The mountains burned with color.
Jon had expected grey stone—the granite of the North, the black basalt of the Doom-scarred lands. What he found instead was a riot of pigment, as if some mad painter had taken the bones of the earth and drenched them in every hue imaginable. Ochre cliffs rose in sheer walls beside the road. Veins of blood-red crystal ran through the rock like frozen arteries. Purple shadows pooled in crevasses that seemed to drink the light itself.
The Painted Mountains. The geological scar left by the Fourteen Flames, where the earth itself had been transformed by Valyrian sorcery and the fires that had built an empire.
Jon limped along the ancient road and tried not to think about how beautiful it was.
Elevation: increasing. Atmospheric pressure: decreasing. Core temperature: still unstable. Marcus's voice had steadied somewhat since Mantarys, but there was a new quality to it—a wariness that hadn't been there before. The cold is spreading faster than projected. Your left arm is showing signs of necrosis.
Jon didn't look at his arm. He knew what he would find—the black veins crawling past his elbow now, the skin going grey and waxy, and the fingers that no longer responded to his commands. The frost was eating him alive, and the fire wasn't strong enough to stop it.
Behind him, the girl he had started calling Zala kept pace in silence.
She had earned the name on the second day of their climb, when she had killed a snake with a thrown rock and cooked it over a fire she built from nothing but dead grass and determination. Zaldrīzes—little dragon. It suited her better than "Shadow" or "Follower" or any of the other names Jon's exhausted mind had supplied. She was fierce in a way that had nothing to do with size or strength, and she refused to let either of them die.
Jon was starting to understand why the Faithful had followed him from Volantis. It wasn't about prophets or messiahs. It was about finding something to believe in when everything else had been stripped away.
The road wound higher into the mountains.
* * *
The Valyrian stonework remained perfect even here, thousands of feet above the lowlands.
The road had been carved directly into the cliff face in places, a ribbon of fused dragonstone that hugged the mountainside with engineering precision that modern builders couldn't match. No erosion. No crumbling. No cracks where water had frozen and expanded. The Freehold's roads were built to last forever, and forever they had lasted.
The surrounding terrain was less accommodating.
Jagged rocks thrust up from the painted stone like broken teeth. Crevasses opened without warning, their depths hidden by purple shadows and the constant wind that howled through the passes. The air was thin here—each breath requiring more effort than the last, the altitude pressing against his lungs—and cold in a way that had nothing to do with his condition.
Frost formed on his lashes despite the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun.
Thermoregulation failure. Marcus noted. Your frame can no longer maintain consistent temperature. The cold is bleeding through your normal heat retention.
Jon wiped the frost from his lids and kept walking.
His ankle had gone numb days ago—the frost magic spreading through the ruined joint, killing the nerves, turning agony into absence. It should have been a relief. Instead, it terrified him. The numbness was spreading up his calf now, past his knee, reaching for his hip with frozen fingers. Soon he wouldn't be able to sense his leg at all. Then he wouldn't be able to control it.
And then—
Don't think about that. Marcus's voice was sharp. Focus on the next step. One foot in front of the other. We'll worry about amputation when we reach civilization.
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
No. It's supposed to keep you moving.
Zala appeared at Jon's elbow, pressing something into his good grip. A lizard—small, brown, freshly killed. She had been hunting in the rocks while Jon struggled with the road, her quick fingers finding prey where he noticed only stone. It was the third time today she had brought him food without being asked.
Jon looked at the dead thing in his palm. His stomach clenched with hunger, but the thought of eating raw meat made his throat close.
Zala solved the problem by taking the lizard back, finding a flat rock in the sun, and beginning to gut it with a sharp stone. Her movements were efficient and practiced—the economy of motion that came from a lifetime of surviving on scraps. Within minutes, she had the meat cleaned and laid out to dry in the mountain heat.
"Where did you learn that?" Jon's voice was rusty from disuse.
Zala pointed at her mouth, then made a cutting gesture across her throat. She had learned because she had to. Because no one would feed a mute slave girl, and the alternative was starvation.
Jon sat down on a warm rock and watched her work.
She didn't treat him like a monster. Didn't flinch from his blackened arm or the frost that clung to his skin. Didn't drop to her knees or whisper prayers when he looked at her. She treated him like what he was—a wounded animal that needed tending. Someone who would die without help and who deserved help regardless of what powers lived in his blood.
It humbled him in ways he couldn't articulate.
"Thank you." The words seemed inadequate. "For... all of this. For following me. For not running when you witnessed what I did in Mantarys."
Zala looked up from her work. Her gaze—dark brown, almost black—held no judgment. She pointed at Jon, then at herself, then made a walking motion with her fingers. We walk together. Simple as that.
"You could have stayed in Volantis. Found a new master. Someone who would protect you."
She shook her head. Pointed at the collar around her neck, then made a breaking motion. Then pointed at Jon again.
You broke my chains. Not literally—the collar was still there, the mark of her servitude visible for anyone to see. But she had followed him anyway. Had chosen freedom over safety, uncertainty over the familiar horror of slavery.
Jon understood that choice. He had made it himself the night he walked out of Winterfell into the unknown.
"We'll find a smith," he said quietly. "Someone to cut that collar off. When we reach... wherever we're going."
Zala smiled. It was the first time he had witnessed her smile—a quick flash of expression that transformed her gaunt face into something almost pretty. Then she went back to her work, and Jon sat in the painted sunlight, and for a moment the cold in his chest became almost bearable.
* * *
The fever came that night.
They had found shelter in an alcove carved into the cliff face—a waystation, perhaps, or a guard post from when the Valyrians still patrolled these roads. The roof was intact, the floor dry, and Zala had managed to build a small fire from scrub brush and dried moss. It should have been comfortable.
Jon burned.
Not with fire—that would have been familiar and manageable. This was something else. A sickness that came from the war in his blood, the two powers tearing at each other in endless conflict. His skin was slick with sweat that froze before it could drip. His heart raced, then slowed to a crawl, then raced again. His vision blurred, sharpened, and dissolved into fragments of color and light.
System error. Marcus's voice was distorted, breaking up like a bad signal. Yin-Yang imbalance is critical. Meridian blockage detected. Attempting to—attempting to—
"What does that mean?" Jon's voice came out as a groan. "What's happening to me?"
Unknown terminology. Accessing fragments. The energy pathways in your form are blocked. The frost and fire are fighting for dominance instead of—instead of—
Marcus's voice cut out entirely.
Jon was alone.
* * *
The hallucinations began an hour later.
The Wall loomed before him.
Not as he had imagined it from stories—a distant barrier of white, standing sentinel against the night. This Wall was close, impossibly close, its seven hundred feet of frozen magic rising over him like a wave about to break. And it was weeping. Not water. Blood. Great rivulets of crimson streaming down its face, pooling at its base, turning the snow red.
The Wall weeps for what is coming, someone said. A voice he didn't recognize, ancient and cold. The Wall weeps for the children of winter.
Jon tried to turn away. The scene shifted.
A dragon. But not the dragons of legend—not the fire-breathing beasts that had conquered Westeros. This dragon was made of blue glass, its scales crystalline, its orbs burning with a cold light that had nothing to do with flame. It was beautiful and terrible, and as Jon watched, cracks began to spider across its surface.
The dragon shattered.
A thousand pieces of frozen glass exploded outward, and each piece was a memory—Winterfell burning, Robb's corpse on a battlefield, Arya's face disappearing into a crowd, his father's head on a spike above a gate Jon had never witnessed—
No. Jon tried to scream, tried to wake up, and tried to do anything but watch. No, this isn't real, this isn't—
A grip on his forehead. Cool and damp.
Jon's lids snapped open.
Zala was kneeling beside him, pressing a wet cloth to his burning skin. Her face was pinched with worry, her dark gaze searching his for some sign of recognition. In her other grip, she held a stone—warm from the fire, smooth as an egg.
She pressed the cloth to his forehead. Then she took his frozen left grip and pressed the warm stone against it.
Cold for the fever. Warmth for the frost.
Balance.
Jon stared at her, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his mind still half-trapped in the nightmare. She wasn't a healer. Wasn't a maester or a priest or anyone trained in the arts of medicine. She was a mute slave girl with no education and no resources beyond her own instincts.
And she understood his condition better than he did.
"How did you know?" His voice was barely a whisper. "How did you know to do that?"
Zala touched her chest, then made a balancing motion with her grips—one up, one down, then both level. When one thing is too much, add the other.
Simple. Obvious. The kind of wisdom that came from a life of making do with nothing.
Jon looked at his grips. The left, black and cold, the frost spreading up past his wrist. The right, raw and burned, the fire trying to break through the ruined skin. Two forces that hated each other, fighting for control of a frame that couldn't contain either.
"I've been trying to suppress them," he said slowly. "Trying to hold them back. But they're not—they're not enemies, are they? They're supposed to work together."
Zala nodded. Touched the cloth. Touched the stone. Touched Jon's chest.
Balance.
Marcus's voice crackled back to life, weak but present. She's right. The meridian blockage—it's caused by resistance. You're fighting both energies instead of letting them flow. The Yi Tish cultivation texts describe this. "Two rivers fighting in one bed." The solution isn't to dam them. It's to dig a wider channel.
"I don't know how to do that."
Neither do I. But someone in Yi Ti might.
Jon lay back on the stone floor, the cool cloth still pressed to his forehead, the warm stone still clutched in his frozen grip. The fire in his blood banked to embers. The frost in his chest stopped spreading, at least for now.
Outside, the wind howled through the Painted Mountains, carrying the smell of sulfur and the distant memory of dragonfire.
Jon closed his lids and, for the first time in weeks, slept without nightmares.
* * *
They descended from the mountains on the fifth day.
The road wound down through passes that grew warmer with every mile, the painted stone giving way to scrubland, then scattered trees, then the first signs of human habitation: abandoned farms, ruined watchtowers, and the bones of caravans that had never reached their destinations.
The land here was scarred by war. Not the ancient catastrophe of the Doom, but something more recent—the conflicts that had been tearing Slaver's Bay apart since the Dragon Queen had begun her conquest. Signs of devastation were everywhere: burned villages, mass graves barely covered by windblown sand, and the rotting corpses of soldiers wearing a dozen different insignias.
Daenerys Targaryen. Marcus supplied. Your aunt. She's been liberating slave cities for years now. The masters aren't taking it well.
Jon said nothing. He had learned the stories in Volantis—the Breaker of Chains, the Mother of Dragons, the silver-haired queen who was remaking the world. Something had stirred in him when he learned them, a response in his blood that might have been recognition or might have been the fire responding to its own kind.
He tried not to think about what it meant that his aunt was waging war across Essos while he struggled to survive each day.
The road crested a final ridge, and Bhorash spread out before them.
* * *
The city had been beautiful once.
The evidence lay in the bones of the place—white marble columns rising from the harbor, the remains of a great temple complex on the hill above, and statues of gods and heroes lining an avenue that led from the docks to the palace. The Valyrians had built this city, or conquered it, or both. They had filled it with their art and their architecture and their dreams of eternal glory.
Then they had destroyed it utterly.
The stories said Bhorash had rebelled during the height of the Freehold. The dragonlords had responded by burning it to the foundations, salting the earth, and slaughtering every man, woman, and child. For a thousand years, nothing had grown here. The ruins had stood empty, a monument to Valyrian vengeance, a warning to any who might think of defiance.
Now the ruins were full of life again—but not the kind the original builders would have recognized.
Corsairs. Slavers. Outlaws. Pirates from the Basilisk Isles, sellswords from the companies, and refugees from the wars further south. They had built their shanties inside the marble palaces and their docks over the ancient stone piers. Smoke rose from a hundred cookfires. The sound of hammering and shouting drifted up from the harbor, where ships of every description were anchored in the turquoise waters of Slaver's Bay.
Lawless zone. Marcus assessed. No central authority. Approximately three hundred to five hundred hostile combatants based on visible activity. Threat level: extreme.
"We need supplies," Jon said quietly. "Water. Food. A way across the bay."
I recommend stealth. You can't fight that many people.
Jon pulled his hood lower, hiding his silver hair and the black corruption that had spread to his jawline. Zala did the same, tucking her slave collar beneath her rags, making herself small and forgettable. They weren't a prophet and his follower anymore. They were two more refugees in a land full of refugees, scavenging to survive.
They began their descent.
* * *
The outskirts of Bhorash were a maze of collapsed buildings and improvised shelters.
Jon and Zala moved through them like ghosts, avoiding the main thoroughfares where corsairs drank and brawled, sticking to the shadows where only rats and the desperate made their homes. The smell was overwhelming—rot and salt and human waste, the accumulated filth of hundreds of people living in ruins never meant to be inhabited.
They found a cistern half-full of brackish water. Found fruit rotting on a vine that had somehow survived the salting. Found the corpse of a man who had died clutching a knife and a purse of copper coins, both of which Jon took without hesitation.
Survival requires flexibility. Marcus noted. You're learning.
"I'm becoming a thief."
You're becoming whatever you need to be.
The sun was setting by the time they reached the harbor, painting the marble ruins in shades of gold and crimson. Jon crouched behind a fallen column and watched the activity on the docks—crews loading and unloading cargo, merchants haggling over prices, slaves being led in chains from ship to market.
One vessel caught his attention.
It was different from the others—smaller, sleeker, with a hull painted in colors he didn't recognize. The crew moving across its deck wore clothing that seemed wrong for this part of the world: loose robes in shades of blue and green, their hair bound in topknots, their faces bearing the angular features of the Far East.
Yi Tish design. Marcus's voice held a note of surprise. A trade junk, possibly. Far from home.
Jon's heart quickened. "Can we—"
A commotion near the gangplank drew his attention. A group of corsairs was offloading cargo from the Yi Tish vessel—not slaves, but artifacts. Jade statues. Lacquered boxes. Scrolls bound in silk. The loot of a civilization Jon had never encountered, being pawed through by men who had no idea what they held.
Then the statue appeared.
It was small—perhaps two feet tall—carved from jade so pure it seemed to glow in the dying light. A woman, seated in a position of meditation, her legs crossed, her grips folded in her lap. Her face was serene, beautiful in a way that transcended culture or time.
And in the center of her forehead, a third eye was carved—open, staring, perceiving things that normal sight could never reach.
The statue called to him.
Not with sound. With something deeper—a resonance in his blood, a vibration in the war between frost and fire. The statue knew him. Or knew what he was. Or knew what he could become.
Interesting. Marcus's voice had gone thoughtful. That's a representation of the Maiden-Made-of-Light. One of the primary deities of the Yi Tish tradition. Associated with wisdom, balance, and—
The connection crackled. Broke.
—and the cultivation of inner harmony.
Jon stared at the statue as corsairs carried it away, and something shifted in his chest—a new certainty, a new direction. Yi Ti was more than a destination now. It was the answer to a question he was only beginning to understand.
He needed to get on that ship.
* * *
They waited until full dark.
The corsairs had established their command in what had once been a harbormaster's palace—a sprawling ruin with enough intact roof to keep out the rain and enough intact walls to defend. Guards patrolled the perimeter, but they were lazy, drunk, and confident in their numbers. Who would be foolish enough to attack a city of pirates?
Jon and Zala crept through the shadows toward the docks.
The Yi Tish ship was still there, anchored apart from the others, its crew either imprisoned or scattered. A skeleton watch remained aboard—two corsairs drinking on the deck, their weapons lying carelessly beside them. The gangplank was down, swaying gently in the evening breeze.
Two hostiles. Approach from the east side, where the deck cargo provides cover. Neutralize quietly if possible.
Jon nodded. He started forward—
And his ruined ankle caught on a loose stone.
The sound was small—a scrape, a clatter, nothing that should have carried over the noise of the harbor. But one of the corsairs had better ears than his fellows. His head snapped up. His grip found his sword.
"Who's there?"
Jon froze. Beside him, Zala pressed herself against a pillar, barely breathing.
"Something by the old quay." The corsair was on his feet now, peering into the darkness. "Go check it."
His companion grumbled but rose, drawing his blade. He walked toward Jon's position with the casual confidence of a man who had killed many and feared few.
Options: flee and lose the ship, or fight and risk alerting the camp.
Jon couldn't flee. His leg wouldn't carry him fast enough. And the ship—the ship might be his only chance to reach Yi Ti before his frame gave out entirely.
He reached for the fire.
It came sluggishly, weakly—nothing like the inferno that had broken his chains in Volantis. The magic was depleted, worn down by days of deprivation and the constant drain of keeping himself alive. Whatever he did now would have to be small. Precise. Efficient.
Remember Zala. The cloth and the stone. Balance, not dominance.
The corsair was ten feet away. Five.
Jon stepped out of the shadows.
"What the—" The corsair's sword came up. "A boy? What are you doing here, brat?"
Jon didn't answer. He was focused on the sensation in his blood—the frost in his left arm, the fire in his right, and the two forces that had been tearing him apart since the eclipse. But instead of fighting them, he tried something different.
He let them flow.
The cold poured down through his left leg, into the ground, spreading through the ancient stones of the dock. Frost crystallized beneath the corsair's feet—not a wall, not a weapon, merely a thin layer that made the footing treacherous.
The man slipped.
His sword went wide. His balance broke. And in that moment of vulnerability, Jon grabbed a rusted blade from his belt—a weapon he had scavenged from a dead man—and channeled the fire.
The blade heated in his grip. Not white-hot, not the inferno of the chain-breaking. Enough to turn rust to glowing orange, to make the metal sing with contained energy.
The corsair tried to block. His cold steel met Jon's heated blade—
And shattered.
The thermal shock was devastating. Frozen metal meeting a superheated edge, the stress fractures spreading faster than thought. The corsair's sword exploded into fragments, and Jon's blade continued through, catching the man across the throat.
Blood sprayed. The corsair fell.
"Rallo?" The second corsair was running toward them, his own weapon drawn. Behind him, torches were moving in the camp—the commotion had been noticed. "RALLO!"
More incoming. Thirty seconds before we're surrounded.
Jon couldn't fight thirty corsairs. Couldn't fight ten. The brief expenditure of magic had left him swaying, black spots dancing in his vision. But the second man was almost upon them, and Zala was behind him, and he would not let her be taken.
He stepped forward—
And the frost reached.
Not through the ground this time. Through the air. The connection formed without understanding—his cold touching the man's warmth, finding the rivers of blood that pumped through his veins.
No. Not again. Don't—
Jon pulled back. Clamped down on the power with everything he had. The corsair stumbled, his face going pale, his lips turning blue—but he didn't fall. Didn't freeze from the inside out like the slaver in Mantarys.
Jon hit him with the flat of his blade instead.
The man went down, unconscious but alive.
That was close. Marcus's voice was shaking. You almost killed him the other way.
"I know." Jon's grips were trembling. "I stopped."
You're learning control.
Torches were converging on their position. Shouts in a dozen languages. The sound of weapons being drawn.
"The ship." Jon grabbed Zala's arm. "Now."
They ran.
* * *
The gangplank swayed beneath Jon's feet as he hauled himself aboard.
His ankle screamed—the numbness had been replaced by fresh agony, the movement jarring something loose in the ruined joint. Blood was running down his leg, hot and wet, but he couldn't stop. Couldn't rest. The corsairs were moments behind.
Zala scrambled past him, nimble as a cat, and began cutting the mooring lines with a knife she had produced from somewhere in her rags. The ship groaned, shifting, beginning to drift away from the dock.
"Stop them!" Someone was shouting from the quay. "Get on that ship!"
An arrow hissed past Jon's ear. Another thudded into the deck near his foot.
Find cover. Get below.
Jon staggered toward the ship's cabin—and found a figure blocking his path.
He raised his blade instinctively. The figure didn't move.
It was an old man. Ancient, truly—his face a map of wrinkles, his gaze filmed with cataracts, his form bent by decades of hard use. He wore rags that might once have been the robes of a monk, and around his neck hung a wooden collar carved with symbols Jon didn't recognize.
Yi Tish script. A sangha marker. The badge of a religious order.
The old man looked at Jon's glowing blade—still hot from the fight, still singing with contained fire. Then he looked at Jon's left arm—black and frozen, the corruption visible even in the moonlight. His filmed gaze widened.
"Two rivers," he whispered. His Common Tongue was broken and heavily accented but understandable. "Two rivers fighting in one bed."
Jon's blade wavered. "What?"
"You drown, boy." The old man stepped closer, apparently unconcerned by the weapon pointed at his chest. "The Lion and the Maiden war inside you. Neither can win. Both will destroy."
He knows. Marcus's voice held something like wonder. He recognizes what you are.
"Who are you?" Jon demanded. "How do you know—"
"I am Jian." The old man's smile was sad and knowing. "Navigator. Monk. Prisoner of these salt thieves." He gestured at the wooden collar. "They take my ship. They take my crew. They take the offerings meant for the temples of the Far East."
Arrows were still flying. The ship was drifting faster now, the gap between deck and dock widening with every second. Corsairs were running along the quay, trying to find a way to board.
"We need to go," Jon said. "Can you sail this ship?"
"Can." Jian nodded. "Know the way to the Jade Gates. Know the way to the masters who might save you." His filmed gaze met Jon's. "But I must ask: why should I help a demon child? Why should I guide destruction to the land of my birth?"
Jon opened his mouth to argue, to threaten, to do whatever was necessary—
And stopped.
He was so tired. So broken. So far from everything he had ever known. The power in his blood was killing him, and he had spent weeks running from people who wanted to worship it or exploit it or destroy it. He had nothing left to bargain with. Nothing left to threaten with.
All he had was the truth.
"I don't want to be a demon." His voice cracked. "I don't want to destroy anything. I want to learn how to stop hurting people. How to control this." He held up his grips—one black, one burned. "A girl in the mountains showed me. Balance. The cold and the warm together. If there are masters who can teach me more..."
He trailed off. The old man was studying him with that filmed gaze, perceiving something that had nothing to do with physical sight.
"The girl." Jian looked past Jon to where Zala crouched by the stern, still cutting lines. "She followed you? From where?"
"Volantis. She witnessed me climb the Black Wall."
"And she still follows?" Something shifted in the old man's expression. "The fire attracts moths. The frost repels all. But you... you have found one who perceives neither. Who perceives only the boy between."
Jon didn't understand. Was too exhausted to try.
"Will you help us?" he asked. "Please."
Jian was silent for a long moment. The ship had drifted far enough that the corsairs' arrows were falling short, splashing into the dark water of the harbor. The shouts from the dock were fading, replaced by the gentle creak of wood and the whisper of wind through rigging.
"The way is long," the old monk said finally. "Past Qarth and the Three Walls. Across the Jade Sea and through the Thousand Islands. Many dangers. Many deaths."
"I know."
"You may not survive. The Lion may devour you before we reach the Gate."
"I know that too."
"And still you ask?"
Jon looked at his grips. At the ship beneath his feet. At Zala, who had finished with the mooring lines and was watching them with her dark, silent gaze.
"The Demon Road ends here," he said. "The sea road begins. I've been running since Winterfell, and I'm tired of running." He met the old man's gaze. "Take us to the sun. Please. Take us to wherever I need to go to stop being a monster."
Jian studied him for another long moment.
Then he smiled—a real smile, warm despite the cataracts, ancient but not unkind.
"Not a monster," he said quietly. "Unfinished." He turned toward the ship's wheel, his bent form moving with surprising grace. "The masters will know. The Jade Gates will open or close. But the journey... the journey I can give."
He began calling orders in a language Jon didn't understand. Zala moved to help with the rigging, her small grips finding ropes and pulleys with intuitive skill. The ship's sails unfurled, catching the night wind, and the vessel began to move—gliding out of Bhorash's harbor and into the dark expanse of Slaver's Bay.
Jon stood at the bow and watched the fires of the corsair city shrink behind them.
The Demon Road ends here. Marcus repeated. The sea road begins.
"How far to Yi Ti?"
Thousands of miles. Months of travel, even with favorable winds. We'll have to pass through Qarth, navigate the Jade Straits, survive the Thousand Islands...
"But it's possible?"
Possible. A pause. If you don't die first.
Jon laughed—a broken sound, more sob than humor, but real. He was dying. He had been dying since the eclipse cracked him open and let the winter in. Every step of this journey had been borrowed time, and he had no guarantee that the borrowed time would last.
But for the first time since leaving Winterfell, he was doing more than running.
He was seeking.
The statue of the Maiden-Made-of-Light was somewhere on this ship, stolen by corsairs, waiting to be found. The old monk knew the way to masters who might teach Jon to survive what he was becoming. The girl with no voice had shown him, with nothing but a cloth and a stone, that balance was possible.
He looked at his grips—one black, one burned—and the war inside him shifted. Not ending. Not resolving. But changing. Becoming something that might, someday, be controllable.
"Take us to the sun," he whispered.
The ship sailed east, and the wheel turned on.