Chapter Text
Ser Duncan the Tall had finally put Prince Aerion in his place.
The Ashford mud was thick, tasting of copper and dirt. Dunk’s lungs burned as he brought his massive fist down again. Beneath him, Aerion’s bright enamel armor was ruined, the painted flames smeared with the dark, bloodied soil.
Dunk didn't stop.
He used his sheer, lumbering weight to pin the prince, hammering blows that rattled Aerion's skull inside his helm until the arrogance finally drained from those violet eyes.
"Yield," Dunk rasped, his voice raw.
Aerion choked, spitting blood. A trembling hand raised. "You… insolent hedge knight! Fine, I yield!"
Dunk rolled off, chest heaving, his muscles screaming. Their personal duel was over, but the roar of the Trial by Seven instantly crashed back over them.
Steel rang against steel as warhorses screamed. Dunk dragged himself to his feet, pulling air into his burning lungs, and looked around the chaotic meadow.
Aerion staggered upright a few paces away, clutching his ribs, swaying like a drunkard. He turned just as the melee shifted violently toward them.
Prince Maekar was a terrifying sight, his spiked mace a blur of iron death as he drove his brother backward. Maekar planted his boots, roaring as he brought the mace back for a devastating, two-handed swing aimed squarely at Baelor’s shield.
At that exact second, a riderless destrier, panicked and bleeding, bolted blindly through the combatants. It slammed hard into Baelor, throwing the Crown Prince off balance and entirely out of the mace's deadly arc.
The massive warhorse continued its terrified charge straight toward Maekar’s unprotected flank.
Aerion saw the beast bearing down on his father.
And whether out of pure instinct or a desperate flash of loyalty, or the sheer terror of a boy watching the man who raised him about to be felled, he threw himself forward, violently shoving his father out of the horse's path.
The shove saved Maekar from being trampled, but it destroyed the prince's footing. Maekar’s swing was already in motion, carrying the full, unstoppable momentum of his battle fury. With Baelor gone and his own balance disrupted, Maekar spun wildly.
The heavy iron head of the mace tore through the air in a drastically altered arc.
The sound was deafening—a sickening, hollow crunch of caved-in metal and shattering bone.
The blow landed squarely on Aerion’s chest.
The sheer force lifted the prince off his feet. For a fractured second, Aerion seemed suspended in the air, his limbs going entirely slack, before he crashed back into the trampled earth like a discarded puppet.
Silence did not fall immediately, but a cold shockwave seemed to radiate outward.
Maekar froze.
The heavy mace slipped from his gauntleted fingers, hitting the mud with a dull thud. He stared at his empty hands, then down at the ruined, breathless form of his son. The breastplate was completely crushed inward, forming a jagged crater over Aerion's heart.
"AERION!" Maekar’s scream tore through the meadow, stripping away the fierce warrior and leaving only a terrified father.
He collapsed to his knees, his hands hovering over the crushed armor, afraid to touch him.
"Aerion!” he howled. “My boy! My boy!"
Dunk stood frozen ten paces away. The rain slicked his hair to his forehead. His hands were still balled into fists from their fight, but a hollow dread opened in his stomach.
He had hated Aerion moments ago—had wanted to beat him into the earth—but seeing the bright prince annihilated by his own father’s weapon sent a tremor through Dunk’s massive frame.
Baelor was the first to recover his wits. "Hold!" he roared, his voice cutting through the remaining skirmishes. "In the King’s name, lay down your arms! Maesters! Bring the maesters!"
He dropped his sword and sprinted to his brother's side, ignoring his own exhaustion. He knelt into the mud beside Maekar.
"Don't move him, Maekar," Baelor ordered sharply, his hands moving rapidly to unfasten Aerion's gorget and helm to give him air. "Keep his head straight."
Maekar was trembling violently, his face pale as milk, his eyes wide and unseeing. He kept repeating the words, a frantic, broken mantra under his breath as Baelor carefully pulled the helm away.
Aerion’s face was slack, his eyes rolled back, a terrifying stillness settling over his chest where the steel had caved.
The crowd was dead quiet now.
Dunk couldn't look away, the rain washing the blood and mud from his knuckles, waiting for a breath from the prince that did not seem to come.
Maekar’s hands were stained with Ashford mud, his iron gauntlets scraping uselessly against the twisted, jagged steel of his son's breastplate. He was hyperventilating, his breath hitching in his throat like a wounded animal’s.
"Aerion. Open your eyes. Boy, open your eyes!" he demanded, his voice cracking from a furious roar into a desperate, reedy plea. He grabbed his son's shoulders, his heavy hands attempting to shake the boy awake.
"Stop!" Baelor’s voice was the crack of a whip. He lunged forward, grabbing Maekar’s wrists with a grip forged of absolute authority.
"You will pierce his heart if you move him, brother!” he roared. “Let go!"
Maekar fought him, wild and feral. The cold, stoic pride that defined the Prince of Summerhall vanished, replaced by a blind, primal panic. He shoved against Baelor, his eyes dilated and unseeing.
"It was the beast!" Maekar spat, rain and saliva flying from his lips. "The horse—it shoved him! He pushed me, Baelor! He threw himself in the way!"
"I know, Maekar, I saw," Baelor said, his tone dropping from a battlefield command to a fierce, anchoring calm.
He physically overpowered his younger brother, violently shoving Maekar backward into the mud to clear the space around the boy's ruined chest. "Maesters! Damn you, get over here!" Baelor bellowed over his shoulder, a rare, terrifying break in his legendary composure.
Maekar collapsed back onto his haunches. He ripped his own helm off and cast it aside, his bare hands burying into his short-cropped silver hair, tugging violently at the roots.
"He saved me. My mace…"
He stared at his trembling, empty hands, the phantom weight of the weapon still dragging his arms down. "I felt it, Baelor. I felt the steel give." He looked up at his older brother, a horrifying vulnerability cracking his harsh face wide open. "Gods—the sound it made…”
Baelor stripped off his own gauntlets, tossing them into the muck. His bare fingers moved with agonizing care, feeling along the edge of the crater in Aerion's chest, searching for the faint, thready flutter of a pulse beneath the ruin. The enamelled steel was driven deep, trapping splintered ribs and flesh in a jagged snare. Every shallow gasp Aerion took was accompanied by a wet, grinding hiss.
"He is breathing," Baelor said, his voice tight. His dark eyes flicked up to his younger brother, blazing with an intense, immovable will. "Listen to me, Maekar. Look at me."
Maekar could only stare at the blood pooling in the dents of his son's armor.
"Maekar!" Baelor snapped, grabbing him by the jaw and forcing his gaze up. "You are a Prince of the Blood. Pull yourself together. The maesters are coming. If he wakes and sees you weeping in the mud like a broken man, he will think he is already dead. Do not let him see your fear. Be his father."
Ten paces away, Dunk stood utterly frozen, a mountain of a boy forgotten by the gods and princes alike. He watched the great Prince Maekar, the anvil of the Targaryen dynasty, nod once, a sharp, jerky motion.
“Damn it! Where are the damn maesters?” Baelor roared.
Maekar leaned forward, burying his face in his hands as a single, ragged sob tore from his throat, swallowed instantly by the roaring thunder above.
The grey robes of the Ashford maesters looked like shrouds in the rain. Three of them dropped to their knees in the mud beside the fallen prince, their satchels rattling with glass and iron.
The oldest, a bald man with a heavy chain clinking against his collar, reached for the jagged edge of the breastplate. The moment his fingers brushed the crushed metal, Aerion let out a gurgling, wet shriek—a sound that made Dunk’s stomach heave violently.
Blood, pink and frothy, bubbled at the corners of the prince's pale lips with every shallow, rattling gasp.
The maester recoiled, his face completely draining of color. He looked at the ruin of the chest, then up to Baelor, and finally to Maekar.
"The sternum is shattered," he whispered, his voice trembling over the rumble of thunder. "The steel is driven deep into the lung. The splintering is severe."
He reached into his leather bag with shaking hands and withdrew a heavy glass vial of milky liquid. "The shock alone is lethal. My Princes, the agony will only worsen. We must focus on easing his passing. A heavy draught of the poppy, to let him sleep—"
Maekar lunged.
There was no royal dignity left, only the blind, violent fury of a father protecting his son. Maekar’s massive hand clamped around the old maester’s throat, hauling the man bodily off his knees and suspending him over the mud.
"Give him poison and I will rip your head from your shoulders," Maekar snarled, his voice a demonic, vibrating rasp that seemed to shake the rain itself. "You will not ease his passing. You will cut away that steel. You will save my boy, or I swear by the old gods and the new, I will crush your skull with the very same mace."
"Maekar, release him!" Baelor roared, seizing his brother's thick forearm.
Maekar threw the sputtering healer back into the mud, his eyes burning with a manic, terrifying fire. "Do your work!"
Terrified and gasping for breath, the maesters scrambled to obey.
It was a butchery.
They needed absolute leverage to pry the caved-in enamel away from the shattered ribs. Two younger acolytes braced their weight against Aerion’s shoulders and thighs, physically pinning the boy down into the muck. The head maester wedged the lip of a heavy iron crowbar beneath the rim of the jagged crater.
"Hold him fast," the old man commanded, his hands already slick with royal blood. "When the pressure lifts, the bleeding will surge."
Dunk watched as they wrenched the steel upward.
The scream that tore from Aerion’s throat didn't sound human.
It was a ragged, tearing sound that ripped through the storm, his body arching violently against the acolytes' grip as the metal finally peeled away from his crushed chest. A fresh, sickening wave of dark crimson spilled out, soaking his torn tunic and pooling into the mud beneath him.
The maester tossed the ruined breastplate aside and plunged his bare hands directly into the raw, gaping cavity, frantically trying to staunch the horrific surge of blood with heavy wads of linen. Aerion’s eyes rolled back into his skull, his jaw locking in pure agony before his head suddenly lolled to the side, completely unresponsive.
Baelor leaned over the maester’s shoulder, rain dripping from his dark hair. "Tell us.”
The old healer kept his hands buried deep in the red ruin, his face a mask of absolute terror. He didn't look up at him, nor at Maekar, who was hovering over them like a caged beast, his chest heaving.
"A shard of his own ribs has pierced the lung," the maester stammered, his voice barely audible. "But… but there is a jagged splinter of the sternum resting directly against the great vessel of his heart. If he moves—if he coughs, if the cart back to the castle jolts over a single stone…"
The man swallowed hard, his bloody fingers trembling within the wound.
"The splinter will sever the artery. He will drown in his own blood before we even clear this meadow."
The words hung in the freezing rain, a death sentence delivered in a whisper.
Maekar didn't rage this time. The demonic, protective fury that had animated him just moments ago vanished entirely, leaving a hollowed-out shell of a father kneeling in the red mud.
He stared at the gaping, pulpy ruin of his son’s chest, watching the jagged white splinter of sternum shifting with every ragged, rattling intake of breath. The great Prince of Summerhall looked suddenly old, his broad shoulders sagging as the absolute, crushing horror of what his own hands had wrought finally took hold.
"Then we open him here," Maekar said, his voice completely devoid of life, a dead, flat rasp. "Reach in and pull the bone away."
"I cannot, my Prince," the old maester wept, his blood-soaked hands trembling violently where they pressed wads of linen against the bleeding lung. "It is wedged beneath the collarbone. To pry it loose without the proper tools, in this filth… I would sever the artery myself. I need my scalpel. I need the boiling water and the milk of the poppy. He must be on my table."
Baelor’s jaw locked. He looked up at the churning, charcoal-black sky, the torrential rain beating down relentlessly, washing his nephew’s lifeblood into the Ashford soil.
"We cannot leave him in the storm," Baelor said, his voice hard, projecting a desperate, iron-willed calm over the panic. "The cold and the shock will claim him before the hour is out."
He turned fiercely to the Kingsguard knights who had finally broken through the chaotic perimeter. "Tear down the high pavilion! Rip the heavy oak doors from their hinges and bring them here! We will not use a canvas litter. The wood will not bend."
The knights scrambled to obey, their armored boots slipping in the gore.
Baelor dropped back to his knees, his dark eyes scanning the terrified faces around him. He needed men of absolute, unyielding physical strength. Men who would not falter or slip under the agonizing weight of a dying prince.
He looked at Maekar, who was shaking so violently his armor rattled. Not enough, he thought.
Then, Baelor’s gaze snapped up and locked onto Dunk.
Dunk stiffened, his massive, bruised hands twitching at his sides. He was drenched, shivering, his knuckles still raw from beating the very boy who lay dying before them.
"You," Baelor commanded, pointing a bloody finger at the towering hedge knight. "Ser Duncan. Get over here."
Dunk swallowed hard, tasting copper, and stumbled forward on numb legs. He dropped heavily into the mud opposite Maekar, his sheer bulk dwarfing the royal brothers.
Up close, the smell of exposed flesh and hot blood was suffocating. Aerion’s skin was the color of old parchment, his lips bruised and blue.
"Take his legs and hips," Baelor ordered Dunk, his tone leaving absolutely no room for hesitation. "Maekar, take his shoulders. I will support the neck and the spine. The maester will keep his hands inside the wound to stabilize the bone."
Baelor looked deeply into Dunk’s terrified eyes. "Do you understand me, Ser Duncan? You do not tremble. You do not slip. If your grip falters by a single inch, you will kill him."
Dunk nodded tightly, his throat sealed shut. He slid his massive, mud-caked hands beneath Aerion’s hips and thighs. The prince felt alarmingly fragile, like a broken bird, his armor slick and freezing.
The Kingsguard rushed forward, dropping a heavy, iron-bound oak door directly beside them into the mud.
"On my command," Baelor said, his voice vibrating with raw tension. He slipped his bare arms beneath his nephew's spine. Maekar mirrored the grip at the shoulders, his jaw clamped so tight a muscle ticked frantically in his cheek. The maester braced his bloody fingers inside the cavern of Aerion's chest.
"One," Baelor counted, the rain deafening around them.
Dunk tightened his grip, his massive muscles locking like iron.
"Two."
Aerion let out a weak, wet rattle, a bubble of blood popping at his lips.
"Three. Lift!"
The oak door groaned under their combined weight as they trudged through the mud. Dunk’s massive hands locked onto the iron-bound edge, gripping the wood so hard his knuckles turned bone-white beneath the caked dirt.
Every step toward the castle was a waking nightmare. The heavy Ashford mud sucked greedily at Dunk's boots, threatening to drag him down, threatening to throw him off balance.
The rain fell in sheets, washing the dark, pooling blood from the flat of the door straight over Dunk’s thick fingers.
It was hot. The prince’s lifeblood was shockingly, terribly hot against Dunk’s freezing skin.
"Steady," Baelor’s voice cracked ahead of him, vibrating with a strained, desperate terror as he walked backward, supporting Aerion’s head and spine. "Watch your footing. Walk as one."
Beside the litter, the old maester shuffled in a half-crouch, his bloody hands still buried deep inside the gaping ruin of Aerion’s chest, weeping as he physically held the jagged splinter of sternum away from the prince’s heart.
Every time the door shifted, even by a fraction of an inch, Aerion let out a wet, rattling hiss that sent a jolt of pure horror straight up Dunk’s arms.
Dunk stared down at the prince’s legs, unable to look away from the ruined, blood-soaked enamel. A sickening, suffocating wave of revulsion crashed over him—not at the gore, but at himself.
Minutes ago, Dunk had been straddling this boy in the dirt. He had brought his enormous fists down on that beautiful, arrogant face, feeling the cartilage yield, tasting a dark, savage thrill in finally breaking a Targaryen prince.
He had wanted to hurt him. He had wanted to grind Aerion into the earth until there was nothing left of his cruelty.
Now, looking at the pale, bruised lips parted in a silent, frothy gasp, the sheer weight of Dunk’s guilt threatened to crush him.
The monster of Ashford Meadow was gone. What lay on the freezing wood was just a boy, shockingly fragile, shattered like a porcelain cup.
If Dunk hadn't fought him, if Dunk had just accepted his beating like a hedge knight should, Aerion would never have been in that exact spot when the horse bolted. He would never have shoved his father.
I did this, Dunk thought, the bile rising fiercely in his throat. My pride did this.
It was a vicious, agonizing intimacy. The very hands Dunk had used to batter the prince into bloody submission were now the only things anchoring the boy to the living world.
The tension traveling through the wet oak was immense. Dunk could practically feel the faint, frantic flutter of Aerion's failing heart vibrating down the length of the wood, straight into his own palms. He tightened his grip until his forearms cramped, his muscles burning with a fierce, possessive panic.
He had claimed this fight. He had demanded the justice. Aerion was his—by law, by word, by honor.
"Don't die," Dunk prayed, a ragged, silent litany echoing in the deafening roar of the storm. "Don't you die, you arrogant prince. Stay alive. Stay alive."
The stone corridor outside the maester’s chambers was freezing, yet the air felt thick, suffocating beneath the stench of wet iron, copper blood, and rain-soaked wool.
Behind the heavy oak door, the agonizing, muffled sounds of a butcher's work continued—the clatter of metal instruments, frantic whispers, and worst of all, the sickeningly wet, ragged gasps that proved the Prince was still clinging to life.
Dunk sat slumped against the cold stone wall, his massive knees pulled up tight. He stared down at his hands. The blood had dried into dark, flaking crusts beneath his fingernails.
It wouldn't wash off. It felt permanently etched into his skin.
Across the narrow hall, Maekar paced. He moved like a starved, maddened lion, his heavy boots grinding into the stone with violent, erratic steps. He had stripped off his battered breastplate, but he still wore the chainmail and the mud.
His chest heaved. The silence between the muffled sounds from the chamber was driving him insane. He needed to strike something. He needed to destroy something.
He stopped abruptly, his boots scraping to a halt. His violet eyes, bloodshot and wild, locked onto Dunk.
"You," Maekar snarled. The word was a venomous hiss that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
Dunk didn’t look up. He didn't flinch.
Maekar crossed the hall in three massive strides, looming over the slumped hedge knight, his hands balling into massive fists. "A freak from Flea Bottom. A wretched, mud-born beggar masquerading in steel. My son is being carved open on a table because of your insolent, miserable pride!"
"Leave him alone!"
A small, fierce voice tore through the heavy air. Egg, shivering in a thin, soaked tunic, threw himself violently between his terrifying father and his battered knight.
The boy raised his chin, his own violet eyes blazing with a defiant, desperate fire. "It was Aerion’s fault! He broke the puppeteer's fingers! He hurt her, and Ser Duncan only did what a true knight should! You cannot blame him!"
"Aegon, get out of my way," Maekar warned, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that shook the very stones. "Before I remind you what happens to sons who defy their blood for scum."
"No!" Egg stood his ground, spreading his small arms wide to shield Dunk's massive, slumped form. "Aerion was going to kill him! Aerion—"
"Hush, Egg," Dunk rasped.
Dunk reached up with a heavy, blood-crusted hand and gently grabbed the back of Egg’s tunic, pulling the boy firmly behind him. Dunk slowly forced himself to stand, his bruised ribs screaming in protest, until he towered over the Prince of Summerhall.
But there was no fight left in Dunk’s eyes. They were hollow, dead things.
"Let him speak, lad," Dunk said quietly, his voice hollow. He looked down at Maekar and exposed his throat, physically dropping his shoulders. "He is right. Strike me, my Prince. If it brings him back, beat me until the stones run red. I brought us to this meadow."
Maekar’s face twisted in sheer, absolute revulsion. The submission didn't soothe his rage. It only inflamed it.
He grabbed Dunk by the collar of his ruined tunic, slamming the massive boy back against the stone wall with a bone-jarring crack.
"If he dies," Maekar roared, spitting the words directly into Dunk’s face, "if my boy stops breathing in that room, I will not simply take your head, Ser Duncan. I will make a ruin of you. I will flay you alive in the courtyard!"
"Enough, Maekar."
Baelor stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the hall. He had scrubbed the worst of the gore from his arms, but his dark tunic was still stained an ungodly black. His voice was not raised, but it carried the absolute, unyielding weight of the Iron Throne itself.
He walked deliberately down the corridor, placing a firm, iron-hard hand on Maekar’s wrist, forcing his younger brother to release Dunk's collar.
Maekar violently shook off Baelor's grip, rounding on him with a feral snarl. "Do not command me, Baelor! Not today! You stood against your own blood! You stood with this filth against my sons! This is your doing as much as his!"
"My doing?" Baelor’s dark eyes narrowed, a terrifying storm gathering in his gaze. "You blame the hedge knight. You blame me. Who else, Maekar? Will you blame the horse? Will you blame the rain?"
"You fought against your own house!" Maekar bellowed, the veins cording in his thick neck. "You shamed us before the realm, and now Aerion is paying the price for your arrogant, sanctimonious honor!"
The two princes stood chest to chest, a violent clash of fire and iron. But Baelor did not rise to the screaming match. He held his ground, his dark eyes locking onto his brother’s wild, dilated pupils.
Baelor stripped away the fury, looking past the roaring dragon to the agonizing, bleeding wound beneath.
"You are screaming at a boy," Baelor said, his voice dropping to a low, devastating whisper, "to drown out the sound of your own mace."
The words struck Maekar right in his sternum.
He froze. The manic, blinding rage that had possessed him suddenly vanished, entirely sucked out of the freezing corridor, leaving nothing but a vast, suffocating vacuum.
Maekar’s jaw trembled. He looked down at his own right hand—the hand that had swung the iron, the hand that had felt the sickening yield of steel and bone. He stared at it as if it belonged to a stranger, a murderer.
"The sound," Maekar gasped, a horrible, wet intake of breath. The harsh lines of his face dissolved, crumbling into absolute ruin. "Baelor… the sound it made when it hit him."
"I know," Baelor said softly.
"He pushed me," Maekar wept, his voice cracking, entirely shattering under the weight of his colossal guilt. The proud, terrifying warrior collapsed forward, his broad shoulders heaving with violent, agonizing sobs.
"He saw the beast. He threw himself in the way. I struck him down, Baelor. I crushed my own son's heart."
Baelor caught him. He stepped forward and pulled his massive, sobbing brother into his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around Maekar’s armored back. He buried his face in his brother's silver hair, holding him fiercely against the cold stone wall.
"We do not know that yet," Baelor murmured into the dark, holding Maekar upright as the younger prince wept openly, his armored fingers clutching desperately at Baelor's tunic. "Hold fast, brother. Hold fast."
Dunk slid slowly back down the wall, pulling Egg tightly against his side, burying his face in the boy's shoulder as they listened to the Prince of Summerhall cry in the dark, waiting for the door to open.
The corridor already felt like a tomb. Maekar's heavy, tearing sobs slowly gave way to a wet, agonizing shudder.
Baelor didn't let him go. He kept his arm securely around his brother, guiding Maekar’s sheer, dead weight toward a low stone bench carved into the alcove.
Maekar sat heavily, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. His hands—the very hands that had swung the mace—hung limply between his legs. He stared blankly at the dark, drying flakes of his son's blood trapped in the deep crevices of his calluses.
He looked entirely hollowed out, stripped of his legendary pride, leaving behind a devastating portrait of a man who felt he had just murdered his own soul.
Baelor stood directly beside him, one hand resting firmly on the thick iron of Maekar’s pauldron, his jaw locked with a fierce, suppressed tremor. He was the anchor, the immovable pillar holding the sky from crushing his family, yet the sheer, suffocating gravity of the moment was clearly dragging him down.
Baelor kept his dark eyes fixed on the heavy oak door, unblinking.
On the floor, Dunk felt the damp cold of the stone seeping through his breeches, freezing the marrow in his bones. The violent adrenaline that had kept him upright in the mud was entirely gone, leaving behind a sickening, hollow exhaustion. He kept one massive arm wrapped tightly around Egg. The boy was so small, radiating a fierce, desperate heat against Dunk’s bruised ribs.
"He's strong, Ser," Egg whispered, his voice trembling but remarkably steady in the heavy quiet. "Aerion is cruel, but he is a dragon. He won't let the Stranger take him."
Dunk looked down at the boy's shaved head, a fresh wave of revulsion twisting his gut.
He is comforting me, Dunk realized, the shame burning hot in his throat. His brother is being butchered on a table, his father is utterly broken, and he is comforting the Flea Bottom trash that started the fire.
Dunk swallowed the sharp copper taste coating his tongue. "Pray to the Crone, Egg," he rasped, his voice sounding like cracked stone. "Pray she guides the old man's hands."
Time bled away in agonizingly slow increments.
The torches in the iron sconces burned down to sputtering, smoking husks, casting long, wavering shadows across the hallway. The agonizing wait was a torture all its own. Every scrape of a metal tool from within, every muffled, frantic whisper of the acolytes, sent a visible, violent flinch through Maekar’s broad shoulders.
Then, a horrific sound echoed from the chamber.
It wasn't a scream. It was a violent, wet coughing fit—a desperate, gargling struggle for air that sounded distinctly like a man drowning from the inside out.
Maekar shot up from the bench, his eyes wide and unseeing, pure terror violently resurrecting him.
"No," Maekar gasped, his voice a broken wheeze, taking a stumbling step toward the door.
Baelor intercepted him instantly, throwing both hands against Maekar’s chest to hold him back. "Stay here!" Baelor commanded, his voice finally cracking with his own rising panic, his boots slipping slightly on the slick stone as Maekar drove his weight forward.
Inside the room, a glass vial shattered violently against the floorboards. The old maester barked a sharp, terrified order that bled right through the heavy oak.
"Hold the bone! The artery is surging! Clamp it—by the Seven, press your fingers into the tear!"
Aerion’s wet, thrashing coughs abruptly ceased, replaced by a devastating, absolute silence.
It was a silence heavier than the thunder outside, heavier than the iron and the stone. It stretched out for ten agonizing seconds. Then twenty.
Maekar stopped fighting. His manic strength evaporated instantly, his arms falling uselessly to his sides. He stared dead ahead at the heavy wood grain, his breath catching in his throat, his eyes wide with a horrific, paralyzing anticipation.
Dunk couldn't breathe.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his massive, blood-crusted hands coming up to cover his own face. He pressed Egg firmly against his chest, burying the boy's face in his tunic as the suffocating, crushing quiet pressed down on them all, waiting for the heavy iron latch to turn.
The silence stretched, agonizing and taut, until it was violently shattered once again.
It was a shriek. Not a human cry of pain, but a ragged, prolonged, animalistic howl that tore through the heavy oak door. It was the sound of a body being pushed beyond the limits of mortal endurance, a wet, tearing scream of absolute agony that clawed at the stone walls and vibrated deep in their soul.
It went on and on, a horrific, lung-shredding noise that seemed to rip the very air in the corridor apart.
And then, just as violently as it had begun, it stopped.
The silence that followed wasn't merely the absence of sound—it was a physical blow. It was the suffocating vacuum of the grave.
Maekar snapped. The sheer, paralyzing terror broke, replaced instantly by a feral, uncontainable frenzy. He roared—a sound of pure, blinding devastation—and lunged for the door.
"AERION!"
Baelor caught him, throwing his entire weight into his younger brother, slamming his shoulder into Maekar’s chest just as his hand grazed the iron latch. The impact sent them both crashing back into the opposite wall with a bone-rattling crunch.
"Let go!" Maekar bellowed, a madman's strength surging through his heavy limbs. He thrashed violently, his boots slipping and grinding against the stone floor.
He struck out blindly, his heavy forearm catching Baelor across the jaw, but Baelor didn't falter. Baelor wrapped both arms around Maekar's torso in a desperate, crushing grip, physically pinning his brother against the cold masonry.
"You cannot go in!" Baelor roared back, his voice thick with exertion and a rising, desperate panic.
Blood trickled from his split lip, but his hold remained like forged iron. "Maekar, stop! If you break that door down, you will kill him! You will make the maester slip!"
Maekar fought like a trapped beast, tearing at Baelor's arms, his violet eyes wide and utterly unhinged.
"He's gone! The bone—he's gone! Let me see my boy!" His voice fractured into a raw, agonizing sob. He stopped swinging his fists and instead grabbed Baelor by the tunic, using his massive strength to try and hurl his older brother aside.
Baelor dug his heels into the mortar, his muscles trembling violently under the sheer, devastating force of Maekar's grief, refusing to yield a single inch.
Down on the freezing floor, Dunk squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled Egg closer into his chest, burying the boy's face against his collarbone, wrapping both of his massive, blood-crusted arms around the young prince to shield him from the sight of his father's utter ruin.
The stench of hot blood and rain filled Dunk's nose. He pressed his forehead against the icy stone wall, his broad shoulders shaking.
He didn't know the words to the high prayers of the septons. He only knew the raw, desperate pleas of Flea Bottom, whispered in the dark when the cold crept in.
Mother, have mercy, Dunk prayed, the words a silent, ragged chant echoing in the hollow of his skull. Warrior, give him strength. Smith, mend his broken chest.
And then, to the Stranger—
Do not take him. Take my hand. Take my life. I beg you. Do not let the Brightflame go out.