NOVEL NEXT CHAPTER 95: The Fire That Does Not Burn
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POV: Alanys of the Ember Veil, Fire Priestess of Rh'llor – Volantis
The flames danced too high.
Too clear. Too quiet.
Alanys, flame-touched since birth, knelt before the brazier that smoked with sweet oils. Her skin prickled in reverence, her mind seeking the future beyond the shimmer.
The fire usually sang. Flickered with whispers. Tonight, it trembled.
"The Demon of the North. The Reaper with no house."
"Not of Fire. Not of Shadow. Something… between."
Acolytes watched in silence as the priestess rocked forward.
Her lips moved without sound, then settled into a single name — Arthur.
Across the coals, a vision bled through the smoke: A sword spinning through snow, striking flame and smothering it mid-birth. A wolf without a leash. A shadow that refused to obey.
The chamber dimmed as the fire lowered.
Alanys stood slowly. "He is not chosen by the Lord of Light," she said aloud. "He is… a rival. A silence too deep for fire to warm."
One acolyte, trembling, stepped forward. "Should we… warn the Red Temple?"
She turned her flame-lined eyes toward him.
"We will not warn," she said. "We will destroy."
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The girl with no name walked the silent halls of the Faceless God, her feet bare against stone worn by centuries of death. She carried no weapon. Only a question.
The man she approached was not old, nor young. His face was plain, ageless — carved by time and forgotten memory.
She bowed.
"A request has come from across the Narrow Sea," she said. "A northern man. Arthur. They offer a box of rubies and emeralds to see him dead."
The man blinked once. No more.
"And yet they offer everything but reason."
A pause. Then, he stepped into a shaft of low candlelight.
"The God of Many Faces does not take gold for the undoing of balance. The man they name… he is not ready. But he is meant. For now."
The girl swallowed. "So we refuse?"
He said nothing. But the silence became its own answer.
"The Faceless shall not raise blade nor breath against Arthur Snow. Not for all the gold in Old Valyria."
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"What do you mean they refused?"
Alanys's voice was like wind scouring ash. Her high priest knelt before her, face bloodied from his own ritual apology.
"They said… he walks beyond us. That even shadows are bound to his passage."
"Then we shall summon a different blade."
She turned toward the east. The fire flared in response.
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A contract passed from hand to hand: unsigned, unsealed, coded in blood and irony. It found its way to a man named Sorrin, once a sellsword, now something else.
He sat beneath a statue of a bull-eyed god, drinking black wine.
The paper bore one word in High Valyrian: Arthur.
"You want him dead?" he asked the masked courier.
The courier said nothing — only dropped a bag of obsidian coins.
Sorrin sipped his drink again.
"Good coin. But men like him don't die by gold. They die by time, or betrayal. Or both."
Still, he stood.
"Tell your priestess this: I'll take the job. But when I fail… remember I warned you."
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Varys read the same name in his own documents. Arthur's summons was public now — but this information was not.
"Qohor. Volantis. The fires are stirring."
He burned the parchment over a slow candle.
"Too many eyes. Not enough truths. And too many men who think one sword can unmake what's already rising."
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Somewhere, far from the heart of things, a red woman stood by a shoreline of jagged bone-colored stones.
Her fingers hovered over the water, then above a single flickering flame inside a bronze cup.
"Arthur, how far will you go ," she murmured.
She closed her eyes.