Mark Smith died with equations still racing through his mind.
One moment he was crossing the street, distracted by thoughts of a particularly elegant solution to the thermal conductivity problem that had plagued his research team for months, and the next.Impact.
A delivery truck, horn blaring too late, tires screaming against asphalt. Pain flared white-hot across his consciousness, then vanished altogether.
Darkness enveloped him. Time stretched in the void, or perhaps it ceased to exist altogether. Mark floated in it, or perhaps it floated through him. The distinction seemed meaningless here.
"Interesting," he thought, with the detached curiosity that had defined his thirty-two years of life. "So this is death." He had always imagined nothingness would be more... nothing.
Until something shifted in the darkness.
A pinprick of light bloomed before him, expanding into a luminous presence that took shape gradually, a figure of indeterminate form, radiating energy that seemed to bend the very fabric of the void around it.
"Mark Smith," the entity intoned, its voice neither male nor female but something altogether different. The words formed directly in his consciousness, carrying neither gender nor accent, merely meaning.
"You are among the fortunate few."
Mark would have frowned if he still possessed a face. Fortunate seemed a strange descriptor for someone recently pulverized by several tons of metal.
"Fortunate?" he thought back.
"Indeed. You have been selected for rebirth. Your time in your realm has ended, but your journey continues."
The darkness around them transformed, coalescing into a chamber of sorts, though its walls seemed to stretch into infinity. Before him materialized three massive wheels, each taller than he had been in life, adorned with countless symbols and images that flickered and shifted as if alive.
"The multiverse is vast beyond comprehension," the entity continued. "Countless worlds exist alongside your own, worlds you glimpsed only through the stories you so cherished."
A pang of emotion swept through Mark's non-existent heart. Those stories, the anime, games, and fictional worlds he'd immersed himself in whenever research pressures grew too intense—had been his refuge. His colleagues had teased him mercilessly about his "childish obsessions," but they'd never understood the elegant complexity, the raw creativity those worlds contained.
"I... have to spin that?" he asked, discovering that thought translated to communication in this place.
"The system is impartial," the entity explained. "Your destination, your power, your lineage, all determined by chance. Three spins will shape your new existence."
The first wheel pulsed with anticipation.
"Begin with power," the entity instructed. "What abilities will you carry into your new life?"
Mark hesitated. His scientific mind rebelled against this impossibility, searching for rational explanation—hallucination, perhaps, or dying neurons firing in chaotic patterns. Yet something deeper recognized truth when confronted with it.
With what felt like a phantom limb, Mark reached out and set the first wheel spinning.
Countless symbols blurred together as it rotated with impossible speed. He recognized some from fiction, a lightning bolt scar, a circular shield with a star, a green ring, while others seemed to pulse with concepts rather than clear imagery. Fragments of images flashed through his awareness: fire dancing across outstretched fingers, shadows bending to will, light condensing into blades, creatures bound to human masters.
He watched, mesmerized, as it gradually slowed, symbols flashing past: a pair of red eyes with comma-like tomoe, a lightning-wreathed fist, a brain pulsing with telepathic waves, metallic spheres orbiting a central point.
With a final shudder, the wheel stopped.
It came to rest on a symbol of a black canine silhouette with glowing red eyes, a sword-like marking on its forehead.
"Canis Lykaon," it murmured, something like appreciation coloring its tone.
"A dangerous gift indeed. One of the Thirteen Longinus Sacred Gears, an Independent Avatar-Type. The Dog God of the Black Blade."
Mark felt confusion ripple through him. "I don't understand."
"Few do, at first," the entity replied. "In its realm of origin, it possesses power sufficient to slay gods themselves." The entity rippled with what might have been appreciation.
"The God of the Bible crafted it from two sources, the cursed King Lycaon of Arcadia, transformed to a wolf by Zeus's wrath, and Ame-no-Ohabari, a divine sword from Shintoism used to slay Hinokagutsuchi. The distortion from merging these disparate elements transformed the wolf into a dog, and the curse tainted the blade, stripping its divinity and creating something... darker.."
"High School DxD," thought Mark.
"The fusion distorted both original elements," the entity continued. "Merging these disparate elements transformed the wolf into a dog, The wolf became a dog, and the curse tainted the divine blade. It lost its heavenly nature, becoming something darker, more primal. In your hands, it may become something else entirely."
Mark struggled to process this information, his scientific mind rebelling against concepts of gods and divine weapons.
"I don't understand what any of this means," Mark admitted.
"You will," the entity assured him. "A Longinus adapts to its wielder, absorbing their abilities and creativity. It becomes a vessel for their desires and ambitions.
The symbol pulsed once, twice, then burned itself into Mark's consciousness. Knowledge flooded him, understanding of what he would become, what power would flow through his veins in his next life.
Images flashed through Mark's mind, a massive wolf with shadow-like tendrils extending from its form, a blade that seemed to drink light rather than reflect it, a bond between beast and master that transcended ordinary understanding.
Suddenly, he returned back to the present. But he felt heavier.
The second wheel loomed before him, massive and intricate. Unlike the first wheel with its abstract symbols of power, this one displayed breathtaking vistas and landscapes, snow-capped mountains piercing cloud-laden skies, dense forests with trees larger than skyscrapers, sprawling desert wastelands, underwater cities glowing with bioluminescence, and urban metropolises both recognizable and utterly alien. Each segment contained entire worlds compressed into symbolic representations, some bearing sigils or crests that Mark recognized from fiction, others entirely unknown.
"The wheel of worlds," the entity explained. "Your destination in the vast multiverse."
Mark's non-corporeal form trembled with anticipation. The scientific part of him, the part that had spent years pursuing rational explanations for physical phenomena, continued to insist this was impossible. Yet another part of him, that section that had devoured stories and imagined other realms since childhood, surged with excitement.
He reached out, setting the massive wheel spinning with a gentle push. It rotated with gathering momentum. The landscapes blurred together, a kaleidoscope of potential destinies. He caught glimpses of impossible architecture, alien skies, familiar skylines from Earth, medieval castles, futuristic cityscapes, and strange symbols he couldn't begin to interpret. He saw a school for wizards, a world where giant humanoids devoured people, a continent where elemental bending was practiced.
The wheel began to slow. Mark watched, breathless despite having no lungs, as the final options flickered past. Then it stopped.
The image flickered, panning across an entire world. Mark saw flashes of a vast continent: desert wastes where bronze-skinned warriors in hoods rode giant lizards, towering mountains where isolated clans kept ancient traditions, sprawling cities with spires and harbors, grasslands where horse-lords thundered across endless plains. Then the view shifted to another continent where dragons had once ruled, stone cities baking under foreign suns, and further still to frozen wastelands where things stirred beyond an immense wall of ice.
"Westeros. Essos. The lands beyond the Wall," Mark thought, awe rippling through his non-corporeal form.
"A Song of Ice and Fire," the entity confirmed. "A world of harsh winters, ancient magic, and political intrigue. A curious choice for one with your power. Winter is coming, as they say."
The second wheel's choice burned into Mark's consciousness alongside his newfound power. The black wolf and the world of ice and fire, somehow they would merge, though he couldn't yet imagine how. Canis Lykaon had never existed in George R. R. Martin's world of political machinations and ancient threats.
The convergence of foreign power with native magic creates... interesting possibilities," the entity said, seeming to read his thoughts.
The third wheel materialized fully now. The final wheel," the entity said, "Your lineage and starting position."
This wheel bore countless family crests, sigils, and symbols representing various houses, clans, and bloodlines from the world of Ice and Fire. Some Mark recognized immediately, the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen, the golden lion of Lannister, the kraken of Greyjoy
"Your blood and birth will determine much," the entity explained. "Though not everything. Even the lowliest can rise, with sufficient will and fortune."
Mark hesitated, his thoughts racing. Where in this brutal world would offer the best chance of survival? The North with its harsh but honorable ways? The political viper's nest of King's Landing? The distant but wealthy shores of Essos? Each had advantages and mortal dangers.
With a final mental push, he set the third wheel spinning, watching as the sigils blurred into a kaleidoscope of potential destinies.
The wheel slowed gradually, a familiar landscape filled the chosen segment: a massive ice wall stretching across a northern frontier, a castle of gray stone built above hot springs, a crimson weirwood tree with a solemn face carved into its trunk, and a dire wolf sigil.
Mark couldn't believe it. If he'd still possessed a physical form, his heart would have pounded against his ribs. Westeros. The North. Winterfell.
"A Song of Ice and Fire," the entity confirmed. "A world of harsh winters, ancient magic, and political intrigue. A curious choice for one with your power."
A wild, incredulous joy surged through Mark's consciousness. Of all the possible worlds, this one, the setting of books he had read and reread until their spines cracked, a show he had analyzed episode by episode, a world whose maps and histories he knew better than his own hometown's. A universe he had studied obsessively, analyzing fan theories, debating timeline discrepancies with online communities.
"This can't be happening," he thought, with growing excitement. "Westeros... with a Sacred Gear..."
It was unbelievable, that his luck that would land him in precisely the fictional world he had spent countless hours obsessing over seemed too perfect, too tailored to his secret passions.
"The convergence is... unusual," the entity acknowledged, rippling slightly as if considering the implications. "Your power originates from a different cosmology entirely. Its introduction to this realm will create... interesting distortions."
Mark barely heard the entity's words. His mind raced with possibilities. The political intrigues of King's Landing, the ancient mysteries beyond the Wall, the looming threat of the Others, all would be navigable with the power of Canis Lykaon at his side.
"The wheels do not lie," the entity replied, seeming to sense his thoughts. "Though I must warn you, the reality may differ from the stories you know. The multiverse contains infinite variations, and the narrative you consumed may be merely one interpretation of countless possible Westeros. The timeline you are born it may be unfamiliar to you."
Mark absorbed this caution, but his excitement remained undiminished. Even with variations, even with differences, this was a world he understood at a fundamental level. Its politics, its geography, its dangers, all familiar territory.
"I see you appreciate the wheels' choices," the entity observed, its formless presence shifting slightly. "The time has come. I'll send your soul away now. All the best to you, lucky soul."
Before Mark could respond, the chamber around him began to dissolve. The wheels faded into mist, and the presence of the entity grew dimmer. He felt himself being pulled away, drawn through an invisible veil, his consciousness stretching and compressing simultaneously. The void closed around him, and then there was nothing but darkness and a sense of rushing forward, faster and faster, toward an unknown destination.
As the soul vanished into the ether, bound for its new existence, the entity remained in the void, its energy pulsing with what might have been amusement.
"Truly fortunate," it mused to itself, the chamber now empty save for its presence. "One in countless billions receives such a convergence of desire and destiny."
The entity's form rippled, reconsidering the wheels' selections. While the soul had received exactly what it wanted, there remained unseen complications. The Sacred Gear chosen was not merely a tool or weapon, but something more complex.
"Canis Lykaon," the entity whispered to the empty void. "Of all the powers to bestow upon a soul entering that particular realm..."
The entity recalled the nature of this particular Sacred Gear, not merely a weapon, but a sentient being with its own will, its own desires. Unlike many Sacred Gears that simply obeyed their wielders, Canis Lykaon formed bonds of fierce loyalty with those it deemed worthy. It did not merely serve; it protected, guarded, defended its host's soul with a ferocity that bordered on possessiveness.
The void pulsed around the entity as it contemplated the soul's journey ahead. Would it even survive the awakening.
The introduction of such foreign power into the world of ice and fire would create ripples, distortions in the fabric of that reality. Ancient magics would respond to the intrusion, either in harmony or in opposition. The delicate balance of forces, the old gods, the new, the Lord of Light, the Many-Faced God, the deep magic of the Children of the Forest, all would sense the arrival of something alien to their realm.
"Perhaps," the entity considered, "this is why the wheels chose as they did. Balance seeking balance, even across the boundaries of worlds."
With that final thought, the entity's attention shifted away from the departed soul. There were countless others waiting in the void between lives, countless journeys to oversee. The story of Mark Smith and Canis Lykaon would unfold now without its observation, one more tale among infinite possibilities in the vast, endless multiverse.
_________________________________________________-
128 AC
The chill of winter permeated Winterfell's ancient stones, but another sound pierced the night, a woman's agonized screams echoing through the corridors of the great castle. Within the birthing chamber, Lady Arra Norrey clutched the bedposts, her knuckles white with strain, her body convulsing with the effort of bringing new life into the world. Sweat-soaked hair clung to her face as the midwife urged her to push once more.
Blood pooled beneath her, darkening the sheets with alarming speed. Too much blood. The maester and the midwives exchanged grim glances as they worked, their movements growing increasingly frantic as they tried to stem the bleeding.
When at last the child emerged, a boy, his lusty cries filled the chamber, a defiant announcement of his arrival. But his mother's screams did not transform into the expected sounds of relief and joy. Instead, they weakened, fading into shallow gasps as her life force ebbed away with each passing heartbeat.
Lord Cregan Stark, a young man of twenty namedays, who had been pacing outside the chamber door, rushed to his wife's side. His face, normally impassive, crumpled as he took in the scene, his infant son alive and wailing, his wife pale and silent, her eyes staring unseeing at the timber ceiling.
The howl that tore from Cregan's throat was primal, a sound of raw anguish that seemed to shake the very foundations of Winterfell. The wolf's blood, they would later whisper in the castle halls. The grief of a Stark is as fierce as their sigil.
Through it all, the infant continued his plaintive cries, oblivious to the tragedy surrounding his birth, to the fact that his first breath had coincided with his mother's last. The midwife swaddled him tightly in wool blankets bearing the direwolf sigil, a small attempt at comfort amid sorrow.
"My lord," a midwife whispered, gently handing the newborn to Cegan the newborn, while the others worked desperately over Lady Arra's still form. "A son. Strong and healthy."
"Rickon," Lord Cregan whispered hoarsely as he reaches out to tenderly cradle the child, naming the boy even as tears tracked down his stubbled cheeks. "Named for my father."
In that moment, as the Lord of Winterfell clutched the still body of his wife, something stirred in the godswood beyond the castle walls. The heart tree's carved face seemed to weep red sap, and beneath the frozen ground, ancient magics shifted and realigned. The old gods had taken notice of the child's birth, a child whose arrival had been marked by both joy and sorrow, by life and death intertwined.
Deep within the infant's soul, something else awakened, a presence, dormant but aware, waiting for the proper time to manifest. A shadow that would one day take form, a companion bound to the boy by threads of fate stronger than Valyrian steel.
Outside the castle walls, a wolf howled in the wolfswood, the sound carrying across the snow-covered landscape. Some would later claim it was an omen, a sign from the old gods themselves. Others dismissed it as mere coincidence, a wild creature calling to its pack on a cold winter's night.
None could have known the truth, that within little Rickon Stark slumbered a power unlike any Westeros had seen before, a convergence of magics from beyond the boundaries of their world. A sacred gear, waiting to awaken.
For now, though, Rickon Stark was simply a newborn, cradled against his father's chest, his cries eventually subsiding into hiccupping sobs.
_____________________________-
The castle around them fell into mourning, black banners replacing the gray and white of House Stark, as preparations began for Lady Arra's journey to the crypts beneath Winterfell, where generations of Starks watched with stone eyes from the darkness.
Maester Kennet examined the child with careful hands. "A strong boy, my lord," he confirmed, his chain clinking softly as he moved. "Though born amidst tragedy, he shows no ill effects. The Stark blood runs true in him."
Cregan nodded, his grief momentarily overshadowed by a father's pride and responsibility. "He will need a wet nurse," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "And in time, he will need to learn what it means to be a Stark of Winterfell."
What it meant to be a Stark. The words unspoken hung in the air between them: Winter Is Coming. It always was, for House Stark, in one form or another.
_____________________________________________
Lets goooooo. This is a big project of mine. Really hope you guys enjoy this story. Canis Lykaon is an epic sacred gear, and I'm going to love exploring it in the ASOIAF setting.
And just so you know. Rebirth isn't as straightforward as you think.....