would collapse into ruins.
"Flame. Power. Glory."
Helaena's soft voice echoed gently through the vast chamber.
Baelon turned his head sharply.
At some point, she had wandered away from his side.
She now stood beside one of the murals lining the wall, her fingers tracing the ancient stone with quiet fascination.
Baelon pursed his lips as he approached, his eyes drifting to the mural before her.
It depicted a group of men standing at the edge of a vast volcano. Unlike the mages in flowing robes from other murals, these men were dressed simply, resembling simple shepherds.
Yet these simple men did not recoil at the sight of the volcano.
The mural instead showed them venturing into the burning throat of the volcano. And from that inferno, they emerged carrying something precious.
Eggs.
Large, scaled, and glowing faintly with heat, cradled in careful arms.
The next panel showed the eggs laid upon carved stone altars while people gathered around them.
They knelt.
Thousands of figures bowed before the eggs in reverence.
In the final scene, the shells cracked.
From within emerged…dragons.
Small and fragile things they were, but still dragons nonetheless.
And as the hatchlings spread their wings, the kneeling masses raised their hands toward them as though greeting living gods.
"Is that the founding of Valyria?" Baelon could not help but murmur.
"Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is not." Helaena sighed softly. "The truth has long since been lost to time."
Nevertheless, Baelon felt his eyes flick to something else in the mural.
Past the crowds. Past the vast altars.
No, it was a...hand?
Baelon suppressed the rising sense of absurdity within him, yet it could not be quelled.
This...hand, jutted out of the ground in the mural like a corpse rising from the grave.
Only, this corpse was the size of a mountain, and its hand was enough to make a city the size of Tolos experience an early dusk should it appear above Tolos.
Baelon pursed his lips away from the mural. He could not quite put his finger on it, but the hand seemed to have elicited a strange sense of panic in him.
Why? How? Baelon knew not. Only the damning thought that he may walk out of this temple with more questions than answers.
Desperate to distract himself, Baelon forced his gaze away and towards the book.
It rested at the very heart of the chamber, quietly waiting atop its pedestal as though it had been expecting them.
His gaze lingered upon it.
This…this might be the first complete text he had ever discovered in Valyria.
Everything else they had found across the peninsula had been broken, fragmented, or so damaged by time that it held little value.
Charred tablets. Crumbling scrolls. Fractured inscriptions barely clinging to the walls of ruined towers.
But this—
This was intact.
Excitement stirred in his veins as he took a cautious step forward.
Then another.
And another.
Before he quite realised it, he stood before it.
Book? Grimoire? Tome?
Baelon cared little for the distinction.
All he could think about was what might lie inside, and...
"Oh, what in the Gods is this!"
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Baelon stared long and hard at the book.
The pages were blank.
Utterly blank.
No words.
No inscriptions.
No spells. No secrets. No forgotten wisdom of the ancient dragonlords.
Just empty parchment.
His brow twitched.
Surely that could not be right.
Baelon desperately tried to comfort himself.
With growing irritation, Baelon grabbed a handful of pages and flipped through them rapidly. Sheet after sheet slid beneath his fingers.
Blank.
Blank.
Blank.
Every single one.
At last, he stepped back, releasing the book as though it had somehow offended him personally. Which, in this case, it most certainly did.
Baelon exhaled slowly as he stared at the utterly useless thing before him.
"Is it truly just a blank book?" He muttered.
But then…
Why hide it like this?
Why conceal it beneath a temple, behind mechanisms and stairways?
Was it some elaborate joke meant to mock whoever found it centuries later?
"Find anything?"
Helaena's voice came from beside him as she wandered over.
"No." Baelon grimaced. "The book is as empty as it could possibly be."
"How odd…" She leaned forward, draping her arms loosely over his shoulders as she peered down at the pages.
"Perhaps its contents are hidden?" She suggested. "Like those dragonglass fragments we found."
Baelon froze.
Then his eyes lit up.
Carefully slipping from her hold, he spun around and pulled her into an enthusiastic hug.
"Pyromancy," he murmured excitedly. "Of course."
Why wouldn't the Valyrians protect their knowledge with some form of magical concealment?
With a quick kiss pressed to Helaena's cheek, Baelon turned back toward the pedestal.
The hungry look in his eyes could have rivalled that of a starving man spotting a feast.
Or perhaps a man eyeing a particularly enticing prostitute.
He grasped Helaena's hand with one of his own.
In his other palm, flame blossomed.
A small sphere of fire flickered to life, its light dancing across the ancient pages.
The moment the light touched the parchment—
The book reacted.
Glyphs and sigils erupted across the blank pages in a golden splendour. Then, the pages suddenly lifted and began turning wildly, stirred by a wind neither of them could feel.
Baelon barely had time to process what was happening.
The symbols multiplied, flooding the book faster and faster until the parchment was covered in writhing script.
Then came the light. A blinding, brilliant light.
Before they knew it, piercing white swallowed their vision entirely.
And then…
Silence.