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 s—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 e three moons ago, on a night when the air hung thick with inse 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 er pined, 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, f his gaze back to his stall. "They were dried just yesterday." But the man had already moved on, leaving Lin Wei aloh his thoughts and his too-sharp vision.

  He saw everything now. The way the harbor master's assistant pocketed extra s. How the silk mert'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 kween his ribs.

  Last week, he'd spotted pirates approag a mert vessel long before the harbor watch raised the arm. He'd sent his you son running to warn the harbor master, g he'd heard rumors in the market. The resulting rescue had saved lives and cargo worth thousands in gold. The mert 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 whehought he slept.

  Lin Wei's firaced the dried fish, feeling each scale through callused skin. He could see the truth of his situation as clearly as he saw the approag 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, fnked by two guards Lin Wei had seen taking bribes just yesterday.

  "The captain would have words with you," the assistant said softly. "About your ret... insights."

  Lin Wei's enhanced vision caught every detail of their faces—the cold calcution, the hint of greed, the plete ercy. 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 i."

  As they led him away from his stall, Lin Wei's gaze swept o time across the city he'd known all his life. He saw everything now—except a way to escape what was ing.

  POV Marro of Bravos

  The als of Braavos stank of fish and brine, but Marro barely noticed anymore. What ed his attention was the whispers—voices carrying through stone walls and across waters as clearly as if spoken directly into his ear.

  "...raise the i again...""...meet him at moonrise...""...the Sealord's health fails..."

  A hundred versations filtered through his sciousness as he lounged against a weathered wall, pretending to doze iernoon sun. Sihat 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 differehe voices kept ing, an endless stream of Braavos's secrets, hopes, and fears. He heard children g in distant rooms, lovers' whispered promises, merts ting s, and priests murmuring prayers.

  "Did you hear?" A dockworker's voice cut through the cacophony. "Someone's been selling the Sealord's secrets. Three cil members arrested already."

  Marro's fingers clutched the s in his pocket—payment for whispered secrets passed to ied parties. He'd thought himself clever at first, trading information to anyone who would pay. But now...

  "The Faceless Men have been asked to iigate," another voice whispered, and Marro felt his blood turn to ice.

  He'd grown careless, too fident in his newfound power. How could arace a secret back to a simple cutpurse? But the Faceless Men weren't just anyone.

  A child's voice sang somewhere across the al:"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 owh approag.

  "Var mhulis," came a whisper, so close it might have been inside his own head.

  Marro ran. But in Braavos, no oruns the Many-Faced God.

  POV Jhiqui's arakh of Dothrak

  Jhiqui's arakh sang through the m air as she practiced her forms, eaent 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 orm-Runner" among her khas.

  The gift had e to her during the dark moon, whears wheeled overhead like scattered silver s. Suddenly, her body moved with impossible grace, each strike and parry flowing like water. Where once she had been merely skilled, now she dahrough bat 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 cimed her pce 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 tless 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 reading across the grass sea.

  "Again!" she called to her riders, demonstrating a plex 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 khasar," 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 ged more than just her own fate. Other women now trained openly with ons, pointing to her success. Old traditions were being questioned, re-examined. ge came slowly to the Dothraki, but it came all the same.

  And if anyone doubted, they needed only watch her fight to uand - 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 mert trying to scrape together enough to matter in Qarth's endless games of trade. Then one day, he simply knew when people lied.

  Not through any magical fsh or mystical insight - he simply felt it, like a discordant note in an otherwise smooth melody. Every false promise, every crafted deception, every carefully structed untruth rang hollow in his ears.

  "Fi silk from the Shadow Lands," a rival mert procimed to potential buyers. False.

  "Your shipment will arrive within the week," another promised. True, but not the full truth.

  "The price is firm, I ot go lower." Lie.

  He built his fortune carefully, never revealing his advantage. When petitors lied about their goods' quality, he simply offered better prices feicles. When partried to deceive him iiations, he steered versations toward truthful ground. Small advantages accumuted, 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 ofteo unwatention from warlocks and shadow-binders. Better to simply use his gift quietly and build his wealth one ho deal at a time.

  Besides, in a city built on eborate deceptions, sometimes the simplest truths were the most valuable currency of all.

  Pov Mira of Astapor

  Mira's firaced the brand on her shoulder as she tehe cooking fires in her master's kit. The fmes respoo her tou small ways - she could make them burn hotter or cooler, direct them away from spilling pots, or keep them from smoking too muothing grand ical, just subtle adjustments that made her work easier.

  The kit was her sanctuary. Among the bubbling pots and crag hearths, she had found a measure of pea her ensved life. The head cook valued her "knack" with fire, keeping her assigo the ovens where bread never burned a always cooked evenly. Other sves whispered that she had lucky hands, but none suspected the truth.

  Until today.

  "The fire's ag strange again," muttered Lazeo, an older sve who'd been watg her with increasing suspi. "Just like yesterday, and the day before."

  Mira kept her eyes down, fog on the loaves before her. The m bread o be perfect - the master was hosting important guests from Yunkai.

  "It's just the wind," she said, though there was no breeze iuffy kit.

  "Wind doesn't make fmes bend like that." Lazeo's voice carried across the kit. "Wind doesn't make fires dance."

  Other sves paused in their wng between Mira and the hearth. She realized too te that she'd grown careless, too fortable with her small gift. The fmes were indeed moving unnaturally, responding to her ay by curling away from the bread she feared would burn.

  "I've seen her," Lazeo tinued, voice rising. "Talking to the fires, making them obey her. She's a witch!"

  "No," Mira protested, but panic made the fmes leap higher, firming her accuser's words. "Please, I just-"

  "WITCH!"

  The cry echoed through the kit. Pots cttered as sves scrambled away from her. Someone ran for the guards. Mira reached for the fmes, trying to calm them, but her fear made them wild. They roared up from the hearth, sending shadows dang across terrified faces.

  "Seize her!" The overseer's voice cracked like a whip. Rough hands grabbed her arms. The fmes surged in response, but what could they do? She couldn't jure fire from nothing, couldn't make it attack her captors. Her small gift was useless now.

  They dragged her before the master, who sat at breakfast with his Yunkai guests. The overseer spoke of witchcraft, of unnatural fires, of sves whispering about her power over fme.

  "Is this true?" her master demanded. "Are you a witch?"

  Mira could only weep, knowing any answer meah. The fmes in the dining room's braziers flickered in respoo 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 fmes she cims to and."

  They built the pyre in the Pza of Pride, where all sves could withe price of sorcery. As they tied her to the stake, Mira reached desperately for the fmes that would soon e her. But her gift was too small, too weak - she could nudge fires, not trol them. Not save herself.

  "Please," she begged, but the fmes that had been her friends could offer no merow.

  The fire caught quickly. Through the smoke and pain, Mira saw Lazeo watg from the crowd, satisfa on his face. She saw the master's children pointiedly, their first witch-burning a thrilling spectacle. She saw other sves looking away, knowing it could have been them.

  Her st thought, as the fmes rose higher, was that perhaps some gifts were truly curses in disguise. In a world that feared the unexpinable, even the smallest magic could be deadly.

  The fmes took her, and Mira's story ended in fire - not the gentle hearth-fire she had onanded, but the wild, hungry fmes of fear and hatred that no simple gift could ever hope to tame.

  Pov Shagga son of sman 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 particurly rge for a sman - but somehow his strikes found the oints in any rock face, shattering stohat 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 ots ione walls of Vale merts' strongholds. A single well-pced strike could bring dowions of wall that would have withstood a ram.

  "The stone speaks to him," his fellow raiders whispered. Some cimed he'd stolen magi 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 thaion too deeply.

  But his gift brought unwatention. Other s sought alliahe Stone Crows offered him leadership if he'd joihe Bck Ears promised him choice raids. Even the Vale lords took notice when their supposedly impregnable walls began falling to mountain attacks.

  "More knights ing," his lookout warned one m. "Led by Bronze Yohn himself."

  Shagga felt the mountaih his feet, sehe stress points in the cliff face above the approag knights. Orike in the right pce 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 pces, where only goats and smen 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 ining bdes a heartbeat before they struck, giving him just enough warning to twist away from death.

  Not true fht, nothing so grand. Just a fra of a sed's warning, a whisper of intuition that made him move before his mind could process why. It was enough to make him uable ireet fights that pgued Braavos's nights.

  "The boy moves like a cat," the other bravos muttered. "Like he knows where your bde will be."

  Pride made him careless. Each victory brought more , more fame, more challenges. He began takis, wagering against anyone who dared face him. Merts and arted attending his fights, pg heavy purses oe.

  "Ten to one o-foot dancer!" they would cry, and Tarro never disappoihem.

  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 oppos began watg him with calg eyes.

  But his gift made him feel invincible. Evehree bravos challenged him at once, he dahrough their bdes unscathed. His purse grew heavy with gold, and he moved from the shabby rooms he Ragman's Harbor to a fine house he 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 ughed 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 dozeepped 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 bde took him in the leg, the sed 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 fot the first rule of Braavos - the odds always even out in the end."

  They found his body floating in the al the m, 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 bde in Braavos, and Tarro was fotten.

  Pov Maegor of Pentos

  Maegor was just ahief ios until the day he made a copper penny float. Small things at first - s, cups, keys that would drift to his hand when no one was watg. Nothing heavier than a loaf of bread, nothing farther than arm's reach, but enough to make him the fi pickpocket iy.

  He kept his ability subtle, using it to supplement his natural skills rather than repce them. A purse that "actally" spilled its tents into his waiting hands. Locked doors that mysteriously uhemselves. Small treasures that seemed to vanish into thin air.

  But his success drew unwatention. The Red Temple's priests began watg the markets more closely, seeking signs of sorcery. Whispers spread of shadow-binders from Asshai searg for those with "unusual talents."

  Then came the day he grew careless, lifting a mert's keys while the man was still wearing them. The mert'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 mert whispered in a Valyrian. "How fasating."

  They took him to chambers beh the city, where hooded figures practiced arts older than Valyria. They thought him a sorcerer, demao know who had taught him, ells he used. When he couldn't answer, couldn't expin his ability, the questions turo torture.

  Now Maegor lies in darkness, his gift twisted by their attempts to uand it. They seek magical knowledge, not knowing his power es from something else entirely. Perhaps that ignorance is the only thing keeping him alive.

  IPov Jabhar of the Summer Isles

  Jabhar had never been special among the crew of the Sweet Lotus until his strength ged. Not in his muscles - he remained as lean as any sailor - but in the way he could push or pull the wind itself.

  Nothing dramatiough to drive a ship or call up storms. Just subtle hat could fill a sck 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 expined away by natural ges in the weather. A helpful breeze during a dead calm. A headwind that mysteriously sed when they needed speed. The crew credited their success to the gods' favor, and Jabhar was tent to let them believe it.

  But the sea held other dangers besides storms. When pirates struck from behind a hidden cove, Jabhar's subtle manipution 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 turheir victory into disaster.

  Jabhar's body washed up on the shores of Basilisk Point three days ter, his secret dying with him. Sometimes, he had learoo te, even the power to touch the wi little against cold steel and human cruelty.

  Pov Pip of Old Town

  Pip had never been anything but anutter child until he could make things stick to walls. Not anything big or fancy - just enough grip to climb where others couldn't, to g 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 kit windows, ging to the undersides es to escape angry merts. The other street children called him Spider-Pip, thinking he was just unonly 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," anued. "Been climbing since he could walk."

  Pip let them think what they wanted. Better they believe in skilled fingers and light feet thaion how he could hang upside down from smooth marble ceilings to steal s from noble's purses.

  He might have lived his whole life that way, just another clever thief in a city full of them. But the greedy. The Starry Sept's golden chalices caught his eye, their jeweled surfaces glinting in dlelight.

  The theft went perfectly until it didn't. He was half the Sept's inner wall, precious cup tucked in his shirt, when the Warrior's Day ceremony began. Hundreds of nobles and merts 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 st thought was that some gifts weren't worth the risks they tempted you to take.

  Pov Harren Stone of Iron Isnds

  Harren Stone was just another bastard on the Iron Isnds until he found he could breathe beh 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 nd.

  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 mert 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 Isnds, where paying the iron price was sacred, a man who could stay beh the waves from suo sunrise was valuable.

  He kept the true extent of his gift hiddehem 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 swimmih the surface, ting ships and cheg defenses. In battles, he'd dive beh enemy vessels, cutting anchor lines and pung 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 Iro. His crew doesn't question how he always knows the perfect time to strike, or how he find safe passages through treacherous reefs. They simply t 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 ohat's never fully revealed.

  Pov Pnatos Will

  Deep in the marrow of the world, beh molten seas of rod byrinthiunnels 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 pirred in response, uain at first, like a wounded beast sniffing at the faint st of fresh grass after a long winter. For so long, it had known only the silence of drained power, the memory of a dista devoured by a thing born in the emptiness between stars.

  Once, when the world was young, magic had been as on 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 e in search of that radiant bahe thing ed magic wherever it found it, sking its ehirst until the p'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 unted, 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 legeually dismissed as myth by mortal schors. From the Citadel to the courts of Yi Ti, the learned men insisted magic was gone food.

  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 p's bedrock retaihe fai echo of what had once been. So it waited, unscious but not beyond saving, until something vast and inprehensible brushed against it, leaving behind a gift more precious than all the gold in Casterly Rock.

  The seed pulsed in the p's hollow heart, fihan a hair, softer than a sigh, trag hidden els in the rock as though testing the shape of long-abandoned pathways. Where emptiness had reighe 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 a cracks that once brimmed with life.

  Beh the Fourteehe once-great furnace of Valyria, slumbering crystals glimmered again, as though recalling the pys of sorcery in ages past. Far in the frozen North, beh the Heart of Winter, cracks formed ihat had hawed, releasing a faint flicker of warmth into a pce that knew only cold. In the fotte, beyond the Five Forts of Yi Ti, bck stones pulsed with an alien luminesce, steeped in mysteries older than men's reing.

  At the ter of it all, the maook hold. It grew slowly, pulsing like a newly-formed heart, each throb sending out a careful measure of power to fill those vat veins. Not the old torrent that had once bzed as bright as a thousand suns, being ic predators with its brilliance, but a steadier, measured floulse awakehe bedrock, sing the wounds left by the devourer from the stars. The p exhaled in relief, like an a beast tasting air after a loombment.

  Time flowed differently in that darkness. Years or turies might pass in a single beat of this molte. Still, the ges 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 pces long sigo oblivion, nourished by the mana streams. Once-fotten ley lines—like roads fic—reactivated, faint as starlight but undeniable to those with the seo 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 ged itself and wandered on. This time, the p would not shih reckless abandon. It had learned cautioer to nurture a steady heart than a r bze that might draw the devourer's eye again.

  So the ma grew, slow aain. 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 recimed its birthright as a cradle fid though the weirwoods did not yet speak and the dragons did not yet sing, one could almost sense an undercurrent of quiet jubition irembling of stones, as all creation stirred, and the world turned hopeful eyes toward dawn.