The world was a disorienting, rhythmic jolt.
He was moving fast. The stocky guard, the one Elara had called Garret, held him pinned to his chest, one massive arm under his back, the other beneath his knees.
His head was locked in place, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. It was a blur of black, vaulted stone, racing by in the dark. The only light came from distant, flickering torches, set in iron sconces high on the walls. Their weak, greasy flames cast long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping, skeletal fingers.
The air was frigid, the same penetrating, damp chill of the courtyard. It was a tomb, this place. An endless, branching corridor of pure, dark stone.
The sound was a hollow, echoing percussion. Garret's heavy, booted steps, thud, thud, thud, a frantic, pounding rhythm. And somewhere ahead, the lighter, quicker footfalls of the other one.
'Kael.'
He was a prisoner in this body, a spectator to his own rescue, but his mind was, as always, working. It was latching onto details. Kael. Garret. Elara. Names. Data. Anchors in this new, impossible, ocean of madness.
They passed other figures.
He couldn't turn his head to see them, only caught glimpses in his peripheral vision. Pale, ghostly blurs pressed flat against the stone walls. Servants, their faces white, their eyes wide and round in the gloom.
He heard their whispers, a faint, sibilant hiss that followed them, lost in the echo of the running feet. The sound of panic.
'This isn't just concern.'
The fear he saw on Elara's face, the terrified, hushed awe of these hall-shadows... it was more than just worry for a child.
It was dread.
This boy, this vessel he had been forced to inhabit, was important. His near-death was not just a tragedy; it was a calamity. The implications of that... of the power this child's family must wield... sent a new, different chill through him, one that had nothing to do with the ice.
The frantic run stopped.
He was pitched forward as Garret skidded to a halt, his body braced. Ahead, Kael was already at a door. It was not like the small, rough-planked doors he imagined servants used. This was a heavy, imposing barrier of dark, banded oak.
Kael didn't knock. He didn't pause. He grabbed the thick, iron ring-pull and hauled the massive door open.
A wave of heat slammed into him.
It was a physical, shocking assault. It was a suffocating, dry blast, the complete, violent opposite of the tomb-like corridors. The air, which had been thin and sharp and wet, was now thick, hot, and heavy.
Garret didn't hesitate, rushing through the doorway, into the furnace.
The door boomed shut behind them, the sound final, sealing them in.
The room was hot. Not just warm, but hot. It was dry and smoky. The air was thick with a dozen new, sharp, and conflicting scents. There was the smell of dry, burning wood, and the pleasant, aromatic scent of... dried herbs.
A profound, involuntary, internal sigh of relief shuddered through him. It wasn't a thought; it was a physical, bodily reaction—the warmth.
The impossible, penetrating chill in his bones, the one that had held him paralysed, the one that had been his death... it finally met an enemy.
He was, for the first time since opening his eyes in this new, terrible world, not actively freezing to death.
His gaze, the only thing he could control, scanned the new room.
The source of the heat was obvious. A massive, roaring fireplace, built of the same black stone as the keep, took up most of the far wall. It was a furnace, a gaping, orange-yellow maw, its flames casting a wild, flickering, and unsteady light over everything.
'It's a hospital.'
The thought came immediately. No. He corrected it. The room was too small, too crude. The tools...
'An infirmary. That's the word.'
His eyes, adjusting to the hellish, flickering light, took in the details. The walls were lined with rough, wooden shelves, and they were packed. Dozens of ceramic jars, all sealed with wax.
A young woman, another servant by her plain, woollen dress, rushed toward them from a shadowy corner of the room. Her hands were fluttering, her face pale with a nervous, anxious energy.
"He... should I...?" she started, her voice thin.
Garret didn't even look at her.
He moved past her with a singular, focused purpose, his heavy boots thudding on the wooden floorboards. He walked straight to one of several crude, wooden cots that lined the wall opposite the fire, and with a surprising, almost impossible gentleness, placed him on the scratchy, dry blanket.
The blanket was rough. The coarse, dry wool scraped painfully against the sodden, freezing linen of his nightshirt, an abrasive, itching friction against his skin.
But it was dry. And it was warm.
'I can... see.'
His gaze, heavy and slow, drifted from his own small, bare feet. He could see the room. He could see them.
Kael, the leaner one, the one with the quicker, fluid movements, had cornered the servant girl. The young woman who had been in the room when they arrived.
She looked, to his detached, weary gaze, just like Elara—pale, terrified, and hopelessly out of her depth.
Kael was speaking to her. His voice was a low, urgent, rapid hiss. The words were too quiet for his new, small ears to make out over the roar of the fire, but the intent... the intent was perfectly, terrifyingly clear.
He was explaining.
Thomas watched the girl.
This was a familiar, ugly scene. An expert delivering a technical, horrifying brief to an unprepared, untrained civilian. He had watched detectives do it a hundred times, their voices flat, their eyes dead, as they destroyed someone's world with a few, simple, clinical facts.
The girl's face was a canvas of dawning, escalating horror.
Her eyes, already wide with a nervous energy, seemed to unhitch, going impossibly wider. Her pale skin, already pasty in the flickering, hellish firelight, drained of all remaining colour, becoming a waxy, translucent, deathly white.
The girl's hand, chapped and red like Elara's, flew to her mouth. It was a classic, theatrical gesture of profound, unmanageable shock, but this was no performance.
She made a small, choked, wet sound—a squeak of pure, animal terror.
Then she bolted.
She didn't ask permission. She didn't curtsy. She didn't make a single, deferent move. She just turned and fled, her soft, worn shoes pounding, desperate, on the wooden floor. She yanked the heavy, oaken door open—it was, apparently, not as heavy as it looked—and vanished into the cold, dark hall.
He heard her voice, high-pitched and hysterical, screaming, her cries echoing back into the warm room.
"Maester Vorin! Maester Vorin, quickly! It's... please, you must...!"
The heavy door boomed shut, its final, solid thud plunging the room back into a heavy, oppressive silence.
The only sounds left were the crackle and roar of the fire, and the low, worried, rumbling tones of the two guards.
'Maester Vorin.'
The name filed itself away.
Thomas, or whatever he was now, whatever this small, broken, boy-thing was... he tried to take stock. He was still a spectator, still a prisoner, but he was a living one.
'I feel... fine.'
It was a strange, indifferent, and utterly absurd assessment. The word fine was a mockery. A joke. He had been murdered. He had been pushed, sent, and stolen. He had drowned in a new world, in a new, small, weak body.
But... physically...
'I'm not... dying. Not anymore.'
The penetrating, bone-deep, cellular chill was still there. It was a frozen core, a lump of glacial ice, settled deep in his marrow. But the furnace-like heat of this room, this primitive, smoky, glorious room... it was fighting back.
It was a war. And for the first time, the heat was winning.
He could feel it. A faint, distant, and utterly agonising tingle. Pins and needles. It was a high, thin, screaming sensation, starting in his fingertips and his toes.
He was thawing.
'I'll live.'
The realisation was not a comfort. It was a sentence. Life... this life... was a new, unknown, and infinitely more complex prison than the death he had been promised.
He looked at the two guards. They had moved and were now standing near the foot of his cot, their broad, leather-clad backs to the fire. They were speaking in low, worried, guttural tones, their strange, harsh language impossible to parse when he wasn't being directly spoken to.
Their panic... it seemed... disproportionate.
'It's the title.'
He remembered Elara's voice, her terrified, cracked plea. 'Young Master.'
He was, in this new, brutal, medieval world... nobility.
This frantic, panicked, over-the-top reaction... this yelling, this running, this terror... it wasn't for a boy. It was for an heir.
It was the better-safe-than-sorry protocol. And in a world like this, a world of stone, and steel, and primitive, sharp-looking tools... he had a feeling the sorry part was catastrophic.
'Probably... means losing your own head.'
The warmth was a drug.
The roaring of the fire, which had been a comfort, was now a heavy, droning, white noise. The dry, herbal, and acidic air, which had been sharp and grounding, was now... an anesthetic.
His thoughts, which had been racing, sharp and bright with adrenaline and cold, now felt... heavy. They were slow.
His new eyelids, the eyelids of this boy, were impossibly weighted. He could feel the darkness at the edges of his vision creeping in, a soft, comfortable, black vignette.
He was so... tired.
His mind, his last defence, tried to fight it. It tried to replay the sequence to find the pattern and solve the problem.
The train station. The rain.
The push.
Her smile. Her words.
The light. The roar. The end.
Then... the cold. The black, suffocating, stone-flavoured water. The ice. The choking. The pain of his first, burning breath.
He had been through... too much. He had no strength left. He couldn't analyse. He couldn't profile. He couldn't think anymore.
He just wanted... to... stop.
To rest.
'It... wouldn't hurt.'
The thought was a slow, seductive, syrupy whisper in his skull.
'To close... my eyes. Just... for a second...'
He gave in. He let the heavy, dark, warm curtain fall.
The world went black.
But... not completely.
Through the sliver of his eyelashes, in the last, fading, fractured moment of his consciousness, his gaze locked on the two guards.
Kael and Garret.
They were standing side by side, directly over his cot, two massive, looming shadows against the flickering, orange-yellow fire. They were staring down at him.
And the look... the look on their faces...
He saw the worry. That was plain. He saw the panic, the frantic subordinate's panic. That was obvious.
But there was... something else.
Something more profound, and colder, and far more telling.
It was fear.
It was not the frantic panic of a subordinate who has made a terrible mistake. It was a cold, profound, personal dread. They were looking at him, at this small, drowned, half-frozen boy... and they were, themselves, afraid.
Sleep, heavy, absolute, and suffocating, took him.
...
He wanted the void.
He craved the black, empty, dreamless nothingness he had felt in the well, the peaceful, silent end that he had been cheated of.
A dream... an absolute, typical, nonsensical dream... would have been a wishful, childish fantasy.
Instead... he got this.
The transition was instantaneous. It was a snap. There was no fade, no gentle, drowsy shift. One second, he was a small, broken, boy-heir, falling into a black, exhausted sleep in a hot, smoky, primitive room.
The next... he was sitting.
And his body was... wrong.
It was his.
His old body.
He felt... tall. His limbs were long. He could feel the familiar, worn, soft cotton of his old sweatshirt, the rougher, heavier denim of his jeans.
He knew, with a sinking, cold, and absolute certainty, that what he was seeing wasn't real.
This was not a memory. This was a nightmare. Or something far, far worse.
He was seated at a large, polished, dark oak table.
The air smelled of old paper, lemon-scented floor wax, and the faint, stale, acidic tang of cheap coffee.
It was the library.
His university library. The main reading room. A place he hadn't thought of, not once, in almost a decade. It was quiet, bathed in the soft, warm, dusty light of a late afternoon, the sun filtering through the tall, arched windows.
He could see other people.
Students. They moved by in the aisles, their faces blurred, their forms indistinct, their movements silent and jerky, like ghosts on a corrupted loop of film. They selected books from the towering, dark-wood shelves.
He knew, with the same, leaden, and crushing certainty, that he could not speak to them. He was an observer. He was a prisoner in his own, false, forgotten memory.
He looked down.
In front of him, on the polished, reflective wood, was a book. It was ancient, bound in dark, cracked, black leather. It was open to a specific page.
The page was covered in script. He leaned in, his eyes, his old eyes, trying to focus.
The letters... they were wrong.
They looked like English. He could see the shapes of As, Ts, and Es. But as he tried to read a single word, to find a single, solid, piece of meaning... the letters themselves... they swam.
They blurred. They twisted. They writhed on the page, like small, black, dying insects. They dissolved, re-formed, and dissolved again, becoming meaningless, incoherent, maddening sigils.
It was a message he could not read—a puzzle he could not solve.
'What... what is this?'
A gentle, physical tap on his right shoulder.
He froze.
His entire body, his real body, his old body... it locked.
The blood in his veins, which had been warm and flowing, turned to the familiar, terrible, and impossible ice.
He knew that touch.
He knew that chill.
Then... the voice.
It was a melody. Clear, articulate, elegant, and laced with a bright, cutting, and utterly impossible amusement. It was right next to his ear, an intimate, sibilant, penetrating whisper.
"Excuse me..."
His breath caught in his throat.
He heard a soft, feminine rustle of movement, a presence, as real as the table in front of him, shifting in the air.
A hand appeared in his peripheral vision.
It wasn't pointing at him.
It pointed, a single, elegant, index finger, to the empty, wooden chair directly across the table.
"...is this seat taken?"