His dreams haunt him. Dreams that he scant remember upon awakening yet unsettle him all the same. He can only recall silver-pale hair and eyes of deep amethyst and an unfathomable sorrow deep within. He does not know her face but he has spent his entire life searching for her. In his youth, Euron had dreamt that he could fly and he saw every city from the Iron Islands to the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. He has always known that the world belongs to him. From the lofty skies to the earth beneath his boots and the brine within the seas, he alone would visit every corner of the known world that there is to see.

Euron rouses on the saddle and blinks the sleep from his eyes. The Ash glows a sickly pale green under the deep looming shadows of the vale. The tread of the horses' hooves against the black-stoned path is the only sound on the deserted road. Horses too that are so sickly that Euron doubts they may make the journey back to Asshai. The mountains sprawl from the north like jagged teeth in leagues before them to the Shadow Lands of the south. He wonders if the lands had always been cursed in its forgotten ages as it is now.

The old shadowbinder leading them turns his head to the side, sniffing at the air before mumbling something to himself in a strange tongue. Asshai'i say that demons and dragons lurk in the caves above the Ash, living off the blind and deformed fish of the river. Some say worse things lay in wait in the shadows, fell creatures that crawl out from the bowels of the earth to feed on the flesh of corpses. Euron hopes to catch sight of them if he can.

The three crewmen that he had brought straggle along behind him. He can smell the fear off their skin and hear the quake in their bones. Only lesser men fear the shadows like a child cowering beneath the sheets. Euron embraces the chill of the night and he drinks the darkness from its overflowed cup.

It had been two days since they departed the port city. Euron remembers seeing the sun for a brief few hours during their week-long journey along the Ash. Now as they turn the corner of a towering crag, he sees moonlight spill over the jagged cliffs. He lifts his face to the sky, glimpsing the waxing moon over the peaks of the vale. The shadowbinder glances over his shoulder while muttering something Euron cannot discern.

"What?" he questions with a frown. There is no response.

Though a moment later, he sees the river wind through the mouth of a ruined archway where two tributaries join from the mountains. Beyond that, the corpse city finally looms before him, its shattered towers and citadel chiselled from the rocks of the cliffs itself. The tallest turret is as high as the vale and touches the light of the moon that shines pale and thin. The shadowbinder dismounts at the city gate and Euron orders one of his men to guard the horses.

Euron can see the hesitance in the man's blue eyes and he looks like he may say something — if only he had a tongue to do so.

Ancient dust and memories stir as he steps foot within the city. Bone-white ruins lie splintered around him. The outer city had been laid to waste hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago and only the citadel stands as a true testament to time. Euron follows the shadowbinder, his cloak rustling through the debris as he walks across a square. They climb imposing stone steps towards the citadel. Remnants of strange and twisted statues line the long deserted corridors. His boots crunch against loose stones and he can hear a voice upon the breeze. Faintly, it whispers, "You walk ever to your doom."

He squeezes his eyes shut to clear his mind before calling out, "Where is it?"

The shadowbinder stops to look at him. "Quiet," he mutters gruffly before continuing on the path.

Euron feels a chill in the air as if unseen hands reach out to him from the shadows. These lands are indeed cursed. He can feel it in his bones, singing in his lifeblood. Death stalks his footsteps and every breath he takes. They pass through a cloister and enter an expansive courtyard. A tall tree stands in the middle with leaden boughs of golden leaves that have a ghostly radiance in the night. His eyes sweep over its haunting majesty and he wonders what it could be. Amber sap runs down the silver bark and he finds the figure of a woman resting at its gnarled roots.

"Is she dead?" Euron questions.

He approaches the figure but the shadowbinder stops him. "She sleeps. Do not rouse her," he says.

"Who is she? What is she doing here?" he asks again.

But the shadowbinder refuses to respond. "I have brought you to the corpse city, this is where our paths part."

The old man turns and kneels before the tree. His gnarled hands start to collect the sap from the bark. He stores the vials in a small satchel for safekeeping. Euron steps closer and leans forward to examine the slumbering figure. Her face is half shrouded beneath a helm of filigreed gold. Wings spread out from the sides of the helm and pale hair spills from beneath. It cascades like molten gold across her back. She wears a white dress of roughly woven cotton with chain mail beneath. A golden pauldron and vambrace adorn her right arm.

A sword rests between her hands unsheathed and the blade shines like milk glass under the moonlight. Euron reaches out to examine it but stops when he hears a blood-curdling scream. It sounds like shattering glass against stone and every demon rousing from the seventh hell. He turns to look as a monstrous beast attacks his crewmen. One is thrown against a stone column, shattering his spine, and the other is ripped in half by long-bladed claws. Euron quickly draws his sword and the shadowbinder flees into the night.

He curses out loud as the twisted creature moves forward. It has the lower body of a large spider with spindly legs that skitter across the ground but its torso is that of a man long dead with numerous limbs grafted onto the sides. Its face is contorted in an eternal scream with clouded unseeing eyes. The monster lunges forward and Euron swings his sword above his head, meeting the brunt of the force with breathless lungs. He falls back to the ground and the monster rears over him. His fingers grip the hilt of his sword in anticipation.

Then in the chill of the moment, Euron sees a flash of silver and gold. The woman stands from the root of the tree and she strikes back at the beast. Her pale sword rings through the air as she deflects the monster's claws with blinding sparks. She skillfully pierces it in the heart and a fearsome shriek erupts from the creature. In one fell swoop, her blade cuts through its neck like silk and its severed head falls to her feet, withering instantly before his very eyes.

The woman pauses before plucking the helm from her head. She turns to him and Euron sees eyes of burning amethysts staring back at him. Her hair and skin are as pale as a winter moon and she looks like the ghost of a Valyrian goddess. Fairer than a summer's day yet as terrible as a storm. Euron rises to his feet and he knows it is her, the one who calls to him from his dreams. She is the dusk, the dawn, the earth and the sea. If he has a heart at all, he feels it shiver in his chest with hunger and rapture.

Her eyes fall to the sigil of his House emblazoned upon the straps of his cloak. "A Greyjoy . . . what are you doing here so far away from your home?" Her voice is soft like northern snow, as deadly as a viper of Dorne.

"Who are you?" he asks.

She blinks slowly as if rousing from an endless dream. "Who am I? I have had many names. The last name I was given was Malenia. You may call me that, if you wish."

"What was that beast? And what is that sword you wield?" Euron looks at the ashen remnants of the twisted creature with disgust.

"Hopefully, the only terror we see tonight," she answers. "I am surprised to find one still lives today. As for this sword, I was told that it was made from a fallen malformed star. Astel is its name."

He remembers a similar tale of the sword Dawn carried by the Star of the Morning of House Dayne. Malenia returns the blade to its sheath and fastens her helm to her belt. Euron approaches her. "Why are you here?" he questions.

She looks to him with a haunted gaze and he sees flecks of gold in her ethereal eyes. "I should be asking you that. Only fools dare enter the City of the Night, so what brings you here? To die, perhaps? If so then my apologies for thwarting your efforts."

"That is not why I'm here," he says evenly. "I came for answers."

"There is nought here but ghosts and ruin and death," she tells him. "There is no answer you seek here in the city of corpses."

"I came looking for you," he interjects. "I saw you . . . in a dream."

Something in his words resonate within her. She brings her eyes back to his and her lips part with wonder. "You saw me in a dream?" she repeats quietly with a sigh.

"I have searched the entire world for you," he declares. "So tell me why that is so, why is it that my sleep is plagued by visions of you?"

"You ask me as if I am a god," she retorts. "I have lived many lives, Lord Greyjoy, and died more than ten thousand deaths. Yet even now, I still do not know the will of the gods. If they have led you to me, I can not say I know why. I am as much in the dark as you are."

"Then why you, and why me?" he questions.

"Mayhaps we were lovers in another life." Her laughter peals clearly in the silence. "Or mayhaps bitter rivals. I shall have to think long and hard on that."

Euron does not find humour in her jest. "You speak as if you are immortal, then what are you? Where did you come from?"

"I can not tell you, my lord, for I have long forgotten my true home or name," she says. "It does that to you, time . . . I am as old as the dawn itself and I will live to see the last day it rises."

There is sorrow in her voice, the same sorrow he feels each time upon awakening. Malenia walks forward and peers up to the golden tree that glows resplendent in the night. Surrounded in shadows and the cold light of the moon, she is a vision of a herald for nameless and forgotten gods. He believes it when she says that she has lived since the dawn of the world. Her eyes are old. She has seen more than he yet dares to see for himself.

"What is it that you desire, my lord?" she asks him. "If it be in my power, I shall see it done."

Euron frowns. "And what is in your power?"

"Whatever your heart desires. If it be gold you seek, I will make you the richest man on earth," she says. "If it be power, I will make you a king to rule over all. If it be darkness, then I will walk you through the shadows."

"And what if I want to be a god?"

Malenia turns back to him and he thinks he sees a ghost of a smile as her lilac eyes twinkle beneath the luminescence. "Then there is much to be done."