There was no light. No sound. No time.
Only sensation — weightless, untethered, and wrong.
He was floating through something too dense to be air, too cold to be water. His thoughts were slippery, refusing to take shape. Then came the pressure — behind his eyes, in his chest, in the marrow of bones he couldn't yet feel.
And with it, the panic.
He gasped, choking on breath as if breathing for the first time. The air was musty, touched by damp stone and the faintest trace of smoke. He coughed. The sound was high, too young — a child's voice.
That realization struck harder than any pain. He opened his eyes.
Stone walls surrounded him, slick and gray, with an arched ceiling high above and wooden beams darkened by time. A single window, small and bare, let in a sliver of light from a sickly morning sun. He sat up, too quickly, and the world tilted.
His limbs were thin. Small. Not his.
His hands trembled in front of him — pale, soft, uncalloused. A boy's hands.
No, no, no...
He stumbled out of bed, nearly falling as his legs buckled beneath him. The floor was cold, rough stone beneath his bare feet. His heart was thundering. Where am I? What the hell is this?
Then the pain returned — not physical, but mental, like someone had cracked open his skull and poured memories into it. Not his memories.
Flashes of fire and storm. Screams in the night. A bloodied ship deck under moonlight. A child sobbing beside a cradle as the sea swallowed the world. A silver-haired woman clutching her belly, face pale as death.
Visions of King's Landing, burning.
A brother Rhaegar — dead. A mother Rhaella — dead. A father Aerys called the Mad King — dead.
And he — a child clinging to the hem of a stranger's cloak as they fled Dragonstone in the dead of night.
Viserys.
The name reverberated through his skull, sharp as shattered glass.
Viserys Targaryen.
He knew the name. Knew the history. Knew the tragedy.
Because he wasn't just the boy in the room. He was someone else. Someone who had lived in another world, long ago, where Westeros was just a series of books and the Targaryens were legends on a page.
He had read it all. A Song of Ice and Fire. The whole saga. He remembered laughing bitterly at Viserys — the whimpering prince with delusions of grandeur, the pathetic, desperate man who called himself a dragon and died screaming for a crown.
He'd died begging.
And now, somehow, he was him.
A sick sensation twisted in his gut. He stumbled to a basin near the window and stared into the still water.
A pale face stared back. Fine silver hair. Violet eyes — too large in a face too thin. He looked frightened. Young.
Eight years old.
He staggered back, mind reeling. "No. No, no, no."
But the memories didn't stop. They kept coming, a storm of images and feelings that weren't his — and yet were now part of him.
He remembered running. Hiding. Begging for coin, for bread, for protection. He remembered the sting of humiliation as noble houses turned him away, one by one. The sneers. The pity.
The name Targaryen meant nothing in Essos. Less than nothing. It was a burden. A threat.
He remembered Daenerys — not the conqueror, not the queen — but the child. A squalling baby clutched in his arms. He had protected her, fed her when their wet nurse abandoned them, comforted her when she cried. She was all he had left.
He had loved her once.
And yet… he remembered her grown, golden-haired and serene, watching as Khal Drogo melted his skull with a pot of gold. She had done nothing. She had let it happen.
His own sister.
He saw it, felt it — the agony of molten metal pouring over his scalp, the smell of burned flesh, the moment of realization: she never loved me.
The despair was overwhelming. He sank to the floor, clutching his head, trying to hold his mind together as two lifetimes collided inside him. Who was he? A modern man who worked a desk job and read fantasy novels on the subway? Or a prince in exile, with dragon's blood and madness in his veins?
He wanted to scream.
Instead, he wept — silent, bitter tears that stung his eyes and scalded his pride. The memories of Viserys were broken and warped, yes — but real. He felt his grief. His fury. His loneliness.
He felt the madness, too.
It stirred at the edges of his thoughts, whispering.
Kill her before she kills you.
He froze.
The thought was not his. It came unbidden, dark and venomous, but oh, it made sense. She would betray him. He knew that. It was already written in the pages of the world.
Daenerys Targaryen would watch him die.
And she would rise in his place.
"No," he whispered.
He stood, trembling, and stumbled out of the room. The hall beyond was dimly lit, quiet. The stone floor chilled his feet as he moved, each step guided by a memory that was both foreign and familiar.
He found the nursery easily. He had been here before — in another life.
The door creaked open.
There she lay.
A newborn. Swaddled in silk, impossibly small. Silver tufts of hair peeked from the blanket, her skin soft and flushed, her breath shallow and innocent.
She slept without fear.
He stood over her, heart hammering, hands clenched. The rage roared within him, fueled by helplessness and betrayal. This creature — this baby — would one day cause his death.
Kill her now, he tought. End it before it begins. Rewrite your fate.
His hand rose, shaking.
Then — she opened her eyes.
They were the same as his. Violet. Wide. Unknowing.
Not cruel. Not calculating.
Just alive.
He stood there for a long moment, staring at the child who would grow into the woman who condemned him. His heart was thunder in his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps.
And then he lowered his hand.
He couldn't do it.
He was not Viserys. Not entirely.
He turned from the cradle, ashamed and exhausted. "No," he said aloud. "I won't become him."
He walked back to the cold room that was now his, each step heavier than the last. He sat on the bed, staring at the gray stone wall.
What now? he wondered. What could I possibly do?
He was eight. Alone. Powerless. The world hated his name.
But he had knowledge. Of things yet to come. Of dragons. Of wars. Of betrayals and victories not yet written in this world.
And if he could remember it all…
I can change it.
The thought struck like lightning. He didn't have to follow Viserys' path. He didn't have to die in fire and gold.
He could shape a new path.
No more begging. No more madness. No more death.
He took a deep breath, the first steady breath since he had awoken. And then —
Chime.
A soft, alien sound echoed in the air, crisp and strange. He blinked — and there it was.
Floating in front of him, glowing faintly in the air, a window. Not glass. Not parchment. Something… impossible.
Something digital.
SYSTEM INITIALIZED
Name: Viserys TargaryenAge: 8Status: HealthyLocation: Braavos, Essos
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