The night of Iron Smoke Isle was dyed a murky dark red by the tireless furnace fires.
The air was filled with the thick smell of sulfur, the charred scent of burnt metal, and coal dust particles that even the sea breeze couldn't fully disperse.
Night fell. Amidst this heavy breathing of industry, Euron Greyjoy and Red Priestess Gwendolyn were arranged to rest in the same small stone room. Space on the island was limited, everything simplified; no one raised objections, as if this were an unspoken arrangement.
Inside the stone room, there was only a simple stone couch and a flickering oil lamp. After the door closed, the roar from outside became dull, highlighting the room's confinement and... a certain rising, strange heat.
Gwendolyn looked composed. She shed her conspicuous red robe, revealing nothing underneath. Her body in the dim lamplight showed milk-white contours and a maiden's softness, carrying a mysterious, tempered, almost sculptural sense of line.
She walked to Euron, standing quietly before him. Dancing in her eyes was no longer metaphorical fire, but a real, burning, almost fanatical light.
In such a scorching Iron Smoke Isle, amidst such thick smoke, her body was stained by not a drop of sweat, nor a hint of rust smell.
A man cannot be cowardly; let her know the consequences of seducing me!
Euron traced her body with his fingers, stroking her beautiful form, asking: "Is this also the magic of the Lord of Light?"
"My Lord," Gwendolyn avoided the topic, voice tender but incredibly firm, "You crave power, crave to see through the mist. What the Lord of Light can give far exceeds mortal iron... but it requires a price, requires... the most candid sacrifice."
"What price? Sacrifice what?" Euron narrowed his eyes, neither retreating nor impatient, looking at her like a unique weapon or a forbidden book waiting to be deciphered.
Gwendolyn confessed frankly: "The price is me; the sacrifice is me. My Lord, please enjoy me to your heart's content..."
Refusing such a thing would seem unlike a true man. Euron tacitly permitted her approach but made a demand: "Remove the ruby necklace on your neck; it gives me a false illusion!" The thought of a certain Red Priestess's appearance after removing her ruby gave him goosebumps involuntarily; he didn't want to face an aged body.
Gwendolyn obediently unclasped the ruby necklace hanging at her throat and placed it gently aside. Nothing changed; her skin remained smooth, figure graceful. When she looked up at him, her eyes were innocent as a forest deer, containing no lust, only a heart-palpitating frankness of offering everything.
Gwendolyn's fingers were cold. Their initial touch on his skin provoked a shiver. But soon, that coldness was replaced by an astonishing heat permeating from deep within her. It wasn't the heat of lust, but a more primitive, tyrannical energy, as if a miniature volcano was imprisoned in her slender body.
"At my current age, that... isn't it a bit early..."
"No... we are merely responding to the... call of the Lord of Light..."
When the two finally entangled on the hard stone couch, Euron felt he wasn't embracing a woman, but a ball of fire, and that fire embraced him into a burning ritual.
Gwendolyn's body temperature was frighteningly high. Sweat evaporated into steamy heat the moment it seeped out, permeating between them, carrying a strange scent mixing incense, sulfur, and maiden sweetness.
Just as senses were drowned by extreme heat, the oil lamp's flame suddenly shot up, crackling, turning an eerie blazing white. Euron felt his consciousness yanked violently from his body!
No longer the cramped stone room, no longer the scorching Gwendolyn beneath him. His soul seemed thrown into a turbulent river of light and shadow, speeding North. Cold wind whistled past—an absolute cold that could freeze the soul.
The vision suddenly cleared.
He "saw" an endless snowfield. Pale moonlight shone on glaciers, presenting an unearthly beauty of deathly silence.
Then, he saw them—countless figures, moving silently like shifting glaciers. Their bodies appeared crystal transparent and ghostly blue; armor was ancient, decaying ice; in their hands, ice crystal longswords flashed with deadly cold light. Their eyes were two points of cold stars bluer than the deepest winter night, devoid of any living emotion, holding only eternal death and destruction.
White Walkers.
The legendary Others. Their numbers were like a moving ice age, silent but carrying the terrifying momentum to crush all living things.
Just then, a grand, blazing, irresistible voice, like thousands roaring in fire simultaneously, exploded directly deep in his mind:
"Burn them all!"
"Purify the extreme cold of this world with sacred fire!!"
"Only the heat of the Lord of Light can oppose the cold of the Long Night!!!"
"Burn them all!"
"Burn them all!"
"Burn them all!"
...
The voice repeated over and over, with fanatical sense of mission and destructive resolve, almost tearing apart Euron's sanity.
Extreme cold and the extreme heat represented by that voice fought madly in Euron's consciousness, bringing unspeakable pain and... a twisted enlightenment.
Meanwhile, on the stone couch in reality, deep within that female body emitting astonishing heat, Euron Greyjoy's body tensed, releasing a suppressed, growl-like pant. Amidst the vision of weaving ice and fire and reality, he underwent a violent metamorphosis simultaneously. In the vision lay prophecies of destruction and rebirth; in reality, he also fought madly, roughly completing the primitive ritual from boy to man upon the sacrificial body of the Red Priestess.
The oil lamp's flame gradually withered, returning to normal dim flickering.
The astonishing heat in Gwendolyn's body receded like the tide, leaving only cold sweat and her exhausted panting. Her pale face bore a near-collapsed satisfaction and unfathomable mystery. Beneath them, on the rough surface of the stone couch, several incredibly bewitching red plum blossoms bloomed quietly, telling of the sacrifice's completion.
Euron sat up, eyes shining with unprecedented light in the darkness. That light mixed un-faded passion, the shock of the vision, and the deep brand of that fanatical voice.
Was it the Greenseer who showed me all this!? Or Gwendolyn!? Or the Lord of Light?
Euron asked uncertainly: "Did you see those scenes? Did you hear those words?"
The Red Priestess panted: "Saw it, all that you saw; heard it, all that you heard."
"But I don't seem to have seen clearly, nor heard clearly."
"Sometimes prophecies are like that; the Lord of Light only lets us see what He wants us to see..."
Euron said extremely piously: "No, the Lord of Light's teachings are incredibly vivid... I feel I can watch again, listen again."
"..."
Soon, the movement of spring played again in the stone room.
The night of Iron Smoke Isle remained noisy, but in this stone room, something had changed forever.