"You treacherous Dragon-Whore!"
"Ah—!"
"Burn in the Seven Hells!"
"Help me! Someone, help!"
The inferno had long since been extinguished, yet the air remained thick with the sickening, cloying stench of charred flesh. Beneath the soot-stained sky, the curdling curses and agonized wails of the King's Landing survivors refused to fall silent.
Standing atop the scorched ramparts, Jon Snow gazed upon this living purgatory, his features contorted with a mask of raw agony and profound disillusionment.
He cast a fleeting, pained look toward his beloved Daenerys Targaryen before turning his eyes back to the city ravaged by Dragonfire. Deep within his chest, the jagged scar that had long since closed began to throb with a phantom, inexplicable ache.
A tempest of conflicting emotions tore through him, yet a cold clarity remained; he understood that a choice—the hardest of his life—was now unavoidable.
After a moment of visible inner turbulence, a grim resolve settled behind his eyes. He squared his shoulders and began a steady, purposeful march toward Daenerys Targaryen.
There stood the newly ascended Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, framed by the shadow of her monstrous, terrifying dragon.
"I'm so sorry."
A flash of cold, silver light cut through the smoke. The Valyrian steel blade, Longclaw, was driven into Daenerys's heart with a swift, merciless finality.
The beautiful Queen gasped, her violet eyes widening in shock as she stared at the lover who had struck her down. Pain and utter confusion flickered in her gaze.
Before Jon could even register the weight of his sin, the dragon Drogon let out a deafening roar. A torrent of catastrophic Dragonfire engulfed them both, reducing man and Queen to nothing but drifting ash in an instant.
...
"No—!"
The nightmare, a fractured collage of dragon flame and suffocating darkness, shattered apart amidst a sharp, ragged scream.
A sixteen-year-old boy bolted upright in his bed, his chest heaving as the world lurched back into a semblance of normalcy.
Thump, thump, thump...
Whine...
Through the frantic pounding of his own heart and the low, mournful whimpering of a wolf, a weathered, aging voice drifted through the door.
"Jon? Are you alright? Was it a nightmare?"
"I... I'm fine," the boy stammered, his voice catching. "I... I was just startled, that's all..."
His voice was a brittle mix of lingering terror and sharp self-reproach. The person outside paused, sensing no immediate crisis in the boy's tone, and their soft footsteps eventually retreated down the corridor.
Despite his reassurances, the boy's body betrayed him, racking with violent tremors and spasms that spoke of a deeper struggle.
Huff... huff...
Gradually, his breathing steadied and the shaking subsided. Yet, after enduring that harrowing vision and the agonizing mental friction of foreign memories weaving into his soul, sleep was now an impossibility.
He reached out to the bedside table and struck a flint, lighting a single candle. As the warm amber glow chased away the shadows, the details of the modest bedchamber slowly crystallized.
The heavy door of ancient sentinel-wood stood only a few paces from the straw-stuffed mattress. To the right of the bed, a small fireplace of grey-black stone sat cold, separated from him by the nightstand. A thick wool rug lay across the wooden floorboards, proudly displaying the embroidered sigil of House Stark: the grey direwolf's head on a field of white.
At the edge of that rug, a white direwolf nearly the size of a grown mastiff sat watching the boy with keen, troubled eyes.
Its eyes, two pools of blood-red, were filled with palpable concern, though it seemed to recoil slightly, as if sensing something foreign or fearsome within its master.
"Come here, Ghost."
"Whine..."
The white direwolf hesitated for a heartbeat. It sniffed the air, catching the familiar, comforting scent of its master, and finally obeyed, padding forward on silent paws.
Seeing the wolf's familiar response, a sense of grounding peace settled in Jon's chest. He reached out with practiced ease, scratching the thick fur behind the creature's ears.
"You held the script of a true protagonist, yet you ended up a 'wife-killer' in the name of the greater good. Jon Snow... in this life, let me be the one to show the world what a real protagonist looks like."
Feeling the solid, living warmth of the direwolf beneath his hand, the boy—who looked like Jon Snow but carried the soul of Li Xiang, a man from modern Earth—spoke the words in a low, measured whisper.
In his previous life, Li Xiang had only skimmed through that botched ending of a television series, yet the broad strokes of the tragedy remained etched in his mind.
The owner of this body possessed the most legitimate claim to the Seven Kingdoms, yet his current reality was that of a lowly, baseborn bastard. That he had survived this long was the best result his 'uncle,' Eddard Stark, could have possibly negotiated.
Now, Jon Snow saw only two paths ahead of him. The first was to follow the flow of the original story, enduring the hardships until the day he might be crowned King in the North.
However, that path was riddled with far too many variables; one wrong step and a pretender like him would likely end up in an unmarked grave.
The second path involved finding a new 'dungeon' to level up in. He could seek out his 'aunt' across the sea before her dragons grew too large. With dragons at his back and a legendary beauty at his side, life would finally have some real promise.
The more he thought on it, the more the second path appealed to his senses. Being the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch or even the King in the North paled in comparison to the allure of dragons and queens.
"Sigh, why is it that everyone else gets a 'Golden Finger' when they transmigrate, but I get absolutely nothing?"
"Whine..."
Ghost, having listened to his master's incessant mumbling, let out a soft, impatient whimper as Jon's mind began to drift toward the horizon.
"Alright, alright, be a good boy. Don't interrupt my thinking. I'm perfectly fine, see?"
Perhaps due to the dormant talent of a skinchanger, Jon felt as though he could actually understand the worry layered within the wolf's whine.
Valar Morghulis.
The phrase surfaced unbidden in his mind.
It was the grim thread that tied together every person and event in this world. In a land that mirrored the brutality of Earth's Middle Ages, a man without extraordinary power was little more than a corpse waiting to happen.
He didn't know how he had become Jon Snow, and he certainly wasn't brave enough to test the limits of his new life. He knew all too well that if he died again, there might not be a second chance at rebirth.
Li Xiang remembered it clearly: he had been tucked away safely at home, playing a mobile game simulator, when a freak bolt of lightning had struck him down.
"Ghost, tell me, how am I supposed to reach the Eastern Continent? In a world where bloodline is everything, without a dragon, I'll never be more than a wretched bastard."
Having accepted his identity as Jon Snow, he turned to the wolf at his feet to vent. The weight of the future pressed down on him, fueling an urgent need to speak his fears aloud.
[System integration in progress...]
"Huh? Is this... the legendary Golden Finger?"
Just as he was calculating how to scrape together the coin for a voyage to Essos, a strange, synthesized electronic voice vibrated within the recesses of his mind.
[System update successful. Loading modules... Unknown error detected...]
[Staff-Caster Module: Error...]
[Elemental-Caster Module: Error...]
[System re-scanning... Please wait...]
[Emblem System: Initialized.]
Name: Jon Snow (Aegon Targaryen)
Class: Dragon Lord (Sealed), Skinchanger, Swordsman, Knight
Weapon: Iron Sword
Strength: 5
Skill: 5
Speed: 6
Defense: 3
Magic: 2
Weapon Rank: LV2
Items: Vulnerary, Antidote
Soul Energy: 500 Points
"Are you my Golden Finger?"
The flood of data flashing before his eyes made his head spin. Once he had processed the information, Jon couldn't help but call out.
"Wait, why isn't there any response?"
"System? Golden Finger? Hello?"
...
After several attempts at engagement—speaking aloud, thinking intensely, shouting in his mind—the system remained frustratingly silent.
"Vulnerary and Antidote? When did I get those? And where are they? Also, what's this about an Iron Sword?"
As he pondered this, a tiny black speck appeared in his field of vision. Initially, he dismissed it as a floater caused by his lack of sleep.
But after rubbing his eyes repeatedly, the dot remained. Suspecting it might be some sort of spatial storage, Jon reached his hand toward the black void.
As his right hand dipped into the speck, three distinct items manifested in his mind's eye: a plain-looking black iron longsword and two glass vials, one filled with a pale yellow liquid and the other with a silver-grey fluid.
After a bit of mental tinkering, he understood their properties. The sword was akin to a magical construct; it was exceptionally sharp and would never dull, but it had a limit of fifty strikes. On the fiftieth hit, it would shatter completely.
The Vulnerary could knit together bleeding wounds—unless he was missing a limb, it could practically pull him back from the brink—but it only had five uses.
The Antidote was a cure for all manner of toxins. In a low-magic world like this, such a treasure was practically priceless, though it was limited to three doses.
Clang... clang... clang...
The rhythmic tolling of the morning bells echoed through the keep, and the first slivers of dawn began to pierce through the gaps in the old wooden shutters. Though many mysteries regarding the system remained, Jon knew his time for quiet reflection had run out.
According to his memories, King Robert Baratheon and the southern court were already on the road. This was the signal that the plot had officially begun.
In the original story, Jon Snow would leave for The Wall shortly after the King's arrival, beginning a life of legendary hardship.
Li Xiang had often wondered: if the catalyst events at the start were altered, how would the rest of the world react?
House Stark was his foundation, the lever he might eventually use to move the Iron Throne. Armed with the foreknowledge of the tragedies to come, Jon Snow resolved then and there to change the script.