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Welcome, welcome everyone to the new Fic. Leave a comment and let me know where to tweak some things. I am but a humble bard of this story
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The first rule of structural engineering is that everything has a yield point. Metal, concrete, glass, human bone—apply enough stress over enough time, and it will eventually fail. The math never lies. You just have to know how to read it.
I was reading the math on a Tuesday afternoon, suspended two hundred and fifty feet above the freezing, slate-gray waters of the bay. The wind was a relentless, howling thing that whipped the salt spray into my eyes and tried to tear the heavy canvas jacket from my back. My safety harness bit into my thighs, the heavy carabiner clinking against the steel grating of the scaffolding.
"How's it looking down there?"
The radio clipped to my shoulder hissed with static before my foreman's voice cut through.
I leaned closer to the massive, primary load-bearing cable of the suspension bridge. It was three feet thick, a braided monster of high-tensile steel meant to hold thousands of tons of concrete and asphalt. I ran my gloved hand over the icy surface, shining my heavy-duty flashlight into a joint connecting it to a vertical suspender.
"I don't like it, Marcus," I keyed the mic, my breath pluming in the freezing air. "The gusset plate on node four-B has micro-fractures. I'm looking at the oxidation patterns right now. Water's been pooling behind the rivets for God knows how long. The steel is fatigued."
"Can it wait until the maintenance cycle next month?" Marcus asked, his voice strained. "Shutting down two lanes for an emergency repair is going to cost the city millions, and the mayor's office is already breathing down my neck."
I frowned, tracing a particularly nasty hairline crack with my thumb. In my head, I was already running the load distribution models. It was winter. The steel was cold and brittle. Rush hour was starting in exactly forty minutes, which meant thousands of cars idling bumper-to-bumper across the span, adding dynamic vibration loads to the static weight.
"No," I said firmly. "It can't wait. The tensile strength is compromised. I'm officially recommending a lane closure. I'll come up and draft the report, but you need to get the DOT on the line right now."
"Alright. Come on up. Carefully."
I clicked the radio off. I was tired. My hands were numb despite the thermal gloves, and I had a backlog of fantasy novels sitting on my nightstand at home that I was desperately looking forward to. Castles, knights, dragons, magic—worlds where problems were solved with a sword instead of a spreadsheet and an argument with city planners.
I unclipped my primary safety tether, reaching up to re-anchor it to the next rung of the scaffolding.
At that exact microsecond, the math caught up with reality.
There was no cinematic groan of metal, no dramatic swaying. There was only a sound like a bomb detonating directly inside my skull. A sharp, deafening CRACK that vibrated through my teeth and rattled my spine.
The gusset plate didn't just fail; it shattered.
Thousands of tons of tension violently redistributed themselves in a fraction of a second. The three-foot-thick steel cable whipped outward with the kinetic energy of a freight train.
I didn't even have time to blink.
The cable struck the scaffolding, vaporizing the steel grating and me along with it. There was a singular, blinding flash of pressure—a sensation of being hit by a solid wall moving at Mach 2—and then the freezing wind, the roar of the ocean, and the agonizing crush of impact simply vanished.
The transition from violent, catastrophic death to absolute, profound stillness was enough to induce a mental breakdown.
I sucked in a massive breath, my hands flying to my chest, expecting to feel pulverized ribs and torn flesh. Instead, my fingers met a smooth, slightly translucent surface. I looked down. I was wearing the same clothes—jeans, work boots, heavy jacket—but they were entirely desaturated, made of a faint, glowing white mist.
I wasn't falling. I wasn't breathing, either. The intake of air had been a phantom reflex.
I slowly lowered my hands and looked around. I was standing in a void. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor. Just an endless, shifting sea of static gray, stretching out into infinity.
"Take your time," a dry, utterly bored voice echoed through the emptiness. "The existential panic usually peaks around minute three. I find it's best to just let it wash over you."
I spun around.
About twenty feet away, sitting behind a massive, battered metal desk that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1970s DMV office, was a figure. He wore a crisp, tailored charcoal suit, but where his head should have been, there was only a swirling vortex of white noise, like a television tuned to a dead channel. The desk was piled high with glowing, translucent folders.
My engineering brain desperately tried to categorize the physics of the space, to find a logic tree I could climb. There wasn't one.
"Am I dead?" My voice sounded flat, stripped of all echo.
"Technically, the medical examiner will declare you dead in about forty-five minutes once they fish the pieces of you out of the bay," the figure said, flipping open a glowing folder and dragging a pen across it. "But for all cosmic intents and purposes, yes. Total catastrophic blunt force trauma. Quick, at least. Barely felt it, I imagine."
I stared at him. The shock was thick, like cotton in my mouth, but beneath it, the pragmatic, problem-solving core of my personality was fighting its way to the surface. "Okay. Who are you? God?"
The figure let out a sound that might have been a laugh. It sounded like grinding gears. "Hardly. I am merely the Administrator. A Random Omnipotent Being, or 'ROB' if you prefer the colloquialism. I handle localized multiversal transmigration for this sector."
"Transmigration," I repeated slowly. "You mean reincarnation."
"With a twist," the Administrator corrected, leaning back in his chair and interlacing his fingers. "Your soul was flagged by the system. A random lottery. You get a 'New Game Plus.' We spin a few wheels, dictate your new reality, your starting parameters, and throw you back into the blender." He checked a heavy, gold pocket watch. "I have a meeting with the celestial audit committee in two standard millennia, so I'd appreciate it if we could expedite this."
I didn't argue. Arguing with a cosmic bureaucrat seemed entirely pointless. "Fine. What wheels?"
The Administrator snapped his fingers.
The gray mist violently parted, and a massive, towering carnival wheel materialized. It was easily fifty feet tall, covered in thousands of tiny, glowing slivers of text. It hummed with a low, vibrating energy that made my translucent teeth ache.
"Wheel number one," the Administrator announced, his static face shifting. "The Destination."
He didn't touch it. The wheel simply began to spin, blurring into a ring of solid light. It whirred for what felt like an eternity before the clicking slowed.
Clack... clack... clack... tick.
It stopped. A single slice of the wheel glowed a harsh, bloody crimson. The words expanded in the air between us.
[ A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE ]
I froze. I knew those books. I had read them. I knew the television show. I knew the lore.
"You have got to be kidding me," I muttered, rubbing my temples. "That isn't a fantasy world. That's a medieval slaughterhouse. The infant mortality rate is staggering, the medicine is barbaric, and the winters last for years. It's an active war zone governed by sociopaths."
"It does have knights, though," the Administrator pointed out smoothly. "And dragons. Eventually. Moving on. Wheel number two: Your starting social status."
Another wheel materialized next to the first. This one was smaller, divided into unequal slices ranging from 'Peasant' to 'Royalty'. It began to spin.
I watched it, a cold knot forming in my stomach. In Westeros, your bloodline was everything. If I landed on peasant, my life expectancy would be measured in days.
The wheel slowed.
Clack... clack... tick.
It landed on a sliver of pitch black. The word burned into the mist.
[ SLAVE ]
The knot in my stomach turned to ice. "No."
"I don't control the physics of the wheel, mortal," the Administrator sighed, waving a hand dismissively. "Slave it is. You'll likely end up in a fighting pit in Meereen, or perhaps a pleasure house in Lys. It builds character."
"No, listen to me," I said, my voice hardening. I stepped toward the desk, planting my hands on the cold metal surface. "I'm not doing it. Being a slave in Essos is a guaranteed, miserable death. I'll just die and end up right back here in front of you."
"Then I will process your paperwork again. It matters little to me."
"I want a re-roll," I demanded.
The static vortex of his face paused. "Excuse me?"
"A re-roll," I repeated, channeling every ounce of stubbornness I used to deal with hostile contractors. "Everything is a negotiation. You said you don't control the wheel, but you're the Administrator. You have discretionary power. I'm offering a trade."
The Administrator leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. The static seemed to buzz with genuine amusement. "A mortal attempting a contract negotiation with an omnipotent clerk. How terribly quaint. And what, exactly, could a dead engineer possibly offer me?"
"A blank check," I said evenly. "Let me re-spin the Status wheel right now. In exchange, I give you one unconditional, absolute override on any future wheel. You get to pick the result, no questions asked. A free choice to mess with my life however you see fit."
The silence stretched. The void seemed to hold its breath.
"A literal Faustian bargain," the Administrator purred. "I haven't had one of those since the Enlightenment. Very well. Contract accepted."
He raised a finger and made a flicking motion. The Status wheel abruptly spun in reverse, blurring before violently locking into place.
The black sliver vanished, replaced by a deep, aristocratic bronze.
[ MIDDLE NOBILITY: HOUSE ROYCE ]
I let out a long, shaky exhale. House Royce. The Lords of Runestone. They were bannermen to House Arryn, located in the Vale. It was an incredibly lucky pull. The Vale was geographically isolated, surrounded by the impassable Mountains of the Moon. They were wealthy, they prided themselves on their ancient First Men blood, and they stayed out of the worst of the political bloodbaths—at least for a while. It was a fortress.
"Satisfactory?" the Administrator asked dryly. "Now, Wheel number three. Gender."
A small wheel, split perfectly in half between Male and Female, appeared. It spun. It clicked. It stopped on [ MALE ].
Relief washed over me. I had nothing against being a woman, well, against the fact I was a male for my entire life—but in a hyper-patriarchal, feudal society like Westeros? Being male was the only way to ensure I had agency. I could hold a sword. I could inherit land. I wouldn't be traded like cattle for a marriage alliance.
I nodded at the Administrator. "Alright. Let's finish this."
"Not quite yet," he said softly.
He slowly raised a hand. "I believe I have a blank check to cash."
My stomach plummeted. "Wait—"
The Administrator physically reached out, grabbed the dial of the Gender wheel, and wrenched it one notch to the right. The mechanism shrieked in protest.
[ FEMALE ]
"You bastard," I whispered, the realization crashing down on me.
"Contractual obligations are absolute," the Administrator mocked, the static on his face shifting into a wide, jagged smile. "You wanted House Royce. You have it. You are now the daughter of Bronze Yohn Royce. Your primary duties will consist of embroidery, smiling politely, and eventually being sold to some lord thrice your age to secure a border treaty. I hope you enjoy watching the knights from the balcony."
I clenched my jaw so hard my translucent teeth ground together. I had been outplayed. I was going to be a highborn lady in a world that treated women as breeding stock.
Fine, I thought, a cold, hard anger taking root in my chest. If they put me in a cage, I'll dismantle the bars and beat them to death with the iron.
"Moving on to the main event," the Administrator declared, clapping his hands. "Wheel number four. The Chaos Wheel. This determines your starting arsenal. I will spin it five times. The pool includes items, skills, traits, and companions from across the entire localized multiverse. Some are garbage. Some are godhood. Whatever you roll, you keep."
The largest wheel yet materialized. It was a blinding kaleidoscope of colors, spinning so fast it hurt to look at.
"Spin one," he said.
Clack-clack-clack-clack... ding!
A glowing panel popped out of the wheel and floated toward me.
[ Petshop - Elite Familiar ]JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - A ruthless, fearless, psychopathic, and fiercely loyal falcon. Possesses the Stand 'Horus', granting immense cryokinetic abilities, allowing it to generate and launch lethal ice spikes and boulders. Invisible to non-Stand users.
I stared at the text. I didn't know much about anime, but I understood the parameters of the description perfectly. I was getting a drone. A highly intelligent, psychopathic, invisible-magic-wielding sniper drone disguised as a bird of prey.
"A potent bodyguard," the Administrator noted. "Though I'd advise caution. Magic has supposedly been dead in Westeros for centuries. If the Faith of the Seven sees a little girl's pet bird summoning ice spikes out of thin air, they will burn you at the stake."
I nodded slowly, my mind already calculating how to use the bird for scouting without breaking cover. Falconry was a noble sport. I could hide him in plain sight.
"Spin two."
Clack-clack-clack... ding!
[ Web Fluid & Shooters - Rare Item ] Spider-Man - A pair of mechanical wrist-mounted web-shooters and a supply of patented web fluid. Generates one full vial every 24 hours. Possesses extreme tensile strength and elasticity.
I actually laughed out loud. It was a short, sharp sound of pure disbelief.
"Amusing?" the Administrator asked.
"You're sending me to the Vale," I said, looking at my hands. "The entire region is defined by impassable mountains, sheer cliffs, and the Eyrie—a castle built on top of a stone needle. The only way up is a basket on a winch." I looked back at him.
The Administrator tilted his head. "Assuming your fragile human shoulders don't dislocate from the G-force of a pendulum swing, yes."
"I'm an engineer. I know how to calculate an arc," I shot back.
"Spin three."
Clack-clack-clack... ding!
[ Expert Item Construction - Epic Skill ] You possess the innate knowledge to create powerful enchanted and special items depending on your existing capabilities. If you possess fire magic, you can forge a sword that burns. If you possess teleportation, you can craft a ring of stepping.
I read the text twice, my heart rate accelerating. This was the linchpin. This was the bridge between my old life and my new one. I knew metallurgy. I knew how to forge steel, how to manipulate carbon, how to build complex mechanisms. Now, I could infuse those mechanisms with the "capabilities" I possessed.
I didn't have magic myself. But Petshop did. He had ice. And the web fluid possessed impossible chemical properties.
If I could channel the cold of Horus into the steel of a blade... if I could weave the tensile strength of the webs into the links of a chainmail shirt...
I wouldn't just be a noble lady. I would be an artificer. In a world relying on crude iron and castle-forged steel, I could outfit an army with gear that bordered on the divine.
"A terrifying synergy," the Administrator murmured, sounding genuinely intrigued now. "Let us see if you can survive long enough to use it. Spin four."
Clack-clack-clack... ding!
The wheel didn't just stop. It shuddered. The mist around us violently rippled, and the panel that emerged glowed with a blinding, golden luminescence.
The Administrator actually stopped writing. He lowered his pen and stared at the text.
[ Father Time - Mythical Trait ]Immune to all time-based abilities, time travel, and paradoxes. Stopping time in your presence is impossible, even for deities. The strain and energy cost of all Time-related abilities is massively reduced. You ignore the paradox and time resistance of all targets weaker than god-level.
I read it, but I didn't fully grasp the implications. "Time travel isn't really a thing in Game of Thrones, is it?"
The Administrator slowly turned his static face toward me. The mocking tone was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, calculating gravity.
"It is not about time travel, mortal. It is about sight." He stood up, pacing slowly behind the desk. "The world of Westeros is heavily bound by prophecy. The Red Priests look into the flames to see the future. The Old Gods, through the Greenseers and the Weirwood trees, watch the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. They manipulate events to ensure their desired outcomes."
He stopped and pointed a finger at the golden text.
"With that trait, you are immune to temporal manipulation. That means they cannot see you. If a Greenseer tries to look at your timeline, they will see only an empty void. If a priestess asks her god about you, the flames will show nothing. You are a blind spot in the tapestry of their reality. You have true, unadulterated free will. The gods cannot account for you."
A profound chill settled over me. I wasn't just armed; I was invisible to the beings pulling the strings.
"One last spin," I said quietly.
The Administrator sat back down. "Spin five."
Clack-clack-clack... ding!
[ Master Total Concentration Breathing - Legendary Skill ]Demon Slayer - Complete mastery of a specialised breathing technique. By increasing oxygen concentration in the blood, you maximise muscle activation, granting exceptional physical performance, superhuman speed, and immense strength. Accelerated recovery speeds.
I closed my eyes. It was the final piece of the puzzle.
The physical limitations of being a woman in a medieval world—the sheer lack of muscle mass compared to a man who spent his life swinging a broadsword—were instantly erased. Total Concentration Breathing was a biological supercharger. It meant I could strike with the force of a battering ram. It meant my bones and ligaments could withstand the violent physics of the web-shooters. It meant I could stand in a forge for three days straight without sleeping, hammering enchanted steel until it was perfect.
I looked at the five glowing panels hovering around me.
A psychopathic ice-falcon. Web-shooters. Magical engineering. Immunity to prophecy. Superhuman physical capabilities.
"Well," the Administrator said, dusting off his hands. "It seems I have accidentally armed a warhead and pointed it at Westeros. You will be inserted at the exact moment of your birth. The year is 283 AC. The dying days of Robert's Rebellion. Do try to make it entertaining, Lady Royce."
"Count on it," I said.
He snapped his fingers.
The void collapsed.
There was no sense of falling this time, only a violent, tearing sensation as my consciousness was ripped from the endless gray and shoved forcefully into a vessel entirely too small to contain it.
The silence shattered.
It was replaced by a deafening symphony of chaos. A woman was screaming, a ragged, breathless sound of pure agony. The air was suffocatingly hot, thick with the smell of burning pine, sweat, copper, and damp wool.
My entire reality was pain. It felt like my bones were being crushed in a vice. I tried to thrash, to fight back, but my limbs wouldn't respond. They were sluggish, uncoordinated, and impossibly weak.
"Push, My Lady! The head is crowning! One more push!"
An older woman's voice. Frantic.
There was a final, agonizing compression, and suddenly, the suffocating pressure gave way to the biting sting of freezing air. Hands—rough and slick with fluids—grabbed me under the arms.
I tried to open my eyes, but the light of a nearby hearth fire was blinding. I tried to speak, to curse the Administrator, to demand to know where my web-shooters were, but what tore out of my throat was a high-pitched, reedy wail.
"A girl, My Lord."
The hands holding me shifted. I was wrapped in something incredibly soft—a heavy woolen blanket that smelled of oil and metal.
"Give her to me."
The voice was a deep, resonant rumble that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. It was a voice accustomed to shouting over the din of clashing steel and dying men.
I felt myself being transferred. The chest supporting me was hard as stone, covered in layers of heavy tunic and the distinct, cold touch of armor plating.
I forced my eyes open, blinking rapidly to clear the amniotic fluid. My vision was blurry, swimming with unfocused colors, but I could make out the sharp line of a jaw covered in a thick, dark beard, and the gleam of bronze pauldons etched with jagged, ancient runes.
Bronze Yohn Royce.
My father.
"She does not cry like a weakling," he murmured, his massive thumb gently wiping a streak of blood from my cheek.
"She... she is healthy?" the exhausted woman in the bed gasped out. My mother.
"Fierce," Lord Royce declared, a note of immense, prideful weight in his voice. "Look at her eyes, Alys. They are not the soft blue of summer. They are gray. Like winter steel. She has the blood of the First Men in her."
He shifted his grip, holding me up slightly toward the light of the fire.
"We shall call her Rhea," he decided, his voice echoing in the stone chamber. "Rhea of House Royce."
Rhea Royce.
I stopped wailing. The infant panic receding, the adult consciousness I retained forced control over my underdeveloped nervous system. I needed to test it. I needed to know if the Administrator had lied.
I took a breath.
It wasn't the shallow, erratic gasp of a newborn. I deliberately engaged the diaphragm, expanding the tiny lungs to their absolute maximum capacity. I visualized the oxygen entering the bloodstream, forcing the heart to pump it violently into every muscle fiber.
Total Concentration.
Even in this tiny, fragile body, I felt the spark. A surge of unnatural heat bloomed in my chest, a microscopic engine roaring to life. My tiny hands, previously curled into useless fists, suddenly clenched with enough force to dig tiny fingernails into the thick wool of my blanket.
High above the stone ceiling of the keep, somewhere out in the freezing winds of the Mountains of the Moon, I felt a faint, phantom prickle in the back of my mind. A cold, sharp, predatory intellect acknowledging my existence. JoJo.
The Game of Thrones was currently ending. The Mad King was likely dead or dying, and Robert Baratheon was about to claim the Iron Throne. There would be roughly fifteen years of peace before the war of the Five Kings tore the continent apart.
Fifteen years for Robb Stark and Jon Snow to play with wooden swords in the snows of Winterfell.
Fifteen years for Joffrey Baratheon to grow into a monster in King's Landing.
And fifteen years for me.
I stared up at the bearded face of the man who thought he could use me as a political pawn, felt the rhythmic, supercharged beating of my own heart, and closed my eyes.
Let them play their game, I thought, the heat of the breathing technique keeping the winter chill at bay. I'm going to break the board.