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SLW Chapter 45 : A Shadow in the Sky
🕑 Added 2025-03-18 22:00:54 +0000 UTCThe battlefield outside Storm’s End was no longer a place of men it was a slaughterhouse.
The hundred shadow knights moved through the ranks like a plague given form. No mercy. No hesitation. No weakness. Each knight was a black storm of death swords cleaving through plate and mail. Blood sprayed in arcs, drenching the ground, yet the shadow soldiers did not slow. They did not tire.
A bannerman raised his greatsword, screaming as he charged one of the knights. The shadow soldier turned, its blackened armor gleaming with an unnatural sheen and impaled the man through the face. The greatsword fell from the bannerman’s hands, his body twitching as he was lifted off the ground like a child’s doll.
Another soldier a Tyrell archer fired an arrow point-blank into a knight’s visor. It should have killed him. Instead, the knight simply turned its head, the arrow still lodged in its face, and cut the archer down with a single, fluid strike.
The Lannisters famed for their discipline were breaking. Fear rippled through their lines as the realization sank in: these things could not be stopped.
"Hold the line! Hold the line, damn you!" a captain screamed, his voice cracking with panic.
He never finished the order. A shadow knight appeared behind him silent, swift and with a twist of its blade, his head tumbled to the blood-soaked ground.
Kevan Lannister watched it all unfold from atop his warhorse, his face pale beneath his helm. This was no battle. This was annihilation, there really was no other explanation to what was going on.
A knight of House Baratheon rode past him, his face contorted in rage and terror. "We outnumber them a hundred to one! Why won’t they fall?!"
Kevan’s grip on the reins tightened as his mind raced. ‘They should be falling.’ No matter how skilled, no matter how fierce numbers should have won the day. Yet, here they were an entire army of Westeros’ finest warriors being butchered as if their lives meant nothing.
He had heard the reports of shadows killing lords and knights inside their own halls including what happened to their own former King, Joffery. He had believed it to be the work of assassins because he didn’t witness it himself, not… this.
"Gods save us…" he thought grimly.
A scream tore his thoughts away as a shadow knight swept through a group of archers. Arrows fired wildly into the air, missing their mark as fear overtook them. Another Lannister spearman lunged at one of the creatures, only to have his weapon shattered by the sheer force of the knight’s counterstrike.
Kevan’s jaw clenched. He had fought in Wars and is still fighting the war of the five Kings . He had stood beside his brother Tywin through countless battles. But this, this was a whole new nightmarish experience.
"This isn’t a battle…" he muttered, his voice low and cold. "It’s a sign of the end times..."
The shadow soldiers weren’t defending Storm’s End they were sending a warning.
Kevan turned sharply to his bannermen. "Fall back!" he commanded, his voice cutting through the din. "Get the wounded what men you can, pull them back to the ridge. Now!"
"But, my lord!" a knight began.
"Do it!" Kevan snapped. His usual composure fractured by what he had seen. His eyes lingered on the slaughter below. "I will not waste more lives against something we cannot kill. This… sorcery is real. And by the gods, my brother must know of it."
The retreat began in chaos. Men scrambled to pull back, fear gripping them tighter than their weapons. Some dropped their swords altogether, too broken by what they had seen to even fight.
But not all made it.
For every soldier who turned to flee, two more fell to the relentless advance of the shadow knights. Their black swords carved through man and beast alike, horses toppled mid-gallop, men dragged screaming into the abyss.
Kevan wheeled his horse around, scanning the battlefield one last time. ‘If this man, or demon...whoever he is...has more than these wraiths… Westeros itself may burn.’
He spurred his horse, his heart pounding in his chest. They had come to crush a rebellion, to stamp out some rogue sorcerer who dared defy the Iron Throne.
Instead, they had found a nightmare made flesh.
And it was winning.
****
Inside Storm’s End, the people watched in horrified silence. Peasants, guardsmen, and nobles alike crowded the battlements, their faces pale as they beheld the massacre unfolding below.
The shadow soldiers creatures of death and darkness were ‘defending them.’
"That man didn’t lie..." a guard whispered, his voice trembling.
The maester, a thin man with a sharp nose and a hunched back, clutched the cold stone wall for support. His eyes were wide, blood drained from his face. "By the gods…" he breathed, his voice barely above a whisper. "We are not meant to see such things."
Further back, in the shadows of the keep, a figure crouched, watching.
A low rumble filled the air as Fang, Aeron’s shadowcat, stretched lazily. His glowing eyes tracked the retreating army with a predator’s interest, tail twitching. To him, this was nothing more than a game, one his master was already winning.
The cat let out a low growl, its muscles rippling beneath the dark sheen of its fur. The humans could not understand it but Fang did.
****
The battlefield was still soaked in blood, but the killing had stopped.
Amid the broken bodies and shattered steel, the shadow knights all one hundred of them moved as one. But instead of pursuing the retreating army, they turned. Without a word, without a sound, they began marching back toward Storm’s End.
Their blackened blades dripped with the blood of hundreds, eerie synchronization that defied the chaos they had just unleashed. Whatever dark will commanded them, it had no interest in further slaughter.
From the ridge, Kevan Lannister risked a glance back as his horse pounded across the blood-soaked earth. Sweat clung to his brow, his heart thundered in his chest. For a moment, he had expected the shadow soldiers to give chase to cut them down to the last man.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they turned like a tide receding back to the shore.
"They’re… they’re returning to the castle," one of his bannermen stammered, riding beside him. His voice cracked with disbelief. "Why? Why aren’t they following us?"
Kevan’s face was grim, his mind sharp despite the horror. "Because they don’t need to," he said, his voice cold. "They’ve already won."
The retreating soldiers men who had once laughed at the idea of shadows and sorcery were no longer laughing. Faces pale, mouths dry, some couldn’t stop shaking. Even as they fled beyond the range of Storm’s End’s walls, they knew the truth:
They had faced something unnatural and they had lost.
On the battlements of Storm’s End, the gathered crowd watched in stunned silence as the shadow knights approached the keep’s towering gates.
"They’re… returning," the maester murmured, his voice thin and unsteady. His bony fingers trembled as he clutched the edge of the wall, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "Gods preserve us… they’re returning to the keep."
The guards, still gripping their spears tightly, exchanged uneasy glances. None of them had moved since the slaughter began none dared. These… things had just butchered an army, and now, they were coming back.
"they are not gonna kill us now are they?" one guard asked, his knuckles white around his weapon. "...Right ?"
The maester swallowed hard. "Because their master commands them, i don’t think they will" he said quietly.
A hush settled over the crowd as the first of the shadow knights stepped through the great stone gates. Black armor gleamed dully beneath the overcast sky. Their swords slick with blood hung loosely at their sides. Not a single shadow soldier bore a scratch. Not a dent in their armor. Untouched.
A guard, barely older than a boy, spoke in a choked whisper. "We’re still alive because he allows it."
Another guard spat on the ground, trying to shake his fear. "If he wanted us dead," he growled, though his voice trembled, "we’d be dead already."
****
Shadowlands -
Aeron sat tall atop his shadow horse, the beast’s form a swirling mass of black smoke and muscle. Its hooves made no sound against the jagged ground as it carried him forward through the Shadow Lands.
The air here was… wrong and oppressive, as if it hung heavy with unseen eyes. Blackened mountains loomed around him, their jagged peaks cutting against a blood-red sky. Rivers of dark water snaked through the cracked earth, hissing faintly as though even the ground itself suffered in this cursed place.
Aeron’s violet eyes glowed like embers in the dimness as they swept across the desolate expanse.
"I feel like I’m being watched from every corner," he murmured to himself, his voice low. There was no breeze here, no life. Yet the crawling sensation on the back of his neck wouldn’t fade. Something… else was out there.
And it wasn’t just the usual monsters of myths.
His grip on the reins tightened. Whatever this place was hiding, he was ready.
Or so he thought.
Suddenly a massive blur of black streaked through the sky above him. Fast. Too fast. Aeron’s gaze snapped upward, his eyes narrowing as the shadow glided overhead.
It wasn’t a bird.
It wasn’t a beast.
His eyes widened slightly as a cold shiver trailed down his spine. "...What the hell was that…?" he whispered, his voice barely audible.
His horse shifted beneath him, uneasy, as if it too had sensed the shift in the air. Aeron held its reins firm, keeping it still while his gaze followed the creature’s path.
