283 AC - Jonos I
Back in the Freehold when he undergo the ritual, he didn't expect to find himself in this situation.
This kind of sorcery was not publicly practiced then. It was too mysterious, too unpredictable and the results not known. There were other, then better, magics that led to the quasi-immortalisation so desired by the greatest Dragonlords.
Despite all of this, he still did it. He knew the future, what it brings. The Fourteen Flames wouldn't last forever, the dragons would one day die, even those who were thought to be eternal.
The Doom would see to it.
And sacrificing slaves, in numbers that would colour every snow flock in the Lands of Always Winter red, to bind his mind, his soul, to the Fourteen was not the most pleasant idea.
Especially due to the fact that once too much sacrifice and blood magic is used, there is the greater risk of something creeping from the sacrificed to the sacrificer.
So, here he was. Thinking one day he would wake as a noble newborn child in Volantis, where the claim of pure Valyrian blood would stay strong. Or Lys, where the blood of the forty runs freely, even if not true.
The surprise he felt was not small, when the first gaze of his new life looked upon was brown hair, a long face and steely grey eyes. Ned, Fucking, Stark!
The next few days, turned weeks, weren't great. He shit himself, had nothing good to eat, due to traveling, slept most of the time, and he couldn't move.
Normal things for newborn and tolerable, if he wouldn't have one minds on planetos.
At least, he found out more about his circumstances.
When they rested, his new uncle hovered over him and his crib partner. Eddard Stark seldom talked to us, but when he did there wasn't much he left out. Why should he? We were infants, and wouldn't remember much anyway. Normally.
He told them their names and apparently his older twin brother is named Jon, the Jon Snow, and his name is Jonos. Jon and Jonos Snow. No one said that northerners had elaborate naming anyway.
If Jonos had the timeline right, wasn't the current Lord Bracken his namesake? Hopefully the Blackwoods don't start a war over this.
At least he knows that he has the Blood of the Forty, even through one of the lesser Dragonlord Families. Hah, Dragonlord, more like dragon riders. At least all lesser families descend from the Fourteen Originals, so there is no need for him to worry.
Another thing Eddard told them was of Starfall and Ashara Dayne. How they visited it shortly after them both being born, bringing Dawn back.
Jonos faintly remembers some woman, with dark hair and purple eyes, once he was awake for some time. That must have been her. She was beautiful, yes. But back in the Freehold he could pick any woman and they would gladly share his bed. And Valyrian Beauty is know to be unmatched. Not that he did bed just any woman, he has standards after all.
Apparently, Eddard Stark had a stillborn daughter with her too. Eddard and Ashara did the deed in Harrenhall, during the infamous tourney near the end of 281 and promised to wed each other.
But fate came between. At the coming of 282 Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped Lyanna Stark and the rest is history.
Or at least that what everyone thinks. Though from what Jonos knows, Eddard doesn't know much more. If Rhaegar really kidnapped her or not, will probably never be known.
He himself doesn't care either. Trueborn or not, that doesn't matter to him. House Targaryen doesn't matter him. The Seven Kingdoms doesn't matter to him.
Even House Stark doesn't matter to him. But he is no ungrateful Dragonlord. Eddard Stark will protect him for the next years, or at least it is likely. Jonos owes him a debt, promises to dead sisters or no. And he will repay that debt.
Even the Freehold doesn't mean much to him. His mother died young, his father was absent. And he wasn't close to his distant family. Power, dragons and sorcery was his life and he was dedicated to it. Even as he ruled as one of the Triarchs, it was all fleeting in the face of the Higher Mysteries.
In the end, it was his second life already and nothing in that time could bound him emotionally too much to the Freehold. And the ways of the Freehold forged him to some extent anew, that in all likelihood, he will never care too much in this third life either.
Due to that, accepting a new name came easy for him.
Power, dragons and sorcery. In the past lifes and in the future lifes. That is what matters.