The heavy oak doors of the Council Chamber slammed shut after the last lord departed, cutting off the cold, salty wind and the lingering tension of the confrontation. The hall instantly fell into dead silence. Only the remaining charcoal in the fireplace crackled weakly, and the sea wind, unwilling to be shut out, squeezed through the cracks in the stone windows with ghostly sobs, pressing the struggling flames low and casting shifting shadows on the cold, rough stone floor.
Quellon Greyjoy's tall frame seemed to have lost its mast. The majesty of the Seastone King receded like the tide. He slumped heavily back into the throne carved from massive whalebone and black reef rock, leather and bone groaning slightly under his weight. At this moment, he looked more like an exhausted old seal thrown onto the rocks by the waves, stripped of his ferocity, left only with the deep fatigue carved by years and pressure. His rough fingers unconsciously rubbed the cold rim of his clay goblet, the amber mead reflecting the dying fire. His gaze, carrying the scrutiny and indescribable complexity of a burden lifted, crossed the dancing shadows to land on the small figure at the end of the long table.
"Speak." Quellon's voice was hoarse, breaking the silence. He sipped the mead; the sweet liquid slid down his throat but couldn't dispel the heaviness in his heart. "The storm has calmed for now. Tell me, with your eyes, what did you see?"
Euron looked up. The mismatched vortexes in his eyes seemed to catch fire, burning silently. "Father, I heard the waves crashing on the shore, and I saw the jagged reefs. But the loudest sound didn't come from the quarrels of the Iron Islands." His child's voice was clear but carried a cold texture that pierced through time. Every word was like an icicle frosted with salt, striking the empty stone walls. "It comes from King's Landing. From the man sitting on the twisted iron thorns, whom fear and hatred call the 'Mad King,' Aerys Targaryen."
Quellon's brow furrowed imperceptibly, his fingers pausing on the goblet. He didn't interrupt, but his falcon eyes, which had seen all storms, grew deeper, like the unfathomable sea before a tempest.
The child's voice suddenly took on a strange ethereal quality, as if not coming from him, but from some older, vaster place: "Father, last night... I dreamed of the Drowned God." He tilted his head slightly, seeming to listen to invisible tides. "His robes billowed with infinite deep blue, His finger pointed to the crimson sky in the south... He said: 'Look, the Red Dragon of King's Landing is madly devouring its own tail! The Lion's golden mane will eventually be soaked in its own blood! Ravens carry vipers, building nests quietly in the shadows of power. When the Horn of Winter blows, only a fleet linked by iron chains can crush the frozen sea.'"
Quellon's fingers froze completely on the cold clay cup. An indescribable chill crept up his spine. The Maester of Pyke had tried countless times to explain Euron's rare heterochromia as a "birthmark" or "coincidence," but now, this dream-like prophecy, carrying the unique, heart-stopping oppression of the deep sea, made him waver in the Maester's certain explanation for the first time. The firelight reflected in the mead jumped violently in his eyes.
"Speak clearly." His voice was low and raspy, like sand grinding on reef rock, every syllable heavy.
Euron's voice returned to that near-cruel calm, as if reciting a bloody chronicle already written: "The rebels of Duskendale, even after laying down their arms and begging for mercy on their knees, were thrown into eternal green flames. Their wails were the funeral song composed by the Mad King. The remnants of the Blackfyre supporters were bound to the iron thorns he claimed to rule, roasted alive in wildfire, skin charring and flesh rotting... The Iron Throne groaned, twisted, and deformed in that hellfire—that was not the forging of victory, but the foundation of centuries of Targaryen rule being thrown by his own hand into the flames that destroy everything!" His fingertip traced through the fine salt grains on the table, leaving a twisted, blackened trail, symbolizing the scorched kingship. "Ser Barristan Selmy, the knight who pulled him back from the hell of Duskendale... his plea, that meager loyalty, barely snatched the life of a three-year-old child from the Mad King's frenzy. If not for that..." Euron's voice held a trace of cold pity, "even that tiny, blood of his own blood would have been severed. Is this mercy? Or a deeper, more desperate madness?"
Quellon's breathing seemed to stop. His large body tensed in the chair, firelight casting shifting shadows on his face. Those bloody rumors, those fragments of terrifying news from King's Landing that were deliberately blurred, were now linked by a five-year-old child with such clear, cold, penetrating language, forming a horrifying picture. He felt he was back in the oppressive Red Keep, seeing the dragon banner on the high tower, the hideous silhouette of the Iron Throne, and the King with flowing blonde hair but eyes flashing with chaotic light like broken glass. An old scar on his knuckles throbbed—a mark left by a golden goblet thrown by Aerys in a fit of baseless rage during an audience a year ago, the first brand of madness.
"He is obsessed with fire," Euron continued, his voice laced with cold sarcasm. "He ordered the pyromancer Rossart, who climbed to high office by licking abscesses, to bury countless jars of wildfire under King's Landing, under the foundations of the Red Keep, hiding them like dragon eggs. That is not a bulwark protecting the realm, Father." He raised his right eye, the ice-blue pupil reflecting the fire but holding no warmth. "That is a tomb buried under his own throne, waiting to be lit! It is the pyre he dug for himself and the entire Targaryen dynasty!"
He paused, the blackness of his left eye seemingly absorbing all surrounding light. His voice dropped lower, but grew more penetrating. "Queen Rhaella, his wife, is imprisoned in the cold stone chambers of Maegor's Holdfast, accused of... infidelity with Tywin Lannister?" The question was filled with cold mockery. "The rage of Prince Doran Martell of Dorne has long boiled in Martell blood! This imposed humiliation is like a poisoned spear thrust under the Dornish sun; the wound will only fester and ooze pus, never to heal!"
Quellon's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. He remembered the letter received not long ago from Prince Doran, worded obscurely but cold as ice. The Mad King's actions were tearing apart and burning the network of allies the dragons had built over centuries with blood, fire, marriage, and promises, turning it into choking ash.
"Any disturbance," Euron's slender finger tapped lightly on the salt grains, making a tiny but heart-palpitating shhh sound, like a countdown pendulum, "a delay in taxes, a careless word, even an inadvertently revealed look... could become the fuse to light the next pyre. Guards, commoners, criminals, noble lords... the eerie green flame of wildfire consuming the living has become the shadow of death hovering over King's Landing." He leaned forward slightly, his small body looking unusually firm in the huge chair. "He abolished the ancient custom of noble counsel, trusting only jesters who crawled out of the mud and 'loyal servants' who survive by kneeling at his feet and licking the foul pus from his fingers. Father," his voice carried the weight of a verdict, "this is not ruling. This is a pot of poisonous soup brewed with fear and madness! Under that boiling lid are countless chains of loyalty stretched to breaking point, mountains of dry wood needing only a spark to explode! He thinks the flames forge terrifying chains, unaware the spark has already fallen—awaiting only a wind from fate!"
Euron's child voice echoed and clashed in the empty, cold stone hall. Every word was like a cold iron hammer, striking heavily on the anvil of reality, producing a chilling resonance. Quellon fell into a long silence. His gaze moved from Euron's small face, which seemed to know everything, to the last struggling flame in the fireplace. The dancing orange-red twisted and transformed in his eyes, overlapping and merging with the terrifying green flames he heard had burned the surrenderers of Duskendale. Through his son's calm-to-cruel analysis, the image of the Mad King appeared before him clearer, more concrete, and more desperate than ever—a lunatic sitting on a mountain of wildfire kegs, waving a torch wildly, and the fuse had already burned to the end.
"This mad fire," Euron's voice suddenly rose, sharp enough to pierce the fog, "burns far more than just the Red Keep in King's Landing! Its sparks have long ridden the ominous wind, splashing onto the dry woodpiles of all Westeros!" His finger moved quickly over the rough map outlined in salt, tapping and poking as if marking powder kegs ready to explode.
"The North!" His fingertip struck heavily on the location of Winterfell. "House Stark, whose blood is honor ancient as the ice fields! The Mad King's atrocities—burning the living, imprisoning the innocent, trampling noble dignity—are incompatible with the Northern code of honor frozen for a thousand years! Lord Rickard Stark of Winterfell, the Warden of the North known for his integrity, has thrown the title 'Mad King' at the Iron Throne in more than one public setting! Varys the Spider's little birds must have carried these treasonous words into the deep palace of the Red Keep. Do you know the Mad King's reaction?" A cold arc curled at the corner of Euron's mouth. "He smashed the dragonbone crown passed down from Aegon the Conqueror, symbol of royal power!" He paused, letting this shocking symbolic act ferment in the cold air. "Father, this is not just anger; this is a thorough blasphemy against his own bloodline and the Conqueror's glory! The fangs of the Direwolf have been sharpened in silence!"
"The West!" His finger slashed toward Casterly Rock. "Tywin Lannister! His wife, Lady Joanna..." The name carried a heavy weight in his mouth. "Though no hard proof points to the Mad King for her death, that lingering shadow is like the golden dust that never dissipates under Casterly Rock! Not to mention the years of bone-deep humiliation—treating the richest, most powerful lord of the Seven Kingdoms like a court jester to be ordered around! 'A Lannister Always Pays His Debts,' Father. This is not just a saying; it is a vow carved into the marrow! Every coin in the mountain of gold at Casterly Rock is soaked in cold hatred for the Mad King, for that teetering Iron Throne! This hatred is more flammable than wildfire, heavier than gold!"
"Dorne!" His fingertip finally landed on the scorching south. "Princess Elia Martell is about to marry into the Red Keep, becoming Prince Rhaegar's bride. Yet her mother-in-law, the noble Queen Rhaella, is imprisoned in Maegor's Holdfast, branded with the stigma of adultery, suffering utter humiliation! The pride of the Dornish is like their sun spears in the desert—they break before they bend! The Mad King's slighting and injury to House Martell has long pushed their loyalty, already built on marriage, to the edge of breaking, fragile as a spiderweb in the wind!"