127: Chapter 127 The Shadow Beneath the Tower

The Honeywine sparkled with honey-colored ripples under the setting sun.

Barges laden with grapes and old manuscript codices sailed slowly toward the harbor, the boatmen's poles pushing and pulling in the riverbed silt, stirring up soft splashing sounds.

Oldtown. The oldest city in Westeros, built thousands of years before King's Landing.

The The Hightower towered at the highest point of the city, its white marble tower reflecting warm golden light in the setting sun. The beacon fire at the top had burned for thousands of years, never once going out—that flame was the sacred fire of The Citadel, rumored to have been lit by the hands of The Old Gods themselves to disperse the night mist of Oldtown's harbor.

At the foot of the The Hightower, the grey buildings of The Citadel spread out like a fungal carpet, with a labyrinth of bridge-corridors connecting dozens of towers, libraries, and laboratories.

The stone arches of the bridge-corridors were carved with the names of Archmaesters of past generations, the oldest of which were already too blurred to make out.

Drogon mingled with the crowd of apprentices finishing their day's work as he passed through the eastern gate of The Citadel. Fully human form. Short black hair. Deep brown round pupils.

The grey merchant's cloak clung to his body, blown by the evening breeze from the Honeywine. The leather bag on his back contained several scrolls of ancient Valyrian manuscripts brought from Dragonstone—the 'pass' requested by Archmaester Marwyn in his secret letter, fragments of Dragon genealogies written in Old Valyrian, enough to prove he was no ordinary seller of old books.

He passed under an archway inscribed with the words 'Knowledge is Power'.

Two young apprentices reciting astronomy almost bumped into him, scattering the star charts in their arms all over the ground.

The parchment rustled as it scattered across the stone slabs, and one star chart was blown by the wind toward a gutter. Drogon bent down to help them pick up a chart, his peripheral vision sweeping over the 'Dragon Constellation' marked on it—the brightest constellation in the northern sky, which believers of The Old Gods called the 'Eye of the Ice Dragon'.

A tiny question mark was drawn in charcoal on the side of the star chart, likely from some apprentice questioning the professor's explanation of the star's brightness variation.

A System pop-up appeared.

"Host has entered Oldtown. Dragon Heritage Perception accuracy is halved in fully human form, but a faint signal has been captured from the direction of The Citadel's secret vaults—the resonance of the final relic is different from the previous four: its frequency is deep and its wavelength is extremely long, resembling a 'vegetative pulsation' rather than the metallic resonance of dragonglass or valyrian steel.

Preliminary deduction: This relic contains an extremely high proportion of petrified weirwood, and its energy signature is closer to a remnant of The Old Gods rather than an Old Valyria relic.

The contact, Archmaester Marwyn's laboratory, is located on the ground floor of the Observatory Tower in the west wing of The Citadel. It is recommended to bypass along the bank of the Honeywine to avoid the dense crowd of maesters at the main gate."

"Vegetative pulsation. Four of the five relics belong to the Dragon Clan, and the last one belongs to The Old Gods. The Storm Ancestor Dragon didn't just have connections with the Old Valyria Dragon Lords back then—it also made a deal with The Old Gods of Westeros.

It didn't mention this to me in the trial. That old bag of bones hid quite a few things."

He returned the star chart to the two apprentices, turned, and bypassed along the bank of the Honeywine.

By the Honeywine. Bookstall Street.

Most of the owners of the old stalls set up along the river were dropouts from The Citadel or widows—the spouses of expelled maesters.

The air of Oldtown was thick with the musty smell peculiar to old books and the sweet, fishy scent of the Honeywine, the two scents blending together like sweet wine soaked with old books.

One of the bookstalls caught his attention.

The stall owner was a woman in her thirties, with dark brown skin and grey-green eyes. Her fingers were stained with indelible ink—the depth to which the ink was embedded in her fingerprints showed she had been handling manuscripts for no less than ten years.

The stall in front of her did not display theological or astronomical manuscripts, but rather an entire row of obscure old books on Dragon anatomy, Old Valyrian grammar, and the Dragon Lord marriage System.

These books could not be bought at all in the bookshops at the main gate of The Citadel—they were all forbidden books.

His pupils in his fully human form dilated slightly as they swept over the book on the stall titled 'The Old Valyria Dragon Lord Marriage System, Volume IV'.

The cover was embossed in gold leaf with a pattern of two intertwined Dragons, completely identical in style to the inscriptions on Daenerys's chain—the same Old Valyrian font, the same curvature of the winding Dragons, and even the carving technique of the dragon scales was exactly the same.

He reached out and picked up the book; the leather binding of the cover was already cracked, but the gold leaf remained intact.

The bookseller woman looked up.

Her grey-green eyes lingered on his face for a moment. Her voice was raspy, yet carried the precise enunciation unique to scholars.

"That is a forbidden book. The Citadel banned almost all books regarding Targaryen marriage customs after Robert's Rebellion.

This is a copy my husband transcribed from the secret vaults during his lifetime—the original is still locked away in there. If you want to buy it, I won't ask your name. Three silver stags."

Drogon fished out three silver stags from his leather bag and placed them on the stall. The silver coins gleamed with an old luster under the setting sun.

As he picked up the book, his fingers accidentally brushed the back of her hand—her hand was extremely cold, not the body temperature a living person should have while catching the evening breeze by the river. That coldness was not from the wind; it was a chill from deep within her bones.

"...Your husband was a maester."

"He was, once. He studied Old Valyria Dragon genealogy for fifteen years, wanting to write a monograph on the Dragon Lord marriage System. Before the book was finished, the Conclave of Maesters expelled him.

Because his conclusion was that the Dragon marriage System and the weirwood covenant of The Old Gods share a common legal origin. That single sentence violated two of The Citadel's taboos.

After he died, I sold his books for him. The books he spent half his life writing were banned, and in the end, only this copy is left to be traded for three silver stags."

Drogon stuffed the forbidden book into his leather bag.

Just as he was about to leave, the bookseller woman suddenly lowered her voice, adding a sentence in a cautious tone only used by those who had sold contraband in black markets.

"You came to The Citadel to find something. Not books—but something inside the secret vaults.

Don't ask how I know. My husband's final manuscript before his death mentioned a relic 'belonging neither to Dragon nor to man, sealed in the deepest part of the secret vaults and wrapped in weirwood roots'.

He said that thing sometimes moves on its own. It's not a living creature—it's book pages. Even when there's no wind, the pages turn on their own. After his last trip to the secret vaults to copy books, he returned with a high fever that lasted three days, and then he was expelled.

If you are going there—bring a Dragonglass Lamp. Oil lamps cannot be lit in the deepest depths of the secret vaults."

"The relic your husband saw—what else did he say about it?"

"He only said one thing—'That book is written in the blood of The Old Gods. It is not yet finished.'

Then he burned all of his manuscripts, leaving only this one." She pointed to the copy of the Dragon Lord marriage System in his leather bag. "

Good luck. And don't tell Marwyn I said this. That old codger looks down his nose at me every time he passes my bookstall."

Drogon secured the forbidden book in his leather bag. A flash of dark golden light, detectable only by the Dragon Clan, flickered in his deep brown pupils under the evening sun. The blood of The Old Gods. Not yet finished.

The Storm Ancestor Dragon had shown him the source of the Evolution fragments in the trial, but it hadn't told him that The Old Gods were also recording Evolution in another way—with blood, written on trees, for eight thousand years. That old bag of bones hadn't just hidden one thing.

It had hidden an entire library.

He turned, walking along the bank of the Honeywine toward the west wing of The Citadel.