The first memory was not fire.
It was weight.
A strange weight, uncomfortable, too small to contain everything that he was. Air filled his lungs with difficulty, as if breathing were a forgotten skill, newly returned. He opened his eyes… and the world was enormous.
Stone ceiling.
Dark.
Ancient.
Though he was confused, he felt strangely calm. There was no panic. There was no desperation. Only a tense, learned calm.
He began to think. To search for his last memories.
It took several heartbeats to understand it: he had died again. Not for the first time. And with that certainty, he knew what came next.
He had reincarnated again.
'Again…'
It was not the first time it had happened to him, though even so he was surprised to have reincarnated again.. He tried to remember more things from his past life, forced his memory… but nothing appeared.
As always.
He did not know his name. He never knew it. For the second time he had lost his identity.
He also did not remember how many years he had lived, nor whom he had loved, nor whom he had buried. Those memories dissolved every time, like faces seen through water.
But everything else remained.
He remembered the war.
He remembered having annihilated alien insects.
He remembered having aimed too high… trying to take down the leader of those creatures and having paid the price.
The Insect God.
The idea did not come with clear images, only with a deep and bitter sensation: failure. It had not been cowardice. It had been arrogance.
He did not fear death. Not anymore.
But neither was he willing to feel it again.
'I am determined to go farther… higher.'
This time he would not make the same mistake.
He tried to move. His arms were short, weak. His body… young. Too young. That did not surprise him. He had already been through this. On his first journey he had retained all his memories and still had acted like a child, a prisoner of hormones and reflexes he did not understand.
Now it was different.
Something had changed.
Maybe it was the second time.
Maybe the soul learned, even if the mind forgot names.
He closed his eyes and steadied himself, like one who grips an invisible sword. He controlled the urge to cry, the useless trembling, the confusion. He breathed slowly.
Then he felt it.
Not on the skin.
Not in the blood.
Deeper.
Something like an inventory manifested in his mind.
'Like in my past life…'
Ten familiar presences, silent, heavy like ancient promises. Rings. They were not on his hands, but in what seemed to be an invisible chest, bound to him in a way that transcended the physical body. Pure gold. The Ten Golden Fingers. Relics of a previous life, brought along against all logic.
A gift… and a burden.
And they were not alone.
Three sleeping pulses, deep like dormant volcanoes. Eggs. He did not need to see them to know it. Smaug. Ghidorah. Draco. Names that were not names, but concepts.
Hunger.
Storm.
Honor.
They still slept.
And so it had to be, for now.
He did not decide to take them out. By experience he knew that once out, they would not be able to go back in. The inventory would disappear. It was a one-time thing.
Before he could decide what to do next, he heard footsteps.
Voices on the other side of the door.
"The prince…" someone said with contained reverence. "Prince Viserys has awakened."
Viserys.
The name settled in his mind like a piece that fit too well.
It was not the first time he had heard it. Not from his past lives… but from his first life. A series. A book. Fiction.
Now real.
Before he could delve deeper into it, an avalanche of information flooded his mind. He knew it instantly: the memories of this life were returning.
Then he remembered everything.
But before he could delight in having been reborn into a privileged family, he remembered something more important.
The plot.
Targaryen.
The three-headed dragon.
The kingdom on the brink of the abyss.
A deficient father, a mad king… and a future stained with ash.
Images came without him seeking them: a vast throne room, a man with an unstable gaze, fire used as punishment, not as a symbol. And beyond… blood. Screams. A kingdom collapsing in on itself.
A hammer.
A fall.
The Fall.
He clenched his small fingers with all the strength he could gather.
'No.'
'I cannot stay waiting for death.'
He would not save the entire kingdom. He was not that foolish. He knew his limits. He had learned that the world is not set straight with a single push. But he could change small things.
Details.
People.
He searched for the main cause. And a name surfaced in his mind.
Rhaegar Targaryen.
A man obsessed with prophecies, driven by them toward his own ruin… and that of his house.
What frustrated Viserys was not knowing the cause of the catastrophe, but feeling helpless, incapable of changing anything at that moment.
Even so, he would not give up.
He would not be so stupid as to follow the plot to the letter and lose the advantage of foresight. He had reincarnated early.
And he intended to make the most of it until the end.