The Summer Sea | 90 AC
The air over the Summer Sea was usually a balm of warm salt and steady trade winds, but today it felt heavy, as if the water itself were holding its breath. Corlys Velaryon stood upon the quarterdeck of the Sea Snake, his namesake and the pride of his ambition. His gaze was fixed on the southern horizon, his dark skin bronzed by years of sun and spray. Behind him, the rest of his fleet cut through the turquoise waves, their hulls sitting low in the water, heavy with the spoils of the Jade Sea.
This voyage was meant to be the final crowning achievement of his house. The silks, the spices, and the rare woods in his hold were enough to make the Velaryons the wealthiest family in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. Yet, a shadow of resentment clouded Corlys's triumph.
Six years ago, a secret pact had been forged in the dim light of Dragonstone's solar. A young Prince had promised a partnership that would revolutionize the realm,exclusive charters for rare "materials" in exchange for the Crown's full diplomatic and financial weight. But the winds of the court were as fickle as the sea. Two years ago, the Crown had abruptly halted the deal. A new merchant conglomerate had appeared out of the Free Cities, offering the King terms that the Velaryons couldn't or wouldn't match.
"The King has a short memory for those who built his peace," Corlys muttered, his grip tightening on the polished teak railing of the Sea Snake.
Suddenly, the vibrant blue of the sky began to bleed.
A wall of Red Fog rolled across the water with impossible speed, thick and clotted like cooling blood. It swallowed the sun in heartbeats, plunging the fleet into a crimson twilight. The tropical warmth turned into a humid, suffocating weight.
"Red fog!" a lookout shrieked from the crow's nest. "To the oars! All hands to stations!"
"Steady!" he bellowed, his voice anchored in years of command and heavy enough to drown out the frightened murmurs of the sailors. He turned to his first mate and the helmsman, his eyes flashing with authority.
"Drop to half-mast! Signal the fleet to close ranks...I want the formation tight enough to walk from deck to deck! If we lose sight of each other in this blood-thick soup, we're as good as ghost ships!"
Then, they saw it.
A massive, jagged shadow moved within the crimson clouds above. It was colossal, eclipsing the masts and circling the fleet with a predatory, silent grace that defied its size.
"Is it a wild dragon?" a young deckhand cried, his face pale with terror. "A beast from Valyria?"
"Take cover!" Corlys ordered, his eyes tracking the dark shape as it cut through the fog. "Shields up! Prepare to repel!"
The shadow circled closer, a low, subsonic vibration rattling the hulls of the ships and making the men's teeth ache. It wasn't just a beast; it felt like a presence, a weight of intent that pressed against their very souls. Corlys realized they were being herded, trapped in a cage of red mist.
"The bells!" Corlys commanded, pointing toward the cabin. "Ring the bells! Signal the ships!"
One of the crewmen scrambled toward the cabin door. Bolted there was a magnificent Golden Bell, its surface encrusted with dozens of deep-red rubies that seemed to pulse with their own light in the crimson gloom. It was an artifact of singular beauty, a gift from the Prince himself during their first year of partnership.
The man heaved on the silken rope.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound was not a harsh metallic strike but a deep, harmonic resonance,a pleasant, vibrating note that seemed to ripple through the fog like a stone dropped in a still pond. Across the fleet, from the Silver Wing to the Mariner, identical bells took up the cry. The sound waves acted like a physical force, pushing back the oppressive silence of the red fog.
Minutes stretched into an agonizing eternity as the fleet moved through the crimson gloom, guided by the rhythmic, ruby-lit song of the bells. The shadow above circled once more, letting out a sound that was half-sigh, half-growl, and then vanished into the heights.
As abruptly as it had appeared, the red smoke parted.
The fleet burst forth into the clear, open air of the Summer Sea. The sun beat down on them once more, turning the crimson-stained wood of the decks back to their natural grey. Corlys looked back at the receding wall of fog, his heart hammering against his ribs.
They had survived the mist, but as he looked at the ruby-encrusted bell, still humming faintly from the vibration, Corlys felt a new kind of dread. The shadow hadn't attacked; it had permitted them to pass.
The shadow stretched long across the salt-stained timber of the Sea Snake, cutting through the golden glare of the afternoon sun.
"Captain."
Corlys Velaryon did not turn immediately. His hands, calloused by a thousand ropes and hardened by the spray of every sea known to man, gripped the teak railing with a steady, white-knuckled intensity. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon, watching the final, clotted wisps of the red fog dissolve into the pristine blue of the Summer Sea. It looked like blood diluting in a basin of water.
"I was wondering when you would come to me with it, William," he said at last. His voice was a low rumble, carrying the weight of the deep.
The man stiffened, his boots shifting on the deck. William had sailed with the Sea Snake long enough to know when the air between them grew heavy with more than just a coming gale. He stepped forward, his voice a cautious whisper. "Then you've noticed it too."
Corlys let out a quiet breath, a sound caught somewhere between a scoff and a grim acknowledgment. "A blind man could notice it, William, if he sailed far enough and kept his ears open to the change in the currents."
Now, he turned. The sun caught the silver in his hair and the hard, seafaring bronze of his skin. His eyes, dark and piercing, locked onto his first mate.
"Say it."
William took a breath, nodding once as if bracing himself. "The Valyrian footholds… they're changing. Not just ruins anymore. Something's stirring in the marrow of the stone. It's as if the bones of the Freehold are knitting back together."
Corlys's expression didn't shift; he looked like a man watching a predictable storm. "They were never dead to begin with. Men simply convinced themselves they were because it was easier to sleep at night believing the ghosts were buried."
William studied his captain for a moment, the unease clear in the lines of his face. "At the eastern ruins, the stones were warm to the touch. The men said they heard whispers. Not the wind, and certainly not echoes. It was… a language."
"I know," Corlys interrupted calmly.
That gave William pause. He blinked, the words dying in his throat.
Corlys's gaze drifted briefly toward the golden bell bolted beside the cabin door. Its surface was encrusted with rubies that still seemed to thrum with a faint, internal light, remnants of the resonance that had cleared the red mist.
"Old Valyria did not fall cleanly," Corlys said, his voice dropping an octave. "It rotted. And rot… rot spreads. It finds the damp places. It finds the cracks."
A heavy silence settled over the quarterdeck, broken only by the rhythmic creak of the hull and the distant cries of gulls. Finally, William spoke again.
"There's more," he said. "Qarth."
That earned Corlys's full attention. His jaw tightened, though his physical reaction remained controlled, a testament to decades of commanding men in the face of monsters.
"The Jade Gates aren't free anymore," William continued, his voice tight. "The Warlocks of the House of the Undying have crawled out of their black palace. They control the passage now. No ship crosses without paying a tribute that would bankrupt a lesser house."
Corlys's lips pressed into a thin, hard line. "And the Pureborn allow this? The lords of the city let blue-lipped sorcerers dictate the flow of gold?"
"They don't allow it," William replied. "They've been pushed aside. Some say they've been silenced permanently."
A faint, humorless smile touched Corlys's face. It was the look of a predator recognizing another's territory. "Of course they have."
A cry sliced across the deck like a boarding blade.
"Ship on the horizon!"
Every head on the Sea Snake snapped to the starboard bow. Far off, cutting cleanly through the lingering sea haze with an unnatural, gliding grace, a vessel emerged.
At first glance, it felt fundamentally wrong.
The shadow of the vessel stretched across the waves, and as it drew nearer, the impossibility of its construction became grounded in a terrifyingly tangible reality.
This was no ghost ship.
Through his far-eye, Corlys could see the movement of men on the dark deck. They were dressed in charcoal-grey tunics reinforced with plates of that same light-drinking metal, their movements synchronized with a mechanical, almost eerie precision. They did not scramble or shout; they operated with the quiet focus of monks tending to a temple.
The ship itself was massive nearly double the length of the Sea Snake. Its hull sat high and proud, forged from heavy timbers that had been treated until they possessed the sheen of black glass. Despite its immense size, it didn't lumber. It moved with a predatory, slicing speed that defied the weight of its thick hull and the height of its three towering masts.
But it was the Runes that held Corlys's breath hostage.
The biting wind of the North howled against the ancient granite walls of Winterfell, but inside the solar, the air was heavy with the scent of pine and the hum of a quiet revolution. Six years of Saera Targaryen's presence had transformed the ancestral seat of the Starks from a fortress of survival into a beacon of efficiency.
Lord Benjen Stark stood by the hearth, his grey eyes scanning the latest reports from the harvest. Beside him, his son and heir, Rickon Stark, watched with a pride that was both for his land and for the woman he had wed.
"It is staggering, Rickon," Benjen said, his voice carrying the gravelly weight of a man who had seen many winters. He tapped a parchment detailing the granary levels. "I have lived many years on this soil, and I have never seen the silos overflow before the first snow. The methods Saera brought... they have changed the very nature of our labor."
He gestured to the window overlooking the vast, organized fields of Winter Town.
"The Crop Rotation was the key," Benjen continued. "By dividing the land and planting legumes where the wheat once stood, she has fed the soil itself. The earth is no longer exhausted; it is vibrant. And the Manure management turning what we once called filth into the 'black gold' of the fields has doubled our yields."
Rickon leaned against the stone mantle, his hand instinctively touching the hilt of his sword. "It is more than just the food, Father. It is the Hygiene. By separating the waste from our water and insisting on the lime-scrubbing of the barracks and the town, the winter fever didn't take a single soul this year. The men are stronger, the children are taller. We aren't just enduring the North anymore; we are mastering it."
Benjen looked at his son, seeing the steady confidence in Rickon's gaze. "The High-Yield Cereals she had her nephew's connections procure... they grow thick and short. They do not snap under the weight of the frost. Saera has given us a North that can feed itself for a decade-long winter if it must."
He walked over to the table, looking at a map of the North where new trade routes were being traced.
"The Maesters in the South will call this sorcery or 'Valyrian interference,'" Benjen murmured with a grim smile. "They believe prosperity in the North is an impossibility. But your wife has shown us that the gods gave us the land but they expect us to have the wit to use it."
Rickon nodded, looking out toward the courtyard where Saera was consulting with the Master-of-Works. "She says this is only the beginning. With the food and the health of the people secured, we can focus on the stone and the steel."
Benjen placed a heavy hand on his son's shoulder. "You chose well, Rickon. She has not just brought a dragon's fire to the North; she has brought the clarity of a new age. The Starks of Winterfell will never look at a winter with fear again."
The heavy oak door of the solar groaned as the Maester entered, his chains clinking with a hurried, metallic rhythm that signaled urgency. He held a piece of parchment sealed with the black wax of the Night's Watch, the edges frayed from a cold journey.
Lord Benjen took the letter, his brow furrowing as he broke the seal. Rickon watched his father's eyes dart across the lines, the older man's face hardening into a mask of grim concern.
"Father?" Rickon asked, stepping away from the maps. "What word from the Black Brothers?"
Benjen handed the letter to his son. "A report from the Lord Commander."
Rickon scanned the parchment, his jaw tightening. "He has the numbers to overwhelm a dozen way-castles, yet the Commander says there has been no march on the Wall. They are massing in the Frostfangs, but they aren't looking for a way through."
"That is what troubles the Watch," Benjen replied, looking out toward the northern horizon. "The scouts say they are digging. Tearing into the ancient glaciers and the old caves of the giants. It is as if they are searching for a buried memory rather than a path to our lands."
=============
If you are interested in reading 4 chapters ahead, read here
patreon.com/Abyssvoid