Ice and Fire: Reign of the Dragon.

Chapter 443 It Eats Up the Light

At fifth base, night fell.

Chai Qian, the "Protector General" of the Fifth Fort, stood on the highest beacon tower of the Fifth Fort, the cold wind tearing at his thick fur coat. This ancient fortress built of black stone was the barrier of East Essos and the last line of defense against the darkness of the north.

The demon hunter's raven struggled to fly over, its body still dripping blood in his palm, and the ice crystals on its feathers glowed blue in the moonlight. He unfolded the blood-stained note, which had only eight words on it:
"The night lion has awakened, and the wasteland is dark."

Chai Qian's knuckles turned white from the force. He knew what this meant.

The forerunner of the long night in the legend, a "monster" that is more silent than the cold winter. It is not a beast, nor a ghost, but something more terrifying. The ancient books of Yidi believe that they are the embodiment of darkness.

Night Lion.

"Grand Protector!" The adjutant rushed up to the battlement, his leather armor covered with frost and snow. "The scouts are back." His adjutant hesitated, not knowing what to say: "Only one has returned."

Chai Qian turned around and saw two soldiers holding a trembling young man. The scout's eyes had lost focus, his lips were dark purple, but he was still mumbling the same words:

“It’s eating it up.”

Three days ago, the scout team went deep into the northern wilderness.

They were originally here to investigate the sudden disappearance of the Jugsnai tribe. After Yidi was torn apart, the Fifth Regiment was almost cut off from supplies and support from the inland, and it only relied on Chai Qian's ability to operate. He made good friends with Huangdu, the god of Carcosa as Westerners call it, and made an alliance with Dan and Beile who came from afar. The Dragon Knight briefly helped Chai Qian defend the Fifth Regiment and won him the support and supplies of the Jugsnai tribe, so the Fifth Regiment sent scouts to support the Jugsnai people, but they saw death on the night of the third day.

"The ground cracked open." The surviving scout huddled beside the fire, his voice hoarse, "Black mist poured out from the cracks in the ground, like a living thing, entwining the corpses."

He described something that would have horrified even the most seasoned soldier.

In his stories, there was a black fog that swallowed up all the light. Torches couldn't illuminate it, and moonlight couldn't get through it. Any living creature that fell into it would lose its temperature in an instant. The zebras of the Jogsnai people and the war horses of the Five-Ramp Cavalry were very afraid of this black fog. Humans would also be swallowed by fear when facing the fog that spread from the darkness of the night. Thorn-like black ice spikes would grow on the surface of corpses touched by the black fog, like some kind of evil totem.

"Then. We saw it." The scout's pupils shrank sharply. "That lion. No, that's not a lion. That's darkness itself! That's darkness itself! It's coming! They're coming!"

The hoarse scream stopped abruptly.

The scout is dead.

Chai Qian ordered with a stern face to light up all the beacon towers in the five forts.

The red flames formed a line on the Black Stone Wall, but they could not dispel the increasingly thick black fog in the north. The defenders wiped their weapons in silence, knowing that the legendary moment was approaching.

"Send the message." Chai Qian's voice was unusually clear in the cold wind. "Abandon the outer outposts, and everyone retreat to the main camp. Send the fastest messenger to Huangdu."

He paused and looked at the pale moon.

"Tell the God of Heaven that the long night has begun in the east. Ask him to release the hunting owl to tell the dragon kings that the destined moment has begun."

That night, Chai Qian had a dream.

He stood in the wasteland, with countless frozen corpses under his feet. The Night Lion was right in front of him. The creature had the outline of a lion, but was made of pure darkness, and its eyes were two spinning ice-blue stars.

"Your light." Night Lion's voice exploded directly in his mind, "will eventually become my food."

When Chai Qian woke up, he found that his right hand was covered with a thin layer of ice. Outside the window, the last star was being swallowed by the darkness, and the pale moon also disappeared in the night sky.

Death was spreading. The second unlucky people were the Dothraki.

At first, no one noticed the grass. The Dothraki considered the tall chaos grass to be ominous and were reluctant to approach areas where it spread.

So they ignored the danger.

The people of the grasslands had long been accustomed to the vastness and desolation of the Great Sea of ​​Grass, and were used to camping under the stars and sleeping in the wind. But the wind this night was different. It blew from the far north, bringing a chill that did not belong to midsummer, and made a hissing sound that was almost like sobbing as it passed over the grass tips.

Then, the ghost grass began to grow.

The cursed creature that should only exist in the shadows stretched its stems and leaves in the moonlight. Its leaves were as sharp as blades, and its roots were like hungry blood vessels piercing the soil and spreading wildly. Arman Khal, who was about to enter Vaes Dothrak, was the first to notice the abnormality. He saw the sea of ​​grass ripple in the windless air, like the back of some pale beast wriggling.

He had barely drawn his arakh when a stalk of pale grass pierced his ankle.

When dawn came, Vaes Dothrak was a vast white tomb.

Ghost grass crawled over every tent, tangling around sleeping Dothraki warriors. Its stems and leaves pierced the skin almost painlessly, as gently as a lover's fingertips, until it began to suck blood. Men twitched in their dreams, women suffocated in silence, and children's cries were choked in their throats by the grass.

The war horses were the first to sense death. They neighed and struggled to break free from the reins, but as soon as their hooves stepped into the grass, the roots of the ghost grass entangled them. A purebred silver mare tore a dozen grass stems with her teeth before falling to the ground, but more vines entangled her limbs and dragged her into the depths of the sea of ​​grass. In a few breaths, her body shrivelled up like a dead tree.

Twelve khalasars and nearly a hundred thousand Dothraki were devoured by the ghost grass in one night.

The last warriors gathered around the altar of the "horse god" and used torches and scimitars to open up a small piece of pure land. But the flames had little effect on the ghost grass. It whistled as it burned, as if a living thing was screaming, but new shoots would immediately emerge from the ashes, growing faster than before, and finally, even the flames turned pale.

An old dosh khaleen woman staggered up the holy mountain. Her nails had long been peeled off in the struggle, and her fingertips were bloody, but she still drew crooked symbols on the stone pillar with blood:
"The grass eats the sun."

After she finished the last stroke, she looked to the north. The sky there was no longer black, but a sickly dark blue, as if the aurora was frozen in the night. The old woman's lips moved, and she uttered an ancient Dothraki word.

meaning is.

Night is coming.

Then, she took the initiative to fall towards the ghost grass.

When the ghost grass is full of blood, its leaves begin to change color.

The originally pale grass stems gradually became transparent, and finally condensed into ice crystal-like veins. In the place that used to be Vaes Dothrak, ice-blue buds bloomed from the sea of ​​grass. The petals were as thin as cicada wings, but the stamens flashed a cold blue light.

The most terrifying thing is that when the wind blows through the flowers, it makes a whisper similar to the Dothraki language.
A few days later, when the first group of fleeing caravans crossed the Great Grass Sea, they only saw an ice-blue flower field and the still spreading paleness. The caravans did not dare to stop at all, as they were racing against the pale ghost grass.

They were to warn the mortals of Essos of the Fall of the World's Heart.

After falling to the scimitars of the barbarians, the grass also came to eat people.

On the stone pillar in the center of the grassland, the warning drawn by the old woman in blood was still clear. But at some point, the crooked blue and white plants twisted into a line of crooked handwriting below:

"The long night has come, and the herder should be the mount."

Deep in the ghost grass, pairs of ice-blue eyes slowly opened.

(End of this chapter)