The scent of damp stone and rusted iron hung heavy in the air. Beneath the abandoned temple of the Faceless Men, the crypts twisted into a maze of shadows and secrets. William jolted awake, his heart pounding like a war drum. Chains bit into his wrists, and the cold stone beneath him felt like it wanted to swallow him whole.
He tried to move, but pain forced him back. His eyes, still adjusting to the darkness, caught a figure approaching—light footsteps, silent, as if the air itself carried her.
"Arya?" His voice came out hoarse, barely recognizable.
She stopped in front of him, her gaze steady, though a flicker of relief sparked behind it.
"So it's true…" she said, her voice heavy with the weight of the world.
William struggled to remember. Flashes came in fragments: a fight, screams, searing pain… and then, nothing.
"Where am I…" he asked, glancing around.
"Far from home, William. This is Braavos… or what's left of it."
He looked down at the chains. Valyrian steel. Not just restraint. Fear.
"Braavos…" he murmured, locking eyes with Arya. "What are you doing here...? You've grown so much."
Arya's gaze was burdened. Somehow, she no longer showed emotion.
"You've been gone a long time, William. You vanished before the Great Scourge."
Her voice cut like cold steel. William's memories twisted and tormented him. Broken recollections clawed at his soul, a pain so deep it seemed to bleed into his flesh.
He chewed on her words, but everything was maddeningly vague. His eyes scanned the crypt.
Dark.
Empty.
Cold.
The silence made his blood hum. His mind was shredded, but his body remembered. A sudden, torturous urge struck him, and he raised a trembling hand to his mouth.
"The Great Scourge...?" he asked, voice dry. Not out of doubt, his ruined mind didn't care. He just needed to escape that impulse.
Arya watched him with veiled judgment.
"Years ago, in Lorath and other parts of Essos, rumors of massacres began to spread. Anyone who went looking for answers never came back. Then the truth emerged: beasts wearing false human faces appeared everywhere. Luckily, outside their nests, they weren't numerous. We discovered their weaknesses—silver burns them. Some fear sunlight. But that doesn't matter to you now, William."
She paused.
"Unless the stories are true." She looked into his soul. "And truth is hard to deny, isn't it? You're alive… even like this."
She gestured toward his body. For the first time, William looked down. What he saw was tragic. Skin and bone, not a trace of flesh.
"Gods…" he whispered, frantic, staring at his arms, then his abdomen. He was nothing but bone.
"How… how do you know it's me?" he asked. How could she be sure? He was practically a walking corpse.
He stared at her. His mind buzzed, trying to anchor itself in the present. And then, in her nearly emotionless eyes, he saw something: disgust.
Arya remained still, her hand resting lightly on a silver dagger.
"That's what the stories say. That it was you. That here, at the heart of the Scourge, the father of horrors lay. That he was a son of Winterfell. You have no idea how much pain that brought us, William."
He tried to understand.
"What do you mean?"
"William… it's good to see you haven't become like them. You're not sadistic, brutal, or inhuman." She said it as if it gave him some shred of dignity.
"But I came here to end this. To free the world from the Scourge."
She stepped closer for the first time.
"I came to kill the father of the Scourge. And end all this destruction."
With lethal precision, she drove the silver dagger into his chest. William felt a burning agony, as if hell itself had ignited in his heart.
And then his mind began to work. A vision. A memory.
A silver-haired woman weeping. Another, dark-haired, descending into madness. A blood-red moon. And the curse of a god.
You are not welcome in this world.