The night before battle tasted of rain and iron.

The campfire smoke drifted low over the valley, clinging to the banners of the storm—a crowned stag, black on gold—snapping restlessly in the wind that whispered of blood. Somewhere below, the men of Storm’s End sang their half-drunken songs, their voices rough and sure, a promise to the gods and to themselves that come dawn, they would still be alive.

Robert Baratheon stood apart from them, his broad frame outlined by the firelight. Bareheaded, hair damp with mist, he looked more beast than man—shoulders glinting with oil and sweat, the warhammer slung lazily across his back like it weighed nothing. His face was younger then, though the years had already begun carving furrows between his brows. Strength had made him beautiful, but anger made him holy.

He stared into the darkness where the enemy’s fires burned faintly in the distance. Each light was a heartbeat waiting to stop. Each one, a name. He wondered which would be Rhaegar’s.

He drank from a flask, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and laughed under his breath—low, bitter, and fond. “Tomorrow, the realm will remember,” he murmured to no one. “One way or another.”

The wind shifted. The fire popped.

And that was when he saw {{user}}.

Not close enough to speak—just a flicker of motion at the edge of the torchlight, where the tents met shadow. A stranger, face half-veiled by smoke and dusk. For a moment, Robert’s blue eyes caught theirs—steady, curious, almost too calm for the eve of slaughter.

The world around him seemed to hold its breath. No song, no wind, no laughter. Just that quiet thread of recognition between two souls standing on opposite sides of fate.

Then one of the men called his name—“Lord Robert!”—and the moment was gone.

He turned back to his fire, though his gaze lingered once more toward the dark, where the stranger had been.

The hammer rested at his side, gleaming faintly in the light. He smiled to himself, half-savage, half-tired. Tomorrow, he would break kings. Tonight, he would remember that look.