” 251 AC, Lys.
Irat Rexarion.
Blessed Lys, known for its luxurious life, exquisite cuisine, and expensive prostitutes.
The art of love is elevated almost to the status of religion here.
Hence the large number of pleasure houses, brothels, in other words.
And it was in one such establishment that I grew up.
My name is Irat Rexarion.
I am blood of the blood of Ancient Valyria, which once perished in a cataclysm, and the rightful ruler of all Valyrian people.
At least, that’s what my mother told me in my childhood.
I took it for children’s tales and even imagined myself sitting on a throne of a kingdom known only to me.
As I grew older, I asked my mother the question that had been tormenting me.
If we were kings, even of a dead state, then why did we live in such conditions?
Why did she work as a whore in a brothel that had become our home?
Where were our other relatives, and why didn’t they take us away from here?
It was that age when children ask hundreds of “whys” to their parents.
Such is the way of discovering the world.
It was then that I first heard the full story of our house.
Of our greatness.
Of how we were the first to tame dragons.
And of course, of how our own people betrayed us, reducing us to the lowest depths.
Mother told her story with such longing that it seemed she had witnessed those times when our house still flourished.
I remember that look, full of hidden hope, with which she gazed at me.
What could a child possibly understand?
But as long as I can remember, I was different from other children.
I’m not just talking about appearance, because Valyrian features were common among many of the city’s inhabitants and visitors.
Rather, I mean something less obvious at first glance.
I thought differently, and according to my mother, my behavior was more befitting an adult than a child.
There was no explanation for this until I started having strange dreams.
Dreams of a world where iron dragons flew and carried people in their bellies, where iron carriages without horses traveled on the ground.
People there carried no weapons, paid with strange colorful papers, and lived in huge stone boxes.
Much later, I came to understand that the dreams were about the life of one person.
An orphan who was forced to fight for his place under the sun and fiercely gnaw at every piece he could grab.
Dreams of who I once was, but that knowledge came to me at a far from happy moment, one I will tell about in due time.
Beyond all this, my differences from other children did not end.
I was stronger and larger than my peers.
Not by much, but it was noticeable.
Frequent fights with other children, in which one-on-one I had no equal, clearly demonstrated this.
I was repeatedly attacked by groups trying to beat me down.
But no one had succeeded yet, thanks to another of my oddities.
I discovered this when I was five.
Having run away from the brothel, I went wandering through the market, hoping to swipe something edible from a stall.
But instead I found a Lysene honor, an oval coin with the image of a naked woman, lying in the dirt.
This was an incredible stroke of luck for someone like me.
With this coin, I could buy food for several days, and maybe my mother wouldn’t have to sell herself for a while.
Only at the edge of my consciousness flickered a cynical thought, almost as if it wasn’t my own: “That’s only for her owner to decide.” I was so stunned by my find that I didn’t think to hide the coin immediately.
This drew the attention of a group of children a couple of years older than me who operated in the market district, stealing or begging.
They surrounded me and demanded I hand over the money.
They justified their demands by claiming this was their territory and others were forbidden to “work” here.
When I tried to explain that I had found the coin and certainly hadn’t stolen anything, a blow landed in my stomach that knocked the breath out of me.
I fell to my knees, doubled over, trying to gasp in even a drop of air.
As I struggled to recover, I was pulled up by my arms and held so I couldn’t struggle, not that I could have anyway.
They searched my pockets, took what they wanted, and after one last punch, turned to leave.
That was when my ability first made itself known.
Watching those bastards walk away with my money, laughing among themselves, I felt true rage for the first time in my life.
I wanted to crush them.
Show them their place, as if they weren’t even human.
My consciousness receded to the background, becoming merely a passive observer of unfolding events.
A second ago, the laughing brats suddenly fell silent.
Their breathing became labored, as if heavy sacks had been piled on them.
Some even dropped to their knees, bracing themselves with trembling hands against the ground.
It seemed that any moment, they would collapse entirely.
Meanwhile, my body moved on its own, without any control from me.
My body slowly drifted toward the group of thieves.
Each step was accompanied by the cracking of the ground beneath my feet, as if my weight was that of the legendary Ghiscari war elephants.
When “I” reached those bastards, they immediately collapsed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
It seemed the previously tolerable pressure had increased tenfold.
Crouching beside them, “I” pulled the coin I had found from the hand of the oldest boy.
The thief’s eyes were filled with terror.
He was ready to beg for mercy, but couldn’t utter a word.
“Know your place, trash.” The words fell from my mouth.
I spoke in a strange growling voice that didn’t fit a five-year-old body.
Control over my own body returned to me, and with it, that strange pressure vanished.
Feeling freedom, the boys scrambled away, screaming in terror.
That day, I received my first nickname: demon.
I ran home, thrilled by the newfound possibilities.
The power that was mine was gravity, as the knowledge from my dreams told me.
If only I had known at that time what “gravity” really was.
At that moment, a goal formed in my mind.
I wanted to understand my abilities and then use them to earn enough money to buy my mother’s freedom from the brothel’s owner.
And so began ten long years of training and participating in countless fights.
Often these were organized fights for money that anyone could join.
Mercenary bands that arrived to spend their coin in the pleasure city loved to host them.
After winning several such tournaments, I discovered that sellswords used them to scout promising recruits.
I was offered positions too, but I always refused, claiming I was still too young.
Though, to be honest, I was already a mercenary of sorts.
As a lone operator who had earned a reputation, the gangs of orphans constantly fighting over the city’s profitable territories often sought my help in disputes with rivals.
The gang that offered me more money always won, thanks to me, of course.
This didn’t endear me to the losing side, and they frequently tried to settle scores with me, but were always beaten and stripped clean.
In such moments, I relied on that familiar feeling of rage, which no longer seized control of my body but only guided me when needed.
I learned to control gravity without those rage-fueled outbursts.
It all came down to will and concentration.
By the time I turned fifteen, I could either increase gravity or lessen its effect.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t do more than that yet.
With increased gravity, I had to be careful.
I could immobilize an enemy or, if I pushed too far, shatter every bone in their body.
After that, no healer could help.
But I found another use for my ability.
At the edge of my consciousness, as if someone was giving me a hint, a thought emerged that by increasing gravity’s pull on myself, I could train my body.
Thanks to this, by the age of fifteen, I was almost as strong as some trained mercenaries.
And I had no intention of stopping.
At this moment, I was walking home to the brothel after another skirmish with a petty gang of thieves.
My mood was high, and it seemed nothing could ruin it.
The reason was the substantial sum I had collected from the beaten scum.
It was exactly the amount I needed to buy my mother out of the brothel.
Yes, I knew that if I bought her freedom, we would have nowhere to live.
But I planned to worry about that later.
Right now, I walked through streets I knew by heart.
Passing through crowds, I drew attention to myself.
I didn’t know if it was my mood or my height for a fifteen-year-old.
It didn’t matter.
If they wanted to stare, let them stare.
That was their right, I was feeling generous today.
Along the way, I remembered what I had overcome and what difficulties I had faced to gather the required sum.
I might have bought my mother out sooner, but every year the owner of the “pillow house” raised the price, claiming slave prices had risen significantly.
In those moments, I struggled to suppress my rage and the urge to crush his skull.
After each such incident, I would go blow off steam by beating the shit out of another gang.
In such moments, a snide thought would always flicker in the back of my mind: “What I wouldn’t give for a woman.” But I would just brush it off.
The idea of going to a brothel to satisfy my lust, knowing my mother worked in a similar establishment, disgusted me.
After such reasoning, my subconscious always shut up.
That same subconscious had become a reflection of my strange dreams, which had become significantly rarer lately.
But my subconscious had grown more active and often inserted sarcastic comments.
Sometimes we would even have something like a conversation.
Was it strange to talk to your own subconscious?
Still, thanks to it, I had gained a wealth of knowledge that no one in this world could teach me.
The world itself was familiar to me, but my subconscious wasn’t eager to share that information.
Approaching the brothel, I was already imagining walking up to the owner, tossing him a bag of coins, and seeing my mother’s face when she learned she was free.
Images formed in my mind: me leading her out of the city so we could settle in Braavos.
My subconscious suggested that slavery was forbidden in that Free City, and the information delighted me beyond measure.
Rushing into the pleasure house, I sprinted toward the stairs, catching strange looks along the way.
I wanted to see my mother first and tell her to pack her few belongings.
Meanwhile, I would deal with her owner.
“Former owner,” I corrected myself, moving toward the door of my mother’s room.
Just outside the door, I heard the characteristic sound of slapping flesh.
The realization of what was happening sparked my usual anger, but I was used to such scenes.
Though this time, I intended to escort the client out.
The moment I pushed the door open, the familiar stench of alcohol hit my nose.
Ignoring it, I focused on what was happening on the bed.
By the bed stood a naked man, who judging by his build and the sword nearby, was a warrior.
He was blocking my view of my mother with his body, she lay motionless on the bed.
Only her bare legs were visible, twitching weakly in rhythm with the client’s thrusts.
The man was clearly displeased with something and moved faster with each passing second.
He fucked my mother with a sort of frenzy.
The sound of slapping echoed through the room, but there were no other sounds besides the man’s grunting.
No familiar moans that usually accompanied the act.
The man noticed this too, and drawing back his hand, he slapped my mother hard.
The flame of rage flared anew at the sight, and I was about to intervene.
“Moan, whore!” the drunk client slurred, delivering another slap to my mother’s face.
No response came, which only enraged the drunk further, and he rained down blow after blow.
I didn’t intervene, because I finally understood what had been bothering me.
There were no moans from my mother, no cries from the blows.
I understood everything.
“Useless whore,” the drunk warrior said, turning away and stepping aside, noticing me.
“And who the hell are you?” I was silent.
No emotions.
Stepping aside, the man revealed the naked, lifeless body of my mother.
She lay on the bed, arms spread wide.
At the edge of my consciousness, I noted that her still-young face was frozen in a mask of peace and even, in some way, happiness, as if the moment she had been waiting for had finally arrived.
She had desired freedom, and what is death but freedom?
“Another one?
Are you next, brat?” the man who killed my mother asked drunkenly, squinting and trying to focus on me.
I was silent.
The core had been ripped out of me.
I hadn’t been fast enough to save her from this hell.
“Sorry, kid,” there was no remorse in his voice.
“I’ll go find another.
This one seems to be dead.” I was silent.
I had no strength to answer him.
No strength to go on living.
The only thing I treasured had been taken from me.
“Shitty brothel.
These whores are weak,” the man said, his tongue already slurring, as he walked to the pitcher by the bed and took a long swig.
This swine was still drinking near my mother’s body.
But I didn’t want to do anything anymore.
What was the point in trying?
It was too late.
Why go on living?
What was the meaning?
“Revenge,” whispered the “subconscious” in my head.
Revenge?
On whom?
This bastard standing here with his bare ass?
The brothel owner who bought my mother?
Or those who reduced us to this life?
*”On everyone,”* was the answer from my subconscious.
Everyone.
Maybe that was the way out, but not for me.
I wanted peace.
I wanted to see my mother’s warm smile again.
I would leave revenge to others.
“If you want it that badly, go ahead,” I said to my subconscious.
“I’m done.” Instantly, I felt the almost forgotten sensation of losing control over my body.
I became a passive observer once more, deciding to watch the show one last time.
“Pathetic,” the “subconscious” spoke in my voice.
And I admitted it.
I had proven too weak for this world.
“What are you mumbling about?” the man slurred.
The next moment, he fell silent and dropped to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut.
The “subconscious” had far better control over gravity.
The naked man knelt, trembling violently.
He was clearly trying to resist.
His face was red with strain, but all attempts were useless.
Meanwhile, my body, under the “subconscious’s” control, walked slowly and purposefully to the table where a dagger lay.
It was the bastard’s, by the look of it.
Picking up the weapon, my body moved toward the man, who had sobered up from terror and watched in horror.
Approaching the man from behind, “I” grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back.
The victim’s eyes were full of desperate pleas for mercy, but “I” only smiled sadistically and slowly dragged the blade across his exposed throat, cutting deep.
The man made gurgling sounds.
Blood poured from the slit throat, streaming down his body and staining it crimson.
All the while, “I” held his head back, looking into his eyes.
As if showing me the final moments of the man who had killed my mother.
“Now you can go, weakling,” the “subconscious” said with a smirk.
He was right.
I could go now.
Follow my mother to where our ancestors surely awaited.
The last thing I saw through the eyes of a body that no longer belonged to me was its new owner strapping the dead man’s sword to his belt.
*** Fastening the sword to his belt and checking it was secure, I took one final look around the room that had become home.
In it, this body was born, and in it, I had entered this world.
A world I knew but understood so little of.
My gaze caught on two bodies that somewhat spoiled the scene.
Still, they reminded me it was time to get the hell out of this establishment before those corpses were pinned on me.
Before leaving, I checked the hiding place where the “weakling” had kept our savings and pocketed the pouch there.
“Time this world learned of my wrath,” I said, stepping out of the room with a cruel smile.