I did not remember the sky.Not how it truly looked.
What hung above me as I stumbled through the ruins of the sorcerer's lair was not the sky I remembered from childhood, when I'd lie atop cracked stone in Flea Bottom and trace shapes in the stars with mud-caked fingers. No, this sky was hung in black velvet and smoke. The horizon bled red where the fire still burned. He had kept his sanctum beneath a forgotten ruin in the Kingswood, masked from wandering eyes by old magics and older fear. None had come near for years, perhaps decades. Not until me.
Now after a long time suffering at the hands of him, I was truly free. I had killed him. I could still feel his bones breaking in my hands. Still taste his blood and still hear his laughter.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
My name is Alexander Wright. I was born in Flea Bottom, raised among shit and shadows. I was never special, until the day I disappeared.
The sorcerer never gave me his name. He didn't need to. He fed me roots that made my bones scream and drove spikes of iron into my skin. He whispered to himself when he bled me. Charted stars on the walls. Drew circles in salt. For two years, I became his parchment.
Then the change came.
It was not magic. It was not divine. It was a tear, a rupture of what I was into what I would never understand. My veins turned to fire. My heart ceased. My mind fractured.
When I awoke, he was smiling and when I realized what I had become, he stopped.
I moved silently now, a thing between man and ghost, winding deeper into the forest. Every sound screamed at me. The rustle of mice in the undergrowth. The distant drip of dew from leaves. My senses had sharpened beyond understanding. The dark did not hinder me, it welcomed me.
And then the scent came.Blood.Warm. Fresh. Human.
I stopped cold. Not far ahead, perhaps half a mile, a campfire glowed faintly behind a thicket. A man's laughter, a woman's soft voice. Mercenaries, from the sound of their armor. Perhaps travelers. I shouldn't go near them. I should run the other way. I-
My mouth flooded with something hot and metallic. My hands trembled.
No.
I turned away, forcing my feet into the brush, deeper into the cold dark. The hunger clawed at me. It was not a stomach-hunger. It was a hollowness in my marrow, a need. I pressed my hands against my ears, trying to block out the heartbeat I could hear from behind the trees.
I fell to my knees.
A kind man would not feed.
A kind man would not stalk travelers in the night.
A kind man would not crave the blood of the innocent.
I curled into myself. My breath came shallow and ragged. Was I breathing? Did I still need to? I didn't understand the rules of what I was, but I understood what I wasn't.
I was no longer a man.
A low growl echoed behind me.
I froze.
The wolf crept from the thicket, lean and hungry. Grey fur, matted with old blood. Eyes yellow and savage. It snarled once then lunged.
I didn't think. I moved. Faster than thought, faster than sight. One moment it was in the air, the next it was in my hands. Its bones snapped like twigs beneath my fingers.
And then I tasted it. Blood, but not human. The scent repulsed me. I dropped the beast and stumbled back, bile rising in my throat.
No animal would sate me.
Only people.
I fell to my knees again, trembling. How do you hold onto kindness when the only thing that can keep you alive is the death of others? How long could I pretend?
I began to walk until dawn bled into the sky.Even beneath the heavy cloak I'd stolen from the dead sorcerer's wardrobe, the sun punished me. My skin prickled and blistered where the light found the gaps. Not fire, not yet, but still a warning.
I needed shelter.
By midmorning, I found the hollow of a fallen tree near the edge of the Kingsroad. Its roots were tangled into a shallow cave, just deep enough to hide in. I pressed myself into the cool earth, and there, shielded from the sun, I slept and dreamt.
In the dream, I was in Flea Bottom again, sitting on the edge of a broken fountain. A girl I barely remembered smiled at me with missing teeth and tangled hair, offering me the last piece of her bread. I smiled back, warm and human, as I had been.Then the sky darkened. Her face melted into the sorcerer's. The bread became a knife. And I felt the hunger rise.
"You were always meant to be more than a rat in a gutter. I gave you purpose."
I tried to scream, but my mouth was full of blood.I woke shaking, cold with sweat.
That evening, I reached the edge of Flea Bottom. The smells hadn't changed, shit, smoke, and desperation. The same cracked stones, the same sagging hovels. I moved in shadow, keeping my hood low, face half-turned. But no one paid me any mind. In this place, no one ever looked too hard. They'd long since learned that knowing less meant living longer.
A boy brushed past me, maybe twelve years old, though small for it. He wore no shoes. His ribs showed through his tunic. He turned and stared at me for a moment, eyes narrowing.
"You from the Black Cells?" he asked.
I blinked. "What?"
"You smell like rot. Like death."
I said nothing. The boy spat and ran off.
I wandered. The old square where I used to sweep for coppers. The corner where Elsie once kissed me. The alley where Borrik tried to gut me for a crust of bread. Flea Bottom hadn't changed. But I had.
When night fell, I slipped into an abandoned butcher's shop and waited.
I had not fed since the sorcerer. His blood still echoed in me, its cruelty and its rot. It hadn't been enough. I would need to drink again and gods help me, I would have to choose someone.
Two nights later, I found her. A whore with tired eyes, walking alone down the alley behind the Street of Silk. I could smell the wine on her breath, the bruises on her hips. Her heartbeat called to me, steady, sad, human.
I moved without thinking. She paused and turned slightly, sensing something. I stopped inches away. She still hadn't seen me.
I could take it now. Fast. Gentle. No pain.
She turned fully. Her eyes locked with mine.
And then, "Are you lost, milord?" she asked softly.
I opened my mouth. My fangs pressed behind my lips, eager, aching. But I saw the exhaustion in her eyes. The resignation. This city had already taken everything from her. I would not be the last thing she lost.
I stepped back.
"Go," I rasped.
She blinked, startled.
"Go."
She ran.
I crumpled against the wall, shuddering.
I fed that night, but not on her. A murderer in the alley behind the Sept. I smelled the fresh blood on his hands before I ever saw him. He had slit a merchant's throat and was rifling through her purse when I found him.
He never even saw me.
His memories spilled into mine when I drank, they were fragmented, chaotic. Laughter as he twisted the blade. No remorse. Just heat and hunger and filth.
When I was done, I staggered back against the alley wall and vomited. It wasn't the blood. It was him. The weight of his sin soaked through me like oil through cloth.
But I'd survived. I'd fed and for now, I was still a kind man. Maybe.
I could not stay in King's Landing.
The city reeked of blood and secrets, and I was beginning to understand just how many people I could smell behind each wall. I saw through masks. I tasted deceit in the air like smoke.
But worse than the hunger was the pull.Something in me, whatever the sorcerer had awakened was beginning to stir when I walked near others. I saw their thoughts behind their eyes. I felt what they wanted before they spoke. I couldn't control it yet.
I had to leave before I lost myself.
That night, I sold a silver brooch I'd taken from the sorcerer's corpse to a fence in the Pisswater Bend. With the coin, I bought a new cloak, a satchel, a waterskin. I did not need food. I did not need sleep. But I needed control.
I slipped out of the city through the postern gate by the Mud Gate. No one stopped me. No one saw me. I headed north, though I didn't know where the road would take me.
By the third day, I crossed paths with a Septon traveling alone. He was old, grey-bearded, wrapped in a fraying robe. He looked at me with eyes that had seen too much.
We sat by the same fire. He offered me bread, but I declined. He asked where I was going. I told him that I didn't know.
He looked at me long.
"There's a shadow on you," he said at last. "Like ash that never washes off."
I stared into the flames. "I lost something,"
"Something… or someone?"
I didn't answer.
The Septon smiled faintly. "It is a bitter thing, to grieve oneself."
He didn't ask more. He let me sit in silence. That night, I watched him sleep. His heartbeat was slow. Calm. I did not feed on him. I walked away before sunrise, leaving my only coin by the fire.
In the hills past Duskendale, I saw crows circling above a burned-out village. Smoke still clung to the air. I approached slowly, half-crouched through the grass.
Bodies littered the ground. Smallfolk, mostly. Throats cut and homes ransacked. One house still burned. I did not weep. But I felt the sorrow in the earth, soaked into the bloodied hay and shattered bones. Then I heard it, a heartbeat, faint, beneath the floorboards of a ruined barn.
A girl. No older than six. Eyes wide, tear-streaked, buried in straw.
I held out a hand.
She stared at me. My hood was still up. My eyes hidden in shadow.
She took my hand.
That night, I carried her to the next village. I did not know if I was still a man.
But I knew this: I could still choose.