Chapter 1 - The Young Messiah (I)
"What is the weight of knowing the past, present and future? Does that make me a god or a mere mortal bold enough to see the world through God's eyes?" Aenar Targaryen, before his conquest, at the age of six.
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289 A.D. - Sixth year of the reign of King Robert I Baratheon of House Baratheon.
North - Winterfell, ancestral home of House Stark.
Jon, in one of the towers of Winterfell, looked out at the men and more men gathering outside the castle. A sea of tents with banners fluttering in the cold northern wind appeared before him, each bearing coat of arms of the noble houses that controlled the North. Loyal men above all, brave.
War.
A word appeared in young Jon's mind, his deep purple eyes staring calmly at the people gathering for war.
It was a simple word, but in the end its meaning was cruel and cold, almost like a god taking human life.
"War is a form of violence aimed at forcing the enemy to give up his will." The six-year-old muttered to himself, his dark hair adorning his boyish face, a silent look reflected on his face.
"The Kraken will drown while the deer, the lion and the wolf feast on his corpse." He murmured again, feeling the cold breeze on his face. Though cold, he felt strangely at peace.
Jon knew how this war would end before it even began, he had seen every important battle, the notable commanders of each side, some would end up dead and the Kraken would mourn as it was forced to lose its last male offspring.
"War... do I want a war in my name?" Jon asked himself as he looked at the men, excited to go to war, sharpening their axes, swords, and hammers. He imagined himself commanding these men, and the conclusion he felt was an enormous weight on his small, fragile shoulders.
"Jihad." A word that sent shivers through Jon's body, he shivered from head to toe, he felt as if a mountain was resting on his head. The overwhelming feeling of fear welled up in his chest, cries of the dead and prayers echoed in his ears like a chorus of completely opposite dualities of good and evil.
"Control your emotions, fear kills the mind and undermines your resolve." Jon muttered, slowly regaining his rationality. The feeling of fear slowly disappeared.
In his eyes, all the men outside Winterfell were animals with no control over their emotions, but when he thought about it from that perspective, he was an animal too. As for which animal, Jon had yet to decide, but he preferred the biggest one, for in this world of intrigue, only violence can force another man to kneel before you.
Dragon...
Jon's eyes showed a look of desire as he remembered his "little" partner now sleeping in Wolfwood.
Taking one last look at the sea of tents at Winterfell, Jon left without a second thought, his clothes mostly black.
Descending the spiral staircase step by step, without haste or fear, Jon found himself in front of a corridor, he walked down the corridor where he passed the kitchen, where people came and went with extreme haste, no one paid any attention to the six year old boy.
Something Jon appreciated, earning scornful looks in the morning was not pleasant, especially for his shaken psyche, although after six years there were no words to make him feel any pain.
Jon quickly returned to his room, or if a pantry could be considered a room at all. But as he lay in bed, he felt peace again. Even the visions of the future seemed to disappear in the silence of his room.
His mind was pleasantly plagued by the silence he loved so much.
Lying on the bed, Jon stretched out his hand and looked at it; it was a child's hand, with calluses already on it, showing that it had been put to work at an early age, courtesy of a certain particularly degradable redfish in Winterfell.
"The irony of fate, me, the most powerful boy in the world, living in a storeroom, tormented by a stigma I never deserved to carry." Jon muttered to himself, he had known he was special for as long as he could remember, not because he was reincarnated with memories of another life, that of an eighteen year old.
In addition to learning things extremely quickly, such as languages and other things, including swordsmanship, he also had almost uninterrupted visions of the future, an ability he called Prescience.
The prescience showed him the past, present, and future, although the future was usually covered in a thick fog and impossible to see through. But every once in a while, a wind would blow the fog away, allowing him to see certain possibilities that could happen.
It was more normal for Jon to see the past than the future, so he knew he wasn't the son everyone thought he was. But even without the prescience, he would have known that he wasn't the son of the Lord Paramount of the North; the color of his eyes and the fact that he had to dye his hair every week were good indicators,
"Lyanna Stark..." A whisper escaped Jon's lips, he couldn't help but smile as he remembered the visions of the past he had seen earlier. The sixteen-year-old girl who was his mother was a free spirit of nature, a nymph.
She was beautiful in every way, noble of character and soul, and her father, Rhaegar, though not so noble of character, was a man of respect, tormented by the same visions of the future, though nowhere near as powerful as his prescience.
Did Jon resent his father and mother for the cruel fate they had thrust upon him? The answer was no. How could he blame two people in love for loving each other?
Besides, the entire responsibility of a kingdom could not be placed on just two people; it was a chain of events that led to the entire downfall of the Targaryen dynasty, a chain of events that stemmed from the Dance of the Dragons.
Moreover, even without Rhaegar, the noble houses of Westeros would still rebel over his grandfather, as Aerys Targaryen chose to set King's Landing on fire with thousands of barrels of wildfire. Jaime Lannister would still be forced to kill the king and earn the nickname Kingslayer.
The North would rebel because of the death of its lord and the death of the Heir to the North, and the Riverlands would follow the North because of the alliance between the two great noble houses.
The Vale, which started the war, and Storm's End would also join the rebellion because of Robert's loyalty to his stepbrother Eddard Stark. The Tyrells would still side with the Crown, and the Martells would still hate the Lannisters.
In the end, the war would still happen; Rhaegar and Lyanna were just other people's tools to make it happen faster.
Jon liked to see the past, to learn from the mistakes of others so as not to make the same mistakes, it was his way of learning to live in this medieval world that seemed to be stuck in time. He liked seeing the conspiracies behind the walls and the epic deaths over the years, such as the death of Daemon Targaryen and Aemond Targaryen in the Eye of God.
"My new family is complicated." Jon muttered to himself, but he was happy to have another chance to live with a healthy body.
Only he knows what it's like to spend a lifetime in pain while slowly rotting away in bed, unable to move his body. So even under the present harsh circumstances, he was happy to be alive again.
He was healthy and able to move freely, he would build a future with his own hands, and he currently had a family that loved him, even though his uncle's wife was someone despicable in his eyes.
"Future... future and future" Another and another tired word came out of Jon's lips, there were things he knew would happen in the future, but he couldn't change them.
Even if he escaped to the most isolated desert in the world, even to the deepest sea and the highest place, there would be wars in his name, for that was what fate had decreed for him.
No matter how much he escaped his fate, it would still be by chaining himself to a noble but equally terrible purpose.
He would sit on the Iron Throne for a single purpose.
The salvation of mankind.
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