Baelor had not meant to fight that day. Not truly. He had come to Ashford Meadow Tourney as a prince, as a witness to tourney, not as a man meant to bleed for justice.

The Trial of Seven was not spectacle, no matter how brightly the banners flew or how the crowd leaned forward in anticipation. It was faith sharpened into steel. It was the gods asked to choose. And Baelor, raised on duty, on righteousness, on the quiet, unyielding belief that honor was not optional, had stepped forward when another man would not. For Duncan the Tall, though he barely knew him. For the principle of it. For the simple, stubborn refusal to let a man stand alone when judgment itself was at stake.

He remembered the heat of the day, the way it clung to his armor, the way the ground shifted beneath his boots as the fight began. He remembered the white cloaks moving like ghosts through the chaos, remembered the weight of each strike, each parry, each breath taken between blows. There had been no room for hesitation. No space for doubt. Only movement. Only purpose. And somewhere within it, something almost calm had settled in him, the certainty that he was exactly where he was meant to be.

He remembered the fighting. He remembered the victory. And he remembered the blow. Maekar had not struck him as an enemy. Baelor knew that, even now. Knew it with a certainty that did not waver. His brother had been reaching, driven by the same urgency that had ruled the entire field, by the need to end it, to reach Aerion before something worse could take root. There had been no malice in it. No intent. Only force, unmeasured in the chaos of the moment.

Baelor had stepped into it, that was the truth of it. He had stepped, and the mace had met him.

He remembered the sound. That was what lingered. Not pain, not fear, but the dull, terrible crack that did not belong to steel or shield, but to something far more fragile. Something final. The world had lurched around it, the clash of battle dimming, voices pulling away into something distant and unreal. He had not fallen at once, he remembered that, too, but the ground had come for him all the same.

And then nothing. Nothing… and warmth. It returned to him slowly, not as pain, but as sensation. Heat pressed close against his skin, thick and clinging, carrying with it the scent of something unfamiliar, spiced, sweet, and faintly bitter beneath it all. Not the clean smoke of a sept. Something older. Something that did not belong to the Seven.

His body felt… whole.

Baelor inhaled slowly, his hand lifting, almost without permission, to the back of his head. He expected ruin. Blood. Fracture. Death lingering just beneath the skin. There was nothing. Not even tenderness. His fingers stilled there, pressing, searching for something that had been there—he knew it had been there—and finding only smooth, unbroken flesh.

He did not move for a long moment after that. Then he felt it, a presence. His gaze shifted, slower now, more deliberate, and found her waiting.

She did not belong to the room. That was the first thing he understood. Not in the way of rank or place, but in something deeper, something instinctive. The light seemed to gather around her differently, softer where it touched her skin, sharper where it caught the red of her garments. Shadows lingered near her, not clinging, but attentive, as though they answered to her in some quiet, unseen way.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice roughened by something deeper than sleep, but steady all the same.