POV Lin Wei's of Yiti
Lin Wei's hands trembled as he arranged dried fish on his market stall, though not from age or weakness. His eyes—once dim with forty years of squinting at copper coins—now saw far beyond the crowded streets of Yin. Past the gilded towers and jade-roofed temples, beyond the great walls themselves, he could spot trading ships while they were still specks on the horizon.
The gift had come three moons ago, on a night when the air hung thick with incense from the nearby temple. At first, he thought the gods had finally answered his prayers for better fortune. Now he wasn't so sure.
"Your fish are rotting," a customer complained, jolting him from his observations of a distant caravan still half a day's journey from the city gates.
"No, honored one," Lin Wei murmured, forcing his gaze back to his stall. "They were dried just yesterday." But the man had already moved on, leaving Lin Wei alone with his thoughts and his too-sharp vision.
He saw everything now. The way the harbor master's assistant pocketed extra coins. How the silk merchant's daughter met her lover behind the temple at dusk. The subtle gestures of guards accepting bribes at the western gate. Knowledge that could earn him gold—or a knife between his ribs.
Last week, he'd spotted pirates approaching a merchant vessel long before the harbor watch raised the alarm. He'd sent his youngest son running to warn the harbor master, claiming he'd heard rumors in the market. The resulting rescue had saved lives and cargo worth thousands in gold. The merchant had rewarded him with three silver pieces, never knowing the truth.
But others were growing suspicious. The fish-wife two stalls down watched him with narrow eyes whenever his gaze went distant. The city guard had questioned him twice about his "lucky" warnings. Even his wife had begun to whisper prayers against evil spirits when she thought he slept.
Lin Wei's fingers traced the dried fish, feeling each scale through callused skin. He could see the truth of his situation as clearly as he saw the approaching dust cloud of that distant caravan—his gift might bring fortune, but it could just as easily bring ruin.
A shadow fell across his stall. The harbor master's assistant stood there, flanked by two guards Lin Wei had seen taking bribes just yesterday.
"The captain would have words with you," the assistant said softly. "About your recent... insights."
Lin Wei's enhanced vision caught every detail of their faces—the cold calculation, the hint of greed, the complete lack of mercy. He saw his fate written in their eyes as clearly as he could see ships beyond the horizon.
"Of course," he said, bowing deeply to hide his expression. "I am honored by the captain's interest."
As they led him away from his stall, Lin Wei's gaze swept one last time across the city he'd known all his life. He saw everything now—except a way to escape what was coming.
POV Marro of Bravos
The canals of Braavos stank of fish and brine, but Marro barely noticed anymore. What consumed his attention was the whispers—voices carrying through stone walls and across waters as clearly as if spoken directly into his ear.
"...raise the interest again..."
"...meet him at moonrise..."
"...the Sealord's health fails..."
A hundred conversations filtered through his consciousness as he lounged against a weathered wall, pretending to doze in the afternoon sun. Since that moonlit night two moons past, when his hearing had sharpened beyond mortal limits, Marro had learned more secrets than any cutpurse in Braavos.
The gift should have made him rich. Instead, it was slowly driving him mad.
"Please," a woman begged somewhere in the building behind him, "just one more week to pay..."
"The Iron Bank will have its due," came the cold reply.
Marro pressed his palms against his ears, but it made no difference. The voices kept coming, an endless stream of Braavos's secrets, hopes, and fears. He heard children crying in distant rooms, lovers' whispered promises, merchants counting coins, and priests murmuring prayers.
"Did you hear?" A dockworker's voice cut through the cacophony. "Someone's been selling the Sealord's secrets. Three council members arrested already."
Marro's fingers clutched the coins in his pocket—payment for whispered secrets passed to interested parties. He'd thought himself clever at first, trading information to anyone who would pay. But now...
"The Faceless Men have been asked to investigate," another voice whispered, and Marro felt his blood turn to ice.
He'd grown careless, too confident in his newfound power. How could anyone trace a secret back to a simple cutpurse? But the Faceless Men weren't just anyone.
A child's voice sang somewhere across the canal:
"The First Sword stood,
In silence deep,
While secrets flowed,
Like tide through keep..."
Marro pushed himself up from the wall. Perhaps if he left now, took ship for Pentos or Lys... But even as the thought formed, he heard it:
The whisper of soft footsteps that made no sound at all. The brush of fabric that shouldn't have been audible. The quiet breathing of someone who wasn't there.
His gift, which had seemed such a blessing, had just let him hear his own death approaching.
"Valar morghulis," came a whisper, so close it might have been inside his own head.
Marro ran. But in Braavos, no one outruns the Many-Faced God.
POV Jhiqui's arakh of Dothrak
Jhiqui's arakh sang through the morning air as she practiced her forms, each movement precise despite the weight of her growing belly. Five moons pregnant, and still she rode and fought with the same ferocity that had earned her the name "Storm-Runner" among her khas.
The gift had come to her during the dark moon, when the stars wheeled overhead like scattered silver coins. Suddenly, her body moved with impossible grace, each strike and parry flowing like water. Where once she had been merely skilled, now she danced through combat as if world itself bent to her will.
"The ghost grass will grow before a woman leads," the old warriors had sneered when she first claimed her place among the fighters. But that was before they saw her move, before her gift let her dodge spears that should have struck true, before she proved herself in three battles and countless raids.
Now she led her own small khas of fighters - men and women both - who valued skill over tradition. They called themselves the Wind Runners, and their fame was spreading across the grass sea.
"Again!" she called to her riders, demonstrating a complex series of moves. Her growing child didn't hinder her - if anything, her gift seemed stronger now, as if the babe shared her power.
A scout approached at gallop. "Riders from another khalasar," he reported. "They challenge us for the watering rights at Red Rock."
Jhiqui smiled, feeling that familiar surge of power flowing through her limbs. "Then we shall teach them why they call us Wind Runners."
Her gift had changed more than just her own fate. Other women now trained openly with weapons, pointing to her success. Old traditions were being questioned, re-examined. Change came slowly to the Dothraki, but it came all the same.
And if anyone doubted, they needed only watch her fight to understand - power knew no gender, and gifts fell where they would.
Pov Xaro Vos of Qarth
Xaro Vos had never been anyone of note - just another minor merchant trying to scrape together enough coin to matter in Qarth's endless games of trade. Then one day, he simply knew when people lied.
Not through any magical flash or mystical insight - he simply felt it, like a discordant note in an otherwise smooth melody. Every false promise, every crafted deception, every carefully constructed untruth rang hollow in his ears.
"Finest silk from the Shadow Lands," a rival merchant proclaimed to potential buyers. False.
"Your shipment will arrive within the week," another promised. True, but not the full truth.
"The price is firm, I cannot go lower." Lie.
He built his fortune carefully, never revealing his advantage. When competitors lied about their goods' quality, he simply offered better prices for genuine articles. When partners tried to deceive him in negotiations, he steered conversations toward truthful ground. Small advantages accumulated, deal by deal, truth by truth.
Some nights, alone in his modest mansion, he wondered about his strange ability. But in Qarth, asking questions about mysterious powers often led to unwanted attention from warlocks and shadow-binders. Better to simply use his gift quietly and build his wealth one honest deal at a time.
Besides, in a city built on elaborate deceptions, sometimes the simplest truths were the most valuable currency of all.
Pov Mira of Astapor
Mira's fingers traced the brand on her shoulder as she tended the cooking fires in her master's kitchen. The flames responded to her touch in small ways - she could make them burn hotter or cooler, direct them away from spilling pots, or keep them from smoking too much. Nothing grand or magical, just subtle adjustments that made her work easier.
The kitchen was her sanctuary. Among the bubbling pots and crackling hearths, she had found a measure of peace in her enslaved life. The head cook valued her "knack" with fire, keeping her assigned to the ovens where bread never burned and meat always cooked evenly. Other slaves whispered that she had lucky hands, but none suspected the truth.
Until today.
"The fire's acting strange again," muttered Lazeo, an older slave who'd been watching her with increasing suspicion. "Just like yesterday, and the day before."
Mira kept her eyes down, focusing on the loaves before her. The morning bread needed to be perfect - the master was hosting important guests from Yunkai.
"It's just the wind," she said, though there was no breeze in the stuffy kitchen.
"Wind doesn't make flames bend like that." Lazeo's voice carried across the kitchen. "Wind doesn't make fires dance."
Other slaves paused in their work, glancing between Mira and the hearth. She realized too late that she'd grown careless, too comfortable with her small gift. The flames were indeed moving unnaturally, responding to her anxiety by curling away from the bread she feared would burn.
"I've seen her," Lazeo continued, voice rising. "Talking to the fires, making them obey her. She's a witch!"
"No," Mira protested, but panic made the flames leap higher, confirming her accuser's words. "Please, I just-"
"WITCH!"
The cry echoed through the kitchen. Pots clattered as slaves scrambled away from her. Someone ran for the guards. Mira reached for the flames, trying to calm them, but her fear made them wild. They roared up from the hearth, sending shadows dancing across terrified faces.
"Seize her!" The overseer's voice cracked like a whip. Rough hands grabbed her arms. The flames surged in response, but what could they do? She couldn't conjure fire from nothing, couldn't make it attack her captors. Her small gift was useless now.
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They dragged her before the master, who sat at breakfast with his Yunkai guests. The overseer spoke of witchcraft, of unnatural fires, of slaves whispering about her power over flame.
"Is this true?" her master demanded. "Are you a witch?"
Mira could only weep, knowing any answer meant death. The flames in the dining room's braziers flickered in response to her distress, damning her further.
"The girl is clearly touched by dark powers," one of the Yunkai nobles observed. "In my city, we burn such creatures."
"A fitting end," her master agreed. "Let her taste the flames she claims to command."
They built the pyre in the Plaza of Pride, where all slaves could witness the price of sorcery. As they tied her to the stake, Mira reached desperately for the flames that would soon consume her. But her gift was too small, too weak - she could nudge fires, not control them. Not save herself.
"Please," she begged, but the flames that had been her friends could offer no mercy now.
The fire caught quickly. Through the smoke and pain, Mira saw Lazeo watching from the crowd, satisfaction on his face. She saw the master's children pointing excitedly, their first witch-burning a thrilling spectacle. She saw other slaves looking away, knowing it could have been them.
Her last thought, as the flames rose higher, was that perhaps some gifts were truly curses in disguise. In a world that feared the unexplainable, even the smallest magic could be deadly.
The flames took her, and Mira's story ended in fire - not the gentle hearth-fire she had once commanded, but the wild, hungry flames of fear and hatred that no simple gift could ever hope to tame.
Pov Shagga son of Clansman of the Vale
Shagga son of Dolf was no one special among the Burned Men, until the day he could make stone crack with his fists. Not through strength alone - he wasn't particularly large for a clansman - but somehow his strikes found the weak points in any rock face, shattering stone that should have withstood a giant's blow.
At first, he used it for hunting, breaking apart cliff sides to trap mountain goats. Then he discovered he could sense weak spots in the stone walls of Vale merchants' strongholds. A single well-placed strike could bring down sections of wall that would have withstood a ram.
"The stone speaks to him," his fellow raiders whispered. Some claimed he'd stolen magic from the children of the forest, others that he'd made a pact with the old gods. Shagga let them talk - better they fear some mystical source than question too deeply.
But his gift brought unwanted attention. Other clans sought alliances. The Stone Crows offered him leadership if he'd join them. The Black Ears promised him choice raids. Even the Vale lords took notice when their supposedly impregnable walls began falling to mountain clan attacks.
"More knights coming," his lookout warned one morning. "Led by Bronze Yohn himself."
Shagga felt the mountain beneath his feet, sensed the stress points in the cliff face above the approaching knights. One strike in the right place would bring tons of rock down on their heads. But that would bring more knights, and more questions, and more attention he couldn't afford.
Instead, he led his men deeper into the mountains, where even knights feared to follow. Let them wonder about crumbling walls and shattered stone. In the high places, where only goats and clansmen dared climb, his secret would be safer.
Pov Tarro of Braavos
Tarro had been a mediocre water dancer before his gift emerged. Now, his reflexes worked differently - he could see the paths of incoming blades a heartbeat before they struck, giving him just enough warning to twist away from death.
Not true foresight, nothing so grand. Just a fraction of a second's warning, a whisper of intuition that made him move before his mind could process why. It was enough to make him unbeatable in the street fights that plagued Braavos's nights.
"The boy moves like a cat," the other bravos muttered. "Like he knows where your blade will be."
Pride made him careless. Each victory brought more coin, more fame, more challenges. He began taking bets, wagering against anyone who dared face him. Merchants and nobles started attending his fights, placing heavy purses on the outcome.
"Ten to one on the cat-foot dancer!" they would cry, and Tarro never disappointed them.
He should have noticed how the losing bravos grew darker with each defeat, how their wounded pride festered into hatred. Should have seen how the gamblers who lost fortunes on his opponents began watching him with calculating eyes.
But his gift made him feel invincible. Even when three bravos challenged him at once, he danced through their blades unscathed. His purse grew heavy with gold, and he moved from the shabby rooms near the Ragman's Harbor to a fine house near the Purple Harbor.
"You're making powerful enemies," warned an old bravo who remembered him from before his gift. "No one likes a man who never loses."
Tarro laughed it off. His gift would protect him, as it always had.
Then came the night when they caught him stumbling drunk from a tavern, his reflexes dulled by wine and victory. A dozen men stepped from the shadows - not just bravos, but hired killers with heavy purses of their own.
His gift screamed warnings, but his wine-sodden muscles couldn't respond fast enough. The first blade took him in the leg, the second in the shoulder. He tried to dance away, but there were too many.
"Nothing personal," said one of the bravos he'd humiliated. "But you forgot the first rule of Braavos - the odds always even out in the end."
They found his body floating in the canal the next morning, his purse empty and his throat cut. The other bravos nodded sagely - another lesson in the dangers of pride. Within a week, someone else was being called the best blade in Braavos, and Tarro was forgotten.
Pov Maegor of Pentos
Maegor was just another thief in Pentos until the day he made a copper penny float. Small things at first - coins, cups, keys that would drift to his hand when no one was watching. Nothing heavier than a loaf of bread, nothing farther than arm's reach, but enough to make him the finest pickpocket in the city.
He kept his ability subtle, using it to supplement his natural skills rather than replace them. A purse that "accidentally" spilled its contents into his waiting hands. Locked doors that mysteriously unlatched themselves. Small treasures that seemed to vanish into thin air.
But his success drew unwanted attention. The Red Temple's priests began watching the markets more closely, seeking signs of sorcery. Whispers spread of shadow-binders from Asshai searching for those with "unusual talents."
Then came the day he grew careless, lifting a merchant's keys while the man was still wearing them. The merchant's hand shot out, grabbing his wrist. But it wasn't the grip that frightened Maegor - it was the strange gleam in the man's eyes.
"A practitioner of the arts," the merchant whispered in ancient Valyrian. "How fascinating."
They took him to chambers beneath the city, where hooded figures practiced arts older than Valyria. They thought him a sorcerer, demanded to know who had taught him, what spells he used. When he couldn't answer, couldn't explain his ability, the questions turned to torture.
Now Maegor lies in darkness, his gift twisted by their attempts to understand it. They seek magical knowledge, not knowing his power comes from something else entirely. Perhaps that ignorance is the only thing keeping him alive.
Pov Jalabhar of the Summer Isles
Jalabhar had never been special among the crew of the Sweet Lotus until his strength changed. Not in his muscles - he remained as lean as any sailor - but in the way he could push or pull the wind itself.
Nothing dramatic enough to drive a ship or call up storms. Just subtle nudges that could fill a slack sail or turn aside an unfavorable gust. Enough to make his captain praise the ship's "luck" when they caught favorable winds that other vessels missed.
He kept his ability hidden, making small adjustments that could be explained away by natural changes in the weather. A helpful breeze during a dead calm. A headwind that mysteriously slackened when they needed speed. The crew credited their success to the gods' favor, and Jalabhar was content to let them believe it.
But the sea held other dangers besides storms. When pirates struck from behind a hidden cove, Jalabhar's subtle manipulation of the wind wasn't enough to save them. As he watched his crewmates die and his ship burn, he realized some gifts, no matter how useful, had their limits.
The pirates never knew why their prize ship suddenly caught an impossible wind and ran aground on a reef. They were too busy cursing their luck to notice the dying sailor who had turned their victory into disaster.
Jalabhar's body washed up on the shores of Basilisk Point three days later, his secret dying with him. Sometimes, he had learned too late, even the power to touch the wind meant little against cold steel and human cruelty.
Pov Pip of Old Town
Pip had never been anything but another gutter child until he could make things stick to walls. Not anything big or fancy - just enough grip to climb where others couldn't, to cling to surfaces that should be impossible to scale.
He used it to survive, scrambling up the slick walls of the Citadel to steal food from kitchen windows, clinging to the undersides of bridges to escape angry merchants. The other street children called him Spider-Pip, thinking he was just uncommonly good at climbing.
"Saw him run straight up the Sept wall yesterday," one boy whispered. "Like a bloody lizard."
"Nah, he just knows all the handholds," another argued. "Been climbing since he could walk."
Pip let them think what they wanted. Better they believe in skilled fingers and light feet than question how he could hang upside down from smooth marble ceilings to steal coins from noble's purses.
He might have lived his whole life that way, just another clever thief in a city full of them. But then he got greedy. The Starry Sept's golden chalices caught his eye, their jeweled surfaces glinting in candlelight.
The theft went perfectly until it didn't. He was halfway up the Sept's inner wall, precious cup tucked in his shirt, when the Warrior's Day ceremony began. Hundreds of nobles and merchants filled the Sept below him, and his gift chose that moment to falter.
He fell seventy feet onto the marble floor, chalice shattering beside his broken body. As the crowd screamed and the Septons shouted about divine punishment, Pip's last thought was that some gifts weren't worth the risks they tempted you to take.
Pov Harren Stone of Iron Islands
Harren Stone was just another bastard on the Iron Islands until he found he could breathe beneath the waves. Not like the tales of the Drowned Men who came back - he could stay under for hours, swimming as easily as walking on land.
At first, he used it only for pearl diving, bringing up treasures from depths no other man could reach. Then he discovered its true worth during raids - swimming under merchant ships to sabotage their rudders, emerging from the sea to strike when crews least expected.
"Blessed by the Drowned God," his crewmates whispered, but they said it with respect. Even on the Iron Islands, where paying the iron price was sacred, a man who could stay beneath the waves from sunset to sunrise was valuable.
He kept the true extent of his gift hidden. Let them think he was just good at holding his breath. The Iron Born respected strength but distrusted anything that smelled of sorcery. Better to be thought skilled than magical.
During raids, he'd scout harbors by swimming beneath the surface, counting ships and checking defenses. In battles, he'd dive beneath enemy vessels, cutting anchor lines and punching holes in hulls. His captain grew rich from his skills, and Harren's share made him wealthy enough to eventually buy his own ship.
Now he captains the Sea Snake, one of the most successful raiding vessels in the Iron Fleet. His crew doesn't question how he always knows the perfect time to strike, or how he can find safe passages through treacherous reefs. They simply count their gold and thank the Drowned God for their good fortune.
Harren keeps his secret, uses his gift wisely, and prospers. Sometimes the best power is the one that's never fully revealed.
Pov Planatos Will
Deep in the marrow of the world, beneath molten seas of rock and labyrinthine tunnels older than the First Men, something new flickered to life. In that dark cradle, where no sun had ever shone, a single seed of mana took root. The planet stirred in response, uncertain at first, like a wounded beast sniffing at the faint scent of fresh grass after a long winter. For so long, it had known only the silence of drained power, the memory of a distant feast devoured by a thing born in the emptiness between stars.
Once, when the world was young, magic had been as common as breath. Great weirwoods drank it through their roots, dragons soared high on its currents, and the children of the forest spun songs that wove into the very stone. Wonders were wrought in those days, raising mountains that touched the skies, carving rivers that coursed with life. But the brightness drew a terrible fate. A hunger from the void, impossible to name, had come in search of that radiant banquet. The thing consumed magic wherever it found it, slaking its endless thirst until the planet's veins ran dry. The children's songs fell silent. The dragons fled, lost or scattered. Even the old gods seemed to wither in their sacred groves.
For eons uncounted, the world slumbered in a hush like a tomb. Its heart still beat, but faintly, sustaining only the mundane cycles of day and night. The greatest wonders waned into dusty legend, eventually dismissed as myth by mortal scholars. From the Citadel to the courts of Yi Ti, the learned men insisted magic was gone for good.
Yet in that slumber, the world did not die. Memories of splendor smoldered within sunken caverns, sealed behind obsidian doors or hidden in roots as thick as castle walls. The planet's bedrock retained the faintest echo of what had once been. So it waited, unconscious but not beyond saving, until something vast and incomprehensible brushed against it, leaving behind a gift more precious than all the gold in Casterly Rock.
The seed pulsed in the planet's hollow heart, finer than a hair, softer than a sigh, tracing hidden channels in the rock as though testing the shape of long-abandoned pathways. Where emptiness had reigned, the stone drank in this gentle energy with a thirst it scarcely remembered possessing. Bit by bit, the new mana spread, sifting into dusty hollows and ancient cracks that once brimmed with life.
Beneath the Fourteen Flames, the once-great furnace of Valyria, slumbering crystals glimmered again, as though recalling the plays of sorcery in ages past. Far in the frozen North, beneath the Heart of Winter, cracks formed in ice that had never thawed, releasing a faint flicker of warmth into a place that knew only cold. In the forgotten East, beyond the Five Forts of Yi Ti, black stones pulsed with an alien luminescence, steeped in mysteries older than men's reckoning.
At the center of it all, the mana seed took hold. It grew slowly, pulsing like a newly-formed heart, each throb sending out a careful measure of power to fill those vacant veins. Not the old torrent that had once blazed as bright as a thousand suns, beckoning cosmic predators with its brilliance, but a steadier, measured flow. Each pulse awakened the bedrock, cleansing the wounds left by the devourer from the stars. The planet exhaled in relief, like an ancient beast tasting air after a long entombment.
Time flowed differently in that darkness. Years or centuries might pass in a single beat of this molten heart. Still, the changes now set in motion would not be stopped. As mana seeped outward, crystals grew anew in uncharted caverns, inch by inch. Strange glowing fungi took root in places long consigned to oblivion, nourished by the mana streams. Once-forgotten ley lines—like roads for magic—reactivated, faint as starlight but undeniable to those with the senses to hear them hum.
The world remembered what it was to be alive with magic, to sing with possibility, and to whisper secrets from root to leaf, from cave to mountaintop. No monstrous being prowled the void now, for it had gorged itself and wandered on. This time, the planet would not shine with reckless abandon. It had learned caution. Better to nurture a steady heart than a roaring blaze that might draw the devourer's eye again.
So the mana heart grew, slow and certain. With each beat, the world remembered a little more of what it had been, and dreamed of what it yet might be. No longer merely the husk of a devoured feast, it reclaimed its birthright as a cradle for magic. And though the weirwoods did not yet speak and the dragons did not yet sing, one could almost sense an undercurrent of quiet jubilation in the trembling of stones, as all creation stirred, and the world turned hopeful eyes toward dawn.