The village was smaller than it looked from the cliff—no more than two dozen huts clustered beneath slanted roofs heavy with snow. Smoke curled from stone chimneys, and muddy paths cut between frozen fences. No banners flew. This wasn't a Northern stronghold, just a forgotten hamlet clinging to life in the far edge of the known world.
Kieran didn't approach from the road. Instinct—born of fear, not training—urged him to circle wide, watching from the tree line like a ghost. His breath misted in the air. His fingers were numb. And yet, deep inside him, something pulsed. The pendant. That ever-present thrum of energy in his chest.
"Arcane Sync: 3%. Cognitive unlock: Level 1 – Basic Mana Channeling now available."
The system's voice whispered in his mind again, gentle as falling snow. With it came flashes—memories that weren't memories. A man seated cross-legged on a mountaintop, hands forming a seal. A silver circle drawn in chalk. The faint vibration of energy beneath his skin.
He closed his eyes.
And felt it.
Not strong. Not precise. But real.
A flicker of something beneath his ribs, like a second heartbeat. Raw, untamed. Magic.
It's real.
He drew in a slow breath and stepped toward the village, heart pounding.
The first villager he encountered was an old man tending a frozen trough outside his hut. Kieran raised both hands and spoke before the man could shout.
"I'm alone. Just passing through. Not looking for trouble."
The man eyed him warily. "You from one o' the keeps?"
Kieran shook his head. "No. Got turned around in the woods."
"Where's your house sigil? Ain't no sellsword I ever seen walking barefoot in the snow."
He glanced down. He hadn't even noticed. His boots were thin, barely held together. His toes were white with cold.
"I'm... not from here."
The man narrowed his eyes. "From where, then?"
Kieran hesitated. How do you explain another world to a man who still believes fire is the work of the gods?
"Far east," he said finally. "Past the rivers. Lost my way after the snows hit."
It wasn't a lie. Not really.
The man grunted and pointed with his chin toward a hut with faded red markings. "Maester's boy might still be alive in there. Knows more letters than sense. Maybe he'll feed you."
The boy's name was Rowan, barely twelve winters old, but clever-eyed and sharp-tongued. He offered a half bowl of barley stew and a cot by the hearth in exchange for stories.
"So you're a healer?" Rowan asked, stirring the stew with a piece of dry bark. "From the East?"
"I was training to be one," Kieran answered, cradling the bowl with trembling fingers. "Back where I'm from."
"You got herbs? A salve?"
"No. Just... knowledge. A little."
Rowan nodded solemnly. "You smell like the old trees."
Kieran blinked. "What do you mean?"
"The godswood. The one near the hollow hill. You haven't been there yet, but you will. They always do."
He stared. "They?"
"The ones who dream with eyes open. Like you."
That night, Kieran couldn't sleep.
Not just from the cold, or the hunger still gnawing beneath the stew—but because of Rowan's words. The pendant pulsed again, as if echoing the boy's voice. The godswood. The hollow hill.
By dawn, he was walking again.
Rowan gave him directions without being asked.
The forest thinned into a clearing wrapped in silence.
Snow blanketed everything. No tracks. No birds. Only a single tree stood at the center—a gnarled, ancient Weirwood with blood-red leaves and a face carved deep into its trunk. The eyes bled sap like tears, and Kieran felt his breath catch the moment he stepped into its shade.
Something was watching him.
No—listening.
His fingers trembled as he reached out and touched the bark. The cold sank instantly into his skin, but it wasn't painful. It was deep. It touched something buried.
And the world shifted.
His surroundings blurred. The trees pulsed. The sky warped. He fell—though he hadn't moved—and found himself kneeling in a place of absolute silence.
Black void. Floating runes. And in the center, a mirror.
Not a reflection. A memory.
Kieran stared into it.
He saw himself, years ago, on Earth. Alone in his apartment, pacing at midnight, repeating lecture notes like a prayer. No friends. No lover. Just pressure. Purpose. Pain.
He turned away—but the mirror didn't.
It shifted, reshaped, and now it showed him here—his new body, his eyes glowing faintly, the pendant pulsing like a second heart.
Behind him stood the Weirwood.
And beside it, something cloaked in shadow.
"You were not meant for this world," the figure said. Its voice was neither male nor female, and it felt... ancient.
"But the world is breaking. And so, it calls for strange salvation."
The mirror shattered.
And Kieran fell.
He landed hard, coughing snow from his lungs, blinking beneath the cold sun.
The Weirwood still stood. The face in the trunk wept silently.
And in the snow before him, carved as if by an invisible blade, were six symbols:
𐌔 𐌑 𐌕 𐌍 𐌔 𐌑
He didn't know what they meant.
But the pendant flared warm against his chest—and part of him, deeper than instinct, understood.
His path had begun.
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