The vast, shadowed hall of the tower was crowded with hundreds of nobles and knights of the Seven Kingdoms, their arms bound tight behind them with coarse hemp rope.
They were forced to kneel on the cold, unyielding stone floor, soaked to the skin, disheveled and disgraced.
Fear, rage, and humiliation mingled across their dirt-streaked faces.
The chamber was silent but for ragged breathing and the faint rasp of rope against armor.
The nobles' eyes flickered restlessly, trading fearful, uncertain glances.
Not long ago, a hot-tempered knight had unleashed a stream of curses when forced to kneel, only for Roro's men to hack off one of his fingers without hesitation.
The scream, shrill and harrowing, and the blood that spattered the stones struck like an iron hammer, smashing the last fragments of pride and illusion from the captives.
Now, no one dared make a sound.
Their gazes, tinged with dread and desperate anticipation, drifted again and again toward the tall, empty throne at the far end of the hall.
They ached to know: Who was this mysterious man from the East?
How could he command an army of the dead?
And what of the golden dragon, that beast of despair?
The memory of its vast, shadow-casting wings and its all-consuming fire made many shudder involuntarily.
A dragon.
A creature thought vanished for a hundred years had returned—in this place, at this hour.
From where had it come?
Was it, like its master, born of the legendary Shadow Lands, where dragons were said to endure?
Among the better-learned nobles, the old tales once told by Maesters flashed through their minds, sowing even deeper doubts.
At last, the suffocating wait broke as the side door opened.
The "Eastern Sorcerer" they longed to see yet feared beyond measure stepped slowly inside.
Lo Quen's face was unreadable, his stride steady, measured.
He wore a fitted black velvet coat over dark trousers, his hair black as midnight falling loose over his shoulders.
A long sword hung at his waist, his hand resting casually upon its hilt. His eyes, cold and fathomless as a deep pool, swept across the hall and the rows of kneeling lords.
The nobles raised their heads. The instant they saw Lo Quen's face, shock filled their eyes.
Too young.
That was the thought that struck them all at once.
Lo Quen had left the ruins of Valyria at only thirteen.
Now, after half a year of fire and conquest across the Stepstones, Qyburn had told him it was the ninth month of Aegon's 294th year—he was just past fourteen.
Fourteen. In another life, nothing more than a boy. Even in precocious Westeros, youths of noble birth at that age were still squires, barely beginning to glimpse the world.
Yet Lo Quen, at this age, had become master of the Narrow Sea, shattering the armies of the Seven Kingdoms with ruthless thunder.
He took his seat upon the high throne with calm ease.
Moments later, several figures entered behind him.
When the nobles recognized the face of the man at their head, a hiss of shock and fury tore through the hall, impossible to suppress.
Jorah Mormont.
The former Lord of Bear Island, a familiar face at tournaments, a veteran of many campaigns—many lords and knights present had known him by sight.
Now, "Jorah" strode up the dais in full armor with Roro, Hal, and the others, then stood to the left of the throne beside them.
Jaelena, armored, stood alone at the right.
At that moment, even the most foolish of the Seven Kingdoms' nobles understood.
The intelligence sent to King's Landing, the lies that had drawn their armies out in full force, had all been a carefully spun web of deceit.
This Jorah Mormont had long since betrayed the Seven Kingdoms, thrown in with their enemy, and become nothing more than a treacherous, venomous turncloak.
No wonder.
No wonder their landing had been ambushed.
No wonder they had been utterly destroyed.
Betrayal clawed at their hearts like fire.
And countless eyes, blazing with hatred and the hunger to tear him apart, fixed on the figure of "Jorah Mormont" upon the dais.
"Jorah Mormont" ignored the sea of hateful glares below, his expression cold as ice.
He stepped forward and broke the silence with a clear, resonant voice:
"Before you stands Lo Quen, ruler of the Narrow Sea and the Stepstones."
Lo Quen lifted a hand slightly, signaling "Jorah" to step back.
Looking down at the kneeling nobles, his voice was calm yet heavy with unspoken force:
"My lords of Westeros, welcome to Bloodstone Isle. I trust you will find the 'hospitality' here... memorable."
The words had barely fallen when Moryn Tyrell, the bound former commander of Oldtown's garrison, could no longer restrain the fury boiling inside him.
He lurched upward, eyes bloodshot, and bellowed at "Jorah" upon the dais:
"Jorah Mormont! You vile, faithless traitor! You betrayed the Seven Kingdoms, betrayed His Grace, betrayed your knightly vows and the duty of a lord! You sold yourself as a dog to this Easterner, fed us false reports, lured the allied host of the Seven Kingdoms into a death trap! Because of you, noble bloodlines now kneel in chains, and countless brave warriors lie dead at sea! A thousand deaths would not be enough for your crime!"
His anguished roar lit the spark. In an instant, the nobles' long-suppressed rage erupted like oil on fire.
The hall shook with curses and cries as bound lords and knights writhed against their ropes, spitting condemnation and venom at Jorah Mormont. The uproar thundered as if it would tear the roof apart.
Lo Quen's brow tightened. His cold eyes flicked toward Roro.
Roro understood at once. A flash of steel glinted in his gaze as he made a sharp throat-cutting gesture to the soldiers below.
Steel hissed.
Moryn Tyrell's roar ended in a heartbeat. His head, still fixed with a look of stunned disbelief, spun into the air. Blood sprayed in a fountain from the stump of his neck, splattering nearby nobles in a crimson rain.
Those who had been about to scream their own curses fell silent at once, as if choked mid-breath. Their teeth clattered, their bodies shaking uncontrollably.
Lo Quen regarded the suddenly cowed nobles, their faces drained white, and a cold smile tugged at his lips.
His gaze found a wretched figure in the corner of the hall.
Paxter Redwyne.
Captured soldiers had named this Arbor lord as the supreme commander of the Seven Kingdoms' host.
"Lord Redwyne..."
Lo Quen's voice was not loud, but in the deathly silence it carried to every ear:
"As the commander of this expedition, I have questions. You brought tens of thousands of men in grand array to my Bloodstone Isle. Surely, it was not as guests?"
All eyes turned on Paxter Redwyne.
His skull buzzed. Humiliation and fear twisted his thoughts to chaos.
He could not grasp why Lo Quen asked what he already knew.
But under the burning weight of hundreds of noble gazes, he forced himself to answer, his voice dry and hoarse:
"I... I came under the command of His Grace, King Robert Baratheon, to pacify the turmoil in the waters of the Stepstones."
"Turmoil?"
A mocking smile curved Lo Quen's lips. "Say it plain—you came to pacify me, did you not, Lord Redwyne?
Yet as far as I know, the Stepstones have never belonged to the Seven Kingdoms.
You raised arms unbidden, invaded my lands without cause. As the master of this soil, I have ten thousand reasons to execute you all where you kneel."
His words cut like a winter gale, chilling them to the bone. Faces turned ashen, pale as parchment.
All the dreams of glory, of plunder and honor they had clung to before the campaign had already turned to ash.
The truth was laid bare. Their enemy commanded a dragon and an army of deathless soldiers.
And they had been crushed—completely, irreversibly.