113: Chapter 113 Midnight in the Cold Cellar

The Cold Cell. Two in the morning. The oil in the lamp had been refilled once, and the charred wick crackled softly.

Two layers of rubble had been completely cleared away.

At the end of the fissure, a thin black slab was revealed—the final barrier The Mad King had used to seal the main canister chamber.

The surface of the obsidian slab was rough, its edges stained over the years by wildfire vapors, turning an uneven, dark green—not the green of plants, but the green of verdigris, the color left behind by decaying metal and long-term erosion from green flames.

Under the lamplight, one could see minute corrosion patterns on the slab's surface, like skin splashed with acid, with every line seeping with the residue of aged wildfire.

A faint, cloying scent permeated the air—the residue of wildfire vapors, like rotting honey mixed with scorched copper.

Old Tomard reached out to touch the slab, then immediately pulled his hand back. The slab still retained a faint corrosive quality from the wildfire, and his fingertips had been burned red. He stuck his fingers in his mouth for a moment before continuing his work.

"This is it. The stone door is behind the obsidian slab. You can't move the slab with your bare hands—you need leather pads. I have some here."

He took several prepared thick cowhide pads from behind a salted fish barrel and handed them to the miners. The pads had been soaked in oil; their surfaces were smooth, but the inner layers were tough, capable of blocking the corrosive residue of the wildfire.

"Once the slab is moved, everyone must retreat outside the Cold Cell. What follows is not something we can be involved in."

Tyrion turned to Drogon. His deep green eyes glinted in the lamplight, his voice kept extremely low but every word steady.

He held the crowbar horizontally in front of him, gripping the handle with both hands.

"You go in once the slab is moved. I'll be outside. If anything happens inside the stone door—if there's a wildfire leak or a structural collapse—I won't wait for you. I will seal the slab back up and lead the men out of the secret passage. This isn't cold-bloodedness. It's because, before the siege, we cannot let Cersei discover that anyone has tampered with the wildfire. Fifty-six canisters; we cannot let her detonate a single one prematurely."

"Understood. If I succeed in dismantling it, frost will seep out from the cracks in the stone door. When you see the frost, you'll know it's safe to enter."

Tyrion paused, stunned. Then he let out a short laugh—not out of humor, but the bitter, cognitive-dissonant chuckle of a dwarf deep in a dragon's den hearing a dragon say, "I will signal with frost." His mouth twitched, and a flash of self-deprecation crossed his green eyes: "I actually ended up here in this life."

"Frost. Fine. I'll wait for your frost."

The obsidian slab was moved aside silently. Four pairs of hands applied force simultaneously, and the slab was steadily lifted to the side, leaning against the wall of the fissure.

The stone door was revealed—a short door carved from Old Valyria black stone, reaching only to a normal person's chest, requiring one to stoop to enter.

The door frame was carved with a faded dragon relief; the dragon was coiled, its head facing into the door—a symbol for "guiding the soul" in Old Valyria funerals. The door had no lock.

The Mad King never worried about anyone daring to enter the heart of his Cremation Array—what he feared was that no one would detonate it for him.

Drogon had silently shifted into his dragon-man form.

His tail was pressed against his back in the narrow passage, the bone spur at the tip glinting in the lamplight—a ghostly blue with traces of dark gold. His slit pupils shimmered with a faint dark gold light in the darkness, and a wisp of ghostly blue Ice Fire slowly rotated in the center of his pupils.

Scales covered his entire body, each one protruding from beneath his skin, edged with fine, ice-blue lines. He stooped to push open the stone door. The door hinges made no sound—Old Tomard had oiled them in advance last night, and the oil was still fresh.

The main canister chamber. A tiny domed stone room with a radius of only three paces. The dome was carved with dragon reliefs blurred by steam, and all four walls were obsidian, non-reflective, swallowing all the light from the oil lamp—the light hitting the walls was like water droplets falling into a desert.

Embedded in the floor in the very center of the stone room was a long-dead weirwood root carving—plundered by The Mad King from The Old Gods, uprooted from the godswood in the North, and used as the "heart anchor" for the Cremation Array.

The texture of the root carving was cracked and dry, every fissure like a dried-up riverbed, yet every crack was still faintly pulsing with the dark green glow of wildfire residue—thump, thump, thump, slower than a heartbeat.

Standing in the center of the root carving was the main canister. A canister of wildfire slightly smaller than the others, encased entirely in translucent dragon glass.

The wildfire inside the canister was not still like the others, but slowly rotating, like a heart still beating slightly. The dark green liquid surged slowly within the dragon glass walls, and each rotation emitted a very low-pitched hum—like a dirge muffled inside a canister.

On the body of the main canister, a line of blood-red text was carved in Old Valyria script, the handwriting sloppy and manic, written by The Mad King himself in dragon blood—the characters were written upside down, from bottom to top, indicating he was kneeling when he wrote them.

System pop-up.

"Translation of Old Valyria script: 'Burn them all—ignite the dragon fire with the dragon heart—left by Aerys Targaryen II.'"

Detected: The main canister contains a weak dragon blood pact—The Mad King slit his own wrist when sealing the canister, dripping a small amount of Targaryen royal blood into it.

The dragon blood pact grants the main canister a passive defense: if anyone attempts to forcibly pull out the master fuse, the dragon blood will be activated, and the wildfire inside will instantly heat up to its ignition point.

To dismantle the main canister—you must first cover the canister with Ice Element to freeze the dragon blood to its inactivation temperature. The bloodline concentration of the Targaryen royal blood is approximately three hundred to four hundred points, and the temperature for complete inactivation is minus sixty-two degrees."

"The Mad King dripped his own blood into a wildfire canister. He was mad to the very end. He arranged his own funeral like a wedding."

"Yes. And this line he left—it's not just a proclamation. It is, in itself, the final 'password' for the Cremation Array.

If this text is not erased when the master fuse is pulled, the fuses of the secondary canisters will trigger a final explosion before automatically tightening—though the power is far less than a full-array detonation, it would be enough to blow up this secret chamber and collapse the dome of the dragon den along with it."

"So before dismantling the fuse—erase this line first."

"Method of erasure: Cover the text on the canister with Ice Fire to freeze the dragon blood into powder."

Drogon took a deep breath. He raised his right hand, and a fist-sized ball of Ice Fire condensed in his palm—ghostly blue with dark gold filaments of burning bloodline energy.

The Ice Fire danced silently in the air of the chamber, its cold light reflecting off the obsidian walls, turning them ice-blue; the light that had been swallowed returned.

The dark gold filaments moved within the ghostly blue flame like frozen lightning—each filament was a strand of bloodline energy compressed to the extreme. He pressed the Ice Fire against the blood-red text on the main canister.

The moment the Ice Fire touched the dragon blood, a sharp hiss exploded in the chamber. It wasn't a physical sound—it was on the level of consciousness.

The final fragment of will left by The Mad King Aerys II in this text: manic, scorching, and paranoid after being burned by dragon fire for too long. It struggled under the coverage of the Ice Fire, attempting to burn back into Drogon's consciousness.

The blood letters pulsed violently within the Ice Fire, every letter twisting, deforming, attempting to recombine into a new curse—B-U-R-N, B-U-R-N—the strokes of the letters elongated and contracted in the Ice Fire, like a snake with its tail stepped on.

The scene of the chamber before Drogon's eyes briefly distorted. The stone walls vanished. The dome vanished. The weirwood root carving vanished. In a trance, he saw the iron throne—not the one currently occupied by Cersei, but the one from twenty years ago.

Behind the iron throne were stacked bundles of wildfire canisters, the wax seals on the lids stamped with the Targaryen dragon sigil. The Mad King sat upon it, covered in blood, holding a canister of wildfire in each hand, dark green powder embedded under his fingernails.

He laughed maniacally, repeating the same phrase. His voice was high-pitched and shattered, echoing in the throne room, every syllable like glass cracked by fire.

"Burn them all! Burn them all!"

The Mad King's eyes were not human purple eyes—they were two balls of wildfire. Green. Pulsing. Burning in his sockets, tongues of flame licking his brow bones.

Behind The Mad King was not the wall of the Red Keep—but a mountain of charred bones. Attached to the bones were fragments of scorched brocade: gold Lannister silk, red Targaryen silk, and grey-white Stark wool. The pile of charred bones reached the height of the dome.

Drogon gritted his teeth.

The scales on his jawline shimmered dark gold in the cold light of the Ice Fire. So this was your final thought. Burn it all. Burn until the charred bones form a mountain. You weren't protecting the kingdom—you were using wildfire to build a grave for yourself. You are mad, Aerys. But your Cremation Array—it stops here tonight.

He increased the injection of Ice Fire. The dark gold filaments of burning bloodline energy suddenly brightened within the ghostly blue flame, and the Ice Fire expanded rapidly from the size of a fist, covering the entire line of blood text—B-U-R-N, one letter after another swallowed by the Ice Fire.

The blood text struggled violently wrapped in the Ice Fire, emitting a final, silent shriek—the frequency of the shriek was too high, so high that only dragon hearing could capture it.

Then, inch by inch, it froze, shattered, and turned into red ice crystals as fine as dust, peeling off the canister wall. The ice crystals fell with a rustling sound onto the weirwood root carving and the obsidian floor, making a faint tinkling noise.

When the blood text completely vanished, Drogon heard a sharp, short scream in the depths of his consciousness that did not belong to him. Then, it returned to absolute silence—not peace, but emptiness. It was the void left after The Mad King's residual will was completely erased, like the silence after thunder stops.

System pop-up. White text.

"The residual will of The Mad King has been completely erased by the Ice Fire.

The dragon blood pact on the main canister is nullified—the dragon blood has been frozen to minus sixty-five degrees and is completely inactivated; it no longer poses a defensive activation threat to the master fuse. It is now safe to remove the master fuse.

Reminder: Before removing the fuse, please use the Ice Element to lower the temperature of the main canister's exterior to below the cracking point of the sealing wax—the sealing wax is a pyromancer's formula, sensitive to extremely low temperatures, and will crack on its own within a few breaths of contact with the Ice Element. The cracking point temperature is approximately minus twelve degrees."

Drogon covered the body of the main canister with his left hand.

The Ice Element spread evenly from his palm at the gentlest flow, and the ghostly blue cold light spread across the dragon glass canister wall.

Frost spread outward from the point of contact with his fingertips, and a layer of extremely thin, even ice crystals covered the canister surface—it wasn't that the thicker the freeze, the better; it had to be even. The temperature couldn't drop too fast all at once; if it dropped too fast, the canister would crack.

A few breaths later, the fire-red sealing wax sealing the connection between the master fuse and the canister emitted a faint "crack."

The sound was very light, but in the absolute silence, it was as clear as a thunderclap. Three spiderweb-like fine cracks appeared on the wax surface, spreading from the edge toward the center.

The cracks continued to expand, spreading along the edges of the wax seal—crack, crack, crack—the sealing wax peeled off piece by piece, revealing the master fuse inside.

The master fuse was made of a cotton wick soaked in dark green wildfire; it felt soft to the touch but was extremely dangerous. The cotton wick was soaked with concentrated liquid from the first generation of wildfire from two hundred years ago, every fiber saturated with destruction.

Drogon stared at the fuse. This was the heart vessel for the fifty-six canisters of wildfire. Pull it out—and the Cremation Array would die. The "Burn them all" that The Mad King had buried beneath King's Landing for twenty years was right there in this cotton wick.

He pinched the master fuse with his index finger and thumb. He didn't pull it violently—Tyrion's engineering diagram had noted that there was a tiny safety hook at the end of the master fuse, which needed to be loosened counter-clockwise first.

His fingertips could feel the presence of the miniature metal hook, slightly protruding at the end of the wick, its temperature two degrees lower than the surroundings. He embedded his fingernail into the fine slot of the safety hook and rotated it a full turn and a half counter-clockwise.

The metal hook came loose, emitting a light "ting"—lighter than the cracking of the sealing wax, but sharper.

Then he steadily pulled the master fuse out from inside the main canister. The moment it was pulled out, a small drop of long-solidified residue of the first-generation wildfire dripped from the end of the fuse—it was the green mucus that had seeped into the core of the fuse when The Mad King sealed the canister.

The mucus landed on the root carving on the floor, immediately vaporizing into a wisp of green smoke, twisting and dissipating into the air. The shape of the smoke was like a dying snake.