The next morning Limpick woke to Plume's sharp, bright call bouncing around Harrenhal's empty halls like a ringing bell. He cracked his eyes open and saw Plume perched on the window frame, wings half-spread, screeching out toward the lake. Ember was already standing, legs locked tight, tail raised high, rumbling deep in its throat.
"What the hell?" Limpick muttered, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.
Plume shot out the window, circled once, then flew straight back and landed on the frame, tilting its head at him with another urgent call. It repeated the loop—out, circle, back—three times. Limpick finally caught on. "You want me to come outside with you?"
Plume's call went even sharper. Ember walked to the doorway, glanced back at him once. Those golden eyes weren't their usual lazy half-lidded look. The pupils had narrowed to razor slits, burning with real fire.
Limpick rolled out of his makeshift bed, tucked the rusty dagger into his belt, and followed them out.
They left Harrenhal's main gate just as the sun climbed over the Gods Eye, turning the whole lake gold-red. The Long Summer morning heated up fast, but the breeze off the water still carried a cool, fishy bite. Plume flew ahead, wings flashing pure white in the sunlight like a moving snowball. Ember ran on the ground, claws clicking fast over stone, tail dragging a line of dust behind it. Limpick brought up the rear, already breathing hard.
He didn't know why he was running. Plume had called, Ember had looked at him, and he'd just gone. Same as the day they left Riverrun—Ember started walking north and he followed. No questions, no time to think.
Plume banked left toward the lake. They reached a shallow stretch of shoreline thick with reeds and cattails. The water was only knee-deep; you could see the mud and stones on the bottom. A few fishermen were already out in flat-bottomed boats, casting nets. A handful of people squatted along the bank, washing clothes or talking.
Plume dropped onto a big rock. Ember stopped beside it, golden eyes locked on the water.
Limpick jogged up, hands on his knees, gasping. "What the hell are you two—"
Ember ignored him. Its tail-tip scales started glowing, brighter and hotter, like iron fresh from the forge. Plume stopped calling. It puffed up, feathers fluffed twice its normal size, black-bead eyes fixed on the same spot in the lake.
Limpick followed their stare. Nothing on the surface—just ripples, distant boats, and the far treeline. But he noticed the fishermen had steered well clear of this shallows, giving it a wide berth like something down there made them nervous.
He took a few steps closer, crouched, and peered into the water. It was clear. Stones, weeds, a few small fish darting around. Nothing special. He waded in another step. The cold made him shiver.
Then he saw it.
Something huge lay buried in the mud—way too big to be rock or sunken boat. Only a small section showed. He leaned closer. Gray-white, pitted, covered in algae and moss, but the shape was unmistakable: curved, segmented, like—
Bone.
Huge bone.
Limpick's heart skipped. He stood, backed up, scanned the shoreline. The shallows formed a weird half-circle crater ringed by stones, like something massive had slammed down from the sky and punched a hole that later filled with lake water. Right in the middle, under a thin layer of water, lay the bones.
He crouched again and reached in. The bone felt cold and slick under the slime. The second his fingers touched it, golden text exploded in his head:
[Detected Ancient Dragon Remains (Vhagar 41% integrity / Caraxes 29% integrity)]
[Ancient Dragon Residual Flame Concentration: High]
[Absorption Efficiency: Estimated 73%–81%]
[Warning: Target remains are massive. Current evolved subjects have limited absorption capacity. Proceed in stages recommended.]
[Estimated Evolution Gain: 35%–52%]
Limpick's hand froze in the water. Thirty-five to fifty-two percent. Ember had gone from zero to three-point-seven just by draining one broken skeleton underground. If they pulled this off…
He looked at Ember. The dragon's eyes weren't gold anymore—they were twin flames, actual fire burning in the sockets and painting the water and rocks red. Ember trembled, not from fear but from pure tension. Every scale glowed—black, red, gray—while those dark-red veins underneath pulsed like living blood.
Plume had gone silent too. Feathers puffed into a white ball, wings half-open, beak parted, making a thin trembling sound. Its black eyes gleamed like polished obsidian, locked on the bones below.
Limpick glanced across the lake. The fishermen's boats had already moved far away toward the opposite shore. The people on the bank had vanished. The three of them were alone.
He took a deep breath. "Go," he told Ember. "Get in there."
Ember looked at him once—then leaped off the rock and waded straight in. The water rose to its belly, its neck, its jaw. It plunged its head under. Bubbles burst up, then nothing.
Plume launched off the rock, circled once above the surface, folded its wings, and dove. It barely made a splash—just a small white streak that vanished.
Limpick stood on the bank and watched the ripples spread, then fade until the lake lay flat again. Only his own reflection stared back—thin face, sunken cheeks, looking like a ghost.
He sat on a stone and waited.
The sun climbed higher, hotter. Long Summer rays beat down on his neck. He tugged his collar up to block a little of it and kept his eyes on the water. A glow started underneath—not sunlight, but dark red, pulsing slow and steady like a heartbeat. It grew brighter, redder, turning the whole shallows crimson, as if someone had lit a bonfire on the lake bottom.
Limpick's throat went dry.
He remembered the old salted-fish seller back in Riverrun rambling about Harrenhal's curse, Harren the Black, dragonfire—and the Gods Eye. The old man had said something about shadows under the water, about fishermen seeing huge shapes, about that island in the middle of the lake being sacred to the green men. His son had shut him up, calling it crazy talk.
The old man hadn't been crazy.
Two dragons lay down there: Prince Aemond's Vhagar and Prince Daemon's Caraxes. They'd fought above this lake during the Dance of the Dragons and crashed in together. A hundred years ago? Almost two hundred? They'd stayed hidden on the bottom ever since.
The underwater light flared brighter. The shallows turned blood-red. Bubbles started rising—first small, then bigger—until the surface boiled and white smoke poured up, drifting across the water like fog.
A deep muffled roar came from below, vibrating through the stone under Limpick's feet and into his chest.
The surface exploded. Ember's head burst out, jaws clamped around a massive gray-white bone longer than Limpick's arm, still trailing weeds and mud. Ember flung it onto the bank and dove again.
Limpick walked over and crouched beside the rib. It was broken in half, hollow inside like a pipe, but the surface glowed with that same dark-red light, pulsing like embers. He laid his hand on it. Warm—not from the sun, but from inside, like touching living skin.
[Detected Ancient Dragon Remains Fragment (Vhagar)]
[Absorbable]
[Estimated Evolution Gain: 0.3%–0.5%]
Limpick pulled his hand back. One piece already gave more than Ember had pulled from the entire underground skeleton at Harrenhal.
Ember surfaced again, dragging an even bigger bone. Plume popped up too—too small for the heavy stuff, but it carried smaller fragments, scales, teeth. One tooth it dropped was longer than Limpick's finger, curved and razor-sharp.
Bone after bone piled up on the rocks—ribs, vertebrae, leg bones, skull fragments. Plume shuttled back and forth with scales and smaller pieces. The system panel numbers started climbing fast.
[Ember: Evolution gain +0.7%… +1.2%… +2.0%…]
[Plume: Evolution gain +0.1%… +0.3%… +0.6%…]