Chapter One: The Rainwood
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The rain was cold.
That was the first thing he noticed. Not the mud under his hands, not the leaves sticking to his skin, not the fact that he was naked and shivering and had no memory of how he got here. Just the cold. Sharp and wet and relentless.
He tried to push himself up. His arms shook. His face met the ground again, cheek pressed against wet earth and rotting leaves.
Get up.
He didn't know where the voice came from. His own mind, probably. Some stubborn part of him that refused to die in a forest he didn't recognize, naked and nameless and alone.
He got up.
Slowly. Knees first, then feet. He stood there swaying, rain streaming down his face, and looked at his surroundings.
Trees. Moss. Roots that rose from the ground like buried fingers. The air smelled of salt and pine and something old, something that made the hair on his arms stand up.
And in front of him, rising from the forest floor like it had grown there—
A tower.
White marble. Silver veins. Windows that caught what little light filtered through the clouds and threw it back in sharp, clean sparks. It rose so high he couldn't see the top. The base spread wider than any keep he'd read about.
Black gates stood at its heart, carved with spirals and whorls that wound inward toward a single image.
A phoenix.
He stared at it. The rain kept falling. His teeth kept chattering.
The gates opened.
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He didn't remember walking inside.
One moment he was outside, shivering. The next he was standing in an entrance hall so vast he couldn't see the walls. Columns of white marble rose toward ceilings lost in shadow. The floor was polished obsidian, black as still water, and he could see his own reflection staring back at him.
Pale skin. Dark hair plastered to his face. Eyes that glowed green even in the dim light.
He looked away.
The hall opened into corridors. The corridors opened into rooms. Rooms filled with books, shelves stretching so high they disappeared into darkness. Rooms filled with weapons, blades of silver and black and materials he didn't recognize. Rooms filled with cauldrons and vials and workbenches covered in half-finished projects.
He walked through it all like a man in a dream.
Then he found the wardrobe.
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He dressed slowly. Black wool, silver embroidery. The clothes fit as if they'd been made for him. Maybe they had.
There was a mirror. He looked at himself again.
His face was the same. Same bone structure, same shape of jaw. But different. Sharper. Younger. His hair was longer, black as ink, and his eyes—
His eyes had never been that color.
He stared at his reflection for a long time.
Then he turned away and kept walking.
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There was a throne room was at the top of the tower.
Seven hundred steps, winding upward through halls he barely registered. His legs ached by the time he reached the door, but he kept going.
The door swung open.
The room beyond was circular. A dais of black obsidian rose at its center, seven steps above a floor inlaid with silver stars. The ceiling was painted to look like sky—grey clouds, steady rain, light that shifted as if real weather moved beyond it.
And on the dais, the throne.
Mithril and diamond and obsidian woven together. The backrest rose high, and carved into it with impossible precision—
A phoenix. Black wings spread. Ruby chips for eyes.
He walked to the throne. His reflection followed him through the polished floor. He reached out, touched the carved wing, felt the metal warm under his fingers.
A weight settled on his shoulder.
He turned his head. The phoenix was smaller than the carving. No larger than a raven, feathers blacker than pitch, each one edged in faint silver. Its eyes were the same ruby red, and it was looking at him.
"Hello," he said.
The phoenix trilled. Soft. Like wind through crystal.
He sat on the throne exhausted amd mentally drained.
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He stayed there for a long time.
Not thinking. Not planning. Just sitting, with the phoenix warm on his shoulder, watching the painted sky shift through afternoon into evening.
His name came to him slowly. Not in a voice, not in a vision. Just—settling into his chest like a key turning in a lock.
Ignotus. Of the House Peverell. Most Ancient and Royal.
He didn't know how he knew this. He simply did.
The tower was his. The books, the weapons, the laboratories—all his. The knowledge filling his head, spells and potions and runes and wards, thousands of pages of information packed into his skull like books on infinite shelves—that was his too.
He didn't know who had given it to him. He didn't know why.
But it was his.
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The phoenix stayed.
He called it Ember, because its feathers caught the light like cooling coals. It seemed to approve. It perched on his shoulder while he explored the tower, while he tested his first spell—Lumos, light blooming from his fingertips—while he pulled books from shelves and read until his eyes burned.
The books told him where he was.
Westeros. The Stormlands. Cape Wrath, a stretch of coast so rarely mentioned in the histories he remembered that it might as well have been invisible.
The Rainwood an ancient forest, full of caves and carvings left by the Children of the Forest. Forgotten. Unvisited. A good place to be forgotten.
The books also told him about the world.
Westeros was one continent. There were others. Essos to the east, with its Free Cities and the Dothraki and the Valyrian dragonlords. Sothoryos to the south, jungles, ruins and academies where sorcerers trained and witchers hunted monsters.
Monsters. Witchers. Sorcerers.
He read about Aretuza, the academy for enchantresses on Sothoryos's eastern coast. He read about Ban Ard, the sorcerers' school in the northern highlands. He read about the witcher schools—Wolf, Griffin, Cat—and the trials that killed most candidates and transformed the rest into something not quite human.
None of this existed in the world he remembered.
But he was here now. This was the world he lived in.
He kept reading.
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The wards took him a week to understand.
They were layered everywhere—walls, floors, ceilings. Detection wards that would alert him to intrudors. Deflection wards that would turn aside spells. Wards that would incinerate anyone who tried to force their way in.
And wards that hid the tower from sight. Anyone who didn't know it was there would walk right past. Anyone he didn't want to see it wouldn't.
There were also wards that anchored it to this spot. And wards that would allow it to move.
He could take it anywhere. Westeros. Essos. Sothoryos. The tower would follow him, settle wherever he commanded, hide itself from anyone he chose.
He filed that information away till he truly needed it.
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The first year passed.
He learned to control his magic. The knowledge was there, complete and perfect, but knowledge wasn't skill. He practiced until Lumos and Nox were seamless. Until Accio brought objects to his hand the instant he thought of them. Until Reparo mended broken things at his glance.
He brewed potions. Simple ones at first—healing draughts, sleeping potions. Then more complex. Felix Felicis. Amortentia. Veritaserum.
He carved runes. Obsidian slabs in a room dedicated entirely to their study. He traced the symbols with his fingers, felt the magic pulse beneath his skin, watched them glow and fade.
He was good at this. Better than good.
He was also alone.
Ember was good company. Ember was excellent company. But Ember was a bird, and Ignotus hadn't spoken to another human being in three hundred and sixty-four days.
He was starting to forget what his own voice sounded like.
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The sword training began in the second year.
He found a clearing in the forest, close enough to feel the tower's wards humming at the edge of his awareness. He picked a practice sword from the armory—simple wood, nothing fancy—and started learning how to fall.
Because that was what sword fighting was. Learning how to fall. Learning how to move. Learning how to make your body obey when your mind didn't have time to think.
He was terrible at it.
His feet slipped on wet leaves. His grip was wrong. His stance was wrong. Everything was wrong.
He fell. A lot.
He got up. Every time.
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In the fifth year, he left the tower for the first time.
Not far. Just to the edge of the Rainwood, where the ancient trees gave way to farmland. He stood at the treeline, invisible under a spell he'd learned from a book, and watched people live their lives.
A farmer mending a fence. A woman hanging laundry. Children playing with sticks.
He watched for an hour. Then he went back to the tower.
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The books told him everything he needed to know about Westeros.
The Seven Kingdoms were not yet seven. The Targaryens were still in Valyria, one dragonlord family among many. The Doom was centuries away. Aegon's Conquest was centuries away. Everything he remembered from the histories he'd devoured in another life—the Dance, the Blackfyre Rebellions, Robert's Rebellion—none of it had happened yet.
He had time.
He didn't know what he was going to do with it.
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The tower was his. The magic was his. The name was his.
Ignotus Peverell.
He said it aloud, testing the weight of it. His voice was rough from disuse.
"Ignotus Peverell."
Ember trilled from his shoulder.
"It'll do," he said.