Leon confirmed that he had gained an ability.
When he was hungry or tired, the halos grew indistinct or even disappeared.
When he was in good condition and fully focused, he could see emotional colors and words, and sometimes even "hear" a few keywords.
He called it the "Eye of Insight."
It was the first weapon he had acquired in this unfamiliar world, though he did not yet know how to wield it.
Not only could it discern surface thoughts, but it could also touch the deepest reaches of another person's soul through precise words.
Though for now, it was only at the first stage: vaguely "seeing."
It was a double-edged sword that demanded the utmost caution, but it also meant... limitless possibilities.
That day, as Thea fed Leon, her halo suddenly turned an intense dark red, like a blazing flame.
Fragments of words surged wildly:
"That bitch! How dare she say Leon is an elven curse... that Tyrion is a demon... the lord should have them..."
Leon knew "that bitch" referred to the kitchen steward's wife, a woman who delighted in spreading rumors.
And the word "curse" lodged in his consciousness like a tiny thorn.
But he showed no sign of it, merely reaching out a small hand to catch a lock of hair hanging over Thea's chest and tugging gently.
She snapped back to herself. The dark red halo faded as swiftly as an ebbing tide, returning to that melancholy blue.
"I'm sorry, young master," she whispered, pressing her cheek against his forehead. "I shouldn't care about such things, but you are... you're everything to me now."
Leon said nothing more. After his last encounter with Tyrion, all contact with him had been completely blocked and severed.
Yet unexpectedly, trouble still found him, trapped in this cage.
"Young master, it's time for your medicine." Thea Marbrand entered the room carrying a silver bowl.
"Thea, there were... screams in the castle courtyard today."
"It was Lady Cersei." Thea lowered her voice and handed him the medicine bowl. "She and Lady Melara Hetherspoon went into the forest earlier. After they came back... something wasn't quite right..."
That morning, Cersei Lannister and her close friend Melara Hetherspoon had slipped out of Casterly Rock to visit the forest witch known as Maggy the Frog deep in the woods.
She was an old acquaintance Lady Joanna had occasionally mentioned while she was alive, an old woman who lived deep in the marshes.
She was the grandmother of Jeyne Westerling, the wife of the future Young Wolf, Robb Stark, of the Red Wedding.
Leon took small sips of the bitter medicinal brew meant to strengthen his constitution.
"Thea, let's get some air..."
Though puzzled, Thea obeyed, picking Leon up and carrying him out to the stone corridor.
Leon gazed into the distance, past Casterly Rock, toward the marshy forest outside Lannisport...
Time turned back to that morning.
Ten-year-old Cersei Lannister hated waiting.
She stood in the dense shade of an oak, the damp wind tousling her golden hair, dead leaves clinging to the hem of her crimson riding clothes.
Beside her, Melara Hetherspoon wrung her fingers and kept looking around like a frightened sparrow.
"Will she really come?" Melara asked softly. "That... witch."
Maggy the Frog. The forest witch.
That was what the old women in the forest called her, fear and revulsion in their lowered voices.
Cersei said nothing. Her heart beat faster than usual, but not from fear. She had heard her mother say that this witch could see the future...
Not the vague, ambiguous predictions of maesters, but true prophecies, word for word.
She wanted to know her future.
The lady of Casterly Rock, Lord Tywin's daughter, with the purest golden blood of House Lannister flowing through her veins...
She was destined for no ordinary life.
She wanted to be in King's Landing, beside the Iron Throne, to make everyone kneel and look up at her.
"She'll come," Cersei said.
Melara wrung her fingers again. She was a daughter of the Hetherspoon family of the Iron Bank's Lannisport branch.
Cersei did not dislike her; she merely found her fear tedious.
The evening mist thickened, and the shadows in the woods began to writhe.
When the witch emerged from the shadows of the trees, Melara let out a stifled scream.
She was a hunched figure wrapped in layers of ragged gray-brown cloth, her exposed skin like dead bark.
Her face was buried deep in her hood, leaving only one eye visible.
Clouded and yellow, like a pebble soaking in stagnant water.
"Golden hair."
The old witch spoke, her voice like sandpaper scraping stone. "Another little golden-haired lion. What do the little girls of Casterly Rock always want to hear from me?"
Cersei stepped forward, lifting her chin. "My future. I want to know whom I'll marry, what I'll become, whether I'll..."
She paused, swallowing the words "become queen."
The witch cackled, her laughter like a crow's harsh cry.
She leaned toward Cersei, her cloudy eye rolling, reflecting the little girl's glittering golden pride.
"Kneel," the witch said. "Those who wish to know their fate have no right to stand."
Cersei's knees seemed to have a will of their own, but she still knelt on the damp fallen leaves.
Melara was already on her knees. Cersei had not even noticed when she had knelt.
The witch stretched out fingers like dead twigs and pressed them against Cersei's forehead.
Cersei felt how cold the witch's fingers were. That chill seeped between her brows, passed through her throat, burrowed into her chest, and wrapped around her heart.
Then the witch spoke.
Her voice was no longer hoarse, but hollow and distant, as though coming from the bottom of a well.
"One day, you will marry the king, and you will have three children."
Cersei's heart clenched. Ecstasy surged through her like a golden tide.
She had known it! She was a Lannister. She had been born to...
"Another woman, younger and more beautiful than you, will cast you down and take everything you hold dear."
The golden tide froze.
Cersei's mouth hung open, but no words came.
"Your children, golden-haired and beautiful, will be your pride, but they will not outlive you."
The witch's voice remained level, as though reciting a passage from some weighty history book. "Gold will be their shrouds, and blood their lullaby."
No.
"And you, little lion of Lannister." The witch bent down, her cloudy eye drawing close to Cersei's pupils. "One day, when you are drowning in tears, your valonqar-High Valyrian-will strangle you."
"What..." Cersei forced the words from her throat. "What does that mean?"
"Younger brother." The witch straightened, lifting her withered fingers from Cersei's forehead. "Your younger brother will wrap his hands around your throat and take your last breath."
Beside her, Melara trembled violently, covering her mouth as tears slid down in silence.
Cersei knelt motionless.
A violent storm raged through her mind.
Younger brother. I have two younger brothers.
Jaime? No, Jaime is my twin, not a "younger brother." We were born at the same time. Then that only leaves...
Tyrion... Leon...
"She's afraid," Leon said softly. It was not a question, but a certainty.
That incident had happened.
Thea's hands shook, and she hurriedly held Leon tighter. "Young master?"
"She did something." Leon pointed toward the gates of Casterly Rock. "Something that frightens her... something to do with us."
Thea was about to question him when a commotion suddenly broke out beyond the courtyard.
"Lady Melara fell down a well!"
When the servants carried Melara Hetherspoon's cold body back from outside the castle, Cersei stood nearby with a perfect expression of horror and grief.
She told the adults that they had only been playing hide-and-seek, and Melara had accidentally lost her footing and fallen.
But Leon stood in the corridor, watching Cersei's trembling shoulders and clenched fists, watching Kevan Lannister's scrutinizing gaze linger on his niece for those few seconds...
Everyone knew that was not the truth.
"Thea... go find Uncle Gerion..."
Thea froze for a moment. "What?"
Leon did not answer. His gaze remained fixed beyond the courtyard.
As Cersei Lannister left, her whole body trembled, her fingers clutching her skirts.
Melara... you shouldn't have threatened me... this secret cannot get out...
Her ten-year-old face had already lost its childish innocence, leaving only a terror that bordered on the grotesque.
Maggy the Frog's words still echoed in her ears like the hiss of a venomous snake:
"...three children, all with gold for their shrouds..."
"...you will become queen... outlive them all..."
"...then the valonqar-High Valyrian-your younger brother, those hands will close around your pale throat and end your life..."
Cersei stopped at the fork leading to the west tower, her gaze turning toward the winding corridor.
Her other younger brother.
The child they called an "elf."
Both of them. The voice suddenly rang in Cersei's head, sharp and certain.
The ugly one is a curse, and the beautiful one is a curse too. They're both here to take everything from me.
Leon watched quietly, his Eye of Insight opening silently, reaching toward the fork like invisible tendrils.
She's coming.
Pitch-black fear, dark red anger, scarlet killing intent-all the colors spun wildly, forming a dangerous vortex.
Leon's hand moved slightly.
"What is it, young master?" Thea stopped to look.
"Back to the west tower. Find Uncle Gerion as quickly as you can," Leon said softly.
Thea seemed to consider something, then immediately grew wary and hurried back inside the tower.
She left the door ajar and tilted her head to listen.
The footsteps on the stairs were hurried and unsteady, belonging to a child, yet carrying a resolve found only in adults.
The door was flung open.
Cersei Lannister stood in the doorway, her long golden hair slightly disheveled from running.
On that face, which had inherited Joanna's delicate beauty and Tywin's contours, an unnatural light burned in a pair of emerald-green eyes.
"Get out," she told Thea, her voice shrill.
Thea stiffened, her halo instantly turning a hesitant pale blue. "Lady Cersei, you..."
"I said get out!" Cersei stepped forward, her hand resting on the hilt of the short blade at her waist, a Name Day gift from Tywin.
Leon rose from the cushion and looked at Cersei, his Eye of Insight fully open.
That famous prophecy of Maggy the Frog had tormented Cersei throughout her life in the original story.
And now, because he existed as an additional younger brother, Cersei's fear had doubled.
"Thea," Leon said calmly, "please leave us for now."
"Young master!" Thea's voice trembled.
"I'll be fine." Leon looked at her, drawing on a little of the Word of Insight's power... "My sister wants to speak to me."
Thea slowly backed out of the room, leaving the door half-open, then hurried away.
Now only the two children remained in the room.
Cersei stared at Leon.
Her gaze scraped like a knife across his face, his eyes, his features too perfect to seem real.
"Elf." She spat the word like venom. "That's what the servants in the castle call you. They say you're as beautiful as the legends of the Children of the Forest. But they don't know elves can curse people to death, do they?"
Leon did not answer. Cersei's twisted face was reflected in his pale violet eyes.
Cersei's unfocused eyes fixed on Leon, her voice so quiet only she could hear it. "Both of you are here to take everything from me."
She drew her dagger, its ruby gleaming blood-red in the candlelight.
"If you didn't exist..." she whispered, as though sharing a secret, "I would be safe."
Leon looked at the dagger, then into Cersei's eyes. His heartbeat remained steady. Faced with the threat of death, he was unusually calm.
Perhaps it was because he had experienced real death in his previous life, or perhaps because he could see that Cersei would not truly strike now.
He could see a trace of hesitant pale blue deep within her halo, beneath that vortex of anger and fear.
"You won't, sister," Leon said, his voice carrying clearly.
Cersei's hand shook. "What did you say?"
Leon said nothing more, because he had already seen a halo on the stairs.
"You won't kill your younger brother!"
The voice made Cersei go completely rigid.
Gerion's voice came from outside the door. "Because you know that if Leon dies, your father will uncover the truth. And your father, Tywin Lannister..."
He paused, choosing the most forceful words within a child's understanding. "Hates losing control more than anything."
The name Tywin Lannister struck Cersei's face like a splash of cold water.
Her halo contracted violently. The angry red briefly faded, replaced by a dejected gray.
"And little Cersei," Gerion continued, taking another step closer outside the door, "if you kill your younger brother, what will your father do? He'll investigate, and then what will he think of you?"
Cersei's lips trembled.
"He'll think you've gone mad," Gerion said softly, each word like a needle piercing Cersei's deepest fear with precision. "Just like that Mad King, a madman ruled by fear. And your father... what he cannot tolerate most is madness like his."
The dagger slipped from Cersei's hand and fell to the stone floor with a clear clatter.
Her aura was now a chaotic jumble of colors:
Fear, anger, resentment, and a trace of newly budding... confusion.
Gerion finally walked in, bent down, and picked up the dagger. The ruby on its hilt was warm to the touch.
He handed it back to Cersei.
"You can hate," he said, "and you can hate anyone you like, but don't let your fear control you, because fear makes people do foolish things, just like today."
Cersei took the dagger, her fingers gripping the hilt tightly, her knuckles turning white again.
The Eye of Insight caught fragments of her thoughts at that moment:
He's right... Father hates losing control more than anything... If he knew I believed the witch... If he knew I wanted to kill... No, I can't... But the prophecy...
Cersei, the prophecy will come true in ways you never expected.
Leon watched quietly, adding those words in his mind.
Gerion held her shoulders. "You can choose to live in fear, on your guard every day, until your own fear kills you in the end. Or..."
He paused. "You can become stronger, so strong that no one can kill you, not even your father."
The room fell silent for a long time.
Cersei stared at Leon as though truly seeing him for the first time. The corners of her mouth twisted into a strange curve, somewhere between a smile and tears.
She put away the dagger, turned, and walked toward the door.
At the doorway, she paused. "What happened today," she said, "I hope no one hears about it."
"You know what my relationship with your father is like." Gerion shrugged.
The door closed.
Leon stood where he was, feeling a wave of intense exhaustion wash over him...
Gerion hurried to support him.
Using the Eye of Insight took an enormous toll, especially on a three-year-old body.
But he knew that today he had averted a crisis, and perhaps changed something as well.
Just then, Thea rushed in, her face as pale as paper. "Young master, are you all right? Did she..."
"He's fine." Gerion carried Leon back to the cushion. "She just... needed someone to tell her she could be stronger than anyone else, but in another way..."
Thea did not understand what he meant. When she saw how exhausted Leon looked, she asked no more questions and simply went over and gently gathered him into her arms.
Outside the window, dusk deepened.
Elsewhere in Casterly Rock, Cersei sat before the mirror in her room, staring at the beautiful yet distorted face reflected in it, repeating Gerion's words over and over in her mind.
Her fingers brushed over the dagger's ruby, and for the first time, something new appeared in her eyes.
"Rhaegar... Once I have Rhaegar..."