The stonemen attack had changed everything.
Half the crew was now on permanent high alert, weapons never more than an arm's reach away. The others moved like ghosts silent, watchful, their eyes always scanning the mist-choked horizon. Vaelros had barely slept since. He couldn't afford to.
He spent his nights in the hold, hunched over a makeshift workbench, grinding herbs and boiling tinctures. The masks he fashioned were crude layers of cloth soaked in a mixture of ghost nettle, ashleaf, and saltroot but they worked. The filters dulled the sting of the poisoned air, kept the worst of the smoke from clawing at their lungs.
It wasn't elegant. But it kept them alive.
Ten weeks into the voyage, the strain was showing.
Vaelros had been using magic to navigate threading sigils into the wind, reading the stars through ash, divining safe currents with trembling hands. The effort was a constant drain. His head throbbed. His vision blurred. His fingers twitched even at rest.
To keep going, he chewed the bitter redleaf grass from the shores of the Red Sea a stimulant known to amplify magical focus. When brewed properly, it became a potent tonic. But Vaelros hadn't had time to prepare it. So he chewed it raw, sucking the juice from the fibrous leaves and swallowing the nausea that followed.
It tasted like copper and bile. Left his tongue numb. But it worked.
Mostly.
When the shattered coast of Valyria finally rose from the mist, it didn't feel like a triumph.
It felt like a warning.
The dock was ancient, half-swallowed by the sea, its stones slick with black moss. No birds. No wind. Just the low, constant hum of something vast and unseen like the world itself was holding its breath.
Vaelros stood at the gangplank, swaying slightly, his cloak drawn tight. "Masks on," he ordered. "Change the herbs every hour. No exceptions."
The crew obeyed, moving with quiet efficiency. Carts were lowered, wheels creaking as they rolled across the cracked stone. They would need them to haul anything they found books, relics, weapons. Or bodies.
Vaelros took a deep breath, then stopped. Even through the mask, the air burned.
He reached into his satchel and pulled out two small pouches the last of his redleaf. He tucked one into his belt, the other into his boot. He would need them both.
The land pulsed beneath his feet. Not literally but in the way a storm hums before it breaks. The magic here was overwhelming. Not just strong monolithic. A beacon, radiating power in all directions. But it was wrong. Toxic. Like a well gone sour.
If he tried to draw from it, it would consume him.
He gathered the two men he trusted most: Ser Calen Waters, the bastard knight, and Tharn, the wildling with the iron grip and the quiet eyes. He handed each of them a talisman small discs of obsidian etched with runes of resistance and clarity.
"Keep these on you," he said. "Don't take them off. Not even to piss."
Tharn sniffed his. "Smells like burnt mint."
"That's the idea."
He turned to the rest of the crew, voice steady despite the weight in his chest. "This place is alive. Not in the way a forest is. In the way a wound is. There are things here monsters, yes. That's a given. But there's something else. Something... flying."
The crew shifted uneasily.
"I'm telling you this once," Vaelros said. "If you see it run. Don't fight. Don't shout. Don't even breathe too loud. I don't know if I can stop it. I don't know if anyone can."
He looked at Calen and Tharn. "It's not just a beast. It's a sickness. Like the stonemen, but worse. A creature that should be dead, but isn't. Whatever the Valyrians did to it... it's still here."
Captain Raveth stepped forward. "You think it's what killed the Black Dread?"
Vaelros hesitated. "Maybe. Or maybe it was fireworms. Or age. But if it was this thing..."
He trailed off, then shook his head.
"I'm hoping for fireworms."
He pulled his cloak tighter, the runes stitched into its lining already beginning to glow faintly. "I've laid enchantments. If you move quietly, you should be able to get in, get what you need, and get back."
"But if it sees you..." He looked out at the ruins, where the smoke curled like fingers. "Then the enchantments won't matter. It's bigger than the Black Dread. It has to be."
No one spoke.
Then Tharn grunted. "Well. That's comforting."
Vaelros smiled faintly. "I do my best."
And with that, they stepped off the dock and into the bones of a fallen empire.