The Sorrows.
Here, the Rhoyne widens dramatically. The once-fertile plains that lined its banks have vanished, replaced by an unrelenting, thick, grayish-white mist. A peculiar scent fills the air—the residue of lingering Magic. Even high upon his dragon's back, Lo Quen could feel the magical concentration here far surpassing that of the outside world.
"This is the place," Jaelena said to Lo Quen, who rode beside her on her silver dragon. "The site where the dragon legions of Valyria were destroyed. It's said Prince Garin's water magic buried over a hundred dragons here."
Lo Quen addressed Jaelena, who rode beside him on the silver dragon. Lo Quen possessed true dragon blood, while Jaelena had acquired her Dragon Bloodline through her conversion into a Flame Knight. This was their assurance for daring to step into this cursed land. Otherwise, should they be touched by the stone men or stumble into a corner where the curse still lingered, they would face a high risk of contracting grayscale.
Blooddancer and Silverfall lowered their altitude. The powerful winds generated by their massive wings briefly pushed some of the dense fog aside, revealing the hidden landscape below. Sunlight here seemed unusually stingy, barely breaking through the thick mist to cast a dim, melancholic light.
Below them lay the colossal ruins of a city. This was once the great city of the ancient Rhoynar people, Chroyane. Now, after the flames of the Valyrian Dragonlords' legion had scorched it, only endless walls and rubble remained. Many buildings had been melted by the extreme heat, their shapes resembling massive wax drips that had solidified into grotesque forms.
Among the ruins, countless shadowy figures shifted and moved. Stone men. Their skin was rough like rock, their movements stiff and awkward, like marionettes aimlessly wandering through the ruins or curling up in forgotten corners.
Three times a year, Volantis's Triarch symbolically sent ships to provide food to these afflicted souls. But Lo Quen knew this was no act of compassion from the slave masters. Instead, they treated this cursed land and its pitiable, terrifying stone men as a natural northern barrier, using them to block any forces from the upper Rhoyne from advancing south. This allowed Volantis to focus its defenses elsewhere.
As the dragons' shadows passed over them, many stone men looked up in terror, their faces blank and confused. But more of them let out wild, frenzied howls at the intruding dragons, flailing their stiff limbs in aggression. Lo Quen frowned. He knew these creatures had low intelligence, their frail bodies slowly descending into madness as they neared the end of their lives, making them extremely dangerous.
The two dragons continued their slow flight toward the heart of the ruins. The closer they flew to the center, the larger the architectural debris became. Strange, melted-and-then-solidified stone towers rose in dense clusters. Lo Quen could almost imagine the scene from a thousand years ago. Hundreds of dragons had blotted out the sky, their dragonfire pouring down like a torrential storm, melting the once-glorious city and its inhabitants, even vaporizing a vast stretch of the broad Rhoyne with their intense heat.
At that moment, an eerie, bone-chilling howl echoed from a massive ruin below. Lo Quen looked down. It was a huge stone bridge spanning the Rhoyne, now half-collapsed, its deck hanging some forty feet above the murky water below. The bridge was now packed with stone men, all of them tilting their heads upward in unison, letting out that spine-chilling collective wail, their eyes locked onto the dragons above.
Lo Quen's gaze passed over the stone bridge and focused on a wide island in the center of the Rhoyne. It had once been the site of Chroyane's core palace complex, the Heart Palace. Now, it was only an even grander ruin. Atop the highest point of those ruins, precariously perched on a half-collapsed dome, stood a figure. He was exceptionally tall, easily over four meters, his entire body tightly wrapped in a grimy gray shroud, leaving only his eyes exposed. Those eyes seemed to seethe with a thousand years of hatred, now glaring with searing animosity at Lo Quen, Jaelena, and the two dragons beneath them.
The Shrouded Lord!
The dreaded entity said to rule The Sorrows. Some claim it is Prince Garin, risen from the depths to become an undead monarch as Warden of this cursed land. Others say The Sorrows has seen countless Shrouded Lords throughout its history, each succeeding the last upon his demise. The current one is a pirate from the Basilisk Isles. A more romantic version tells of the Shrouded Lord beginning as a statue, brought to life when a mist-born gray woman kissed him with her icy lips. Regardless of the Shrouded Lord's origins, it was clear this sovereign held no welcome for the two uninvited guests.
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
A shrill whistling pierced the air. Countless pallid bone arrows swarmed from the shadows of the ruined palace below. These archers were also cursed stone men, yet they seemed to retain more of their former combat instincts. Their bows were curved from massive bones, their strings made of some resilient sinew, and their arrows were sharpened fragments of various bones.
Lo Quen's stomach churned violently. He instantly understood the source of these materials. Beyond the sheer revulsion, however, what caught his attention was the faint magical fluctuation clinging to the bone arrows as they streaked toward them.
"So it is!"
A sharp gleam flashed in Lo Quen's eyes. "These stone men, this grayscale—they are fundamentally a potent magical curse. They are magical units." His initial conjecture confirmed, a cold smile curled at the corners of Lo Quen's mouth. Dragon's Soul—that was what he craved most now. Only with Dragon's Soul would he possess the strength to confront the coming Long Night.
A thought struck Lo Quen, and he was about to command Blooddancer to dive down, incinerating those insolent Archers into Ash with Dragonfire. Suddenly, an anomaly occurred.
The Shrouded Lord raised his hands, and without warning, the waters of the nearby Rhoyne surged violently. The once-calm river surface instantly turned turbulent, massive whirlpools materializing out of thin air with a deep, rumbling roar. Immediately, thick water spouts erupted from the river surface. Starting with just one or two, they multiplied in an instant to dozens. They connected the murky river water with the thick, heavy mist, twisting and spinning madly, emitting deafening howls.
The appearance of the waterspouts instantly disrupted the air currents across the entire The Sorrows. Hurricanes materialized out of thin air, carrying bone-chilling river water and thick, indissoluble gray-white mist, lashing violently against Blooddancer and Silverfall. Blooddancer let out an angry, uneasy roar as its massive form lurched violently in the raging turbulence, struggling to maintain balance. Silverfall fared worse. Slightly smaller in size, its flight pattern was completely shattered. It emitted a terrified shriek, nearly losing control as the fierce winds threatened to carry it away.