(POV: Third Person — Red Keep, Order of the Storm Training Yard)
The Red Keep's old tourney yard was no longer dusty and neglected.
Under Steffon Baratheon's quiet orders, the cracked stones had been swept clean.
Broken racks had been repaired.
New targets, straw dummies, and practice fields had sprung up — not from Robert's command, but from a quiet trickle of requests Steffon had routed through minor stewards and Stormlander captains too eager to displease him.
It was slow. Subtle.
Unnoticed by the court.
But the Order of the Storm was growing.
And it was changing.
At first, the boys had thought it a game — a prince's indulgence.
Sword drills, horsemanship, contests of strength and speed.
But Steffon demanded more.
Before the sun rose, he had them running the walls, armor weighted with stones.
At night, he taught them how to read the stars, to navigate without light.
He paired them in secret duels — shieldless, weaponless — to teach them the ugly reality of fighting when banners fell and rules shattered.
He made them recite not just their oaths — but the names of every man beside them.
No brother forgotten. No brother left behind.
Failure was punished not by beatings or lashings — but by isolation.
The greatest cruelty: being cast out alone, if only for a night.
They learned fast.
Hardness replaced eagerness.
Loyalty replaced pride.
And in Steffon's sharp, quiet gaze, a hidden kingdom began to rise — one that no council, no crown, no maester yet understood.
They must become more than knights, Steffon thought as he watched his young soldiers collapse from exhaustion under the moonlight. They must become pillars. Foundations.
The old ways were dying.
Honor alone would not save Westeros.
Glory would not hold kingdoms together.
Only loyalty.
Only strength.
The sun blazed over the Red Keep.
The stink of old wine and rotting meat clung to the stones.
Jon Arryn summoned Steffon again — this time not to train, not to study.
But to witness power firsthand.
The Small Council chamber was cool and dark, heavy with the scent of ink, parchment, and old men's sweat.
The great table gleamed in the torchlight.
Jon Arryn sat at its head, calm and severe as a granite cliff.
Around him sprawled the weary and the wicked:
Grand Maester Pycelle, mumbling over rolls of accounts.
Varys, all sweet smiles and sly suggestions.
Stannis Baratheon, lean and cold-eyed, barely speaking.
Renly Baratheon, younger, still green but laughing too easily.
Robert's Master of Coin — a fretful man half-drowned in debt ledgers.
Robert himself was absent — off hunting or drinking or whoring.
As always.
Steffon stood silently by Jon Arryn's side, hands folded, green eyes lowered respectfully.
But he missed nothing.
The arguing.
The slowness.
The rot.
They debated grain shortages while pirates raided the Narrow Sea.
They bickered over tourneys while Dorne whispered of rebellion.
They begged for coin from rich houses while the royal treasury bled dry.
No vision.
No will.
Only decay, hidden behind polite words and false banners.
At one point, Jon Arryn's old blue eyes flicked to Steffon — a silent question.
Do you see it?
Steffon met his gaze calmly.
I see.
Jon nodded almost imperceptibly.
And for the first time, Steffon felt it — not just learning, not just testing.
Responsibility.
Westeros was crumbling.
The cracks were spreading faster than anyone dared admit.
And soon — sooner than any of these old men realized — someone would have to rebuild it.
As the council droned on, arguing over debts and feasts,
Steffon stood silent and still.
And deep within him, he made a vow:
When the time comes, I will not patch a broken kingdom.
I will forge a new one.
The days shortened.
The air turned sharper, crisp with the first hints of coming winter.
And Prince Steffon Baratheon moved quietly among the sons of the realm — as carefully and patiently as a spider spinning its web.
Not at court.
Not with the great lords.
But among the younger sons.
The overlooked heirs of small houses, the second and third sons of proud but fading bloodlines — Stormlanders, Crownlanders, Riverlanders — brought to court to serve, to learn, to wait.
Boys who would grow into knights.
Knights who would grow into lords.
And lords who would owe him everything.
He did not summon them openly.
He did not promise gold or glory.
He spoke instead of brotherhood.
Of honor restored.
Of a realm reborn where loyalty, not birth, determined greatness.
He listened to their complaints — of neglect, of fathers who favored elder brothers, of mothers who married them off like coin in a purse.
He nodded.
He smiled.
He promised them a future.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
But soon.
And quietly, behind the laughter and the lessons, behind the feasts and the hunts, Steffon Baratheon began forging his first true circle of loyalty.
Some of the boys from the original Hundred were chosen.
Others were new — boys drawn by whispers, by ambition, by the strange magnetism that clung to the King's son like a second cloak.
No formal oaths yet.
No banners raised.
Only a quiet, growing understanding:
Steffon was not merely their prince.
He was their future.
---
The bells of the Red Keep rang sharply one morning — short and urgent.
A new birth.
Queen Cersei Lannister had given birth at last.
To a daughter.
The news came to Steffon while he trained alone in the yard, the morning sun glittering off the steel of his practice blade.
A daughter.
He set the sword aside carefully, wiping the sweat from his brow with slow, deliberate movements.
A sister.
Good.
A daughter was no direct threat.
No rival prince to divide the realm's loyalties.
No second boy for Cersei to place ahead of him, to whisper into Robert's ear.
At least... not yet.
But he would not be foolish enough to ignore her.
Even daughters could become pieces on the board, queens in their own right, or queens wed to the wrong man.
He would watch.
He would prepare.
The court celebrated, of course.
The maesters declared the child healthy, the gods thanked, the feasting prepared.
Cersei received the congratulations of lords and ladies alike, pale and glowing on her birthing bed, her golden hair spread like a halo.
Robert — drunk already — roared with pride over his "beautiful little rose," though he had little real interest beyond the day's celebration.
Behind the smiles, however, Steffon saw it:
the calculations beginning again.
Marriages.
Alliances.
New threats.
As the bells tolled and the court toasted,
Steffon Baratheon stood quietly at the edges of the feast, a small, serene smile on his face.
Let them rejoice.
Let them plot.
He was the storm coming over the horizon.
And nothing — not brother, not sister, not king nor council — would stand against it when it broke.
(POV: Third Person — Red Keep, Early Winter)
The air in the Red Keep had turned colder, heavy with the sharp scent of rain and smoke.
The courtiers drew their cloaks tighter, the smallfolk lit more fires in the halls, and the city below churned in mud and misery.
But Prince Steffon Baratheon moved through it all like a blade through water — untouched, unseen, patient.
Armies win battles, Steffon thought as he leaned against a stone balustrade overlooking the training yards. But knowledge wins kingdoms.
Sword and shield he had begun to forge.
Now it was time to forge something finer.
Something sharper.
An invisible web.
He started small.
A stableboy, promised the chance to serve the Order's finest steeds if he happened to overhear when foreign envoys arrived late at night.
A scullion girl in the kitchens, gifted a new pair of boots when she happened to mention which lords met with Pycelle behind closed doors.
A page assigned to Renly Baratheon, praised quietly when he happened to recount who visited the Queen's solar after midnight.
Nothing overt.
No orders barked, no threats made.
Only attention.
Only rewards.
In a castle where boys were kicked aside and girls forgotten, a prince who remembered their names, who thanked them, who smiled at them — was a prince worth following.
Within a moon's turn, Steffon had a dozen minor eyes and ears scattered through the Red Keep's winding halls:
Pages in the royal chambers.
Cupbearers in the council rooms.
Stableboys at the gates.
Kitchen girls near the feast tables.
They did not know each other.
They did not think of themselves as spies.
They thought of themselves as lucky.
As favored.
And in the dark hours of the night, when Steffon sat alone in his chambers, his mind pieced together the whispered fragments they brought him:
Which lord drank too much and muttered treason.
Which knight owed too many debts to the Master of Coin.
Which merchant bribed whose steward to gain a foothold at court.
Piece by piece, the map of power unfolded before him — invisible to the laughing courtiers, the drunken king, the scheming lords.
But not to him.
Never to him.
He told them nothing about his plans.
Gave no names, made no promises beyond small kindnesses.
Even now, at the beginning, he understood:
Loyalty bought with gold fades.
Loyalty built through favor and fear endures.
He let them think it was friendship.
Gratitude.
Chance.
But in truth, each one was a strand in a web only he could see.
A web that one day would strangle the old powers of Westeros in silence.
As the winter wind howled against the high towers of the Red Keep,
Steffon Baratheon stood by his window, the candlelight flickering across his sharp, thoughtful face.
He smiled, a thin, patient smile.
The Order was his sword.
The Web was his shield.
The Realm would never see it coming.