DING.
Edrin went still.
The hut did not change. The embers still hissed. The cold still pressed in.
But something in him felt… addressed.
Words formed behind his eyes, sharp as carved stone. Not his voice. Not any voice he'd heard in Hollow. Not the Old Gods' silence either.
Just there.
[ CHOOSE THE SYSTEM ]
And beneath it, the list unfolded.
Some of the names were half-familiar from the dreams. Some were not. Some read like the titles of old songs.
[ 1. THE RELATIONSHIP SYSTEM ]
[ 2. KINGDOM BUILDING SYSTEM ]
[ 3. THE WARBAND DOCTRINE ]
[ 4. THE CRAFT & FORGE CODEX ]
[ 5. THE COURT INTRIGUE INDEX ]
[ 6. THE DREAM-ROOT PATH ]
[ 7. THE BEASTSKIN PACT ]
[ 8. THE WINTER'S DEBT ]
[ 9. THE ESSENCE REAPING SYSTEM ]
Edrin stared at the words as if staring hard enough could make them bleed truth.
His chest tightened.
So the systems were real.
And the dreams; those long, brutal, too-real dreams had been previews. Practice runs. Warnings. Temptations. A way to show him what happened if he picked one shape of power over another.
A laugh clawed at his throat, half relief and half hysteria.
He swallowed it down.
"Huh," he said softly. He did not trust his voice to be steady if he spoke louder. "So I get to choose."
His eyes flicked over the list again.
Relationship. Kingdom. Warband. Craft. Intrigue. Dream-root. Beastskin. Winter's debt. Essence reaping.
Each one promised a different kind of survival.
Each one promised a different kind of doom.
He thought of the Gift; thin soil, hard wind, pine forests that swallowed men. He thought of Hollow-its ragged huts, its half-starved faces, its stubborn refusal to die. He thought of the Watch; black cloaks moving through the trees, horns sounding, deserters hanged. He thought of wolves.
And then, as his gaze reached the bottom of the list, something shifted.
It wasn't a new line on the list.
It was more like… an itch in the words.
A place where the list felt incomplete.
As if the thing presenting it had more to say, but had not bothered to put it in the same neat format.
Edrin narrowed his eyes.
"What's the catch?" he whispered.
His mind flicked back to the dreams. To the ninth- no, the last one he'd had, where he'd been older and harder and standing on a battlefield, watching Stark men bleed into snow, and then he had stepped from the trees and changed everything with arrows like a storm.
In that dream, he had not felt like a boy.
He had felt like a wolf.
But even in that dream, there had been a cost.
There was always a cost.
He looked again at the Relationship System and felt the vulgar temptation of it. Not the women, not really. Not the bodies. It was the loyalty that drew him. The way the system promised certainty in a world that was all betrayal and weather. Locks. Bonds that could not be broken.
It was dangerous.
Anything that promised certainty in Westeros was dangerous.
He looked at Kingdom Building and felt the grinding practicality of it. Stores. Grain. Iron. Roads. Winter caches. The kind of thing that kept people alive when lords were too busy bleeding each other to notice common folk starving.
That was… good.
That was safe.
He looked at Warband Doctrine and felt the pull of discipline, of drilled men moving through snow like predators. Power that did not rely on the goodwill of lords.
That was good too.
He looked at Dream-root and felt the prickling unease of the weirwood. Visions. Beast-sight. Memory prices. The Old Gods' quiet attention.
Too risky. Too close to whatever had touched him.
He looked at Winter's Debt and felt his stomach twist. Borrowed power from cold that worsened storms and hunger nearby. That was not a bargain. That was a curse with paperwork.
Essence Reaping; meaningful defeats, vows broken, roles claimed. It sounded like blood magic in a nicer coat.
He should have picked the safe path.
He knew he should have.
But there was an itch in him.
An itch that had been there even in his first life, before Westeros, before Hollow. The stupid part of him that had always wanted to see what happened if you jumped off the cliff.
The part that had read stories not for romance or comfort, but for the moment the hero did something reckless and the world changed because of it.
YOLO, that part of him whispered, dragging a word from a world that should have been dead.
He almost smiled.
It felt wrong, smiling in the dark with winter at the door. But he could not help it. The absurdity of it; two lives jammed into one skull, a system menu hanging behind his eyes like some drunk god's joke, made him want to laugh until his ribs ached.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's see what you're really offering me."
He scrolled.
Not with fingers. Not with eyes. It was a movement of thought, a pressure behind his brow. The list shifted as if obeying.
And there it was.
Not on the main list.
Not presented with the same neat formality.
It sat beneath the others like a thing half-hidden under a stone.
[ THE CYCLE OF DEVOURING ]
Edrin froze.
He had not seen that in the dreams.
At least, he did not think he had. He had dreamed of systems, yes, but not this one. Not this name. Not this promise.
The words were… ugly.
Devouring.
Eating.
Taking something into yourself and making it yours.
He pictured teeth again.
He pictured blood.
And beneath the unease, something else stirred: greed.
If this is unknown, he thought, then it might be strong.
That was the stupid logic of every boy who'd ever died chasing a legend.
He stared at the words until they burned behind his eyes.
"Man," he whispered, and the phrase came from his first life again, too casual, too modern, too out of place in a hut in the Gift. "This looks like I can get something by eating… devouring stuff. It looks cool."
He swallowed.
"It looks like I can get OP," he added, because he could not help himself.
Then the other thought hit him, hard enough to make him sit up.
"But do I have to eat humans too?" he hissed.
The hut seemed to lean closer, as if listening.
The wind outside moaned.
For a moment, he saw himself biting into flesh, human flesh- felt bile rise in his throat, felt revulsion clamp down like a fist.
"No," he muttered. "No. Fuck that."
He breathed in, slow, tasting smoke and damp.
There are beasts here, he thought. Direwolves. Bears. Elk. Whatever else the Gift hides.
Maybe I can avoid it.
His mind tried to argue with itself, frantic and careful at once.
He had seen the other options through dreams. They were known quantities. He could pick them and walk a path he had already glimpsed.
But this one--
This one was unknown.
And in a world like Westeros, where known quantities got killed by surprises, maybe the unknown was exactly what he needed.
Or maybe it was exactly what would kill him.
He stared at the name again.
[ THE CYCLE OF DEVOURING ]
He felt, faintly, that the system was waiting.
Not impatient.
Not eager.
Just… there, the way the cold was there. The way winter was always there. Patient. Certain.
Edrin's jaw tightened.
"Alright," he said, voice low. "Anyway. I'll choose this."
He hesitated.
Then, because he was still himself, because even with all the weight of Westeros on his shoulders there was still a stupid boy in him who had laughed at danger, he added, "YOLO."
He grimaced at the word as soon as it left his mouth.
Second life, he thought. But in here… YOLO. Yeah.
He pushed the thought forward like a hand slamming a door.
[ CHOOSE — THE CYCLE OF DEVOURING ]
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Edrin sat rigid on the pallet, waiting for some surge, some warmth, some magic sensation to crawl under his skin and rewrite him.
He waited for power.
He waited for the "golden finger" he'd been promised in every story he'd ever consumed.
Come on, he thought. Come on. Magical feeling. Something.