The rain was heavy, thick drops drumming against the rusted metal roof above me. The stench of gunpowder and burned oil had been stuck in the air for hours, as if the walls themselves had learned to breathe it in. The thermal sight showed three moving shapes in the hallway ahead. No more than fifty meters. Three heat signatures, moving with the clumsy urgency of men with little training and too much fear.
I drew a slow breath. Air control. Focus on breathing — a basic lesson that never failed. Inhale for four, hold for two, exhale for six. The body understands math better than panic. The body obeys when the mind commands.
"Alpha One, you are green." The voice in my earpiece was low, almost swallowed by the sound of the storm, but clear enough to leave no room for doubt.
"Copy." I shifted the weight of the carbine against my shoulder. The familiar press of metal against my cheek was almost comforting. Almost.
Fourteen years in special forces. Missions in places that didn't appear on any map. Some the world would never know had happened. Others, we weren't even sure ourselves. But this one… this one smelled wrong from the briefing: improvised supply lines, too many civilians as cover, people more willing to die than to talk. The kind of op manuals don't cover and consciences don't forgive.
I moved down the narrow corridor, boots hitting wet concrete with purpose. Rainwater leaked through gaps in the roof, running down the walls in thin rivulets. The first target came into sight — too quick for a civilian, but far too slow for me. Two rounds to the chest, one to the head. Automatic. I didn't think; I just did.
The second came right after, shouting something in Arabic I didn't understand. Too loud, not enough intent. A sharp kick to the side of the knee, the inevitable fall, the butt of my rifle to his jaw, and then the silence that always came too fast.
But the third… the third didn't show up on thermal.He came from above.
The flash of the explosion blinded me for an instant. The heat was immediate, suffocating, like the air itself had turned molten. I felt the impact before I heard the sound — something slammed into my vest with absurd force, like the fist of God shoving me back. The pressure cut my breath in half, like someone had switched off my diaphragm.
I stumbled back, hit the wall. My fingers came away wet… red. The blood was running inside my glove, heavy as oil. I tried to inhale, and the world made that clogged-pipe sound that always means trouble. It wasn't just the vest.
The radio hissed again, someone shouting my callsign. The sound came as if from underwater. I smiled. Not the victorious smile of a man who'd completed the mission. The half-smile of someone who knows it's over. There's a particular kind of peace in realizing there's nothing left to fix.
My body was getting heavy. My legs didn't remember how to stand. The sound of rain mixed with the distant echo of gunfire and, for some ridiculous reason, my mind decided to remember one thing: I never finished rereading A Dance with Dragons. The book was still open on my desk, a yellow marker stuck on a chapter I'd always liked for reasons I couldn't explain.
"Perfect… I get to die without finding out how old George planned to screw the Targaryens even more."
It was funny, in a bitter way. Men, bad decisions, good stories. I closed my eyes. Breathing turned into a bureaucratic process. Each blink pulled me deeper into the dark, like an elevator descending far too slowly to a basement without a number.
And then… silence.
No divine light. No angelic choir. No highlight reel of my "greatest hits" — thankfully. Just crushing pressure, suffocating heat, and… screaming.
Not combat screaming.Screaming… from childbirth.
...
The first thing I saw was too much light. Not the "tunnel light" they talk about. This one was yellowish, flickering, spilling from torches that blew smoke in my face — not that I was tall enough to thank them. The ceiling was stone. Gray. Cold. Stained with moisture that looked like maps of countries that never existed. The light danced on the walls, making the shadows seem larger than they were.
And I was… small. Very small. Every fiber of my body screamed that. A sticky heat clung to me, and the air reeked of blood, sweat, and damp hay. My blurry vision caught shapes: sweaty faces, rough hands, thick wool fabric, poorly cured leather. Someone was breathing far too close. Someone else was fighting to stay conscious.
A woman's voice, hoarse from effort, cut through the buzzing in the room:"He's not crying."
Of course I'm not, milady. I'm a bit busy processing the fact that I've just been reincarnated.
The words didn't come out, obviously, but that's what I thought. Another voice, farther away, answered in a dialect my brain hadn't quite tuned into yet. There was a heavier accent there, rougher, shaped by cold winds and harsher winters.
The smell was a mix of people and stone, old iron and wet wool. The heavy clothing, the carved sigil on the far wall — a circle with ancient lines like runes — lit up a memory from my previous life with map-like clarity: Runestone. House Royce. The Vale. High cliffs, wind that cuts the skin, sea hammering against stone, snow insisting even in April. I'd read about it so often it felt like déjà vu.
That said a lot. Rhea Royce. And if memory served, her husband was Daemon Targaryen — not exactly the "stay-at-home" type. The math was simple: I was in Westeros, and I had just been born from a politically convenient marriage with zero romantic investment. Great.
What did that make me? A bastard? No — legitimate, at least on paper and in whispers. Probably unwanted by half the family and under a magnifying glass for the other half. In Westeros, anything that breathes and has a title becomes a conspiracy thesis. Breathing is evidence, the title is proof.
The woman holding me — likely Rhea — wasn't "beautiful" in the lazy sense, but she had presence. Her face was pale and slick with sweat, chestnut hair plastered to her temples, yet her gaze was steady. Not cold — something rarer. She was weighing me up like a craftsman checking the quality of stone — deciding if you could build a keep with it, or if it was just dead weight. The verdict wasn't cruel. No disgust. If there was bitterness, it wasn't aimed at me. I saw something like quiet protectiveness there. Subtle. Almost hidden under exhaustion. But it was there.
Servants bustled, whispering. The words came in waves, breaking and fading: "dragon's blood," "heir," "eyes." One got too close, and Rhea only needed a single look to send her stepping back. No raised voice. Some people command without noise.
I was cleaned with a warm — or "warm enough" — cloth and wrapped in rough wool, itchy enough to remind me that life here didn't come with comfort as a default. My crib was solid wood, old, edges worn down, carved with leaves and lines whose meaning had probably been forgotten centuries ago. It smelled of oil and ash. Beside it, a small brazier pretended to fight off the cold. It was losing.
My body was small, fragile, utterly dependent. My mind… wasn't. There was a grown man looking out from behind newborn eyes. The trick would be teaching the body that the brain was still in charge. Not on the outside — that would take years — but on the inside. My goal was simple: live long enough for the rest of the world to notice I'd arrived.
I spent the next stretch of time — minutes? hours? — doing what I do best: observing. The voices fell like rain on tile, but each drop had a shade in tone that, put together, told a story. The older maid called Rhea "my lady" with genuine respect; the younger one, with fear. The maester — I could smell the herbs before I even saw him — insisted her bleeding was under control and she needed to rest. Rhea thanked him with a curt nod, the kind that agrees and rewrites the order in the same breath.
I didn't cry. Not because I was some prodigy, but because I saw no immediate use for it — and I wanted to see how people reacted to my silence. The result was interesting: it drew more attention than a scream would have. People stared. Whispered. Respect and superstition often walk hand in hand when it comes to a child who refuses to wail at birth.
I gave myself the luxury of remembering the old world for a moment. Hospital lights too white for someone leaving. Vest weight too heavy for someone entering. People I loved in my own way, women I understood better in the body than in words, promises I didn't make because I saw no point in owing time a debt. Life had been an honest collection of imperfect choices. Now I was somewhere that turned imperfections into formal accusations. Westeros doesn't forgive misunderstandings — it gives them names, sigils, and heirs.
The door creaked, a tired, long sound. A draft carried in the smell of the hall: wet stone, torch smoke, leather. A midwife came in, likely to take over the watch. Middle-aged, strong hands, the kind of face that laughs only after the work is done. She picked me up with no pity — just practiced hands. My body fit her arm's curve like she'd held dozens of newborns, all still breathing afterward.
"Quiet little thing," she whispered, almost afraid of chasing away whatever good had finally happened in this house.
Rhea watched her with a softness she hadn't shown anyone else. There was an old alliance there, the kind that can't be bought — only earned over years. For a second, I thought the midwife might say my name. She didn't. Just "him." That was enough for now. Names are social tools. I'd figure out the system first.
One by one, the room emptied. The maester left to write notes no one would read. The servants carried off the bloody cloths and bowls. The brazier spit one last spark and gave up on the idea of winning the cold. Rhea leaned back against the bed, eyes on the ceiling only briefly before turning them back to me. Then came something books like to romanticize, but I'll keep simple: she reached out and touched my chest lightly, fingertips pressing just enough to feel my heartbeat.
"Strong," she murmured.
Not praise. Assessment. And in the right mouth, assessment is a rare kind of affection.
I pretended to sleep. The room told its own stories — hunting tapestries, game and hounds, not art so much as proof of self-reliance. Knife marks on the edge of a chest, where someone once decided it was the best cutting board available. A small bench worn at the edges, clearly for a child learning to tie their own boots. Old keeps like this store memory in details lords forget to see.
I had time. No big moves before twelve — that was the rule I'd set for myself. But influence doesn't require age; it requires attention. Practical ideas from my world could quietly take root here, and habits move armies without fanfare.
I thought of boiled water. Of hanging clean cloth far from smoke. Of checking drafts before lighting more torches. Of moving the crib away from the outer wall when northern winds blew. Little things no one would clap for, but that cut infant mortality like a sharp blade through poor mail.
Fatigue pulled at me. Biology wins over pride. I heard the last shift of wool and leather as the midwife laid me back down. The crib rocked just enough to tell my nervous system the world hadn't ended.
Before I drifted off, I did something I hadn't in the hospital, in the corridor, or during the fall: I felt grateful. Not to anyone in particular — no new religion acquired during birth — but to the simple fact that there was continuity. Life hadn't ended; it had changed maps. And I've always been good with maps.
...
When I woke — hours later, or days, time is meaningless to a newborn — the world was almost the same. Almost is important. The brazier had been fed. The door was barred from the inside. A tray held a jar that smelled of herbs and honest effort. And Rhea, still pale but more grounded in her body, wore another face now — the one of a woman who'd already weighed the cost and decided to walk through it anyway.
I saw the exact moment she tried to smile. Not at me. At herself. As if to say, "I didn't die," and file that on the top shelf, where things don't need to be said to be true.
When she took me in her arms again, I felt the instinctive adjustment of her body, the way her hand supported my head without needing to think about it. I didn't think of it as "mother and child" in the watercolor sense. I thought of it as a duo — the first alliance anyone learns: you breathe; I watch. You sleep; I listen. You grow; I teach. In Westeros, they pretend blood is the core of this. It isn't. It's the unspoken deal two bodies make when they decide to outlast a winter together.
The hallway murmurs had changed pace. Someone mentioned Lord Yohn. Another spoke of messengers and the Gates of the Moon. The larger world was knocking, disguised as names I knew from maps and family trees. It was far too soon for outside interest to start sniffing around. That suited me. The longer I stayed in Runestone's shadows, the more solid my footing would be when I finally stepped into the winds of court.
Still no name. That nagged more than I'd admit. Pronouns are too broad — they fit any story. A name pins down the outline, gives a headline to the portrait. I'd get mine. But not yet. And honestly, it was better this way. While I remained nameless, I could be anything silence would allow.
The midwife took me to the fire for a while, and the real warmth reminded my skin what "alive" felt like when it meant it. In the old world, heat came with the smell of electricity and modern habits. Here, heat was born in the friction of old things: wood, iron, wool, breath. The body learns the fire's language quickly when there are no switches.
The door creaked again. A man entered. Not Daemon — there was no natural theater in him, no sense that his name arrived a second before he did. This was a Royce. Years of the Vale in his posture. He looked at me with the wary respect reserved for inherited blades — useful, but just as capable of cutting the owner. He spoke to Rhea in a tone lower than rank demanded. Another clue: loyalty that doesn't need volume.
I caught fragments. Rook's Rest. Gulltown. The map in my head lit up like a constellation, points connected by routes the sea allowed only on its best days. It made me want to laugh again — not at a joke, but at the luxury. Laughing is a privilege when the air doesn't weigh on you.
I was set back in the crib. The ceiling greeted me with the same gray gravity. Torches whispered in a language the walls understood. And somewhere between those sounds, the castle breathed. Old places do that — shift their stones for the arrival of someone who will leave them just a little more tired by the end.
I thought… of women. Not in the absurd sense of desire from a newborn's body — my mind has a sense of humor, not insanity — but in the way the body speaks a language words often fail to match. I've always read people better through touch than through speeches. I've always chosen loyalties through what hands and eyes told me when mouths forgot their script. That wouldn't change. If anything, it would become more dangerous. Westeros loves to turn desire into an accusation. I'd have to dance that one like a blade.
The room quieted. The wind eased. Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Rhea drifted off sitting upright for a few minutes, head tilted to the side, her hand still reaching toward the crib. The midwife covered her with sheepskin without asking. For a rare moment, the world fit inside a single unhurried breath.
I didn't pray. I didn't make promises. I didn't ask for anything. I just aligned what I knew with what I had, and gave myself one small goal — the first step of any honest restart: observe without being observed. The rest would come the way it always had — slowly to those watching, fast to those deciding.
I closed my eyes.
In my world, I'd faced men armed to the teeth.Here… I'd face dragons, kings, and lords.And honestly? The difference between them was smaller than they like to sing about.
The game started the moment I took my second breath.The first was biology.The second… was mine.