The Three-Eyed Crow

One day, two weeks later, Viserys was practicing his swordsmanship as usual.

Sweat streamed down from his head like little rivers, running into his eyes until he could barely keep them open.

But both his hands gripped a wooden sword tightly, and his eyes stayed fixed on Ser Barristan Selmy's wrist. He tried to predict where the next slash would land from those tiny movements.

With every parry, the force of Ser Barristan Selmy's strike traveled through his arms and into his whole body, making his awareness falter for an instant.

"Stay focused, Your Highness." Barristan's stern, serious voice echoed across the training yard. "On a real battlefield, a moment's distraction will cost you your life. Your enemies won't show you mercy because of your age."

"Mm." Viserys forced a muffled grunt from his throat in reply and brought his attention back.

He could feel this body growing stronger at an extraordinary rate. From the most basic sword grips to their current sparring sessions, Barristan had quietly raised the intensity of his training to the standard expected of a full-fledged knight.

Although his lack of strength meant he still used a wooden sword, he had only been training for about a month. What was more, he was barely over five years old. It was astonishing.

Viserys simply did not realize it. After all, the body's original owner had never trained either, and this was a world of dragons and magic. He assumed he was only a little more gifted than ordinary children.

Though Barristan was surprised by Viserys's talent, the dragonlord bloodline of House Targaryen was unusual, and every generation could produce someone with special gifts.

He, too, assumed that Viserys had awakened some talent in his blood. That seemed perfectly plausible.

"That's enough for today." After an indeterminate stretch of time, Barristan finally announced the end of the day's training. Viserys merely waved a hand. He felt as though every bone in his body was screaming and every muscle was swollen and aching.

Yet he had to admit that the feeling of his strength genuinely increasing was addictive. Viserys dragged his two unresponsive legs out of the training yard, his mind filled with nothing but the desire to sink into a steaming bath and relax.

Just as he stepped out of the training yard, a hoarse "Caw-" rang out, and a crow landed on a rock beside the yard.

At first, he assumed it was one of the maester's ravens, resting after tiring itself out in flight. Ravens were fierce, carnivorous birds, so no other birds could possibly live in the Red Keep.

But the instant Viserys glanced at it, he felt cold sweat trickle down his back.

The crow before him actually had three eyes. Two were no different from an ordinary crow's, their black gaze alert, but a blood-red third eye sat directly above them in the center of its forehead.

That eye resembled a burning ruby, radiating an eerie glow. Now, with its head tilted, the crow stared fixedly at Viserys with all three eyes.

The Three-Eyed Crow. Why would he come to King's Landing? This shouldn't be happening. I've only been in this world for a little over a month. I haven't touched the wheels of history or changed any storylines. There's no reason I should have drawn his attention.

In the original story, the Three-Eyed Crow had told Bran that he needed weirwoods to use his abilities. Yet outside the North, nearly all the weirwoods south of the Neck had been cut down.

There should only have been a few left on the lands of families in the Riverlands and the Vale who still worshipped the Old Gods, as well as one at the center of the Lake of Eyes. Beyond those, some might still have survived in remote places deep within the Red Mountains of the Reach to the south.

In short, his appearance in King's Landing was itself an extremely dangerous sign.

Viserys gave him only a glance, then pretended he had noticed nothing unusual and followed the maid to wash up. Inside, however, towering waves had already risen, and his heart sank straight to rock bottom.

He felt certain that this thing had come for him. Was it because my transmigrated soul disturbed some damned thread of fate?

He spent the entire afternoon in a distracted haze. That blood-red eye flashed through his mind again and again. At dinner, even the table full of carefully prepared dishes tasted like sawdust.

The maid attending him seemed to notice that something was wrong with the prince, but she silently attributed his lack of conversation to exhaustion from training.

Night had completely enveloped the Red Keep, and beyond the window lay impenetrable darkness. Viserys lay on his soft, spacious bed, unable to sleep. Bloodraven's terrifying image and that three-eyed crow kept circling through his mind. Now he was certain: that thing had come for him.

Sure enough, before long, Viserys felt a strange drowsiness forcibly descend upon him. It was not natural sleepiness, but something more like a hijacking of his mind. His consciousness was dragged into a cold, viscous vortex.

When the weightless sensation vanished and he opened his eyes again, he found himself in unfamiliar surroundings.

"You're very special, little one."

The voice came from behind him, dry and hoarse, like bark scraping against bark. Viserys spun around, his heart nearly leaping into his throat. What was he looking at?

Beneath a weirwood so enormous that words could not describe it, a tall figure sat half embedded in a tangle of roots. He wore a ragged black cloak and was so thin that little remained of him but his skeleton.

Most terrifying of all was his face. Pale roots occupied the place where his left eye should have been, their tendrils burrowing deep into the socket as though they had become part of his body.

His sole remaining eye was blood-red, like a frozen flame. The three-eyed crow perched on his shoulder, all three of its eyes likewise fixed on Viserys.

"Who... who are you?" Viserys put just the right amount of trembling into his voice and took a step backward as though something had frightened him. "Where is this? Am I dreaming?"

Bloodraven let out a laugh that sounded like coughing. "Heh, heh... a dream? You could call it that. This is the space between reality and dreams." His good eye, if it could be called good, glowed red and narrowed slightly. "But you... your thread of fate is shrouded in mist. I cannot see it clearly. You are not entirely yourself, little one."

Viserys's heart tightened, but he answered with a bewildered look on his face. "I don't understand what you're saying. I'm Viserys Targaryen. You still haven't answered me. Who exactly are you?"

"Targaryen? Perhaps. I'm a Targaryen too. Brynden Rivers. Have you heard that name?" Bloodraven's voice was utterly flat, as though he were stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.

"Brynden Rivers? I've heard that name. You're Brynden Rivers? Then you're not a Targaryen. You're just a bastard." Viserys adopted the haughty expression of an arrogant, overbearing child, placing particular emphasis on the word "bastard."

"There is no point discussing such things. I brought you here only to tell you that I have seen something far more terrible approaching-a bitter cold from the ends of the world, the breath of death spreading like a tide to engulf all things. The Long Night is coming. We need every bit of strength to fight it. Winter is coming, child."