Limpick sat up slowly and followed the direction the carved human figures were facing.
The wall had no door, just solid darkness.
But something in that darkness was glowing faintly.
Weak. Distant. Flickering—like fire?
He stood and walked toward it. Number One woke up, jumped down from his palm, and followed.
After a few dozen steps he reached the wall.
It was solid stone—no door, no window. But a thin line of light seeped through a crack, running from the floor all the way up past his head.
Limpick leaned in close.
The light wasn't fire. It was something else—dark red, pulsing slowly, like breathing.
He touched the stone.
Cold.
The light kept pulsing under his fingers, shining through the crack.
Number One squeaked sharply.
Limpick looked down. The rat's red eyes glowed the same color as the light. It stared at the crack, every scale on its tail blazing like it was on fire.
"Something in there?" Limpick asked.
Number One ignored him and started scratching at the wall.
Its tiny claws scraped against the stone—scratch, scratch, scratch—over and over.
Limpick crouched and watched.
He knew something was behind that wall. The light, the carvings, the "Ancient Dragon Residual Flame"—none of it was normal.
But he also knew a grown man and a palm-sized rat weren't going to break through solid stone.
"Give it up," he said. "You're not getting through."
Number One kept scratching.
Limpick sighed, sat down with his back against the wall, and watched.
Moonlight poured through the broken roof overhead, lighting the two of them. The steady scrape of claws echoed through the empty halls of Harrenhal.
Limpick closed his eyes.
He didn't know when he fell asleep.
When he woke, daylight was streaming in.
Sunlight stabbed through the hole in the roof and made his eyes water. He rubbed them and looked around.
Number One was still there, crouched at the base of the wall. It had stopped scratching.
But now there was a hole in the floor.
Not in the wall—in the ground right at the wall's base. At some point the stone had split open, revealing a narrow gap that dropped into blackness. He couldn't see how deep it went.
Limpick leaned over it.
The gap was only a little wider than his fist. Nothing visible inside, but cool air rose from it carrying a strange smell—nothing like mold or rust. Something he couldn't name.
Number One started squeezing into the hole.
Limpick grabbed it.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Number One squirmed, looked back at him. Its red eyes burned with the same light as the crack.
Limpick stared into those eyes and suddenly understood.
There was something down there.
Something it wanted.
He let go.
Number One slipped inside. The faint glow at the tip of its tail flickered deeper and deeper, growing smaller and dimmer until it vanished completely.
Limpick stayed crouched at the opening, waiting.
One quarter-hour.
Half an hour.
A full hour.
The sun climbed overhead, then started sliding west.
Number One still hadn't come out.
Limpick remained motionless, eyes fixed on the black hole.
He suddenly remembered the day they left Riverrun. He'd asked Number One what would happen if it got lost.
It hadn't answered.
Now it had crawled into a hole who knew how deep, with who knew what inside, and who knew if there was another way out.
Limpick felt ridiculous.
A rat.
A rat with a dozen scales.
And here he was, waiting for it to come back.
The sun dipped a little farther west.
Limpick stood, stretched his cramped legs, and glanced at the hole one last time.
Still nothing but blackness.
He took a deep breath, bent down, and crawled in.
The tunnel was tight. He had to belly-crawl. Rough stone scraped his hands raw. He couldn't see a thing and had to feel his way forward inch by inch.
After what felt like forever the passage widened.
A cavern.
Not huge—about the size of two rooms—but it dropped away into impossible depth. The walls glowed with that same dark-red light, pulsing slowly.
Limpick stood at the entrance and stared.
It wasn't fire.
The stones themselves were glowing.
Chunks of rock embedded in the walls—red, black, dark gold—some bright, some dim, some flickering like heartbeats.
He walked forward slowly.
His boots crunched on something.
He looked down.
Bones.
More bones.
But these were different—smaller, countless, carpeting the entire floor. Some crushed to powder, others still whole: skulls, ribs, leg bones, everything.
All rat bones.
Limpick walked across them. The glow on the walls grew brighter and redder until the whole cavern looked like it was soaked in blood.
At the far end lay a skeleton.
Huge.
Bigger than the dragon bones he'd seen upstairs.
It was coiled across the entire bottom of the cavern, skull pressed against one wall, spine looped several times, tail disappearing into another tunnel.
Limpick stopped in front of it and tilted his head back.
It was enormous.
He felt like an ant standing next to it.
The eye sockets were higher than his head, empty black voids. Teeth littered the ground, each one longer than his arm. Ribs rose like pillars.
A dragon.
A real dragon.
Not the scattered mess upstairs—this was almost whole. The spine was broken in places, a few ribs missing, but the skeleton was still here, coiled exactly where it had died God knows how many years ago.
Number One crouched beneath the skull, staring up at it.
Its tail was raised high, every scale blazing bright red, glowing like live coals.
Limpick walked over and crouched beside it.
"You found it," he said quietly.
Number One didn't answer. It kept staring up at the massive skeleton.
Limpick looked up too.
The dark-red light was coming from inside the bones. Every rib, every vertebra, every joint pulsed slowly, like a dying heart.
[Detected Ancient Dragon Remains (Integrity 32%)]
[Ancient Dragon Residual Flame Concentration: Medium]
[Absorption Efficiency: 41%]
[Estimated Evolution Gain: 2.1%–3.7%]
Limpick stared at the "2.1%" for a long time.
Thirty times more than yesterday's 0.07%.
If Number One could absorb all of this—
He glanced down at the rat.
Number One stayed perfectly still, head tilted back.
But the glow on its tail grew brighter and redder, shifting to purple, then to deep black—the same black as the five towers above.
The light crawled upward.
It spread from the tail, across the back, up the neck, over the head, and into the two red eyes.
Number One's eyes were no longer red.
They were gold.
Burning gold, like live coals with flames dancing inside.
It opened its mouth toward the giant dragon skeleton overhead and let out a thin, piercing hiss.
Not a rat sound.
Something else.
Limpick listened to that hiss and felt like he was dreaming.
Sunlight poured through a crack in the cavern roof, lighting the dragon bones, lighting Number One, lighting him.
Deep underground in Harrenhal, a rat with a handful of scales stood before the skeleton of a dragon dead for over a century and hissed.
The sound echoed through the cavern, growing louder, vibrating the walls until the whole space hummed.
Limpick stood there, watching Number One.
Number One turned and looked at him.
Those golden eyes blazed like two small suns, so bright he could barely keep his own eyes open.
Limpick suddenly smiled.
"Alright," he said. "Go for it."