The rat didn't know it was being watched.
It skittered along the beam in the warehouse rafters, trailing a thin smear of ash on the wood. Below, two men argued over an undercounted shipment. The room smelled of mold, wool, and wine-soaked rot. Neither man noticed the rat's pause above them.
But Alex did.
He wasn't in the room. He was half a district away, sitting cross-legged in the attic of a burned-out brothel, one hand pressed to the head of a second rat — the one he'd started training two days earlier.
His eyes were closed. His focus razor-sharp.
The system whispered in the background.
Beast Mind-Link – Active (1/10)
Connection established: Rodent Class – Urban Common
Visual Relay: Limited
Auditory Range: Moderate
Control Precision: Basic
Distance: Within 1.5 km
Duration: 8 minutes (Level 0)
It was crude. The images came in flashes. Black-and-white outlines. Blurred edges. The sound was clearer — enough to catch fragments of speech. Not enough to eavesdrop perfectly. But enough to gather rhythm.
Tone. Emotion. Tension.
That was what mattered.
Alex had learned to read meaning between words long before he ever arrived in Pentos.
The men below the rat grew louder. One slapped the other. Coins scattered. A threat was made — something about debt, something about the harbor master.
Alex noted the names. The time. The location.
He blinked.
Connection broken.
The rat in his hand jerked and scurried back into the corner. It wasn't hurt. Just drained. So was Alex.
Using Beast Mind-Link still gave him a dull ache behind the eyes — as if part of his mind was being stretched like canvas. But the pain was worth it.
It was data.
And in Pentos, data was currency more valuable than gold.
Two days earlier, he had copied the trait from a traveling beast trainer — a woman with thick arms, a pack of birds in cages, and a bad temper. He'd posed as a boy looking for lost dogs. Touched her sleeve. Paid with a silver stag.
She never knew she'd given him something she'd spent ten years mastering.
Trait Acquired – Beast Mind-Link (Level 0)
Enables temporary remote vision/hearing through animal contact.
Control limited by level and animal intelligence.
Passive communication grows with use.
Can influence basic actions: movement, stillness, alarm response.
Alex spent the next forty-eight hours capturing rats. Not with traps. With food. Cheese. Old fruit. Slow gestures. Gentle hands.
He learned to mark them. To distinguish behavior. One responded to whistling. Another preferred salt.
By the end of the second day, he had five working rodents. Each trained to respond to a different signal. Each tethered to a part of the city where whispers flowed thickest.
Harbor – Wine District – Candle Alley – North Gate – Red Market.Each watched.Each listened.
Alex used the trait once per hour. No more. It hurt otherwise. Too much mental stretch, too soon.
But the results were clear.
By the fifth night, he had a list of:
Five smuggling routes
Three bribed dock officers
Two trade families about to betray their contracts
One Magister's mistress planning blackmail
He wrote nothing down. Stored it all using Echo Memory, now (3/10), and growing sharper with each use.
The city was a maze.But now he had eyes in the walls.
The next stage was flight.
Rats were valuable. But limited. Slow. Grounded.
Alex wanted sky.
He spent three days visiting rooftop bird-cages, city towers, and pigeon breeders. He paid with coin, errands, and a silver ring he stole from a distracted councilor's servant.
By day four, he had two pigeons and one injured raven.
He didn't use Mind-Link on the raven immediately.
He waited.
He fed it. Sat with it. Watched it move. Then touched its wing.
Connection surged.
Beast Mind-Link – Active (6/10)
Connection: Avian Class – Corvus (Raven)
Vision: Extended
Control Precision: Moderate
Flight Sync: Enabled
Duration: 10 minutes
Range: 3 km
Target Marking: Passive scan within visual path
The effect was night and day.
Where rats gave shadows, the raven gave perspective. Height. Movement. Layout.
Alex used the first full session to fly over the merchant quarter. Watched which homes had extra guards. Which rooftops had guards only at night. Which streets the patrols avoided.
From above, the city was predictable.Pentos, for all its chaos, ran in patterns.Now, Alex had the blueprint.
At sunset, he activated his final link for the day.
This time, he perched the raven atop the roof near Silco's estate.
Two men stood on the balcony. One was Silco. The other — a Braavosi, by his clothes. Narrow face. Black gloves.
They spoke in low tones, but the system enhanced the signal. The raven's ears weren't human, but with focus, Alex picked up phrases.
"—Don't trust the northern lines—""—Delayed. Still waiting for that boy—""—He's moved faster than expected. Too fast—"
He smiled.They were talking about him.
By the time the raven returned to its cage, Alex had learned more in one night than most spies in a week.
The next day, he met Tregar again.
"You've been watching Silco's rivals?" Tregar asked without looking up.
"Yes."
"You know Councilor Merin?"
"Pays his guards double. Moves his mistress between three houses. Keeps one servant who reports to a wine guild, not to him."
Tregar's head lifted.
"And you've learned this how?"
Alex only smiled. "Carefully."
Tregar grunted. "You're earning attention. You're earning risk, too."
Alex stayed silent.
"Silco has a problem. A message needs delivering to Lys — but not by raven. By hand. Quietly. You'd go with a merchant crew, under a different name."
"What's the cargo?"
Tregar smirked. "I didn't ask. You don't either."
Alex nodded. "When?"
"Four days. Until then, keep collecting. Quietly."
Alex returned to his candle-lit loft.
The pigeons cooed in their cage. The raven blinked slowly. The rats rustled in the walls.
The Archive of Shadows whispered softly as he reviewed his traits:
Trait Progress:
Beast Mind-Link (7/10)
Echo Memory (4/10)
Keen Smell (2/10)
Tactical Memory (1/10)
Quick Bind (3/10)
Canine Command (2/10)
He wasn't a noble.He wasn't a warrior.He was something else entirely.
A network.
A web of eyes and ears, growing wider each day.
He would not wait to be noticed. He would not wait to be respected.
He would make himself indispensable to the power that ruled Pentos — until one day, he ruled it himself.
Not with titles.With information.
With the right truths delivered to the right people…at the wrong moment.