10th Day of the Second Moon, 282 AC – Stoney Sept, Riverlands
The bells of Stoney Sept rang in the morning mist — slow, heavy, tolling across the hills like a dirge for the living. They had rung for three days now, each clang a cry of warning, of grief, of despair.
The town lay in ruin. Smoke rose from its outer streets where the royalists had set fire to homes in their hunt for Robert Baratheon. The narrow alleys, once filled with traders and children, ran dark with mud and blood. Crows perched on rooftops, waiting for the dead.
Robert himself was hiding among the smallfolk, his body bruised, his hammer gone, his men scattered. The loyalists under Lord Connington had surrounded the town, their banners choking every gate, their torches flickering in the fog like embers of a dying world.
The people whispered that death had come to Stoney Sept. But Jin Mu-Won was already walking toward it.
---
The rebel host had marched through the night. Ned Stark rode at the head beside Jin, their cloaks stiff with frost, their faces grim. Behind them, the men of the Vale and North moved in silence, their armor clinking faintly, their breath misting in the cold.
When they crested the last ridge and saw the smoke curling from the town below, Ned's jaw tightened.
"Gods…" he murmured. "It's worse than the ravens said."
Jin said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the horizon — not on the walls or the soldiers, but on the faint sound that drifted through the mist.
Bells.
He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deep, letting the rhythm of their toll settle in his chest. "The town cries for help," he said quietly. "Let us answer."
---
The battle began before dawn broke fully.
Connington's men held the eastern approach — disciplined, ruthless, their archers on the roofs, their spearmen behind makeshift barricades. The rebels hit them from the north, led by Ned and Jon Arryn.
Arrows hissed through the fog, striking shields with sharp cracks. Men screamed, fell, rose again. The air filled with the reek of sweat, mud, and burning pitch.
Jin walked into it without flinching.
Where others charged, he advanced steadily, his staff in hand, his breathing even. The first arrows bent away from him, their flight disturbed by ripples of unseen force. A loyalist soldier swung at him from the side — Jin's staff met the blade and turned it aside, the man thrown backward as if struck by a wall.
"Push forward!" Ned shouted, but Jin's voice cut through the din — low, firm, impossible to ignore.
"Breathe. Step. Shield."
The men nearest him echoed the rhythm unconsciously. Their panic softened into focus. Shields rose together, boots moved in time. They advanced not as scattered fighters, but as one body, each man guided by the calm presence among them.
---
They broke through the outer barricade and entered the town proper.
The streets were narrow, choked with debris and bodies. Flames licked from shattered windows. The cries of the wounded mingled with the clang of steel and the endless, ceaseless tolling of the bells.
Everywhere, innocents screamed — women and children caught between the fighting. Loyalist archers fired from rooftops without care whom they struck. A mother fell clutching her child; a man burned alive when an oil jar shattered nearby.
Jin moved toward them as if drawn by a current.
He caught the burning man by the shoulders, his hands glowing faintly as qi flowed through his palms. The fire sputtered and died. The man gasped, coughing, skin blistered but alive.
"Run," Jin said softly. "Find the gate. Live."
The man stumbled away, sobbing thanks.
---
Further down the main street, a group of Northmen had been pinned behind a collapsed cart. Jin saw their panic rising — the fear that freezes limbs, that turns men into prey. He stepped into the open, calm amid the arrows.
He swept his staff once. The air shimmered — the arrows slowed, their momentum broken, clattering harmlessly to the ground.
The Northmen stared, stunned. Jin's voice reached them through the smoke.
"Stand."
And they did.
They surged forward, shields raised, their courage rekindled. The loyalists, unnerved, faltered under the sudden, disciplined charge.
When the rebels reached the next crossroads, Jin saw movement — a cloaked figure slipping through an alley, half-carrying, half-dragging another man.
Robert Baratheon.
The prince of storms looked half-dead — blood crusted along his jaw, his armor dented and soot-stained. His eyes widened when he saw Jin approaching through the haze.
"By the gods," Robert rasped, his laughter ragged. "The Shield. I thought you a myth."
Jin knelt beside him, checking the wound along his ribs. "You bleed too easily for a myth."
Robert grinned even through pain. "And you talk too calm for a man in hell."
Jin's gaze flicked to the street beyond. "Hell moves fast. We should move faster."
---
They did.
With Robert between them, Jin and Ned led the wounded rebel band through the town's maze of alleys, every street a battlefield. Loyalists pressed from all sides now — thousands against hundreds. Bells still rang, the sound now wild, frantic, like the heartbeat of the dying city.
At the western square, they made their stand.
The cobblestones were slick with blood. The air shimmered with heat and smoke.
Jin planted his staff into the ground and drew in a deep breath. His qi pulsed outward — invisible, steady, vast. The soldiers nearest him felt it first: their fear ebbing, their limbs growing lighter, their breaths syncing with his.
Then the loyalists charged.
The clash was chaos. Steel on steel, screams, curses, the wet sound of blades finding flesh.
Jin moved through it like water. His staff struck, turned, deflected, broke. Every motion efficient, precise, balanced. A sword aimed for his heart met his hand instead — and shattered.
He caught a fallen roof beam with his qi, shifting it to block a volley of arrows. He moved to protect, not to kill — but in that protection, men found the strength to live.
---
The bells rang louder.
In the square's heart, the great sept's tower burned, its bell still tolling as the flames climbed. The sound was deafening now — a dirge for the fallen, a summons to the living.
Jin turned, his robes scorched, his hair matted with ash. He looked upon the burning sept, and his heart ached. Not for victory, not for loss — but for the sheer waste of it all.
He saw a boy no older than twelve, lying under the fallen body of a soldier, eyes wide in shock. Jin tore the corpse away, lifted the boy gently.
"Go," he said, his voice barely audible over the chaos. "The bells are not for you."
---
By nightfall, the battle was done.
The bells still rang, but softer now, almost gentle. The loyalists were in retreat, their dead left behind. Robert lived, though barely. The town was half-ruined, its people broken but breathing.
Jin stood on the sept's steps, the smoke swirling around him. His staff leaned against his shoulder, its tip dark with soot.
Ned approached, face grim, blood spattered across his armor. "We've won," he said hollowly. "If this can be called winning."
Jin's gaze was distant, his voice low. "When the bells toll, it is never victory. It is only remembrance."
Ned followed his eyes, seeing the burned streets, the corpses, the weeping survivors. He said nothing.
---
That night, as the soldiers tended the wounded, Jin moved among them silently. He bound wounds with steady hands, gave water to the dying, whispered words that made men weep quietly in their sleep.
Robert woke briefly, pale but alive. His voice was rough. "You saved me, Shield."
Jin shook his head. "You saved yourself. I only steadied your step."
Robert tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. "Aye. Then let's both steady the realm next."
Jin looked away. "The realm will not steady through war. Only through mercy."
Robert's smile faded, though he did not understand why.
---
Outside, the bells tolled one final time. Their echoes carried through the night, across rivers and hills, to faraway lands.
In King's Landing, Aerys screamed at the sound, clawing his throne until his fingers bled.
In Dorne, Elia wept without knowing why.
In Starfall, Ashara dreamed of a calm voice and a hand reaching through fire.
And in the Riverlands, men began to whisper that when the bells rang at Stoney Sept, the gods themselves had heard the Shield.
---