The Titan screamed, and Jon's blood answered.
Three weeks at sea had dulled the war beneath his skin to a constant hum—manageable, if never silent. The salt spray had become familiar, the endless grey of the Narrow Sea almost comforting in its emptiness. Sleep came easier now, lulled by the ship's creaking and the rhythm of waves against the hull. The hard biscuits and salted fish no longer turned his stomach. Even the sailors' warding signs had become routine—a background noise, like the cry of gulls or the snap of canvas.
Then Braavos rose from the fog, and everything changed.
The colossus straddled the harbor entrance like a nightmare given bronze form. Three hundred feet of metal and malice, its legs planted on the broken islands that guarded the Arsenal, its sword raised toward the sky as if threatening the gods themselves. The morning light caught its surface and turned the bronze to fire—red and gold and orange, blazing against the grey fog like a wound in the world.
Jon had heard stories of the Titan. Every child in Westeros had. But stories were shadows of things, pale echoes that captured nothing of the truth. The stories had not mentioned how the bronze seemed to breathe in the shifting light, how the sword caught the sun and threw blinding reflections across the water, or how the very air seemed to thicken as they approached—heavy with salt and age and the weight of a thousand years of watching.
Murder holes gaped in its armored skirt, dark mouths waiting to vomit boiling oil on any fleet foolish enough to attack. The face was hidden behind a war helm, blank and pitiless, but the weight of its gaze pressed against Jon's chest like a physical force. He could not shake the feeling that something looked back at him—something old and patient and not entirely bronze.
Kill box. The Marcus voice cut through his awe. Murder holes in the legs. Flanking positions on the islands. One ship at a time through the gap. Perfect choke point.
Jon gripped the rail as The Bleeding Edge glided toward the narrow passage between the Titan's legs. His knuckles had gone white—left hand frosted, right hand steaming—and the wood groaned beneath his fingers. Around him, sailors moved with practiced efficiency, trimming sails and adjusting lines, their faces carefully blank. None of them looked at the colossus directly. None of them looked at Jon.
"First time seeing her?" Captain Terys appeared at his shoulder, his Braavosi accent turning the words musical. The captain's eyes were fixed on the passage ahead, but a smile played at the corner of his mouth. "She has that effect on everyone. Even those who grew up in her shadow."
Before Jon could answer, the horn sounded.
It was not a noise. It was a physical force—a wall of sound that slammed into his chest and drove the breath from his lungs. The ship shuddered from stem to stern, timbers groaning, rigging humming like plucked strings. Sailors grabbed for handholds, their carefully maintained composure cracking into naked fear. One man fell to his knees, hands over his ears. Another screamed something in a language Jon didn't recognize—a prayer, perhaps, or a curse.
The sound drilled through Jon's skull, vibrating in his teeth, in his bones, and in the marrow where the power lived. It was not just loud—it was deep, a frequency that bypassed his ears entirely and spoke directly to something older, something buried in his blood. Something to be remembered.
And beneath it, answering the ancient bronze scream, his own blood began to burn.
Fire surged up his right arm like a living thing, racing from fingertip to shoulder in the space of a heartbeat. Ice crackled down his left, frost spreading across the rail in spiderweb patterns that raced toward the deck. The war that had been sleeping for three weeks woke all at once—not gradually, not gently, but like a beast ripping free of its chains. Jon doubled over the rail, a scream trapped in his throat, as steam rose from one hand and ice crystals formed in the air around the other.
"Boy?" Terys's voice came from very far away, muffled by the ringing in Jon's ears. "Boy, what—"
Focus. Marcus, cutting through the chaos like a blade through smoke. The horn is resonating with something in your blood. Old magic. Valyrian frequencies. FOCUS.
Jon forced air into his lungs. One breath, ragged and wet. Two, steadier. Three. The fire receded, reluctant, still snarling at the edges of his control. The ice slowed its spread, though it did not retreat. By the time the Titan's shadow fell across the deck—cold and absolute, blocking the morning sun like an eclipse—he had wrestled the war back to its usual simmer.
But the cost was written in his flesh. His chest ached with every breath. His vision swam at the edges, dark spots dancing like gnats. Something had shifted inside him, awakened by that ancient horn, and it was not going back to sleep.
"I'm fine." His voice came out as a croak. "Just seasick."
Terys did not believe him. The captain's eyes lingered on Jon's hands, on the frost still melting from the rail, and on the scorch marks his fingers had burned into the wood. When he spoke again, his voice had gone careful.
"We dock within the hour. My cargo masters will need time to arrange the next leg of your journey. You will stay on the ship. You will not draw attention." His eyes hardened. "And you will not burn anything."
Jon nodded. It was all he could manage.
The Titan's shadow passed over him like a judgment, and the ship sailed into Braavos.
* * *
Ragman's Harbor smelled like death wearing perfume.
The assault was overwhelming: fish guts and tar, sewage and spices, and unwashed bodies pressed together in numbers Jon could barely comprehend. Winterfell's entire population could have fit in a single corner of these docks, with room to spare for a dozen more villages. Ships from a hundred nations crowded the piers, their flags snapping in the salt wind—striped sails from Tyrosh, purple hulls from Myr, sleek galleys flying the golden kraken of the Iron Islands. Crews shouted in languages Jon had never heard, their voices blending into a roar that never stopped.
Everywhere, motion. Stevedores hauled crates down gangplanks, their muscles gleaming with sweat. Merchants argued over prices in half a dozen tongues, their hands cutting the air in emphatic gestures. Children darted between legs, quick as rats, their fingers quicker still. A woman in Lysene silks walked past with a retinue of guards, her perfume cutting through the stench like a blade. Behind her, two men in the black robes of the Iron Bank counted coins with mechanical precision, their faces as blank as the masks they were rumored to keep in their vaults.
Maintain awareness. Marcus, scanning the chaos. Too many variables. Unknown hostiles. No cover. Bad ground.
Jon sat on a crate near the gangplank, trying to look small and insignificant. Captain Terys had gone ashore to meet with his contacts, leaving strict instructions to stay put and "look like a mute." The crew gave Jon a wide berth, which suited him fine. Three weeks of their warding signs and whispered prayers had made clear what they thought of him.
The fever had returned—not the killing heat of those first days, but a low burn that made his skin feel too tight for his bones. His right hand trembled against his knee, fingers twitching with suppressed fire. His left hand had gone numb at the fingertips, frost creeping up toward his wrist despite the warmth of the day. The war was getting worse. Every day, a little harder to control. Every day, the balance tipped further toward destruction.
You need to move. The Marcus voice carried an edge of urgency. Sitting still lets the pressure build. Find a rhythm. Burn some of the excess.
"I'm supposed to stay here," Jon muttered.
Your blood doesn't care what you're supposed to do. Move, or lose control.
Jon glanced toward the harbor. Terys was nowhere in sight—swallowed by the crowds, probably arguing with customs officials or bribing dock masters. The sailors were busy with cargo, their backs turned, their attention elsewhere. No one was watching him.
He slipped off the crate and walked.
* * *
The docks gave way to alleys, and the alleys gave way to a maze.
Braavos was nothing like Winterfell. Where his former home had been open and orderly—granite walls and cobblestone yards, clear sightlines in every direction—this city seemed designed to confuse. Buildings leaned against each other at impossible angles, their upper stories jutting out over streets so narrow Jon could touch both walls at once. Some structures looked ancient, their stones worn smooth by centuries of fog and salt. Others looked newer but were already rotting, their timbers warped by damp, their shutters hanging loose on rusted hinges.
Bridges arched over canals that cut through the city like black wounds, their surfaces oily and foul. Water lapped against stone foundations, and things moved in that water—shapes Jon couldn't identify, pale and quick. Fog drifted between structures, turning everything beyond arm's length into grey shapes and shadows. A man could get lost here. A man could disappear here, and no one would ever know.
The smell changed as he walked—fish giving way to bread smoke, then incense, then something chemical and sharp that made his eyes water. Voices echoed from windows and doorways, mixing into a constant murmur. Once, a woman screamed something in a language Jon didn't recognize, and three children ran past him laughing, their bare feet slapping against wet stone.
You're being followed.
Jon's stride faltered. He forced himself to keep walking, to not look back, and to not give any sign that he knew.
Two men. Striped doublets, rapiers at the hip. Bravos—water dancers, or trying to look like them. They've been on you since the third alley.
"Why?"
Because you look like money. Clean clothes, northern coloring, no escort. Easy mark.
Jon risked a glance over his shoulder.
Two young men leaned against a doorway, their conversation a little too casual, their eyes a little too focused. One had a scar across his cheek, pink and puckered, running from ear to jaw. The other smiled when their gazes met, showing teeth that had been filed to points.
The smile did not reach his eyes.
"What do I do?"
Run.
Jon ran.
The Bravos were faster than he expected.
His legs pumped against the slick cobblestones, breath coming in ragged gasps, heart hammering so hard the beat filled his ears. The alleys blurred past—doorways and windows and faces that turned to watch, curious but unwilling to intervene. This was Braavos. A boy running from men with swords was entertainment here, not tragedy.
Behind him, boots rang against stone—not rushing, not desperate, just steady and inevitable. They knew these streets. He didn't. They were herding him, driving him like a deer toward a hunter's blind. The alleys narrowed. The bridges vanished. The crowds thinned until he was alone in a canyon of grey stone with nowhere to go.
Dead end in forty feet. Marcus, calm as ever. The wall's too high to climb. Turn and—
"I can't fight them!" Jon's voice cracked. "They have swords. I'm seven years old. I'm—"
Stop thinking like a civilian.
The alley ended. A wall rose before him—fifteen feet of slick stone, its surface covered in moss and mold, offering no handholds. Jon spun, pressing his back against the cold rock, and watched the Bravos emerge from the fog.
Scarface drew his sword. The blade was thin and elegant, made for speed rather than strength—a water dancer's weapon. "Pretty boy," he said, his accent thick and mocking. "Rich boy, yes? Far from home. Far from Papa's guards."
Pointed-teeth drew his own blade. "Pockets first. Then we see what else he has to offer."
Look at the wall behind you.
Jon didn't understand. The wall was solid stone—no doors, no windows, nothing but—
Look with my eyes.
The world shifted.
It was like the overlay from the training yard, but sharper now, more complete. Green lines blazed across the stonework—a crack here, a jutting brick there, a rusted pipe that ran up the wall's face like a ladder. Red lines marked the Bravos' positions, calculating threat vectors, analyzing their stances, and identifying weaknesses Jon's own eyes could never see.
The gap between those buildings. Twenty inches wide. Too narrow for them. If you can reach it, you escape.
"I can't climb that fast."
You don't have to climb. You have to stick.
Jon did not understand. But his body—or Marcus's body, the ghost that lived in his muscles—did.
He ran at the wall.
The Bravos laughed.
Jon didn't blame them. He was a child sprinting toward solid stone, arms pumping and legs churning, and absolutely nothing about this made sense. Scarface said something in Braavosi that made Pointed-teeth howl with amusement. They were already sheathing their swords, already moving to collect him when he bounced off the wall and fell.
Jon's left foot hit the stone. His right followed.
And then he was running up the wall.
Not climbing—running, his boots finding purchase on surfaces that should have been impossible to grip. Frost exploded from his soles with each step, turning slick moss into jagged ice crystals, transforming the wall's face into a friction surface his body could use. The cold sang through his left leg, up through his hip, spreading with each footfall. Two steps. Three. Four—
His muscles screamed. His lungs burned. The wall seemed to stretch above him forever, grey stone reaching toward a grey sky, and for one terrible moment he thought he would fall—
Now!
His left hand shot out, grabbed the rusted pipe, and pulled. The metal groaned under his weight, flakes of rust biting into his palm, but it held. The momentum carried him up another six feet, muscles tearing, lungs empty, and then his fingers found the gap between buildings—a chimney space barely wide enough to wedge himself into—and he was above them, wedged between brick walls like a spider in a crack, looking down at two Bravos whose laughter had died in their throats.
"Demon." Pointed-teeth was backing away, his filed teeth bared in something that might have been fear. "Fire-witch. Dragonspawn—"
"Grab him!" Scarface was made of sterner stuff. He jumped for the wall, trying to follow Jon's path, his boots scrabbling against the stone.
His feet found the frost patches Jon had left behind. For one moment he stuck—and then the ice cracked beneath his weight, and he fell, his head striking the cobblestones with a sound like a melon dropped from a tower.
He did not move. Blood pooled beneath his skull, dark and spreading, catching the grey light. His eyes were open but empty, staring at nothing.
Jon stared at the body. His stomach heaved. He had killed a man. Not with fire or ice or any of the powers that were destroying him from the inside—just with frost on a wall, just with the desperate need to escape. A man was dead because Jon had run up a wall, and now that man would never run anywhere again.
Pointed-teeth stared at his fallen companion. Then he looked up at Jon, wedged into the chimney gap like a spider made of ice, and his face went the color of old cheese.
He ran.
Jon clung to the stone and tried to remember how to exist.
* * *
The rooftops were a different world.
Braavos from above was a chaos of angles—slate roofs and copper domes, chimney stacks and weather vanes, all of it slick with fog and treacherous with moss. The wind was stronger here, cutting through Jon's clothes like knives. In the distance, the Titan's bronze form caught the afternoon light, and beyond it, the harbor—the ship that was supposed to carry him to safety.
It might as well have been on the moon.
Move. The fall attracts attention. Someone saw. Someone always sees.
Jon's muscles screamed as he pulled himself onto the nearest roof. The slate was slippery beneath his boots—no moss here to freeze, just smooth stone polished by decades of rain. He took a step and nearly fell, catching himself at the last moment on a rusted weathervane that groaned under his weight.
Assess. Breathe. Find a path.
The overlay blazed. Green lines traced routes across the rooftops—gutters that could bear his weight, chimney stacks he could vault, gaps he could jump if he timed it right. Red lines marked the dangers: weak spots in the roofing, sheer drops to canals far below, and windows where watchers might lurk.
Jon started moving.
It was nothing like the training yard. Nothing like the dreams of sword forms and soldiers' drills. This was raw, desperate survival—scrambling across slick tiles, leaping gaps that made his stomach lurch, trusting the Marcus-voice to tell him where to put his feet. The wind tore at his clothes and stung his eyes. The fog swirled around him, hiding dangers until they were inches away. Once he put his foot through a rotten shingle and nearly plunged through to the attic below, catching himself at the last second on a chimney stack that crumbled under his grip.
Twice he slipped. Twice the fire flared from his palms, superheating the air beneath him just enough to slow his fall, to give him time to grab a handhold. The first time, he caught a weathervane that bent but did not break. The second time, his fingers found a gap in the masonry, and he hung there for three heartbeats, his feet dangling over a forty-foot drop to a canal that looked black as ink from this height.
Each time, the cost carved itself into his flesh. Heat was bleeding from his blood. Ice spreading through his bones. The war inside him was tipping toward chaos.
Aqueduct ahead. Thirty-foot gap to the next roof. You can't make that jump.
Jon staggered to a halt at the roof's edge. Below him, a canal stretched like a black ribbon, its surface oily and foul. Across the gap, another rooftop beckoned—safety, distance, escape. But thirty feet was impossible. His legs were too short, his muscles too weak.
Unless—
"No." Jon's voice was barely a whisper. "That's too much. I'll—"
Ice for the launch. Fire for the thrust. Balance.
Somewhere behind him, voices were shouting—someone had seen the body in the alley, and someone was raising an alarm. Jon looked down at his hands. Left frosted blue, numbness spreading up his wrist. Right red with heat, steam rising from his palm. The war was killing him.
He took three steps back. Centered himself. Called the cold.
Frost exploded across the roof's edge, hardening the loose tiles into a solid platform. Jon sprinted, his boots crunching against the ice, and at the last moment—
Fire.
It erupted from his palms, from his chest, from every pore in his body—a focused explosion that shoved him forward like a ballista bolt. The world blurred. Wind screamed past his ears. Heat roared through his blood, and for one impossible instant, Jon Snow flew.
The gap yawned beneath him—thirty feet of empty air, the canal glittering far below like a black mirror. Time stretched. He could see every detail with impossible clarity: the moss on the opposite roof, the rust on a weathervane, and a gull wheeling in the grey sky above. He could feel the fire draining from his blood, the ice surging up to fill the void, and the war inside him screaming toward some terrible equilibrium.
Then gravity remembered him, and he crashed into a pile of wool bales on the opposite roof, the impact driving the breath from his lungs and the consciousness from his skull.
* * *
He woke to darkness and agony.
Everything hurt. His hands had gone numb—both of them now, frost and fire burned down to embers. His ribs ached where he'd hit the bales. His head throbbed with a pain that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and when he tried to move, his vision dissolved into swimming black spots.
You're alive. Marcus, sounding almost surprised. That was inadvisable.
Jon tried to speak. What came out was a wheeze.
Don't move. Your body is in shock. The magic took too much—you're running on fumes. If you try to stand, you'll black out.
Jon lay among the wool and listened to his blood trying to tear itself apart. The war had gone quiet—not peaceful, but exhausted, like two wolves too tired to keep fighting. His chest rose and fell. His heart beat. He was alive.
Good news: you covered about two miles. Bad news: you have no idea where you are. A pause. Worse news: someone is watching.
Jon's eyes snapped open.
Above him, the sky had gone grey with the promise of rain. Chimney stacks rose like black fingers against the clouds. Weathervanes spun lazily in the evening breeze. And at the very edge of his vision, silhouetted against the darkening sky—
A figure.
It stood on a tower in the distance—tall and narrow, its surface dark as obsidian. The tower itself was strange, Jon realized through the fog of his exhaustion. Too thin, too sharp, its lines wrong in ways his eyes could not quite track. It looked less like a building and more like a blade thrust up from the city's heart.
And on that blade, the figure waited.
It was motionless, wrapped in robes that did not move in the wind—robes that seemed to drink the fading light rather than reflect it. The watching pressed against Jon's mind like cold fingers probing for a way in, patient and terrible and utterly inhuman. No face was visible. No features at all—just a shape, a darkness, a presence that should not have been able to see him from a hundred yards away but somehow did. Somehow he knew exactly where he was, what he was, and what he had done.
Then it was gone. Simply gone, as if it had never been there at all. The tower remained, but the figure had vanished between one heartbeat and the next, leaving only the memory of that terrible attention.
That was not a Bravo.
Jon struggled to his feet. His legs shook beneath him. His vision swam with every movement.
That was something worse.
* * *
He found his way back to the ship by smell.
The harbor's distinctive reek—fish and tar and rotting seaweed—cut through the fog like a beacon. Jon followed it through alleys he didn't recognize, across bridges he didn't remember, and past crowds that parted around him as if sensing something wrong with the boy who walked among them. His feet found the way by instinct, carrying him through the maze while his mind drifted somewhere between consciousness and collapse.
The streets grew darker as he walked. The crowds thinned. Twice he passed down alleys where men watched him from doorways, their eyes calculating, their hands near their knives. But something in Jon's face—or perhaps the frost that still rimed his fingers, or the scorch marks on his sleeves—made them look away. Whatever they saw, they wanted no part of it.
He walked until the alleys opened onto the waterfront, until the forest of masts rose before him, until the familiar shape of the Bleeding Edge emerged from the gathering dark.
By the time he reached the docks, the sun had set. Orange light from oil lamps flickered across the water, turning the harbor into a field of dancing shadows. Captain Terys was pacing the gangplank, his face a mask of barely controlled fury.
"Three hours." His voice was tight enough to crack. "Three hours I have been searching. I sent men into the city. I bribed dock guards. I was about to hire sellswords." He stopped pacing and turned to face Jon. "I told you to stay on the ship. I told you—"
"I'm sorry." Jon's voice came out as a croak. His legs chose that moment to give out, and he collapsed against a mooring post, shaking with exhaustion.
Terys's anger flickered. Something else moved behind his eyes—concern, perhaps, or fear, or the calculation of a man who had been paid a great deal of gold to deliver a package intact.
"What happened to you?"
Jon looked down at his hands. The frost had retreated, but his fingertips were blue with frostbite. His right palm was blistered, the skin angry and red. His whole body trembled with a cold that had nothing to do with the evening air.
"I went for a walk."
Terys stared at him. Then, slowly, the captain's face rearranged itself into something that might have been respect—or might have been resignation.
"Get on the ship. Get to your cabin. And if I find you on the docks again, I will tie you to the mast until we reach Pentos."
Jon nodded. He did not have the strength to argue.
* * *
The cabin was small and dark and safe.
Jon curled into his hammock, his body still trembling, and stared at the ceiling. The wood was stained with watermarks from old leaks, patterns that looked almost like faces in the dim light. The ship rocked gently beneath him—a motion he had hated three weeks ago but now found almost comforting, a reminder that he was moving, escaping, putting distance between himself and whatever had watched him from that black tower.
The sounds of the harbor filtered through the hull: shouts and laughter, the creak of ropes, and the splash of oars in the distance. A bell rang somewhere—a temple bell, perhaps, or a ship signaling its departure. Life continued in Braavos, blind and busy, unaware of the boy who had run across its rooftops and drawn the attention of something that should not have noticed him at all.
You survived. Marcus's voice was quieter now, almost gentle—the voice of a soldier who had seen too many men die and learned to value the ones who didn't. First real field test. You made mistakes. Attracted attention. Almost died twice. But you survived.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
It's supposed to make you learn. Every engagement provides data. Every failure teaches. A pause. Today you learned that you can run on walls. That fire can propel you. That combining the two can cover distances a normal child could never manage.
Jon closed his eyes. Behind them, he could see the figure on the tower—still, watching, inhuman. The memory pressed against his mind like a bruise.
You also learned that you are not alone in this city. Something saw you. Something old.
"The Faceless Men." Jon had heard the stories. Every child in Westeros knew about the assassins of Braavos, the death cult that could wear any face and strike from any shadow.
Perhaps. Or something older. The magic you used was loud. Like a signal fire in darkness. Certain entities would have noticed.
"What do I do?"
You leave. Tomorrow, if possible. Get on the next ship heading east and do not stop until you reach Yi Ti. The longer you stay in one place, the more attention you attract. The more attention you attract—
"The more I die."
Correct.
Jon pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. His hands had stopped trembling, but the cold remained—a deep, bone ache that no fire could warm. Outside the porthole, the fog closed in like a fist, swallowing the lights of Braavos one by one.
Sleep now. Tomorrow, we run.
Jon closed his eyes. The ship rocked beneath him, a gentle rhythm that promised motion, escape, and distance. Somewhere in the darkness above, the Titan stood guard over a city of secrets and assassins, its bronze face turned toward the sea, its ancient horn waiting for the next ship to announce. And somewhere in that city, in a tower that looked like a blade, something without a face turned its attention toward the harbor.
It had seen the boy who burned too bright. It had tasted the magic that screamed from his blood. And now it was thinking, planning, waiting—patient as only the truly old could be patient, certain as only death could be certain.
The game was only beginning.