Chapter 5: The Obsidian Heartbeat, The Crimson Dawn
The final years of Valyria were a terrifying crescendo of decay, a symphony of a dying empire played out against a backdrop of fire and ash. What had once been subtle tremors shaking the foundations of the Freehold became relentless, violent convulsions, toppling spires and cracking the fused obsidian streets. The sky, once merely hazed by the Fourteen Flames, now often bled a sickly, permanent crimson, choked with volcanic plumes that rained down ash fine as silt, coating everything in a grey funereal shroud.
The Dragon Lords, those self-proclaimed masters of the world, reacted with a predictable blend of denial, panicked avarice, and internecine savagery. Some fled, their dragons laden with gold and slaves, desperately seeking refuge in their colonial outposts, only to find those lands often equally unstable or unwelcoming. Others turned on each other with renewed ferocity, convinced that seizing a rival's resources or magical artifacts could somehow ward off the encroaching darkness. The slave markets ran dry as the condemned either perished in collapsing mines or rose in bloody, futile revolts that were drowned in dragonfire, each act of brutality a small, insignificant tremor before the earth-shattering quake to come.
Aemond Xantys, now in his early twenties, moved through this collapsing world with the serene focus of a watchmaker assembling his grandest, most intricate timepiece. His reputation as the "Obsidian Prince" had solidified into something far more sinister in the popular imagination – a harbinger, a figure who seemed not to fear the encroaching chaos but to be an intrinsic part of it. His father, Rhaegar, still clung to the illusion of Xantys dominance, leveraging Aemond's fearsome aura to bully concessions from crumbling rival houses, oblivious to the fact that the very ground beneath their ancestral manse was preparing to swallow them whole.
Aizen, the soul within Aemond, cared nothing for these petty squabbles. His attention was fixed on the throbbing, crystalline Heart deep within the northern caldera, and on the rapidly approaching alignment of celestial and telluric energies that his greensight and Hōgyoku-enhanced calculations had identified as the precise moment of Valyria's catastrophic end.
His hidden research outpost near the Heart's chasm had become a fortress of arcane science. Within its shielded chambers, he worked tirelessly, Vhagarion a constant, silent sentinel whose presence seemed to stabilize the immediate vicinity, his unique connection to the geothermal energies creating a bubble of relative calm amidst the growing storms. Aemond was no longer merely studying the Heart; he was preparing to interface with it, to subtly guide its apocalyptic detonation.
He had crafted a series of complex devices, an unholy fusion of Valyrian blood-gem technology, principles of Kido barrier and energy-channelling spells, and insights gleaned from the Heart's own shifting glyphs. These were not crude instruments of Valyrian sorcery. They were focusing arrays, resonance tuners, designed to harmonize with the Heart's final, monumental energy release and channel a significant portion of that raw, planetary-scale spiritual power directly towards a pre-designated nexus – where he and the Hōgyoku would be waiting. He had even begun to subtly etch Kido-like formations, invisible to the untrained eye, onto the very bedrock around the Heart, preparing a vast, three-dimensional array to shape the explosion's spiritual shockwave.
Eliminating potential interference had been a quiet, ongoing project. The few loyal Xantys guards at the outpost who showed too much curiosity, or whose loyalty wavered in the face of the increasingly terrifying phenomena around the Heart, simply… disappeared. Their souls, small motes of energy, were absorbed by the Hōgyoku, test subjects for its refining capabilities. Any rival scouting parties or desperate refugees who stumbled too close to his sanctuary were met by Vhagarion, whose attacks were becoming less like a dragon's fury and more like a precise, elemental force, leaving no trace but ash and melted stone.
Lyra Stark, his mother, was the one variable Aizen had treated with a degree of… consideration. Her greensight, amplified by the dying land and her own despair, had become a torrent of agonizing visions. She saw the end with horrifying clarity: the earth tearing asunder, the sky falling in fire, and Aemond, wreathed in an unnatural light, standing at the epicenter of a storm of screaming souls.
Her once-beautiful face was now etched with grief and terror. The godswood, her sanctuary, offered no comfort, the weirwood tree itself seeming to weep tears of blood-red sap almost continuously, its carved face a mask of silent agony. She knew, with a certainty that shattered her soul, that her son was not just aware of the coming Doom, but was somehow… welcoming it, orchestrating it.
Her final confrontation with him was not born of anger, but of a mother's ultimate, hopeless love and profound terror. She found him in his private study within the Xantys manse, days before the final cataclysm, surrounded by arcane charts and strange, glowing devices.
"Sōsuke," she whispered, her voice raspy. She looked frail, a wolf brought to bay, her Northern resilience worn down to its very core. "It is here, isn't it? The end you've been waiting for."
Aemond looked up from a complex diagram depicting energy flows within the Heart. His dark eyes held no surprise, no emotion. "The culmination, Mother. Not an end, but a transformation."
"Transformation?" Her voice cracked. "I have seen it! The fire, the death… the souls, Sōsuke! Millions of them, crying out! And you… you are a void, drawing them in!" Tears streamed down her face. "This isn't power, my son. This is damnation!"
"Perspectives differ," Aemond replied, his tone utterly calm. "One being's damnation is another's ascension."
Lyra stumbled forward, her hand outstretched, not in attack, but in a desperate plea. "There has to be another way! Your Stark blood… the Old Gods… they speak of life, of renewal, not this… this devouring!" She clutched at the small, worn leather pouch she always wore, containing soil from Winterfell and a shard of weirwood. "I can… I can try to shield you, to bind this darkness within you…"
Aizen saw her intent. She was planning to use her primitive earth magic, her connection to the weirwood network, to try and "cleanse" or "contain" him. A futile, sentimental gesture. Yet, her desperation, her raw emotional energy, was potent. He could sense the Old Gods network, if it could be called that, resonating weakly through her, a faint thrum of ancient, planetary consciousness.
"Your efforts are admirable, Mother," he said, a ghost of what might have been pity in his voice, had he been capable of such an emotion. "But you seek to preserve a world that is already dead. And you seek to bind a force you cannot possibly comprehend."
He saw her decision in her eyes, the desperate resolve of a mother facing an impossible choice. She would try to stop him, even if it meant her own destruction, or his.
As she began to chant in the Old Tongue, her hands glowing with a faint, earthy light, drawing power from the weeping weirwood in the distant godswood, Aizen acted. He did not raise his hand in a Valyrian spell of fire. Instead, he simply focused his will, a sliver of his true spiritual pressure, honed by the Hōgyoku, and uttered a single, almost whispered word from his past life – a binding Kido, simple, elegant, and utterly effective.
"Bakudō Yon: Hainawa." (Crawling Rope)
Ethereal ropes of yellow light erupted from the floor, ensnaring Lyra before her spell could fully manifest. She gasped, her earth magic sputtering and dying as the Kido cut her off from its source. The light ropes tightened, not cruelly, but with an inescapable, paralyzing force.
"This is not your battle, Mother," Aemond said, his voice soft. "Your part in this play is over." He walked towards her. He saw the utter devastation in her eyes, the final shattering of her hope. "You gave me life in this world. For that, I offer you a painless end, before the true suffering begins for the rest of this city."
He placed a hand on her forehead. Lyra closed her eyes, a single tear escaping. Aizen didn't need a grand ritual. He simply willed the Hōgyoku to absorb her soul, cleanly, efficiently. There was a faint sigh, and Lyra Stark slumped in her light-bindings, her life extinguished. Her soul, tinged with the unique energy of her greensight and her connection to the Old Gods, flowed into the Hōgyoku. Aizen noted its distinct resonance, another valuable addition to his understanding of this world's spiritual tapestry.
He gently lowered her body to the floor. A necessary step. She would not have survived the Doom, and her attempts to interfere, however futile, could have been a minor distraction. Now, she was… part of him.
Rhaegar Xantys, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly erratic as Valyria crumbled around him. His ambition, fanned by Aemond's successes, had curdled into a desperate paranoia. He saw enemies everywhere, plots to usurp the Xantys's "rightful" place as Valyria's saviors. He demanded Aemond use Vhagarion to enact brutal purges, to secure the family's vaults, to somehow stop the earth from shaking.
On the very eve of the Doom, as the sky wept fire and the ground bucked like a dying beast, Rhaegar confronted Aemond in the primary Xantys dragon pen, where Vhagarion rested, an obsidian mountain radiating an unnerving calm amidst the chaos.
"Aemond! We must leave! Take the ancestral swords, the dragon eggs, the histories! We fly to Volantis, establish a new Valyria!" Rhaegar's eyes were wild, his fine robes disheveled. "Command Vhagarion! He is our only hope!"
Aemond looked at the man who was his father in this life. He saw only a fool, blinded by petty desires, unable to perceive the true scale of events. Rhaegar was an irrelevance, a loose end.
"There will be no new Valyria, Father," Aemond said, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space. "Only a new world, forged in the ruins of the old."
"What nonsense are you spouting, boy? Are you mad?" Rhaegar lunged for Vhagarion's reins, a dragon whip appearing in his hand. "Obey me! I am your Lord Father!"
Vhagarion, who had tolerated Rhaegar's presence until now, let out a growl that was less a sound and more a physical pressure, shaking the very stone. His emerald eyes, glowing with infernal light, fixed on Rhaegar.
"Your lordship is… revoked," Aemond stated. He didn't even need to give Vhagarion a command. As Rhaegar raised the whip, Vhagarion's massive head darted out with lightning speed. It wasn't a bite. It was a precise, crushing impact of his armored snout against Rhaegar's chest. There was a sickening crack of bone, and Rhaegar Xantys flew backwards, slamming into the obsidian wall before crumpling to the ground, his ambitions and his life extinguished in an instant.
Vhagarion snorted, a puff of green-tinged smoke curling from his nostrils, then turned his immense gaze back to Aemond, awaiting his true master's will.
Aemond felt nothing for Rhaegar's passing. Another soul for the Hōgyoku, though one tainted by arrogance and fear, less "pure" than Lyra's. With his mother and father gone, the last vestiges of Aemond Xantys, the Valyrian noble, were shed. Only Aizen Sōsuke remained, poised on the brink of his grand experiment.
The Hōgyoku against his chest was now a blazing nexus of power, almost painfully hot, its rhythm perfectly synchronized with the chaotic heartbeat of the dying peninsula. It was feeding him information, not just about the impending cataclysm, but about its own evolving nature. It was no longer just an amplifier or a wish-granter. It was becoming a crucible, a tool of apotheosis, ready to absorb and transmute the unimaginable energies about to be unleashed.
He briefly touched the obsidian amulet Quaithe had given him. It was cool against his skin, a stark contrast to the Hōgyoku's fire. He had analyzed it, finding it imbued with subtle shadow magic that acted as a kind of spiritual dampener, a filter against raw, chaotic energies. It might prove useful in shielding his core consciousness during the initial, overwhelming surge of the Doom, allowing him to maintain focus. A minor tool, but potentially valuable. Quaithe, he mused, was either incredibly prescient or a pawn in a game even larger than she realized.
The final hours were a blur of escalating horror for the doomed populace. The sky turned a permanent, bloody black, lit only by the incandescent eruptions from the Fourteen Flames. The earth screamed, vast chasms splitting open, swallowing entire districts. Dragons, driven mad by fear and the warping magical energies, fought each other in the sky or plummeted into the burning city. The psychic death cry of millions was a deafening roar in the spiritual spectrum, a symphony of terror that Aizen listened to with rapt attention.
He and Vhagarion stood on a pre-selected precipice overlooking the northern caldera, directly above the hidden chasm of the Heart. Aemond was clad in his specially crafted dark armor, his Valyrian steel sword, now etched with his own Kido-esque glyphs, strapped to his back. He was perfectly calm, a conductor surveying his orchestra as it tuned for its final, cataclysmic performance.
His greensight, fused with the Hōgyoku's omniscience, showed him the precise sequence of events. The chain reaction of volcanic eruptions, the fracturing of the peninsula's bedrock, the collapse of the Valyrian landmass into the boiling sea. And the Heart – oh, the Heart was the key. Its compromised structure would shatter under the strain, releasing its eons of stored and corrupted energy in a single, unimaginable burst, a spiritual shockwave that would dwarf even the physical destruction.
Aizen Sōsuke, the reborn god, took a deep breath of the ash-filled air. He closed his eyes for a moment, not in prayer, but in final, focused concentration.
Let it begin.
As if on cue, the ground beneath him gave a colossal lurch, far greater than any tremor before. A sound like the tearing of the world's fabric ripped through the sky. From the heart of the Fourteen Flames, not one, but all of the major volcanoes erupted simultaneously, their combined force punching a hole through the roiling black clouds, spewing molten rock and incandescent ash miles into the atmosphere.
This was it. The Doom of Valyria had begun.
Aemond opened his eyes. They glowed with a faint, internal luminescence, the Hōgyoku beneath his armor blazing like a captive star. He felt the first wave of raw, untamed spiritual energy wash over him, the collective death-screams of the city's northern districts as they were instantly vaporized.
It was an agony, an ecstasy, a torrent of power beyond imagining.
And it was only the beginning.
He raised a hand, his fingers splayed, as if to conduct the ensuing annihilation. Vhagarion roared, a sound of terrible, primal exultation, his emerald-streaked scales seeming to ignite with an inner fire that mirrored the erupting world.
The obsidian heartbeat of the dying land was about to give way to a new, crimson dawn – the dawn of Aizen Sōsuke's godhood.