Jon Clinton watched as Xiao Griffin rushed toward Aegon, toward that pale-gold behemoth.
He wanted to stop him, but his body felt as if it were nailed to the spot.
It was too late, and there was no way to stop it.
Twenty years of lies and twenty years of devotion condensed at this moment into heavy chains, binding his entire being.
He watched the blue-haired youth, that nameless child, like a moth to a flame, throwing himself resolutely toward the fire destined to incinerate him.
Aegon stood there, his silver hair fluttering slightly in the courtyard breeze, his purple eyes as calm as a still pond.
He had promised Jon not to kill Xiao Griffin, but if the other party actively showed murderous intent or even acted upon it, that was a different matter entirely.
He didn't even look at the rushing youth; he merely tilted his head slightly, his gaze falling upon Ghidorah's pale-gold wing membranes.
Ghidorah didn't even open its mouth to breathe fire.
Instead, between its wing membranes, a fine streak of golden lightning suddenly emerged, flickered, and condensed.
Then, a finger-thick, brilliant, almost blinding golden bolt of lightning shot out silently, like a spear of judgment cast down by a god.
It was fast.
Faster than the limits of visual tracking, faster than a single thought could turn.
"Zzt—"
It wasn't a deafening explosion, but a sharper, more grating sound of annihilation, mixed with the dull thud of flesh being instantaneously carbonized and pierced.
The lightning pierced through.
It struck Xiao Griffin precisely in the center of his chest.
Its momentum undiminished, it shot into the stone-paved ground behind him.
"Bang!"
A dull explosion rang out.
The flagstones shattered, debris flew, and a crater over a foot deep with charred, molten edges appeared. Green smoke curled up from the bottom of the pit, carrying a pungent, burnt smell.
Xiao Griffin's forward-charging posture suddenly froze.
Inertia made him stumble half a step further before he stopped right there.
He lowered his head and looked at his own chest.
A hole the size of a bowl, with neat, charred edges and passing straight through, had appeared there.
No blood gushed out.
This was because the moment the wound touched the lightning, it was completely carbonized and sealed by the terrifying high temperature.
The flesh around the hole was curled and blackened, and the carbonized cross-sections of bone and internal organs were faintly visible within.
The sword in his hand fell with a "clang," slipping powerlessly to the ground and bouncing twice on the flagstones with a crisp, ironic sound.
He raised his head.
His gaze passed over the calm-faced Aegon standing inches away, finally landing on Jon Clinton, who was still kneeling on the ground.
That look was so complex it was heartbreaking.
There was deep-seated resentment. 'Why did you choose him over me? Does nearly twenty years of being together day and night not compare to a stranger who suddenly appeared?'
There was overwhelming indignation. 'Why can't Blackfyre have dragons?! We also have the blood of the Conqueror in our veins!'
There was bottomless sorrow. 'What did these twenty years—the history I memorized day and night, the swordsmanship I practiced bitterly, the noble genealogies I committed to memory, the etiquette I maintained so carefully... what did it all mean?'
'A performance where only I didn't know it was a play? An absurd dream where everyone was playing along just to watch me make a fool of myself?'
Perhaps, at the deepest level of all these emotions, there was also a tiny, almost imperceptible trace of... relief.
Finally... no more playing someone else.
Finally... I can be myself.
Even if this "self" doesn't even have a name.
Then, he fell forward.
He crashed heavily onto the cold stone floor.
A fine dust kicked up.
His body twitched twice and then became completely still.
Dead.
The courtyard fell into a deathly silence.
The only sound was the faint, rustling friction of pale-gold scales as Ghidorah slowly retracted its wing membranes.
And the distant, faint clamor from the city, which had nothing to do with the frozen death here; it was the sound of life continuing, the pulse of Lys struggling and tenaciously reviving under the iron fist of the conqueror.
The wind blew through the courtyard.
It swept up a few fallen leaves from the garden; the withered yellow leaves swirled, passing over Xiao Griffin's cooling body and the rapidly fading charred marks before disappearing.
Jon Clinton still knelt there, unmoving.
He seemed to have turned into a stone statue, a sculpture named Remorse and Sin.
Only his bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the slumped corpse with the terrifying void in its chest.
Staring at that young, pale face that still held a trace of indignation.
The face he had looked at for nearly twenty years, taught for nearly twenty years, and upon which he had placed all his hope and guilt.
A long time passed.
Only then did he slowly and with great difficulty use his hands to brace himself against the ground, attempting to stand up.
His knees were shaking, his legs were weak, and his first attempt actually failed.
He grit his teeth and used all his strength to stagger to his feet, walking with unsteady steps to the corpse.
He crouched down.
His trembling hand, covered in calluses and old scars, reached out and hovered in mid-air, hesitating as if the corpse were a red-hot iron.
Finally, that hand descended.
Gently and carefully, he closed Xiao Griffin's wide-open eyes, which were staring hollowly at the leaden-gray sky.
A single turbid tear slid from the corner of Jon Clinton's wrinkled eye, tracing down his weathered cheek and dripping onto the youth's cold, pale skin.
Those were not tears shed for Blackfyre.
Blackfyre was a rebel, a loser, a few cold lines of record in history books; he did not weep for Blackfyre.
Nor were they tears shed for the false Aegon Targaryen.
That identity was stolen, forged, a grand deception that had lasted twenty years; he did not weep for a fraud.
This tear was for the child who had no name, no self, who had lived for nearly twenty years on a life path set by others, and who ultimately met his end in such a tragic manner.
It was for the "Xiao Griffin" who would clumsily try to take care of him when he was sick, who would practice his sword late into the night just to earn a single word of praise, and who would secretly imitate his walk and way of speaking.
It was for the grand and sorrowful lie that had lasted twenty years, in which he himself was deeply entrenched, into which he had poured all his heart and emotion, only to finally discover it was built upon quicksand from the very beginning.
Aegon walked up behind him.
His boots made a slight sound as they stepped on the flagstones.
Jon did not look back. He remained crouched there, his back to Aegon, his shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly, though he quickly suppressed it.
"He chose death."
Aegon's voice sounded from behind him, calm and without emotion, stating a simple fact.
Jon's body stiffened for a moment.
Then, in a voice as raspy as sandpaper, he spoke, as if making a statement or confessing to the void:
"It was I... who forced him to choose."
He paused, each word sounding as if it were being forced out of his throat, carrying the metallic taste of blood:
"I said I would imprison him... I wanted to save his life."
"But I forgot his pride, his sensitivity, and that he valued that bestowed 'identity' more than his life... When I said that, he would rather die than endure living with such humiliation."
Aegon was silent for a moment.
The wind blew through the courtyard again, tugging at their clothes.
Then, Aegon spoke, his voice still calm, yet like a cold blade, it precisely dissected the deepest part of Jon's heart—the part he himself was unwilling to face:
"You taught him for twenty years, and you produced a prince who would rather die than lose his pride and be imprisoned for life like a useless waste."
He paused, letting the meaning of those words fully ferment and permeate the dead air.
"In a sense, you taught him very well."
Jon's body jolted violently!
As if struck hard on the spine by an invisible whip, he suddenly straightened up, then leaned forward uncontrollably, his hands gripping the ground tightly, his knuckles turning white and veins bulging on the back of his hands.
He turned around slowly, very slowly, and raised his face to look at Aegon.
The tear tracks on his face had dried, leaving only two faint marks.
The pain, struggle, and remorse in his eyes—those churning, boiling emotions—were now forcibly suppressed and compressed by a powerful force, buried deep within his gaze.
In their place was a kind of resolution born from destruction, a rekindling after deathly silence, carrying the scent of blood and ash.
It was a resolve to burn everything of himself away—past glory, sins, weaknesses, and emotions—leaving only the core, the hardest part, and then rebuilding upon that foundation.
"Your Grace."
He knelt on one knee once more.
This time, the movement was fluid and without hesitation, his knee hitting the flagstone with a dull, firm thud. His back was straight as a sword, his head bowed, his posture as standard as a textbook on the most rigorous knightly etiquette.
"My past has died along with that child."
His voice no longer trembled; it was still raspy, but it carried a cold hardness that severed all ties.
"From this day forward, Jon Clinton's sword swings only for you; my loyalty is offered only to the True Dragon."
He raised his head, his gaze meeting Aegon's purple eyes directly, each word clear as the strike of iron on stone:
"In the name of the Old Gods and the New, and by the ancestral honor of House Clinton, I so swear."
The courtyard was so quiet that the cries of distant seagulls could be heard.
Aegon looked at him, his gaze scanning every inch of that aged face that had regained its strength, as if evaluating a weapon that had just finished its quenching.
After a moment, he nodded slowly.
"Rise."
"I accept your loyalty."
Jon Clinton lowered his head, remained still for a breath, and then stood up, standing at attention with his hands at his sides.
His posture was upright, his gaze lowered; he was already the image of an impeccable, qualified subject.
Aegon stopped looking at him.
He turned around, his gaze calmly scanning the Lysene nobles in the courtyard who were as quiet as cicadas in winter, their faces pale, wishing they could shrink into the cracks in the ground.
He scanned the cooling corpse and the charred crater in the ground.
Finally, his gaze landed on the main building of the Governor's Mansion.
"Have someone clean this up," he ordered, his tone as flat as if he were talking about clearing away a fallen leaf.
Then, he set off, walking toward the interior of the Governor's Mansion.
"Earl Clinton..."
His voice carried on the wind, with an unquestionable tone of command, and a cold efficiency that quickly turned the page on all emotions and incidents toward the next goal.
"Follow me to the study."
The sound of footsteps echoed in the empty courtyard.
"We should discuss how to take back 'my'... Golden Company."
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