Nero’s heart seized as if an invisible fist had closed around it.
The code on his screens twisted into static.
A high, thin scream of feedback drowned the server room.
Then pain tore through his chest and the world went black.
— Air hit his lungs like broken glass.
He sucked in a ragged breath and opened his eyes.
Vision swam.
A face filled his entire field of view—misshapen, ugly, too close.
Broad forehead.
Blond hair like dead grass.
One eye green, one black, both burning with grievance, mockery, and the wild light of a man who had already stared into the abyss and found it funny.
Tyrion Lannister.
The name rose unbidden from somewhere deep and cold.
Wind howled past them, sharp enough to scrape bone.
Nero shivered and realized he was wearing stiff, poorly cured leather armor.
A longsword with a cracked scabbard hung at his hip.
Half a meter to his right, a lean, unshaven man kept sliding his thumb along the guard of his own sword, easing the blade out half an inch, then letting it snick home again.
Bronn.
“It’s you!
It’s you, you vicious little imp!” The hysterical shriek cut through the gale.
Nero turned and went still.
They stood in the High Hall of the Eyrie.
White marble columns climbed toward a vaulted ceiling.
At the far end a wooden door stood wide open onto nothing—only empty blue air and rolling cloud.
The Moon Door.
Beside the throne, Lysa Arryn clutched her deformed son against her thin chest, face gaunt and wild.
“You and your family murdered my husband Jon!
Now you want to kill little Bran!” Spittle flew with every word.
Robert Arryn sucked his thumb and added in a cruel, piping voice, “Make him fly, Mother!
I want to see the little bad man fly!” Catelyn Stark stood nearby, brow furrowed, eyes already realizing she had lost control of the situation.
Memories that were not his own slammed into Nero’s skull.
He had transmigrated.
Not into a lord.
Not even into a landed knight.
He was a sellsword who had taken a few silver stags to help Lady Stark drag the Imp up this mountain.
His job should have ended the moment they handed Tyrion over.
After that he was supposed to watch the Vale’s highborns play their little farce, collect his coin, and walk away.
“Lady Arryn.” Tyrion’s voice was steady even though he knelt on cold stone.
“I must say it again.
I know nothing of your husband’s death.
I know nothing of Bran Stark’s fall.
Accusation requires evidence, not—” he flicked a glance at the nose-picking lordling nearby “—the mad ramblings of a child.” “Evidence?” Lysa’s scream bounced off the marble.
“My sister’s word is evidence!
Guards!
Throw him through the Moon Door!” “Mother!
Make him fly!” little Robert clapped, face flushed with delight.
Silver-and-blue knights stepped forward.
Their eyes said they were looking at gutter rats.
Bronn’s hand tightened on his hilt, but he did not draw.
Offending the entire Vale for a doomed dwarf was bad business.
Nero stood rooted.
This was not a game.
The wind screaming past the open door, the thin, freezing air—every sensation drove the truth home.
This was the real world of ice and fire, where lives were cheaper than straw.
As a bottom-rung mercenary on the eve of a war that would drown the Seven Kingdoms in blood, he barely ranked as cannon fodder.
“Wait!” Tyrion’s voice cracked like a whip, cutting through wind and hysteria alike.
“I confess!
I confess to my crimes!” Silence dropped over the hall.
He looked around the room with the exaggerated flourish of a mummer and began the famous litany.
“My life has been one long parade of sins.
I confess to stealing lemon cakes at six.
Stuffing sheep dung into my sister’s slippers at ten.
Paying too little at a brothel at twelve… And I confess my greatest crime of all—being born a dwarf.
For that, I am guilty!” The Vale knights’ faces went purple.
Tyrion rose slowly.
Mud and bruises could not hide the intelligence burning in those mismatched eyes.
“The truth is worthless in this place.
I have done none of the things you accuse me of.
But I demand—” He drew a deep breath and roared the words that changed everything.
“A trial by combat!” Lysa’s face twisted.
“Fine!
Ser Vardis!
You will be my champion!” The old knight in polished plate stepped forward and bowed.
“As you command, my lady.” At that exact moment a cold, mechanical voice spoke inside Nero’s skull.
[Ding.
Host detected in a world-core event.] [War and Gold: Mercenary / Knight’s Path System activated.] [Current Rank: Wandering Mercenary (lowest tier).] [Scene Choice Quest triggered: A Gamble of Life and Death.] [Tyrion Lannister seeks a champion.
Bronn is still weighing the odds.] [Option 1: Stay silent.
Reward: 1 gold dragon.
System will unbind.
Good luck in Westeros.] [Option 2: Seize the gamble before Bronn does.
Fight for Tyrion Lannister.] [Reward: Combat Memory Fusion — Wandering Swordsmanship (Proficient).
The system will fully integrate the original host’s years of bloody experience.
Equipment Status Refresh: Derust and Sharpen.] Nero stared at the panel.
No god-tier artifacts.
No invincible techniques.
Just the original body’s skills pushed to their absolute limit and a sword that might last more than two swings.
Against an old knight in full plate, it was still a coin toss on the edge of a cliff.
Tyrion’s gaze swept the hall—disdainful Vale knights, a tight-lipped Catelyn Stark—and finally settled on the handful of rough sellswords, Nero among them.
He was looking at Bronn.
Bronn rubbed the stubble on his chin, eyes half-lidded.
Nero knew the calculation running behind those eyes: wait for a better offer, measure the risk of fighting a man in heavy plate.
In those few heartbeats Nero’s own mind raced just as hard.
Option 1 meant walking out of the Eyrie alone.
The Mountains of the Moon were full of clans that would cut a lone traveler’s throat for his boots.
Even if he somehow reached the lowlands, the War of the Five Kings was about to explode.
A rootless mercenary with no name and no lord would be pressed into some army and fed to the first charge.
He had already survived years of all-nighters and broken data.
He was not about to become a footnote someone else stepped on.
A Lannister always paid his debts.
Tyrion was not only the future Hand of the King.
Right now he was the only powerful patron Nero could reach.
Bronn’s lips parted.
He was about to speak.
Nero moved first.
Iron-shod boots slammed against marble with a harsh, ringing crack.
He ignored Bronn’s flicker of surprise and Catelyn’s widened eyes.
His gaze locked on Tyrion’s mismatched stare.
His right hand closed on the hilt of the longsword—now free of rust, cold and keen under the system’s touch.
Steel hissed free.
Nero angled the point toward the floor.
In the sudden, absolute silence of the High Hall he spoke in a low, flat voice that carried farther than any shout.
“I will fight for him.”