The gods-forsaken castle loomed overhead like a broken monument of despair, gnawing at Daemon’s reason. With a scoff, he’d always dismissed tales of sorcery, haunted ruins, and mad kings—but now the castle whispered his folly back to him. Each passing time, as he closed his eyes, Ser Simon appeared, his jowls quivering, as he announced yet again, "More pudding, my prince." Always pudding.

"Enough of this madness!" Daemon snarled, kicking at the old Weirwood bed. Night tore open, bleeding into blinding day. Suddenly, he was thrust into a memory: the tourney of years past, Ser Criston sprawled upon the woodchips and cedar—the deafening roar of the crowd that rose like waves; rolling to a distant hum as he shut his eyes. Peering through the veil of heavy lashes, he was met with hands slick with warm scarlet.

He blinked, and the blood was gone. He sat now at the supper table, roasted duck laid out before him. "My prince?" The rasp of Simon Strong cut through, the old fat man's face a mask of worry.

"King Consort," Daemon corrected irritably, leaning backward and rubbing his fingertips together as though banishing the lingering slickness.

A chill crawled up his spine. His breath stilled as he shifted his gaze. In the shadowed corner, a figure lingered. Laena. His Laena. Silent, tarrying, and unmoving; her pallid flesh melting into the darkness. Gooseflesh prickled across his skin much like that of burned flesh blistering beneath the surface; tormenting.

"Are you enjoying the head?" Simon's question jolted him.

Daemon's stomach churned.

Head? His gaze dropped toward the plate before him, the sight alone twisted his gut. The roasted duck was no more. In its place lay something grotesque and undeniable—lifeless eyes staring back at him, accusatory and unblinking. His own mistakes lay bare before him.

"An heir for a day, did you say it?" His brother's words rang out. Panic surged like dragonfire as Daemon lurched back; the chair legs scraping against the flagstone of Harren’s towers. He turned sharply, expecting to be met with the face of Viserys, but the hall had swallowed him whole.

Then, in an instant, he found himself outdoors with a hatchet in hand, swinging at logs. "This cursed place is haunted," he struck the log with a brutal swing, and for a moment, he thought he heard a scream—not from the Weirwood tree, but deep within the bowels of the castle. Harrenhal was a labyrinth of Daemon’s torment. And it refused to release him.