The stars above the North were colder than those he had known.
They didn't twinkle like they did back on Earth, not the way he remembered during his long nights walking home from the hospital, always with his hands in his pockets, always with thoughts too heavy for his age. These stars didn't comfort. They watched. Silent. Patient.
Kieran had found a cave the morning after leaving the glacier, tucked behind a fallen ridge of frost-bitten rock. A natural hollow in the cliff face, shielded from the biting wind and just high enough to keep out wolves or worse. He sealed the entrance with a slow-forming rune barrier—a simple shield, weak against steel, but enough to distort visibility and keep heat trapped within.
He wasn't hungry anymore. Not in the normal sense. After days of draining himself through battle and study, his body had begun adjusting to the slow-burning intake of mana. He felt thinner, sharper. Something in him had changed, not just his power—but his perception. The way he looked at the sky, or the lines of the earth, or even the bones beneath the snow.
There were patterns now.
Lying flat on his back in the cave, cloak wrapped tight, he stared into the dark above and let his mind drift. The system had changed again—quieter now, no longer guiding each breath, each step. As if it had stepped back, letting him take the reins.
But the pendant still pulsed.
A soft blue warmth against his sternum. Calling. Not outward. Inward.
The Library in the Ice had shown him the concept of astral detachment—the first major divide between those who used magic and those who understood it. Meditation was only the start. Real projection required something more—shedding the weight of the flesh, silencing fear, and untangling the spirit from the body.
There was no incantation. No dramatic gesture.
There was only stillness.
Kieran closed his eyes and breathed deeply, slowly, as he traced the runes within his mind—glyphs of separation, of clarity, of control. Each one painted onto the fabric of his thoughts, not drawn in air. His heartbeat slowed. His limbs relaxed.
Then—nothing.
And then—everything.
The cave vanished. The snow. The cold. Even the sensation of breath disappeared. In its place: light.
Blinding, shimmering, endless.
He floated—not in air, not in water, but in a sea of thoughts made visible. Streams of color and memory and emotion swirled around him, whispering pieces of lost dreams. He didn't fall. He drifted. Without weight, without form.
Then, something found him.
A tug—not physical, but psychic—rippled through the currents of the astral sea. A thread pulling him forward. He didn't resist.
The currents darkened. The light thinned into silver strands, threads that danced and knotted into shapes resembling faces—dozens of them. Eyes without names. Some he recognized from history books. Others from Game of Thrones itself. But they weren't dead. They were suspended here, remnants or echoes, fragments of dreams that had long since died in the waking world.
One face stood out.
It was her.
Long silver hair cascading over her shoulders like liquid moonlight. Eyes—not the soft violet often spoken of in tales, but sharp and storm-gray, clouded with war. Her lips were pressed into a line. Her brow was creased.
Daenerys.
Not in chains. Not surrounded by dragons. But alone. Sitting in a vast stone hall, head resting on her hand, looking out into a realm of fire that stretched endlessly.
She didn't see him.
But she felt him.
Her head turned slightly, and for a heartbeat, their eyes met.
Not as two people. As two anomalies.
She whispered, though her lips did not move.
You are not from here.
Her voice was not a voice. It was a thought, pressed into his mind like a blade held to his throat.
But you burn. Like I do.
The vision split.
He was no longer floating. Now falling. Through fire. Through ice. Through ruins that stretched beyond the Wall, castles shattered by invisible wars, dragons screaming in skies blackened by ash. A great throne stood at the center of it all—not just of swords, but of names. Thousands. Written in blood.
A war was coming.
Not just of kings and queens.
A war of timelines.
Of forces too large for mortals to bear.
The pendant on his chest seared into his skin.
He screamed.
Then silence.
When Kieran awoke, his back arched in agony. The cave around him pulsed faintly with runes trying to stabilize the surge of uncontrolled mana. He rolled onto his side and vomited bile into the snow. His eyes stung. His fingers trembled. But he remembered everything.
The vision wasn't prophecy. It was probability.
A warning.
Not just of Daenerys. Not just of the Night King. But of himself.
He could break this world.
And something—someone—had seen that future already.
The pendant was quiet now. Resting.
Kieran gripped the edge of his cloak with bloodied fingers and whispered into the silence, not to the system, not to the gods, but to himself.
I have to be more than power.
I have to choose what I become.
And yet, deep beneath the vow, beneath the noble resolve, a small part of him—quiet, but honest—smiled.
Because for the first time since he was reborn, he was no longer lost.
He was part of something greater.
And he would find her.
--------------
Please spend some power stones for support, Thankss!