[ June 25, 298 AC | 2:30 AM | Camp in the Heart of the Mountains of the Moon ] The dead of night.
Cold wind still clawed at their faces, but around the hollow dozens of Stone Crows had spread out into a living wall.
Rusty axes and fire-hardened spears kept every smaller, restless band at a respectful distance from the fire.
Tyrion, Nero, and Bronn sat close to the rekindled flames.
Light and shadow moved across their faces.
Tyrion lifted a battered wineskin, tilted his head, and took a long pull of the sour, cloudy mare’s milk wine.
He choked hard, tears streaming.
“Is this horse piss?” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and fixed Nero with a stare that already carried the edge of drink.
Nero was carefully wiping dried blood from his blade.
“Nero,” Tyrion said, voice sharp with manic energy, “what lives inside your head is more dangerous than the steel in your hand.” Nero sheathed the sword and tossed the rag into the fire.
“I only put what both sides want most onto the same scale.” He met the green eye.
“Have you never thought of taking the Vale of Arryn for yourself, my lord?” “I have thought of moving every last gold dragon in the world into my bedchamber,” Tyrion answered with a self-mocking laugh.
“That still requires Tywin’s nod.
But with this pack of bodyguards, my dear father will at least have to let me roll into his command tent in one piece.” Bronn rubbed a silver stag between calloused fingers.
“So you tricked a pack of savages into becoming your private army.
When we reach the camp, will the old man actually give them real steel?” “Of course he will.” Tyrion shrugged.
“Thousands of fearless, disposable vanguards who cost only a few hundred swords?
Tywin Lannister would not even blink at that bargain.” Bronn snorted.
“I knew it.
You high lords never tell a straight truth.
You dangle the Eyrie in front of them, but all you really want is free meat to throw in front of the next blade.
If these savages had any sense they would take the coin, go down the mountain, and find clean women in the next town for one good night.
Better that than hanging around lords who will put a knife in your back the moment you sleep.
Marry a village girl, spend a few coins, and at least you know she won’t cut your throat for politics.” Tyrion’s hand froze halfway to the wineskin.
The warm glow of the fire drained from his face, leaving something pale and dead.
“A village girl?” His voice came out rough, as if scraped across sandpaper.
Bronn’s eyes narrowed.
“Did I touch a nerve?” “No.” Tyrion stared into the cloudy wine still left in the skin.
“Just remembered a… farm girl.
Once upon a time I thought marrying a country girl and living a quiet life might not be so terrible.” He tipped the skin back and drank bitterly.
The calculating light in the mismatched eyes was gone, replaced by bottomless exhaustion.
“I was thirteen.
Jaime and I found a girl on the road.
Her name was Tysha.
Black hair.
Eyes that curved when she smiled.
Just a tenant farmer’s daughter.” Only the wind and the crack of burning wood filled the silence.
Bronn frowned but said nothing.
Nero listened without expression.
As a man who had read the true story, he already knew the ending.
“I thought I was in love.” Tyrion gave a short, sharp laugh; his eyes had gone red.
“Even a dwarf is allowed that much, isn’t he?
Especially a Lannister.
I found a drunken septon and married her in secret.
Those two weeks were the happiest of my life.
We had a little shack by the sea.
She sang to me… a song from Myr.
‘My Love’s Season.'” He stopped.
His throat worked as if he were swallowing broken glass.
“Then my father found out.” Tyrion’s knuckles whitened around the wineskin.
“He summoned Jaime and forced my brother to tell me the truth.
Tysha was never a farm girl.
She was a whore Jaime had bought for a single gold coin—so his poor dwarf brother could finally know what it felt like to be a man.” Bronn rolled his eyes.
“Your brother did you a favor.
One gold coin buys the best talent in King’s Landing.” “Yes.” Tyrion’s voice was hollow.
“Then my father decided the whore had broken the rules.
He handed her to the entire garrison of the tower.
He made me sit and watch.
Every man who took her had to throw a silver coin onto the floor.
By the end the coins were scattered so thick she could not scoop them up with both hands.” He drank again.
Wine ran down his chin into the filthy collar of his leather.
“Tywin told me that Lannister gold is never earned so cheaply.” Silence settled over the three of them like a shroud.
After a long moment Bronn picked up a stone and began sharpening his blade with hard, deliberate strokes.
“Thirteen, thirty, or three—if anyone did that to me I would cut them down where they stood.” Nero watched the slight tremor in Tyrion’s mismatched eyes.
He knew the true, crueler version: Tysha had never been a whore.
The lie had been forced from Jaime’s mouth by Tywin himself.
She had been a farm girl who had genuinely loved the dwarf, destroyed by the coldest method possible to teach a deformed son that no one would ever love a monster.
Nero poked the burning twigs and let sparks rise into the night.
He chose his words with care.
“My lord.” His voice was calm and heavy, cutting through the crackle of the fire.
Tyrion lifted his head slowly.
“Forgive the presumption, but I have heard another ending to that story.” He paused, then spoke each word like a nail driven into wood.
“Tywin made you the last man to go to her.
And then he gave you a gold coin… because a Lannister is worth more.” Tyrion froze.
Shock, confusion, rage, and the raw humiliation of an old wound ripped open all crossed his face in the space of a breath.
“You…” His voice shook.
“How could you know that?
How dare you—” “Listen to me.” Nero held the burning gaze without flinching.
“Men with power are accustomed to weaving scripts with gold and steel, then forcing the world to believe the script is truth.” He was taking a deliberate risk, tearing open the deepest scar, because only a wound this deep would force the Imp to hear every word that followed.
“If he had not used cruelty that shattered a thirteen-year-old boy’s heart, he could never have killed the romantic fervor completely.
Tywin does not need the truth.
He only needs you to believe the truth he chooses.
To him every Lannister is a chip on the table—Cersei, Jaime, even you.
All the same.” Nero leaned forward slightly.
His voice stayed low, but it struck like a bell.
“If Tywin needed that girl to be a whore for gold… even if she had been pure as fresh snow, the Seven themselves would have nodded and pointed.
Your brother was still young then.
He would have said whatever was required.” He locked eyes with Tyrion.
“But think back carefully.
When she looked at you during those two weeks, when she sang and met your gaze… do you truly believe those were the eyes of a woman who had taken coin?” The wineskin slipped from Tyrion’s fingers and hit the ground.
Murky wine spilled across his boot.
The face that usually wore sarcasm and cynicism twisted violently.
His mouth hung open.
His chest heaved as if he were a drowning man dragged from deep water.
Fourteen years.
No one had ever spoken this inference to his face.
No one had ever offered even this thin, heartbreaking thread of hope.
He stared into Nero’s eyes, hunting for any trace of a lie.
Nero did not look away.
For a single heartbeat Tyrion felt something in those eyes that did not belong to any ordinary sellsword—something deeper, older, that did not seem to belong to this world at all.
“How can you say that…” Tyrion’s voice was dry, desperate, clinging to a piece of driftwood even as he fought against it.
“You do not know Jaime… he would never tell me such a lie…” Inside Nero’s mind the system spoke, cold and clear.
[Warning: Host detected leaking significant future secrets to a core character.] [Current causality deviation: Mild.] [Hint: Changes in the core character’s perception will cause subsequent events to branch in unpredictable ways.
Frequent, direct, and gratuitous disruption of established causality may trigger world-line backlash.] [Long-term mission generated: The Rift in the Lion’s Pride.] [Stage Goal One: Escort Tyrion Lannister to Tywin’s military camp and ensure he retains actual influence over the Mountain Clans.] [Goal One Reward: Honor +5; unlock one-time auxiliary judgment — Rhetorical Incitement × 2.] [Helpful Tip: Due to the danger of breaking causality, the system temporarily issues a reward — one-time auxiliary judgment: Rhetorical Incitement (Basic) × 1.] Nero’s eyes darkened a fraction.
The system was right.
This world was not parchment he could rewrite at will.
Every truth spoken too early made the road ahead stranger.
But some seeds had to be planted now.
Once the doubt took root, even if Nero never spoke another word on the subject, Tyrion would chew those memories alone in the blackest hours of the night.
When Tywin Lannister eventually looked at them with those pale golden eyes, if Tyrion was still only a son craving his father’s approval, they would all be placed back onto the old lion’s board without resistance.
“You are right, my lord.” Nero’s tone returned to calm detachment, as if he had not just detonated a bomb.
“Perhaps Lord Tywin was truly right.
Perhaps that girl really was only a whore acting for coin.” He left it there.
Nothing more.
“The schemes of the lowlanders are more poisonous than the vipers in these mountains.” A voice like muffled thunder cut across the fire.
Shagga had approached unnoticed.
The Stone Crow chief stood with his rusty great-axe, violent eyes fixed on Nero with something close to open admiration.
“The half-man’s brain turns faster than a mountain fox.” He pointed a thick black finger at Tyrion, then at Nero.
“But your eyes are more poisonous than a mountain eagle.
Fast with a sword, and bold enough to rip a lowland high lord’s stinking guts out to his face.
Nero—you are a true warrior.” Shagga swung the iron axe horizontally—not to strike.
He laid the flat of the blade on Nero’s shoulder and leaned his full weight downward.
“Let me see,” he grinned, showing rough yellow teeth, “if your bones are as hard as your mouth.” Bronn’s hand flashed to his hilt.
Nero did not move.
The axe pressed down like a waterlogged millstone.
Strength 18 tensed hard under the skin; joints gave a faint, warning crack.
It hurt.
He did not bend.
He simply lifted his eyes and met Shagga’s gaze with calm.
“If you only need to borrow an axe, I can help you chop wood tomorrow.” Shagga stared for two full breaths.
Then the giant of the mountains threw his head back and laughed, a sound that rolled across the rocks.
He pulled the axe away and clapped Nero’s shoulder hard enough to nearly send him into the fire.
“Good!
Hard mouth, hard bones.
Shagga likes it.” He pounded his scarred chest once and strode back toward the outer line.
With Shagga’s interruption and the quiet proof of Nero’s strength, the silence around the fire finally broke.
Tyrion closed his eyes and leaned against the cold stone.
His breathing slowly evened.
When he opened them again the carefully hidden sharpness and struggle had returned.
He looked at Nero for a long time—wariness still present, but now mixed with a complicated, almost grateful recognition of the strange solace that had been offered.
“Fine.” The Imp wrapped himself tightly in his tattered cloak, curled into a small ball, and soon slept.
— The mountain wind blew until dawn.
Nero was not woken by beasts, but by a shrill argument.
At first light the Stone Crow camp had gained dozens of new wildling faces—men and women in even more ragged furs, carrying sharpened sticks.
At the front, locked in confrontation with Shagga, stood a short, fierce woman.
Her chest was as flat as a boy’s.
Greasy feathers were braided into her tangled hair.
Around her neck hung a string of dried, blackened human ears.
“Shagga, son of Dolf—when did your tongue become as slippery as a lowlander’s?” she demanded, gripping a bone-handled knife.
“You said there were free steel swords and chainmail here, that you would share the Eyrie with us?
Have the Stone Crows gone mad with hunger and started eating their own brains?” “Chella of the Black Ears, shut your stinking mouth!” Shagga roared, slamming his axe into the ground hard enough to spray gravel.
“This is the Lion Chief’s promise!
A Lannister always pays his debts!” “I only see a dwarf!” Chella pointed unyieldingly toward the cave.
“What is all this noise so early?” Bronn yawned, walked to the entrance with one hand on his hilt, and surveyed the tense standoff.
One eyebrow rose.
“It seems our half-man lord’s reputation travels faster than the wind.” Tyrion had woken as well.
He crawled out of his cloak, face still pale from sour wine and hard stone.
But the moment he heard the argument outside, every trace of the previous night’s fragility, sadness, and struggle vanished as if swallowed whole.
In the space of a single breath Tyrion Lannister put the familiar mask back on—cynicism, calculation, and sharp-edged charm.
He scrubbed his face hard with cold stream water, brushed the dust from his clothes, and strode out on short legs with his trademark proud smile already in place.
“Ah.
It seems my renown has already reached the Black Ears.” He walked with hands clasped behind his back until he stood before Chella.
“I am Tyrion, son of Tywin, and your best friend in the days to come.
My lady—such a beautiful necklace.
Would you like a real steel sword to match it?” Chella eyed him warily and did not answer at once, but the hungry green eyes of the wildlings behind her spoke for her.
Nero leaned against the rock wall, arms crossed, watching in silence.
Bronn came up beside him and nudged Tyrion’s head with an elbow.
“These are the troops you mean to lead?
These savages have a damned strange custom—when they hold a ‘meeting’ everyone gets a voice, even the women.
They argue until someone bleeds.
Do you truly intend to walk back to the Westerlands with a rabble that might start killing each other at any moment?” Nero’s eyes flicked to the system panel still hovering at the edge of vision.
[Stage Goal One: Escort Tyrion Lannister to Tywin’s military camp and ensure he retains actual influence over the Mountain Clans.] “Savages are hard to manage,” Nero said quietly.
His gaze moved from Chella of the Black Ears to the distant tree line, where still more figures from smaller tribes were beginning to appear, drawn by the promise of the Vale.
“In a castle the nobles argue for three days and in the end a king and the law still decide.
In these mountains they argue with blades in hand, and only corpses are left when it ends.
You will have to change that, my lord.” “I intend to,” Tyrion said with a thin smile.
Nero patted Bronn’s shoulder and walked toward the Imp, who was already deep in verbal combat with the newcomers.
“But before we reach Lord Tywin’s camp,” he said, “we have time enough to teach them to draw steel at the same command.” The flight through the Mountains of the Moon had become something far stranger—an absurd, bloody recruitment drive.
And the long road toward iron and blood had only just begun.