The dragon slept, and the cold came rushing back.
Jon made it perhaps a mile from the gates of Volantis before his frame betrayed him. The adrenaline that had carried him up the Black Wall and through the eastern districts drained away all at once, leaving him hollow, leaving him broken, leaving him to collapse on the ancient stones of the Demon Road with nothing but agony for company.
The phantom cold was worse than ever. It radiated from his chest like a second heartbeat, spreading through his limbs in waves of numbness and pain. His ruined ankle had swollen to twice its normal size, the frost-seal cracking, weeping fluids that smelled of rot and char. His palms—the palms that had melted dragonstone and shattered chains—were raw meat, blistered and bleeding, the skin hanging in strips.
System failure imminent. Marcus's voice was barely audible, fading in and out like a dying signal. Core temperature destabilizing. Caloric reserves are critical. Recommend immediate shelter and—
"There is no shelter." Jon's voice came out as a croak. "There's nothing."
He looked back toward Volantis.
The city glowed on the horizon, its fires visible even at this distance—the Red Temple's eternal flames painting the sky in shades of orange and crimson. Between Jon and those flames, moving along the road with the slow inevitability of a tide, came the Faithful.
There were perhaps a dozen of them. Slaves, by the look of their collars. Beggars, by the look of their rags. They walked in a loose procession, their faces upturned toward Jon like flowers following the sun. When he looked at them, they dropped to their knees. When he looked away, they rose and continued following.
They didn't approach. Didn't speak. Only watched.
They think you're a prophet. Marcus's voice carried something that might have been disgust. A messiah. They'll follow you until you die, and then they'll build a shrine on your bones.
Jon turned away and kept moving.
* * *
The Demon Road stretched before him like a ribbon of black glass.
It was nothing like the roads of Westeros—those muddy tracks that turned to rivers in rain and dust bowls in drought. This was Valyrian work, fused dragonstone raised ten feet above the surrounding marshland, immune to the rot and ruin that consumed everything else. The surface was smooth as polished obsidian, warm beneath Jon's bare feet (he had lost his boots somewhere in Volantis), and thrumming with a power that predated the Doom by centuries.
The Valyrian road network. Built during the height of the Freehold. Marcus was cataloguing, analyzing, and trying to impose order on the chaos of their situation. Designed to survive anything. Earthquakes. Floods. The apocalypse itself.
Jon said nothing. He was focused entirely on the act of moving—dragging his ruined ankle behind him, placing one foot in front of the other, refusing to fall down and die on these ancient stones.
The landscape around him was a nightmare.
To the south, the sky had gone wrong. Not clouded—wrong. A permanent bruise of purple and red stretched across the horizon, pulsing with light that had no source. The Doom of Valyria, still burning after four hundred years. The place where the Fourteen Flames had erupted and swallowed the greatest civilization the world had ever known.
The air tasted of sulfur. Of ash. Of something older and darker, something that made Jon's blood stir uneasily in his veins.
Residual radiation. Magical contamination. This entire region is a hot zone.
"I know." Jon's lips were cracked, his throat raw. "I can taste it."
The duality in his blood was responding to something in the land itself—the fire waking to the volcanic energy that still lurked beneath the earth, the frost recoiling from warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. He was walking through a wound in the world, and the wound was infected with power.
Behind him, the Faithful followed.
* * *
Days blurred together.
Jon lost count somewhere around the third sunrise, when the dehydration became severe enough to make the world shimmer and shift. The waystations along the road were ruins—burned-out shells that had once served travelers, now picked clean by scavengers and time. He found dirty water in a cistern half-choked with algae. Found rotted fruit in an abandoned garden, the flesh brown and crawling with insects.
He ate it anyway. All of it. His frame demanded fuel with a desperation that overrode every instinct of disgust.
The magic is burning through you. Marcus observed. Your metabolism has accelerated beyond human norms. You're consuming yourself.
Jon looked at his arms. The black veins had spread further—crawling up past his elbows now, branching across his chest like the roots of some dark tree. His skin had gone pale, almost translucent, the corruption visible beneath it like shadows moving under frost.
The Faithful noticed too. When he stopped to rest, they gathered at a respectful distance and stared at the marks with something like ecstasy.
"The fire writes upon his flesh," one of them whispered—an old man with a slave's collar and a convert's burning gaze. "The Lord of Light transforms him."
Jon wanted to scream at them. Wanted to tell them he wasn't a prophet, wasn't chosen, and wasn't anything but a dying child trying to outrun his own blood. But the words wouldn't come. His throat was too dry, his mind too fractured, and his will too exhausted.
He settled for looking at them until they looked away.
The road wound on.
* * *
The Sea of Sighs appeared on the fifth day.
Jon crested a rise in the road—the Demon Road climbing to avoid some ancient obstruction—and the vista opened before him: a vast expanse of water the color of old blood. Not blue. Not even grey. Red, as if the entire sea had been filled with wine or worse.
Geological phenomenon. Marcus was analyzing. Mineral content in the water. Iron oxidation, possibly volcanic residue from the Doom. The coloration is natural.
"It looks like blood."
It does.
The road curved north to avoid the sea's toxic shores, but the smell reached Jon anyway—salt and sulfur, decay, and something sweeter beneath it all, like overripe fruit. The air shimmered above the red water, heat rising in waves that distorted the distant shore into something dreamlike and wrong.
Jon stopped walking.
He stood on the ancient stones, swaying slightly, and looked at his grips. The left was black to the wrist now, the frostbite permanent, the nerves dead. The right was raw and weeping, blisters forming over blisters, the skin unable to heal before new damage appeared.
The tattooist's needle froze before it could mark him.
The chains were melting in his grip until they shattered.
The guard's blood was crystallizing in his veins as Jon's panic reached out and found something vital to destroy.
He was a bomb. A walking catastrophe waiting to happen. Every moment of fear, of pain, of desperation brought the power surging to the surface—sometimes frost, sometimes fire, always beyond his control. The duality in his blood wasn't balanced. It was war, and the battlefield was his own flesh.
You need training. Marcus said it like a diagnosis. The power is growing faster than your ability to contain it. Without guidance, without discipline...
"I know." Jon started walking again. "Yi Ti. The masters there."
If you survive that long.
The Sea of Sighs stretched out beside them, red and endless, while the Faithful followed in their silent procession and the sky to the south continued to burn.
* * *
Mantarys appeared like a tumor on the horizon.
The Demon Road led directly to it—a city of black stone rising from the blasted landscape, its towers twisted, its walls bulging, its entire structure suggesting diseased architecture. It had been built by Valyrians, Jon knew. Built as a waystation on the road between the Freehold and its eastern colonies. But something had gone wrong here. Something had festered.
City of Monsters. Marcus supplied. The inhabitants are... changed. Valyrian blood magic gone wrong, compounded by centuries of isolation and inbreeding. Reports suggest significant genetic deviations.
"Meaning?"
Meaning they're mutants. Expect hostility.
Jon didn't have a choice. His waterskin had been empty since yesterday. The rotten fruit was gone. His frame was shutting down, the phantom cold spreading deeper with every hour, and if he didn't find sustenance soon, the road would claim him.
He limped toward the gates.
* * *
The Mantari watched him approach with gazes that held no recognition.
They were human—technically. They had the basic shape of men and women, the fundamental arrangement of limbs and features. But everything else was wrong. Subtly wrong, in ways that made Jon's skin crawl even as his mind struggled to identify the specifics.
A woman sat by the gate, selling something that might have been bread. Her nose was gone, replaced by two slits that flexed as she breathed. A child played in the dust nearby, its fingers fused together into flipper-like paddles, scooping dirt and letting it fall in patterns only it could understand.
Deeper in the city, worse shapes moved. A man with a vestigial twin growing from his neck, the second head lolling, its mouth opening and closing in silent mimicry of its host. A woman whose arms bent the wrong way, her elbows jutting forward, her grips reaching backward. Guards in black armor whose faces were hidden behind masks—and what those masks concealed, what deformities lurked beneath the bronze and leather, Jon could only imagine.
In Volantis, he had been a freak. A curiosity. Something to be sold or worshipped.
Here, he was too whole.
The Mantari looked at him with suspicion, not wonder. His Valyrian features marked him as one of their ancient masters—the bloodline that had created them, shaped them, and abandoned them to their twisted fate. But he lacked their marks, their mutations, and the visible signs of belonging to this broken community.
He was an outsider. An intruder. Something is wrong.
Keep moving. Find supplies. Get out.
Jon limped through the streets of Mantarys, looking for anything he could trade.
* * *
The merchant's stall smelled of pickling brine and desperation.
Jon had found it in a market square near the city's center—a collection of ramshackle stands selling goods that ranged from mysterious to actively disturbing. Preserved organs floating in jars. Bones carved into implements he couldn't identify. Meat that might have come from any number of sources, its origin carefully unnamed.
The merchant herself was ancient, her spine curved into a question mark, her gaze milky with cataracts. She squinted at Jon as he approached, her lipless mouth pulling back to reveal teeth filed to points.
"Northern boy." Her voice was a whisper of dried leaves. "Valyrian blood. What do you want?"
"Water." Jon's voice cracked. "Food. I can pay."
He held up the ring he had taken from one of the guards in Volantis—gold, set with a small ruby, worth more than anything in this market. The merchant's gaze widened, then narrowed.
"Where did a crippled child get such a thing?"
"Does it matter?"
She studied him for a long moment. Her milky attention moved over his face, his palms, and the black veins visible through his torn shirt. Something shifted in her expression—recognition, perhaps, or fear.
"The stories have reached us," she said quietly. "The boy who climbed the Black Wall. The fire made flesh." She took the ring, weighing it in her palm. "The Red Priests are offering a fortune for your return."
Jon's grip twitched toward the cold. "Are you going to collect it?"
The merchant laughed—a dry, rasping sound. "I am Mantari. We do not serve the Red God, and we do not serve Volantis." She produced a skin of water and a package wrapped in oiled cloth. "Take your supplies and go, fire-boy. This city has enough monsters without adding you to the collection."
Jon took the offerings and didn't look back.
* * *
The Yunkish found him before he reached the eastern gate.
He should have been more careful. Should have moved faster, kept to the shadows, and avoided the main thoroughfares. But his frame was failing, his mind clouded by exhaustion and fever, and the caravan appeared before he could evade it.
They were camped in a square near the city's edge—perhaps thirty men in the bronze and crimson of Yunkai, their wagons loaded with goods and slaves. Sellswords, by the look of their mismatched armor. Slavers, by the look of the iron collars piled beside their cook fires. They had come north along the coast road, probably trading with Mantarys before continuing on to Volantis.
Jon tried to slip past. His limp gave him away.
"Hold."
A grip closed on his shoulder, spinning him around. The man who had grabbed him was big—not tall, but thick, with arms like tree trunks and a face scarred by a lifetime of violence. He wore the insignia of a sergeant, and his gaze held the flat assessment of a professional evaluating merchandise.
"What have we here?" He grabbed Jon's chin, tilting his face toward the light. "Valyrian coloring. Silver hair under the filth. And those marks..." His attention moved to Jon's arms, to the black veins crawling up past his elbows. "Gods. You're the one from Volantis."
Jon tried to pull away. The grip tightened.
"The fire demon who climbed the Black Wall." The sergeant's laugh was ugly. "There's a bounty on you, boy. A big one. The Red Priests want you back, and they're paying in gold."
More men were approaching. Six, eight, or ten of them, closing in from all sides, cutting off every avenue of escape. His back hit a wall. His ruined ankle screamed as he shifted his weight, trying to find a stance that would let him fight.
[MULTIPLE HOSTILES. WEAPONS: BLADED. FORMATION: ENCIRCLEMENT. THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL.]
"I don't want trouble." Jon's voice came out steadier than the fear warranted. "Let me pass."
"Oh, you're not passing anywhere." The sergeant produced a length of rope. "The priests want you alive, but they didn't say anything about undamaged. Get the box."
Two of the men peeled away, returning moments later with something that made Jon's blood freeze: a cedar chest, large enough to hold a child, its lid fitted with air holes and heavy locks. The kind of container used to transport living cargo over long distances.
The kind of container used to ship slaves to buyers who preferred their merchandise unable to escape.
They're going to box you. Like cargo. Like meat.
Jon's grip moved toward the fire—
And found nothing.
The power was gone. Not suppressed, not restrained—gone, drained away by days of deprivation and the constant demands of keeping himself alive. He reached for the familiar heat in his blood and found only ash.
"No magic today, demon?" The sergeant had caught the gesture, the failure. His smile widened. "The boys in Volantis said you'd be weak. Said you burned yourself out climbing that wall." He moved closer, rope in grip. "Let's see how much fire you've got left."
They rushed him.
* * *
The first blow caught Jon across the face.
He went down hard, his ruined ankle folding beneath him, his frame hitting the cobblestones with an impact that drove the breath from his lungs. The world became a chaos of boots and fists, pain exploding from everywhere at once. He curled into a ball, trying to protect his head, trying to survive long enough to—
To what? The fire was gone. His frame was broken. He had nothing left.
Get up. Marcus's voice was distant, desperate. You have to get up. Use the cold. Use anything.
A boot connected with Jon's ribs. Something cracked. He screamed—
And the cold answered.
It came from somewhere deeper than the fire had ever reached. Not the controlled chill of his left grip, not the deliberate frost he had learned to summon. This was older. Darker. The cold of the crypts beneath Winterfell, where dead kings slept with iron swords across their laps. The cold of the Wall, seven hundred feet of frozen magic. The cold of the Others, creatures from the legends of his childhood, whose touch was death itself.
It surged up through Jon's form like a tide of black frost.
The sergeant's grip closed around Jon's throat.
And Jon reached.
Not with his grips. With something else—something that lived in the frozen darkness of his blood, something that had been waiting for this moment since the eclipse had cracked him open and let the winter in. The connection formed: his cold touching the sergeant's warmth, his frost finding the rivers of blood that pumped through the man's veins.
He pulled.
The sergeant's gaze went wide. His grip slackened. His mouth opened in a scream that never came—his tongue was already freezing, his throat already closing, his blood turning to slush and then to frost in the space of a heartbeat.
He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
The other slavers stumbled backward, their faces masks of horror. The sergeant lay on the cobblestones, his skin gone blue-white, frost spreading across his face and chest, and crystals forming in his open sockets. Dead. Not injured. Not disabled. Dead, killed from the inside out by a cold that had reached through skin and muscle to find the warm flow of life itself.
Jon stared at his grips.
They were glowing. Both of them were not fire-bright but shadow-dark, a black luminescence that seemed to drink in the light rather than emit it. The phantom cold was everywhere now, spreading through him, demanding more, wanting to reach out and touch every warm thing in the world.
Run. Marcus's voice was shaking. Run NOW. Before you kill them all.
Jon ran.
* * *
The twisted streets of Mantarys swallowed him whole.
He lurched through alleys and passages, his ruined ankle dragging, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Behind him, the slavers were shouting—but their voices were distant, uncertain, the pursuit of men who had watched their leader die in a way that defied explanation.
The Mantari watched him pass. They pressed themselves against walls, vanished into doorways, and made signs against evil as the demon-boy staggered through their broken city. None of them tried to stop him. None of them offered help.
He was a monster now. Even to the monsters.
Jon emerged from the eastern gate as the sun was setting, painting the blasted landscape in shades of blood and fire. The Demon Road stretched before him, continuing its endless journey toward the Painted Mountains and whatever lay beyond. The air was hot and sulfurous, thick with the residue of the Doom.
He made it perhaps a hundred yards before his legs gave out.
* * *
The ruin might have been a temple once.
Columns rose around Jon like broken teeth, their surfaces carved with symbols that predated the Freehold. The roof was gone, collapsed centuries ago, leaving only the skeleton of walls and the ghost of sacred purpose. He had crawled into its shadow to die.
Because that was what was happening. The cold was spreading through him, claiming more of his form with every heartbeat. His left arm was numb to the shoulder. His right grip had stopped responding to his commands; the fingers curled into a claw he couldn't relax. The black veins had reached his neck, crawling up toward his jaw like fingers of corruption.
Core temperature is critical. Marcus's voice was fading. Systemic cascade failure imminent. Jon... I'm sorry. I thought we could make it.
"Yi Ti." Jon's lips barely moved. "How far?"
Thousands of miles. Across the Painted Mountains. Through the Bone Mountains. Past the Grey Waste. We'll never—
"How far?"
Silence. Then, softer:
Too far. I'm sorry.
Jon closed his lids.
He thought of Winterfell. Of Robb's laugh and Arya's sharp face and the way the godswood had smelled in autumn. He thought of his father—his uncle—sitting in the solar with a face that held more sorrow than Jon had ever understood. He thought of the crypts, the cold darkness where the Kings of Winter slept their endless sleep.
Would they bury him there? Would anyone ever know what had happened to the bastard boy who had walked out of Winterfell and into legend?
A sound. Footsteps on stone.
Jon's lids snapped open. His grip scrabbled for a weapon—found a loose stone, clutched it in fingers that could barely hold. If the slavers had followed him—if this was the end—
A figure stepped into the ruins.
She was young. Perhaps twelve, perhaps thirteen, with the shaved head and collar of a Volantene slave. Her feet were bare and bleeding from days of walking. Her face was gaunt, her gaze sunken, and her form wasted by the same deprivations that had destroyed Jon.
She was one of the Faithful. One of the silent processions that had followed him from the gates of Volantis.
The only one who had survived.
Jon raised the stone. "Stay back."
She didn't speak. Only looked at him with a gaze that held no fear, no judgment, and no demand. Slowly, she reached into the rags she wore and produced something: a skin of water, miraculously full. A roll of clean bandages, white as snow.
She held them out to him.
"Why?" Jon's voice cracked. "I'm not your prophet. I'm not... I'm nothing. Why did you follow me?"
The girl opened her mouth. No sound came out. She pointed to her tongue—or where her tongue had been. A slave's punishment. Someone had cut out her voice.
But she didn't need words. She touched her chest, over her heart, then pointed at Jon. Then she touched her lids and pointed at the sky—at the stars that were beginning to emerge as darkness fell.
She believes, Marcus said quietly. It doesn't matter if you think you're nothing. She watched you climb that wall. She witnessed you do the impossible. To her, you're proof that the world can change.
Jon looked at the water. At the bandages. At the girl who had walked hundreds of miles through hostile territory to offer a dying boy hope.
He took the skin and drank.
The water was sweet and clean, the best thing he had ever tasted. It spread through his form like light, pushing back the cold, easing the terrible thirst that had been killing him by degrees. He drank until the skin was half-empty, then stopped, forcing himself to save the rest.
The girl sat down beside him, her back against a broken column, her gaze fixed on the road ahead.
Jon looked at his grips. The black luminescence had faded, but the corruption remained—the dark veins, the dead nerves, the skin that no longer belonged to him. He looked at the road stretching into the darkness, toward mountains that scraped the stars and lands that existed only in legend.
"The road is death," he whispered. "Everyone says so."
The girl looked at him. In her gaze, something that might have been understanding.
Jon drained the last of the water and pushed himself to his feet. His ankle screamed. His form swayed. But he was standing—barely, impossibly, but standing.
"Good." His voice was frost and ash. "I'm already dead."
The Demon Road stretched before them, black glass under black sky. The girl rose to follow him, silent as a shadow, faithful as a prayer.
Behind them, Mantarys smoldered in the darkness, the City of Monsters watching their departure with a thousand twisted shapes.
Ahead, the Painted Mountains waited.
And the wheel turned on.