Good news: two near-death experiences and I still walked away breathing. Hell of a score.
Bad news: I've crossed over into a savage, backward world.
The moment Brynden Rivers—Bloodraven—handed over his memories, everything clicked into place.
This place ran on supernatural power. No real technology, practically none, but gods and monsters more than made up the difference.
My capsule had slammed straight into a greenseer's lair by pure accident, sparking the fire that burned the old man's body to ash.
What were the odds?
Surviving a no-chute, full-speed impact? Something had definitely been steering the whole thing.
The Three-Eyed Crow's physical shell had been dying. He'd been waiting for the right new host to walk in. Instead some outside force had played him for a fool.
From Bloodraven's memories, every transfer needed a proper "vessel." Those vessels always came from skinchangers.
Skinchangers were born able to slip their minds into animals, see through their eyes, hear what they heard, control them completely.
One person in a thousand was a skinchanger. One skinchanger in a thousand might become a greenseer.
Only greenseers could serve as true hosts for the Three-Eyed Crow.
The Crow was the strongest greenseer alive—the merged consciousness of every greenseer who had ever lived. The second you became the Crow, your own personality got crushed and lost forever in an ocean of memories stretching back thousands of years.
The last host, Brynden Rivers, had been lured into it.
The exact reasons were gone; Bloodraven's leftover memories were broken and full of holes.
One thing was certain: the Three-Eyed Crow never truly died—it only got weaker. Every bad host chipped away at its power. Today it had failed twice.
First mistake: the newborn dragon. Worst possible choice.
Dragons carried raw magic that clashed hard with greenseer power. Ice and fire in the same jar.
But the Crow had been trapped in the flames with nowhere else to go. The instant the egg cracked it had lunged into me.
I wasn't even a skinchanger, but I was still a thousand times better fit than the dragon. The Crow miscalculated again—this time because of language.
The Three-Eyed Crow knew every tongue on the planet. Its power was tied to weirwood groves, but millions of years of silent watching had built up something terrifying.
Time is the ultimate weapon.
I'm an outsider. My language had zero overlap with Westeros. Our minds were incompatible at the root level. When the Crow tried to rip through my memories for an anchor, the flood of movie footage scared it off.
People can't picture things they've never seen. Neither could the Crow.
It couldn't read the languages or text in my head, so it had no idea what movies were. It took those world-ending, reality-warping scenes as my actual life.
What kind of outer god am I?
Next to me, the entire history of Westeros since thinking beings first appeared looked like kids playing in the dirt.
The second it realized that, the Three-Eyed Crow ran like hell.
To keep from losing more, it cut its losses—sacrificed some of its power and bolted from the deceptively empty but terrifying body.
At the same time, the last shred of "Bloodraven" Brynden Rivers tore himself free.
In a near-suicidal move, he dumped every scrap of memory he could salvage into my mind. The final thread of his soul latched onto the newborn dragon—the symbol of his own family.
As the Crow he had known almost everything happening across the continent, but the weight of past greenseers had forced him into passive watching. That went against everything he was.
Back when he was still Lord Bloodraven he had used his spy network and iron will to help the king rule the Seven Kingdoms. Bastard or not, he had been loyal to the bone. He broke oaths and burned his own honor to crush rebellions.
Yet once he became the Crow he could only watch his own family suffer the Tragedy at Summerhall and get slaughtered in Robert's Rebellion.
The pain had eaten him alive. Endless life had turned into endless boredom. When the chance came, he chose to break free—even if it cost him everything.
His family had been without dragons for over a century. The price his descendants paid trying to hatch them had been horrific.
This accidental birth was a miracle.
The egg had been taken in secret from the Butterwells during the Second Blackfyre Rebellion in 211 AC. Bloodraven had carried it for decades with no sign of life.
Until today.
Attaching what was left of himself to the dragon felt like the right ending.
I let out a quiet sigh.
But there was no time to get sentimental. We were on the edge of the Land of Always Winter, hunting grounds of the Cold God's followers—the Others, also called White Walkers.
The weirwood magic had kept this place hidden and safe. That protection had burned away with the forest.
Night was coming fast. I shivered.
I'm a textbook information-age softie. Can't lift, can't fight. The only exercise I got was cramming for the spaceflight lottery. The rest of my life had been soft and half-sick. One run-in with a Walker or wildling and I'd be dead before I could blink.
The Others and wildlings don't do mind tricks. They come with steel. Wights don't even have brains—just the urge to kill anything warm.
Plus, scaring off the Three-Eyed Crow had been a one-time miracle. Thanks to Bloodraven's memories I had passively picked up the Common Tongue, the Old Tongue, and High Valyrian.
If the Crow came back for round two, I was finished.
At least I had some of its leftover power for self-defense.
I'm not the type to sit and wait. I won the spaceflight lottery and burned every credit I had without hesitation. That's how I ended up here.
The situation sucked, so I didn't overthink side effects. I rolled my eyes back and triggered the boosted skinchanger ability the Crow had left behind.
It felt like psychic radar. My awareness shot out of my body, covering a fifty-meter radius. It wasn't sight—it was pure life-sense. Drained me hard.
I figured I could hold it maybe thirty seconds before it started frying my brain.
Normal skinchangers need a deep bond first. Greenseers and the Crow didn't. They could slip into any living thing in range—even people—though controlling them was another story.
Human minds are too messy. Jump in weak and you get eaten. Jump in too strong and… well, look what happened to the Crow.
I scanned. Only two living things in range: me and the baby dragon. Not even a frozen bug. Anything that survived the fire had already run.
No time to waste. I slid straight into the newborn dragon.
Unlike the Crow's full takeover, simple control met almost no resistance. The dragon was still tiny, and the violent instincts it was born with had been scrubbed clean by the Crow. My entry was smooth as glass.
Suddenly I was looking at myself from the outside.
Dragon eyes are vertical slits built for hunting—insane light control, perfect depth, night vision that kicks in instantly, pinpoint ranging. Pure predator hardware.
The view was a little warped at the edges, but otherwise crystal clear. As daylight faded, the night vision ramped up perfectly.
The new perspective made me study my own body.
Still in the standard flight suit, looking bulky. Head bare. Medium-length black hair loose because I hadn't bothered cutting it for a short trip. Sharp features, typical East-Coast look. Stubble on my jaw after a few days without shaving.
The baby dragon was still weak from hatching and the Crow's attack. Its mind was foggy. I didn't push it with any fancy moves.
But while I was inside I could feel how much it hated the cold. Deep in its nearly blank mind, Bloodraven's remnant soul drifted quietly.
It had lost itself. Only one stubborn thread of its old obsession remained.
That thread now acted as the dragon's will. It resonated with the Bloodraven memories still in my head, making the little dragon ridiculously easy to control.
Maybe Bloodraven had planned it that way—as a thank-you for helping him break free.
No need for long goodbyes.
As the first "person" I'd met in this world, we had basically saved each other. Looking through his remaining memories, almost everything was tied to his family—the Targaryens. The guy's obsession with protecting their rightful claim ran bone-deep.
'I'm barely keeping myself alive right now, but if I ever cross paths with your descendants, I'll do what I can to help them out, brother.'
I sent the thought outward from inside the dragon, then slipped back into my own body.
The sickly little dragon—curled in the ash, no bigger than a housecat—suddenly got it.
It flapped its wings, half-flew, half-climbed up my body, and settled on my shoulder. Razor-sharp blood-red claws snagged a few threads on the fire-resistant outer layer of my suit.
The baby dragon was almost solid crimson with silver-gold stripes along its belly. It perched unsteadily, one wing braced against my neck, long serpentine neck raised high. I could feel the insane heat pouring off its body.
Whether from the possession or Bloodraven's will, the dragon had chosen me.
Who the hell said only Targaryen blood could ride dragons?