282 AC. Outside King's Landing.
The fresh earth was wet and muddy from the rain. Two tiny graves stood side by side, so crudely made they seemed almost an afterthought, without headstones or markers.
Whoever had buried them had not dug deep. It was more as though they had simply thrown some dirt over the bodies.
In the bloody storm that had swept through King's Landing, perhaps the fact that these two small corpses had not been tossed into a pot of brown stew in Flea Bottom was the Usurpers' last, grudging act of "mercy."
Rain drizzled down, light but bitterly cold.
It soaked the freshly turned earth, softening it, making it sink.
After an unknown stretch of time, the mound of one small grave stirred.
Then a hand, astonishingly small, caked in filth with black mud packed beneath its nails, trembled as it stubbornly reached out of the soft earth.
Then came the other.
The dirt was laboriously pushed aside. A small head broke through the covering layer and emerged.
Mud covered the little face. Hideous wounds and dents marked his forehead, cheeks, and even his temples, as though something heavy had smashed into them.
The blood had long since clotted dark brown, mingling with the dirt.
Violet eyes opened, filled with an immense pain and bewilderment no child should have known, as though he had just woken from a long, terrible nightmare only to find himself in another, more tangible hell.
He crawled out.
He lay on the cold, sodden ground, gasping violently, every breath bringing a pain like his lungs were tearing apart.
Rain struck his nearly shattered skull and skeletal body, washing away a little of the filth while bringing a bone-deep chill.
A corner outside King's Landing.
An unnamed mass grave.
He lived among rotting