When Solomon woke, the first thing he knew was the cold. It was a damp, gnawing chill that settled in the marrow, carrying the metallic tang of river mud and old rot.
He lay in a crude stone chamber. Through a narrow arrow slit, a slice of leaden sky pressed down upon a vast, yellowing expanse of marsh grass.
His mind clawed backward, trying to grasp the moment before the darkness. The memory was fragmented, a smear of blinding light.
He saw the sky of his old life, dominated by a searing white point. It hadn't been a star. It was a solid thing, a burning mountain tumbling from the heavens, growing larger with every heartbeat. He remembered the shrill voice of a child on the street—"Mommy, look! A shooting star! It's huge!"
Then, erasure. Existence simply stopped.
I died, he realized, the thought drifting through the fog. Crushed by a meteor. At least it was rare. A statistic of one.
He had been a drifter in his old world, untethered and alone. There was a strange comfort in knowing he left no one behind to grieve, save perhaps for the mother and daughter who had watched the sky fall.
Suddenly, a jagged spike of pain drove through his skull.
It was not a physical blow, but a rupture of the mind. An alien lifetime flooded in—scenes, emotions, and scars cascading like a broken dam.
He was Solomon a son of the Riverlands.
He was a subject of the Iron Throne. He was a small, insignificant knight under the banner of House Deddings, swore to the Lords of the Green Fork.
The memories sharpened into blades.
Tears leaked from his eyes—a reflex of the body, not the soul. The grief belonged to the flesh he now inhabited. He saw fire and iron. He tasted despair.
The Greyjoy Rebellion.
Balon Greyjoy had crowned himself King of the Iron Islands. The Riverlands, with its long, exposed coastline, became the anvil for the Ironborn hammer. When the black kraken banner rose above the waters near Seagard, Lord Tully sent the ravens flying.
Solomon's father, the stoic and scarred Ser Bligh of Mirekeep, answered the call.
House Bligh was destitute. Their lands were a swamp; their smallfolk few. Yet, when Lord Deddings called, Ser Bligh did not hesitate. He rallied every man who could hold a spear: his two eldest sons, sixteen-year-old Solomon, and fifteen sturdy peasants.
They spent every copper groat the family possessed to buy cracked leather armor and rusted mail. They marched to war with pitted swords and spears that had seen better centuries.
The memory shifted to the Tower of Mirekeep—a damp, squat fortification. Solomon saw his mother standing in the gloom, her face a mask of silent weeping as she watched her husband and three sons march into the mist.
Then, the memory turned red.
The beach at Seagard. The roar of the surf drowned by the screams of dying men.
The Ironborn were monsters of salt and steel, fighting with a ferocity that ignored pain. Solomon saw his father, wielding a chipped longsword, roar like a lion as he hacked down two raiders. But the kraken's children swarmed him.
A reaver with a short axe severed his father's arm at the shoulder.
Ser Bligh did not fall. He swung his sword with his remaining hand, a grimace of defiance frozen on his face, until a second axe split his skull.
Solomon's eldest brother, the bull-necked Lorent, the heir, screamed and charged to defend the body. He fought wildly, desperate courage fueling his swings, but three Ironborn circled him. Their long knives flashed. Lorent collapsed across his father's corpse, his blood turning the grey sand black.
Beren, the second brother, went mad with grief. He buried his sword in an Ironborn's neck, but a boathook caught him from behind, ripping through his throat. The reavers descended on him like a pack of starving dogs.
Solomon had stood frozen, paralyzed by the slaughter. He watched his world end in a span of heartbeats.
Then, a shadow loomed. An Ironborn warhammer descended.
The world exploded into white stars, then black nothingness.
Miraculously, he wasn't dead.
Before the charge, Lorent—his silent, protective big brother—had forced his own helmet onto Solomon's head. It was the only piece of good steel they owned. That helm had absorbed the blow that should have pulped his skull.
When the tide of battle turned and the Riverlords claimed the beach, scavengers found Solomon half-buried in the mud, breathing shallowly beneath the dented steel. Lord Deddings, pitying the destruction of his most loyal vassal house, ordered the boy carted back to the swamps.
Of the fifteen peasants who marched, thirteen died on the sand. Two crawled back to Mirekeep, broken and bleeding, bearing the news that shattered a family.
"The Lord is dead. Master Lorent is dead. Master Beren is dead. Little Master Solomon is dead."
The news broke Solomon's mother. She had lost her husband and three sons in a single sunrise. That night, as the fog rolled off the Green Fork, she climbed to the top of the very tower where Solomon now lay... and stepped off into the dark.
Solomon—lay in the bed, letting the tragic history settle into his bones.
House Bligh of Mirekeep.
Outsiders knew them by a different name: The Lords of Reekfort. It was a title dripping with scorn, yet in the twisted memory of this body, it carried a strange, defiant pride.
Their sigil was not a beast of war, but a golden hand. Their words: Grace Endures.
Generations ago, the Blighs were not knights. They were servants. Specifically, they held the position of "Groom of the Stool" for the Lords of House Deddings.
It sounded vile to common ears—wiping the Lord's backside, managing his chamber pot. But proximity to power is power. To be with a Lord in his most private, vulnerable moments required absolute trust. The Blighs were not just servants; they were the keepers of secrets, the silent shadows who saw the Lord stripped of all pretense.
A century ago, Lord Leonor Deddings had rewarded that intimate loyalty. He granted them a knighthood and a patch of unwanted wetlands along the river, centering on a three-story stone tower sinking slowly into the muck.
Thus, the "Dung Peasants" became the "Dung Knights."
The nobility mocked them. They called the tower "Reekfort" or "Fungus Hall." They laughed at the Blighs at feasts, seating them below the salt, in the darkest corners.
But Solomon's memories held a different truth. Despite the mockery, House Deddings still trusted House Bligh above all others. Not for their sword arm, nor their wealth, but for that ancient, hereditary silence.
"Master Solomon!"
The voice was cracked, trembling with disbelief.
An old man shuffled to the bedside, his face a map of deep wrinkles and liver spots. He fell to his knees, his gnarled hands clutching Solomon's cold fingers. Tears cut clean paths through the grime on his cheeks.
It was Old Nikken. The steward. A man who had been born in Mirekeep and would die in Mirekeep.
"How long?" Solomon rasped. His throat felt like he had swallowed broken glass.
"Seven Hells be praised... you're awake. You're finally awake." Nikken sobbed, pressing his forehead against Solomon's hand. "You've been lost to the stranger for a moon's turn, My Lord. Maester Walder said... he said you wouldn't wake. I thought House Bligh was finished."
The old man broke down, his shoulders shaking with the weight of a month's grief.
Solomon lifted his hand, weak as a kitten's, and rested it on Nikken's thinning grey hair. "I'm here, Nikken. It was a long sleep."
Nikken sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Relief washed over his face, but it was quickly replaced by a shadow of fresh pain. He looked away, unable to meet the young lord's eyes.
"Master Solomon... My Lord... there is... news. Terrible news."
Solomon stared at the damp stone ceiling. The pain in his head throbbed in time with his heart.
"I know," Solomon whispered. "Father. Lorent. Beren. And Mother."
Old Nikken froze. He looked up, seeing the hollow, ancient look in the boy's eyes. The steward's face crumbled, and he wept openly, no longer trying to speak, for there were no words left in the world that could fix what was broken.