The five new boys did not go quietly.
They were dragged down the gangplank by the veteran crew, still gagged, still bound, their boots scraping helplessly along the wooden boards. One boy kicked out with his heel, hitting nothing. Another tried to twist free and managed only a choked scream.
"Let us go! Devils… devils of the fog!" one of them shouted once his gag slipped loose.
A crewman shoved the gag back in, voice flat. "Scream later. No one listens here."
The boys were hauled onto the rocky shore, their chains rattling over stone and sand. The air was still, carrying only the distant groan of the fog wall.
Four Runic Knights stepped forward, armored in dull steel, helms hiding their faces completely. Their presence quieted the new boys; even their sobs grew smaller.
Behind them came a few unarmored crewmen, and farther back, walking with composed steps, was Tanesha.
Captain Olyvar stood apart from it all, directing the rest of the crew. "Unload the supplies," he called. "Everything to the tower storage. Move."
Men began carrying crates and barrels off the ship, forming a steady line across the beach.
Meanwhile, the knights and the escorting crew pulled the boys toward a cluster of thatched houses. The path was narrow, the roofs low and simple. A house near the end was opened, its interior dark and bare.
The boys were shoved inside. One hit the packed dirt floor hard and groaned. Another backed into the wall, trembling.
A Runic Knight stepped in after them, voice gruff and muffled beneath the helm.
"Listen well," he said. "You try to scream or run, you die. Not later. Not tomorrow. HERE."
The crewmen moved around the room with practiced motions. Heavy chains were brought in. Iron balls, each the size of a melon, were fastened to the end of the chains.
One by one, the boys were held down while the iron was clamped around their ankles.
The sound of metal on metal echoed louder than their muffled protests.
"Food twice a day," the knight continued. "Water. Get it from the barrel outside."
One of the boys, barely older than fifteen, stared wide-eyed at the knight. "W-why us?" he whispered through the gag.
The knight looked down at him. "You were chosen. That is honor enough."
His tone implied there would be no further explanation.
Tanesha stepped into the doorway, hands folded at her waist. The boys immediately shrank away from her, though she had not spoken a word.
"You will not be harmed," she said, her voice calm, "unless you give us a reason to."
Her gaze moved across their pale faces. "On this island, obedience is absolute. You may test the limits if you wish, but understand… there is no punishment, only death."
One boy whimpered. Another clenched his fists, trying to mask his fear with anger.
Tanesha flicked her fingers.
The knight who had spoken earlier stepped forward. He removed a gauntlet, revealing an ordinary hand.
Then the change began.
Bronze color washed over his skin, spreading from the fingertips to the wrist, then up the forearm.
The boys pressed themselves tighter against the wall, eyes wide.
The knight stepped outside and turned toward a boulder near the doorway. He drew back his fist and struck.
The impact rang out sharply, a hard, metallic crack. Nothing like flesh slamming against stone, as it should be.
A shallow fracture split across the boulder's surface, flakes of rock skittering to the ground. Dust drifted from the line of impact.
The boys stared, mouths slack, the iron chains forgotten.
Tanesha stepped forward slightly. "Your skulls would break the same way if you challenge us."
Silence.
"However," she continued, her tone steady, "obedience has rewards. If you serve well, power like this may one day be within your reach."
The oldest boy, perhaps sixteen, looked at the cracked boulder, then at the knight's bronze fist. Ambition flickered in his expression, faint but unmistakable.
Tanesha saw it. She said nothing.
She turned and left the hut, the knights following her out. One remained behind to stand guard just outside the doorway, arms folded, blocking any fantasy of escape.
The others walked with Tanesha toward the tower.
Lanterns were lit in the small houses below; tiny dots of light in the growing dusk.
At the base of the stone tower, Captain Olyvar waited, his boots planted squarely on the path.
"My lady," he said with a short bow. "When will the Lord return?"
"In a week," Tanesha replied. "Perhaps sooner… "
Olyvar nodded once. His eyes drifted to the crates being carried toward the tower storage room. "The materials you requested have been brought."
"Good. Take me to them."
He led the way through the tower's ground-floor entrance and into the storage chamber. It smelled of wood, dust, and damp earth.
The crates were already arranged neatly along the walls. Olyvar kicked one open.
Inside lay rows of carefully packed plants: herbs, roots, dried leaves tied in bundles.
Another crate was opened. Small cages filled the interior, cats, snakes, lizards. Their eyes gleamed in the dim light, silent and restless.
Tanesha studied the contents without expression, though her pulse quickened almost imperceptibly.
Her training will soon begin in earnest… when the Lord returns.
Far across the Narrow Sea, while the Cursed Murk grew thicker and colder by the day…
the one who created it could not sleep.
Red Keep, King's Landing
The screams…
High, raw, tearing through the dark like claws. Women. Men. A chorus of terror: Gael, Alysanne, Baelon, Maegelle… voices he knew as well as his own heartbeat.
Then clearer ones, strained and breaking:
"Save me—!"
"Help—!"
"Aegon—!"
And finally, a last fractured whisper, dissolving into static:
y-you can't… save ryone…
Then darkness swallowed everything.
Aegon jerked awake.
His chest rose and fell sharply, sweat cooling on his skin. For a moment, he lay still, listening to the pounding of his heart and the soft rustle of night wind against the balcony curtains.
Then he pushed himself up, swung his legs off the bed, and crossed the chamber with slow, controlled steps. He poured water into a cup, lifted it to his lips, and drank in steady gulps. The coolness helped, but only slightly.
"Not this dream again," Aegon murmured, voice low and serious.
After returning from Winterfell two years ago, and after upgrading his second Tier 3 class, [Psychic Master], to max level, Aegon had suddenly begun receiving a new dream.
He instantly recognized it as prophetic, because the dormant prophetic aspect of [Heir of Old Valyria] had been triggered.
Perhaps, in pushing [Psychic Master] to its peak, he had crossed some unseen threshold. He did not know for certain.
The dream was very much like his earlier visions of Jon and Daenerys… yet this time, it involved him and his family.
At first, shock had rooted him in place.
Then came fear.
He spent hours afterward replaying the dream in his mind, using spirituality to sift through every detail, every sound, every shred of meaning. But nothing was clear.
Nothing except the voices.
He could identify them easily: Gael, Alysanne, Baelon, Maegelle… each screaming, calling for help, begging him to save them.
And at the end, a broken version of his own voice delivering a final warning…
that he would not be able to save everyone.
The night he saw it for the first time, panic had consumed him.
The next night, the vision came again.
And then again… this time not through sleep, but through the obsidian echo ability of his [Heir of Old Valyria] class.
After that, it returned time and again, pressing on his nerves as if urging him:
Do something.
Faster.
Or you will lose them.
Why this dream? Why now?
What triggered it?
Save them from what?
These questions began haunting his days and nights.
And then clarity came like a blade.
All the family members he heard screaming…
None of them appeared in the House of the Dragon series he had watched in his previous life.
A terrible possibility rose in him… one he did not want to accept:
Perhaps this was a message.
A warning from himself.
From the future.
That destiny was coming for them… his family.
Aegon began an urgent search for a way to understand, or fight, this fate.
His first instinct was to create a class that could peer directly into destiny. A class that could extend the dream, decode it, or pull more information from whatever lay in the future.
But the moment he attempted to create it, his spirituality flared violently in warning.
Danger.
The instinct was absolute.
He abandoned the idea immediately.
His spirituality was warning him:
To reach for fate is fatal.
But why?
Again, no answer.
So then…
How do you fight destiny?
How do you defend your family from an unseen, abstract threat?
The questions and paranoia began eating into him. His strained state did not go unnoticed by his family, but he could not tell them.
What would he even say? Even if they believed him, what preparations could they possibly make?
It was more than a physical threat.
He understood that clearly, otherwise, the broken voice in the dream would not have warned him about being unable to "save everyone."
Aegon was not a time-nerd in his former life, but he understood enough to form a basic hypothesis. His earlier dreams of Jon and Daenerys had already hinted at fate nodes, fixed points that shaped the future.
Events that must happen.
Events that create future nodes, which in turn define the past ones.
A loop.
His prophetic visions from [Heir of Old Valyria] were not active manipulation… but passive echoes of these nodes.
Since he now saw his family screaming, that meant this event was fixed.
It would happen.
And he had to be ready.
His greatest weapon, the thing he had invested years into was…Magic.
Magic allowed miracles.
But was it enough in its current state?
Could it protect his family?
Would it fail?
Questions again.
Endless.
The only thing he could control was his preparation.
He needed to grow stronger… much stronger, far faster than normal progression allowed.
So he chose the only possible path:
Grow at any cost.
Abandon his morals.
Abandon his bottom line.
Remove anything that slowed him down.
But he couldn't.
His personality, his conscience, his empathy… those refused to break.
Even if he forced them, would he still remain himself?
Fortunately, his new class [Psychic Master] offered a way forward.
If he could not change himself…
He could build something that could.
[Psychic Master] was a title class based on [Wizard Apprentice]. Its logic was simple:
A Wizard Apprentice who studied observation and manipulation to their limit… naturally awakens Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Subliminal Influence traits… thus earning the title.
After maximizing the class, his mental space had expanded drastically. His spirituality had grown denser, more compressed, more potent.
With that growth came knowledge: deeper understanding of emotion, consciousness, and behavioral patterns, all seen through the structured lens of magical logic.
From observing the flow of magic bonded to thought and feeling, he deduced new runes tied to mind, spirit, and emotion.
He decided to use that knowledge.
From it, a mask was forged.
It was not an alter ego, nor a split personality, but a deliberate mental and emotional stance… a mask crafted using two spell models, he had newly deduced:
[Spell: Emotional Dampening]
[Spell: Cognitive Focus]
A stance that was cold, clinical, unburdened by hesitation.
A form he later called:
The Wizard Lord.
And then he, The Wizard Lord, created…
The Cursed Murk.
Originally, Aegon had planned to build a shadow organization: subtle, decentralized, a quiet network of agents woven through the Seven Kingdoms. But after the dream, that plan had to be postponed.
Quiet influence would not stop what fate had decided.
What he needed now was not an invisible network…
but an isolated crucible—
a place where he could shape power directly, without laws, without limits, without hesitation.
A fierce machine to help him study magic and craft miracles… miracles that might let him resist destiny and protect the people he loved.
A self-contained, isolated system that cut off distractions, stopped prying eyes, concentrated resources, and focused everything on one goal:
Becoming strong enough to fight fate.
The Cursed Murk became the obvious answer.
Aegon stepped out onto the balcony, the night air of King's Landing washing over him. The city glittered below, lantern lights flickering like scattered stars, the harbor wind carrying distant sounds of waves and revelry.
He stood there quietly, arms folded behind his back.
To everyone else, he was still the calm, unshaken young prince with an easy smile.
But only he knew how much pressure he had been under these last two years.
Old Town
The morning light slanted through the high windows, soft and pale, settling over the row of pallets. The familiar scent of boiled herbs, vinegar, and damp linen hung in the air. The children were awake today, some sitting, some lying down, all wrapped in thin blankets that rustled when they shifted.
Maegelle knelt beside a little girl whose right arm was wrapped in fresh linen. The girl's uncovered hand clutched the blanket tightly.
"And then the knight tripped in the mud!" the child said, her voice scratchy but bright.
Maegelle smiled, keeping her hands folded safely in her sleeves. "Tripped? A knight in full armor?"
The girl nodded vigorously. "Face-first!"
A boy in the next cot snorted with laughter, though he kept his own hands tucked beneath his pillow, mindful of the scaled patches running up his forearm. "He looked like a turtle!"
The laughter that followed was soft but real, brightening the dreary hall for a fleeting moment.
Footsteps approached. The older septa stopped beside them, carrying a basin of clean water and fresh cloth. Her eyes, lined with fatigue, softened at the sound of the children's amusement.
"That is enough for today," she said gently. "Your day is over, dear. Go and rest."
Maegelle nodded. She dipped her head toward the children. "I will come again tomorrow. Save the rest of your story for me."
They nodded back… some eager, some barely awake.
As Maegelle stood, the older septa placed a hand on her shoulder, steering her toward the corridor. "You've looked worn these past weeks. Rest properly for once."
"I will," Maegelle promised quietly.
She walked the long hall alone. Each step echoed faintly against the stone walls. When she reached her small cell, she slipped inside and quietly bolted the door.
Only then did she let out the tight breath she had been holding.
The room was dim, lit only by the thin beam of sun that crossed her narrow bed. She removed her outer robe carefully, then her shift, moving with slow, deliberate motions. Piece by piece, the garments fell away until she stood in her shift before the narrow mirror.
She drew in a slow breath.
The greyscale had spread again.
What had once been a patch on her left forearm now crept up past her elbow, staining the soft flesh of her upper arm. The edges had reached her collarbone, and beneath the fabric of her shift she could see the ridged grey creeping across the left side of her chest. The skin there was cold to the touch, stiff as weathered stone.
Almost a year now.
She pressed her lips together to steady her breathing.
Kneeling on the cool stone floor, she folded her hands, a gesture that concealed the trembling.
"Mother above," she whispered, "grant that they never learn of this. Spare my family this fear."
Her voice thinned.
"Let me serve while I still can… and when my time comes… let me join the little ones I could not save."
In the silence of her cell, only her quiet breathing filled the air… steady, measured.
Alone.
***
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