The village was called something. I never learned what.
By the time I got there, half of it was already ash.
Thatched roofs burned like torches. A sept's bell tower had collapsed into the street. Bodies lay in doorways—people who'd tried to run, tried to hide, tried to protect their children.
None of it worked.
The men doing the burning wore mismatched armor. Rusty mail. Leather patches. No sigils I recognized. Sellswords, probably. Or deserters. Didn't matter which. They moved from house to house, dragging people out, shoving them to their knees.
I counted twelve at first. Then more came out of the smoke. Twenty. Thirty.
They had a leader. Big guy. Bald. Wearing a half-helm with a dent in the side. He sat on a horse while his men did the work.
"Check that one over there," he said, pointing at a cottage still standing. "She was hiding something. I saw it."
Three of his men kicked the door in.
A woman screamed inside.
I stopped at the edge of the village.
The shadows stopped with me.
The boy-shadow—I needed a name for him, later—stood at my right. His spear caught the firelight, but the flame didn't reflect. It just died against his dark.
"How many?" I asked.
The system answered.
"Current shadows: 87. Available extraction in vicinity: 214."
Almost three hundred dead in this field and village combined. Three hundred people who'd been farmers, mothers, sons, until someone decided they were in the way.
I walked into the village.
Nobody noticed me at first. The smoke was too thick. The screaming too loud. I passed two sellswords looting a corpse. They didn't look up.
The bald leader did.
He squinted through the haze. "Who the fuck are you?"
I kept walking.
"I said—" He drew a sword. Rusty, but sharp enough. "You deaf, boy?"
I stopped ten feet from his horse.
"You killed these people," I said.
He laughed. "What's it to you? You some knight? Lost your way?" He looked at my black clothes. No armor. No sigil. His confidence came back. "Get out of here before I add you to the pile."
The woman screamed again. Louder this time.
I didn't look at the cottage. Didn't need to.
"You had a choice," I said. "You could have worked. Fought in a real war. Died for something that mattered." I tilted my head. "Instead, you chose this."
The bald man's smile faded. "Kill him," he said to his men.
Three of them rushed me.
I didn't move.
The boy-shadow moved for me.
His spear went through the first man's chest before the man could swing his sword. Not blood. The shadow spear didn't cut flesh—it cut life. The sellsword dropped without a sound. His body hit the mud. His shadow twitched.
Then it rose.
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
The other two stopped. Stared. Their dead friend was standing up again, but wrong. Dark. Empty.
"What in seven hells—" one of them whispered.
The new shadow turned. Looked at its former comrade. No recognition. Just duty.
It swung its sword.
The second man fell.
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
The third tried to run.
The woman-shadow—the one with the kitchen knife—appeared in front of him. She'd been fifty feet away a second ago. Now she wasn't. Her shadow-blade opened his throat.
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
The bald leader's horse reared. He almost fell, caught himself on the saddle. His face had gone white.
"Shadows," he breathed. "You're—you's a fucking warlock—"
"I'm worse," I said.
I raised my hand.
Not a snap. Not a dramatic point. Just an open palm, fingers spread.
Every shadow in the village answered.
They rose from the dead. From the burning houses. From the corners of every alley. The sellswords who'd died in the raid. The villagers they'd killed. Even the dogs. Especially the dogs.
One by one, they stood.
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
The system's voice became a chant. A drumbeat.
By the time I closed my fist, sixty-seven new shadows stood in the burning village.
The bald man's horse threw him. He hit the ground hard, sword skittering away. He scrambled backward, boots slipping in mud and blood.
"Please," he said. "Please, I'll go. I'll leave. I'll never—"
"You already left," I said. "You left your humanity behind the first time you killed a child."
I didn't order the attack.
The shadows knew.
They fell on him like a wave of dark water. No screaming. No dramatic death. Just thirty seconds of silence, and then he was gone. His shadow joined mine.
"Shadow Soldier summoned."
The rest of his men tried to run.
They didn't get far.
My army spread through the village like a net. No mercy. No hesitation. Every sellsword who'd participated in the burning died. Their shadows rose. Their shadows joined.
When it was over, I stood in the center of the village. One hundred and fifty-four shadows surrounded me. Kneeling. Waiting.
The fires still burned. The smoke still choked the sky. But the screaming had stopped.
A girl crawled out of the cottage the men had kicked in. She couldn't have been older than ten. Her dress was torn. Her face was bruised. She looked at me with eyes that had already seen too much.
"Are you a demon?" she whispered.
I crouched down to her level. "No."
"Then what are you?"
I thought about it. The power in my chest. The weight of a hundred and fifty-four dead souls pressing against my mind.
"I'm the answer," I said. "To people like them."
She didn't understand. That was fine. She didn't need to.
I stood up. Looked at my army. At the burning village. At the smoke rising toward a sky that didn't care.
This is just the beginning.
The show hadn't started yet. Robert was still king. Ned was still alive. The Lannisters were still smiling at court while plotting in the shadows.
They had no idea what was coming.
I turned to the girl. "Where's the nearest town?"
"D-Duskendale," she said. "My father used to take me there. For the market."
Duskendale. That was on the east coast. Close to King's Landing.
Close to the game.
"Can you walk?"
She nodded.
"Good." I pointed to one of the shadows—a woman who'd been a healer in life. She still wore her apron. "She'll go with you. She'll keep you safe."
The girl looked at the shadow-woman. Flinched. Then took a breath. Then nodded again.
Brave kid.
I watched her walk toward Duskendale with her shadow escort. The rest of my army melted into the ground around me. Waiting. Watching.
The system pinged.
"Shadow Monarch level: 1. Soldiers: 154. Capacity: 500."
I had room for more.
And Westeros had plenty of dead.
I walked east. Toward the coast. Toward the capital. Toward the first whispers of a civil war that would drown the realm in blood.
Not if I drowned it first.