The Valyrian air smelled of burnt metal and old salt. The breeze, laden with volcanic dust, trailed like a burning tongue through the ruins. The group advanced in silence, each step echoing on the black, fractured stones.
The echo of their boots and the whisper of their cloaks mingled with a distant murmur, as if the bowels of the earth spoke.
Vaemor Xhaelarys clenched his fist on the hilt of his sword. The heat of the metal reminded him that, in this place, even the steel seemed alive. The sight of the ruined towers and dried-up canals made him ponder the same question again and again: how many more secrets did this dead city hold?
"The road that continues east forks," Aerys Qhaedros said, bending down to examine some footprints half-buried in the ash. "They are not human."
Rhaedor Vorys leaned beside him, touching the marks with his fingers. "They don't look like common beasts either," he added quietly. "The pattern is too orderly... as if they knew where they were going."
The sentence left a silence thicker than the air.
Ever since they crossed the last broken bridge over the canal, the group had sensed they were not alone. Fleeting shadows among the rubble, the creaking of stones without the wind... signs of unseen presences.
It was Maekor Dravion who spotted them first. A pair of figures crouched atop a ruined wall; their eyes reflected the red sky like embers. They were elongated, their bodies covered in bony plates that seemed made of the same material as the charred towers. Their movements were stealthy, but with a calculated cadence, like hunters studying their prey.
"They're watching us," Maekor whispered, slowly raising his spear.
Kaelyth Thalmyx frowned. If they're clever, perhaps they're waiting for us to approach... to attack us from all sides. There was no time for more words. A shrill cry, a mixture of roar and hiss, cut through the air. Then more appeared, slipping through the ruins, climbing together, surrounding the group like wolves in a forest.
Vaemor noted that their formations were not chaotic. The flanks moved like pincers, and those behind carried improvised weapons of bone and rusted metal.
"They are not simple beasts," Daenyr Vhaelys muttered, falling back to cover Zaryon Velqarys's flank. "They are a pack... but also an army."
The first clash was brutal. One of the creatures leaped at Aerys, who barely managed to block its sword. The impact knocked him back two paces, and the enemy's teeth scraped his shoulder guard. Maekor drove his spear into the side of another, but even wounded, the creature continued to fight with silent fury. Vaemor spun around, severing the arm of one that tried to rush at Kaevor. The blood that spurted was thick, almost black, and gave off a stench of sulfur.
"Hold the line!" he shouted. "Don't let them surround us!"
But for every one that fell, another emerged from the ash mist. Some seemed to communicate with each other with clicks and hisses, moving in unison, as if responding to invisible commands.
Rhaedor was the first to understand that they could not win here.
"Toward the northern towers," he said, blocking a blow with his shield. "The terrain is narrower, they won't be able to flank us."
Vaemor hesitated for a moment, but the wave of creatures left them with less and less space. He ordered a retreat, covering Zaryon steps with his sword as he limped after a claw strike to his leg.
The race was controlled chaos. The creatures didn't launch a desperate attack; rather, they followed, maintaining the pressure, forcing them forward toward a point Vaemor feared was a trap.
The group burst into a sunken plaza, where a semicircular structure, covered in cracks and dried roots, stood like the entrance to a forgotten temple. On its pediment, carved in high relief, were human figures with dragon faces, carrying what looked like stone orbs.
Kaelyth breathed heavily.
"It's... Valyrian. Very ancient."
The creatures stopped at the edge of the plaza, watching silently. Their red eyes flickered, and in their stillness there was a kind of... reverence.
Vaemor took a step toward the threshold and felt something beneath his boots: carved symbols, hidden beneath the ash. As he touched them with the tip of his sword, a faint blue glow ignited in the stone.
"It seems they cannot enter," Aerys murmured, his sword still raised. "Whatever this place is... it belongs to us by right." The tension was not broken, but the siege ended. Outside, creatures waited like wolves before a cave, and inside, the silence of the temple seemed to promise both salvation and danger.
And there, in that instant, Vaemor understood that this discovery was no coincidence.
That Valyria was guiding them.
Or perhaps... man.