Jon
The ship's deck rolled gently beneath Jon's feet as Volantis disappeared into the morning haze behind them. For the first time since fleeing Winterfell, he felt something dangerously close to peace. Beside him, Kerys—Alya, she'd whispered last night, my real name was Alya—stood watching dolphins race alongside their vessel, and she was actually smiling.
"We did it," she said, wonder in her voice. "We're free."
"You are. You're going to Braavos."
She turned to him, and Jon was struck by how different she looked when not terrified. Younger, though still aged by what she'd endured. "Not yet. I'll travel with you to Qarth. Make sure you're safe."
"You don't have to—"
"You saved my life. Let me help you survive yours." She bumped his shoulder gently. "Besides, someone needs to teach you how to fight dirty. Those breathing tricks won't always save you."
Jon wanted to protest, but the warmth in her eyes stopped him. When had anyone last looked at him without fear or calculation? Not since Robb, that last night in Winterfell.
"Alright," he said. "To Qarth, then."
They spent the morning training on the forecastle while other passengers gave them space. Alya showed him where to strike to disable rather than kill—the hollow behind the knee, the soft spot beneath the ribs, and the nerve cluster at the base of the skull.
"Your techniques make you fast," she said, circling him with a practice knife. "But fast doesn't mean invincible. Someone who knows what they're doing, someone who's prepared—they could take you."
"Like who?"
She moved, and suddenly her wooden blade was at his throat. "Like anyone who's survived as long as I have."
Jon laughed—actually laughed—and knocked her blade away. "Show me again."
Seven days out from Volantis, they made port at Yunkai. Jon had argued for sailing straight through to Qarth, but the captain needed supplies, and the ship's water barrels had developed a leak.
"One night," the captain promised. "We sail with the morning tide."
The city reeked before they even reached the dock—sweat and waste and something else, something that made Jon's enhanced senses recoil. Fear, he realized. The entire city stank of fear.
"I hate this place already," Alya muttered, pressing closer to him as they descended the gangplank.
Yellow brick pyramids rose above the city like diseased teeth, and in their shadows sprawled the markets. Not goods or foods, but people. Hundreds of them, chained and collared, standing on blocks while buyers prodded their muscles and peered at their teeth.
Jon's rage was a living thing, clawing at his chest. A child no older than five was being torn from her mother's arms, both screaming, and sold to different buyers.
"Don't." Alya grabbed his arm before he could move. "You can't save them all."
"But—"
"I know. But stay alive first. Then fight."
They'd made it three streets from the harbor when the trap sprung.
Vakkos
The alley had been chosen with care. Narrow enough that the boy's speed would be hampered. Far enough from main streets that screams wouldn't draw attention. Close enough to the harbor that they could be dragged to a ship quickly if needed.
Vakkos had spent considerable gold to arrange this moment. Informants in Volantis, on the ship, and in Yunkai itself. All to catch the child who'd murdered his brother.
"Run, Jon!" The woman—Kerys, though Vakkos knew that wasn't her real name—already had a knife in her hand.
"No running," Vakkos said calmly. "We've watched you for weeks. Planned this."
The boy tried to use his unnatural speed, that impossible quickness that had let him kill Maelor. But Vakkos had hired a water dancer from Braavos specifically to counter it. The bravo moved in a blur of his own, catching the boy mid-motion and slamming him into the alley wall.
The woman fought viciously—she killed Gavos with a throat strike before three men subdued her. Impressive, but futile.
"Let her go," the boy gasped from where the bravo held him. "I'm the one you want."
"Noble. But she's complicit. She fled, my brother. Both of you pay."
"I owe him nothing!" The woman spat blood. "I was PROPERTY!"
"Yes," Vakkos agreed. "And property that destroys property is destroyed. It's logical."
He studied the boy—Jon Snow, he'd learned. A bastard from the North who'd somehow crossed half the world, leaving bodies in his wake. Just a child, really. But children could be rabid dogs too, and rabid dogs were put down.
"Bring them," he ordered. "The Wise Masters have already agreed to a public example."
The Cross
They erected the crosses in the Square of Punishment just after dawn, when the crowds would be thick with slaves being marched to their day's labor. Examples were most effective with the largest audience.
Jon had screamed himself hoarse during the night, beating his small fists bloody against the cell bars. Now, dragged into the square, he'd gone quiet with a horror too large for sound.
"This woman fled her lawful master," Vakkos announced in Ghiscari, then repeated in the Common Tongue for the boy's benefit. "She was aided by this Westerosi savage who murdered my brother. Justice demands blood. The Wise Masters agree."
They crucified Alya first.
The historical accuracy of it would have interested Marcus's memories if Jon had been capable of thought. Not through the palms—that wouldn't hold weight. Through the wrists, between the bones. The Romans had perfected the technique.
Alya screamed once when the first nail went in. Then she went silent, her body entering shock. They hauled her up, and she hung there, already struggling to breathe as her weight pulled against her pierced wrists.
"STOP!" Jon's voice broke. "Kill me! NOT HER!"
"You'll watch," Vakkos said. "You'll understand the cost of your arrogance."
Jon erupted. The Thunder Breathing technique flooded his child's body with impossible strength, and he tore free from two guards. He'd crossed half the distance to the cross when the spear took him in the side—not deep enough to kill, but enough to drop him.
He lay in the dust, his blood mixing with the packed earth, and watched Alya die by degrees.
It took three hours. Three hours of her body sagging, lungs unable to expand, forcing herself up on pierced wrists to grab each breath. The crowd thinned as the spectacle became mere endurance. But Jon watched every moment, even when the guards tried to turn his head away.
Near the end, her eyes found his.
"Not... your fault..." The words were barely a breath, but Jon's enhanced hearing caught them. "Jon Snow. Be... free."
She died with the noon sun overhead, her body finally unable to fight for another breath.
"ALYA!" Jon screamed her true name to the uncaring sky. "ALYA, NO!"
Vakkos knelt beside him. "Now you understand. Actions have consequences. You wanted to be a hero? Heroes get people killed."
"Kill me," Jon whispered.
"No. You'll live. As a slave. You wanted to free slaves? Become one first. Learn what you were trying to destroy."
The Brand
Grazdan mo Yunkai was not a cruel master by Ghiscari standards. He didn't beat slaves for pleasure, didn't take the young ones to his bed, and didn't work them to death for sport. He was a businessman, and damaged goods sold poorly.
The Westerosi boy, though—a gift from that Myrish merchant—was interesting.
"Pretty features," he mused, examining the child. "Could be trained for bed service. The Qartheen like exotic."
The boy exploded into motion at that, trying to fight despite his wounds. It took four guards to subdue him, and one would need stitches after.
"Spirited," Grazdan noted. "That can be trained out. Brand him."
The iron was a work of art, really. Grazdan's personal sigil—a harpy clutching coins. It would mark the boy as property, valuable property, for the rest of his life.
They had to hold the child down, one guard on each limb. The iron hissed against the flesh of his left shoulder blade. The boy screamed—a sound that echoed off the compound walls—and the smell of burning meat filled the air.
Then, mercifully for him if not for Grazdan's purposes, he fainted.
"Take him to the training cells," Grazdan ordered. "Put him with Dhara. She's good with the difficult ones."
Dhara
The boy woke slowly, whimpering before his eyes opened. Dhara had seen enough new slaves to recognize the stages—confusion, denial, rage, despair, and finally, if they were lucky, acceptance.
"You're awake. Good. Thought you'd die from shock."
His grey eyes focused on her. "Where...?"
"Master Grazdan's compound. Training facility." She kept her voice neutral. "You're a slave now."
She watched him process the knowledge and saw the moment his mind simply refused to accept it. He curled into a ball and said nothing more for two days.
Dhara kept him alive anyway. She'd been where he was—that first terrible realization that you were property, that your body wasn't yours, that your life had become a thing owned by another. She spooned water between his cracked lips and forced small bits of bread into his mouth.
On the third day, he spoke: "Why did you come back?"
"What?"
"The guard said you were freed. You came back. Why?"
Dhara studied this strange boy who'd been tortured and branded but still had enough mind to question. "Because freedom meant starvation. The streets of Qarth: no work, no food, no shelter. Here, I'm owned but alive."
"Better to die than—"
"Is it?" She cut him off. "I was dying slowly, begging for scraps, selling my body for bread that might be moldy. Here I have food, shelter, and purpose."
"You're not alive. You're just surviving."
"And what were you doing, little warrior? Before this?"
"I was FREE."
"Were you? Running from place to place, one step from capture or death? How is that freedom?"
The boy flinched. "I fought slavers. Killed one."
"And did it free anyone? Did your friend's death mean anything?"
He curled in on himself again, but she pressed on. Sometimes the kindest cut was the deepest.
"She died because you thought yourself a hero. How many others died for your righteousness?"
"I tried to help."
"You tried to feel righteous. There's a difference." She softened her voice. "You want to free slaves? Get power first. Real power. An army, gold, influence. Killing one slaver, freeing one woman—that's nothing. The system continues."
"So I should do nothing?"
"No. Do something that matters. Not grand gestures that get people killed."
He looked at her with eyes too old for his face. "Like you? Accept chains?"
"I accept reality. When you're powerful enough to change reality, then act. Until then, survive."
Days into Nights
Time ceased to have meaning in Grazdan's compound. Jon woke when water was thrown on him, ate whatever gruel was provided, endured whatever training or punishment the day brought, and collapsed into exhausted sleep that brought only nightmares.
Day twelve: he refused an order to kneel. They whipped him—ten lashes that left his back a ruin of split skin.
Day eighteen: he tried to escape, using Thunder Breathing to reach the wall. They caught him immediately—the compound was designed to prevent exactly such attempts. They broke two fingers on his right hand as punishment. They healed crookedly.
Day twenty-three: he collapsed during training. They denied him food for two days.
Day thirty: they made him watch as another slave was beaten to death for stealing bread. The boy had been perhaps nine years old.
Day thirty-eight: Jon stopped speaking entirely.
The worst part was how Marcus's memories kept invading his own. He'd dream of being tortured in the Demon Slayer world, of watching comrades die to demons while he stood helpless. He'd wake unsure if he was Jon Snow enslaved in Yunkai or Marcus Chen dying again and again across different worlds.
Am I Jon, who has Marcus's memories? He wandered in the dark of the cell. Or Marcus, who thinks he's Jon? Or just meat in chains, dreaming it was ever anything else?
Dhara kept him functional, sharing her food when he couldn't eat and cleaning his wounds when they festered.
"You think you're special," she told him one night. "You're not. You're just another body. We all are."
She was right, Jon knew. He wasn't special. He was nothing. Just breathing meat that used to have a name.
The Red Priest
On the fiftieth day of Jon's captivity, Moqorro came to bless the compound.
Jon barely looked up when the slaves were gathered in the courtyard. Red priests sometimes came to sanctify the training houses, blessing the slaves to be obedient and the masters to be prosperous. It was obscene, but Jon had lost the capacity for outrage weeks ago.
Then the priest stopped directly in front of him.
"You burn wrongly," Moqorro whispered.
Jon looked up, confused. The priest was tall and dark-skinned with flames tattooed across his face. His eyes held depths that reminded Jon of the braziers in Winterfell's great hall.
"Two flames in one vessel," Moqorro continued. "The dead man's fire and the boy's ice. Impossible."
"Who are you?" Jon's voice was rusty from disuse.
"Moqorro, priest of R'hllor. I see truth in flames. And you... you are an abomination."
The word should have hurt, but Jon was beyond hurt. "What do you want?"
"Nothing. But the Lord of Light shows me things. I saw you months ago, across the sea. The flames showed two paths." Moqorro's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "First: you become the storm. Lightning clothed in flesh. Cities burn. Empires fall. You break the world."
Jon waited.
"Second: the world breaks you. You die screaming, forgotten, chains rusted into your bones."
"Which happens?"
"You choose. Every moment, you choose."
Grazdan approached, nervous around the holy man. "Priest, this slave gives us trouble."
Moqorro didn't look away from Jon. "This slave is cursed. I see demons in him."
Grazdan paled. "Cursed?"
"Haunted by the dead. You should sell him before the curse spreads."
As quickly as that, Jon's fate changed. Grazdan, deeply superstitious like most who dealt in human misery, would have him sold within the week.
"Help me escape," Jon whispered as Moqorro turned to go.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because this suffering is your forge. You will be steel, or you will shatter. Either way, R'hllor's will be done."
The priest walked away, leaving Jon with nothing but prophecies and the promise of more pain.
The Storm
The Qartheen merchant who bought him seemed disappointed by his purchase. Jon stood on the auction block, not responding to prodding or questions, and sold for barely the cost of feeding him.
They loaded him with twelve other slaves bound for Qarth—household servants, bed slaves, and a few fighters for the entertainment pits. Jon was chained in the hold and promptly forgotten about.
For days, he drifted in the space between sleep and waking, between Jon and Marcus, and between living and just breathing. Then the storm hit.
It came from nowhere, a wall of wind and water that sent the ship heeling hard to port. The crew scrambled to save the vessel, forgetting entirely about their cargo below.
Water poured through the grating. The other slaves screamed, pulling at chains as the hold flooded. Jon watched the water rise with detachment. Drowning might be peaceful. Certainly better than—
"Be free."
Alya's last words hit him like lightning. She'd died telling him to be free, and he was about to drown in chains?
"Survive. Learn. Grow."
Dhara's advice was given despite his failure, despite everything.
Jon reached for the Thunder Breathing technique. It hurt—every enhanced breath brought memories of the compound, of whips and chains. But pain was just pain. He'd learned that much.
The chains snapped.
He helped free the others—let them make their own choices—then fought his way to the deck. The storm was magnificent in its violence, with waves as tall as buildings and wind that could flay skin. The crew was too busy to notice escaped slaves.
Jon saw the coastline in flashes of lightning. Not close, but possible.
He jumped.
The sea tried to kill him immediately, tons of water driving him down. But Water Breathing was the first technique Marcus had truly mastered, and even traumatized, even broken, Jon's body remembered. He swam through walls of water, under waves that would have crushed him, breathing in the spaces between catastrophe.
When he finally crawled onto the beach below Qarth's walls, he lay in the sand and laughed. Or cried. He couldn't tell the difference anymore.
Qarth
The guard at the Eagle Gate looked at him with disgust. Jon knew what he saw—a scarred child with a slave brand, whip marks, and crooked fingers. Refuse.
"Who are you?"
"No one," Jon croaked.
"Runaway slave?"
"Escaped."
The guard shrugged. "Qarth accepts no slaves. If you enter, you're free by law. But we don't feed strays."
Jon passed through the gates into a city of marble and gardens, fountains and palaces. He saw none of it. His world had shrunk to the next meal, the next safe place to sleep, and the next breath.
Street children found him collapsed in an alley three nights later. They were nothing like the Canal Rats of Braavos—harder, warier, damaged in ways that had nothing to do with poverty.
"You're new," one said. "Westerosi?"
Jon nodded weakly.
"Come. We'll feed you. For now."
They led him to an abandoned building that might once have been a temple. Other children huddled in corners—escaped slaves, orphans, the unwanted. Jon found a space against a wall and sat, staring at nothing.
When night fell, he examined himself by moonlight. The brand on his shoulder had been burned over but remained visible—a scar in the shape of ownership. His fingers on his right hand bent wrong where they'd been broken. Whip scars made a map of pain across his back.
I left Winterfell to be free, he thought. I've been chained, branded, and broken.
I wanted to matter. I've caused only death.
Marcus's knowledge didn't save me. It made me arrogant.
I'm seven years old. And I've seen more horror than most live lifetimes.
Somewhere to the east, Yi Ti waited beyond the Jade Sea. But why go? What was the point? He'd failed everyone who'd trusted him. Alya was dead because of him. Dhara remained a slave despite his grand gestures. Even Moqorro's god had abandoned him.
But Alya had said, "Be free."
Dhara had said, "Get power."
Moqorro had said, "Choose your path."
Jon didn't know what path he was choosing anymore. He didn't know if he was choosing at all or just being dragged forward by momentum and the inability to stop.
But when dawn broke over Qarth's walls, he stood. His body protested every movement—hunger, wounds, exhaustion. But he stood and walked toward the docks where ships sailed the Jade Sea.
Because the only thing worse than moving forward in pain was stopping in it.
He breathed—Water to steady himself, Thunder to find strength, Beast to sense danger. The techniques hurt now, each one bringing flashbacks of chains and whips. But he breathed anyway.
Because breathing meant living.
And living, even broken, was the only revenge he had left.
Seven years old, Jon Snow had crossed the Summer Sea in chains. He had watched the woman he'd saved die on a cross, been branded like cattle, beaten like a dog, and broken like cheap pottery.
He carried scars now—not just Marcus Chen's memories, but his own wounds. Flesh marked by ownership, fingers that would never straighten, a back that would always remember the whip.
And he carried names: Alya, who died believing in freedom. Dhara, who chose chains and showed him his arrogance. Vakkos, who taught him that actions had consequences. Moqorro, who saw his future and offered nothing but riddles.
Somewhere east, the Golden Empire waited. A place of dragons' bones and demons' jungles. Perhaps there, a broken boy could find purpose.
Or perhaps he'd just find more ways to fail.
Jon didn't know.
But he walked toward the ships anyway, because stopping meant admitting that everyone who'd died—Alya, Maelor, even pieces of himself—had died for nothing.
The sun rose over the Jade Sea, painting the water gold and blood.
Jon Snow—bastard, killer, survivor, slave, free man, broken thing—walked toward it.
Still breathing.
Barely.
But breathing nonetheless.