1st bonus chapter: 120 powerstones
2nd bonus chapter: 200 powerstones
3rd bonus chapter: 250 powerstones
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The army soon headed out and they would take the overland route on the Demon Road. Even hearing the name spoken aloud made hardened legionaries shift uneasily.
The ancient Valyrian highway cut eastward from Volantis like a blade of black stone driven into the continent's heart. Built in the days when dragonlords commanded half the known world, it had once been a symbol of dominion; wide, seamless, indestructible. It ran straight where mountains would have curved lesser roads. It bridged ravines with fused stone spans that defied time. Its surface was dark, glass-smooth, unmarred by root or frost despite centuries of neglect.
Large enough for ten wagons abreast. Strong enough to bear elephants without cracking. Pristine and cursed. There was a reason the stretch leading toward the ruins of old Valyria had earned its name.
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When the Doom consumed the Freehold, something had gone wrong with the roads near to the destruction. Some said the reasons were because the dragonlords had poured sorcery into the stone itself, binding fire and will into their infrastructure. Others whispered that the roads were not merely built, they were conduits.
Nevertheless, after the cataclysm, those conduits did not fall silent. They leaked. Now, at irregular intervals, fire split the seams of the road. Fissures glowed from within. Shapes too alien to be men, too structured to be flame poured out and slithered along the ancient path. Fire demons. Creatures of fire and shadow that clung to the stone and hunted heat and life. This is what the roads spewed out.
The decision to march by land was not born of recklessness, but necessity. Volantis' fleet of over two hundred warships and some merchant vessels were called in from trade routes and patrol lines, and had been recalled and consolidated. Triremes, heavy dromonds, fire ships, escort vessels. Their prows carved into snarling beasts. Their hulls freshly tarred.
They would not ferry the army east. Instead, they formed a blockade. The fleet split in two great arcs; one stationed near the mouth of the Rhoyne, the other patrolling deeper into the Summer Sea. Their task was clear: contain Elyria.
Elyria's ships were swift and elusive, masters of current and mist. If left unchecked, they could harass supply lines, land raiding forces behind the advancing host, or strike Volantis itself while the army marched away.
The Volantene navy would pin them in their waters which was tricky business through to begin with. Still they had the advantage as those ships needed to sail all the way past the doomed peninsula and to them in which their lands by then can be invaded.
Also if Braavos dared to send its famed fleet south in opportunistic interference, it would find chains raised across harbors and iron rams waiting in open sea. So the army marched by land. Along the Demon Road.
For the first few days, the march felt almost effortless. Fifty thousand men and women traveled on the stone laid by dragonlords.
The Red Faith marched near the vanguard, braziers lit even beneath the open sky. Legion blocks followed in disciplined columns, shields slung, spears upright. Elephants lumbered in steady cadence. Sellswords fanned along the flanks. Old Blood contingents kept their banners high and separate.
The road bore them easily. Its width swallowed the army without congestion. Supply wagons rolled smoothly. Horses did not stumble. Even the elephants' massive feet left no imprint. The countryside thinned. Trade settlements became sparse. The air grew warmer.
Standing beside Jon was his assigned Red Guard captain. A Red Protector. These were the most highly trained guardians of the Faith, sworn solely to safeguard the priesthood. His protector was a young woman, her frame lean and balanced, her movements economical. She wore a golden, ornate mask like the others, etched with flame motifs and eye slits narrow enough to conceal expression entirely.
She barely spoke to him, and not once did Jon see her rest or even remove her mask to eat. She was his constant shadow which sometimes he swore he saw her from the corner of his eye when he even went to the privy. It was unsettling and sort of reassuring how serious the faith took his safety.
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Yet his truest companion was not masked or armored. Ghost padded at his side. The direwolf had grown massive over the years in the East. He already surpassed the war horses in size and his once-lean frame had filled with muscle, his white fur thick and gleaming despite the heat. At first, the Essosi climate had weighed on him, but now he moved through the warmth with steady ease, tongue lolling, pale eyes alert.
With not much to do on the march except get brief lessons from his master he played with him to catch up for all the time he missed since over these months of years of traveling and studying he barely had time. Ghost was happy to spend time with him instead of just shadowing him.
Also Jon caught Ghost hungrily stalking the elephants which had them terrified, Jon could not help laugh at the thought of having these massive wolves hunt through the plains, jungles and hills of Essos. For a few moments, Jon was not priest, not adept, not symbol. Just a man with his wolf.
On the eight night, the first fissure opened. It began as a hairline crack across the road's surface. Then light bled through it. A legionary shouted. The crack widened with a sound like glass snapping under strain. Flame burst upward wild and chaotic as though emerging through a gate.
From within the fire came shape. Monstrous lumbering silhouettes formed from living embers, their limbs elongated and tapering into smoke. Their heads split into horned ridges of flame. Their eyes were hollows of white heat.
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More and more of them poured out from the fissures flowing and popping out from them as though the road were birthing them. By the time the cracks sealed with a hiss of steam and glassy fusion, and returned to their pristine conditions there were dozens of them charging at their army.
They darted low along the road's surface, moving between ranks, igniting cloaks and supply tarps with casual contact. The Legion tightened formation instantly. "Shields!" came the cry. But steel was not enough.
The Red Faith reacted instantly. Red Apostles stepped forward, chanting in High Valyrian. Flame answered flame. Controlled bursts slammed into the emerging demons, disrupting cohesion. Then a Red Priest started the process of sending them back to whatever alien world they came from.
The apostle flames formed wards, geometric patterns which trapped the demons. Their forms flickered and thinned, as if stretched between worlds. The legions held them back, steel not entirely useless against them.
One by one, the demons collapsed inward compressed into sparks that were dragged back through the stone, pulled into whatever dark void or alien realm had birthed them. In moments, the road was whole again. The army continued marching on knowing this was just the beginning.
The Demon Road was not constant terror. It was worse. It was unpredictable. Some days passed without incident. The army marched beneath a hard blue sky, the stone warm beneath boots and hooves. Camps were established in careful formation off the road's edge. Elephants fed. Mercenaries gambled. Priests conducted rites.
Then, without warning, the road would split. Sometimes at dawn. Sometimes at the worst possible hour in midnight, when fatigue dulled reaction.
The demons varied. Some were small and swift, skittering like burning hounds along the stone. Others towered twice a man's height, dragging trails of molten residue behind them. Once, a breach produced something winged, its form incomplete, shrieking as it rose before being torn apart by coordinated flame and volleys of arrows.
The Legion adapted quickly. Shield walls formed instinctively at the first glow of fissure-light. Archers learned to target the bright cores within the demons' bodies or what passed for one. Engineers developed sand-and-ash mixtures to smother smaller entities before they fully manifested.
The sellswords proved their worth in the chaos. Used to irregular warfare, they pivoted fast, plugging gaps, reinforcing exposed flanks. Their night-fighting units excelled in reacting to sudden breaches.
The Old Blood sorcerers remained largely silent but when fissures grew larger, when flame rose higher than expected, they stepped forward.
The Wyvern Lord's beast proved invaluable. It seemed to detect fissures moments before they cracked. More than once, it screeched warning before stone split open beneath marching ranks. That left Jon wondering if there were a lot more demons crawling through Sothoryos since it had lived most of its life there.
As weeks passed, the landscape grew harsher. Vegetation was none existent this far out. Soil darkened. Black stone flowed seamlessly beneath boot and hoof, smooth as glass yet impossibly strong. No weeds grew through it. No frost cracked it. It cut through hills rather than bending around them, passing over ravines on arches that had never needed repair.
Occasionally, carved markers still stood at the edges of the road and resting spots with pillars of veined with red crystal that had inscriptions in High Valyrian, weathered but legible to scholars. Distances. Dedications. Names of dragonlord families who had funded segments of construction. Trade caravans were nonexistent here now only the army marched.
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The further east they advanced, the more frequent the breaches became. Some nights saw three or four fissures erupt along different segments of the column, forcing coordinated responses across miles of formation. The Red Faith's presence proved crucial. Without sustained magical containment, smaller breaches risked merging into larger tears.
Even so, casualties accumulated not catastrophic or all at once but steady. Burns. Exhaustion. The occasional soul dragged screaming into fissure-light before being pulled back or not. No one spoke of turning back. To retreat would be to admit weakness before Mantarys even sighted them.
So they marched on and the Demon Road tested them at every turn. It was many battles, many great breaches to contain many dramatic clashes. It was a grinding pattern. A rhythm of advance, rupture, containment, and advance again. The deeper they pushed east, the more the land seemed to thin into something harsher and older.
And most importantly of all, the land began to reveal what it had once been. The lands of an empire. The Dragonlords had ruled this region absolutely, and though the Doom had shattered their heartland, their outer domains remained; abandoned, dangerous, and largely untouched for centuries. Few caravans dared go this far east. Fewer returned with coherent tales.
The first major ruins they encountered were the Dragon Watchtowers. Tall, spiraled structures of black and crimson stone, rising from ridgelines that overlooked the road. Some leaned. Some were cracked. But none had fully fallen.
These had once been signal towers, communication points linking Valyria's outer holdings to the core. Dragonfire braziers had crowned their summits, used to send coded bursts of flame across leagues. Also dragons used to land on them, resting spots for them in their journey through the empire.
Now, the fires at the top had died out. Inside, spiral staircases wound upward around hollow shafts that once amplified heat and light. Char marks blackened interior walls, not from battle, but from something internal that had burned from within when the Doom came.
The army did not linger long in them. Even centuries later, the air inside those towers felt wrong; dry, brittle, faintly metallic.
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Further along the road, they passed the remnants of lesser Valyrian outposts, not the proper Free Cities or colonies like the others but small living centers of empire. These were the homesteads and outlying towns and villages of the Valyrian people. Proper dragon settlements.
They all knew that when they saw the great dragon skull at the mouth of the ruins. They all knew what they were looking at when they saw the head of such terrifying beasts. Further in, the ruin was a perfect circular structure made of fused dragonstone.
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Streets radiated outward in precise geometric lines. Aqueduct channels still traced their way through shattered courtyards. Mosaic floors remained intact beneath layers of ash and dust. Statues lined the forum of dragonlords depicted not as rulers, but as gods. Some bore wings sculpted behind them. Others stood upon coiled serpents. Faces serene. Arrogant.
The army scavenged cautiously. Engineers examined the remaining cisterns. Scholars recorded inscriptions. But no one attempted to claim the ruins. Even abandoned, they felt inhabited by memory.
Standing amongst the settlements were the administer centers, the ruined dragon estates, private compounds of dragonlord families who had governed this region before the Doom. These were more than ornate, they were magnificent.
Great manor complexes of black marble and red-veined stone. Courtyards arranged around reflecting pools now dry. Columns engraved with personal banners. However these estates bore signs of sudden abandonment. Tables overturned. Metal objects melted mid-use. Sculpted gardens turned to brittle stone.
They found petrified fountains though no bodies remained, only faint outlines. Shadows burned permanently into stone in places where figures had once stood.
The soldiers moved through these estates quietly as did the mercenaries. There was no plunder worth the risk. Precious metals had long ago been scavenged by braver fools. What remained was legacy and warning.
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Much rarer and deeper in were the Sorcerer Dragon Sanctums. These were hidden off the road, accessible by branching paths of the same black stone. From a distance, they rose from the scorched earth like engineered monoliths.
They were great mage tower complexes of peerless design that were circular, symmetrical, windowless. These were not places of governance, but experimentation. The towers were hammered home deep into the earth like nails, drinking deep from the leylines. Things no mage or civilization nowadays can not even imagine how to do.
Circular outer districts radiated around a central spire that pierced the sky. Massive rings hovered around the upper tiers of those towers, some broken, some tilted, yet still suspended by ancient enchantments that had not entirely failed. They bore relief carvings of coiled dragons and twisting flames.
These sanctums had once been the research centers of the Freehold's most ambitious dragon-sorcerers. Underneath them were countless apprentices, bonded magic thralls, and alchemical engineers had once lived and worked within these complexes.
Here, they experimented freely. Here, they tested boundaries. The Freehold had not merely ruled the world. It had tried to redesign it.
Entire wings of these complexes were dedicated to different disciplines, pouring out powerful implements of war, deadly experiments, large-scale spells or rituals, and endless magic supplies for the empire. The Freehold had not feared magic. It had industrialized it.
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Old Blood sorcerers could only examine these sites far away with reverence and caution. Most sanctums had collapsed inward during the Doom, as if their own power had imploded. But a few remained structurally intact.
The army did not camp within them, the mercenaries kept their distance. Even Moqorro advised against him going near one. Some powers, even dead ones, were better left undisturbed. They still had their defences with wards up and experiments running loose down in those laboratories.
In the hills overlooking the long stretches of road, massive stone terraces could be seen carved directly into cliff faces. Colossal stone shelves tier upon tier, ascending in disciplined symmetry. From a distance they looked like amphitheaters built for giants. Up close, their purpose was unmistakable. Dragon roosts.
Each roost consisted of multiple landing platforms cut into the mountainside, wide enough to hold creatures larger than warships. The stone was smoothed to unnatural precision, fused rather than chiseled, as though the mountain itself had been persuaded to yield its form. Deep grooves ran across the platforms large as trenches where talons once dug in and held fast against wind.
Massive chains of blackened metal were embedded into the rock, some twisted from unimaginable strain, others remained perfectly intact. They were forged to bind chains capable of restraining something that could melt cities.
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Below the primary platforms lay vast hollowed chambers within the hills and mountains. Heat vaults.
The inner walls were glazed smooth, layered in fused mineral deposits built up over centuries of sustained flame. Even now, faint warmth lingered in certain recesses, as though the stone had absorbed generations of dragonfire and never fully cooled.
These were not temporary encampments. They were permanent military installations where dragons were reared and fitted for war. Between roosts, narrow observation towers dotted the ridgelines, from these, handlers and dragonlords would have monitored sky traffic, coordinated patrols, and maintained disciplined aerial rotations.
It was clear: the Freehold had not relied on dragons as chaotic weapons. It had regimented them. Standardized their deployment. Integrated them into imperial logistics.
The sheer scale silenced even the most hardened soldier or priest. Standing beneath those terraces, men felt small in a way no battlefield could make them feel. The stone overhead curved like the underside of a titanic ribcage. Wind whistled through empty anchor points where chains once clanged and strained.
The Old Blood grew contemplative when passing these heights, seeing how great their old overlords were. These roosts were not merely places of rest. They were the backbone of aerial supremacy. Here dragons had been housed, trained, healed, bred, and launched. Entire squadrons could have risen from these cliffs in disciplined waves, blotting out the sky above the Demon Road.
Time had not eroded them much. Rain had not softened the stone. Wind had not reclaimed the terraces. The mountain remained carved, precise, obedient to hands long turned to ash.
However dragons were gone but the infrastructure of their dominion endured. As the host marched onward, banners snapping beneath empty skies, many could not help but glance upward at those silent decks and imagine what it must have been like when they were alive with the sound of —
The thunder of wings. The roar of flame. The command of dragonlords shouting across wind-swept heights. The Freehold had once filled these lands with fire. Now only the echo remained. And the road led ever onward.