(Act I)
Volantis did not sleep through the battle.
How could it?
Five thousand men do not march to war in a city without waking it.
The Tigers had tried to do it quietly—mustering companies near the river barracks, calling in Elephant sellswords under the lie of "harbor security," moving armor in covered carts so as not to panic the merchant quarter. But steel on stone carried, and the river never kept a secret.
By the time the first volleys were loosed at the docks, half the riverward district was awake.
By the time the first screams started, the other half was standing at windows.
By the time silence fell…
Everyone who mattered was watching.
And everyone who didn't matter was listening.
Slave Quarters – River District
Mera woke to the sound of steel.
Not the clean ring of drills, but the messy clash of shields slamming, spears glancing, men barking orders over panic. Her first thought was that the Tigers were beating some poor fool in the alley again.
Then the noise did not stop.
Her second thought was:
No. That's war.
She sat up on her pallet with a groan, joints protesting as iron rings dug into her ankles. The chain was long enough to let her stand and reach the shutter.
"Up," she rasped to the boy curled beside the wall. "You, too."
The boy stirred, rubbing his eyes. "What is it?"
"Listen," she said.
He did. His eyes went wide.
"That's… many," he whispered.
"Yes." She hobbled to the shutter and eased it open.
The sky over the docks flickered orange and white with torchlight, thousands of little flames, like stars fallen into the streets. But what made the hair rise on her arms wasn't the light.
It was the darkness between.
From here she saw the broken line where Volantis ended and the river began. On the stone before the water, in the torchlight's glare, a wall of shields glimmered.
"Is that…?" the boy started.
"The Tigers," Mera said.
"No, the dark line—"
Her old fingers tightened unconsciously on the wood frame.
Like a strip of shadow cut from the river itself and hammered into shape, the Legion stood. Armor black, edges inked with dark gold. No banners. No bright cloaks. No plumes.
And not moving.
They might have been statues—except when the Tigers charged.
Even from this distance she saw it: the shimmering surge of bronze and color, Volantis's pride hurtling forward in a tide of shields and spears.
She heard the roar go up from the Tiger line, faint under all that stone and distance—but she heard it.
She did not hear any answer from the dark line.
No war-cry.
No horn.
Not even a word.
Then the lines met.
The sound came a beat late, like thunder lagging lightning: a deep, sickening crunch that rolled up into the streets and into Mera's bones.
The boy grabbed the shutter.
"Who are they?" he breathed.
No one answered.
Not from her room.
Not from any other.
Because the slaves in the river district knew this much: when two masters clash, you stay very, very quiet and hope one of them dies.
Rooftops and Balconies
Across the district, people watched.
On a wine-merchant's tiled roof, three apprentices lay on their bellies, staring down.
"They're not breaking," one muttered.
"Whose line?" another asked.
"The black ones. Our men hit them like… gods, like someone shoved them into a wall."
Down one street, a prostitute in a thin wrap leaned over a balcony above a gambling den.
"Those aren't Volantene shields," she murmured.
The man beside her—hair tangled, reeking of stale wine—squinted blearily.
"No sigils either… who fights with no banner?"
"Someone who doesn't need you to remember him," she said.
On another balcony, higher still in a house of minor nobility, a young girl clutched the rail.
"Father," she whispered, "are we winning?"
Her father watched the distant sparking, the way bright shields gathered and then thinned, the way dark shapes never seemed to fall out of formation.
"We are… fighting," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"No," he admitted softly. "It isn't."
Arrows arced — visible only as faint streaks under the moonlight — and shattered against the Legion's shield-wall.
Someone watching from a roof nearer the front spat over the edge.
"Seven save us," he muttered reflexively, then corrected himself, "Mother of Mountains—whatever gods there are—save us."
His friend didn't pray. He just said:
"Those aren't men. Men shout when they kill. They cry out. Those things down there just… move."
Inside the Barracks – Those Who Lived
Later—when dawn smudged the sky and the battle had already been lost—some of the Tigers who crawled back would be made to tell the tale.
They sat in the barracks now, armor half-off, cracks in shield rims, faces gray.
"How many of you went down?" the junior officer asked.
"Too many," a survivor muttered.
"Be precise," the officer snapped.
"Half the line," another answered hollowly. "In the first push."
"That's impossible."
The soldier shook his head once.
"Their shield wall didn't move."
"We hit them with thirty deep."
"Thirty deer running at a cliff," the man said.
"Who was at their front?" the officer asked.
Silence.
At last, someone answered.
"Him."
The officer's mouth dried. "…Describe him."
"He wore no crown. No colors. No sigil. Just black." The survivor's hands shook as he mimed a blade. "He stood behind the line until they needed him."
"And then?"
"Then… he walked forward." The man swallowed. "He never ran. Never yelled. Just… walked. And where he walked, men began dying. Like someone had erased them."
Another voice from the bench added, quieter:
"He laughed, once."
The officer looked up sharply.
"Laughed?"
"Yes."
"At what?"
"At our numbers."
Their eyes met. Both men felt the wrongness of it again.
"What do they call him?" the officer asked.
One of the soldiers, a veteran who had seen the Disputed Lands and the Rhoyne campaigns, said it first:
"He's no Tiger. No Elephant. No Lion. He's not even a man."
The others waited.
Finally, he finished:
"They're calling him the Crimson Reaver at the docks."
The name sat between them like something dead and heavy.
No one argued with it.
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(Act II)
The sun had barely crested over the horizon when Volantis began to speak to itself. Not in councils or proclamations—that would come later—but in the thousand little conversations that make up the life of a city.
By mid-morning, everyone knew three things:
The attack on the docks had failed.
The harbor was full of corpses.
The black-armored commander had not died.
Everything else changed depending on who told it.
But one phrase began to appear, again and again, reshaped but not replaced:
The Crimson Reaver.
Spies in the City
In a cramped upper room above a cloth warehouse, a man from Lys held a quill above a half-filled parchment.
The wax seal of his patron house sat beside his cup.
"You're shaking," the woman on the bed said.
He flexed his fingers once and forced them still.
"Too much wine," he lied.
"They say the battle was near your window," she said.
"I watched," he admitted.
"What did you see?"
He dipped the quill.
"Truth?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Liars don't write in ink this early. You'll stain the lie into the page."
He almost laughed.
He wrote:
To my lord in Lys,_News from Volantis: they have provoked something they cannot contain.
"What do they call him?" she asked.
"Who?"
"The one in black."
He wrote instead of answering:
He commands three hundred. They move like one. They broke five thousand as if it were training.
"Is he a sorcerer?" she pressed.
"If he is, steel obeys sorcery," the spy said. "And fear, more so."
He added:
They name him in whispers already—The Crimson Reaver.
He sealed it, knowing the name would reach Lys long before Volantis decided what story it wanted to tell itself.
Across the city, in a modest house with no banner, a man from Braavos folded his own letter.
In another, a lean-faced Qohorik scribe quietly changed the wording of a report he'd been sending for years.
In a low tavern near the eastern gate, a Myrish bravo sat with a cup untouched.
"You're leaving?" the barkeep asked.
"Yes."
"No more work here?"
He smiled thinly.
"There is too much work here now," he said. "And I do not fight men who erase legions."
The Red Temple – Kinvara
The great temple's flames burned hotter than usual.
They always did when blood soaked a city.
The main hall's braziers roared, shadows dancing in unnatural shapes along the carved columns. Kinvara stood before the largest fire, her ruby at her throat glowing faintly.
"You saw?" a junior priest asked, hesitant.
Kinvara did not answer at once.
She had seen.
Not just through mortal eyes—but through the way fire remembers things.
It remembered the docks lit by torches and the glint of black armor swallowing light. It remembered shields that locked like scales. It remembered spears that moved with one will. It remembered three hearts beating in strange cadence:
One cold.One laughing.One coiled in ancient flame.
And above them all, Kaine.
"Yes," she said softly. "I saw."
"Is it true what they're calling him?" the novice asked. "The Crimson Reaver?"
"In the fish alleys, yes. In the barracks, they use it like a curse. In the brothels, like a story they will sell with drink."
"Is that… what he is? A reaver?"
Kinvara smiled faintly.
"Oh, child. Reavers take coin and slaves. He takes futures."
The novice swallowed.
"Is he of R'hllor?"
Kinvara turned, her eyes bright as embers.
"He is of himself," she said. "R'hllor chose not to oppose him. That is enough for now."
She walked away from the fire.
"Where are you going?" another priest asked.
"To change the sermon," she answered. "The people will want to know if this Crimson Reaver is monster or miracle."
"And what will you tell them?"
"The truth," she said.
"That we should stand out of his way."
Nyessa – News and Realization
Nyessa did not sleep well.
She had dreamed of the dock battle—not from any vantage she had actually held, but from a hundred fractured others: watching from windows, roofs, alleys. In each, the details changed, but one thing did not:
The black commander at the center never fell.
Her attendant pounded on her door before full morning.
"Come in," she said, tying a sash around her robe.
The young woman slid the door open, eyes wide, lips tight.
"Well?" Nyessa asked.
"It's… the factions," the attendant said. "They're in chaos. The Tigers have lost nearly an entire dock cohort. The Elephants…"
"Dead?" Nyessa asked.
"Many. And the merchants… some of their number were seen dragged away in chains. Not by Tigers. By his men."
Nyessa's fingers tightened on the sash.
"Of course," she murmured. "He told them they would pay."
"And the streets…" The attendant hesitated. "They're calling him something."
Nyessa raised a brow. "I assume it isn't 'foreign trader.'"
"The Crimson Reaver," the girl blurted.
Nyessa stilled.
"…Reaver."
"Yes, my lady."
She had heard the word before. Reavers in the Basilisk Isles, ironborn across the sea, Stepstone pirates. It had always meant the same thing: men who took what they wanted from the weak and left nothing but burned timber and drowned bodies.
"That doesn't fit," she said softly.
"My lady?"
"He didn't come to take," Nyessa said. "He came to answer."
The girl hesitated. "Is there a difference?"
"Yes," Nyessa said. Then her gaze hardened. "And Volantis will learn it today."
The Triarchs – Fear in High Places
The Triarch chamber felt smaller than usual.
The room was not built to feel small—its high ceiling painted with scenes of Valyria, its windows wide and tall, its seats long enough to hold plump men with plump egos.
But fear always made spaces shrink.
"This is… reversible," one Triarch insisted, sweating into his silk. "We can—negotiate. Explain. Blame the merchants."
"The merchants were there," another snapped. "Their men died too."
"All the better to blame them," the first said.
The Tiger Triarch's jaw shook beneath his beard.
"He marched three hundred men into our city," he said. "They killed five thousand. They hunted our soldiers through our streets like dogs. He holds our conspirators in his chains."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"And he told us, last night, that we had two choices."
"They say he sits in the colosseum now," the Elephant Triarch muttered. "On a throne he had his men build in the night."
"A barbarian throne for a barbarian lord," the merchant-Triarch said bitterly. "We will not go."
"You will," the Tiger Triarch replied.
"Why?"
"Because everyone else will."
He stood, shoulders heavy, eyes tired.
"Look out there," he said.
They went to the window.
From their height, they could see the river snaking around the city and, inland, the massive stone ring of the colosseum rising like a broken crown. Its arches were already packed. Streets leading to it were a living river of bodies.
"Slaves?" the merchant-Triarch asked.
"Slaves," the Tiger Triarch answered. "Freemen. Priests. Traders. Surviving officers. Nobles who think they can hide at the back of a crowd."
"Why are they going?" the Elephant Triarch whispered.
"To see if they still live in Volantis," the Tiger replied quietly. "Or if they live under him now."
A heavy silence fell.
Finally, the merchant-Triarch said:
"What do they call him?"
The Tiger Triarch's mouth twisted.
"The Crimson Reaver."
The merchant snorted. "A peasant name."
"Yes," the Tiger said. "And peasants have long memories."
────────── ❖ ──────────
(Act III)
By the time the sun cleared the low haze of smoke, every road to the colosseum was clogged.
Men and women pressed into one another, sweating, muttering, craning for a glimpse. Children sat on their parents' shoulders. Slaves clung to their masters' cloaks, ordered not to stare and staring anyway.
Sereyna walked slowly at Kaine's flank, helm off, hair sweat-damp, eyes sweeping the tiers.
"They're treating this like a spectacle," she murmured.
Vaerynna walked on his other side, armored, her glamoured skin hiding the subtle shimmer beneath.
"It is one," she said. "Men have always liked watching the powerful explain themselves."
Kaine said nothing.
Ahead, the arena floor spread wide—sand raked, old blood buried under thin layers of new grit.
At its center stood a throne of black alloy and dark wood, not ornate but imposing, raised on a simple three-step platform.
In front of it, kneeling in two ragged rows, were the prisoners: Tiger officers, Elephant financiers, Merchant princes, a handful of lesser collaborators. Shackles bit into their wrists and ankles. Some stared ahead in numb shock. Others stared at the sand.
The Legion ringed them in a wide circle, shields grounded, spears angled outward, helms turned not toward the crowd—but inward, toward their charges.
They resembled executioners who had not yet heard the word begin.
As Kaine entered the arena, a hush rolled through the tiers—not total silence (no crowd that size could ever go completely quiet), but a wave of sound drawn inward, sucked toward the center.
"That's him," someone whispered above.
"He doesn't look like a demon," another said.
"Demons don't need armor," a third muttered.
From a higher tier, a woman's voice rose:
"Is that the Crimson Reaver?"
The name leaped from mouth to mouth.
"Reaver."
"Crimson Reaver."
"Reaver of the Docks."
"The Blood Reaver."
Words shifted. Stories grew.
Kaine mounted the steps without hurry and sat.
The throne took his weight as if it belonged under him.
He rested his blade point-down against the step beside his boot.
Sereyna stopped a half-pace to his right, well within reach, hands resting on her pommel. Vaerynna took station to his left, gaze cool and faintly amused, as if the entire arena were a puzzle she'd already solved.
Nyessa arrived a moment later, escorted by a few of her own loyalists. She didn't take a prominent noble box—she walked down, down, to the lower tier, where she could see the prisoners' faces.
Kinvara appeared at nearly the same time, ruby glinting at her throat, the Red Priests behind her taking places along one of the mid-tier galleries. Her eyes never left Kaine.
At last, the Triarchs entered.
They did not march.
They came like men walking to a sickbed.
Their guards parted crowds for them. They took seats in the high gallery reserved for rulers of Volantis. For the first time in living memory, no one booed them. No one cheered them either.
No one looked at them much.
The crowd's attention belonged to the man on the throne.
Kaine let the silence stretch.
Let them feel the weight of it.
Finally, he spoke.
His voice was not loud. It didn't need to be. The arena had been built to carry sound, to make even weak cries roll across sand and stone.
"My name," he said, "is Kaine."
Thousands listened.
Some frowned. They had expected something longer. Stranger. More royal. More monstrous.
"In the night," he continued, "your leaders tried to answer my offer with steel."
He gestured vaguely toward the prisoners kneeling before him.
"These men and those they commanded attacked my people. They struck not as defenders of Volantis, but as conspirators who had already betrayed it for their own gain."
He looked toward the tiers.
"Some of you watched."
Heads turned guiltily. Mera, in the cheap seats with a dozen other slaves, clenched her hands tight.
Somebody near the back shouted, "I saw!"
Another voice: "They came like a black tide!"
Another: "The Tigers broke on them!"
The noise swelled.
Kaine let it.
Then he lifted a hand.
It died at once.
Even the children shut their mouths.
"They attacked," he said, "and failed."
He rested his forearms lightly on the arms of the throne.
"You have given me a name now. The Crimson Reaver."
He said it without mockery.
"Names are useful. They travel. They explain things to men who were not there."
He leaned forward a fraction.
"But I am not here to take your city's ships. Or its women. Or its gold. Reavers do that."
His gaze slid over the kneeling prisoners.
"I am here to take away your illusions."
He nodded toward the conspirators.
"And they are the first."
One of them, a merchant with a voice that once commanded markets, tried to speak.
"This… this is illegal," he stammered.
"Illegal," Kaine repeated mildly. "In which court?"
The man swallowed.
"You have no—no authority—"
Kaine's eyes did not harden.
They cooled.
"I have the authority that comes from being attacked and not dying," he said. "I have the authority of the last undefeated man on a blood-soaked dock."
He turned his head slightly.
"Sereyna."
She stepped forward.
"Yes."
"Tell them what you saw."
She eyed the prisoners, then the Triarchs, then the people.
"I saw five thousand men," she said, voice carrying. "Volantis's pride. Tigers, sellswords, mercenaries, conscripts. I saw them march out with drums and return in pieces—or not at all."
Some of the Tiger veterans in the stands flinched.
"I saw three hundred hold the line," she continued. "No banners. No songs. No boasting. Just shields." She nodded toward the Legion. "Them."
She looked back at the crowd.
"And I saw your leaders," she said, voice sharpening, "send them to die not for Volantis. Not to defend homes. But to erase the memory of a shame they brought on themselves when they struck at Valyr'Nox."
Murmurs.
Valyr'Nox.
Rumor crystallized into reality in that moment for many in the crowd. The word felt like a stone thrown into a lake—ripples spreading.
Kaine spoke again.
"Your anger," he said, "is not for me."
He pointed at the kneeling men.
"It belongs to them."
A merchant prince tried to push himself upright.
"You have no right to—"
A Legion spear butt struck the back of his knees, forcing him down again.
Kaine did not move.
"Right?" he asked softly. "You tried to kill me in the dark. You used pirates to test my city. You funded knives and fire against what I have built. You gambled that I would be weak—or gone."
He glanced at the Triarchs.
"Even your rulers believed it," he said.
They did not deny it.
The arena watched them.
Nyessa exhaled slowly, feeling the fate of a city teeter on the edge of a stranger's blade.
Kinvara's fingers tightened on the railing before her, a strange mix of reverence and hunger burning in her chest.
Kaine leaned back in his throne.
"You had a choice," he said, looking down at the conspirators.
"Last night, you chose arrogance."
He lifted his gaze to the crowd.
"This morning, Volantis will choose something else."
He let that hang.
"Dawn," he said, "is for judgment."
The crowd held its breath.
Somewhere in the upper tiers, a voice whispered it again, unsure if it was prayer or prophecy:
"Crimson Reaver…"
Below, the kneeling prisoners trembled.
Above, the Triarchs realized that whatever happened next, Volantis would never again be the city it had been yesterday.
And at the center of it all, Kaine sat, not as a king or conqueror—but as something far worse:
The one who had survived their murder attempt.
And come to explain, calmly, what that would now cost.
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(Act IV)
The colosseum stood packed beyond memory.
From the lowest tiers where chained slaves pressed shoulder to shoulder to the highest balconies draped in silk and bronze, the city of Volantis crowded itself into a single hollow of stone. The docks still smoked behind them. Blood still stained the stones no one had yet scrubbed. Every face in attendance carried the same question:
What are we about to witness?
At the arena's center waited the prisoners.
Not raiders. Not pirates. Not soldiers dragged from the failed assault.
Merchants.
Naval accounts officers.
Faction brokers.
Six Tiger captains who had paid for ships that never returned.
Men who had never drawn steel themselves.
They knelt now in fine clothes gone dull with sand, wrists freed from chains but weapons shoved roughly into their hands—old pit spears, chipped short-blades, splintering shields once issued to slaves forced to perform for cheers.
One merchant wept openly. Another laughed under his breath, the sound cracked and erratic.
"They can't be serious," someone whispered from the stands.
"They won't do this," a noblewoman murmured, clutching her daughter closer.
The Tiger guards lining the arena did not respond. They stood rigid, unmoving, eyes fixed forward but shoulders tight with something unfamiliar—fear.
Then Kaine rose from the throne.
The noise died like a snuffed candle.
No command had been given. No horn was blown. The city simply went silent around him.
"You were granted time," Kaine said, his voice carrying clean over the stands, steady and unraised. "Time to choose restraint. Time to consider consequence."
He turned his gaze toward the kneeling men.
"You chose profit instead."
A quartermaster choked out, "We were working for Volantis—"
"You were working for yourselves."
A spear butt struck the sand near the man's hands. He flinched.
"You sold death without standing near it," Kaine continued. "You sent others to bleed while you counted silver."
His hand lifted toward the weapon racks.
"So today, you take the place of those you condemned."
A murmur rippled through the stands. A slave gasped. A Tiger officer whispered, "Gods…"
The prisoners fully understood now.
"No," one broker sobbed, scrambling backward. "This is madness—you can't—"
Kaine's voice cut through him calmly.
"Pick up the weapons."
Legionnaires stepped forward. The order never needed to be spoken twice. Those who hesitated were forced upright, iron shoved into shaking grips.
Shields knocked together weakly.
A few men gathered instinctively into rough formation, pit reflex rising unbidden. A Tiger officer above muttered, "They think it will matter."
From behind the throne came a sound that had no echo—no footsteps, no breath—only the subtle hiss of shadow shifting across stone.
The first red eyes appeared.
Then others.
Figures slid from darkness like wolves sculpted from midnight: massive shoulders, elongated limbs, jaws that opened too wide to be natural, their mass visible only where arena light bent around them.
No snarling.
No rushing.
They simply looked at the prisoners.
One man whispered hoarsely, "Those aren't beasts…"
"They are," another said. "Just not of this world."
The prisoners screamed.
"Hold the line!" one merchant screamed uselessly, spear raised but hands shaking violently.
The beasts moved.
Not in rage.
In method.
Two broke left. Three right. One leaped the shield line entirely, landing in the formation's heart.
The first man died without spectacle—no spray, no drawn agony—just a sudden collapse as shadow tore through him and dissolved.
Panic consumed discipline.
Shields fell.
Men ran.
One lunged with a pit blade and missed entirely, jaws closing around his torso as his scream vanished mid-sound.
A Tiger nearby whispered, stunned, "They hunt like veterans…"
"They hunt like executioners," a priest replied.
A merchant tripped in the sand and screamed for the Triarchs—was still screaming when the darkness crushed him flat.
Another vaulted the barrier into the stands but was dragged back in shadow that poured over him like smoke made solid.
The crowd recoiled as one. Slaves pressed down into their chains. Nobles covered eyes that still peeked through fingers.
Kaine did not look away.
He watched the process calmly, as if outcome were never in doubt—and it wasn't.
Within minutes it was done.
No bodies.
No gore.
Only discarded weapons scattered across the disturbed sand.
The shadow predators lifted their heads toward Kaine.
He raised his hand.
They froze.
Then they withdrew—not vanishing but unraveling, melting backward into the dark like ink pulled into black water, eyes dimming last.
The arena was left empty.
The prisoners were simply… gone.
Silence followed that was thick enough to crush breath.
A dockworker's knees hit stone. He didn't stop himself.
"They're all gone," he whispered.
A slave beside him sobbed openly. "They made us fight like dogs…"
A Tiger guardsman lowered his spear slowly and knelt.
Then another.
Then another.
Soon the kneeling spread in waves through the stands—laborers first, then guild clerks, then soldiers, merchants, nobles.
At last, the Triarchs stood from the dais.
Marqelo's mouth moved but no words came.
Rhovar murmured hoarsely, "There is no defiance left."
They descended together and knelt before Kaine.
Across the arena, tens of thousands were bowed.
Volantis knelt.
A child trembled beside his mother."Is he a god?"
She watched Kaine's unmoving form and whispered, "No… he's something worse."
Kaine rose fully now.
"Volantis stands," he said quietly, "because it chose submission."
He planted his blade into the sand.
"Let this dawn be remembered—not as slaughter—but as awakening."
He turned toward the gates.
A Tiger captain found the courage to speak, his voice cracking.
"What… what do we call you?"
The question fluttered across the stands, already whispered in fearful murmurs:
"The Crimson Reaver…"
"He who takes blood without spilling it…"
Marqelo breathed the name aloud.
"The Crimson Reaver."
Kaine did not correct him.
The Legion parted in perfect silence as he walked between them.
No cheers followed. No laments. Only kneeling silence.
The gates boomed closed behind him.
And Volantis—broken, humbled, awakened—remained on its knees long after the echoes faded.