Deep in the wolfswood, the cold wind moaned through the ancient pines like restless ghosts.
Jon lay on his back in a clear stream that cut through the forest, letting the icy water flow over his chest.
He felt nothing.
Since the day he had woken in this world carrying the memories of his previous life, his body had lost any real sensitivity to extreme cold or heat.
No matter how brutal the weather, it simply did not touch him.
He suspected it had something to do with the two opposing bloodlines running through his veins—Targaryen fire and Stark ice.
Either one alone would have made him extraordinary.
Fate, in its usual cruel humor, had forced both into the same fragile body.
“Would you like me to serve you, Your Grace?”
The soft, seductive voice came from behind him.
Jon turned his head.
Even with the mind of a grown man, he felt a flicker of surprise.
Kinvara stood there completely naked, the red gown discarded somewhere behind her.
She looked as bare and natural as the day she was born.
Any traditional northerner who stumbled across this scene would have called her insane.
Stripping naked to bathe in the freezing North was suicide.
But setting survival aside, Jon had to admit—whatever gods had shaped women had done a far more elegant job than they had with men.
She was beautiful in a way that felt almost unfair.
Full breasts, a narrow waist, long straight legs.
Jon’s purple eyes traveled down her body without false modesty or embarrassment.
“Do what you want,” he said flatly, looking away.
His mind was adult, but his six-year-old body had no physical reaction to give him away.
He was quietly grateful for that.
If he had been in a grown man’s body right now, facing a woman this stunning and this deliberately naked, he doubted he would have stayed as calm as he felt.
Kinvara stepped into the stream behind him.
A moment later her soft, surprisingly strong hands were in his hair, massaging his scalp with practiced skill. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Jon let his head fall back against her, accepting the touch without resistance.
The warmth that seemed to radiate from her skin took the edge off the northern air.
“Ask whatever you want to ask,” he said, eyes half-closed.
“I wish to know, my lord…” Kinvara leaned close to his ear, her voice low and reverent.
“Have you ever been granted the honor of seeing our great Lord of Light with your own eyes?”
Jon’s mind slipped back to the end of his last life.
Eighteen years in a hospital bed.
Eighteen years of pain that never stopped.
He had watched other boys his age run and laugh while he lay surrounded by the smell of disinfectant, reading every book he could reach before his body failed completely.
When death finally came, it had felt like a release.
His senses had faded one by one until there was only darkness and the sensation of his soul drifting like a feather on a black ocean.
Then something had reached into that darkness—a hand of immense power—and dragged him out.
When he opened his eyes again, he had stood before a presence that could only be called a god.
Jon opened his own eyes now and looked straight into Kinvara’s burning ruby gaze.
“He sits upon a throne brighter than a thousand suns,” he said evenly.
“A crimson robe drapes his great form. His hair is made of pure light, falling like a river of stars. And his eyes…” Jon paused.
“They are two burning red suns.”
Kinvara’s breath caught.
The fanatic light in her eyes flared so bright it was almost painful to look at.
“Kinvara.” Jon’s voice sharpened, cutting through her rapture before it could swallow her completely.
“The red faith as it exists now must change. Completely. Only then can you serve the purpose your god actually wants.”
He did not say my purpose out loud, but the words sat cold and clear in his own mind.
“I listen to your divine word, Light’s chosen.”
“I will write a new holy book,” Jon continued.
“It will contain the stories the Lord of Light wishes the world to hear—stories that teach morality, reverence, and virtue. But before any of that can spread, the red faith’s image in Westeros must be fixed. Your clothes, your rituals, your prayers—everything changes. No more open displays of blood magic in front of smallfolk. And the burning of living people ends. All of it.”
He knew exactly why the Faith of the Seven had spread so far in his old world. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
It had not been through blood sacrifice and terror.
It had been through stories that gave people meaning and rules in a brutal age.
Jon intended to give the red faith the same kind of weapon—minus the parts that would make every northerner want to kill them on sight.
Kinvara stared at him with terrifying intensity.
“Once the reforms are done,” Jon said, “I will personally decide the new priestly garments, the new rituals, the new prayers, even the images your followers will pray to. And you will expand. Fast.”
He sat up, turned, and took her face in both hands, pulling her close until their eyes were only inches apart.
His voice dropped into something cold and final.
“Do not disappoint me, Kinvara. I hate mistakes. Anyone who stands in the way of these changes dies. You and the red faith will be the sharpest sword I have when the Long Night comes.”
Kinvara dropped to her knees in the stream without hesitation.
She pressed her forehead to the cold ground and kissed the top of his bare foot with absolute devotion.
“Your word is law, Light’s chosen. Any who refuse the new commandments will burn in holy fire.”
When she lifted her head, the look in her eyes made Jon’s skin prickle.
Pure, unfiltered madness.
She no longer saw him as a boy.
She saw a god walking the earth.
If he told her to die right now, she would do it smiling.
Jon kept his face expressionless.
“Thank you, Kinvara. The Lord of Light sees your devotion.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it didn’t matter.
He reached out and touched her cheek again.
She closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth of his small hand like it was the only heat left in the world.
A six-year-old boy and a naked, centuries-old red priestess kneeling in a freezing northern stream.
If anyone else had seen it, they would have thought the world had gone mad.