Foulkeep

Li Qing, when he woke up.

What he felt was a bone-deep chill and the damp, earthy stench that lingered in the air.

He was in a crude stone room.

Through the narrow arrow slit, he could see the gloomy sky outside and a stretch of yellowing river grass.

He tried to retrace what had happened before he lost consciousness, but his memories were hazy.

He saw a huge point of light in the sky from his memories.

It was hurtling toward him. It was no ordinary light.

It was a burning giant, plunging from the sky and growing larger by the second!

He could faintly hear a mother and daughter nearby exclaiming, "Mom, look! A shooting star! It's so big!"

Then everything vanished beyond description—his consciousness, his senses, even his very existence.

"So I really did die. Getting hit by a meteor, though—that's some unbelievably bad luck. What an unexpected way to go."

While alive, Li Qing had once watched a trivia video online.

There was only one recorded case in history of someone being injured by a meteorite. He never expected to become the first person ever killed by one.

Still, he had been alone in the world. Perhaps he had always been just a transient in his original one.

A lonely man with no one to rely on. He only hoped he hadn't frightened that mother and daughter.

Suddenly, a powerful wave of dizziness and tearing pain erupted through his senses.

A torrent of unfamiliar memories and countless scenes from someone's life—

They flooded into his mind like a breached dam: the life of a young man named Suleiman.

He had transmigrated to the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, written by George R. R. Martin.

He had become an insignificant petty knight in the service of House Deddings, lords of the lower Green Fork in the Riverlands.

Then came a painful, bloody memory, slicing through his consciousness like a sharpened blade.

Tears spilled down his face without his realizing it. They were an instinctive reaction of this body.

It had been a time of iron and fire, despair and death.

The Greyjoy Rebellion!

Balon Greyjoy had declared himself king. The Riverlands stood on the front lines against the Ironborn invasion.

When the "kraken" banners appeared in the waters off Seaguard,

all the Riverlands received a summons from Lord Tully.

Suleiman's father—

That taciturn, stern-faced man, whose features were forever marked by the weather, Ser Blei of Foulkeep—

Though their family was destitute and their lands sparsely populated,

he had been the first to answer the call of his liege, Lord Deddings, without hesitation.

He had gathered every able-bodied man in the household who could wield a sword: his two elder sons and sixteen-year-old Suleiman,

along with fifteen sturdy farmers.

They had spent everything they had on battered leather armor, rusted and damaged swords, and spears.

They hadn't even been able to equip every man properly.

In the damp, gloomy tower,

Suleiman's mother had watched with sorrowful eyes as his father, brothers, and Suleiman donned their worn leather armor, took up rusty swords and spears,

and set out along the muddy road to Seaguard.

Then the memories turned to a close-quarters slaughter of torn flesh and severed limbs.

The Ironborn were fearsome foes. They fought like ravenous wolves, excelled at close combat, and seemed utterly unafraid of death.

His father had wielded a notched longsword and charged at the front, cutting down two Ironborn who came near.

But more enemies soon surrounded him. Though his title had come from handling shit,

he fought like a true lion.

In the memory, Suleiman saw his father's arm chopped off by an Ironborn wielding a short-handled axe.

Yet he kept swinging his sword one-handed, until another axe split his skull.

His eldest brother, Lorent, a powerful man and heir to the family, rushed forward to save their father.

He swung his sword with all his might, but in the chaos, several Ironborn blades struck him.

He fell with a wail beside their father's corpse, his blood staining the muddy ground.

His second brother, Beren, had witnessed what happened to their father and eldest brother. His eyes bloodshot, he charged the Ironborn like a madman.

He managed to cleave one of them to death, but before he could do more,

another Ironborn hooked his neck from behind, and several men swarmed him, hacking him to death with all manner of weapons.

Suleiman had been nearby. Terrified out of his wits, he could only stare blankly as his family fell.

An Ironborn swung a warhammer and smashed it hard into his head.

Pain struck at once. Suleiman's vision went black, and his body crumpled into the mud, unconscious.

Miraculously, Suleiman, who had been presumed dead, had only been gravely injured by the blow.

Before the battle, his eldest brother, the strong Lorent, had placed the only intact, sturdy helmet on his head.

His taciturn brother had given him one final smile.

After the coastal battle had ended and the victorious Riverlanders began clearing the field,

they found Suleiman among the mud and corpses, still breathing faintly, and rescued him.

Maester Walder of the Green Fork thought it unlikely anyone could survive injuries like his.

With a sigh, Lord Balon Deddings ordered Suleiman sent back to Foulkeep.

The landing battle had been utterly brutal. Of the fifteen farmers who had followed them, thirteen had died on the shore.

Only two wounded farmers had survived.

They brought heartbreaking news back to Foulkeep:

"Ser Blei is dead. Young Lord Lorent is dead. Young Lord Beren is dead. Young Lord Suleiman is dead too."

The news struck like a bolt from the blue, shattering Suleiman's mother's last hope.

She had lost her husband and all three of her sons.

All her family, all she had to live for, had been wiped out in that war.

Despair and grief swallowed her like a rising tide.

On that night of despair and grief,

Suleiman's mother leaped from the low, gloomy stone tower.

Li Qing—or rather, Suleiman—was still trying to absorb the flood of memories and information surging through his mind.

"Ser of Foulkeep." That was the title by which their family was best known beyond their lands, a designation full of mockery and insult.

More unbelievable still, in the memories he had inherited,

the name "Foulkeep," which seemed to stink all on its own, was actually their family name.

The family members even spoke of it with pride, as a symbol of their "honor."

Their ancestors had served House Deddings, the lords of the Green Fork, as household servants for generations.

But behind the words "household servant" lay an embarrassing history—and one that had earned them the family's trust.

They weren't ordinary servants who swept courtyards or saddled horses.

They had been responsible for the Deddings lord's most "troublesome" daily needs—specifically, attending him on the privy and disposing of his waste. They were "shit servants."

The job sounded utterly degrading.

But what extraordinary trust and loyalty did it take to remain beside a lord at his most vulnerable and private, handling something so secret and repulsive?

They were more than servants. They were the lord's most trusted confidants, entrusted with the most shameful, vulnerable, and private aspects of his life.

It was for this generations-long "loyalty" and "comforting service"

that, a little over a hundred years ago, Leonor Deddings rewarded their ancestors.

He granted them a barren tract of land beside the Green Fork, surrounded by low-lying marshes, along with a pathetic three-story stone tower.

He named their family's holding "Foulkeep" and granted them a knightly title.

The place called "Foulkeep" in the memory was less a castle

than a solitary three-story tower standing on the edge of a wetland.

It was small and gloomy, surrounded by endless marshes and countless reeds, and saw little sunlight throughout the year.

The air was forever heavy with damp and decay.

From then on, the descendants of generations of servants tasked with disposing of their lord's waste became nobles.

But their starting point had been so low,

and their land so barren and poorly situated, while their title stemmed from such "service,"

that the little tower

was given a more direct and far nastier nickname by other nobles, who spoke with amusement and contempt: "Dungfort."

And so their family became the laughingstock of the nobility, the "shit knights."

Their family had no wealth, no prestigious marriages, and no powerful forces.

They didn't even have guards, and their lands had barely more than fifty people.

They were vassals of House Deddings, and the lowest-ranked among all of House Deddings' bannermen.

At feasts, they were seated in a corner, ignored by everyone.

Though other vassals mocked and excluded them, Suleiman's memories told him

that his family held a special place in the inner circle of House Deddings—not one of power, but of trust.

That trust came from the most loyal and comforting service their ancestors had provided when their lord was at his most unguarded.

In the world of Westeros, rank was rigid and barriers stood firm, like countless invisible chasms separating people into different classes.

Climbing the social ladder was all but impossible.

Noble blood, ancient glory, and wealth and power passed down through generations—

Eight thousand years of history had built an upper world that was all but unshakable.

And yet Suleiman's family, in a way the world found so unconventional it was almost absurd,

had crossed through that ironclad hierarchy.

Their ancestors had gone from a family of servants attending a lord to receiving a hereditary title and a fief in an almost miraculous act of grace.

That was why the family motto was more than a mere slogan. It was the foundation and soul of their very existence.

It was etched into their hearts, every word carrying weight, passed down from generation to generation.

"Grace Everlasting."

The grace referred to the title and fief granted over a hundred years ago by Lord Leonor Deddings, a man of that rigid noble order,

who had generously bestowed them on their humble ancestor, changing the family's fate.

"Young Lord Suleiman!"

An old voice, trembling with disbelief and delight, interrupted Suleiman's thoughts.

An elderly man with white hair and a deeply wrinkled face hurried to the bedside.

His eyes were clouded with tears, and they streamed down his cheeks.

He clutched Suleiman's hand where it lay outside the blanket, as if afraid it was all a dream.

This was Old Nicken, the family's longtime steward, who had spent his entire life serving House Foulkeep at Foulkeep.

"How long was I asleep?" Suleiman rasped, his voice weak.

Now that he had inherited the memories, he knew he could trust this old man, who had served the family all his life.

"Seven save us! Young Lord Suleiman, you're finally awake! You've been unconscious for a month!" Old Nicken wept, kneeling beside the bed.

"Maester Walder said you wouldn't make it. Your old servant thought... thought you wouldn't survive either, and House Foulkeep would die out."

He choked up, unable to continue, and finally broke into sobs.

Suleiman weakly raised a hand and laid it over Old Nicken's trembling one. "I'm all right now. I just slept for a long time."

Old Nicken looked relieved, but then seemed to remember something. His expression turned complicated and conflicted. "My lord, there are some things you need to know."

Suleiman knew what he was about to say. While he had been unconscious and being carried back to Foulkeep, he had already heard the soldiers escorting him talking about the tragedy that had befallen the household.

The pain in this body rose again.

"I know. My father, my brothers, and my mother."

Old Nicken shuddered. He looked at Suleiman's calm expression as the tears began to flow again, but he no longer knew what to say.