Chapter 1: The Slum Awakening (70 AC, Age 0-1)
The first sensation was not light, but pressure. A suffocating, relentless squeeze that compressed his entire being into a singular point of agony. There was no thought, only a primal, panicked impulse to escape. It was the terror of drowning, of being buried alive, a crushing finality that ripped a silent scream from a mind that had no mouth. He fought against it, his consciousness a flickering candle flame against a hurricane, until a final, violent heave thrust him from darkness into a blinding, chaotic world.
Cold air, sharp as a razor, shocked his skin. A cacophony of foreign sounds assaulted him—a woman's exhausted groan, a man's gruff encouragement, the sloshing of water. Hands, rough and calloused, grabbed him. They were giants' hands, turning him over with an unnerving lack of ceremony. A sharp slap on his back, and his lungs, alien and new, convulsed. They drew in a stuttering, painful breath, and the silent scream in his mind became a shrill, helpless wail that tore from his throat.
This was not the sterile, beeping finality of a hospital room in Palermo. This was not the quiet fade into nothingness he had anticipated after Lorenzo's betrayal, the cold steel of the stiletto finding its home between his ribs. This was something else entirely. Something impossible.
His name, he remembered, was Marco "The Architect" Bellini. He had been the head of the Bellini family, a man who had built an empire of concrete, blood, and fear. He had been fifty-seven years old, a grandfather, a widower, and a king in his own right. He had commanded legions of men with a nod, and his whispers had toppled politicians. His mind was a fortress of secrets, strategies, and the cold arithmetic of power.
Now, that mind was a prisoner.
The giant hands, which he slowly processed belonged to a weary-looking woman with stringy, sweat-drenched hair, wrapped him in a coarse, scratchy cloth. He tried to move his limbs, to assert some form of control, but they flailed with the spastic, uncoordinated jerks of an infant. His eyes, unable to focus, saw only blurry shapes and the flickering orange glow of a fire pit. The wail that continued to erupt from his own mouth was a sound of pure, undiluted vulnerability, a weakness he hadn't experienced since he was a boy, long before he had learned to encase his heart in ice.
"He is a screamer, this one," a man's voice rumbled. It was deep, tired, and tinged with an accent that pricked at the edges of his memory.
The woman shushed him, her voice a raw murmur. "He has fire in his lungs, Borin. A good sign. We will call him Maric."
Maric. The name felt alien, a label slapped onto the cage of flesh that now contained him. The language they spoke… it was not Italian, not English, not any dialect he knew from his previous life. Yet, impossibly, he understood it perfectly. The words formed in his mind with an innate familiarity, a chilling realization that this was not some post-death hallucination. This was a new reality, one with its own rules, its own tongue.
Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up his throat, but it was drowned out by the infant body's relentless, instinctual needs. Hunger, a gnawing emptiness, began to eclipse the existential terror. His mouth, acting on a will of its own, sought purchase, rooting blindly until the woman guided him to her breast. The warmth and the taste of milk were both revolting and lifesaving. He was Marco Bellini, a man who drank vintage Barolo and ate meals prepared by private chefs, and he was suckling like an animal. The humiliation was a fresh, bitter wound.
He forced the fury down. Fury was an indulgence, a luxury for those with the power to act on it. He had no power. He was a piece of meat, utterly dependent on these strangers—his parents—for survival. And so, the first rule of his old life reasserted itself with brutal clarity: Adapt or die. He was no longer The Architect. He was Maric. And Maric had to survive.
The next months were a living hell, a masterclass in powerlessness. His days were a torturous cycle of eating, sleeping, and defecating, his brilliant, strategic mind a helpless passenger in a vessel governed by the most primitive urges. He learned the geography of his prison first. It was a single, cramped room in a hovel made of leaning timber and daub-and-wattle that did little to keep out the biting wind. The floor was packed earth, cold and damp. The roof, a haphazard mess of thatch, leaked in a dozen places whenever it rained, the steady plink-plink-plink of water into clay pots a constant soundtrack to his waking hours.
The air itself was an assault. It was a thick, cloying miasma of human sweat, stale ale, boiled cabbage, woodsmoke, and the ever-present, gut-churning stench of filth from the alley outside. This was poverty. Not the romanticized struggle he'd seen in movies, but the real, grinding, soul-crushing kind. It clung to everything, a physical presence in the room.
His family began to come into focus. His mother, Lara, was a creature of pure, weary resilience. Her face was perpetually smudged with soot, her hands chapped and red, but she moved with a grim determination that he, in his cold, analytical way, could respect. She was his primary resource, the guarantor of his continued existence. He needed her. The dependency was a constant, grating irritation.
His father, Borin, was a dockworker. He left before dawn and returned after dusk, his body stooped with exhaustion, smelling of fish guts and river water. He was a large, quiet man who rarely spoke, his presence a heavy, tired weight in the small room. He would eat his meager portion of pottage, drink a cup of watered-down ale, and collapse onto the thin straw pallet he shared with Lara. He was a provider, but a fragile one. Maric noted the hacking cough that sometimes wracked his frame in the dead of night, filing it away as a potential liability.
Then there was Kael, his brother. Four years his senior, Kael was already a product of this world. He was a wiry, quick-limbed boy with sharp, suspicious eyes. He moved with the quiet stealth of a creature that knows it is prey. He treated Maric with a mixture of childish curiosity and detached resentment—another mouth to feed.
As Maric's infant eyes learned to focus and his ears to parse the cacophony, he began to do the only thing he could: gather intelligence. He was a sponge, absorbing every scrap of information. From his cot, he watched the sliver of the alley visible through the cracked doorway. He saw the world of Flea Bottom unfold, a brutal ecosystem red in tooth and claw. He saw children with faces old beyond their years picking through refuse heaps, their movements quick and furtive like rats. He saw gaunt-faced women selling their bodies in the shadows for a few copper pennies. He heard the drunken shouts, the sharp cries of pain, the sudden, terrifying silences that followed.
One evening, Borin came home with a rare scrap of news, his voice low and tinged with something that might have been awe. "They say the Queen herself was in the city today. Queen Alysanne. Saw her from the docks, riding that silver dragon of hers. A sight to make you piss your breeches."
Lara clicked her tongue. "The King and Queen have time for their dragons, but none for the folk starving in the shadow of their castle."
King? Queen? Dragons?
The words were a key turning a lock in the deepest recesses of his mind. Not his mind, Marco Bellini's mind, but a deeper, stranger layer of memory that had come with this rebirth. A torrent of information, vivid and detailed, flooded him. It was the complete, encyclopedic knowledge of a fantasy series, a world of fiction he'd once seen his grandson reading. A Song of Ice and Fire.
Westeros. King's Landing. The Targaryens.
Jaehaerys I, the Conciliator. Alysanne, the Good Queen. Silverwing, the dragon. The names weren't just familiar; they were data points. He was not just in some generic medieval hellscape. He was in a specific place, at a specific time. He mentally cross-referenced the details. Jaehaerys's long reign, the period of peace, the construction of the Kingsroad, the codification of the laws. The year, his parents had mentioned in passing, was 70 AC—the seventieth year after Aegon's Conquest.
The realization was staggering. It was both a death sentence and the ultimate advantage. He was living in a history book, a story whose ending he already knew. He knew about the Dance of the Dragons, the tragic civil war that would tear the Targaryen dynasty apart. He knew about the Blackfyre Rebellions, the rise of the Mad King, the fall of the dragons. He knew about Robert's Rebellion, the Starks, the Lannisters, and the existential threat that lay dormant in the far north, beyond the Wall. The White Walkers.
For a moment, the sheer scale of it all was paralyzing. What could one man, one baby, do in the face of such epic, world-spanning conflicts? He was Marco Bellini. His expertise was in racketeering, smuggling, and navigating the treacherous currents of organized crime in 20th and 21st century Italy, not in feudal politics and magic.
But then, the pragmatist, the strategist, the architect reasserted control. The principles were the same. Power was power. People were leverage. Fear was a tool. Information was the ultimate weapon. And he possessed the most powerful information imaginable: foreknowledge.
His squalid hovel in Flea Bottom was no longer just a prison. It was the starting line. The lowest possible point from which to begin his ascent. His family were not just jailers; they were his first, most immediate assets. His cover. He needed to protect them, not out of love—that emotion was a withered, vestigial thing within him—but out of cold, hard necessity. An asset unprotected is a liability waiting to happen.
His planning began in earnest, a silent, meticulous war game played out in the confines of his own skull. Phase One: Survival and Information Gathering. He was already doing that. He listened to the gossip his mother brought back from the market, to the hushed conversations between Borin and other laborers about the City Watch and the goings-on at the Red Keep. He started to build a mental map of King's Landing based on their descriptions. The Street of Steel, where the smiths worked. The River Row, with its fish market. Visenya's Hill, crowned by the massive, still-under-construction dome of the Dragonpit. And looming over it all, Aegon's High Hill, where the Red Keep stood, a symbol of the ultimate power he intended to one day grasp.
He learned to control his new body. The first time he managed to purposefully roll over was a victory more satisfying than closing a multi-million-lira construction deal. He weaponized his infancy. He learned which cries brought his mother running fastest. A sharp, pained shriek worked best. He learned that a gurgle and a clumsy, reaching gesture could earn him a moment of affection from Lara, a brief respite from the relentless misery. He saw these small manipulations not as childish actions, but as his first forays into influencing this new world. He was testing the system, finding its pressure points.
One evening, the fragile stability of their existence was shattered. The door to their hovel was kicked open with a splintering crack. A man ducked inside, filling the small space with his bulk. He was large and greasy, with a flat, broken nose and a cruel smirk that revealed several missing teeth. Two other, leaner men stood behind him in the doorway, their faces lost in the shadows.
"Borin," the man grunted, his eyes scanning the room with contempt. "You're late."
Borin, who had been huddled by the fire with Kael, slowly got to his feet. There was no defiance in him, only a deep, weary resignation. "Galt. I… I haven't got it. The work's been slow."
"That's not my problem," Galt said, stepping forward. His boot crushed a small wooden toy Kael had been carving. The boy flinched but didn't make a sound. "The Razor-Hawks keep this part of the Gut safe. Safety costs. You know the price."
"I'll have it by the end of the week," Borin pleaded, his voice barely a whisper.
Galt laughed, a wet, ugly sound. "The end of the week is too far. I'm feeling impatient today." He looked over at Lara, who was clutching Maric tightly, her knuckles white. Galt's smirk widened. "You got a new one. Another drain on your purse."
From his mother's arms, Maric watched. His mind was a storm of cold fury. This was Galt. A capo, in his old world's parlance. A low-level enforcer for a street gang, the 'Razor-Hawks'. This was the raw, unchecked power that governed Flea Bottom. The King's laws, the Queen's charity, none of it reached this deep into the muck. Here, men like Galt were the only law.
And he, Marco 'The Architect' Bellini, could do nothing but watch. His body was useless, his mind a caged lion. He was screaming inside, a torrent of curses and threats, but all that came out was a frightened whimper.
Galt took another step, his gaze lingering on Lara. "Maybe," he said slowly, "we can arrange an alternate form of payment."
Borin, in a rare flash of spirit, moved to stand between Galt and his wife. "No."
The punch was brutally fast. Galt's fist connected with Borin's jaw with a sickening crunch. His father crumpled to the dirt floor without a sound. Kael scrambled back into the corner like a terrified animal. Lara let out a choked cry, hugging Maric so tightly he could barely breathe.
Galt loomed over Borin's unconscious form. He spat on the ground next to him. "Have the coin by morrow's sunset," he snarled. "Or next time, I'll take more than a pound of your flesh. I'll take your wife for a night. And maybe the boy, too." He gestured vaguely toward Kael, who had made himself impossibly small in the corner.
Then, the enforcer turned and left, his cronies melting back into the night. The broken door swung gently on one hinge, letting in the cold and the stench of the alley.
Silence descended, broken only by Lara's ragged sobs and the distant, mocking laughter of Galt's crew. Maric lay in her arms, his infant heart hammering against his ribs. The helplessness was a physical poison, a white-hot shame that burned hotter than any fire. He looked at his father's still form, at his mother's terror, at his brother's silent fear.
These were not assets. Not anymore. Not just. They were his. They were the first pieces of his new life, his first responsibility. Galt had not just assaulted his family; he had trespassed on Marco Bellini's property. And for that, there was only one punishment.
In that moment, lying in a filthy hovel in the armpit of a fantasy kingdom, a new plan began to form, superseding all the grand, long-term strategies. The grand game of thrones could wait. The Dance of the Dragons, the White Walkers—they were distant thunder. The here and now was a man named Galt.
He felt no morality in the decision, no flicker of right or wrong. It was simple math. Galt was a threat to his foundation. A threat had to be neutralized. Permanently.
He didn't know how yet. He was a baby, trapped in a prison of his own flesh. But time was the one thing he had in abundance. He would grow. He would get stronger. He would learn this world, learn its weapons and its weaknesses. He would watch Galt, learn his habits, his routines, his fears.
And one day, when he was ready, he would find Galt. He would remove him from the board. This was not a promise born of rage, but a simple, calculated statement of fact. It was his first executive decision in this new world.
His infant eyes, dark and ancient, stared past the broken door, towards the distant, unseen silhouette of the Red Keep. The lords and ladies in their castle could have their silly, gilded game of thrones. Maric's game had just begun, here in the mud and the filth. And he would win. He always won. He closed his eyes, the image of Galt's sneering face burned into his mind. It was the first entry on a very, very long list.