Year 2029, somewhere on an unknown battlefront
In a half-collapsed bunker along the frontlines, six men lay beside each other as mortar shells screamed overhead, shaking dust loose from the concrete ceiling. The roar of warplanes tore across the skies above, occasionally breaking the sound barrier with bone-rattling cracks. Bullets hissed past like angry hornets, some striking so close overhead that fragments of dirt rained down on their helmets.
The men pressed closer together, breaths shallow, listening to the chaos of war unfolding around them. Finally, one of them spoke.
"We can't stay here for long. Supplies are nearly gone, communications with command is dead, and enemy foot soldiers are closing in," he said in a voice both calm and cracked, as if reciting something as ordinary as the weather. Yet, if one were to look into his eyes, they would see a vacant stare—unfocused, hollow, stripped of all light or emotion.
The others nodded silently, the weight of his words already etched into their minds. One man opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a faint buzzing reached their ears.
It was distant at first, more felt than heard, like an insect's hum buried beneath the sounds of war. None of them flinched—none of them even looked surprised. Instead, their heads turned in unison toward the horizon, scanning the pale, smoky sky. Nothing yet. But they all knew. A fiber-optic drone was inbound.
One of the soldiers raised his hand, cupping it behind his ear in a fan shape, straining to catch the sound more clearly. His face was blank.
After a long, tense pause, he said flatly,
"They've found us. The drone's closing in. A minute, maybe less."
One of the men spoke—a soldier with a burn scar stretched across his right cheek, the skin twisted and warped, his ear half-melted into the side of his head. He looked no older than his mid-twenties, yet thick strands of stark white streaked through his black hair, the cruel mark of stress carved by too many battles.
He leaned back against the mud wall of the bunker, as still as if he were part of it. Bullets cracked overhead, mortar blasts showered dirt from above, but his body didn't even twitch. His hollow eyes, stripped of warmth and light, stared past his comrades as he said flatly,
"Since a drone is coming, it means one of us dies today. We can't outrun it. I'll stay behind."
No one argued. No one cried out. They had seen this before—comrades sacrificing themselves to buy the rest a chance. The silence that followed wasn't agreement; it was acceptance.
He finally turned his head, his lifeless gaze settling on the others.
"Go. Now."
The remaining five didn't linger. There was no time for words that would mean nothing. They gathered what little was left: the rations, the ammunition, even his rifle. What use was a gun to a dead man? Still, they left him a pistol with a single bullet chambered—an unspoken mercy, a choice between surrender and silence.
Without another word, they slipped out into the shattered landscape, leaving him alone in the bunker's dim shadows.
As the hurried footsteps of his comrades faded into the distance, the bunker filled with a new sound—the droning buzz of the suicide drone, growing louder with every passing second.
Renold tilted his head back, staring up at the broken sky through the gaps in the ruined ceiling. Perhaps, he thought, for the last time.
'My country is destroyed. My hometown bombed to shit. My house—reduced to nothing, not a brick upon a brick. My father fell on the battlefield, as I am about to. My mother, my sister, my baby brother—all gone, swallowed by fire when an entire train of civilians was erased in an instant.'
The memories rolled through his hollow mind, not with sorrow, but with the dull weight of inevitability.
When his eyes lowered again, he saw it—about a hundred meters out, weaving between the blackened tree trunks, descending lower with every sweep of its rotors. The drone. His executioner.
Renold raised the pistol, pressing the cold steel under his chin. He would not give the enemy the satisfaction. He would die on his own terms.
He waited, calm, as the buzzing grew to a deafening scratching sound. When the drone was nearly upon him, he whispered his last words, voice steady yet cracked with betrayal:
"Oh God… Why have you forsaken tyour loyal servant?"
He pulled the trigger.
But instead of deliverance, only the hollow click of a jammed round echoed through the bunker.
Renold had no time to curse fate. A heartbeat later, the drone slammed into him, erupting in a thunderous explosion that consumed him whole. Even his final wish—to die by his own hand—was denied.
Renold's vision went completely black.
He floated in stillness, his body curled tight upon itself like a fetus in its mother's womb. No sound, no sensation—only an endless void pressing against him from every side.
'Is this the afterlife? he wondered. Nothing but darkness, no sense of time… How long until I go mad? I can already feel the irritation gnawing at me, and I haven't even been here long. Or… have I?'
His thoughts spiraled, chasing themselves through the silence—until, without warning, a golden light shimmered in the abyss.
A rectangular screen appeared before him, glowing faintly against the void. Its letters gleamed with divine finality:
[Congratulations. You have been selected for reincarnation.]
Renold blinked—or thought he did—staring into the impossible message.
[You will be transported to a predetermined world: House of the Dragon.]
His mind faltered. 'House of the Dragon?' The words meant little to a soldier who had lost everything in the smoke of war. Yet the screen did not pause.
[Your identity has been chosen.]
[You will be reborn as an Original Character: the twin brother of Aegon Targaryen, son of King Viserys Targaryen.]
Renold's hollow eyes widened, though his body remained trapped in the fetal stillness of the void. His war-scarred soul trembled, not from fear of death, but from the weight of something even stranger—life, once more.
Renold blinked—or at least he thought he did—and fragments of memory stirred. A show he used to watch in another life resurfaced in pieces: dragons, silver-haired kings, crowns, and wars over thrones.
The golden screen flickered once more, its voice chiming cold and mechanical:
[You will be granted a small boon to aid you in your journey.]
The letters shimmered, shifting as though weighed by some unseen judgment.
[Boon decided: Dragon's Link.]
[The dragon you bond with shall share a stronger connection than any dragon rider before you. You will feel its emotions and surface thoughts. You may glimpse the world through its eyes. You will always know its location. And your dragon shall grow at an accelerated pace compared to its kin.]
The screen dimmed for a moment, as if pausing.
[But boons come with curses. To gain something… something must be lost.]
Renold's chest tightened, though no breath filled it. The silence stretched until the screen flared gold again.
[Curse decided: Dampened Emotions.]
[From birth, your feelings shall be muted. What brings others joy will not stir you. What brings others sorrow will not wound you. Lust, greed, anger, hate, love—all will be shadows, distant and faint. At most, in moments where others might collapse in grief or weep in ecstasy, you will feel only a faint trickle in the heart.]
The golden letters pulsed slowly, almost as if softening the blow:
[Do not worry. Though your emotions will never burn like those of others, you will still know what they mean. You will walk among them, though forever apart.]
The light faded, leaving Renold adrift in silence once more.
The golden screen pulsed one final time.
[Good luck on your journey.]
Before Renold could even form a thought in reply, the light vanished. A sudden whooshing sensation tore through him, like being pulled headfirst into a rushing current.
Then—silence. Warmth. Pressure.
He floated, weightless, submerged in thick fluid that pressed against every part of his small, fragile body.
'Am I… inside a womb?' he thought, bewildered. The sensation was alien yet strangely soothing. He felt the steady rhythm of a distant heartbeat, slow and thunderous, echoing all around him.
'If this is real… then I should be inside… what was her name again? The king's wife…' His mind strained through the haze. 'Ah. Alicent Hightower. Daughter of the Hand of the King.'
He twitched his tiny fingers experimentally, the motion sluggish and clumsy. His hand brushed against something warm, slick, and solid.
the shape beside him twitched in response—then kicked faintly.
Renold's hollow thoughts stirred. 'Is that… Aegon? My twin?'
Renold's thoughts were cut short as a crushing sensation wrapped around him. Pressure closed in on every side, squeezing him tighter and tighter. Muffled cries echoed faintly through the liquid around him—his mother's screams.
Beside him, Aegon writhed like a trapped worm, kicking and twisting with desperate vigor against the walls of their shared prison. The pressure mounted until, suddenly, Renold felt his twin slip away. The space next to him was empty.
'So… he made it out first,' Renold thought.
Moments later, the same fate overtook him. His head pressed forward, breaking through into cold air. Rough, enormous hands clasped his crown, pulling him into the blinding brightness of the world.
Renold was born once again.
The room fell into hushed silence. The Grand Maester and midwives exchanged uneasy glances, their hands frozen mid-motion. Queen Alicent, flushed with sweat, cradled the wailing Aegon in her arms. Her young face twisted in fear as she rasped, voice cracked and trembling:
"What is it, Grand Maester? Why does my child not cry?"
The Grand Maester took Renold, pressing his ear to the infant's tiny chest. He waited a beat, then exhaled softly.
"Fear not, Your Grace. The child lives… though it seems he is of the silent sort."
Renold, realizing the issue, forced his tiny mouth open. What came out was no newborns cry, but a weak, broken wail—a pitiful sound. Yet to Alicent, that frail voice may as well have been a chorus from the Seven Heavens.
Relief washed over her as she demanded her second son be wrapped and placed in her arms beside Aegon. She gazed down at them, love glimmering in her weary eyes, and rocked them gently in an attempt to calm Aegon's cries.
Renold, swaddled tightly, blinked at the blurred shapes above him. His vision flickered, hazy, as though the world glitched at its edges. And then he felt it—an emptiness deep within his chest.
Even as a soldier in his past life, hardened by years at the frontlines, he had known emotion. Rage when facing the enemy. Hatred when comrades fell. Even lust, fleeting and crude, in the arms of women desperate to sell themselves for a peice of bread. But now… nothing.
'So this is the curse,' Renold thought. 'Dampened emotions. In this cruel world, where the wrong feeling could mean a knife across my throat… perhaps it may serve me well. Or doom me. We shall see soon enough.'