It was a bitter truth. As Yoriichi grew taller and more silent, the rumors of his demonic nature had spread like wildfire. The smallfolk, who once praised his birthmark, now whispered that his unnatural calmness and eerie strength were the result of a curse. The Faith's endorsement could only do so much against the superstitious terror of the masses. Many lords openly praised Robert's decision to legitimize the handsome, boisterous, and entirely "normal" Joffrey.
"Let the King play with his bastard," Tywin had muttered, dipping his quill in ink. "Robert owes the Rock four million gold dragons. A crown built on debt is easily bought when the time comes. We simply endure."
Now, months after that conversation, far from the suffocating politics of the Red Keep and the golden halls of Casterly Rock, Yoriichi rode alone.
He was returning to King's Landing from his latest stay in the Westerlands. Normally, Cersei would have dispatched a hundred red cloaks to guard her divine son. But strangely, she had insisted he make the final leg of the journey entirely alone.
"You are a man grown, my sun," Cersei had whispered before he left, her eyes wide with a feverish devotion that Yoriichi as usual finds deeply unsettling. "The Gods must see you ride alone. You must cast a solitary shadow to prove your strength."
Yoriichi suspected Jocelyn's sly whispers had planted that specific, poetic delusion in his mother's head, but he hadn't argued. He relished the open air and the quiet solitude of the road.
The late morning sun was bright, casting a golden hue over the rushing waters of the Blackwater Rush. King's Landing was only a few hours' ride to the east, but the dust of the Goldroad clung heavily to Yoriichi's skin.
He guided his massive black destrier to the edge of the stream, pulling back on the reins. He dismounted smoothly, his boots crunching softly against the river pebbles. He tied the horse to a sturdy willow branch and walked toward the water's edge, his sharp eyes scanning the surrounding treeline. It was clear.
First, he carefully unclasped the heavy, dark traveling cloak from his shoulders. Next, he reached up and untied the black cloth mask that covered the lower half of his face—a precaution he took on the roads to avoid the terrified stares and panicked whispers of the common folk who recognized his marked brow.
He stripped off his crimson tunic, revealing a torso of sculpted, pale muscle, marred only by a few faint, silver scars from intense training, and finally removed his heavy leather trousers, stepping into the shallows in only his linen undergarments.
The cool water felt magnificent against his hot skin. Yoriichi cupped the water in his hands, splashing it over his face and running his wet fingers through his dark, crimson-tipped hair.
He stared down at his reflection in the rippling surface of the stream.
The jagged, flame-like mark on his left forehead seemed to pulse in the dappled light.
Why me? he thought, a rare moment of existential contemplation washing over him. He had no memories of a past life. He did not remember a world plagued by immortal monsters, nor did he remember the faces of comrades lost to the night.
But he had instincts. Deep, terrifyingly precise instincts. He knew exactly how to forge a blade that did not exist in this world. He knew how to pull oxygen into his lungs in a cyclical pattern that turned his blood to fire. He knew the exact, anatomical weak points of the human body without ever being taught.
What is the reason for this? Yoriichi mused, tracing the reflection of the mark in the water. Is it truly as the fat priest preached all those years ago?
Yoriichi let out a low, incredibly rare chuckle. The sound was rich and melodic, carrying over the babbling water.
"A divine destiny for this land?" Yoriichi murmured to his own reflection, shaking his head. "It sounds incredibly fake. A mummer's farce invented for gold."
He splashed more water onto his chest, scrubbing away the grime of the road. But as he cleaned himself, his thoughts drifted to the secondary, entirely hidden reason he had taken this solitary route.
Over the past year, horrific rumors had trickled into the capital from the Riverlands and the Crownlands. The Crown dismissed them as nonsense—wild tales of wolves or desperate bandits. But the descriptions had triggered something primal and deeply unsettling within Yoriichi's soul.
Corpses found in the deep woods, unnaturally mutilated. Eyes gouged out with surgical precision. Bones torn apart as if by immense, impossible strength. Chunks of flesh bitten cleanly away, the bodies seemingly devoured by beasts that walked on two legs. The survivors, half-mad with terror, swore that the attacks happened only in the dead of night.
When he heard these stories, a strange, suffocating feeling had tightened in Yoriichi's chest. It was a phantom memory, a sense of familiarity that he could not place, like an old, festering wound aching in the cold. He felt an undeniable certainty that these attacks were connected to something terrible, something that demanded his blade. He didn't know what these flesh-eating creatures of darkness were called, but his blood demanded he hunt them.
He had spent the last week taking detours through the densest, darkest parts of the Kingswood, actively hunting the source of the rumors. He had kept his breathing focused, his hand resting on the hilt of his Valyrian katana, waiting for the familiar, sickening stench of a threat he couldn't even name.
But he had found nothing. No corpses, no strange creatures, no monsters.
Perhaps it is just exaggeration, Yoriichi reasoned, stepping out of the water and drying himself with a rough linen towel from his saddlebags. Desperate men commit horrific acts during a long summer, and fear easily twists bandits into monsters.
He pulled on a clean pair of dark trousers and slipped into a fresh, unlaced white linen shirt, leaving his chest partially bare to the warm morning breeze. He picked up his Valyrian blade, securing the crimson scabbard to his leather belt.
He was just reaching for his mask to cover his face once more when a sound cut through the tranquil babble of the river.
It was faint, carried on the eastern wind, but to Yoriichi's superhuman hearing, it was unmistakable.
Dong... Dong... Dong...
Yoriichi's eyes widened slightly, his hand freezing in mid-air. He looked up, his burgundy gaze piercing the distance toward the horizon, where the faint, hazy silhouette of the Red Keep rose against the sky.
It was the massive iron bells of the Great Sept of Baelor, accompanied by the higher, sharper ringing of the Red Keep's alarm bells. They were ringing in a frantic, overlapping cacophony that signaled absolute disaster.
The emergency bells, Yoriichi realized, his heart rate remaining perfectly calm, though his mind instantly accelerated to a terrifying speed. They only rang like that for an invasion, a catastrophic fire, or the death of royals.
Something monumental had just shattered the fragile peace of King's Landing.