Scene 1: The Migraine
The first thing he knew was the thirst.
It was not a simple dryness of the throat. It was a geologic event. It felt as though a desert wind had been blowing through his open mouth for a century, turning his tongue into a strip of cracked leather and his throat into a canyon of dust.
He tried to swallow, but there was no moisture to be found. His tongue felt too large for his mouth, a swollen slug of dead weight.
Water, his mind croaked. I need water.
He tried to move his arm to reach for the bedside table—a reflexive muscle memory from a life of reaching for alarm clocks and smartphones.
But the arm didn't move.
Or rather, it didn't move fast. It moved with the slow, terrifying momentum of a falling tree. He felt the shift of weight first—a heavy, dense mass of meat and bone that felt utterly alien. The limb that dragged across the sheets was thick, heavy, and sluggish.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in his chest.
Paralysis? Stroke?
He forced his eyes open.
The world did not greet him. It assaulted him.
Light, gray and merciless, stabbed through a narrow arrow slit in the stone wall. But it wasn't just light. It was... data.
The thoughts weren't his. They were flashes, jagged text scrolling behind his eyelids in a color that didn't exist in nature—a searing, radioactive gold.
He squeezed his eyes shut, a groan tearing itself from his chest. The sound frightened him more than the paralysis. It wasn't his voice. It was a low, guttural rumble, like stones grinding together in a deep cavern. It was the voice of a monster.
"What..." he tried to say, but the word dissolved into a dry cough.
The pain hit him then.
It wasn't a headache. Calling it a headache was like calling a hurricane a draft. It was a railroad spike driven directly into the soft tissue behind his left eye. It was a white-hot drill boring into his frontal lobe.
The text flashed again, searing his mind's eye.
He gasped, his body jerking with a violence that shook the heavy timber frame of the bed. The sensation was overwhelming. He could hear everything. The whistle of the wind outside wasn't just a sound; it was a physical texture, a razor-thin scream slicing against the stone. He could hear the scratching of a rat inside the wall, the heartbeat of a guard standing three rooms away, the creak of leather, the rustle of wool.
It was too much. The inputs were overlapping, screaming over one another, a cacophony of sensory garbage.
Turn it off, he screamed internally. Turn it off!
He rolled onto his side, and the sheer mass of his body nearly carried him off the edge of the mattress. He hit the floor with a thud that shook the room. The cold rush matting bit into his skin—skin that felt too tight, stretched over muscles that twitched with restless, explosive energy.
He retched.
The nausea was absolute. It was the revolt of a body that had consumed too much, felt too much, and was now rejecting its own existence.
He scrambled on hands and knees—hands that were the size of dinner plates, covered in thick black hair—toward the corner of the room where the smell of stale urine lingered. His instincts, borrowed from a beast he didn't know, guided him to the chamber pot.
He gripped the rim of the heavy ceramic pot, his knuckles turning white.
He vomited.
It was a violent, purging exorcism. Sour wine, dark and red as blood, splashed into the pot. Chunks of half-digested venison. The bile burned his throat, searing the dry flesh. He heaved until his ribs ached, until the veins in his neck felt like they were about to burst, until his vision swam with black spots.
And in the darkness of his closed eyes, the memories waited.
They didn't come linearly. They didn't come as a story. They came as shrapnel.
A warhammer, light as a feather in his hand, crunching through the steel breastplate of a Tarly vanguard.
The smell of Lyanna Stark's hair—winter roses and cold rain—and the crushing, suffocating realization that she was looking past him, not at him.
Jon Arryn's face, lined with worry, holding a letter from King's Landing. "He wants your head, boy. He wants both your heads."
The taste of Arbor Gold. The taste of a serving girl's neck. The taste of blood.
The fear.
That was the strongest one. Not the bravery the songs would sing about. The fear. The terrifying, hollow knowledge that he, Robert Baratheon, was a fraud. That he was just a man who liked to hit things, suddenly tasked with toppling a dynasty that had ruled for three hundred years.
I don't want to be King, the voice in his head whined. It was a pathetic, childish voice buried under layers of bravado. I just want her back. I want to kill Rhaegar.
"Stop," the transmigrator gasped, spitting a string of saliva into the pot.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The hand was trembling.
The "Eagle Vision" glitch began to subside, the blinding gold text fading into a dull, throbbing background noise. The hearing dialed back from supernatural to merely hungover.
He sat back on his heels, panting. The cold stone floor seeped through his thin sleeping breeches.
He needed to see. He needed to know.
He used the heavy oak table to pull himself up. The wood groaned under his grip. He felt the power in his shoulders—immense, coiled, hydraulic power. He felt 250 pounds of muscle and bone responding to his commands, sluggish but undeniable.
He stumbled toward the wall where a Myrish silver mirror hung.
He gripped the edges of the frame, staring into the glass.
The horror that washed over him was cold and absolute.
It was a face he knew from fan art. It was a face he knew from descriptions in books he had read a lifetime ago. But seeing it... wearing it... was a violation.
The eyes were blue—Baratheon blue. But they were bloodshot, rimmed with red, swimming in a pool of exhaustion and chemical imbalance. The hair was a thick, unruly mane of coal black, matted with sweat from the night's terrors. The beard was thick, covering a jaw that could seemingly chew through iron.
It was a magnificent face. It was a warrior's face.
And it was terrified.
He watched his own pupils dilate in the reflection. He watched the stranger's lips move as he whispered.
"Robert," he breathed.
The name tasted like ash.
He looked deeper. The "Eagle Vision" flared again, just for a second, a low-battery flicker.
A red outline ghosted over his own reflection in the mirror.
The text vanished, leaving him with a throbbing ache behind his eyes and the visceral reality of the room.
He looked down at his hands again. These were the hands that had killed men. These were the hands that would kill Rhaegar Targaryen on the waters of the Trident.
No, he thought, the modern mind finally wrestling control from the biological panic. I am not him. I am...
He tried to reach for his own name, his true name. David? Michael? Alex?
It was gone.
The realization hit him harder than the migraine. The old file had been overwritten. There was no going back. There was no "logging out."
He was trapped in a meat suit of a man destined to rot on a throne he hated, married to a woman who loathed him, surrounded by vipers who would drain him dry.
He looked at the vomit in the corner. He looked at the empty wine flagon on the floor.
The Drunkard, he thought bitterly. The Whoremonger. The Usurper.
He straightened his spine. A vertebrae cracked—a loud, pistol-shot sound in the quiet room. The pain in his head was receding to a manageable throb. The nausea was fading, replaced by that cavernous thirst.
He wasn't going to die like that. He wasn't going to get fat. He wasn't going to let the Lannisters pick his bones clean.
The horror was still there, lurking in the edges of his vision, a cold shadow. But beneath it, the resolve began to harden. It was the resolve of a man who knew the ending of the story and refused to play his part.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Right," he grunted, the voice sounding a little less like a monster and a little more like a man.
He turned away from the mirror.
Chapter 1: The Drunkard's Mirror
Scene 2: The Empty Vault
The thirst was still there, a nagging drought at the back of his throat, but the panic had calcified into something brittle and sharp. He needed to take stock.
He was Robert Baratheon. Lord of Storm's End. Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. He was one of the most powerful men in Westeros. By all rights, he should have the resources of a small nation at his fingertips.
He turned from the mirror, his heavy boots thudding against the stone floor as he walked toward the solar desk. It was a sturdy piece of Vale oak, scarred by the careless use of daggers and heavy tankards.
Inventory, the modern mind commanded. Assets. Liabilities. Liquidity.
He grabbed the heavy leather belt hanging over the back of the chair. It was fine craftsmanship, the leather supple and dyed a deep onyx, the buckle shaped like a roaring stag in hammered brass.
He hefted it. It felt light. Too light.
He opened the coin pouch attached to the hip.
He upended it over the desk.
Three copper pennies and a button made of bone clattered onto the wood. They spun lazily and settled, mocking him.
He frowned. "That's... not right."
He began to search the room with a frantic energy. He yanked open the drawers of the desk. The wood screeched in protest.
Drawer 1: A pile of crumpled parchment. Sketches of falcons (terrible quality). A dried hawk's foot (why?).
Drawer 2: A dagger with a chipped blade. A half-eaten apple that had begun to rot, filling the drawer with a sweet, sickly scent.
Drawer 3: Papers.
He snatched up the papers. His eyes scanned them, the "Eagle Vision" flickering involuntarily, highlighting numbers in a glowing, ominous red.
I.O.U. – 200 Gold Dragons – The Gambling Den at Gulltown.
Bill of Sale – One destrier, black – Unpaid.
Tab – The Weeping Lady Tavern – 40 Dragons.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered, the modern curse slipping out in the deep baritone of the Storm Lord. "I'm not just broke. I'm in the hole."
He felt a headache blooming again, not the blinding spike of the download, but the dull throb of stress. He needed a professional. He needed someone who knew where the real money was hidden. Surely, a Lord didn't carry his wealth in his pocket. There had to be a chest. A line of credit. Something.
He strode to the heavy wooden door and yanked it open.
"You!" he roared.
The guard outside jumped, his spear rattling against his breastplate. He was a young man in the sky-blue livery of House Arryn, his eyes widening in terror as the massive frame of Robert Baratheon filled the doorway.
"My Lord?" the guard squeaked.
"Get me my steward," Robert growled. "Now."
"Yes, my Lord! At once!" The guard turned and practically sprinted down the corridor.
Robert slammed the door shut and paced the room. Five steps one way, five steps back. He felt like a caged tiger. The energy in this body was restless, a physical hum in his blood that demanded movement, violence, or drink. He fought the urge to smash the desk just to hear the wood splinter.
Control, he told himself. You are not a barbarian. You are a rational actor.
A timid knock came at the door a few minutes later.
"Enter," Robert barked.
The door creaked open, and a thin, balding man shuffled in. He wore the gray woolens of a household retainer, his shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow. He carried a ledger clutched to his chest like a shield.
"My Lord Robert," the man said, bowing low. "You... you summoned me? I trust the wine was to your satisfaction?"
Robert stared at him. He tried to access the memories. Name... what is his name?
Petyr? No. Harys. Harys the Steward.
"Harys," Robert said, his voice level. "Close the door."
The steward obeyed, his hands trembling slightly as he latched the heavy oak. He turned back, eyes darting to the empty wine flagon on the floor, then to Robert's fists.
"I need a status report," Robert said, leaning against the desk, trying to look casual despite the fact that he was wearing sleeping breeches and a sheer layer of cold sweat. "Financial."
Harys blinked. "Financial, my Lord?"
"Gold, Harys. Coin. Funds." Robert waved a massive hand. "I need to leave the Eyrie. I need to rally the banners. How much do we have on hand?"
Harys swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed in his scrawny throat. He licked his lips.
"On... on hand, my Lord?"
"Yes. In the strongbox. In the retinue's chest. Wherever we keep it."
Harys looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He clutched the ledger tighter.
"My Lord... surely you remember?"
"Humor me," Robert said, his voice dropping an octave. The threat was unintentional—a byproduct of the vocal chords—but it was effective.
"Well," Harys squeaked. "We arrived with three hundred dragons from Storm's End two months ago. A generous allowance from the Castellan, Ser Harbert."
"And?"
"And... well..." Harys opened the ledger with shaking fingers. He pointed to a column of ink that was almost entirely red. "The tournament wagers. The new armor you commissioned—the one you didn't like and threw off the Moon Door? The... uh... nightly entertainments in the valleys below?"
Robert felt a pit opening in his stomach. "Get to the bottom line, Harys."
"There is nothing, my Lord."
The silence in the room was deafening. The wind whistled outside, a lonely, mocking sound.
"Nothing?" Robert repeated.
"Technically... less than nothing," Harys whispered, flinching. "We owe the Arryn Master of Horse for your mount's feed. And we owe the wine merchant."
Robert rubbed his temples. "I'm the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. I have an income. Taxes. Port duties from Weeping Town."
"Yes, my Lord!" Harys hastened to agree. "At Storm's End, you are wealthy beyond measure! But here... in the Vale..." He trailed off, gesturing helplessly to the empty room. "Your next allowance is not due to arrive by raven-courier for another three weeks. And even that..."
"Even that?"
"You... you pre-spent it, my Lord."
Robert froze. "I what?"
"Last week," Harys whispered, his voice barely audible. "When the shipment of Arbor Red arrived. The vintage from 280 AC. You said it was 'nectar of the Gods' and you bought the entire cart. You signed a promissory note against the next two months' allowance."
Robert stared at the steward. He looked at the empty flagon on the floor.
He had drunk a war chest.
He had pissed away an army.
The absurdity of it threatened to make him laugh, but the laughter curdled into a cold, hard knot of dread. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a strategy simulation where you started with a set amount of resources.
He was in enemy territory—well, neutral territory that was rapidly becoming a war zone. The Mad King had called for his head. The royalist forces in the Vale, centered at Gulltown under Marq Grafton, would block the ports.
He couldn't buy passage on a ship. He couldn't bribe his way through a blockade. He couldn't even buy a fresh horse if his current one threw a shoe.
"Wars are bought," he whispered to himself, the realization settling on him like a lead shroud. "Not fought."
He looked at Harys. The little man was terrified, waiting for the explosion. Waiting for the drunkard to lash out.
Robert took a deep breath. The air was cold in his lungs.
"Harys," Robert said.
"Y-yes, my Lord?"
"Get out."
Harys didn't need to be told twice. He bowed so fast he nearly headbutted the floor and scrambled out the door, clutching his ledger like a lifeline.
Robert stood alone in the silence.
He walked to the window. Far below, the world looked like a toy set. Small. Manageable. But down there, men were sharpening swords. Down there, Marq Grafton was likely already receiving ravens from King's Landing.
He had no gold. He had no army. He had a hangover and a reputation for being a brute.
He looked at his hands again.
The Warrior, they called him. The Demon.
Fat lot of good that did him against compound interest.
He turned back to the room, his eyes scanning it with a new, predatory focus. He didn't look for coin this time. He looked for value.
He activated the vision again. It hurt less this time—a pinch rather than a stab.
The room lit up with a dull wireframe overlay.
The Myrish Mirror: [Value: High] The Silver Washbasin: [Value: Moderate] The Tapestry on the wall (Hunting Scene, slightly moth-eaten): [Value: Low-Moderate] The Jeweled Dagger in the drawer: [Value: High]
A grim smile touched his lips. It wasn't the smile of Robert Baratheon. It was the smile of a desperate man who had just realized that while he didn't have cash, he had equity.
He wasn't going to fight a traditional war. He couldn't afford to.
He sat down at the desk, the chair creaking under his weight. He swept the rotting apple and the gambling chits onto the floor. He grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment.
If he was going to survive this, he had to stop thinking like a Knight and start thinking like a Liquidator.
He dipped the quill into the ink.
"Step one," he muttered to the empty room. "Stop the bleeding."
Chapter 1: The Drunkard's Mirror
Scene 3: The Raven
The quill felt ridiculous in his hand.
It was a delicate thing, a goose feather stripped and sharpened, designed for the nimble fingers of a maester or a lady. In Robert's hand—a hand that felt like it was designed to crush rocks—it was a fragile splinter.
He held it with a grim intensity, staring at the blank parchment. The inkpot sat open, a black pool reflecting his own narrowed eyes.
Focus, he commanded. You know how to write. You know how to command.
He dipped the quill. A blob of ink dripped onto the desk.
"Dammit," he hissed.
He took a breath. He had to bridge the gap. He had the vocabulary of a modern corporate strategist and the muscle memory of a medieval warlord. He needed to find the middle ground: commanding, urgent, and brutally efficient.
He began to write.
The handwriting that emerged was a chaotic hybrid. Robert's natural scrawl was large, looping, and aggressive—the writing of a man who assumed everyone would wait for him to finish. The transmigrator's influence tightened the strokes, adding a jagged, frantic precision.
To Ser Harbert,
Castellan of Storm's End,
He paused. The memories of Harbert surfaced. A stern, iron-willed old man. His great-uncle. The man who had raised him and Stannis after their parents' ship smashed against the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay. Harbert didn't tolerate fools. He didn't tolerate waste.
He would listen to Robert, but only if Robert sounded like a Lord.
If you are reading this, the raven has flown true. The King has called for my head. Jon Arryn has refused. The banners are being called.
He watched the ink dry, black and glossy. This was the point of no return. Once this bird flew, treason was inked on paper.
Do not wait for my arrival. I am cutting through the mountains to reach the Stormlands, but time is our enemy. The Reach will mobilize. Mace Tyrell will look to prove his loyalty to the Dragon by crushing us.
He felt a flash of anger at the thought of Mace Tyrell. The "Fat Flower." A man who would sit outside Storm's End feasting while Stannis and Renly starved inside.
Not this time, he thought, the quill digging into the parchment. Stannis isn't eating rats on my watch.
He pressed harder, the nib scratching loudly against the paper.
You have full authority to act in my name. Execute the following orders immediately:
Seal the Vaults.
Move fifty percent of the household treasury to the Iron Bank's representative in Braavos. Do not argue. Do not delay. I want a line of credit established in my name that cannot be seized if the castle falls. Money inside the walls is just heavy metal. Money outside is a weapon.
He paused, considering the economics. Westeros was about to enter a period of hyper-inflation for war goods. Steel, horses, and food would triple in price. Cash was king, but only if it was liquid.
Liquidate the Luxury.
Sell the tapestries in the East Gallery. Sell the silver plate. Sell the ornamental jeweled swords in the armory that have never seen blood. If it does not kill a man or feed a man, turn it into gold. I want the markets of Pentos and Myr emptied of grain.
He could almost see Harbert's face reading this. The old man would be apoplectic. Selling the heirlooms? It was unheard of. It was shameful.
But Robert didn't care about shame. He cared about logistics.
Audit the Grain.
Check the granaries yourself, Uncle. Trust no steward's ledger. I want every bushel counted. Buy salted beef, dried pork, and hard cheese. Fill the cellars until they burst. Prepare for a siege of two years. If the Tyrells come, let them sit in the rain while my brother dines on beef.
He wrote the name Stannis and hesitated.
The old Robert had loved Stannis in a distant, abstract way, but mostly found him tedious. The "teeth-grinder." The stiff iron rod.
The new Robert felt a profound, aching sense of responsibility. Stannis was the one who had held the line. Stannis was the one who had nearly died of starvation while Robert feasted in King's Landing years later.
He dipped the quill again.
Protect Stannis. Protect Renly. I am coming home.
Make us rich, Harbert. Or at least, make us impossible to starve.
Robert Baratheon.
He threw the quill down. It bounced off the desk and rolled onto the floor.
He sat back, exhaling a breath he felt he'd been holding since he woke up. The letter was done. It was madness, by Westerosi standards. A Lord Paramount liquidating his assets before the first battle was even fought? It smacked of desperation.
But he knew better. It was the ultimate hedge.
He grabbed the stick of sealing wax—yellow, the color of House Baratheon. He held it over the candle flame. The wax softened, dripping onto the bottom of the parchment.
He didn't have his signet ring. He checked his hand—bare. He must have lost it gambling, or left it in a brothel in Gulltown.
"Typical," he grunted.
He pressed his thumb into the hot wax. The heat bit into his calloused skin, but he didn't flinch. A thumbprint would have to do. It was raw. It was visceral. It fit the new reality.
He folded the parchment roughly.
He stood up, the chair scraping against the stone. He felt restless again. The letter was just paper until it was in the air.
He marched to the door and threw it open. The guard was still there, looking even more nervous than before.
"My Lord?"
"Take this," Robert said, shoving the letter into the boy's chest. "To the Maester. Tell him it flies for Storm's End. Tell him if it doesn't leave the rookery within the hour, I will come up there and throw him off the mountain."
The guard's eyes went wide. "Y-yes, my Lord!"
"Go!"
The guard scrambled away, boots clattering on the stone.
Robert watched him go, then stepped back into the room and closed the door. The silence returned, but it felt different now. It wasn't the silence of confusion. It was the silence of the calm before the storm.
He walked back to the Myrish mirror.
He picked up the silver washbasin he had identified earlier. [Value: Moderate].
He looked at his reflection one last time.
The panic was gone. The nausea had settled. The "Eagle Vision" was dormant, a tool waiting to be used, not a curse blinding him.
He looked at the face in the glass. The beard was still wild, the hair a mess, the eyes bloodshot. He looked like a savage. He looked like a beast.
But behind the eyes, the spark was different. It wasn't the dull glimmer of a man looking for his next drink. It was the cold, calculating burn of a man playing a permadeath game on the highest difficulty setting.
He picked up the empty wine flagon from the floor—the expensive vintage he had poured out the window. He weighed it in his hand, then tossed it into the waste bin. It shattered with a satisfying crash.
He didn't need the wine. He didn't need the validation. He didn't need the dreams of Lyanna Stark to distract him from the reality of his situation.
He was Robert Baratheon. He was a tank. He was a hammer.
And now, he was the bank.
He touched the cold glass of the mirror, tracing the line of his own jaw.
"The drunkard died in his sleep," he whispered to the reflection.
The blue eyes stared back, hard as flint.
"The King woke up poor."
He turned away from the mirror. It was time to find a sword.