For a heartbeat, no one moved.
The words had been clear. The rules had been simple. The line at the far end was visible, carved into the earth just before Yhorm's great boots, but fear had a way of making even simple things impossible. The women stood packed between the two walls, some clutching at each other, some staring at Yhorm as if he might move first, some looking upward at the elves with their drawn bows.
Then one woman ran.
That broke the rest.
Bodies surged forward in a ragged wave, not together, not coordinated, just desperate. Feet scraped over packed dirt. Skirts tangled around legs. Someone fell almost immediately and was stepped over by two others who didn't even look down. The corridor filled with gasps, sobs, and the ugly, human sound of people trying not to die.
Yhorm remained motionless at the far end.
He didn't blink.
He didn't breathe in any way Daemon could see.
His burning eyes watched the corridor from beneath the shadow of his crown, and for a moment, because he was so still, the women seemed to forget that he was not a statue. Some ran harder, seeing the line, seeing the impossible chance of survival and throwing every bit of strength they had left toward it.
Jeanyx waited.
Then, softly, almost lazily, he said, "Red light."
The effect was immediate and terrible.
Some stopped so suddenly they nearly fell forward. Others tried to halt but stumbled, arms windmilling, knees locking too late. One woman clapped both hands over her mouth as if silence could make her invisible. Another froze with one foot half-lifted, trembling violently from the strain of holding herself still.
A few kept moving.
Not far.
Not even intentionally, perhaps. A shoulder twitch. A foot sliding. A body swaying because panic had stolen balance.
Yhorm's head turned.
Slowly.
The motion was small compared to his size, but it carried the weight of a mountain shifting.
Above the walls, the elves released.
Their arrows struck with frightening precision. Not in throats. Not in hearts. Not in eyes. Thighs. Shoulders. Calves. Places meant to cripple, not end.
The women hit the ground one by one, cries ripping out of them as the poison began to work. It was not instant. That was the cruelty of it. Their bodies curled around the wounds, hands clawing at shafts buried in flesh, their breathing turning ragged as the venom spread.
Daemon watched the archers more than the fallen.
Their discipline was perfect.
No wasted shots. No hesitation. No visible pleasure.
That made the whole thing worse in its own way.
Rhaenys looked away for a moment, only a moment, then forced herself to look back. She could feel the nausea rising again, but something colder now held it in place. She had already asked herself the question once and hated the answer. Now she watched not because she approved, but because looking away felt like cowardice.
Jeanyx's gaze passed over the fallen without much interest.
"Green light."
The survivors moved again.
This time they ran differently.
Not as a wave, but in broken bursts. Some tried to control themselves, taking fast but measured steps, eyes fixed on Yhorm's unmoving form. Others sobbed as they ran, glancing upward at the archers even though the real judge stood at the end of the corridor.
One woman dragged another by the wrist until the second stumbled. For half a heartbeat it looked like she might help her up.
She didn't.
She let go and kept running.
Daemon's mouth twitched, not in amusement, but recognition. Fear stripped people quickly. Faster than battle sometimes. On a battlefield, men could hide behind banners, orders, songs of courage. Here there was nothing to hide behind except instinct.
"Red light."
Again, bodies locked.
Again, some failed.
A woman near the left wall slipped, catching herself with one palm against the earth barrier. Her shoulder moved after the word had been spoken, barely an inch.
Yhorm saw.
An arrow struck her through the upper arm.
Another woman, younger, perhaps no more than twenty, tried to steady her breathing and failed. Her knees shook so badly that her whole body trembled. She whispered something, a prayer perhaps, then shifted her foot to stop herself from falling.
The arrow hit her thigh.
She collapsed with a choked scream, clutching at the wound as the poison began its slow work.
Jeanyx didn't smile.
That was what Rhaenys kept noticing. He wasn't enjoying it the way a cruel boy might enjoy pulling wings from flies. He was simply carrying it out, letting terror do the teaching, letting the crowd see the cost of betrayal stretched across the ground one mistake at a time.
Arya watched from her seat with fierce attention, but even her excitement had begun to settle into something more focused. Alysanne sat beside her, hands folded in her lap, expression calm in a way that made her look older than her years. Thor leaned forward with open intensity, while Loki's gaze darted everywhere, not missing a single reaction from prisoner, crowd, or guest.
The children of Jeanyx were not looking away.
That was its own lesson.
"Green light."
The remaining women surged forward again, closer now, close enough that Yhorm seemed impossibly large. His axe still rested upright before him, his hands folded over the pommel, but the fire beneath his armor pulsed brighter as they approached. Some women slowed despite the command, too frightened to get near him even though the line of survival lay at his feet.
One woman, older and limping, forced herself forward with a sound that was half sob, half growl. She had been near the back at the start, but she moved with grim purpose now, eyes fixed on the line and nothing else. Blood ran down one side of her face from an earlier injury, yet she kept going.
Daemon found himself watching her.
Rhaenys did too.
"Red light."
The woman stopped.
Perfectly.
Her whole body shook, but she did not move.
Others around her were not so lucky. Three arrows flew. Three bodies fell. One prisoner screamed so loudly that the sound bounced off the walls and came back thinner, uglier.
The older woman remained still.
Yhorm's burning gaze swept over her, then moved past.
Jeanyx noticed.
For the first time since the game began, his eyes sharpened with something close to interest.
"Green light."
The older woman moved.
Not fast now.
Steady.
She was close enough to the line that every step seemed to take an eternity. The women behind her panicked at seeing someone so near survival and rushed forward too quickly, trying to steal the same chance before it vanished.
Jeanyx lifted his hand.
"Red light."
The older woman froze again.
So did two others.
A third tried to stop and failed, momentum carrying her one step too far. Her foot landed after the command.
The arrow struck her calf, and she collapsed so close to the line that her fingers scraped the carved mark in the dirt.
Not across it.
Just short.
That broke something in the others.
Several screamed. One tried to lunge forward anyway, as if defiance could count as victory. She made it two steps before an arrow caught her low in the back, dropping her hard into the dust.
The older woman didn't move.
Her eyes were wet, her breathing harsh, but she waited.
Jeanyx watched her for another moment, then spoke.
"Green light."
She crossed.
Not dramatically.
Not with a final burst.
Just one step.
Then another.
Her foot passed over the line.
The corridor went silent.
Even the archers held.
Yhorm's head lowered slightly, acknowledging the crossing, and for a moment the older woman seemed unable to believe she was alive. She stood there on the other side of the line, shaking so badly she nearly collapsed.
Jeanyx gestured once.
"Take her aside."
Two Abyss Watchers moved in, not roughly this time. They guided her away from Yhorm and toward the side of the field, where a small group of healers waited under guard.
Rhaenys released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
Daemon glanced at Jeanyx.
"So it wasn't impossible."
"No," Jeanyx said quietly. "Just unlikely."
The game continued.
More fell than crossed.
Far more.
Each round stripped the group smaller. Green light sent them forward in bursts of desperation. Red light froze them into trembling statues, and any failure, any twitch, any collapse of nerve was answered by the elves above. The poisoned arrows turned the corridor into a place of slow suffering, the fallen left where they dropped until healers or guards later dragged them aside depending on whether Jeanyx gave the slightest sign that they were worth tending.
A handful survived.
Not the strongest.
Not always the youngest.
The ones who controlled themselves.
The ones who understood quickly that panic killed faster than weakness. Some crossed by inches. Some stopped so perfectly under Yhorm's gaze that even Daemon felt a faint respect for them. Others reached the line and broke down only after passing it, collapsing into sobs once the Watchers pulled them aside.
By the time the last woman crossed or fell, the corridor looked nothing like it had at the start. Dust hung in the air. The earth was scuffed with frantic footprints. The wounded lay scattered across the ground, groaning, whispering, praying, cursing. The elves remained above, bows still in hand, faces calm.
Jeanyx turned his gaze toward the remaining men.
"Reset the field," he said.
The Abyss Watchers moved immediately, dragging the fallen away from the path, while the healers separated the few who had earned survival from those already dying of the poison. Yhorm lifted his axe from the ground with one slow pull, embers spilling from the cracks in his armor as he turned and walked back to his place at the far end, ready to become still again.
Daemon leaned back slightly, the faintest edge of a smile touching his mouth despite the horror of it all, because now he understood the punishment more clearly.
It was not just death.
It was judgment under pressure.
Rhaenys understood too, though she hated that she did. Her eyes moved to the women who had survived, then to the men being shoved toward the start of the corridor, and the sickness in her stomach returned when she realized Jeanyx had only finished the first half.
Jeanyx watched the surviving woman for a few seconds longer than anyone expected.
She had barely made it past the line. Her whole body shook so violently that one of the Abyss Watchers keeping her upright had to tighten his grip around her arm before her legs gave out. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, her breathing broken into ugly little gasps, and yet there had been a moment—small, fragile, almost foolish—where she seemed to believe the nightmare was over.
Then Jeanyx snapped his fingers.
The woman's head jerked up.
Two Abyss Watchers seized her properly this time, one by each arm, and began dragging her back toward the start of the corridor.
She fought instantly.
Not well. Not with strength. Just with the desperate panic of someone whose mind had been given hope and then had it ripped away. Her heels scraped through the dirt, her body twisting as she tried to pull free, her voice cracking as she screamed at them to stop, that she had crossed, that he had said she would live.
"You said I'd live!" she shrieked, wild-eyed, looking at Jeanyx as if she could force the words back into meaning. "You said it! I crossed! I crossed!"
Jeanyx didn't move.
"I did," he said.
That made her struggle harder, because for a second she thought agreement meant mercy.
Daemon's expression shifted before he could hide it.
Rhaenys felt her stomach drop.
It was a foolish thing, maybe, to think there had been a limit. After everything she had already watched, after Nyx, after the cliff, after the children frozen in place and the poisoned arrows, some small part of her had still thought that Jeanyx might keep his word cleanly. Cruelly, yes, but cleanly. That the woman who crossed would be taken away, marked forever by fear but alive, proof that this game had rules.
But now she was being dragged back.
Rhaenys' mouth went dry.
For what felt like the hundredth time in the last few hours, the thought returned to her with a heaviness she could no longer ignore.
The madness had taken him.
Not loudly. Not with wild laughter or senseless bloodlust. That might have been easier to condemn. This was worse because it wore his face calmly, sat behind those violet eyes without trembling, and made decisions with the patience of a man arranging pieces on a board.
Daemon did not have the same thought.
Or rather, he had moved past it.
He knew madness. Not in the way maesters whispered about it, or the way frightened courtiers used the word when a Targaryen refused to be soft enough for them. Daemon knew the old blood better than most. He knew the hunger in it, the arrogance, the burn of wanting the world to bend because something inside you insisted it should.
But this was not simply Valyrian madness.
That was the part he was beginning to understand.
Jeanyx had told him about the Force. About Light and Dark. About control and surrender, restraint and passion, discipline and hunger. At the time, Daemon had listened because it was interesting, because it was power, because his younger brother had returned speaking of forces that made dragons look like only one piece of a much larger world.
Now he was seeing it.
The Dark was there. Gods, it was there. In the anger that had not burned out, in the selfish protectiveness, in the certainty that his pain mattered enough to become law. Daemon could feel it in the air around Jeanyx, not as heat but as pressure, something deep and hungry that wanted to tear through every person who had endangered what belonged to him.
But the Light was there too.
That was what made it terrifying.
It was not mercy. Daemon understood that now. It was control. It was the leash around the inferno. Without it, Jeanyx might have simply unleashed Nyx on the entire field and drowned Stormwatch in screams until nothing living remained. Without it, this would have been rage, fast and bright and stupid.
Instead, the rage had been shaped.
Compressed.
Made cold.
A wildfire turned into a blade.
Daemon's eyes followed the woman as she was forced back into place with the others who had survived the first passage. There were only a handful of them, all shaking, all staring at Jeanyx with a kind of broken disbelief. They had believed the rule. That was the cruelest part. They had believed survival meant escape.
Jeanyx stepped closer to the corridor, wand hanging loosely at his side.
"I said those who crossed the line would live," he said, his voice calm enough that the woman's sobbing made it sound even colder. "I never said you were finished."
The woman stopped struggling for a second, not because she accepted it, but because her mind seemed to fail under the weight of the words.
Rhaenys looked away.
Only for a breath.
Then she forced herself to look back, her jaw tight, her pride refusing to let her hide from something she had chosen to witness. But her face had gone pale, and when she breathed in, it was slow and careful, as though one wrong breath would make her sick.
Daemon glanced at her briefly.
He didn't mock her. Didn't smirk. Didn't say anything.
That alone said more than most words would have.
Yhorm shifted at the end of the corridor.
The motion was small, but because of his size, it drew every eye. He lifted his axe slightly, then set it down again, the blade biting into the dirt beside him. His burning gaze lowered, and then, with a slowness that made the air feel heavier, he closed his eyes.
That unsettled even the islanders.
A murmur moved through the crowd.
The women at the start of the corridor stared at him, confused through their terror. Some seemed to think this meant mercy. Others understood enough of Jeanyx by now not to trust anything that looked like mercy.
Jeanyx turned his head toward Yhorm.
The giant did not open his eyes.
"Begin," Jeanyx said.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Yhorm's voice rolled through the corridor.
"Green light."
It was deeper than any human voice had a right to be, so low it seemed to rise from the earth rather than his throat. The words struck the walls and came back dull and heavy, filling the corridor like the tolling of some enormous bell.
The survivors hesitated.
Not because they hadn't heard.
Because now they understood there were no clean victories here.
The woman who had crossed before was the first to break. She stumbled forward, sobbing openly, trying to move but not run, trying to remember the timing, trying to keep her body from betraying her. The others followed a heartbeat later, all of them moving with the stiff, unnatural caution of people who had already died once in their own minds.
Daemon leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
Rhaenys gripped the edge of her seat.
Jeanyx watched without expression as the second passage began, and this time the crowd watched differently too. Less curiosity now. Less excitement. More attention. They had learned the rule behind the rule, the cruelty hidden beneath the promise, and the corridor seemed longer for it as the women took their first trembling steps toward Yhorm's closed eyes.
For the next hour, the corridor became less a game and more a slow stripping away of hope.
Jeanyx kept making them begin again.
Each time someone crossed the line, the first instinct was the same. Relief. Collapse. A shaking breath that almost sounded like laughter because the body, stupid and desperate, believed it had survived. Then Jeanyx would lift one hand, or snap his fingers, or simply glance toward the Abyss Watchers, and they would be dragged back to the beginning.
The first time, they screamed in protest.
The second time, they begged.
By the third, most of them had stopped speaking altogether.
The rules did not change. That was the cruelest part. Nothing about it became unfairer than it had already been. Green light meant move. Red light meant stop. Cross the line and live. But living, they began to understand, only meant being allowed to try again.
The pool of survivors shrank with each passage.
Some were struck down by arrows because exhaustion made their bodies betray them. A trembling knee. A shoulder jerking with a sob. A hand falling to catch themselves at the wrong moment. Others simply broke, their minds giving out before their bodies did. They would stand frozen on red light with tears running down their faces, then suddenly lurch forward anyway, walking into death with the blank, empty expression of someone who no longer cared how it ended.
By the fourth run, the corridor was quieter than it had any right to be.
The screams had thinned.
The pleas had become hoarse and useless.
Even the crowd had changed. The earlier tension, the anger, the grim satisfaction—all of it had settled into something heavier. People watched with the faces of those witnessing a lesson dragged out until it became impossible to misunderstand.
Daemon said nothing for a long time.
He had seen men die by the hundreds. He had seen battlefields after dragonfire and heard the wet panic of soldiers crushed under horses. But this was different, because battle had movement, noise, chance. This had structure. This gave people just enough hope to make them destroy themselves trying to reach it.
Rhaenys sat still beside him, pale but composed, though the composure looked more like armor now than pride. At some point she stopped looking at Jeanyx and started watching the prisoners instead, not because it was easier, but because looking away from them felt like pretending this was only about him.
On the fifth restart, most of them were already gone inside.
Not dead yet, not all of them, but gone.
When Yhorm's voice rolled out with another deep, earth-shaking "Green light," several survivors did not run. They walked.
Slowly.
Openly.
And when his voice followed with "Red light," they kept walking.
The archers did their work.
One after another, bodies dropped into the dirt, not with dramatic defiance, not with courage, but with exhaustion so complete it looked almost peaceful from a distance. They had chosen the arrow over another beginning.
All except one.
The same woman from earlier.
The one who had crossed first.
By then, she could barely stand. The poison had taken its toll despite the small mercy of delay, her limbs weak, one leg dragging behind her, her breathing so ragged that even from the raised seats Daemon could see each inhale shake through her ribs. She fell twice before she reached halfway. The first time, she clawed herself upright. The second time, she couldn't.
So she crawled.
The corridor had gone almost silent around her.
Even Yhorm seemed to watch differently, his burning eyes following her from beneath the shadow of his crown. The elves above kept their bows drawn, waiting for movement at the wrong time, waiting for failure, waiting for the moment her body would give out.
"Red light," Yhorm said.
She froze.
Not perfectly.
Her hands trembled. Her shoulders shook. Her head hung so low her hair brushed the dirt. But she did not move forward. She did not collapse. She held herself there with something that looked less like strength and more like hatred sharpened into survival.
Daemon leaned forward before he realized it.
Rhaenys held her breath.
Jeanyx watched her with the first real interest he had shown in some time.
Yhorm's gaze remained fixed on her.
The woman's fingers dug into the ground, nails breaking against stone and packed dirt, but she kept still. Her whole body seemed to beg her to fall. She didn't.
A few seconds passed.
Then Jeanyx said, quietly, "Green light."
She moved.
Not fast. Not with grace. Not even like a person anymore, really. She dragged herself forward one painful stretch at a time, elbows pulling, knees scraping, one hand reaching ahead and closing around dirt as though she could pull life itself toward her if she gripped hard enough.
The line waited in front of her.
Close.
Cruelly close.
Yhorm said, "Red light."
She stopped again.
Her hand hovered an inch from the carved mark.
For a moment, Daemon thought she would break. Anyone would have. Anyone with sense would have lunged that last inch and taken the arrow just to be done with it.
She didn't.
Her fingers curled slowly into the dirt before the line, her body trembling so badly it looked impossible that the archers wouldn't count it as movement. But they held. Yhorm held. Jeanyx held.
Then came the final words.
"Green light."
The woman crossed.
Not with a step.
With her hand.
Her palm slapped over the line, then her arm followed, then the rest of her body dragged after it in a broken, shaking heap. Once she was across, she didn't celebrate. She didn't cry out. She didn't beg.
She simply lay there.
Waiting.
Everyone understood why.
She was waiting to be dragged back to the start.
The Abyss Watchers moved toward her.
Rhaenys' face tightened, and even Daemon's eyes flicked toward Jeanyx, expecting the gesture, the order, the familiar cruelty of repetition.
But Jeanyx raised his hand.
The Watchers stopped.
The field stilled with them.
Jeanyx looked down the corridor, then at the bodies scattered across it, then at the woman lying alone beyond the line.
A slow smile touched his face, but it wasn't amused. It was almost approving.
"We have a winner," he said.
For a moment, no one reacted.
Then people looked back.
Really looked.
The corridor was empty of survivors.
Everyone else was dead, dying, or too far gone to continue. The woman had not merely crossed again. She had outlasted them all.
The realization moved through Stormwatch so sharply it felt like a physical thing.
Jeanyx turned his head slightly.
"Heal her," he said. "Give her the antidote."
The healers moved at once, hurrying forward with supplies already prepared. The woman did not respond when they reached her. She flinched only when hands touched her, as if some part of her still believed pain was the only thing left in the world.
Daemon stared at Jeanyx.
Rhaenys stared at the woman.
And almost at the exact same moment, everyone understood.
There had been a way to win.
A terrible way. A nearly impossible way. A way so narrow that most would never reach it, and those who did would be changed by it forever.
But it existed.
That was what Jeanyx had wanted them to see.
Not mercy.
Not fairness.
Conviction.
The woman had not been the strongest. She had not been the fastest. She had not been the cleverest in any way that mattered at court or war councils. She had simply wanted to live more than anyone else in that corridor. More than her fear. More than her pain. More than the part of her that begged for the relief of dying.
Jeanyx looked toward the remaining men waiting their turn, and for the first time since the punishment began, their terror changed shape.
Before, they had feared death.
Now they feared the chance to survive.