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Chapter Text

Eddard

The morning air at Winterfell was crisp and clean, sharp with the scents of frost and smoke that drifted from the forges. Above the training yard, the sky stretched pale and cloudless, the low sun little more than a pale smudge against the iron-colored sky. Ned Stark stood on the covered walkway overlooking the yard, his hands resting lightly on the cold stone balustrade. He watched his sons at play below, the weight of old oaths heavy on his shoulders, but for a time he allowed himself to savor this small glimpse of peace.

Robb and Jon were teaching Bran to shoot, though the boy’s bow looked too large for him. Bran stood braced, his tongue caught between his teeth in fierce concentration, his small boots leaving prints in the dust. Jon’s voice carried clearly “Draw to your ear, not your chest.” A tone that reminded Ned so much of his brother Benjen that for an instant it ached.

Robb grinned at Bran’s confusion. “Or you’ll shoot your own foot,” he teased, and Bran huffed and loosed the arrow with a loud thrum. It struck the target — low and left, but it struck. Bran whooped, his face splitting with joy, and Robb clapped him on the back, a grin as bright as summer. Even Jon, usually so reserved, ruffled Bran’s brown hair in quiet approval.

Ned watched them with a quiet, aching pride. Robb had grown tall and lean over the past year, his red-brown hair catching the pale light like copper wire. There was an ease in his movements, a confidence that made Ned think of Brandon — his brother’s laughter echoing across the years like a ghost. Jon, though — Jon carried himself like a Stark, somber and serious, eyes always watchful. A child born of war, but a child nonetheless. They were boys still, but not for much longer.

Below, near the yard’s entrance, Catelyn crossed briskly, a folded bundle in her arms — a new cloak, perhaps, or fresh linens. The sunlight dappled her auburn hair, making Ned think of the autumn leaves that would soon fall from the trees. She paused, calling softly to Jon as he stepped away from the target.

“Jon,” she said, her voice gentle but guarded. “Would you see these delivered to Maester Luwin?”

Jon looked up at once, eyes wide with that eager obedience that always tugged at Ned’s heart. “Yes, Aunt Catelyn,” he said, his voice clear and polite. He reached for the bundle with careful hands, his black hair falling across his brow.

Catelyn’s smile came slow, but it was real — no coldness, no lingering doubt. A small, fleeting thing, but in that moment it felt like a victory. Ned felt an old knot in his chest loosen. It was not a wide smile, nor a long one, but it was honest, and that was enough. He had made the right choice all those years ago — telling Catelyn the truth of Jon’s birth, instead of letting her heart curdle around a lie. Howland’s counsel had spared them all a colder, crueller fate.

Thank you, Howland, he thought silently, as he had a hundred times before. His old friend’s quiet wisdom had always guided him well, even in the darkest hours.

He leaned against the parapet, breathing in the sharp morning air. A raven cawed in the distance, the sound echoing against the stone. Winter was coming — he could feel it in his bones. And with it, all the old ghosts, stirring once more.

A shout broke his reverie, sharp as a sword-blade. Ned turned to see a rider galloping across the courtyard, his horse’s breath steaming in the cold air. The black of the Night’s Watch flapped behind him, stark against the pale sky.

Ned’s mouth tightened. A messenger from the Wall, and so early in the season. Bad news rode swiftest, he thought.

The rider drew rein before the steps, sliding from his horse with the practiced ease of a man long in the saddle. His cloak was crusted with frost, his cheeks raw and windburned. One of the guards— Harwin, Ned saw —hurried to meet him, his sword at his hip.

“My lord,” Harwin called, his breath misting in the chill air, “they’ve brought a deserter. Caught near the Wolfswood, half-mad with fear. The men are holding him by the old well.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the holdfast, where a knot of black-cloaked riders milled, their faces grave.

Ned’s stomach clenched. A deserter from the Night’s Watch.

“Fetch Robb and Theon,” he ordered. “, and Jon as well.” Harwin nodded

Ned hesitated, then turned and found Bran, bright eyes watching him from the walkway, curious and solemn. Catelyn was there too, a shadow of concern in the lines of her mouth. She already knew what he would ask.

“He’s but seven,” Catelyn said quietly, laying a hand on Bran’s shoulder. “Too young to watch a man die.”

Ned met her gaze, his own eyes cold as ice. “And yet he must,” he said, each word heavy with the old ways. “He is a Stark of Winterfell. Winter is coming, and he will not be a child forever.”

Bran’s small mouth firmed. “I want to see,” he said, his voice trembling only slightly.

Ned gave a slow nod. “So be it,” he said. He turned back to Harwin. “Fetch the horse.”

As Harwin strode off, Ned laid a hand on Bran’s shoulder, the weight of it both comfort and burden. “Remember what you see today, Bran,” he said, his voice low. “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. That is our way, and it is a hard way, but it is the right one.”

He saw the fear in Bran’s eyes, but also a stubborn spark that made him proud. He had always known this day would come — the day his son would learn that a Stark’s duty is not just to hold a castle, but to bear the weight of justice, even when it was cold and sharp as steel.

As the wind stirred the banners overhead, Ned felt a deep chill settle in his bones — a chill older than the winter winds that swept down from the Wall. Winter was coming, and with it all the hard choices that would shape them all.

They found the deserter by midday, near the edge of the wolfswood. A cold wind rattled through the bare branches, carrying with it the scent of pine and old earth. The man was half-mad with fear, his eyes wild, his breath ragged as if the air itself turned to ice in his lungs. He babbled of dead men walking, of cold shadows with eyes like blue fire.

A ring of Stark guards stood at the ready, their swords drawn but lowered, faces grim beneath the grey sky. Robb and Jon stood together at the front, Bran between them, his small hands clenched in his cloak. The boy’s eyes were wide and unblinking. Theon Greyjoy loitered a few paces back, a smirk twisting his lips as he watched the wretch blubber.

Ned dismounted and approached the prisoner. He was a ragged thing, his cloak torn and crusted with frost. He looked up as Ned drew near, eyes wild and desperate.

“They’re dead ... all dead,” the deserter gasped. “Their eyes—” The man’s voice cracked. “They turned blue. So pale. So cold.”

Ned’s jaw tightened. At the words “blue eyes,” a jolt ran through him, sharp and sudden as a blade. He remembered Howland Reed’s voice, low and urgent beneath the heart tree, speaking of wolves bleeding, a world swallowed in blackness, and cold, blue eyes gleaming in the dark. He forced the memory away. Dreams were dreams, and a madman’s ravings proved nothing.

“You deserted your post,” Ned said, his voice heavy with the weight of duty. “You abandoned your brothers. You broke your vows.”

The deserter’s mouth worked soundlessly, the terror plain on his face. “I should have warned them,” he wept. “I should have warned the Wall. They’re coming—”

Ned silenced him with a look. Justice must be done, and mercy was a luxury Winterfell could ill afford. He drew Ice from its sheath, the greatsword gleaming cold and pale in the weak sunlight.

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword,” he murmured to himself, as he always did.

Robb stood tall and solemn, his jaw set. Jon watched with quiet intensity, his grey eyes unflinching. Bran clutched Jon’s sleeve, though he made no sound. Theon shifted on his feet, smirking as if the sight amused him.

Ned raised Ice. The sword was heavy in his hands, but its weight was familiar.  The deserter sobbed once, a final, broken sound. Ned swung.

The head fell to the ground with a dull thump, the snow stained red. The body crumpled a moment later, steam rising faintly from the warm blood.

Theon gave a short, harsh laugh and prodded the severed head with the toe of his boot. “Coward’s death,” he sneered. “Good riddance.”

Robb’s voice was sharp. “Leave him be, Theon.”

Theon only shrugged, his smirk lingering. “As you say, Stark.”

Ned cleaned Ice on the snow, each stroke slow and deliberate. Around them, the guards stood silent, their faces as grey as the sky.

“Come,” Ned said at last, his voice low and grave. “There’s nothing more for him here.”

They turned their horses toward Winterfell, the cold wind ahead. And Ned Stark rode with the weight of justice on his shoulders, and the faint, uneasy echo of a dream that refused to leave him.

They were riding back to Winterfell, the sun low and pale on the horizon, when Robb’s voice broke the quiet. “Father! Look!”

Ned reined in his horse and turned to see Robb pointing at a shape sprawled in the snow, half-buried beneath a drift. It was a direwolf — a great she-wolf, her grey fur streaked with blood, a broken shaft of antler jutting from her throat.

Ned dismounted, his boots crunching on the frost. He crouched beside the fallen creature, fingers brushing her fur, already stiff with cold. The direwolf was the sigil of House Stark, yet none had been seen south of the Wall in two centuries. He felt a chill deeper than the cold wind.

Around the she-wolf, the snow churned with small movements — five tiny bundles, yipping weakly, eyes still sealed shut. The children gathered close, faces alight with wonder. Even Theon Greyjoy leaned in, though his smirk remained.

“A freak,” Theon sneered. “Better to put them out of their misery.”

Robb ignored him, bending to lift one of the squirming pups, cradling it with a tenderness that caught at Ned’s heart. Jon crouched beside him, lifting another, his black hair falling across his brow as he held the small creature against his chest. Bran’s hands trembled as he reached for a third.

“They’re meant to be ours,” Robb said, his voice strong with certainty.

Jon glanced at him, then at Ned, his grey eyes solemn. “Five pups,” he said softly. “One for each of the Stark children.”

Bran looked up sharply, his brow creased. “What about Jon?” he asked, his voice small but clear.

Jon gave a sad smile, and it twisted something in Ned’s chest. “I’m not a Stark,” Jon said quietly. “Not truly.” He lowered his gaze to the grey fur in his arms.

Ned watched the boy, saw the way he excluded himself from the count. The ache in his chest deepened. Jon’s place in this family was as certain as the blood in his veins — even if the world did not know it. Yet the old dream gnawed at the edges of his thoughts, a reminder of a fate he could not yet name.

He looked at the children, each holding a small, fragile bundle of life, and felt the weight of the North settle on his shoulders. Perhaps it was the gods’ gift to them — a sign, or a warning. Or both.

“Very well,” he said at last, his voice grave but not unkind. “Take them. Raise them as your own. And remember — they will grow, and so will your responsibilities.”

Relief and pride lit Robb’s face, and even Bran’s eyes shone with fierce joy. Jon held his head high, though a quiet sadness lingered at the corners of his smile.

They turned their horses for home, the children’s laughter rising like birdsong in the cold air. Ned felt the old dream stirring in the back of his mind, but he pushed it aside. Five wolves for five Starks. That would have been enough.

But before they had gone a hundred yards, Jon called out, his voice sharp with urgency. “Father!” he cried, dismounting quickly. “There’s another — stuck in the drift!”

Ned’s heart clenched as Jon bent and lifted a small, trembling shape from the snow — a sixth pup, pale as snow with eyes like blood.

The world seemed to tilt beneath him. Six wolves. Six fates. Howland’s dream, come to life in the cold.

Jon’s voice was quiet but steady as he looked up at Ned. “This one was left behind,” he said, cradling the pale pup with eyes like blood. “It’s different from the rest. I could take it, if you’d allow.”

Ned looked at the boy, at the small white wolf trembling in his arms. A sadness tugged at his heart. Jon had already counted himself apart from the others—he had always carried that burden, unspoken. The shape of the dream closed around them, heavy and cold as a winter sky.

He nodded, though the movement felt like stone. “Keep him,” he said, his voice low but certain. “He is yours.”

As they rode back toward Winterfell, the pups mewling in the children’s arms, Ned Stark felt the long shadow of a dream stir at the edge of his mind. Six wolves. Six children. Six fates. And winter was coming.

The godswood of Winterfell was a place of ancient quiet, older than the walls that guarded it. Ned Stark sat beneath the heart tree, the white bark scarred by a face not carved by human hands. Its red eyes wept slow tears of sap, trickling down like blood. He found solace here, though the comfort was often cold. Ice lay across his knees, its long blade catching the green light filtering through the branches. He ran a whetstone along the edge, slow and steady, the rasp of stone on steel marking the passage of time like the beat of a slow drum.

The weight of duty pressed on him, even in this place of old gods and whispered prayers. His thoughts turned to Robert’s laughter and Lyanna’s smile, to Brandon’s fiery temper and Benjen’s easy grin. All gone now, and yet their ghosts clung to these woods as tightly as the damp moss on the old stones.

He did not hear her approach at first. It was only when her shadow fell across the worn roots that he looked up. Catelyn stood before him, her cloak trailing behind her like autumn leaves on the wind. Her face was pale, her lips pressed tight against the worry that so often marked her days.

“Cat,” he said, his voice low and rough. “What brings you here?”

She hesitated, gathering herself as if the words themselves were a burden too heavy to bear. “Jon Arryn is dead,” she said at last, her voice trembling like a winter branch.

For a moment, the godswood seemed to hold its breath. The steady rasp of the whetstone fell silent in his hands. Ned felt the old grief stir in his chest, an ache he had carried since the Rebellion. Jon had been a second father to him—a guide, a friend, a father in all but blood.

He set the whetstone aside, his hand resting on the broad pommel of Ice. “How?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“A sudden illness,” Catelyn said. “A fever. Maester Luwin received a raven from King’s Landing. Jon Arryn took to his bed and never rose again.”

Ned’s jaw clenched, the lines of his face deepening. He stared at the face on the heart tree, its red eyes weeping their slow, silent tears. The sorrow in his chest felt like an old wound reopened, raw and bitter.

Catelyn studied him, her gaze long and searching, as if she could read the weight of every secret he carried. “You knew,” she said softly. “Somehow… you knew this would come.”

Ned felt the words strike him like a blade. He thought of Howland’s dreams, of warnings spoken beneath the heart tree in the quiet hours of the night, of the sense that the past had never truly left them. He drew a breath and let it out slowly, the air misting in the cold godswood.

“There were signs,” he said at last, his voice low. “Old signs. Old warnings.”

He rose then, sheathing Ice with a practiced motion. Each movement felt heavy, as though the weight of every choice he had made pressed upon him at once.

Catelyn stepped closer, her eyes searching his face. “And now?” she asked softly.

Ned turned to the heart tree. “Now Robert will come,” he said. The words fell from his lips like stones. Not hope, nor pleasure—only certainty. Robert would come, and with him all the troubles of the realm.

“Are you sure?” she asked, though he saw that she already knew the answer.

He nodded once, his gaze fixed on the red sap trickling down the weirwood’s face. “He will come.”

Catelyn lowered her gaze. “Will you refuse him?”

Ned’s lips curved in a bitter, private smile—a smile that held all the sorrow and weight of the past. “I will hear him,” he said simply. That much he owed Robert—his brother in arms, his oldest friend.

A cold wind stirred the godswood, rustling the leaves overhead. Somewhere far off, a wolf howled, low and mournful. Ned felt the old fears stirring, the ones that never truly left him. They had built a life here—a family, a peace carved from blood and sacrifice. And now, with Jon Arryn dead, and Robert riding north with all his banners, he feared they were standing at the edge of a long fall.

A month passed in a slow, uneasy rhythm. Winter’s bite grew sharper, and with it, Ned’s sense of foreboding. Every morning, he wondered if the wind would bring a raven’s wings or a king’s banners. The old dreams stirred in his mind, heavy with meanings he did not yet dare to name. Then, one cold dawn, the watchmen’s horn sounded from the battlements, and the banners of the stag and the lion came into view on the kingsroad.

The bells of Winterfell rang out across the courtyards and towers, a bright clamor that sent the ravens fluttering from the rookery. Ned Stark stood with his family atop the gatehouse, the cold wind snapping the banners overhead — grey direwolf of Stark, crowned stag of Baratheon, and the lion of Lannister. Their colors streamed side by side against the pale sky.

Ned shifted his weight, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. His heart was steady but heavy. It had been nine years since he had last seen Robert Baratheon, in the smoky aftermath of rebellion. Nine years, and a thousand miles of change.

Below, a line of banners and riders emerged from the forest road — gold, crimson, black. The royal procession wound toward Winterfell like a slow river of silk and steel. Catelyn adjusted little Rickon’s cloak against the wind. Bran leaned out dangerously far, eager for a first glimpse of the king. Robb stood tall and proud, his eyes alight with anticipation.

Ned could not share their excitement. Not fully. He felt the years between them like an unspoken burden.

When the riders drew close, Ned picked out Robert at their head — a mountain of a man even now, though gone to fat and wine. His black beard was shot with white, but his armor gleamed, the crowned stag bright on his breastplate. Ned’s heart tightened at the sight.

Behind him, Queen Cersei rode like a queen indeed, her golden hair a river of sunlight beneath her elaborate headdress. Her children rode with her — Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen — all golden-haired, all smiles. All Lannisters.

Ned’s thoughts stirred uneasily. Blond, all of them. He thought of Howland’s voice beneath the heart tree, speaking of lions wearing false antlers, leeching the life from the fat stag. He shook his head. Children bore their mother’s looks often enough. It meant nothing. It had to mean nothing.

The gates of Winterfell swung open, the old iron hinges groaning in the cold. Robert swung down from his horse with a grunt, his great belly straining against the clasps of his tunic.

“Ned!” he bellowed, his voice booming through the courtyard. “Get down here, you cold-hearted bastard!”

Ned descended the steps, his mouth set in a half-smile despite the weight in his chest. They embraced hard, as they had in their youth, and for a heartbeat it was as if the years had fallen away. But even as Robert’s laughter rang in his ears, Ned felt something cold coil in his belly, a memory of old dreams and older debts.

Robert pulled back, his eyes bright with unshed tears and unspoken burdens. “Come,” he said, his voice suddenly rough. “Walk with me, Ned. There’s something I must see.”

They moved quickly across the yard, guards falling in behind them, but Robert waved them away with a dismissive hand. He led Ned down the winding steps into the crypts, torchlight flickering on ancient stone. The air grew colder, the weight of years pressing in on them like a shroud.

Robert’s boots echoed on the flagstones as he paused before Lyanna’s tomb. He reached out, his fingers trembling slightly, brushing the carved face. “I dream of her,” he said, his voice thick. “Even now. I thought if I could only be king, if I could build something… it would ease the ache. But it never does.”

Ned’s heart clenched. There was no balm for that wound, and Robert had never learned to let the past lie. He said nothing.

Robert turned to him then, his eyes heavy with the burdens of kingship. “I need you, Ned. I need you at my side again.” He laid a hand on Ned’s shoulder, his grip strong but pleading. “Be my Hand. I trust no other.”

The words settled on Ned like a shroud, heavy and cold. Robert went on, his voice softening. “And more. I have a son. You have a daughter. Let us join our houses, as we once dreamed. Joffrey and Sansa.”

Ned’s jaw tightened. He thought of the boy’s hair — bright as gold, like the queen’s. Like all the Lannisters. He thought of Howland’s dream again, the lions with false antlers bleeding the stag. He forced the thought down. It had to be nothing. It must be nothing.

He bowed his head, the weight of choice pressing down like Ice itself. “I will think on it,” he said quietly. “Both things. I will give you my answer soon.”

Robert clapped him on the back, mistaking his solemnity for stubborn Northern pride. “That’s the Ned Stark I know,” he said, his voice warm with the old affection. “Stubborn as a stone.”

They moved deeper into the crypts, torches casting long shadows behind them. Ned Stark walked with his king, but in the silence of his heart, he walked alone.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

The great hall of Winterfell rang with laughter and music, the scent of roasted meats and spiced wine thick in the air. Catelyn Stark sat at the high table beside the queen, her back straight despite the weight of the crown that pressed invisibly upon them all. Sansa sat at her father’s side, her blue eyes wide with wonder as she stole shy glances at Prince Joffrey, his golden hair catching the firelight like a promise.

Catelyn watched her daughter with a mixture of pride and worry. Sansa had always been so gentle, so eager to please. She had dreamed of songs and gallant knights, of handsome princes who would sweep her away to some far castle in the south. And now he was here, in their hall, all shining armor and easy smiles. Catelyn prayed her girl’s heart would not break too soon.

Further down the table, Arya was less enchanted. The little wolf threw a bit of bread at Sansa, her eyes dancing with mischief. Sansa flushed and cast a nervous glance toward the queen. Catelyn caught Robb’s eye and gestured sharply toward Arya. He rose at once, a quiet command in his gaze as he bent to speak to his sister. Arya’s grin faded, and she followed her brother out into the torchlit yard.

Catelyn’s gaze shifted to the king. Robert Baratheon laughed too loudly, his face red with drink and good cheer. A serving girl perched on his knee, and he pressed a sloppy kiss to her neck while the queen watched with eyes like sharpened glass. Catelyn felt the chill between them, the wound that festered in every silent glance. Queen Cersei’s smile was a blade, thin and cold.

Her eyes drifted across the hall to where Jon Snow stood near the hearth, speaking quietly with Benjen Stark. Jon’s eyes were bright, but a shadow clung to his smile. She remembered the conversation they had shared before the feast, her voice low but firm as she explained that he would not sit at the high table tonight. The queen’s pride would not bear it, and Ned could not risk a slight so early in their visit.

Jon had bowed his head, his dark hair falling across his brow. She had seen the hurt there, in the line of his shoulders and the silence that followed. Yet he had nodded and said, “I understand, Aunt Catelyn.” His voice had been steady, but his eyes had been shadowed with something older than his years.

She had never been his mother, though she had tried to offer him what little kindness she could. She had not always succeeded, but she had tried. She wondered if that would ever be enough.

A burst of laughter erupted from Robert’s table, sharp as the crack of a whip. Catelyn turned her head, her mind heavy with worry, and prayed the night would pass swiftly.

The feast stretched on into the deep hours of the night, the air heavy with wine and laughter, the music fading to a soft hum of lutes and low voices. Catelyn watched as Sansa was led away by Septa Mordane, her face flushed with dreams. Robb lingered to speak with Ser Rodrik, and Arya had long since vanished into the shadows of her chamber. Even Jon had retreated to the hearth’s edge, his eyes half-hidden in the fire’s glow. At last, Catelyn rose from her place, bidding the queen a careful goodnight, and felt the cold of the long night settle in her bones.

When she entered their chambers, Ned was already there, his face worn and quiet. The fire burned low, its embers glowing like old blood. They had spoken little at the feast, each occupied with their own thoughts. Now, in the hush of their room, they found each other again — slow, careful, a closeness born of habit and love.

Afterward, Catelyn rose, slipping a simple robe over her bare skin, and went to the sideboard. She poured a cup of watered wine, her fingers trembling only slightly. Ned watched her in silence, his grey eyes shadowed.

“Robert’s offer weighs on you,” she said at last, holding out the cup.

Ned took it, his hand brushing hers. “It does,” he admitted. “He asks me to be his Hand, and to betroth Sansa to his son. He means it as a kindness, but it feels… like a chain.”

“It is an honor,” Catelyn said gently, settling beside him. “An honor for you, and for Sansa. She would be queen, Ned. Queen of all the Seven Kingdoms. Think of that.”

Ned shook his head. “I have thought of it. And I think of the last Hand, lying dead in the cold ground. I think of the snakes in the south, and the weight of that office.”

Catelyn leaned closer, her voice taut with worry. “If you refuse him, he might take offense. He might think you plot against him, or that Winterfell stands apart. That could bring harm to us all — to Robb, to Jon, to Sansa, to every one of our children.”

Ned met her gaze, the lines of his face deepening. “Robert is my friend, more than a friend — like a brother to me. He would never harm me or my family.”

Catelyn studied his face, the lines carved by care and loss. “He would not,” she said softly. “But others might. The king you knew is not the man who sits that throne now. The years have changed him. Power has changed him.”

Ned frowned, staring into the dying fire. “I know,” he said at last, his voice low. “If I refuse him, it will be an insult he cannot ignore.”

“Then you must accept,” Catelyn urged, laying a hand on his arm. “For Sansa’s sake, if nothing else. She is a gentle girl, and she would make a good queen. She would be safe.”

Ned closed his eyes, the weight of choice pressing down like Ice itself. He must have felt the old gods watching him from the shadows, silent and patient.

A knock at the door startled them both. Ned turned, his hand falling instinctively to the hilt of his sword, though it lay across the room. “Enter,” he called.

The door creaked open to reveal Maester Luwin, his expression grave and worn. In his hands he held a small wooden box, unadorned but finely made.

“My lord, my lady,” he said, bowing his head. “Forgive the hour, but a message arrived at the maester’s tower. I thought it best brought to you in private.”

Catelyn took it from his hands. The box was plain, unadorned, the wood smooth and dark with age. She turned it over carefully, but found nothing suspicious — no mark of treachery or hidden threat. Yet she felt the weight of it in her palm like a stone.

Maester Luwin leaned closer. “Look here,” he said, his thin finger pointing to the cunningly fashioned clasp. With a practiced touch, he pressed a hidden catch and a small compartment clicked open, revealing a folded piece of parchment.

Catelyn’s breath caught as she unfolded it. The letters were written in a secret hand she had not seen in years — the language she and Lysa had invented as girls, scrawled in pale ink that bloomed under the glow of the firelight.

Her chest tightened. Lysa. Always so fearful, even as a child.

She read the message once, then again, the words a cold blade in her heart. Without hesitation, she held the parchment to the flames, watching it curl and blacken, the secrets it held devoured by the fire.

When the last of it had turned to ash, she turned to Ned, her face pale but resolute.

The fire had burned low, its embers glowing red in the hearth. Shadows crept across the walls, long and uncertain. Ned sat silent in his chair, eyes fixed on the flames. Catelyn could see the lines of care etched deep in his face, the weariness that no sleep could ease.

She turned the memory of the message over in her mind, each word sharp as a blade. “It was from Lysa,” she said at last, her voice low and unsteady. “She says Jon Arryn did not die of sickness, Ned. She says he was murdered.”

Ned’s eyes lifted from the fire, gray and hard as winter stone. “Murdered?”

“Poisoned,” she said, the word catching in her throat. “By the Lannisters.”

He frowned, a shadow crossing his face. “You are certain it was her hand?”

“I am,” Catelyn insisted, her voice firm now. “She wrote in the cipher we used as girls, a language only the two of us knew. She would never have risked such a message—never—if it were not the truth.”

Maester Luwin shifted, his hands folded in his sleeves. “She would have had to know the risk,” he said, his voice soft but urgent. “A letter like that could mean her death if discovered. She would not have taken that chance lightly.”

Ned’s brow furrowed. The firelight danced across his face, painting lines of doubt and duty. “Poison,” he said again, as though testing the word. “It is a coward’s weapon.”

“It is the weapon of the south,” Catelyn said. “The weapon of kingslayers and spymasters. Ned, if Jon Arryn was murdered, if the Lannisters truly conspired to kill him, then Robert is in danger—and so are we. You must go south. You must find the truth.”

Maester Luwin nodded. “For the realm, my lord. For the safety of the king—and for the sake of your own house. If the Hand was murdered, it is a threat to every noble house in the Seven Kingdoms.”

Catelyn’s eyes shone in the firelight, bright with worry. “Think of Sansa, Ned. Think of Robb. Think of all of them. You must go. You must.”

Ned said nothing. He stared into the flames as though seeking answers in their depths. The room fell silent, the only sound the low crackle of burning wood.

Maester Luwin and Catelyn watched him, their faces expectant, anxious.

At length, Ned rose and paced the room, his steps slow and deliberate. Shadows stretched and bent around him, the weight of the moment settling on his shoulders like a cloak of ice.

Finally, he turned and looked at Maester Luwin, his eyes hard and gray. “Leave us, Luwin” he said, his voice low.

The old maester hesitated, his mouth opening as if to protest. Then he bowed and withdrew, the door closing softly behind him.

The door closed softly behind Maester Luwin, leaving them alone in the flickering firelight. Catelyn watched Ned, his face drawn and pale, shadows dancing across the hard lines of his jaw. He looked as though the weight of the entire North pressed down upon his shoulders.

“Do you remember,” he said, his voice rough with memory, “why I told you about Jon—about who he truly was?”

Catelyn blinked, startled by the sudden shift. “I remember,” she said, her voice steady despite the chill that ran through her. “You told me because you trusted me. Because I was the mother of your child.”

Ned gave a soft, weary laugh that held no warmth. “Yes,” he said. “I trusted you. But that was not the only reason.”

He turned to her fully now, his gray eyes meeting hers in the dancing glow. “It was Howland Reed who counseled me to tell you. Not my own wisdom.”

Catelyn’s brow furrowed. “Howland Reed?” she repeated. “The one who fought with you at the Tower of Joy?”

Ned nodded. “He has a gift, Catelyn. Since he was a boy. Green dreams, the old crones called them. Visions of what may come.”

He paused, the words catching in his throat. “When we were young, we made light of it—even Lyanna. She called it a game, trying to fit the pieces together. But as we grew older, the dreams turned darker. More violent. And Howland… he was never wrong.”

Catelyn felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She had always known there were mysteries in the North—old gods and old ways that ran deeper than she could grasp—but to hear Ned speak of them so plainly chilled her to the bone.

Ned drew a long breath. “Nine years ago,” he said, his voice low, “just after the Rebellion ended—while the Greyjoys still stirred but before they rose—Howland came to me with two dreams.”

His eyes went distant, as if he could see the past in the flickering embers. “One was of an old falcon dying at the hand of a mockingbird while trying to protect a fat stag drinking from a pond. Then lions with false stag’s antlers started leeching the stag’s life away. A great grey wolf came and tried to fight, to save the stag” he paused, his voice growing quieter, eyes darkening with dread. “But he lost his head.”

He paused, and the silence stretched between them like a blade. “And then there was another dream,” he continued, his voice barely a whisper now. “Six wolves. One held captive in a golden cage. One wandering and weeping in strange lands. One pierced by two towers crowned in flayed flesh. Two burning at their home. And one bleeding at the Wall until the world turned black and cold, and blue eyes rose from the dark.”

Catelyn sat frozen, her hands folded in her lap, the firelight glinting off her pale skin. She felt the shape of the dream settle over her, heavy and cold as a funeral shroud.

She wanted to dismiss it all as shadows and fancy, the mad ramblings of an old friend with too much moss in his head. Dreams were only dreams — half-forgotten scraps of sleep and smoke. That was what she wanted to believe.

But as Ned spoke of the wolves — their fur, their eyes — each description settled on her like a stone. Grey and silver fur, golden eyes, yellow eyes, black coats, white pelts, red eyes, green eyes — her children. Each one. The dream clawed at the edges of her reason, whispering that it had never been a dream at all.

Her heart twisted painfully at the thought of it — wolves burning, caged, lost, killed. And the last of them, white as snow, with blood-red eyes, bleeding at the Wall.

She thought of the Wall then — the cold, the dark, and Jon’s restless yearning to join the black brothers. That hunger had always lived in his eyes, a longing for something beyond Winterfell’s gates.

Now the dream said he would bleed there — and the world would grow cold and black.

A shiver ran through her, as if the fire’s warmth could no longer touch her. She tried to deny it, to cast it aside as nonsense, but the fear clung to her heart like ice.

Ned’s face was drawn, the lines deep and harsh. “I do not know what all of it means,” he said. “But Howland’s dreams are not idle fancy. They come true, in ways I cannot always understand.” He leaned closer, his voice rough with worry. “And now, with Jon Arryn dead and the realm in chaos, I cannot shake the feeling that the dreams are waking.”

Catelyn rose slowly, her legs unsteady, and crossed to the sideboard. She poured herself a cup of wine, the tremor in her hand betraying the calm she tried to hold. Turning back to him, her voice low and fierce, she said, “Then you cannot go, Ned. Not if it means your death. Not if it means the suffering of everyone you love.”

Ned’s eyes met hers, gray and solemn. “After the Greyjoy Rebellion,” he said softly, “Howland warned me there would come a time when I would have to choose—a choice that could save lives or doom them.” His voice was like a blade drawn in the dark. “I think that time has come.”

Catelyn’s face paled, but her voice did not falter. “Then you must stay,” she said. “You must choose your family. You must choose the North.”

Ned’s gaze drifted back to the flames, shadows dancing in his eyes. “Aye,” he said, his voice breaking. “I will not go.”

He looked back at her then, sorrow carving deep lines in his face. “Old gods forgive me,” he whispered, his voice so low she almost did not hear. “But I cannot keep Robert safe.”

The fire crackled in the silence that followed, its light the only witness to the vow he had made.

Chapter Text

Eddard

The godswood was empty save for the sighing of the trees, their bare branches creaking in the chill wind like old bones. Ned Stark knelt beneath the heart tree, his cloak pooled around him like a shadow on the moss. He had come to pray, but no words would come — only silence, and the slow, heavy beat of his own heart.

Robert was gone. The banners of the stag and the lion had disappeared down the kingsroad three days past, their laughter and songs fading like mist in the morning sun. Only the echoes remained, trapped in the cold stones of Winterfell like ghosts.

The king’s visit had ended sooner than expected. Robert had come with all his banners, expecting hospitality and feasting and the easy laughter of old friends. But Ned’s refusal had soured the air like a bitter draught. Robert’s rage had been swift, hot as wildfire, the roar of an old lion too long caged.

Ned had watched his friend’s face flush red with anger, watched the wine cup tremble in Robert’s hand. And behind the king, he had seen Cersei’s cold smile, a blade thin and sharp. Jaime’s smirk had been like the crack of a whip.

In the end, Robert had taken his court and his queen and ridden south in a fury, the echo of his curses still hanging in the yard like smoke. Catelyn had watched them go with troubled eyes.

Now, alone beneath the ancient branches, Eddard bowed his head. He felt the weight of that choice like a stone on his chest. He had chosen his family, chosen the North, but the cost of that choice gnawed at him still.

He remembered the moment he had spoken the words. The air had been heavy in the solar, the fire crackling low in the hearth. Robert’s face had gone red with fury, the veins in his neck bulging like cords. Spittle flew from his lips as he shouted, each word a hammer blow.

“You would refuse your king?” he had thundered, his voice thick with betrayal and disbelief. “After all we fought for, Ned? After all we bled for?”

Ned had borne the storm without flinching, his jaw tight, his hands folded before him like a shield. He had not raised his voice. He had not let his temper guide him. “I cannot,” he said simply, his words a quiet knife. “My place is here. My family needs me. The north needs me.”

Robert’s fury had burned hot and bright, a blaze that threatened to consume the room. He had cursed Ned then — a string of bitter oaths that would have made a septon faint. Words like daggers, each one a wound.

Yet even as the fire raged, Ned had seen the grief in Robert’s eyes, the old hurt that never healed. Lyanna’s name had hovered between them, unspoken yet heavier than any chain.

Slowly, like a fire burning itself out, the anger had ebbed. Robert’s great shoulders slumped, and the wine cup he held trembled in his hand. The laughter was gone from his voice, replaced by the brittle silence of old regrets.

Ned had seized that fragile moment to speak of Sansa. He had offered her hand to Joffrey when she came of age, a gesture of alliance he knew Robert would cling to. “A strong alliance,” Robert had muttered, pacing before the hearth like a restless bear. “A tie between north and south, just as we dreamed.”

“But not yet,” Ned had insisted, his voice firm but gentle. “Not until she is of age. Let her be a girl a while longer.”

Robert had grumbled, his brows drawn together like thunderclouds, but in the end he had nodded. “It will do,” he had said at last, though there was a hollowness in his eyes that no wine could fill.

Ned had watched him then, this man who had once been his brother in all but blood, and wondered if the Robert he had known had not been left behind on some battlefield long ago.

He thought then of Jon.

The boy had come to him after the feast, eyes alight with longing, his dark hair falling across his brow. “Uncle Benjen says I could take the black,” Jon had said, his voice eager and solemn all at once. “He says the Wall needs men of honor.”

Ned had felt the old dread coil tight in his belly, cold and sharp. A white wolf, with red eyes. Bleeding out at the Wall.

Jon had always yearned for a place, a purpose. In his heart, Ned had known this talk would come one day, but he had hoped for more time — time to give the boy what he could not give him by name alone.

Catelyn had said nothing at first, only fixed Jon with a soft, sorrowful gaze. She had always tried to be kind, to show him a mother’s love despite the burden of secrets that weighed on them both. She had held him when he cried as a child, kissed his brow when fever took him, and guided his steps with as much care as she did Robb’s. Yet even now, the words she longed to speak felt heavy in her throat.

It had been Ned who spoke, though the words were like knives in his throat. “You are too young,” he had told Jon, each word a small betrayal. “Another year, at least. Time to think. Time to grow.”

Jon had argued — not loudly, not rudely — but with the stubborn fire that Ned knew too well. The boy’s eyes had shone with that fierce pride, that refusal to bend, and for a moment Ned had seen himself in that gaze.

It had taken both him and Catelyn together to forbid it. Their voices had joined in a chorus of gentle refusal that felt, to Ned, like the closing of a door.

Since that night, Jon had not spoken to them beyond the barest courtesies. Polite, distant — the rift between them opening like a hairline crack in the ice. Ned could see the hurt in the boy’s grey eyes, could feel it like a wound that would not close. And he hated himself for it.

Days passed in a slow, steady rhythm. The tension that had clouded the castle during the king’s visit had lifted, leaving behind the quiet order that had always defined Winterfell. Ned walked the battlements each morning, the crisp air biting at his cheeks, his mind a tangle of old memories and new worries.

It had been nearly a fortnight since he had refused Robert’s offer. The choice still weighed on him like a chain, but the castle itself seemed to breathe easier in the king’s absence.

He watched his children, saw the unasked questions in their eyes — the small mysteries of a choice they did not understand. Yet they had accepted it in the way of the North silent, patient, carrying on with the rhythms of the day. Only Sansa had wept. Night after night, she had come to him with tears in her blue eyes, asking why she could not go to King’s Landing if she was to wed Joffrey.

Ned and Catelyn had answered her as best as they could, “When you reach six-and-ten,” they said. “When you are older. When you are ready.”

Sansa had sniffled and nodded, her tears drying with practiced grace. She had carried herself with dignity after that, as a lady should — but Ned had seen the shadows in her eyes, the lingering ache of a child’s broken dream.

The godswood offered him no answers, only silence and the sighing of the wind through the branches. He had begun to doubt that any wisdom still lived among the old gods.

But then the ravens came.

Not one or two, but dozens, their black wings filling the morning sky. They perched on the battlements and the rooftops, their beady eyes fixed on him, their cries harsh and insistent. Ned felt a shiver crawl up his spine as he watched them gather. He knew what it meant.

Howland Reed had always walked the old paths. Even as a boy, the ravens had flown above him in silent company, as if drawn by something ancient in his blood. Now they came ahead of him, a silent herald of the secrets he carried.

Ned turned from the window, his heart a mix of dread and hope. Howland had come north, and with him, the past would come as well.

By midday, Howland Reed stood once more within the walls of Winterfell. The sun had reached its zenith, streaming pale light through the high windows of the Great Hall. Shadows stretched across the stone floor like grasping hands.

Ned met him beneath the old banners, and for a moment, it was as if the years had fallen away — the wars, the burdens, the losses.

Howland was older now, as was he. His hair, once the color of rich mud, was shot through with silver and bound at the nape with a simple leather cord. Lines of care marked his face, the years of the marshlands etched in every crease. Yet his eyes — bright green, sharp and secretive — had not changed. They held the same quiet knowing that had carried him through the battle at the Tower of Joy, and through all the days since.

They embraced briefly, two men bound by blood and memories no others could ever truly understand.

“It has been too long,” Ned said, his voice low.

“Too long,” Howland agreed, smiling that shy, lopsided smile that had once made Lyanna laugh.

Beside him stood two youths — a boy of perhaps fifteen, wiry and serious, with eyes that seemed to see more than they should. He carried himself with a stillness that was unsettling in one so young, his gaze steady and calm as the deep waters of the Neck. His clothes were simple, the colors of peat and rushes, blending easily into the marsh he had left behind.

Beside him, a girl stood with the quiet confidence of a huntress. She was a tall girl, her hair the color of river reeds, long and loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and keen, alive with curiosity and the thrill of movement. She wore leather and wool, practical garb that bore the scent of damp earth and green leaves. A knife hung at her hip, its hilt worn but well cared for.

“My children,” Howland said, his voice touched with both pride and worry. “Jojen and Meera.”

Ned greeted them warmly, though the strangeness of it tugged at him. They were older than most fosterlings he had known. But there was purpose in their coming, of that he was certain.

They walked the battlements together after the formalities were done, the children left to explore under Catelyn’s careful eye. The wind was sharp and bracing, carrying with it the scent of pine and distant snow. Winter was coming, a cold promise in the air.

Below, Winterfell’s rooftops sprawled like a nest of sleeping beasts, smoke curling lazily from the chimneys. He could hear the clang of steel from the yard, the low murmur of voices drifting on the wind. But up here, it felt as though the world had narrowed to just the two of them, two men bound by blood and memory.

“Do you remember,” Howland said, glancing sideways, his green eyes sharp with old mischief, “when I first came here?”

Ned smiled faintly, his breath misting in the cold air. “You were half-drowned in the bogs when we found you.”

“Ah, but I was a sight,” Howland said, his voice soft with old affection. “Mud to my chin, dripping like a frog. She laughed at me for a week.”

“She called you her little frog prince,” Ned said, his voice warm with memory.

“And I called her a wolf-maiden,” Howland replied.

They both chuckled quietly, though the laughter did not reach their eyes. The past lived between them — bright and bitter — a tapestry woven of sunlight and blood.

They fell silent then, walking a few paces in the cold wind. Howland’s eyes drifted northward, to the line of the forest that marked the edge of the world.

“There was a time,” Howland said at last, his voice low, “when I thought I understood the shape of my dreams.” Ned turned to him, his expression curious. “It was in the days before the rebellion,” Howland continued. “I dreamt of a she-wolf in a bed of blood, surrounded by sand. I thought… I thought it was the end for her. That she would die in torment.” Ned felt a cold weight settle in his chest, though he did not speak. “I was certain of it,” Howland said, his eyes fixed on some memory only he could see. “I told you then — I remember the fear in your eyes. We were so sure the blood meant pain, that it meant suffering” He paused, the wind tugging at his hair. “But we never saw the truth of it, not fully. Dreams are fog, Ned. What I saw came to pass — there was blood, but it wasn’t the blood we thought.”

Ned nodded, his face drawn. “But there was still blood.”

Howland’s eyes met his, full of that quiet, secret knowing. “Aye,” he said softly. “There was still blood.”

As the sun dipped low, staining the sky in shades of amber and crimson, they retired to Ned’s solar. Shadows gathered in the corners, and the firelight danced on the old tapestries like restless ghosts. Catelyn left them alone with a knowing look — this was old business, older than her place among them, older than marriage or war.

Howland closed the door softly behind him and turned to face Ned fully. His eyes, green and deep as the Neck, seemed to see through all the walls Ned had built around himself.

“I am not staying,” he said, his voice quiet but resolute.

Ned felt the weight of those words settle like a stone in his chest. “You are going north.”

Howland nodded. “There are things stirring beyond the Wall. Old things. The gift I have… it was meant for more than dreams. Bloodraven calls, though he would not name himself so openly.”

Ned gripped the back of a chair, his knuckles whitening with the force of his grip. The room felt smaller suddenly, the air heavier. “And your children?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“They will remain here. In your care, if you will have them.”

“You need not ask.” Winterfell was their home now, for as long as they wished it.

Howland smiled faintly, but there was sorrow in it too — a sadness that seemed to reach back through the years to a dawn long lost. “Before I go,” he said, “I must tell you what I have seen.”

Ned’s mouth went dry. Another dream.

He sank into his chair, his cloak pooling around him like a shadow. The fire hissed and cracked in the hearth, filling the room with its restless voice. Howland remained standing, framed by the firelight, a figure of shadow and truth. He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts.

“This time, only one dream,” he said at last. “A clear one.” He took a slow breath, his voice low and solemn. “A white wolf,” he said. “Standing proud and tall. But he bore dragon wings — vast and terrible. And around him, every creature and every tree, every river and mountain, bowed.”

Ned felt as if the floor had tilted beneath him, as if the world itself had shifted. Jon. It could only be Jon. He shook his head, denying it as a drowning man denies the sea. “He is a boy,” Ned said roughly. “He dreams of the Wall, not crowns. He is no king.”

Howland opened his eyes and looked at him with infinite sadness. “The choice was made, Eddard,” he said. “The day you chose to remain here. The future bent to your decision. Jon’s path is no longer the one you imagined for him.”

Ned rose, pacing the room like a caged wolf. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots. He thought of Jon — stubborn, earnest, brave. Too much his father’s son. He thought of the Wall, the Night’s Watch, the sword Jon yearned to carry. He thought of the blood that ran in the boy’s veins. Stark blood. Targaryen blood.

“Is there no way to stop it?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Howland shook his head slowly. “The river flows. You can dam it for a time. You can divert it. But it will find its course in the end.”

Ned’s shoulders slumped. He bowed his head, the weight of every choice pressing down on him like a mountain.

Howland Reed came to him then, and clasped his shoulder as he had on the battlefield so many years before. His grip was warm, steady, full of old strength. “Trust him,” Howland said simply. “The boy you raised. The wolf with dragon wings.”

Ned closed his eyes, the fire’s warmth on his face a poor shield against the cold that had settled in his heart.

They said their farewells that night under a sky strewn with cold stars. The moon hung low and thin as a scythe, its pale light etching the world in silver and shadow. The air smelled of frost and old woodsmoke, a reminder that winter’s breath had already crept into the North.

They spoke little, for what words could carry the weight of what lay between them? Old loyalties, old secrets, old wounds. Howland’s green eyes were shadowed with sorrow, yet there was a quiet strength there too — the same strength that had carried him through battles and bogs, through blood and broken oaths.

At dawn, Howland Reed rode north, alone, into the frost and the gathering dark. His cloak flapped behind him like a banner of marsh reeds, the hood drawn tight against the wind. Ned watched him go from the battlements, his hands resting on the cold stone, his heart heavy with the weight of choices yet to come.

Far below, Jojen and Meera Reed stood at the gates, their faces turned to Holland’s back Jojen’s eyes were old beyond his years, solemn and knowing. Meera’s gaze was bright and unflinching, like a hawk’s. They did not wave. They did not call out. They only watched, silent witnesses to a world in the making.

The old world was passing. Ned could feel it in the wind, taste it in the iron tang of the cold air. The new world — strange and terrible — was already taking shape, coiled like a snake in the grass, waiting for the moment to strike.

And Winterfell stood at its heart, as it always had, a fortress of stone and blood and memory.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

Life at Winterfell had settled into a new, tentative rhythm. The days grew shorter, the winds sharper, carrying the bite of the coming winter. The fields had been harvested, the stores filled. Fires burned brighter in the hearths, and the scent of woodsmoke clung to every stone.

And in the halls and yards, two new faces moved among the Starks — the children of Howland Reed.

Meera was quick as a willow branch, all smiles and sharp eyes. She hunted with Robb in the woods and sparred good-naturedly with Arya, her laughter bright as the morning sun. Arya had taken to her instantly, nearly worshiped her in the way of a lonely child finding a kindred spirit.

Jojen was quieter. A solemn boy, younger than Robb by a year but older in some strange, heavy way. His eyes held a knowing that made even the old maester pause. He spent his days in the library or walking the godswood paths with Bran, speaking in low voices of things that left the boy wide-eyed and wondering.

Catelyn had watched them carefully at first, wary of strangers so near her children. But their loyalty was as plain as the mud on their boots. They were Howland’s blood, and that was enough.

This morning, she made her way through the castle, the chill air biting at her cheeks. From the yard she heard laughter — Arya’s laughter, sharp and unbridled. She paused at the parapet and looked down to see Arya dancing across the packed earth with a wooden sword in hand, Meera Reed her opponent. The girl moved like a cat, all grace and speed.

Catelyn frowned, disapproval stirring in her chest. A lady should not carry a sword, she thought. But then she remembered Ned’s quiet words “It is good for her to have a friend — another girl who doesn’t shrink from her wildness.” Catelyn had yielded, though her heart still clenched every time she saw Arya’s unbound hair flying as she swung her blade.

She moved on, past the training yard, and caught sight of Sansa on a bench with Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassel. The girls were sewing, their heads bent close, giggling at some private joke. Catelyn’s heart softened. Sansa had cried when she learned she would not go to King’s Landing, her dreams of court and golden princes dashed in an instant. But here she was, calm and poised, her grief folded away like a summer gown, her smile once more that of a lady.

Further along, in the practice yard, Catelyn saw Jon with Robb, Theon, and Jojen, all under Ser Rodrik’s watchful eye. Swords clashed, laughter mingling with the rhythmic thud of practice blades. Bran stood at the edge, a wooden sword clutched in his small hands, his eyes shining. Catelyn felt a mother’s pride and a pang of worry all at once.

She smiled, but the smile faded as her gaze drifted to the edge of the yard where the wolves waited. Grey Wind prowled beside Robb, watchful and lean, his grey fur rippling in the wind. Ghost stood a little apart, his white coat gleaming like fresh snow, his red eyes fixed on Jon with a devotion that was both comforting and unsettling.

The old dream came to her then, unbidden and cold — six wolves, six fates. She thought of the dream Ned had shared, of the dangers that might come. But here, within the walls of Winterfell, with the children strong and together, she dared to hope that the gods would keep them safe.

The old dream of six wolves lingered in her mind like a shadow, but another dream soon took its place — the dream Ned had shared with her in the hush of their bedchamber, his voice low and burdened.

“A white wolf,” he had said. “A white wolf with dragon wings, vast and terrible.”

Her gaze shifted across the yard, seeking him out. Jon stood near the yard, his practice sword raised, showing Bran how to parry and pivot. His movements were precise, his focus unwavering, the snowlight catching in his black hair.

A boy with wolf’s blood, and dragon too.

The thought struck her like a chill wind. She had tried to treat him as a son — as best she could, knowing the secret that lay between her and Ned. She had mended his cuts, praised his skill, soothed his fevers. She had not always succeeded, but she had tried.

He was the white wolf in the dream — she knew it, in the marrow of her bones. What that meant, she could not yet say. Howland’s words had haunted her in the quiet hours of the night, “The river flows, you can dam it for a time. You can divert it. But it will find its course in the end.”

Her heart stirred with a mother’s worry — for Jon, for all of them. She wondered what future might come for the boy with dragon wings. Would he fly or fall? Would the fire consume him, or would he rise from the ashes stronger than before?

Whatever fate the gods had woven for him, he would not face it alone. She would see to that. They would all stand beside him, as a family should.

The wind picked up as the sun fell behind the hills, rattling the shutters and carrying the scent of snow. Winterfell’s halls glowed with the warmth of hearth fires, but in the corners, shadows gathered like old memories.

As the day gave way to night, the castle settled into its evening rhythm — the clatter of plates, the laughter of serving girls, the muted voices of men at their cups. Catelyn made her way to the Great Hall, the scent of roasted meats and fresh bread greeting her like an old friend.

The Starks gathered at the high table beneath the ancient banners of the direwolf. Ned sat at her side, his face calm but distant, his thoughts still caught in the webs of dreams and prophecy. Robb spoke quietly with Jon and Theon, laughter dancing in his voice like the last bright leaf of autumn. Bran leaned on the table, half-asleep with the weariness of a day spent at practice, while Rickon giggled at Arya’s stories.

Arya, still flushed from sparring with Meera, chattered on about her victories — her hair a tangle of wind and wildness. Meera sat beside her, her green eyes bright with mischief, listening with the easy grace of a hunter at rest.

Jojen was quiet, his gaze distant and solemn, a boy who carried too many secrets for his years. He toyed with a piece of bread, as if seeing something in its crumbling shape that no one else could.

Sansa, ever the lady, smiled and served her brothers, the sadness in her eyes hidden behind a practiced grace. Catelyn watched her daughter, pride and worry battling in her heart. Sansa was growing so quickly — too quickly.

The firelight flickered across the hall, painting each face in hues of gold and shadow. For a moment, it felt as though the walls themselves were listening, old stone hearing the laughter and the stories, the love and the worry.

“Father,” Robb said, leaning forward with that eager grin he shared with Ned’s brother Brandon. “Did you hear that Lord Tywin has been named Hand of the King?”

Ned’s jaw tightened ever so slightly. “Aye, I heard,” he said. “Robert has chosen the lion to guard the realm.”

“And Stannis?” Theon asked, his brows arched in curiosity. “They say he’s still at Dragonstone, brooding like a hen on a roost.”

“And took a red witch into his castle,” Jon added quietly, his voice carrying a hint of disbelief. “That’s what the ravens say.”

Arya made a face. “A witch? Like in the stories?”

Bran’s eyes went wide. “Do you think she’s cursed him, Father?”

Ned gave a small shake of his head. “Stories, Bran. Nothing more. Though I’d wager Stannis is the sort to scowl at his own shadow.”

Laughter rippled around the table, warm and light.

“Oh!” Sansa exclaimed suddenly, her eyes bright. “Did you hear about the tourney? The one they planned for the new Hand? They say Lord Tywin canceled it as soon as he arrived at court.”

“That’s like a Lannister,” Robb muttered. “No games, just gold.”

Sansa pouted prettily. “I wish I were of age already. Then I could go south and be a true princess.”

Robb grinned. “You’d be stuck with Joffrey then. I’d rather face the Others.”

Sansa’s lips parted in protest. “Joffrey is noble and brave!” she declared. “He’s nothing like you say.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “He’s as noble as Grey Wind’s tail.”

“Enough,” Catelyn interjected gently, though her voice carried the firmness of command. “Let your sister dream her dreams.”

Jon cleared his throat, his voice steady and low. “Robb’s right,” he said. “Joffrey’s not the kind of man you think, Sansa.”

Sansa’s cheeks flushed pink, tears brimming in her eyes. “You’re all just jealous!” she cried. She pushed back from the table and fled the hall, her skirts whispering against the stone.

Silence fell like a shroud. Ned sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “You should not be so hard on your sister,” he said quietly. “She’s young, and the world is full of hard lessons. Let her keep her innocence a little longer.”

Catelyn nodded, though inside her heart twisted with unease. The dreams came back to her — the lions with false antlers, leeching the life from the realm.

She watched her family, laughter now replaced by shadows, and wondered how many would remain to see the dawn.

Later that night, the wind rattled the shutters as Winterfell slept. In their chambers, the fire burned low, casting long shadows across the walls. Catelyn sat by the hearth, a half-finished mending in her lap. Ned stood by the window, his face lined with worry, his eyes lost in the darkness beyond the glass.

He turned to her at last, his voice low and weary. “Tywin as Hand,” he said, as though the words themselves were bitter on his tongue. “A lion’s claws at the heart of the realm.”

Catelyn set her mending aside, her own thoughts heavy. “And Stannis still at Dragonstone,” she added. “He refuses to return to court, or so the ravens say. They call him stubborn, but I think he sees the rot at the heart of King’s Landing as clearly as we do.”

Ned’s hand curled around the window frame, his knuckles white. “I wonder if I did right,” he said quietly. “Refusing Robert’s offer. I thought I was choosing our family. But now, with Tywin’s claws sunk in the capital, I fear I’ve left Robert to face the lions alone.”

Catelyn rose and went to him, laying a hand on his arm. “You chose right,” she said, though the words felt thin. “You chose the North. You chose your family. Robert has his armies, his lords, his pride. He’ll not be so easily undone.”

But in her heart, doubt coiled like a sleeping serpent. She did not know if any choice was safe anymore.

Ned sighed, his breath misting in the chill air. “Sansa,” he murmured. “She’s not a girl anymore. She dreams of courts and princes, of silks and songs. But the world she’ll inherit… it will not be the world she’s imagined. Her dreams will break.”

Catelyn felt her heart twist. “She is still a child,” she said, her voice soft. “Let her be one while she can.”

Ned turned to her, his grey eyes heavy with sorrow. “We must prepare her,” he said. “All of them. The world is changing, Cat. And we cannot shield them from it forever.”

Catelyn closed her eyes, pressing her lips together against the grief that rose in her throat. She did not want that. She did not want her children to carry swords and secrets. But she knew the truth of it — the cold truth of the North.

She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll teach them. We’ll prepare them. Whatever comes, they’ll not face it alone.”

Ned pulled her close, his arms strong and warm, though his heart felt miles away.

Outside, the wind moaned through the towers, and the first snowflakes of winter fell against the stones.

This morning had begun like any other. A pale dawn crept over the high walls of Winterfell, painting the sky in soft hues of gold and rose. Frost clung to the stones, silvering every surface and turning the courtyard into a world of light and cold.

The air was sharp in her lungs, biting with the promise of the long winter to come. The sounds of swordplay echoed beneath the ramparts — the ring of steel on steel, the barked commands of Ser Rodrik as he drilled the young men of Winterfell.

Catelyn stood by the solar window, her breath misting on the glass. She watched Robb in the yard, his practice sword flashing in the pale light, his movements growing steadier and more sure with each passing day. Soon enough, he would be a man grown, a Stark in truth and not just in name. And still, she thought with a pang, so much a boy — his laughter bright and sharp, his smile so quick to rise.

Jon was there too, a little apart from the others, sparring with a blunt practice blade. His strikes were precise, his footwork measured, but there was a distance in him, a quiet anger that not even Ghost’s silent shadow could soothe. The white wolf lay near the yard’s edge, watching with those red eyes that saw too much.

She turned away from the window with a sigh, gathering her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The castle felt different these days, quieter, as if the air itself held its breath.

That was when Maester Luwin came. His footsteps hurried on the stone, his breath short from climbing the tower stairs. He carried a sealed scroll clutched tightly in his hand.

“My lady,” he said, his voice low and urgent, the lines of worry deep on his brow. “You must summon Lord Stark at once.”

A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the wind.

They met in the Great Hall, the long tables cleared, the smallfolk dismissed, the heavy oak doors bolted against the cold. The room felt vast and empty, every shadow deepened by the low flames in the hearths.

Ned arrived within moments, his cloak swirling behind him, a shadow of concern already crossing his features when he saw Maester Luwin’s expression. The old maester stood stiffly, his hands clasped around a sealed scroll, his face lined with worry and weariness.

“What news?” Ned asked, his voice low but sharp, cutting through the hush like a drawn blade.

Luwin bowed his head, the candlelight glinting off his chain. “My lord. My lady.” He took a trembling breath. “The king… Robert Baratheon… is dead.”

The words fell into the hall like stones into still water. Silence rippled outward in their wake.

Catelyn gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The chill in the room deepened, creeping into her bones.

Ned stood very still, as if the words had turned him to stone. His face was carved from ice, grey eyes unblinking.

“He was wounded while hunting,” Luwin continued, his voice careful, each word placed like a stone in a wall. “A boar, they say. He lingered for days before the wound claimed him.”

“A boar,” Ned murmured, his voice strange — hoarse and hollow. The word hung between them like a blade unsheathed. As if he heard another sound beneath Luwin’s words. As if he saw another hand guiding the blade.

Catelyn’s fingers trembled against her lips. She thought of Robert’s laughter, his easy strength. She thought of the court at King’s Landing — the snakes and the vipers that prowled the halls in silks and smiles.

“And the throne?” she managed at last, though her throat felt dry as winter leaves.

Luwin hesitated, his fingers white on the scroll. “Joffrey Baratheon has been crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms.”

The lion with false antlers. The false crown atop false blood.

Catelyn looked to Ned and saw the storm raging behind his grey eyes. The dreams were coming to pass — the fat stag dead at the pond, the lions leeching the life from the realm.

She reached for his hand, but he did not move, his gaze locked on something only he could see. And now the world would bleed.

Chapter Text

Stannis

The sea crashed endlessly against the black rocks of Dragonstone, a sound like distant thunder that never ceased. The wind carried salt and cold through the window slit, stinging his eyes as he stared at the whitecaps below.

Stannis Baratheon stood at the window of the Solar, arms clasped behind his back, his jaw tight. The raven had come at first light, its wings black as the sky before a storm. The letter it bore had been written in a stranger’s hand — neat, official, but stinking of Lannister courtesy.

Robert was dead. Killed by a boar, they said.

Stannis grunted softly — a sound without humor, a sound that died on the cold air. Robert had always been reckless, drunk on wine and bravado, too fond of his pleasures, too quick to laugh. And yet…

He closed his eyes. Memories rose unbidden — Robert’s booming laugh on the tourney field, the way he would swing his hammer in battle as if he could break the world in two. A brother who had always drawn the light to himself, leaving Stannis in the shadows.

But this… this stank of something more. He had seen the rot in King’s Landing for years the golden Lannister smiles that hid dagger in the dark, the queen’s cold ambition coiled like a viper under the Iron Throne. He had smelled it, even as Robert had drunk with them, feasted with them, taken their gold.

And now the boy — the blond boy — wore his brother’s crown. Stannis’s lip curled. Not Robert’s son. Not Robert’s blood. An ill-born whelp, he thought. Seed of incest. Fruit of treason. His hands flexed at his sides.

And then there was Renly. The letter from the south had spoken of a failed coup in King’s Landing, of Renly’s sudden flight to Highgarden under the cloak of night. Coward, Stannis thought, traitor. And now word reached him that the lords of the Reach had crowned Renly Baratheon king. His own brother — the same boy who had played with wooden swords at Storm’s End, who had wept the day they’d buried their mother.

Stannis felt the old bitterness rise, the same bitterness that had been his companion since boyhood — a sour taste of always being second, always in the shadows. Robert had been the warrior, the hero, the king. Renly had been the charmer, the golden boy with a smile for every hall. And Stannis… Stannis had been the stone. And now they would all pay. The sea crashed again, louder this time, as if to answer his thoughts.

A sound behind him, the soft rustle of robes against stone, broke Stannis’s reverie. He turned, jaw set, to find Melisandre standing in the doorway, a tall figure clad in flowing crimson, her hair a river of living flame. The red glow of her ruby pendant pulsed softly, like a heartbeat in the gloom.

“Your Grace,” she said, her voice a velvet murmur, smooth and sure. “You grieve for your brother.”

Stannis’s eyes narrowed. “I grieve for the realm,” he replied, his tone as sharp as a drawn blade. “And for the rot that grows in King’s Landing. My brother’s death was no hunting mishap.”

Melisandre’s lips curved into a small, knowing smile. “A boar can be a cunning beast,” she said. “Or the hand that guides it can wear a golden crown.”

Stannis’s jaw clenched. “The lions,” he spat. “And the vipers.”

She inclined her head, her red hair catching the firelight. “But you are the one the Lord of Light has chosen. I see victory in your path, my king. The night may gather, but your fire will burn through the darkness. The Iron Throne is your destiny.”

“Destiny,” Stannis muttered. “A word to comfort children.”

Her eyes gleamed like garnets. “Not so. I have seen it in the flames. I have seen a dragon rise from stone in the dark, and it can only be you. You are the one who will wake the dragons from their long sleep.”

A muscle ticked in Stannis’s jaw. “Dragons from stone,” he echoed. “I have heard enough riddles from maesters and madmen.”

Melisandre stepped closer, her presence like the heat of a forge. “It is not a riddle,” she said. “It is your path. The fires do not lie. Your blood calls to the power that sleeps beneath this world. Only you can wake it.”

Stannis turned back to the window, the sea’s thunder a ceaseless drumbeat in his ears. “And the lords?” he asked, his voice low.

“They await you in the war chambers,” she replied. “All but those who fear your fire.”

Stannis gave a short, sharp nod. “It is time.”

Melisandre’s smile deepened, her ruby glinting. “It is time,” she echoed.

Stannis turned from the window, his face set in hard lines. He felt Melisandre’s presence at his side, a heat that lingered even in the chill corridors of Dragonstone. Together they walked the narrow halls, the sea’s ceaseless roar echoing through the stone.

Tapestries of ancient battles lined the walls, their colors faded, the dragons long turned to dust. Stannis’s boots struck the flagstones with the measured rhythm of a drumbeat. Each step carried the weight of his brother’s crown, of the Iron Throne that called to him in his dreams.

Melisandre’s eyes glowed in the half-light, her crimson robes a river of blood in the shadows. “They will see your fire,” she murmured. “And they will bow.”

He said nothing, his jaw clenched, his mind already on the council that awaited. The lords of the Narrow Sea and the stormlands had gathered like gulls on a carcass — some loyal, some merely waiting to see which way the wind blew.

They reached the heavy oak door of the war chamber. Stannis paused a moment, his hand on the iron handle. Melisandre’s eyes met his, unwavering.

“Trust in the Lord of Light,” she whispered.

Stannis pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The chamber fell silent as he entered, the lords around the table turning to face him. Candlelight flickered across worn faces, eyes sharp with ambition and fear. The salt air crept in through the high windows, carrying the scent of the sea and the promise of blood.

They looked to him now. All of them.

Stannis’s cold gaze swept the table, marking each man in turn. There was Lord Velaryon of Driftmark, his long silver hair tied back in a neat braid, his pale eyes betraying nothing. Lord Celtigar of Claw Isle, lean and hawk-nosed, his chain of office heavy on his breast. Ser Axell Florent — his wife’s kin, red-faced and proud, eager to press his claim to Stannis’s favor. His uncle Ser Imry Florent, more cautious but no less ambitious, his fingers drumming on the table’s worn wood. Lord Sunglass of Sweetport Sound, his expression tense and uncertain. Lord Bar Emmon, young and green as new grass, shifting nervously in his seat.

Davos Seaworth stood among them, a plain man in plain clothes, the fingers of one hand cut short by Stannis’s own decree years ago. He kept his head low, listening intently. Yet Davos was the only man in the room Stannis truly trusted.

Around the table, the lords shifted uneasily — men in heavy cloaks and fine mail, each with a banner to call and a price to weigh.

“Send the ravens,” Stannis ordered, his voice iron on stone. “To every great house. Every lord with honor still beating in his chest.”

He unrolled a parchment — the letters drafted already in his own hand. Ink smudged his fingers, dark as blood.

“The boy Joffrey is no true Baratheon,” Stannis said, his mouth tightening. “He is the bastard of Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime. The Iron Throne is mine by right. By blood. Let all the realm hear it.”

Lord Velaryon cleared his throat, his long silver hair catching the torchlight. “Your Grace,” he began carefully, “without proof—”

“Proof?” Stannis snapped, his eyes glinting. “The line of the blood is clear. Black of hair, black of hair, black of hair — and then golden? Are we all fools?”

A hush fell, the only sound the sea’s ceaseless roar against the walls.

Ser Axell Florent shifted in his seat. “Your Grace,” he said, his voice smooth as oil. “Even so, the smallfolk love the boy. They see his mother’s smile and Robert’s name.”

Stannis’s jaw clenched. “The smallfolk are sheep,” he spat. “Let them bleat. I will not sit idle while lions steal my house and my brother’s crown.”

Lord Celtigar spoke up then, his thin voice trembling. “And Renly, my lord? He is crowned in Highgarden. They say he has the Reach behind him. That is no small host.”

A muscle ticked in Stannis’s jaw. He turned slowly, his face carved from stone. “Renly is a child playing at kingship,” he said. “He has no claim. No more than the whoreson on the Iron Throne.”

Davos stepped forward, his weathered hands open in a gesture of peace. “My lord,” he said carefully, “blood of the same father runs in Renly’s veins. Would you not treat with him? Perhaps—”

“Treat?” Stannis’s voice was cold iron. “Would you have me kneel to a usurper? A younger brother who would wear my crown as if it were a bauble for a summer feast?”

Silence stretched, heavy as a millstone.

Stannis stalked to the window, staring out at the churning sea, the waves crashing like drumbeats of war. His voice was low, but every man heard it.

“Let Renly come,” he said. “Let the boy-king in King’s Landing clutch his false crown. When the fires rise, they will all burn.”

One by one, the lords bowed their heads, the hush of submission falling over the table.

Only Davos lingered, his eyes troubled, his voice quiet. “As you command, my king.”

Night had fallen like a shroud over Dragonstone, the sky a deep tapestry of black and silver. In the courtyard, torches guttered in the wind, their flames dancing like restless spirits. Smoke curled skyward, carrying the scent of salt and something sharper, something like old blood.

Stannis Baratheon stood at the edge of the gathered crowd, his arms folded across his chest. The cold bit at his face, but he did not flinch. Before him, Melisandre stood tall, her red robes billowing like flame itself. The ruby at her throat glowed with a light that seemed not of this world.

“My lords,” she called, her voice rising over the wind, “and all who would serve the one true king! Know that the Lord of Light has shown me a vision in the flames. I have seen the shape of the world to come. The night is dark and full of terrors — but there is one among you who will drive back the shadow.”

She lifted her arms, the firelight painting her face in stark relief. “Stannis Baratheon is the chosen one!” she cried. “He shall vanquish the false kings and claim the Iron Throne that is his by right. He shall wake the dragons from stone, and with their fire cleanse the realm of darkness!”

A murmur ran through the crowd, uneasy and uncertain. Some of the lords watched her with skeptical eyes — Velaryon’s mouth was a thin line, and Celtigar’s fingers drummed restlessly on the hilt of his sword. Others — the Florents most of all — nodded eagerly, their faces lit with fervor.

Selyse stood at the front, her hands clasped tight, her eyes shining with a fanatic’s glow. Her lips moved soundlessly, a prayer or a promise, Stannis could not tell. She believed, body and soul.

Stannis felt a chill in his chest, a cold that had nothing to do with the wind. He had never believed in gods. He had seen too much — the silence of the Seven the day his parents died, the empty prayers of men during the siege of Storm’s End. Gods were for the weak.

And yet.

The words burned in him. The chosen one. The true king. That much, at least, he could believe.

His eyes swept the faces around him — some devout, some fearful, some calculating. He saw the way the shadows danced behind their eyes, the way each man weighed loyalty against ambition.

In the end, it would not matter. He would prove them all — gods and men alike — that he was the rightful king.

The wind rose, carrying Melisandre’s voice higher, a hymn of fire and blood. Stannis stood unmoved, a pillar of iron among wavering men.

Chapter Text

Robb

The wind carried the smell of salt and cold iron as they rode south, the air sharp with the promise of autumn.

Robb Stark sat astride his grey stallion, his back straight and eyes fixed on the road ahead. Grey Wind trotted at his side, the direwolf’s head swinging from side to side as he sniffed the breeze, his grey fur rippling like smoke in the wind.

Ahead, his father rode with Jon and Ser Rodrik, the Stark banners streaming behind them — grey direwolf on white field, snapping in the stiff wind. The sound of the banners filled Robb’s chest with a strange mix of pride and dread.

They were bound for Moat Cailin, the ancient fortress of the Neck, where the lords of the North would gather to decide the future — to decide if the North would stand alone or bend the knee.

A horse drew up beside him, dark mane tossing. Theon Greyjoy flashed his sharp grin, his eyes bright with mischief. “You look like a man off to his own funeral,” he said.

Robb shifted in his saddle. “Do I?”

Theon chuckled. “You do. Are you afraid?”

Robb hesitated. The wind seemed to cut deeper. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s so much I don’t know.”

Theon’s grin widened, white teeth flashing. “Well, I hope you’re not too afraid. War’s a grand thing. Wine and song and a woman in every camp — that’s the way of it.”

Robb frowned. “That’s not what war is.”

Theon shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll wager it’s better than freezing your balls off in the godswood.”

Robb shook his head, though he couldn’t help the small smile. “You think the lords will decide anything at Moat Cailin?” he asked.

Theon’s grin faded a little. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Which king will they choose to bend the knee to?”

Robb fell silent. Three kings. Three crowns. He saw them in his mind: the boy in King’s Landing with his mother’s cold smile; Renly with his easy laughter and his golden cloak; Stannis, grim as iron, his jaw clenched against the world.

And the North, caught between them all

The ravens had flown thick across the sky these past weeks, black wings beating against a realm breaking apart. Each letter carried the weight of kingdoms — and the burden of choices that no boy should bear.

First had come Stannis’s message — cold, sharp, merciless as the man himself. The parchment had been thick and stiff, the words written in a tight, unyielding hand. “The boy Joffrey is no true Baratheon. He is the bastard of Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime. The Iron Throne is mine by right of blood.”

Robb had read those words by firelight, the shadows dancing across his face. They carried the weight of law, of honor, of vengeance. But they also carried the promise of war — a war that would pull the North into the maelstrom whether it willed it or not.

Then had come Renly’s raven, its seal bright with the colors of the Reach. The words inside had been gilded and sweet as honey, promising peace and prosperity under the banners of Highgarden. “Renly Baratheon, crowned in Highgarden under the banners of the Reach, declared himself king by right of strength and love.”

The people loved Renly, or so his letters claimed. And with the Tyrells at his back, his claim was no empty boast. His words dripped charm and promise — a smiling face for a kingdom in need of laughter.

Robb’s brow furrowed as he thought of the two men — Stannis with his iron heart, Renly with his easy smile. Two brothers, each carrying the same blood, and yet as different as ice and fire.

The realm was splitting at the seams.

Robb remembered his father’s face as they read the replies that trickled northward, each scroll carrying the weight of kingdoms and the blood of the realm. The wax seals cracked like old bones, each one another burden on his father’s shoulders.

The Lannisters had crowned Joffrey without hesitation, gold and crimson banners snapping proudly from every tower in the west. Lord Tywin’s letters were curt, edged with disdain — the Iron Throne belonged to the boy, and all who opposed him would be swept aside. Robb could almost see the smirk on Jaime Lannister’s lips, the cold calculation in Cersei’s eyes.

The Tyrells had bent the knee to Renly, their rose-and-thorn banners unfurling alongside the crowned stag of Highgarden. A marriage pact between Renly and Margaery Tyrell had already begun to stir the courtly whisperings — love and beauty and sweet honeyed words. Robb snorted softly at that.

The Lords of the Narrow Sea — Celtigar, Velaryon, Massey — had raised Stannis’s black stag crowned in flame over their keeps. Their letters were cold and formal, words like swords honed to a fine edge. They pledged fealty to Stannis, citing the old blood, the old laws, the old ways.

But the rest…

The rest waited. The Vale under young Lord Robert Arryn had declared neutrality, too weak and divided to choose a side. Robb thought of his cousin hidden behind Lysa’s skirts and the high walls of the Eyrie, safe from war but no safer from fear.

Dorne had closed its borders, silent and watchful. The Martells were a people of patience and vengeance, and neither could be rushed. Robb had heard his father say that once.

The Riverlands, under Hoster Tully, had also proclaimed neutrality — though Edmure Tully, Lord Paramount in all but name, had allowed Tywin Lannister’s men to march through the Riverlands unchallenged to avoid bloodshed. Robb’s jaw tightened at that. Blood would come anyway, sooner or later.

So far, the fragile pact held. The Lannister armies marched — but did not pillage. The Riverlands watched — but did not rise.

Yet Robb could feel the tension like a bowstring stretched too tight, every nerve in his body bracing for the snap. It would come. It had to.

Now they rode south to Moat Cailin, that ancient fortress of the Neck, where the lords of the North would gather — Karstark, Tallhart, Hornwood, Cerwyn, Manderly — to speak not of peace, but of survival.

The wind carried a bitter chill as they approached, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and old stone. The towers loomed on the horizon, dark and battered, their walls thick with the scars of a hundred sieges. The blackened towers rose like broken teeth from the marshes, older than the North itself.

Lord Manderly, wise and cautious, had already begun to fortify Moat Cailin at his father’s request. New timber braced the old stone. Iron gates had been reforged, their hinges oiled and strong. Wagons had come from White Harbor, laden with salt pork and grain, wool and hard cheese. Stores enough to last a siege, though all prayed it would not come to that.

The Neck would hold, if it must. The bogs and mires would slow the lions and their kin, just as they had always done.

But the harder question remained: who would the North follow?

Robb felt the question like a stone in his chest. The banners were not called yet — not yet. His father’s words still rang in his mind: A lord must lead with more than just a sword.

But the time for banners would come, and soon. Robb knew it as surely as he knew his own name.

The boy he had been — the boy who raced Jon up Winterfell’s towers, who wrestled with Theon in the yard, who laughed in the godswood with Arya — that boy was falling away, step by step, mile by mile.

In his place, a man was rising.

Grey Wind whined low beside him, his great head swinging as if searching for threats in the shadows. His golden eyes met Robb’s own, and in them Robb saw something he could not name — a reflection of himself, fierce and watchful.

Robb reached down, his gloved hand burying itself in the thick fur behind the wolf’s ears. “Easy, boy,” he murmured. “Soon.”

The towers of Moat Cailin loomed larger now, ancient as the land itself, grim and unyielding.

Soon the lords would speak.

And the North would choose its path.

Chapter Text

Jon

The Great Hall of Moat Cailin smelled of damp stone and old iron, the scent of ancient battles and slow decay. The torches smoked in their sconces, their flames guttering in the drafts that whispered through the broken walls. Shadows danced in the high corners like half-remembered ghosts.

Jon sat at the back, half-shadowed among the Stark men, his cloak drawn tight around him against the chill that seemed to seep from the very stones. He could feel the cold in his bones, and the weight of waiting pressed on his shoulders like a mailed fist.

The voices of the lords rose and fell like the wind through broken towers, each man vying to be heard, each word another drop in the flood of arguments that had filled the hall since dawn.

Jon’s eyes moved over them one by one. Rickard Karstark, tall and grim, his long beard a streak of winter among the northern lords. Medger Cerwyn sat stiff-backed and watchful, his pale eyes sharp as a drawn blade. Halys Hornwood, lean and lined, his mouth drawn tight as if every word cost him a drop of blood. Galbart Glover, his green surcoat marked with the silver fist of his house, listening intently but speaking little. Rodrik Ryswell, his face a mask of solemn patience. Cley Cerwyn, not yet grown to manhood, but here nonetheless, his jaw set in determined silence.

The Greatjon Umber loomed like a bear among men, his booming laughter echoing even in the moments between speeches. Maege Mormont sat with her daughters at her side, eyes bright and fierce as any sword. Wylis and Wendel Manderly, in place of their father — too fat to ride, Jon thought uncharitably — conferred in low voices, their heads bent together like conspirators.

And there were others — minor and high lords, men who had come at Lord Stark’s call, each with his own loyalties and fears.

They had all answered.

Jon pulled his cloak tighter and watched them, the wind cold at his back, the fate of the North laid out before him in lines of weary faces and hard eyes.

Another day of talk. Another day without answers.

Lord Hornwood spoke first, his voice heavy and slow, like a man burdened by too many winters. “We should stand by King Joffrey,” he declared, his tone more weary than convinced. “The girl, Sansa, is betrothed to him. An alliance already made.”

Jon’s jaw tightened. Sansa was still here, still safe at Winterfell. The thought of her promised to that golden-haired boy made his stomach twist. She was only a girl — still laughing with Arya by the hearth, still singing ballads on quiet afternoons.

And yet the lords spoke of her like she was a coin to be spent, a piece of silver to be weighed and traded.

A hush fell as Lord Medger Cerwyn answered, his voice sharp and edged with steel. “Betrothals can be broken,” he said. “Especially with a supposed ill-born.” His gaze flicked toward the Greatjon, who grunted his approval.

A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall, like a breeze stirring dry leaves.

Jon’s eyes swept the faces around him — the cold calculation in Karstark’s eyes, the wary doubt in Galbart Glover’s, the grim approval in Rodrik Ryswell’s. Each man measured his words carefully, the weight of oaths and alliances pressing on every brow.

Others spoke then, raising their voices for Stannis — the stern, unyielding brother.

“A hard man,” declared Lady Mormont, her voice ringing clear above the murmurs of the hall. She stood straight-backed, eyes bright as steel. “But a just one. He would not usurp without cause.” Her words cut through the smoke and gloom like a drawn sword.

Lord Tallhart rose next, his face grave, the lines of worry deep at his brow. He held up an old, worn copy of the lineage book, its leather cover cracked and scarred with age. “The blood proves it,” he said, his voice rough with certainty. He thumped the book on the table, the sound echoing like a drumbeat. “Black of hair, black of hair, black of hair — and then a boy of gold? Bastard born, and false.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall, deeper and more certain than before.

Jon watched his father then, silent and grim, his grey eyes hooded. Ned Stark sat with his hands folded before him like a stone carving of a king — unyielding, unchanging. He did not speak much. He let his lords weigh the scales themselves.

Then others — fewer, but louder — raised their voices for Renly, the youngest of the brothers.

“He has the larger host!” cried Ser Wylis Manderly, his cheeks red, his voice sharp as a blade drawn in haste. He pounded his fist on the table, rattling the cups and plates. “Better a king with strength than a rightful king with none!”

A ripple of murmurs swept through the hall. Some lords nodded, slow and uncertain. Others scowled, their eyes narrowing like wolves at the scent of blood.

Jon’s eyes darted from face to face — the shifting glances, the hard set of jaws, the cold calculations etched into each brow. Honor and pragmatism warred behind every stare.

The hall grew cold then, as if the wind itself had found a way inside. The old stones seemed to clutch at the chill, their age pressing down on every man present.

Cowards, Jon thought the others would call them. Cravens, choosing numbers over honor. He could almost hear the words whispered on the wind, like ghosts of the old kings who had once held this hall.

And so the day dragged on, long and dull, the torches guttering in the drafts, the smoke clinging to the rafters like a shroud. Arguments rose and fell, names and claims tossed back and forth like dice on a table. None could sway the room fully.

When at last the gathering broke apart, the lords retreating to their chambers and their cups, Jon slipped away into the yard, breathing the sharp night air. The cold settled on his skin like a second cloak, sharp and bracing after the closeness of the hall.

He found Robb there too, brooding near the old well, his arms folded across his chest. Grey Wind prowled in the shadows, his eyes catching the moonlight, while Ghost sat at Jon’s side, silent and watchful.

“Anything decided?” Jon asked, though he already knew the answer.

Robb shook his head, his breath fogging in the chill. “Only more talking.” His voice was rough, as if the weight of the hall had pressed the life from it.

They stood in silence for a while, the sounds of the night wrapping around them — the creak of old timbers, the distant call of an owl.

“Joffrey’s a fool,” Robb said at last, his tone bitter. “But he’s Robert’s heir. If Robert was king, that makes Joffrey king too, doesn’t it?”

Jon frowned, his brow furrowing. “Unless Stannis is right,” he said slowly. “If the boy’s a bastard — a Lannister’s bastard — then he has no claim at all.”

Robb’s mouth twisted into a grim smile. “I almost hope it’s true,” he said. “If it is, then Sansa won’t have to marry that little shit.”

Jon let out a low laugh, the sound small and tired in the cold air. “Aye. I’d not wish that fate on anyone.”

Robb’s gaze turned thoughtful. “But Stannis… he’s a hard man father always said so. Would he be any better?”

Jon hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know. He might be hard, but at least he’s honest.”

They both fell silent, the unspoken truth hanging between them. The North’s choice would not be easy, and whatever choice was made, the realm would pay the price.

Grey Wind paced back and forth, restless under the cold stars. Ghost’s eyes glowed like embers, fixed on something Jon could not see.

Robb sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I wish Father would just tell them what to do,” he muttered. “But that’s not his way.”

Jon nodded, his own thoughts heavy. “He’d let them decide — then bear the weight himself.”

They stood together, two brothers bound by blood and duty, the night pressing in around them.

That night, Jon dreamed.

He was no stranger to strange dreams — of wolves beneath the moon, of blood on the snow, of eyes that glowed like embers in the dark. He had confided them to Robb once — dreams of running through the woods at night, chasing scents on the wind, feeling the world through another body. Robb had smiled grimly and said he sometimes dreamed the same.

But this dream was different.

He was flying.

The air rushed past him, cold and clean, sharper than the North’s cold had ever been. It filled his lungs with fire and ice, and he felt himself rise higher, borne up on invisible wings that beat like thunder.

Beneath him, the world unrolled like a map painted in living color — greens and browns, rivers like silver ribbons, forests dark and endless. He saw the Wall, a pale white serpent coiled across the frozen north, its presence both protective and forbidding. He felt the cold radiate from it, a wall of ice and old magic.

Higher he flew, and the land blurred beneath him — forests and rivers giving way to the shattered peaks of Valyria, broken and burning still, a black wound on the face of the world. Ash clouds coiled into the sky like dark fingers, reaching for the sun. He heard the echoes of a thousand voices — some screaming, some singing, some speaking in tongues he did not know.

And then he saw Asshai, where the rivers ran black as ink and the towers were older than time itself. Shadows moved through its streets, shapes half-seen, half-felt. A darkness so deep it made his heart pound with dread.

He tried to cry out — in joy, in terror, he could not tell — but no sound came, only the wind rushing past him like a living thing.

The world turned beneath him, endless and terrible and beautiful. He felt the pull of it in his bones, a destiny written in every star and stone.

Then the darkness reached for him — a shadow without form or face, vast and cold and endless.

Jon woke with a gasp, his heart pounding, sweat cooling on his brow despite the cold. His breath came in ragged bursts, the memory of the dream fading even as it clung to him like a shadow.

Ghost sat beside his bed, his white fur silvered in the moonlight, his eyes like embers — ancient, watchful, knowing.

“It was only a dream,” Jon whispered, his voice hoarse.

But Ghost only watched, silent and still, as if he knew otherwise.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The banners of House Lannister fluttered proud over the Red Keep, crimson lions on fields of gold, their silken threads catching the last rays of the sun. But Tyrion Lannister knew better than most how thin a cloth was when the winds of chaos blew.

He made his way through the twisting corridors, boots tapping on worn stone, past ancient tapestries depicting victories long forgotten, the colors faded by time and candle smoke. Servants scurried along the hallways with downcast eyes, their steps quick and silent, arms laden with trays of cold meat, amphorae of wine, bolts of new silk. Their whispers rose and fell like the hush of mice in the dark, every one of them afraid of being seen, afraid of being called, afraid of being blamed.

The Gold Cloaks stalked the halls like hungry wolves, their black and gold armor polished to a mirror sheen, spears resting easily in their hands. They watched each passerby with suspicious eyes, measuring every step and every word. Tyrion caught the low murmur of a sergeant ordering new patrols — the city was restless, the crowds in the streets thickening with each day of tension.

Power clung to the halls like old dust — thick, stale, and crumbling at the edges. The sweet smell of incense from the septs mixed with the acrid tang of old blood and sweat, a perfume no golden banner could hide.

Tyrion had been named Hand of the King — in truth if not in ceremony — after his lord father had departed with Jaime and Ser Kevan to raise the banners against Stannis and Renly. Tywin Lannister had left the Red Keep in his son’s keeping with little ceremony and less affection.

A moon’s turn, Tywin had been away from King’s Landing, tending matters in the Westerlands. In that short span, everything had begun to come undone: Robert Baratheon dead, gored by a boar on a hunt that smelled of more than accident; the city alive with rumors of Renly Baratheon’s so-called coup — a tale Cersei had spun from half-truths and sharpened to a point; and Ser Barristan Selmy, the finest knight the realm had ever known, cast aside by Joffrey’s whim, discarded like a worn-out cloak.

A kingdom balanced on a blade’s edge — and all of it in a single moon’s absence.

Tywin had returned in haste, his fury as sharp as any sword, and summoned the banners of the Westerlands when Stannis and Renly declared themselves kings, Tywin and Jaime had ridden to war — leaving Tyrion with the chain of office heavy on his neck, the Red Keep in his keeping.

“Control the boy and his mother,” Tywin had ordered, his voice like cold iron. “Nothing more is needed from someone like you.”

Tyrion remembered those words all too well. They rang in his mind every time he donned the chain of office, every time he sat the chair that had once belonged to Jon Arryn. Nothing more was needed. Not wisdom. Not courage. Not loyalty. Just control. As if he were a goaler set to watch two unruly prisoners.

A sour laugh escaped his lips. Control? Gods, he thought, what a jest.

He’d longed for power once, imagined himself wielding it with wit and cunning — but Tywin had left him not a kingdom, but a nest of vipers.

Rule what? he wondered. A court of squabbling lickspittles. A boy king with a lion’s pride and a madman’s whims. A mother who thought herself a queen of wisdom but ruled with poison and vanity.

Tyrion had not killed Robert Baratheon. Tyrion had not whispered treason into the ears of half the court. Tyrion had not cast aside Barristan the Bold. Yet here he sat — the king’s uncle, the queen’s brother, the dwarf who would be blamed for every failure.

The Red Keep was a tinderbox soaked in oil, and his nephew — gods bless him — delighted in striking sparks.

Still, knowing did not make it fair. And if the fires grew too hot, he knew, it would be his skin that burned.

Tyrion turned down the familiar corridor that led to the Small Council chamber. The guards outside the door stiffened as he approached, though he doubted it was out of respect. More likely habit—or fear. He gave them a curt nod, which they returned with silent bows, and pushed open the heavy oak door.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of beeswax and old ink, the quiet weight of expectation settling over everything like dust. The chamber felt too large now, too empty. The long table stretched before him like a cold, accusing finger in the half-lit room, its length an echo of absent voices.

Only Varys awaited him, seated daintily at the far end of the table, his silken robes a shimmer of spiderwebs in the torchlight. The eunuch’s hands were folded like a supplicant, his smile smooth and unreadable on his round face.

“Where are the others?” Tyrion asked, glancing around the empty chairs that had once held the realm’s most powerful men. The shadows seemed thicker for their absence.

Varys tilted his head, the very picture of innocence. “As you know, my lord, we are somewhat short on councilors.” His voice was a whisper wrapped in honey. “No Master of Laws, no Master of Ships. The Grand Maester is... indisposed at the moment.”

He offered a delicate cough, one hand fluttering like a moth’s wings.

“Indisposed?” Tyrion’s tone was sharp, though weariness tugged at the edges of his patience.

“Engaged in important personal ministrations, my lord,” Varys said sweetly. “In the company of a rather talented girl from Lys, I am told.”

Tyrion snorted, a sound without humor. Pycelle chasing whores while the realm burned.

Varys’s smile widened a hair, his eyes gleaming with candlelight. “And as you know,” he said smoothly, “the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard is riding to war with your lord father, my lord.” His tone was light, as if it were nothing at all.

Tyrion grunted. Jaime. His brother, now Lord Commander, clad in white and gold, riding with Tywin’s host to face the rebels. For all Jaime’s skill with a sword, Tyrion wondered if even he could hold the realm together.

His thoughts shifted, unbidden, to Ser Barristan Selmy. The finest knight the realm had ever known — cast aside by Joffrey’s whim, dismissed as if he were nothing more than a rusty sword. A mad dismissal, yet another brick pulled from the Red Keep’s crumbling walls.

“And the Master of Coin?” Tyrion asked, though his tone suggested he already suspected that answer as well.

Varys’s smile turned sly, his round face the very mask of courtly secrets. “Ah, the king, in his infinite wisdom, entrusted Lord Baelish with a most urgent task. So urgent that he refused to inform even me of its nature.”

The eunuch’s eyes twinkled maliciously. “He has taken ship to White Harbor, I am told.”

Tyrion sat heavily in the Hand’s chair, feeling the weight of the city settle on his narrow shoulders like an ill-fitting cloak. The carved lion’s heads on the arms of the chair seemed to watch him with cold, golden eyes.

He poured himself a cup of wine from the flagon at the table’s center, ignoring the sour tang that rose from its depths. He would need it before long.

“Well,” Tyrion said, raising the cup in a mock-toast to the empty room, his voice bitter and low. “To chaos. It seems I have my work cut out for me.”

Varys chuckled softly, the sound like silk sliding over a blade. “Indeed, my lord,” he murmured. “Indeed.”

Chapter Text

Eddard

The hall of Moat Cailin was a ruin of crumbling stone and broken towers, yet the Northern lords filled it with their iron voices and heavier purpose. Moss clung to the ancient walls like a green, weeping shroud, and the draft from the broken windows carried the chill of the marsh. The air smelled of old iron and damp earth, a scent as ancient as the North itself.

Arguments rose and fell like sword-blows — measured, careful, and deadly serious. Shadows danced on the cracked flagstones as torches sputtered and hissed in the damp air. Some called for Stannis, voices hard and cold as the man himself. Others spoke more cautiously of Renly’s strength, their words sweetened with the promise of the Reach’s harvests and gardens. A few, wary and weary, urged neutrality — a hope to weather the southern storm behind stone walls and northern snow.

Eddard Stark listened without speaking. His grey eyes swept the room, taking in each lord’s face — the drawn lines of worry, the flush of anger, the tight press of lips that spoke of hidden fears. He weighed each word, each fear, each hope, knowing that no path would be free of blood.

The old dreams haunted him still. Even here, even now. The wolves, the lions, the bleeding stag. The white wolf with wings of fire. Prophecies that tangled themselves around his heart like brambles, their thorns sharp and unyielding.

He had chosen to stay in the North, to heed the counsel of old friends and the weight of his own honor. He had hoped that choice would change the fate foretold, that he might stand between his family and the gathering storm.

But prophecy was a river, and rivers found their course no matter how men built their dams. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the weight of the past and the weight of the hall pressing down on him. The voices of his lords filled the chamber like the beat of war drums. He opened his eyes and waited.

The heavy doors creaked open then, their iron hinges moaning like old bones, and a gust of cold air swept through the hall, stirring the torch flames and sending a shiver down the spine of every man present.

A guard stepped forward, his armor dulled by long hours on watch. He banged his spear on the stone floor and raised his voice to the assembled lords. “Petyr Baelish, Master of Coin,” he declared, his voice echoing through the hall.

A new figure entered — slight, fine-boned, clad in rich velvets of dark green and silver that caught the light with every step. Petyr Baelish. Littlefinger. He moved with the easy grace of a cat among wolves, all sly smiles and apologetic bows, his mocking eyes missing nothing. The Northern lords turned as one, a sea of cold, hard faces beneath fur-trimmed cloaks, but Littlefinger only smiled wider, the very picture of unbothered charm.

“My lords,” he said, his voice smooth as silk drawn over the edge of a dagger, “forgive my interruption. I come bearing the words of our king.”

The hall grew still — so still that Eddard could hear the wind whistling through the cracks in the old stone walls, the drip of water from some forgotten leak. A hundred cold Northern eyes fixed on the man from the south, every one of them measuring his worth, his lies, and the threat he carried.

“You were not summoned,” growled Lord Karstark, his voice rough as a whetstone on steel.

“No,” Baelish agreed lightly, his smile unbroken. “But the king’s words brook no delay.”

Eddard rose slowly from his seat, the weight of his cloak a familiar burden as it whispered against the flagstones. His eyes met Littlefinger’s — grey ice to green mockery — and he inclined his head. “Speak, then,” he said, his voice even but cold.

Baelish dipped into an exaggerated bow, his smile as empty as the promises it carried. “King Joffrey, First of His Name, commands that the North honor its sacred bonds. The betrothal of Lady Sansa Stark to His Grace is to be fulfilled without further delay. The Lady is to be sent south to King’s Landing immediately, to join her lord betrothed.”

A low growl rose from the gathered lords — a sound like a bear stirring in its den, deep and dangerous. The air itself seemed to thicken, heavy with the promise of blood. Baelish only smiled wider, as if he were a man who had never known fear. He let the moment hang, savoring the tension like a cat playing with a mouse.

“In addition,” he continued, his tone light, almost playful, “the king commands the North to call its banners and ride in support of the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. The king trusts that the honor of House Stark shall not be found wanting.”

For a moment, there was only silence, as if the hall itself held its breath. The cold wind rattled the broken stones of the keep, a lonely sound that whispered of old wars and older graves.

Then Lord Cerwyn spoke, his voice a whip-crack in the hush. “We are no vassals to be ordered about like trained dogs,” he spat, his face flushed with anger. His hand clenched the arm of his chair as though it were the hilt of a sword.

Lady Mormont’s hand dropped to the hilt of her own blade, her eyes sharp as winter steel. “We do not send our daughters to madmen,” she said, her voice low and fierce. Her daughters at her side echoed her defiance with grim nods.

Lord Hornwood muttered darkly of betrayal and blood, his gaze fixed on the shadows that clung to the corners of the hall. A hundred years of Northern pride shone in his eyes, banked like coals waiting for the wind.

The other lords shifted, their voices rising in a restless murmur, a tide of anger and fear.

Eddard stood unmoving, his face carved from ice and sorrow. He felt Sansa’s small hand in his once more, soft and trusting. He saw her laughing by the hearth, her red hair shining like a banner in the firelight. A child of the North — his child.

Grey fur with golden eyes, trapped in a golden cage, the dream had whispered.

And the South had come to claim her, to chain her to a throne of lies and treachery.

He thought of the lions in the dream — golden, false, leeching the life from all they touched. He thought of the cold blue eyes that waited beyond the Wall, the gathering darkness that no southern alliance would keep at bay.

There was no safety in the South. There never had been.

Baelish was speaking again, honeyed words and veiled threats, weaving promises and poisons in equal measure. But Eddard no longer heard him.

His path was clear.

It had always been clear, he thought grimly, only hidden by the mist of fear and hope.

Later, as the council broke apart in anger and argument, Ned remained by the broken window, watching the dark clouds gathering over the Neck. The wind carried the taste of rain and salt and old iron, and somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, a sound that made his heart ache.

Winter is coming, the old words whispered in his blood.

Two days passed in uneasy silence, the weight of Littlefinger’s words lingering like a sour taste in the air. Petyr Baelish remained at Moat Cailin, his presence a shadow in every chamber — too polite to challenge openly, too clever to be dismissed. He watched the Northern lords with a serpent’s patience, his smile never wavering.

On the evening of the third day, beneath a grey sky heavy with mist, Eddard Stark called the banners of the North.

No great speech marked the moment. No songs or cries of valor. Only Lord Stark standing before his gathered bannermen, cloak stirring in the cold wind, and speaking in the voice of stone and frost.

“You are to ride home,” he said. “Gather your men. Two moons’ time, return here — armed and ready. We will speak then of who we stand beside.”

No promises. No names. Only duty. It was enough. The words fell like iron, leaving the hall still and solemn.

The lords bowed low, one by one — some with eagerness in their stride, eager to ride for hearth and honor, the scent of battle already in their blood. Others moved more slowly, their eyes wary, uncertain of the path ahead, casting nervous glances back at their liege lord as if seeking reassurance that this was not a dream but a reckoning.

Petyr Baelish departed with them, his departure as smooth as his arrival. He rode south with a pack of guardsmen in Lannister colors, his cloak of dark green and silver catching the last light of the dying sun. Littlefinger’s face held that same mocking smile, as if he alone knew the shape of the game to come — but Ned had seen the way the man’s fingers twitched on the reins, the brief flicker of calculation behind his eyes.

That, too, was by design. Let him carry word to the South, Ned thought. Let the lions know the North had teeth.

Ned watched them go with grim satisfaction, the weight of his decision settling over him like a mantle of frost. The North had stirred. Ancient oaths woken from long sleep. And the world would remember. Now the game would move faster — but it would move on ground he chose.

The ride back to Winterfell was cold and silent. The mist clung to the trees like a shroud, its fingers creeping along the road as if to snatch at passing riders. The sky hung low and gray, promising rain that never came, and the wind bit at exposed skin like a jealous lover.

Jon rode ahead with Robb and Theon, their cloaks billowing behind them like tattered banners of grey and black. The boys spoke little, their faces drawn tight with unspoken worry, their eyes searching the horizon for answers that would not come.

Grey Wind and Ghost ran alongside, white and grey shadows in the dusk, their breath steaming in the chill air. The direwolves moved with a restless energy, their eyes sharp and wary, as if they too felt the storm gathering on the horizon.

Ned watched them, his heart heavy with the weight of too many dreams. The wolves. The bleeding. The darkness rising beyond the Wall. Visions that gnawed at the edge of sleep and lingered in the waking hours like ghosts he could not banish.

Had he done enough, choosing to stay? Had he changed the course of fate, or only delayed its coming? The questions weighed on him like a mailed fist, cold and unyielding.

Each hoofbeat echoed the old refrain: Winter is coming. And in that silence, as the land stretched before him in shadows and frost, Eddard Stark felt the old truths stirring in his blood. The North would endure — but at what cost?

They arrived at Winterfell at dusk, the great gates opening with a groan of ancient iron. The chill air smelled of home — of old woodsmoke, damp stone, and the deep earth that had always been his comfort. Yet even here, the weight of the past days clung to him, heavy as a frost on his heart.

Ned dismounted in silence, his boots crunching on the packed earth of the courtyard. The castle seemed to hold its breath, its towers and battlements shadowed by the falling night. Ghosts of old kings seemed to watch from every corner, waiting.

He did not linger in the hall, nor seek the comfort of his children’s laughter. Instead, he turned his steps toward the godswood, where the heart tree’s white face wept slow tears of sap. The air beneath the boughs was cold and still, filled with the scent of moss and damp stone. The leaves whispered secrets only the old gods would know.

Catelyn met him there, waiting in the hush beneath the boughs. She stood tall and proud, though worry lined her brow. Ned told her of the council, of Baelish’s arrival and the king’s demands. The words came slowly, each one a burden.

Catelyn’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “They would tear her from us,” she said. “Send her into the lion’s den.”

“Aye,” Ned said softly, the word heavy as a stone.

They stood together in silence, listening to the wind sigh through the leaves. The godswood felt older than the walls that ringed it, older than memory itself.

At last, he spoke again. “There is more,” he said. His voice was thick with things long unsaid. “It is time Jon knew the truth.”

Catelyn turned to him sharply, her eyes wide in the gloom. “Are you sure?”

“I am.”

He looked out across the godswood, seeing not trees but memories — Lyanna’s laughing eyes, Howland’s grim warnings, the dreams that had haunted his nights for nine long years.

“I kept it from him to protect him,” Ned said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “But the world is changing. War is coming, and with it truths that no lie can shield.” He closed his eyes, feeling the old guilt twist within him like a blade. “He deserves to know who he is. Who his mother was. What blood flows in his veins.”

Catelyn placed a hand on his arm, her touch warm against the night’s chill. “Then tell him,” she said. “And pray the gods grant him the strength to bear it.”

Ned nodded once, solemn as an oath. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, he would speak to Jon. And the boy would walk forward into a world more terrible and more wondrous than he had ev

Chapter Text

Jon

The summons came at dusk, as the last light bled out of the sky in slow, fading ribbons of fire. Shadows pooled beneath the ancient oaks and elms, stretching long and dark across the courtyard.

Jon found his father waiting for him in the godswood, beneath the weeping branches of the heart tree. The white bark gleamed like bone in the half-light, its red sap glistening like fresh blood on a sword’s edge. A single leaf drifted down, landing on the forest floor like a bloody tear.

Ghost padded silently at his heels, but as they reached the clearing, the direwolf halted, ears flat, tail low, and would come no closer. A soft whine rose in his throat, but Jon only frowned and said nothing. The unease in his gut spread outward like a chill in his veins.

Lord Eddard Stark stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his cloak stirring in the chill breeze that sighed through the branches. His head was bowed, his breath misting faintly in the twilight, and for a moment he seemed carved from the same ancient stone as the godswood itself.

Jon hesitated at the edge of the clearing, the silence pressing down on him like a weight. Every leaf seemed to hush its whisper, every branch waiting for what would come.

Then his father lifted his head and turned. The lines on his face looked deeper than Jon remembered, shadows gathered in the hollows of his eyes.

“Jon,” he said, his voice low and rough, the words half-swallowed by the evening wind. “Come closer.”

Jon obeyed, his heart thudding strangely in his chest. He had stood before his father countless times — for lessons in swordplay, for reprimands after childish mischief, for farewells at the edge of a long road. But never like this.

Never with this sense of something vast and heavy pressing down on them both — the weight of old oaths and older blood, of choices that would shape not just his life, but the fate of the North itself.

He stepped forward, the soft crunch of leaves beneath his boots loud in the hush. The godswood seemed to hold its breath.

His father stood silent for a moment, eyes fixed on the red leaves above. Then he spoke, voice low, distant. “You’ve asked me before — about your mother.”

Jon’s breath caught, but he said nothing.

Yes, he had thought of her, now and then — in quiet moments, when the castle slept and the winds howled over the battlements. He had known from a young age that Aunt Catelyn was not his mother — not from anything she said, but from the way people looked at him sometimes, like he didn’t quite belong. Theon had called him “bastard” once, long ago, when neither of them truly understood what the word meant. He never said it again. Jon sometimes wondered what Aunt Catelyn had told him.

“I told you it was not the right time. That there were reasons I could not speak.” Ned’s jaw tightened. “But time no longer waits for any of us.”

A breath. A pause. Something heavy settled in the space between them.

“You deserve to know,” Ned said. “The truth — all of it.” He looked at Jon then, truly looked at him. “Your mother… was Lyanna Stark.”

The world tilted. Jon staggered back a step, his breath catching in his throat. “No,” he said. “No, that’s not—”

He had always imagined… some tavern wench, some nameless girl who would fade into the mists of memory. That was the story. That was the comfort.
But Lyanna? His father’s sister? The wolf-maiden? The beloved of Robert Baratheon? It made no sense. It made terrible, blinding sense.

A rush of dizziness swept through him, his hands trembling at his sides. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears, the cold air pressing in on his chest. His vision blurred as if the world itself had cracked.

“I found her,” Ned said, his voice breaking at the edges. “In Dorne, at a place called the Tower of Joy. She was dying. And she gave you to me, with her last breath. She made me swear.”

The words fell into Jon like stones into deep water, each one sinking and sending out ripples that threatened to drown him. “You swore,” he echoed dully, the words tasting of iron in his mouth.

“I swore to protect you. To raise you as my own. To keep you safe from those who would see you as a threat.”

“Threat?” Jon’s voice cracked, a ragged edge of panic in the word. “But why—?”

“Because of your blood.”

Ned stepped forward, laying a hand lightly on Jon’s shoulder. “You are not only Stark. You are Targaryen as well.”

Jon jerked away, the breath tearing from his lungs like a blade. Targaryen. Mad kings and burning cities. Dragons and fire. It was a lie. It had to be. And yet deep inside him, something stirred — something ancient, something wild. The dreams. The flying. The feeling of being more than just a boy of Winterfell.

The godswood spun around him, the red leaves blurring as his heart thundered in his chest. He felt as if the world itself was closing in — the air too thin, the shadows too deep. His breath came in ragged gasps, the ground tilting beneath his feet. I’m not him. I’m not…

He dropped to his knees without meaning to, the cold earth biting through his breeches, grounding him in the here and now even as his mind screamed. He could not breathe. He could not think. Only the wind in the trees, the beating of his own heart, the weight of names that did not fit. Snow. Stark. Targaryen. Who was he now? What was he?

Ned knelt beside him, silent at first. Then he reached out, his hand firm on Jon’s shoulder — an anchor in the storm. “Jon,” he said quietly, the word a rock in the tide. “Look at me.”

Jon raised his head, his eyes wide and wet.

“You have choices ahead,” his father said. “Choices heavier than you know. But you are not alone. You are my son, in all the ways that matter.”

Jon let out a shuddering breath. The tears on his face surprised him — he had not felt them fall. The godswood blurred before his eyes, and for a moment he was a child again, clinging to a father’s strength he could never claim but always trusted.

He nodded once, wordless, his chest still tight but his heart steadying beneath his father’s touch. Ned rose and offered his hand. Jon took it. Together, they stood beneath the red leaves, as the old gods watched and the night gathered around them.

Days passed, but the truth his father had laid bare in the godswood clung to Jon like a second cloak — one he could neither shed nor ignore.

He walked the halls of Winterfell as though in a dream, the faces of his brothers and sisters blurring in his vision. He heard their laughter, their squabbles, the training yard’s clash of steel — but all felt distant, muffled beneath the roar of his own blood.

Lyanna. Rhaegar. Stark. Targaryen.

The names circled him like wolves in the night, their teeth bared in memories he did not possess.

Ghost never left his side, his red eyes watchful and silent. Jon would sometimes catch the direwolf staring into the shadows as if seeing something Jon could not.

His father, for his part, watched him with the same quiet pain Jon had seen in the godswood. They spoke little of the secret — there were no more words left to bridge the chasm it had opened between them.

But in the silence of Winterfell, in the hush that came before dawn, Jon felt a pull — stronger each day. Not north. Not south. But down. Down into the stone and earth. Down into the bones of Winterfell itself.

And when sleep came, the dreams came with it — every night now, relentless and wild.
Dreams of flight — soaring high above the snows and seas, over mountains crowned in white, over cities burning with strange, pale fire.

He flew over the Wall, its white expanse like a scar across the north, over dark forests that whispered of ancient things, over rivers that twisted like silver serpents under a moonless sky.
He flew over blackened ruins, the bones of kingdoms long dead, and over shining towers that gleamed with the promise of power.

He saw lands he had never known yet recognized with the surety of blood and bone, each one calling to him in a voice he could not name.

Sometimes he saw Ghost pacing below him, a pale shadow among the trees — eyes like embers, unblinking and unafraid.

Sometimes he saw a dragon, vast and terrible, its wings beating thunder from the sky, its eyes like pools of molten gold.

And sometimes he flew alone, nothing but the wind and the stars and the sound of his own heartbeat echoing in the darkness.

Each morning he woke gasping, the taste of smoke and cold salt on his tongue, his heart still racing with the memory of the sky.

Ghost would be there, always watching him — eyes alight with secrets too old for words.

The pull became unbearable on the seventh night.

Jon rose from his bed without thinking, his body moving as if guided by unseen hands. He dressed quietly, his fingers trembling at his belt, and Ghost was already at the door — eyes like embers, tail twitching.

He slipped from his chambers, the direwolf a silent shadow at his heels. The halls of Winterfell stretched before him, dark and echoing, the torches guttering low. The stones beneath his boots felt alive, whispering secrets in the hush of midnight.

No one stirred. The castle slept. Only he and Ghost moved.

The entrance to the crypts loomed ahead — a yawning mouth of blackness beneath the keep. Jon paused at the threshold, his breath catching in his throat. The air was cold and still, the darkness deep and old.

He had come here as a child, racing Robb and Theon down the damp steps, daring each other to touch the oldest statues. But tonight the place felt different. Alive. Waiting. Ghost brushed against his leg, urging him on. Jon swallowed and descended.

The air grew colder with every step, thick with the scent of earth and old stone. He passed the newer tombs first — Lord Rickard, Brandon, Lyanna — their statues carved in faithful likeness, eyes blind and watchful.

Deeper still he went, past tombs older than memory, their names worn away by time. The pull guided him unerringly, deeper than he had ever gone. At last, Ghost halted before a tomb half-swallowed by time and darkness. Cregan Stark. The name was faint, almost lost to the ages.

Jon felt his heart hammer in his chest, a beat that matched the ancient rhythm beneath his skin. The pull was strongest here. Ghost whined low, ears flat and tail stiff. Jon hesitated, a tremor running through him. Then, as if something had seized his hands, he fell to his knees and began to dig.

The earth was damp and heavy, clinging to his fingers, fouling his nails. His hands bled from unseen stones, but he did not stop. He dug until the sweat ran into his eyes, until his muscles burned, until the world narrowed to the scrape and drag of soil.

And then his fingers struck something smooth. Warm. Alive.

He froze, breath shallow, the weight of it pressing into his palm like a heartbeat. He cleared the last of the dirt with trembling hands, tears stinging his eyes.

An egg. Heavy as a stone, yet impossibly light. Smooth and scaled, the color of deep charcoal shot through with veins of silver. It pulsed faintly, as if a heart beat within.

Ghost nosed it once and withdrew, ears laid back. Jon cradled the egg to his chest, feeling its warmth seep into his bones.

He did not know how it had come to be here, hidden in the tomb of a dead Stark.
He did not know what it meant. But deep inside, in the place where dreams and blood spoke louder than words, he understood: It was his.

He rose slowly, every muscle trembling, the egg in the crook of his arm. The old kings of Winterfell watched him with blind stone eyes. None moved. None spoke. But Jon felt it — a silent blessing, a passing of torches older than memory.

The boy who had walked into the crypts was not the boy who would walk out again.
And the world would tremble for it.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

Jon Snow was not himself. Catelyn Stark watched him from the shadows of Winterfell’s stone halls — the way he walked, the way he spoke, the way he held himself at meals, as if carrying a secret too heavy for any boy’s shoulders.

Something in him had changed. He moved like a shadow searching for the source of its own darkness, a quiet restlessness that set her teeth on edge and her heart on guard. His eyes were darker now, deeper, as if he saw things no one else could, things that lived in the corners of the world beyond the reach of firelight.

He ate little, pushed food around his plate as if every bite carried the weight of a thousand memories. He spoke even less, his voice rough when it came, as though shaped from the same stone as the walls of Winterfell.

Sometimes, when he thought no one watched, she caught him staring at the crypts with a hunger in his eyes that frightened her — a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
His hands curled and uncurled at his sides, restless as a caged wolf.

At first, she said nothing. It was not her place to worry for Jon Snow. He was not hers. But blood was blood, and the walls of Winterfell had a way of binding strangers together, forging iron where before there had been only doubt and pain. She had borne too many children — and buried too many fears — to mistake the scent of danger when it crept close.

She had watched Jon grow from a sullen boy at her husband’s side to a solemn young man — proud, loyal, uncertain of his place in the world. She had tried, in her own way, to give him the kindness his mother would never know, the respect he deserved if not always the love she wished she could give freely. And now she watched him and wondered if she had failed him after all.

She spoke to Ned that evening, in the quiet of their chambers, where the fire cast long, flickering shadows on the ancient stone. Jon’s behavior gnawed at her like a splinter she could neither dig out nor ignore — the way he carried himself, the haunted look in his eyes, the way his hands fidgeted at his sides as though trying to grasp a weapon he did not own.

Ned listened, grave and patient, as he always did, his grey eyes fixed on the hearth as if the answers might lie in the coals. “He has learned hard truths,” he said at last, his voice low and worn. “About his mother. About his blood. It is natural that he should be unsettled.”

Catelyn frowned, worry pinching at the corners of her eyes. “I know grief when I see it,” she said, her voice tight. “I know the shape of it, the way it steals a man’s voice, the way it hollows his eyes. But this — this is not grief. This is… something else.”

She paused, fighting the tremble in her voice. “I saw him, Ned. I saw the way he looked at the crypts, the way his eyes turned, as if he heard voices none of us could. He is not the same boy he was.”

Ned only shook his head, the lines of his face carved in shadow. “He needs time,” he said. “We all do.”

He reached for her hand then, callused and warm, but it felt like a barrier more than a comfort. And that was the end of it, in his mind. But not in hers. That night, when the castle slept, Catelyn rose from her bed and pulled on a cloak, the wool scratchy against her skin.

The halls of Winterfell were cold and silent, shadows pooling in corners like hidden watchers. Every step she took was an echo of memory: footsteps she had paced beside Ned, beside her children — but tonight she walked alone, the hush of stone and wind pressing against her heart.

Ghost was not in Jon’s chambers when she passed, and the empty bed made her breath catch.
No sign of the boy either. Her heart quickened, her pulse drumming in her throat. That old, sharp mother’s instinct — the one no sword could dull — sang in her bones like a blade drawn from its scabbard. She followed it through the hush of Winterfell, down the winding stairs, past the towers that loomed like silent sentinels.

The door to the crypts gaped open — black and yawning, a mouth to the deep places of the world. She paused at the threshold, feeling the weight of centuries pressing on her chest, before slipping inside, her steps soft on the cold stone.

The air grew colder with every step, a chill that sank into her marrow.
She passed the newer tombs first — Rickard, Brandon, Lyanna — faces she had come to know too well in silence and stone. Deeper. And deeper still, until the air itself felt old, filled with the hush of secrets too heavy to name.

A faint, flickering light glimmered ahead — a torch, its flame dancing like a ghost in the dark. She moved closer, pressing herself to the cold pillars of the old kings, her breath a hush of mist. And there, in the half-light, she saw Jon.

He knelt before a tomb half-swallowed by time — Cregan Stark’s, though the name barely registered in her mind. His head was bowed, his face half in shadow, and in his arms he cradled something, holding it with a tenderness that made her heart tighten. At first she thought it was a bundle of cloth, a tattered keepsake of grief.

But then it moved. A shiver of scales. A flicker of wings. A creature — small, no larger than a small cat, its scales black as midnight coal, wings folded tight against its thin body. Its eyes gleamed gold in the firelight, ancient and bright as molten crowns. Smoke curled faintly from its nostrils, the air itself quivering around it as if the world held its breath.

A dragon. Alive. Breathing. Real.

Catelyn gasped, the sound small and sharp, cutting the hush like a dagger’s point.
Jon turned, his face pale and stricken in the torchlight, his eyes wide with guilt and wonder.
For a long, shuddering moment they simply stared at each other — woman, boy, and beast — the silence thicker than the stone that surrounded them.

And in that silence, Catelyn Stark understood. The old songs, the old fears — all the tales she had half-feared and half-doubted — they were no longer tales. The world had changed. Winterfell would never be the same again. And neither would Jon Snow.

They climbed the winding stairs in silence, the hush of Winterfell pressing around them like a cold cloak. Jon’s face was pale in the flickering torchlight, his eyes fixed on the bundle he held to his chest. Catelyn tried to speak, to ask the questions that gnawed at her heart, but the words caught in her throat. It was too soon, too heavy, too much.

The dragon—alive, breathing—burned in her mind like a brand. She had seen the smoke curl from its nostrils. She had felt the old stories shiver down her spine.
Jon’s hands trembled on the cloak’s edge, knuckles white as snow. She longed to reach for him, to comfort him, to be the mother she had promised herself she would be. But fear stayed her hand. Fear of what this meant for Jon. For Ned. For Winterfell.

They reached the chamber, the door dark and silent. She raised her hand and knocked, soft but insistent A rustle within. The scrape of a chair. And then his voice, deep and rough with sleep, “Enter.” Catelyn pushed the door open and stepped inside, the cold following them like a shadow. Jon hovered behind her, his burden hidden in the folds of his cloak.

Ned stood near the hearth, the embers painting his face in hues of red and gold. His eyes went first to her, then to Jon, then to the thing Jon held.

“What is this?” he asked, though the tremor in his voice told her he already knew.

She could not speak. She could only watch as Jon stepped forward, his shoulders squared, his eyes wide with something between shame and wonder. He pulled back the folds of the cloak, and the dragon stirred—small, dark as coal, eyes like molten gold. Smoke curled from its nostrils, filling the room with the scent of new-forged steel. The world seemed to stop. And in that hush, Catelyn Stark felt the shape of things to come.

Ned’s eyes moved from the dragon to Jon, then to her. His face was carved from stone, the lines deepened by sleepless nights and silent worry. “How long?” he asked, his voice rough.

Jon’s reply was a whisper, but it carried the weight of all their fears. “Since the night after you told me the truth,” he said. “I dreamed of it… I found it in the crypts.” A shiver ran down Catelyn’s spine. The crypts. The old blood. The old gods. She felt the weight of the past pressing down on them all.

Ned closed his eyes briefly, and in that moment she saw the grief in him—the sorrow that had no words. He had always carried it, but now it seemed to break free of its chains. When he opened his eyes again, there was something new there—a fierce, terrible resolve.

Howland’s warning had echoed in her heads for moons, carried on the hush of the godswood, spoken in the stillness after nightmares. She could hear it now in Ned’s silence. She held her breath, feeling the shape of destiny close around them like the walls of this keep.

Ned looked at Jon—not as a boy now, but as something more. Something the gods had whispered into the bones of the world.

His son. His sister’s son.  Mine too, she thought.

The blood of Stark and Targaryen. Winter and fire. North and South. Jon cradled the dragon as if it were a part of him, and in that moment, Catelyn understood that he was.

Ned’s jaw tightened. She saw him weigh the choices. She saw him hold them against the dream he had carried like a secret wound. She saw the only choice settle in his bones.

He turned to her then, his eyes heavy with the knowing. “We will call the banners,” Ned said quietly. His voice was a blade drawn in the dark. “But not for Stannis. Not for Renly. Not for Joffrey.”

Catelyn felt her heart quicken. The fear and hope tangled together like threads of old blood. She said nothing. She could not. But she watched, her breath caught in her chest.

Ned turned back to Jon, the dragon stirring faintly against the boy’s chest. “For the North,” he said. “For the blood that remembers. For the future that is coming.”

He crossed the floor, the shadows of the hearth chasing him like old ghosts. He placed a hand on Jon’s shoulder—firm, steady, the weight of a thousand generations behind it. “We will make ready,” Ned Stark said. “And we will carve our own destiny.”

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The Small Council chamber smelled of cold stone, damp with the memory of old secrets, and something fouler — the stink of fear, thinly veiled behind fine cloaks and heavy chains. The air was thick, like breath held too long, as if the walls themselves were waiting to exhale.

Tyrion Lannister paused at the heavy oak doors, letting his hand rest on the iron latch. He felt the weight of the chain at his throat — the badge of the Hand, forged in gold but cold as any shackle. He pushed the door open with deliberate force, letting it bang against the ancient hinges in a jarring note of defiance. The sound echoed through the chamber, a challenge hurled into the hush.

The room was half in shadow, lit by flickering torches that cast long, restless shapes against the tapestries of dead kings and lost battles. The air felt colder here, as though the stone had soaked up all the warmth of the sun and hoarded it for itself.

Tyrion took a step inside, boots clicking on the worn tiles — tiles polished smooth by centuries of wary feet. He let his gaze drift across the chamber, noting every face, every posture, every mask they wore.

He could taste the tension, sharp and metallic on his tongue. They were all here. The players in this grim game of thrones. His eyes found them one by one.

Pycelle hunched at his seat like a dying crow, coughing into his sleeve. His thin white hair lay in greasy strings, and he peered around with the cloudy suspicion of old men who know their time is short.

Cersei sat rigid, her beauty drawn tight and brittle, the lines at the corners of her mouth deeper now — worry, rage, or both. Her green eyes glinted with sharpness that had nothing to do with mercy.

Petyr Baelish sprawled in his chair as though the council chamber were his own private stage. Fingers steepled, a smirk playing at the edges of his lips, his eyes alive with mischief and secrets. He always looked too pleased, too polished, like a man who saw the world as one long joke — and himself as its punchline.

And Varys — soft, unctuous Varys — lurked in the shadows, his bald head gleaming like a polished egg. He watched them all with those pale eyes, hands folded in his sleeves, a spider waiting in its web. His smile was small and secretive, the smile of a man who knew too much and cared too little.

Tyrion stood just inside the threshold, taking it all in. A part of him wanted to laugh — here they sat, this collection of vipers and sparrows, each one with a dagger hidden behind their smile. And him, the dwarf in the lion’s den, the Hand of the King in all but name.

If they wanted a show, he would give them one. He would be the jester and the judge both, the little lion with teeth sharp enough to draw blood. He took a step forward, boots ringing like a challenge in the cold air.

Let them see, he thought. Let them see that the imp does not bow.

Tyrion took his seat with the slow, deliberate grace of a man who knew the eyes of a kingdom were on him, even in this half-shadowed chamber. He let the chair creak beneath his weight — a small sound, but in the hush of the room it carried like a sword drawn in the dark.

He studied his cup as he poured himself a measure of wine, letting the crimson liquid swirl and catch the light. The smell of it rose to meet him — dark, earthy, sharp with promise. He relished that scent, the promise of oblivion in a single swallow.

He raised the goblet, watching the wine tremble at the rim. "Well then," he said, voice bright as a dagger’s flash. "Shall we begin the farce?"

A hush spread across the table, thick and uneasy. The air felt tight, as though the room itself had drawn a breath and held it.

Pycelle gave a damp cough, one that rattled in his throat like old bones, and shuffled a sheaf of parchments with hands that shook. His fingers were stained with ink and something darker — Tyrion noted the smudges absently, wondering if they were wine or something more sinister.

Cersei’s fingers were white on the armrest, knuckles gleaming like bone beneath her pale skin. Her lips pressed into a thin line, as if each breath were a battle. The queen’s mask — the one she wore for the court and the courtiers — was beginning to crack, and Tyrion felt both pity and disdain for the woman beneath.

Petyr Baelish tilted his head, that lazy smile curling at his lips like a question unanswered. His eyes danced with secrets, and Tyrion could almost hear the coins clinking in his head as he calculated the cost of every word spoken.

Varys, ever the spider, folded his hands in his voluminous sleeves and inclined his bald head, a gesture both servile and threatening. His smile was a thin white line, patient and unreadable.

Tyrion let the silence stretch a little longer, savoring the discomfort like a fine wine. Let them sweat. Let them guess what the dwarf would say next. He took a sip, then lowered the goblet with exaggerated care. "So," he said, his voice light as silk but cold as the winter wind, "which enemy do we fear most this morning?" The question hung in the air like a blade.

Pycelle opened his mouth first, voice quavering. "My lords, my Queen," he began, but his words faltered under Cersei’s withering glare.

It was Varys who answered, his voice smooth and unhurried. "There is news from the Riverlands," he said, his pale eyes fixed on Tyrion. "Ser Jaime’s host has crossed the Trident."

Tyrion arched an eyebrow, a slow smile creeping over his lips. "Crossed? And the Tullys let him?"

Pycelle cleared his throat, the sound wet and labored. His parchment rattled as he unfurled it, the edges trembling in his grasp. "Lord Hoster Tully has declared neutrality," he croaked, voice strained. "Ser Jaime’s forces march with safe passage, avoiding—" He paused, dabbing at the sweat on his brow. "—ah, complications with House Tyrell along the Gold Road."

Tyrion leaned back, swirling his wine. The flicker of candlelight danced on the liquid’s surface like blood in a basin. "A wise old trout," he mused, his tone edged with disdain. "He sells his honor to buy his lands a few extra days of peace. He spares his people a battle — and earns the contempt of both sides."

Baelish’s chuckle was soft, like the rustle of a knife leaving its sheath. "Some men prefer to be ruled by cowards than to die for heroes."

Cersei’s lip curled, but she said nothing.

"And my father?" Tyrion asked, his tone deceptively casual.

Petyr’s fingers drummed lightly on the table, his smile fixed and thin. "Lord Tywin remains at Casterly Rock," he said. "A second host gathers under his banners. House Lannister prepares for the long war."

Tyrion’s mouth twisted. "Meaning half the West is marching east to fight — and the other half waits to see who survives the first blow."

Cersei’s glare cut across the table like a blade. "You forget yourself," she spat.

Tyrion raised his goblet in a silent toast, his eyes cold as winter. "I forget nothing, sister. Least of all how quickly victory rots in the sun."

The conversation shifted, like a tide rolling in with the scent of blood.

Pycelle, eager to regain favor, thrust a parchment toward Tyrion with trembling hands. "Lord Stannis has taken Storm’s End."

The silence that followed felt sharp enough to draw blood.

Tyrion took another measured sip of wine, hiding the tightening in his chest behind a practiced mask. "And Renly?" he asked, voice soft as silk.

Petyr leaned forward, his smile gleaming in the candlelight. "Defeated. Routed. He fled to Ashford, gathering the Reach lords who still cling to his banners."

Varys’s sigh was almost theatrical, his bald head bobbing like a mournful priest’s. "Poor Renly," he murmured. "So bright. So beloved. And yet, when the storm came, he folded like a pageboy’s cloak."

Cersei’s teeth flashed white in the gloom, her eyes hard as emeralds. "Will he march again?" she demanded.

"Perhaps," Varys allowed, with a delicate shrug. "But not soon. He strengthens his position. Detaching ten thousand men to hold the Mander and the Tyrell lands against Lord Tywin’s future advances."

Tyrion’s brows drew together. Ten thousand men — lost to defense. Renly was bleeding strength even as he clung to his banners. Stannis, grim and implacable, would not stop. Like a rusted blade sawing through steel, Stannis would cut through the realm’s pretenders one by one.

"And the North?" Tyrion asked at last, his tone deceptively mild, though the room felt like it had grown smaller.

A shadow passed over the council. Baelish’s smile curled at the edges. "Lord Stark has called the banners," he said, each word a coin flicked into the silence. "White Harbor. Karhold. Barrowton. The Dreadfort. The wolves gather."

"For us," Cersei snapped, the words brittle and bright, as if by saying them, she could make them true.

Baelish’s eyes glimmered with amusement. "Perhaps. Sansa is still betrothed. And honor is a heavy yoke in the North."

"And yet," Varys said softly, his eyes half-lidded, "no raven has flown south declaring loyalty. No cries of fealty. Only the sound of claws sharpening on the wind."

Tyrion’s finger tapped on the stem of his goblet. "And no raven has flown to Dragonstone either."

A hush fell again, like a blade held just above the throat.

Cersei’s breath came quick. "And the Vale?" she demanded, her voice sharp, the question tinged with desperation.

Baelish spread his hands, all innocence. "Lady Lysa guards her son and her walls. She will not risk either for a southern king."

"And the Riverlands?" Pycelle wheezed, voice thin with age.

Varys’s smile was a knife. "The Riverlords wait. They watch the roses and the lions dance. But their hearts are tied to Winterfell — not to the Iron Throne."

Tyrion’s mouth curved, thin and cold. "Then we must hope the wolves grow tame."

For a long moment, no one spoke. The weight of kingdoms settled on their shoulders like a yoke of iron.

Tyrion let the silence stretch, savoring its bitter taste. Then he leaned back, eyes glittering, and spoke in a voice carved from iron and salt. "So," he said softly, "Jaime marches east. Tywin fortifies west. Stannis grows stronger. Renly bleeds. The North gathers. The Riverlands drift. The Vale hides. And here we sit, king in hand, city in hand, hoping the wolves and falcons do not both turn on us." He raised his goblet high, the wine a dark mirror for their fears. "Truly," he said, his voice cold, "a splendid position."

Cersei slammed her palm against the table, her rage crackling in the hush. "We have power!" she spat. "We have the Iron Throne!"

Tyrion’s eyes found hers, hard and unyielding. He thought of Joffrey’s cruelty, the madness of the city, the fragile peace that stretched like glass over a boiling sea. He thought of the knives in the dark.

You have a mad boy and a crumbling city, he thought. And neither will save you when the storm breaks.

But he only smiled, slow and cold. "Of course, sister," he said. "Of course."

The council dissolved, each member slipping away into the shadowed halls, their faces masks of calculation and fear. Tyrion lingered, staring at the city beyond the high windows.

King’s Landing sprawled beneath him, a tangle of roofs and towers and broken streets. Fires burned in a hundred hearths — and in a hundred hearts, he thought grimly. Peace was a skin stretched thin over a boiling cauldron. And the skin was beginning to tear.

He let the wine warm his throat, let the silence fill him. The game was in motion now — and the pieces were blood and bone. And in the distance, the wolves were howling.

Chapter Text

Jon

The land changed as they rode south. Gone were the open woods and ancient stone roads of the North. Here, the trees grew thick and twisted, their roots clawing up from black earth drowned in water. Mist clung to every branch, every stone, a pale ghost that wrapped the world in a hush so deep it made Jon’s skin prickle.

This was the Neck — a place where the air itself seemed to breathe and shift, where every shadow hid a secret. Where men vanished without a trace. Where the old gods still whispered through the reeds, older than memory.

Jon pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, feeling the weight of his new burden pressing against his ribs. Beneath the thick wool, the dragon stirred — a living heat that felt both comforting and terrifying. Its tiny claws flexed sometimes, pricking the fabric as if testing its prison. A secret. A burden. A promise he wasn’t sure he was ready to keep.

Beside him, Jojen Reed rode easily through the mist, his green cloak blending with the marsh like it belonged there. His eyes, pale and knowing, seemed to pierce the veil of fog as if it were no more than smoke. He had the look of one born of the Neck, a boy who had never feared the bogs or the creatures that skulked beneath the water’s surface.

Behind them, Walder rode the pack horse with quiet confidence. Broad as a blacksmith’s anvil, he carried his axe slung across his back like it was part of him. His thick, shaggy hair was damp from the mist, and his face — all lines and scars — was calm and watchful. Walder had grown up at Winterfell, a Stark guard since before Jon had drawn breath, and one of the last of those who had shared Lyanna’s laughter and Eddard’s secrets in their youth.

Jon felt the air press heavy on his chest — not just the humidity of the marshes but the weight of what he carried now, hidden beneath his cloak. The secret Ned Stark had given him, a truth older than his own name.

He was a Stark. And yet, he was not. He was something more — and less — and he carried that secret now, tucked beneath his heart like a blade he dared not draw. The memory of his father’s last words in the godswood burned in his mind. “Go south. Find Greywater Watch. Keep him safe.”

Every step the horse took felt like a step further from the boy he had been. They rode for hours in silence, the only sounds the squelch of hooves in wet earth and the low, haunting calls of unseen birds. The mist blurred the horizon, a world reduced to shifting shapes and the sound of water dripping from twisted branches.

At last, Jojen spoke, his voice soft as the mist itself. “My father dreamed of this,” he said, his eyes fixed on something distant that Jon could not see. “Before the Greyjoy Rebellion. He dreamed of wolves bleeding, of winter falling, of fire in the darkness.”

Jon turned to look at him, his brows knitting together. “Your father sees the future?”

Jojen shook his head slowly, his pale eyes wise beyond his years. “No. He saw pieces. Like shattered glass. A green dream is never whole. Never certain. But every dream he spoke of came to pass… one way or another.”

Jon felt a chill creep down his spine, cold as the mist. He thought of the dragon beneath his cloak, of the ancient pull that had guided him to it. The weight of it felt like destiny pressing on his bones. “Unless… it changes,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

Jojen’s solemn gaze met his. “Unless it changes,” he agreed.

Jon wondered then if he was another shard of Howland Reed’s broken glass. Another piece of a future no man could hold.

The fog thickened, turning the world to a shifting grey. Every branch became a claw, every shadow a threat. And Jon, with the dragon hidden against his ribs, felt the weight of all the old songs pressing down on him.

He was a Stark. A wolf. He was Targaryen. A dragon. He was both. And the Neck whispered that soon, he would have to choose which name to wear into the darkness.

As the sun dipped lower and the mists thickened, they made camp on a dry island of reeds and black earth. The land seemed to breathe here, the marsh muttering beneath them like an old man dreaming. The reeds rattled softly in the evening breeze, and the water beyond their little island gleamed dark and treacherous in the fading light.

Walder made a small fire, built low and smokeless. His big hands moved with quiet confidence, stacking the damp wood just so, a skill learned from a hundred nights at Winterfell and a hundred more on the march. He was a solid presence, a living wall of calm in a world that seemed to shift and twist with every step.

Jon sat with his back against a bent willow, the dragon cradled in his lap like a living ember. Its scales, dark as midnight, shimmered faintly in the firelight, veins of silver glinting like old runes. Its tiny claws rested against Jon’s wrist, a gentle weight that felt both delicate and fierce. The creature’s eyes opened once, a quick flash of molten gold, before it tucked its snout beneath its wing and settled into sleep.

Jojen watched it with open wonder, his green eyes wide, reflecting the flames like a pair of forest lanterns. He had always seemed older than his years, but now he looked like a boy again, caught between awe and fear.

Walder only nodded, his face unreadable in the flickering light. To him, the presence of a dragon in the world was a fact to be accepted, not questioned. He had seen too much to doubt the strange ways of fate.

Jon felt the weight of their gazes — Jojen’s curiosity and Walder’s steady calm — pressing on him like a question he could not yet answer. He was the one who carried the dragon, but the burden was more than flesh and blood; it was a promise written in the oldest songs of ice and fire.

The marsh pressed in around them, thick with the scent of peat and water, as if the land itself were breathing. A heron cried once in the distance, a lonely sound that echoed across the water.

Jon shifted uncomfortably, the dragon shifting with him. “Tell me of her,” he said suddenly, the words raw and sharp.

Both Jojen and Walder looked up, startled by the sound of his voice.

“My mother,” Jon said, his throat tight. “Lyanna. You knew her.”

Walder’s eyes softened, the lines of his face easing like an old wound that had finally stopped bleeding. “I did,” he said, his voice low and steady. “She was fierce. Like a she-wolf. Quick to laugh — and quicker to anger.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, a ghost of the man he had been. “She could out-ride most knights. Out-shoot them too. No one told her what she could not do.”

Jon closed his eyes and tried to summon the image — a girl with a warrior’s heart, laughing as she raced across green fields. It felt impossible, and yet something in his blood sang to the truth of it.

“She loved Winterfell,” Walder continued, his voice roughening. “And she loved your father.”

Jon’s eyes flew open, sharp and questioning. “My father?”

Walder’s smile faded, replaced by something sad and solemn. “Ned Stark was her brother, Jon. He loved her as a brother should — fiercely, protectively.”

He paused, his gaze steady as the marsh itself. “But your true father… he loved her too. In his own way.”

Jon felt the words sink into his bones, cold as the mist around them. He had heard whispers all his life — songs of a silver prince and a Stark girl. But no one had ever spoken plainly. Until now.

Walder’s hands were gentle as he fed the fire, his big fingers deft and certain. “You are her son,” he said, each word carrying the weight of an oath. “Of Stark blood. Of dragon blood.” He looked up, and Jon saw the truth in his eyes — old as the reeds, deep as the roots of Winterfell. “And someday, that blood will call you to great things.”

Jon said nothing. The marsh lay thick and heavy around them, the mists pressing close like a second skin. Somewhere far off, a lone bird cried again — high and mournful, as if the world itself wept for what was lost and what would be.

Jojen’s voice came soft but certain, breaking the hush. “You are not alone,” he said. “The Neck watches. The old gods watch. And Greywater Watch waits.”

Jon nodded slowly, his fingers brushing the dragon’s scales. He was a bastard. A prince. A wolf. A dragon. He was all of these things — and none. But he was not alone.

That night, as the mist thickened and the moon rose pale and broken above the marsh, Jon drifted into uneasy sleep. The reeds rustled softly in the night air, a sound like dry bones whispering secrets. The marsh stretched on forever in every direction, endless and dark, and for a moment Jon thought he was awake — but then he felt the weightless pull that came with the dreams.

He stood at the edge of a great river, its waters black and endless, swallowing all light. The air tasted of salt and ash. The current moved slow and implacable, carrying broken branches, splintered shields, and rusted blades — relics of wars he could not remember.

On the far bank, wolves gathered in the mist. Their eyes shone red as embers, and their howls tore at the night, a chorus of ancient grief. One by one, they leaped into the river, their fur slick with cold water, vanishing beneath the surface.

He tried to call out, but his voice was stolen by the wind.

Above him, dragons wheeled in a sky of bruised purple and dying gold. Their wings beat thunder from the clouds, and their cries were half fury, half mourning. One circled lower, its scales catching the moonlight — dark as the depths of the crypts, marked with veins of silver. It locked eyes with him — eyes the color of molten gold — and Jon felt a jolt in his chest.

He reached out, but the dragon vanished, leaving only the echo of its wings.

A tower rose on the far shore, half in ruin, half in shadow. Smoke curled from its highest window, dark and silent. As he watched, the stones cracked and split, revealing a woman’s face in the broken walls — proud, fierce, and unbowed by time. Her hair was black as midnight, her eyes bright with defiance. She looked straight at him, and the river seemed to freeze.

“Jon,” she called. Her voice was stronger than the river, stronger than the wind.

His heart clenched, every beat a war drum.

“Mother,” he whispered.

The river’s current seized him then, cold and relentless. It dragged him down, deeper and deeper, until the surface was only a memory. His breath caught. The darkness pressed in.

And then — light. A glimmer of silver and gold in the depths. The shape of wings unfolding.

A dragon, rising from the river’s heart.

Jon’s chest burned, and he reached for it, feeling its heat like a sunrise in winter.

He woke with a ragged gasp, the marsh air cold against his skin. Ghost lay beside him, head on his paws, red eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The dragon in his lap shifted and whined softly, its scales catching the faint silver glow.

Jon closed his eyes and let the dream settle into his bones. The river. The wolves. The dragon. The woman’s voice. His mother. He would not forget. No matter how deep the river ran, no matter how dark the mists became — he would not forget.

Chapter Text

Stannis

The sea lashed the black rocks below Storm’s End, foam and fury rising in bursts like the wrath of some ancient god. Waves shattered against the cliff face in a rhythm as relentless as his thoughts.

Stannis stood in silence at the narrow window of the Lord’s Solar, hands clasped behind his back, jaw set like stone. The storm had raged since nightfall, and he had not moved. He welcomed its fury. It matched his own. He clenched his jaw tighter, feeling the familiar ache at the hinge.

The battle should have been his. He had marched north with fifteen thousand, seasoned men, lean and loyal. His core had been those who had stood by him at Storm’s End, survivors of the siege, joined now by the cautious lords of the Stormlands who had bent the knee after Renly’s rout. But Jaime Lannister was no fool.

Stannis had hoped the Kingslayer would be arrogant — overconfident, rash, as Robert might have been. But Jaime had moved quickly, pulling his men from the Riverlands and intercepting Stannis near the Blackwater Rush.

Twenty thousand under the lion banners. They had met like hammers striking an anvil. The fields ran red, and men died screaming beneath banners of gold and red, of fiery hearts and crowned stags.

Stannis’s men had fought hard. He had led from the front, his sword red to the hilt, his horse killed beneath him. He had not broken. But neither had he broken them. No ground was taken. No banners captured. No victory earned.  

In the end, he had given the order he had never wanted to speak. “Fall back.” Two words, bitter as gall.

He had retreated to Storm’s End, clenched his teeth so tightly that his molars still ached. The shame burned like fire, but shame was a lesser enemy than death. And Stannis Baratheon did not throw away men for vanity.

He thought of Renly — his fool brother, all green silk and empty boasts — and how he had shattered him with fewer than ten thousand men. That had been different. Renly was unblooded. Soft. Jaime Lannister was not. Stannis allowed himself the smallest nod. At least he recognized the truth. The Kingslayer was a better general than Renly had ever been. But not better than him.

The wind howled through the broken teeth of Storm’s End’s battlements, shrieking like some hungry spirit clawing at stone. Stannis stood in its path, unmoved, his cloak snapping behind him like a banner of defiance. Salt spray lashed his face from the cliffs below, but he made no move to wipe it away.

When at last he turned from the sea, his boots rang heavy on the ancient stones. He passed beneath cold arches and low ceilings, the damp breath of the keep seeping into his bones. He descended with purpose, every step measured, until he came to the war room.

The chamber was small, windowless, and built like a tomb — thick with the smell of salt and stone. A round table of old oak dominated the center, its surface scarred and scorched by generations of quarrels, campaigns, and kings who had dreamed of crowns and bled for them.

Around it sat the lords who had answered his call, those who had declared for him, and those who had bent the knee only when Renly fled the field.

Lord Alester Florent, his orange-fox sigil pin gleaming on his cloak, sat stiff-backed and certain, as if he were the king and not merely kin. Lord Monford Velaryon leaned forward, silver hair catching the light, eyes flicking between faces like a man already counting ships. Aurane Waters, young but sharp, stood behind him in silence. Lord Ardrian Celtigar, old and thin-lipped, sniffed disdainfully at the damp walls. Lord Eldon Estermont, one of Renly’s former Lord, sat with hands clasped before him. And Davos Seaworth — quiet, observant, the only man Stannis truly trusted — stood at his left.

Stannis did not sit. He stood at the head of the table, hands behind his back, still in the black and red of battle.

Ser Richard Horpe entered briskly, bowing once before handing over a parchment sealed in grey wax. “A raven from Stonehelm,” he said. “Reports of movement. Renly’s banners march again.”

A murmur swept the table.

“How many?” Velaryon asked.

“Twenty thousand, maybe more,” Horpe replied. “They fly for the coast. Some say they aim for Nightsong, others for Crow’s Nest.”

“They dare!” Celtigar hissed. “After his rout, the green king limps south like a whipped cur and still believes himself heir?”

“The Reach still backs him,” muttered Estermont. “A rout does not undo charm in the eyes of reach-men.”

“Let him come,” said Florent. “We’ll crush him again, just as before.”

“We should strike now,” Velaryon said. “Ride north and face Jaime Lannister a second time, before he entrenches deep. If we delay—”

“Delay is defeat,” Celtigar finished for him.

“And if we ride to face Jaime again?” Davos asked softly, his voice the only calm one in the room. “He has more men and a better position.”

“We gain more every day,” Florent countered. “Tarth may yet join us—”

“Tarth will do nothing while their lord hides behind neutrality and his daughter is at Renly’s side,” Celtigar spat.

Stannis raised a hand. The voices fell silent.

“You all see threats,” he said. “That is good. But you must also see reason.”

He stepped forward, slow and measured.

“Jaime Lannister holds the border. If he moves south, he leaves King’s Landing exposed. Renly’s second host lies waiting — ten thousand men near Bitterbridge. If the lions turn their back, the greens will strike.” He turned to Horpe. “Renly marches now to save face. He will take Stonehelm, perhaps Griffin’s Roost. But what are castles worth, when no one defends them?”

“A prize,” Florent muttered.

“A distraction,” Stannis said. “He hopes we chase him. Hopes we abandon Storm’s End.” His eyes swept the table, sharp as drawn steel. “We will not.” The lords fell quiet. “Let Renly take ruins. Let him seize walls without men to hold them. Let him stretch his line thin with vanity. When he turns east — and he will — we will be here.” He pointed to the stone floor beneath his feet. “We wait. And we break him.”

Davos gave a small nod. Estermont looked satisfied. Velaryon said nothing.

After a moment, Florent bowed stiffly. “As you command, Your Grace.”

Stannis nodded once. “Then go. Send ravens to the Stormlords still wavering. Strengthen the defenses. Ration the grain. No man will say we were caught unready.”

One by one, the lords rose and filed out, their footfalls muffled by the cold stone. Only Davos paused in the doorway, as if to speak — but thought better of it. He met Stannis’s eyes, gave a respectful nod, and left.

When the last of the lords had gone, their boots echoing down the halls like fading thunder, Stannis remained in the war room, his hands braced on the scarred table. The room was quiet now, save for the low hiss of the dying fire and the distant groan of the sea battering Storm’s End below.

He did not look up when the door opened. He did not need to. He knew her step — soft as breath, silent as shadow. Melisandre.

The scent of myrrh and smoke preceded her like a herald. Her red robes whispered as she entered, catching the firelight with a shimmer that made them seem alive.

“My king,” she said, her voice smooth and low. “You sit among ash and stone while the path burns clear before you.”

Stannis did not move. “The lords are restless,” he muttered. “Some look west to my brother, others north to the Kingslayer. And still they wait.”

“They wait,” she said, stepping closer. “Because they are blind. But you, Stannis Baratheon — you were born to see. The Lord of Light chose you.”

“I was born second,” he said bitterly.

She circled him like flame curling around dry wood. “You were born to bring justice. The Iron Throne is yours by right and by fire. But fire demands fuel.”

He lifted his eyes to her then — sharp, rimmed with tiredness, but burning still with the iron beneath. “Say it plainly.”

She stopped behind him, close enough he could feel the heat radiating from her body.

“Your brother stands in your way. He wears a crown not meant for him. He defies the will of the Lord of Light. His blood is royal. And blood is power.”

Stannis turned sharply. “You speak of murder.”

“I speak of sacrifice.”

He stepped back from her, jaw clenched. “No.”

Melisandre tilted her head, the ruby at her throat pulsing with faint crimson light. “You would rather lose a kingdom than spill a traitor’s blood?”

“I would rather lose my claim than lose my soul,” he growled.

She smiled then — not cruelly, but as one who pities a stubborn child. “A king with no crown. A king with no fire. You would cling to the chains of old honor while the world burns around you.”

Stannis stepped forward until they stood face to face, storm and fire in his eyes. “I am not Robert. I am not Renly. I will not rule through charm, or laughter, or lies. I will rule through law.”

“Law,” she echoed, almost a whisper. “And what law says a brother may not bleed for a kingdom?”

“Every law that matters,” he said. “The one I hold here—” he struck his chest, “and the one I gave to a dying man in the smoke of Dragonstone. I will not be a kinslayer. I will not win this throne with my brother’s blood.”

The fire cracked between them, sparks rising like dying stars.

Melisandre bowed her head slightly. “As you command, my king.”

But there was a flicker in her eyes, behind the red — something unreadable. Not anger. Not defiance. Patient. And when she left him there, alone among the shadows and fading flames, the war room seemed darker for it.

Stannis turned back to the table. No one would call him loved. But they would call him rightful.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The Small Council chamber was stifling, the heavy curtains drawn against the midday sun. Stale air clung to the room like the breath of a dying man — too warm, too close, too heavy with perfume, sweat, and fear.

Tyrion Lannister pushed open the carved oak doors and let them creak and thud behind him. He could have entered quietly, but what would be the point? Let them flinch. He paused on the threshold, letting his mismatched gaze travel the room like a blade through fog.

Cersei was already seated, back ramrod straight, her hands folded tightly on the table. She looked as if she'd been carved from marble — lovely, cold, and brittle. Rage hummed beneath her stillness like a string drawn too taut. She didn’t look up as he entered.

Pycelle was wheezing over a scroll, beard trailing like some molting bird had died on his chest. He gave a little cough as Tyrion passed, as though to remind everyone he was alive — barely.

Varys lounged in lavender silks, hands folded gently in his lap, face as unreadable as a closed book. He smiled at Tyrion, smooth and unblinking — the kind of smile a man gives while setting snares.

And Baelish, of course, sat as if the room belonged to him. One leg crossed over the other, fingers steepled, that smirk playing at his lips. He looked amused. He always looked amused.

And now—

Joffrey.

The boy king sat in his mother’s chair, lounging with the arrogance of a conqueror, one boot kicked up against the table’s leg. His golden curls were mussed with impatience, and in his hand, he held a slim dagger, idly flicking dirt from his nails with the blade’s tip. He looked like a child playing at kingship — which, Tyrion supposed, he was. The sight made Tyrion’s stomach twist. Not with fear. But with a quiet dread, like watching a wildfire take root in dry woods.

He moved to his seat at the opposite end of the table and climbed into it without haste, letting the silence press in. They were all waiting for him to speak. Good. Let them stew. He poured himself a generous cup of wine and raised it to his lips. The curtains filtered the sun into pale streaks, and dust danced in the light like tiny ghosts. Tyrion took a sip and leaned back in his chair.

Varys was the first to speak, his voice as smooth as cream over glass. He folded his soft hands on the table and inclined his bald head with the grace of a well-trained courtier.

“News from the Kingsroad, Your Graces,” he began, that unctuous tone curling around the chamber like incense. “Ser Jaime has engaged Lord Stannis’s host.”

Tyrion lifted an eyebrow, swirling his wine. Of course he had. Jaime was too restless to wait behind castle walls while war brewed like stormclouds.

“The battle at Blackwater Rush was hard-fought,” Varys continued, “but Stannis has been turned back.”

“Turned back,” Tyrion repeated, setting his goblet down with a soft clink. “Not defeated?”

The distinction mattered. You could turn back a storm. That didn’t mean it wasn’t coming again.

Varys’s expression didn’t shift. “Victory enough, I think, when facing Lord Stannis.”

Pycelle, from his end of the table, made a sound between a wheeze and a harrumph. “Stannis Baratheon is a seasoned commander,” he said, blinking at no one in particular. “To halt his march is a great feat, yes, yes. Very great.”

Tyrion smiled thinly. Great feats. Great graves. He wondered how many bodies were left in that muddy bend. How many had bled against his brother’s army.

Cersei leaned forward slightly. “Jaime will reach the city soon?”

Varys shook his head. “Alas, no, Your Grace. He remains with his forces. Lord Tywin commands it.”

At the sound of his father’s name, Tyrion felt his spine stiffen involuntarily. Ah, yes. Lord Tywin commands. Of course he does.

“Lord Tywin has crossed into the Reach,” said Littlefinger, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from his doublet. “Goldengrove, Old Oak, and Red Lake have fallen. The Reach quakes like a maid on her wedding night.”

Tyrion tilted his head. “And the Tyrells? Still sniffing their flowers and sitting on their hands?”

Baelish’s smile curled. “Lord Tywin keeps his distance. The Tyrells are strong, yes — but divided. Renly draws most of their loyalty.”

“Which brings us,” Cersei cut in, “to Renly.”

There was venom in her voice now. She never liked Renly — too pretty, too clever, too popular. She hated all things that drew the crowd away from her.

“Marching south of Storm’s End,” said Varys. “Or he was — until Lord Tywin’s arrival forced his hand. Now he turns west. Racing to defend his own lands.”

Tyrion pictured Renly’s banners retreating in disarray, his crown slipping sideways on that pretty brown head. He imagined the young Baratheon’s smile faltering. That thought, at least, made the wine taste better.

Then came the sound — sharp and childish — of steel striking wood. Joffrey had stabbed his dagger into the table.

“Let them come!” the boy-king shouted, voice shrill with youth and madness. “I’ll kill them all! I’ll put their heads on spikes! I’m the king!”

The silence that followed was thick as boiled wine.

Tyrion didn’t rush to break it. He took another long sip and let the boy flounder in the echo of his own absurdity. At last, he said, “Of course, Your Grace.” He set his goblet down and laced his fingers. “And when they arrive, perhaps you will ride out alone and deal with them yourself. I hear Renly weeps at the sound of your name.” Cersei’s eyes snapped to him, narrow and hot.

But Joffrey puffed up in his chair like a bantam rooster. “I will,” he said. “I’ll cut down Renly myself.”

Tyrion nodded solemnly. “I’m sure you will.” And the gods would weep for joy.

Pycelle coughed wetly, rummaging through a tangle of scrolls that rustled like old bones. “Dispatches from Sunspear, my lords,” he wheezed, finally producing a cracked tube and squinting at the wax seal. “Dorne remains... quiet. Prince Doran refuses to move. Their gates are closed. Trade has slowed.”

Closed gates, closed mouths, and open wounds, Tyrion thought. Doran Martell had not forgotten Elia. No Dornishman ever would.

“And the Vale?” Cersei asked, sharp as glass.

Baelish gave a soft chuckle. “Lady Lysa guards her son and her walls. No ravens stir. No swords drawn. She hoards her silence like gold.”

A shame, Tyrion thought. The Vale had knights enough to shift any war — but none brave enough to scale that bloody mountain to fetch them.

“No help from Dorne,” Tyrion said. “No help from the Vale. And yet—” he turned to Varys “—the North?”

Cersei pounced before the eunuch could reply. “The North marches for us,” she said with brittle triumph. “Their banners gather at Moat Cailin, armed and ready.”

Tyrion glanced sideways. “Do they?”

Varys folded his hands like a silent prayer. His smile was vague and smooth. “The wolves gather, yes. But we have yet to hear a cry of fealty.”

“They are bound to us,” Cersei snapped. “Sansa is betrothed to Joffrey.”

“Paper chains, Your Grace,” Varys replied softly. “Strong enough to hold a wedding feast. Not strong enough to hold a kingdom.”

Tyrion studied his sister. Her hands were white-knuckled on the armrests. She clung to the betrothal like a drowning woman to driftwood, as if a promise on parchment could chain the North to her son. But Varys was right — paper was not iron. Ned Stark had made a promise for the sake of friendship, for a king already buried. Robert was gone, and with him, whatever thread had held the wolves leashed.

He turned to Varys again. “Is their more?”

“A whisper here. A rumor there.” Varys shrugged. “Wildlings stirring. The Ironborn growing restless on their rocky shores.”

Tyrion sat back and gave a thin, cold smile. “Excellent. Let every corner of the realm burn at once. At least no one can say we played favorites.”

Joffrey slammed the pommel of his dagger into the table with a sharp crack. "I am king!" he shrieked, voice brittle as glass. "Let them come! I’ll kill them all!”

The room fell still. Cersei’s mouth tightened, her hand drifting toward her son’s arm in a gesture more of control than comfort.

Tyrion took a long, unhurried sip of wine, letting the silence stretch like a taut wire. When it was near to snapping, he set his goblet down with a deliberate click. "Of course, Your Grace," he said, his voice dry as the Dornish Marches.

At the end of the table, Pycelle cleared his throat and raised a shaky scroll. "The city, my lords... the city struggles."

Tyrion leaned forward. “At last, something practical. Go on.”

Pycelle adjusted his spectacles. "The Rose Road is closed. No grain caravans reach us from the Reach. The docks remain open — barely — but with Lord Stannis’s ships prowling the Blackwater, many merchants have fled. The price of bread has doubled in a fortnight."

"And tripled in Flea Bottom," Varys added delicately. “Children fight rats for supper. Riots simmer. Only the gold cloaks keep order — and barely that.”

Cersei made a noise of disgust. “They should be grateful we keep them alive.”

"They’ll show their gratitude with daggers and torches," Tyrion muttered.

He turned to Baelish. “You still call yourself Master of Coin. Any solutions?”

Littlefinger’s smirk did not falter. "The Crown owes more gold than it weighs. Short of squeezing the Faith or taxing breath itself, we are out of tricks."

“So,” Tyrion said, counting on his fingers, “we are starving, isolated, surrounded by enemies, and ruled by a boy with a crown. Did I miss anything?” Pycelle looked scandalized.

The council dissolved soon after, their chairs scraping stone like the whisper of tombs. One by one, they departed — Baelish humming, Varys gliding, Pycelle wheezing, and Joffrey stalking off like a lion cub trying to roar.

Cersei lingered a moment, her gaze hard. But Tyrion offered her only a mocking bow. “Your Grace.”

Then she was gone, and Tyrion was alone. He moved to the window, pushing back the curtain. King’s Landing sprawled below, a city of shadows and smoke. From up here, it still looked like a jewel — glinting in the sunlight, nestled in hills and water.

But Tyrion Lannister knew better. It was a barrel of wildfire, and the sparks had already started to fall.

Chapter Text

Benjen

The snow fell in thin, hissing sheets, carried by a cruel northern wind that sliced through fur and wool like a blade. It whispered across the frostbitten land, scouring the trees of the haunted forest and biting into exposed skin with icy teeth. Each gust was a reminder that winter had not merely come — it had settled, rooted deep in the marrow of the world.

Benjen Stark rode hunched in the saddle, the battered black cloak of the Night’s Watch wrapped tight around his shoulders, soaked through and heavy with ice. Longclaw weighed at his hip, the pommel cold as death. It had once been Jeor Mormont’s sword — Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Now it was his. A gift passed in blood. A burden he had not sought. He felt the weight of it in every step of his mount, in every breath that clouded before him in the bitter air.

Behind him rode the broken remains of honor. A ragged column of survivors — two dozen black brothers, maybe fewer. Some wounded, swaying in the saddle, their cloaks stiff with dried blood. Others bore fresh bandages, hastily wrapped with strips of linen and silence. There was no room for mourning. Not yet.

Some rode with faces set like stone, hollow-eyed men who had seen brothers turn to butchers at Craster’s Keep and lived to tell of it. Their grief hung behind them like a funeral banner, but still they rode. And among them, trudging wearily through the snow beside the packhorses, came a few of Craster’s wives. Girls, most of them. Barefoot. Silent. Eyes like broken glass.

Benjen had offered them a choice. “Come with us,” he had said. “Come to the Wall. There will be food. Shelter. Safety.”

Some had followed, clutching children or each other’s hands, moving like sleepwalkers through the ruins of the only home they'd ever known. But many had remained behind, unwilling to leave the familiarity of cruelty for the unknown mercy of strangers. Benjen had warned them — there was no safety in that place now. No walls. No laws. Only the cold, and what moved in it. Still they’d stayed. He did not have the strength to argue.

Ahead, the Wall loomed out of the mist like a god's tomb — pale, colossal, and cruel. It reared into the sky, a jagged blade of ice piercing the clouds. Castle Black huddled beneath it, a crippled thing of stone and wood, dwarfed by the ancient, frozen titan at its back. It looked less like a fortress now and more like a grave marker. The light in its towers was faint, flickering, as if afraid of being seen.

Benjen spurred his horse forward. Every mile they had gained since the mutiny was a victory paid in breath and blood. Every hour lost was another hour the North slid closer to ruin. He knew what waited beyond the trees. He had seen it.

Craster’s Keep came back to him in flashes. The reek of old blood clinging to the rafters. The firelight catching on a rusted axe. The sound of men screaming — some in rage, some in terror.

He remembered the moment the Old Bear fell — Jeor Mormont, roaring like a wounded lion, his white beard soaked in blood, carving down mutineers with the last of his strength. Two dead by his hand before the third found his back with a blade. Benjen had arrived too late. Too late to stop it. Too late to save him.

Mormont had pressed Longclaw into his grip, fingers slick with his own blood. The sword was warm then, almost burning with final purpose.

“The Watch needs a Stark,” the old man had said, voice ragged and low. “You’ll stand. You must.”

And then... nothing. His hand went slack. The light left his eyes. Only duty remained.

Benjen set his jaw, teeth clenched so tight it ached. There would be time for grief later. If they survived. Now, there was only the Wall. The message. The North.

The wind shrieked across the open plain, tearing through the shattered pines like a cry of the damned. His horse groaned beneath him, ribs heaving, but he pushed it onward. Castle Black rose larger with every step — battered, scorched, and still standing.

Months earlier, he had ridden into the wilderness — north and west, past the furthest outposts, into the deep wilds where no light of man ever reached. The haunted forest swallowed sound, swallowed thought. The trees there were older than kings, gnarled like arthritic fingers clawing at the sky, their limbs heavy with snow and silence. Beyond the Frostfangs, even the crows grew silent, and the cold was not merely cold — it was ancient, alive, and watching.

He had chased whispers. Wildlings gathering in strange numbers, fires flickering in places long abandoned. Unnatural lights seen in the trees — pale blue, flickering, dancing like corpse-flame. Scouts who vanished. Tracks that ended in blood, or worse — that ended in nothing at all.

He had expected raiders. He had prepared for giants, or even madness. What he found was death. Not the quiet kind, not the human kind — but something far colder, far older.

The Others.

They came like moonlight through fog — elegant, cruel, silent. No war cry, no sound of hooves or rusted mail. Only the snap of frost, the hiss of ice against steel, and the soft crunch of snow under feet that left no warmth behind. Beautiful, some would say. Ethereal. Inhuman. But Benjen had looked one in the face and seen no beauty in those eyes — only the cold hunger of the grave.

They struck without warning. Swords of ice — not merely cold, but impossibly sharp — cleaved through cloaks, armor, flesh. Steel shattered when it struck them. Men screamed, then froze, then died, their eyes rimmed in frost.

Benjen had fought. He remembered the terror in his chest, the way his sword felt dull and heavy in his grip. He remembered the moment he realized he would not live to see the Wall again. The air had been too thin, the darkness too deep, the fear too wide. He had seen death walking.

And then — light. A song without words. Shadows moving faster than wind. Golden eyes in the snow. The Children of the Forest came like the dawn, all root and flame and ancient power. Not quite human and yet not wholly alien. Their skin shimmered with the hue of bark, their hair like autumn leaves. Their hands glowed with fire drawn from the old world.

He remembered fragments only. The sting of smoke and sap. Hands pressed against his chest, against wounds that should have killed him. Words in a tongue older than the First Men, soft as flowing water. Visions in the flames — not just of the Others, but of the past and future intertwined like vines.

They had not saved him out of kindness. He understood that. They had saved him because they needed a voice. Because they needed men to remember the old threats rising once more.

They had healed him as best they could. His wounds had closed, his breath returned, the strength slowly creeping back into his limbs. He had walked to the edge of death and been pulled back by hands older than men, with fire, herbs, and care that felt almost sacred.

By the time he reached Craster’s Keep, he found only ruin. Survivors were broken, bloodied, half-starved — their eyes hollowed by betrayal. The mutiny had already begun. Benjen arrived in time to see the fighting. He joined them, the loyal ones, the ones who still remembered their vows. Side by side, they fought through the dark hall and the frozen yard. The fire crackled over corpses, and the snow drank deep that night.

The Old Bear fell. Benjen buried him himself — beneath a cairn of frozen stone, beneath the trees where the snow never melted. He said no words. He could not. The grief was too raw. Benjen had stood over the grave until the wind scoured all prints from the snow, and the silence felt like forgiveness. Then he turned his face south.

The Wall was close now. It rose out of the swirling snow like a mountain forged from glass and storm — pale blue in the fading light, veined with shadow, immense and terrible. Benjen squinted through the flurries. The sight should have brought comfort. It didn’t.

From there, he would send a raven — black and swift through the storm — to Winterfell. To Eddard. Ned.

The name echoed like a bell struck deep in his chest. He could still see his brother riding back to Winterfell after Robert’s Rebellion, the babe in his arms swaddled in silence and snow, a weariness in his bones that even victory could not wash away.

Benjen had known, even then. Not the full truth — but enough to glimpse the edges. Enough to see the shadow Ned had carried like a blade hidden under his cloak. Now it was his turn to carry something dark, something unspoken.

The dead were walking. The Wildlings were not just fleeing — they were running from something. The Others were no longer myths. The cold winds had teeth.

His horse stumbled beneath him, hooves catching on ice hidden under a crust of fresh snow. The beast groaned and nearly buckled. Benjen swung down before it could fall, boots crunching into the frostbitten path.

He walked the rest of the way on foot, leading the animal by the reins, Longclaw heavy at his side, its grip slick with ice and old blood. Each step was a march, not toward safety, but into the storm that was coming for them all.

He would send the raven the moment he reached the gate. He would warn his brother. The Wall must be manned. The North must be ready. Or winter would not spare them a second time.

The snow thickened as he climbed the slope — a white veil drawn over the world. It hissed against his cloak, caught in his lashes, clung to his beard in beads of ice. The storm felt alive. Watching. Listening.

He pulled his cloak tighter and kept walking. No other road remained to him. Only duty. And honor.

A shape moved beside him through the snow. Samwell Tarly emerged from the whiteness like a ghost — breath puffing, cheeks ruddy, eyes wide and anxious behind his hood.

“We’re almost there, Lord Stark,” Sam said softly, voice half-swallowed by the wind.

Benjen did not break stride. “Aye,” he said. And did not stop.

Chapter Text

Jon

Greywater Watch was alive.

Jon felt it the moment they crossed into its domain — not a place so much as a presence, a whisper at the edge of hearing, a pulse in the damp earth beneath his boots. It was not wind, not water. It was something else. A slow, rhythmic breath exhaled by the land itself.

The castle emerged from the swamp like something grown rather than built, a structure stitched into the bog by roots and time. It had no walls of stone, no towers of polished granite. Instead, Greywater Watch leaned from the moss-thick mire like the carcass of a great ship long lost to the fen — lashed together from driftwood and dark timber, its sides patched with woven reeds and sodden bark, its foundations moored in mud rather than anchored to rock.

Two narrow towers rose at uneven angles from the central hall, shaped like tree trunks stretched skyward, their tops shrouded in mist. Between them stretched sagging rope bridges of knotted hemp and greased rope, swinging gently with the movement of the swamp. The main hall sprawled low and wide like a raft, its roof slanted, patched with moss and lichen, sloping away into the mists. Floors creaked like ship decks underfoot, soft and groaning as if protesting each step.

Balconies jutted from its sides — no more than wide platforms woven from willow branches, bordered by thin railings carved with runes and old markings Jon did not recognize. From them, Jon could see the marsh spreading for miles — water, moss, and fog, broken only by pale trees with grey leaves and knuckled roots that twisted through the peat like fingers of drowned gods.

There were no ravens. No banners. No horn to welcome or warn. Just mist, and the sound of the water, and the soft hiss of reeds parting under unseen weight.

Jon had asked, the first day they arrived, “How can anyone find it?”

Jojen had smiled then — a small, almost secret expression, as if the answer were both truth and riddle. “They can’t,” the boy had said simply. “Greywater Watch moves with the swamp. No road leads to it. No raven can reach it. Only those the crannogmen choose may come.” Jon had believed it.

Even now, standing on one of the low balconies beside a crooked support beam carved with faces worn smooth by time, he could feel the subtle drift beneath his feet. The castle shifted beneath them — a slow, almost imperceptible slide, like a barge carried gently across the mire by invisible tides. He couldn’t tell if it was drifting in a circle or a line, whether it moved at all or simply made him think it did. But he felt it — in the ache of his knees, in the swaying rhythm of the rope bridges, in the breath of the wood around him.

It was like living in a dream. A half-forgotten song sung in a tongue older than Winterfell’s stones. Greywater Watch was not a fortress. It was a secret the world had forgotten to kill. And it had let him in.

The dragon sprawled beside him, nestled against the damp wood of the balcony, its dark body coiled like a serpent in the mist. Its scales were a deep, lustrous black — not dull like coal, but gleaming like polished obsidian, each plate edged faintly with a sheen of red where the light touched them. Its wings, when stretched, revealed a thin membrane veined with crimson, like fire trapped beneath silk. Even now, folded close against its sides, the wings trembled with latent strength. Jon had seen them beat once in frustration and knock over a barrel of peat, sending the thing crashing down a stairwell. Since then, no one came near the beast unless Jon stood beside it.

Three weeks ago, it had been the size of a cat. It had curled on Ghost’s back, even slept with its head resting between the direwolf’s ears. Now it was almost as large as Ghost himself — not yet rivaling the wolf’s strength or reach, but no longer the hatchling Jon had cradled in his arms that first night in the crypts. It had grown too fast. Far too fast. No creature should change so quickly — not even a dragon. But it had. Here, in this strange place of moving wood and old magic, the dragon had not merely grown; it had awakened.

Its golden eyes opened, fixing on Jon with an unblinking gaze. The pupils were narrow slits, sharp as blades, but not cruel. There was thought in those eyes, or something close to it — a question, a watchfulness, an eerie stillness that reminded Jon not of fire, but of snow.

He watched as Ghost padded closer from one of the rope bridges, pausing just at the edge of the balcony. The direwolf’s eyes glowed faintly red in the greying light, his white fur beaded with moisture from the ever-present mist. The dragon stirred but did not rise. Its tail flicked once, then stilled. The two creatures regarded each other a moment — predator to predator, bond to bond — then Ghost lay down at the dragon’s side, and the beast curled once around him, black against white, fire against frost. No growl, no protest. Only a slow exhale of steam from the dragon’s nostrils.

Jon ran a hand lightly down the dragon’s neck, fingers skimming the warm, ridged surface of its spine. The heat beneath its skin was uncanny — not feverish, but alive, pulsing like the ember of a forge. It made his fingers tingle, as if the fire were trying to climb into him.

He had no name for it. No leash. No command. Only the strange truth that they were tied — not by voice or gesture, but by something deeper. When he slept, the dragon's mind brushed his own, an alien warmth flickering at the edges of his dreams. Sometimes it shared flashes of sensation — scent, movement, distant fire. It never spoke. It didn’t need to. Jon understood, somehow. They were of the same breath now.

"You wonder if it's natural," Jojen said, stepping silently onto the balcony.

Jon turned his head slightly. The boy stood in shadow, his green eyes catching what little light pierced the mist. They were too large for his face, too still. Jon said nothing.

"It isn't," Jojen continued. "Not entirely. The Neck is old. Older than memory. The old magic lingers here — in the water, in the wood, in the air we breathe." His lips curled faintly. "It woke something in him."

Jon looked down again at the dragon — not a beast, not a pet. A mystery. A promise. Or a warning.

He had known it already, hadn’t he? The way it had grown. The way it looked at him like it understood things Jon himself did not. The way it was silent, always silent, like Ghost — no roar, no hiss, only breath and stillness and the echo of fire waiting to rise. This place was different. This place was dangerous. And it was changing them both.

They sat together for a time, listening to the sigh of the wind through the reeds, the slow groan of wood beneath them, the quiet rhythm of Greywater Watch drifting through the marsh. The dragon dozed nearby, one wing curled loosely over its flank, the faint crackle of its breath rising like the embers of a forgotten hearth. Ghost lay not far from it, silent, watchful, his pale eyes half-closed, but never truly at peace.

At last, Jojen spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper. "There is war beyond the Neck."

Jon nodded, not needing to ask how he knew. The world felt heavier each morning, like the wind itself carried news of swords drawn and oaths broken. "I guessed."

"Three kings," Jojen said, the words falling from his lips like lines from a prophecy. "Robert's brothers and Robert's son. Each claims the Iron Throne." He spoke without heat, without fear — as if it were all distant to him, abstract, like storm clouds on a far horizon. "The lions hold King’s Landing. The stag of the Stormlands fights in the west. The other stag, the hard one, fortifies Storm’s End." Jojen tilted his head slightly. "And in the North, your father gathers the banners at Moat Cailin."

Jon’s heart stirred at that — not with pride, but something deeper, more conflicted. A knot of longing and doubt and resolve.

He looked down at the dragon, its breath slow and warm, then out across the grey horizon where mist swallowed the edges of the world. Names stirred in his chest like echoes in a crypt — familiar and sharp, and each one carried a weight he could not lay down.

His father. Not by blood, but in every way that mattered. Eddard Stark, who had raised him in a world that barely had space for bastards, let alone secret sons of dead princesses. Who had taught him what it meant to hold fast when the winds turned, who gave him a name when the world might have left him with none. Ned Stark had looked at him not with warmth, always, but with gravity. With purpose. As if he knew something Jon did not — as if the boy he raised might one day be something more than he could explain.

He remembered his father’s voice: "There will come a day when I can no longer shield you. When you must stand on your own. When your choices will matter, not just for yourself, but for others." Jon had not understood then. And wonder if he ever would.

Catelyn. His aunt. More mother than fate had ever promised. She had loved him like a son, she had raised him, let him sit beside her children, eat at her table. She had given him shelter, if not welcome, and that, Jon realized now, was more than many would have offered.

Arya, fierce and wild, his sister in spirit if not in name. She had never hesitated to stand beside him, to fight beside him, to see him for who he was. He missed her like breath.

Sansa — proud, graceful, trying always to rise above her fear, to wear dignity like armor even when the world mocked her for it. She had never fully understood him, but she had tried.

Bran and Rickon — boys still. Too young for war. Too young for thrones and blades and ravens bearing tidings of blood.

And Robb. The other half of his soul. His brother in truth if not in name. Sword and shield. Rival and refuge. They had fought in the yard, hunted in the woods, whispered in the dark. Jon could not think of the North without thinking of Robb. Of what it meant to ride beside him. Or to lose him.

They were his family. Not by right, not by blood. But by choice. And by love. They were his pack — and he would not let them stand alone.

"We'll go to them," Jon said, rising, the decision already made in his heart before the words reached his lips. "Walder, you, and I. We’ll ride to Moat Cailin." He looked down at the dragon. Its eyes were still closed, but he knew it heard him. "But not him."

Jojen stiffened beside him. "Leave him? Without you?" His voice was tight, alarmed. "Are you sure?"

Jon knelt beside the dragon, placing his hand gently on the warm, ridged muzzle. The creature stirred faintly, its breath deepening, a wing twitching once before settling again.

"I'll come back," Jon said softly. "He’ll wait for me. He knows."

Jojen said nothing for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. Behind them, Walder appeared from the shadows, silent as stone, his great axe slung across his back like a warning. He said nothing — he rarely did — but his presence was grounding. A wall of old strength, carved from Winterfell’s history, still loyal to the last.

Jon rose. Greywater Watch shifted beneath his boots, a slow, ancient pulse like the breathing of the swamp itself. The mist beyond the balcony swirled in slow circles, rising like spirits from the water.

He was a Stark and a Targaryen. A wolf of winter, and a child of fire. And the time had come to take the first true step toward whatever fate awaited him.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The Small Council met again behind heavy oak doors and thicker lies. Tyrion sat in his usual chair, the cool rim of his wine goblet pressed to his lips, as the air thickened with the smell of smoke, sweat, and barely masked panic. The chamber was dimly lit despite the hour, the light from the windows shuttered by the curtains Cersei insisted remain drawn — as if shadows could hide weakness.

At least Joffrey was absent. A small blessing from the gods, though likely one they’d charge interest on.

Around the table, the cast remained the same — each more familiar, each more tedious in their performances.

Cersei sat stiffly, her back straight as a sword blade, arms crossed beneath her cloak of crimson and gold. The lines around her mouth had deepened, though she would never admit it. Her eyes, bright and cold, scanned the room like a falcon looking for prey to rip open.

Pycelle sat hunched like a dying crow, beard spilling down his chest like a greying shroud, fingers trembling as he fumbled through his scrolls. Every breath sounded like it might be his last, though Tyrion had long since decided the man would outlive them all out of sheer spite.

Varys was a soft ripple of silk in his lavender robes, watching the proceedings with hands gently folded over his belly, his expression serene and unreadable as ever — a spider nestled in the heart of his web, feeling for the smallest tremor.

And Baelish… Baelish leaned back in his chair like a man perfectly at home in the wreck of a kingdom. One leg crossed over the other, a quill twirling lazily between his fingers, that ever-present smirk lurking at the corner of his mouth like a knife in silk.

Tyrion let the silence stretch until it began to tighten around their necks. “So,” he said at last, his voice smooth and dry, “tell me something cheerful.”

Pycelle coughed into his sleeve, a wet, rattling sound like rotting parchment. “My lords, Your Grace” he wheezed, “Lord Tywin’s host has been… checked.”

Cersei’s head snapped around like a striking adder. “Checked?” she repeated, her tone sharp enough to draw blood.

Pycelle flinched beneath her gaze, shoulders hunching deeper. “Randyll Tarly led a force out of Highgarden,” he said quickly. “They met Lord Tywin's vanguard near Ashford… and threw them back.”

Tyrion hid his amusement behind his goblet. Of course Tarly would come swinging. The man was as subtle as a warhammer, and twice as heavy.

Baelish twirled his quill with idle elegance. “Tywin now camps near Red Lake,” he said. “Biding his time. A sensible move. He still outnumbers any force that can be fielded against him.”

Cersei curled her lip. “But he is no closer to King’s Landing,” she said, frustration sharpening her voice. “No closer to saving us.”

Varys’s smile barely moved. “Nor is Renly,” he murmured.

Tyrion raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Ah. Sweet King Renly. What word from our shining brother?”

Pycelle rustled through his pile of parchment like a rat in a grain sack. “Renly’s march westward has stalled,” he said. “His levies thin with every mile. He now marches toward Bitterbridge, abandoning the idea of beating Lord Stannis directly.”

Tyrion let out a soft chuckle. “Smells trouble, does he? Best to let the dogs fight and pick the bones clean afterward.”

Cersei, unsurprisingly, did not laugh. Her eyes were ice, fixed on the center of the table as if it might shatter under her will alone.

Tyrion took another long sip of wine. The air in the chamber was warm, but he felt the first cold fingers of war tightening around them. “And Stannis?” he asked.

“Fortifying Storm’s End,” Littlefinger said, his tone light as if he were discussing weather, not war. “A strong defensive position. Unlikely to break soon.”

Tyrion tapped the rim of his goblet, the sound soft and rhythmic — like a heartbeat counting down. So. Stannis dug in, Tywin pacing at the gates of the Reach, Renly slinking sideways, clever and cautious, never where the blade falls first.

The war of the Three Stags had become less a charge and more a grind — not a storm, but a siege. A long, slow bleeding of men and grain and gold. None of them bold enough to end it in one stroke. Each waiting for the others to make the first mistake.

And all the while, King’s Landing sat in the center — bloated, brittle, waiting to crack.

Time, Tyrion thought grimly, was not their ally. It was another sword, and it swung for all their necks.

“There is more,” Varys said delicately, his voice slipping through the council chamber like a silk thread drawn tight. He produced another parchment with a flick of his soft hands. The paper looked old already, edges frayed from storm or fingers too eager. “A raven from Castle Black. From Maester Aemon.”

Tyrion straightened in his seat, the wine forgotten in his hand. He remembered the old man — blind, ancient, sharp in the mind despite the weight of his years. Aemon Targaryen had spoken softly, but every word had carried like wind across ice. A voice that had once turned down a crown, and now warned of ghosts in the dark.

“What does our ancient maester want?” Cersei asked with a yawn, as if she were being asked to care about the price of salt in Dorne.

Varys bowed his head slightly. “He warns of Wildlings gathering beyond the Wall. And…” He paused — just long enough for discomfort to ripple the air like heat rising from a forge. “…of darker things. Of the Others.”

Cersei laughed — a short, barking sound, half disbelief, half scorn. “Ghost stories. Old women’s tales.”

Pycelle nodded with slow gravitas, beard rustling like dry grass. “Wildlings, yes. A concern, if they mass in great numbers. But the Others?” He shook his head with theatrical dismissal. “Dead things walking? My Queen, such stories are relics of a darker age. Tales to frighten squires and washerwomen.”

Tyrion said nothing. He remembered the Wall. Not just the cold — though it clung to your bones like a second skin — but the quiet. The kind of quiet that came with watching eyes you couldn’t see. But in the end, Tyrion also remembered steel. Steel and fire and men with blades. He clung to that — because what else was there?

“There is more,” Varys continued, tapping the parchment. “The North.”

That shifted the air. Even Cersei leaned forward, her frown sharpening.

Varys smiled, a faint, knowing thing. “Half the Northern host has turned north. Marching to Castle Black to aid the Watch.”

Cersei’s face twisted. Fury and confusion made her mask crack. “They were meant to march south!” she spat. “For Joffrey! For their future queen!”

“Apparently,” Tyrion said mildly, swirling his goblet, “they believe their own cold stones matter more.” He hid the flicker of admiration in his tone. Ned Stark’s people had not forgotten who they were — or what loomed in the snow. That, at least, could still be counted on.

“And the other half?” Baelish asked smoothly, as if he were inquiring about the odds on a horse race.

“West,” Varys said. “Toward the western shores. Reports of ironborn raids.” He smiled again, soft as silk. “Seals and squids, it seems, are stirring.”

Tyrion nearly sighed aloud. Of course the Greyjoys would stir. They were like rot in old wood — quiet until the whole beam gave way. And this realm was nothing if not old timber and strained nails.

Cersei slammed her hand on the table. “They owe us their loyalty! Their swords! Not chasing ghost stories and fish!”

“They owe loyalty,” Tyrion said, “to themselves first.” He took a slow sip. Let it linger. “And to whatever future they think will best protect them.”

He watched her as he said it. Her knuckles were white against the table’s edge. The future was slipping through her fingers — and like all Lannisters, she would sooner crush it than admit she couldn’t hold it.

Pycelle cleared his throat with the slow, deliberate gravitas of a man announcing bad news. “There is… another matter.”

Baelish leaned forward ever so slightly, the motion languid but precise — like a cat scenting meat. Cersei’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table, her knuckles pale and rigid. A storm gathering behind her eyes.

The Grand Maester unfurled a scroll. His rings clicked faintly against the parchment as he adjusted it. “Reports from the Riverlands,” he said. “Lady Stark has departed the North. She rides south with a small escort. It is said Lord Hoster Tully weakens… she seeks to see her father one last time.”

Tyrion felt something stir in his chest. Not quite alarm. Not quite surprise. A shift — like a piece moving on a board he thought stable.

“And the girl?” Cersei’s voice cut through the chamber like a blade honed for a single purpose. Cold, sharp, inflexible.

Pycelle nodded stiffly, lips pressed tight. “Both daughters travel with her.”

The silence that followed had a different weight. Not the quiet of calculation — but something colder. Heavier. A beat of realization. Even Baelish didn’t smile for once.

Tyrion let the quiet settle, then broke it with a crooked grin. “So… our future queen leaves the wolf’s den. Is this part of the wedding arrangements?” He spoke lightly, but inside his thoughts spun fast.

Why now? Why both girls? Catelyn Stark wasn’t a fool. If she brought her daughters south, she had a reason. A risk calculated.

Baelish gave a small chuckle, recovering quickly. “A farewell to the old trout, perhaps. But Riverrun is closer to King’s Landing than Winterfell. Who knows where she might turn next?” The glint was back in his eye — that same amused malice he wore like a second skin.

“She’d best turn here,” Cersei snapped. “With her daughter. Before she forgets who her king is.” Her voice carried that dangerous tremble now, the one that always came just before she acted rashly.

Varys tilted his head like a bird listening for footsteps. “Or perhaps she simply seeks refuge,” he said softly. “With the North in upheaval and the Wall in unrest… Riverrun must seem a safer shore.”

Safer, yes — if one trusted the Tullys to stay out of the deeper game. Tyrion did not.

He drained the last of his goblet and stood, the motion smooth but firm. His cloak swirled behind him as he turned from the table. “We are losing pieces,” he said, voice dry. “One by one.” And then, quieter — for them or for himself, he couldn’t say, “And winter is not the only thing coming.”

The weight of it hung in the room like smoke.

As Tyrion left the Small Council chamber, the carved oak doors groaned shut behind him, the sound lingering like an accusation.

He paused on the threshold of the hall, letting his gaze slide down the shadowed corridor toward the Iron Throne, half-swallowed in gloom at the far end. It sat alone, untouched, veiled in shadow and menace — a jagged thing of swords and spite, glittering faintly in the dim light like a corpse’s smile. It waited. Silent. Sharp. Unforgiving. Just like the world outside.

Tyrion turned from it and made his way toward the Tower of the Hand, boots tapping softly on the polished stone. The corridor was still, thick with the smell of wax and old air, the hush of power drawing breath between storms.

He was halfway down the passage when he heard the soft click of steps behind him — measured, polite, meant to be heard.

He didn’t bother to turn. “Lord Baelish,” he said dryly, adjusting the hem of his cloak. “Have you come to tell me more good news?”

Littlefinger’s voice was all silk. “I thought we might… speak,” he said, falling into step beside him. “Privately.”

Tyrion finally turned his head, one brow arched. “Are we not private now?”

Baelish’s smile widened, feline and composed. He gestured slightly, as if inviting Tyrion to follow him into secrecy itself.

They turned off the corridor and slipped through a narrow archway into a small alcove overlooking the inner courtyard — a forgotten place of pale stone and high windows, shielded from the wind but touched by the blue light of early evening.

Tyrion leaned against the cold balustrade, goblet in hand, the wine catching a glint of the fading sun. Baelish settled against the opposite wall, all languid grace and controlled mischief. His cloak fluttered slightly in the draught, deep green trimmed with sable, and his fingers tapped a rhythm on his belt as if the world were a harp and he knew every note.

“You seemed concerned,” Baelish said smoothly, “about the loyalty of certain houses.”

“And you seemed unconcerned,” Tyrion replied, swirling his wine.

“Appearances,” Baelish said lightly, “are armor.” He steepled his fingers, eyes glinting. “The Vale,” he said.

Tyrion blinked. “And what of the Vale?”

Littlefinger’s smile turned sly, the kind that made Tyrion want to check his purse — and his back.

“Sweet Lady Lysa sits in her Eyrie, high and cold and trembling,” he said. “She does not love the Lannisters. But she loves gold. And safety.” He paused, measuring Tyrion. “And her son loves titles.”

Tyrion snorted into his cup. “A title for a babe at his mother’s breast?”

Baelish shrugged. “Infants grow. And regents act on their behalf.” He stepped closer now, voice lower. “Bring the Vale into the fold. Secure the mountain passes. You might yet save this pretty crown of yours.”

Tyrion tilted his head. “And in return?” he asked lazily, though he already knew.

Littlefinger’s eyes gleamed. “Lord of Harrenhal was promised to me once…” he said.

Tyrion chuckled. “All men dream of castles,” he said. “But Harrenhal dreams of death.”

“I am not afraid of ghosts,” Littlefinger said, the smirk never leaving his lips.

“No,” Tyrion agreed. “Only of being poor.”

They stood like that for a time, two players in a game too old for innocence, the wind tugging at their cloaks and the courtyard lying silent below. Tyrion watched the last of the daylight bleed across the tiles.

Finally, he nodded. “I will consider your... proposal.”

Baelish bowed with exaggerated elegance. “I am ever your servant, my lord.”

Liar, Tyrion thought. But perhaps a useful one. For now. He watched as Littlefinger turned and slipped away into the stone-dark halls, vanishing with the light. The shadows lengthened.

The game grew deeper by the hour. And the knives grew sharper. He would need every ally he could buy. And every enemy he could see coming.

Chapter Text

Robb

The wind off the western sea carried the scent of salt and smoke, thick and sour, the stench of plundered homes and burning timber. It cut through the trees like a blade and curled beneath Robb’s cloak, pricking cold along his spine. He ignored it. The chill was nothing compared to the heat simmering behind his eyes.

He rode at the head of his column, grey wool soaked through his mail, the hood of his cloak matted with damp. Grey Wind padded beside his horse — silent, watchful — his pale coat slick with rain, his breath fogging in the damp. The direwolf’s ears flicked at every snapping twig, every shift in the underbrush, every distant caw of a seabird — and Robb’s ears did the same.

They had passed Torrhen’s Square two days ago, crossing sodden meadows and flooded roads, pushing hard despite the weather. Their pace had not faltered. It could not. The western coast was near now, and somewhere ahead, beyond the wet hills and leafless woods, the Ironborn were still at work.

They did not fight battles, not in the way Northmen understood the word. No banners. No honor. Only fire and blades in the night. They struck like wolves, then vanished into the mists. They raided fishing villages, slit throats in the dark, took women and boys as chattel. Robb had read the ravens, seen the ash-stained carts and smoke on the horizon.

It was not war they waged, but reaving. And Robb Stark meant to stop them.

He clenched his jaw and leaned forward in the saddle, rain dripping from his hair, his eyes scanning the bleak horizon. Somewhere beyond the rise, the sea waited, vast and grey and endless. And with it, the men who had come as thieves and murderers.

The iron tide would break here, Robb told himself. He would see to that.

His horse's hooves beat a steady rhythm on the muddy road, the sound muffled beneath the whisper of wet grass and the distant crash of waves. Rain clung to Robb’s hair and soaked through his collar, but he scarcely noticed. His body rode west. But his mind was far behind — back at Moat Cailin, beneath its squat towers and broken walls, where the air was thick with damp stone and old secrets, and the voices of his father’s bannermen echoed off walls older than kingdoms.

They had come from all corners of the North — great lords and lesser, grim men with hard eyes and calloused hands, the sons of Winterfell’s long memory. Some had ridden for weeks through snow and sleet, through rivers swollen with meltwater and forests where wolves still hunted freely. And when the raven came — sealed in black wax, the mark of the Watch clear on its tongue — they had gathered in silence as Eddard Stark broke it open with fingers steadier than stone. The letter was brief, but the words struck like thunder.

Wildlings, it warned. Thousands. Moving together beneath one banner — Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall. That alone would have been trouble enough to stir every sword from its scabbard. But the letter said more. The Others are stirring.

Robb remembered the silence that followed. It had dropped across the hall like a shroud. Even the fires seemed to burn quieter. Even the wind beyond the walls had paused, as though the land itself were listening.

Some had laughed, of course. Ser Wylis Manderly, red-faced and loud, had banged his meaty fist on the table hard enough to slosh wine from his goblet. “Children’s tales!” he’d barked. “Snowmaid’s gossip and widow’s fears!”

Others had not. Roose Bolton had sat with hands folded and pale eyes glinting. “We should be ready,” he said, in that dry, hollow voice. “Stories often grow from roots.”

The arguments had begun then — as loud and bitter as any Robb had ever heard. Some urged delay. Others, caution. Others still called for swift, brutal action — “march to the Wall,” “strike now,” “burn the wildlings in the snow.”

But no voice rose higher than the rest. And none rang truer than Eddard Stark’s.

He had spoken last, as was his way. Quiet. Steady. “We are the North,” his father said. “If we do not stand against the cold... who will?”

And just like that, the decision was made. The host would be split.

Half would ride north with his father, to Castle Black, to the Wall, to face whatever truth or madness waited in the snow.

And the other half would ride west, under Robb’s command. To face Ironborn with black sails and red axes, to save what could still be saved before the sea swallowed it.

Robb had not protested. It was the right decision. He was his father’s heir. His father’s voice, when the old wolf could not speak. But the truth had stung like a drawn blade. Jon would ride to the edge of the world, to stand beside their father at the Wall, in the shadow of ancient things. And Robb... Robb would chase reavers and thieves.

He gritted his teeth at the thought. His hands tightened on the reins until his knuckles whitened.

Jon is my brother, he told himself. This is my duty. I am my father’s heir.

The column behind him moved slowly through the sodden hills, a long, winding line of steel and wool and oiled leather. Spears and banners swayed with the wind. Carts creaked under barrels of grain, casks of mead, salted meat, and armor-patched wheels. Old men rode beside boys not yet grown, and among them walked smiths, healers, maesters, and grooms.

They followed his banner — the grey direwolf of House Stark on a field of white. But would they still follow it when the rains turned to snow? When the world cracked open and the dead rose again? Would they still follow if it wasn’t just Ironborn they met at the end of the road?

His thoughts turned, unwillingly, to Theon. Still at Winterfell. Not in chains. But not free.

His chambers were guarded day and night. He was watched, not openly but enough that the message was clear. He was not trusted. He was not wanted. And yet, he was not condemned. He ate alone, seated at the end of long, empty tables while others avoided his gaze. He trained no longer in the yard. No one would spar with him now. He was, in all but name, a prisoner. And Robb had left him there.

He could still recall the debate — the way the air had gone still and sour the moment Theon’s name was spoken aloud in the hall at Moat Cailin. As if invoking it summoned the stink of betrayal.

Some had called for his death. None louder than Roose Bolton. "He is a snake raised in your own garden," Bolton had said, his voice flat, his pale eyes colder than the frost on the stones. "Strike before he bites."

Robb had looked across the firelight at the Lord of the Dreadfort and wondered if Roose had ever once raised a child with anything but knives and suspicion. Still, others had nodded.

Lord Karstark had agreed, though he said it softer — as if the gentler tone could smooth the edge of the blade. "He is the son of Balon Greyjoy," he had said, not unkindly. "Blood speaks, in time."

And yet... Eddard Stark had shaken his head. "He is a hostage," his father said. "A son raised among us. He has broken no vow, spilt no blood. He lives."

Robb had not spoken. Not then. Not even when eyes turned toward him, waiting. Judging. What could he say? Theon was a brother. He had been raised in Winterfell — learned to ride on the same horses, trained with the same wooden swords, shared the same hearth and laughter. They had hunted together, fought together.

But the Ironborn raided their shores now. They burned and butchered and carried off women and children. Would Theon fight for his father? Or against him? Robb did not know.

And that — more than Bolton’s glares or Karstark’s murmurs — was what gnawed at him. Not Theon’s blood. Not his father’s name. But the question. What would Theon choose? What would he be when the tide finally rose?

Robb stared ahead, past the mists clinging to the hills, to where the coast lay cloaked in smoke and salt. Grey Wind padded beside him, his breath steady, low and cold. There were battles to come. But some wars lived behind you — silent, unseen — until they swallowed everything.

Grey Wind let out a low growl — low and steady, like distant thunder rolling across the moors. Robb raised a fist without thinking.

The sound of hooves and creaking leather slowed behind him as the command rippled down the column. Hundreds of men pulled up their reins, murmurs rising like smoke. The wind carried the scent of brine and something fouler — charred wood, and beneath that, the acrid stink of death.

A rider galloped up the line, boots and mail slick with mud. Eddard Karstark, breath steaming in the cold, threw back his hood.

“Scouts report smoke ahead,” he said, still catching his breath. “A fishing village, still burning. No sign of the enemy yet.”

Robb nodded once. His voice was calm, but the weight behind it was iron. “Send outriders. Double scouts. I want eyes on every tree and hill.”

Karstark wheeled his horse around and galloped back down the line.

Robb looked west, toward the curling edge of the sky. The sun was dying behind a wall of grey clouds, bleeding red through the mist, as if the day itself had been wounded. The wind cut sharper here, flavored with salt and ash. Somewhere out there, reavers still prowled. Somewhere, the Ironborn slipped between rocks and smoke, leaving ruin in their wake.

Not a war of banners and glory, he thought. But of fire and steel. And reaving. He rode on.

The company advanced into the deepening dusk, their passage marked by the squelch of hooves in wet soil and the creak of leather harnesses. Crows followed them now, circling overhead like heralds of the dead.

That night, they camped on a low hill that sloped down toward the rocky shoreline. The sea roared beneath them, black and endless, and the wind came howling up from the surf, tearing through tents and cloaks alike. The waves crashed against the cliffs below with a fury that echoed in the marrow.

The fires were slow to catch in the damp air. Men cursed and huddled close, cradling bowls of hard bread and stew. Robb sat beside the largest fire, hands outstretched for warmth, fingers tingling from the cold. Grey Wind lay beside him, curled tight, one golden eye half-lidded, the other watching the dark. His ears twitched at every sound — the crack of a twig, the howl of wind, the cry of distant gulls.

Robb stared into the flames, but his mind was far away. He thought of Jon. Of his father. Of a Wall made of ice and magic, high and cold and older than kings. He thought of pale blue eyes that did not blink, did not bleed, did not die. He did not believe in ghosts. He did not want to. But he believed in his father — in the way Ned Stark had looked when he read Maester Aemon’s letter aloud. Grave. Still. Certain. And that was enough.

Tomorrow, they would ride to find the Ironborn. To strike back at fire with steel. To show the reavers what it meant to steal from wolves. And after that... Winter would come for them all.

Chapter Text

The Young Stag

The camp at Bitterbridge sprawled like a wounded beast across the muddy fields, vast and restless. Rain had turned the earth to muck, swallowing boots and soaking banners. Tents sagged under the weight of sodden canvas, their colors dulled to miserable shades of green and brown. The air reeked of wet cloth, unwashed bodies, horse piss, and woodsmoke that clung to everything like guilt.

Renly Baratheon sat alone at the edge of his royal pavilion, slouched on a camp stool with his green cloak dragging through the mud behind him. The fine wool was damp and stained, its embroidered stag barely visible beneath the grime. His golden crown — antlered and heavy — sat forgotten beside him on a low stool, catching what little grey light the sky offered. He hadn’t worn it all day.

The sea of tents before him might have once stirred pride. Now it only deepened the ache in his chest. Too many were dark, abandoned. Too many of their banners no longer flew.

The wind rolled through the field, sharp with the sting of salt from the distant river, and beneath it lingered something bitter — smoke. Smoke from villages burnt in the Reach, from dreams smothered under retreat.

Somewhere, a blacksmith’s hammer struck metal with slow, mournful rhythm. It echoed like a dirge.

Renly rubbed at his jaw, unshaven and raw. His hair was plastered to his brow, rain-touched, and he hadn’t eaten since morning. The stew had gone cold before he ever lifted the spoon.

He had wanted a crown — wanted it since Robert’s throne grew silent and soft, since Joffrey’s shrill tantrums poisoned court and Stannis’s grim stare began casting its shadow over the realm. He had dreamed of golden halls and the adoration of lords.

But this wasn’t a dream. It was a crawl through mud and betrayal and rain. And the crown felt heavier each day — less like gold, more like iron.

“Your Grace.” The voice came soft through the drizzle, careful — deferent but edged with concern.

Renly looked up slowly. Rain streaked his face, but he made no move to wipe it away.

Ser Loras Tyrell stood before him, clad in green and gold despite the mud. His hair clung to his temples in wet curls, his cloak heavy with damp. There was a touch of steel in his eyes beneath the softness — worry held at bay by stubborn loyalty.

For a moment, Renly said nothing. Then he laughed — a harsh, cracked thing that sounded too loud in the fog. A soldier nearby turned, startled, then looked away quickly.

“Don’t call me that,” Renly muttered, his voice low.

Loras frowned, stepping closer. “You are a king.”

Renly gestured out toward the rain-washed camp with a sweep of his hand. “Am I? Look around, Loras. What do you see?”

Loras followed his gaze. “A host,” he said after a pause. “Your host.”

“A rabble,” Renly corrected bitterly. “Half-starved. Half-lost. I lead them in circles and call it war. I lead them—” He shook his head, the words catching in his throat. “Where? To defeat?”

The words stung more than he’d expected. He ran a hand down his face, slick with rain, then dragged it through his hair. The golden circlet beside him caught his eye — gleaming, yes, but cold. Always cold.

He lowered his face to his hands and sat there, elbows on knees, breathing slow and shallow.

The canvas overhead flapped with every gust of wind. His pavilion was large, meant for entertaining. Tonight it felt cavernous. Hollow.

“You are the best hope the realm has,” Loras said fiercely, stepping forward until only a breath separated them.

Renly looked up again. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired. “I’m a boy playing at war.”

“No,” Loras said, jaw clenched. “You are a Baratheon.”

Renly snorted. “Robert was a Baratheon. A real one. He fought. He conquered. He didn’t run.”

He stood abruptly, cloak flaring with the motion, and stalked to the edge of the tent. The mud sucked at his boots.

“I can barely hold this army together,” he said, staring across the camp. “Half the battles won, weren’t mine. Tarly stopped Tywin — without me. Stannis holds Storm’s End with a few hundred men, and I retreat like a whipped dog.”

He laughed again, softer this time. Bitter. “What am I, Loras? A king? Or a fool with a crown?”

Loras knelt before him, the sodden fabric of his cloak soaking into the muddy earth. His hands reached up and took Renly’s gently, fingers chilled, grip steady.

“You are Renly Baratheon,” he said, voice quiet but fierce. “Storm’s End is yours by right. The people love you — not Stannis. Not Joffrey. You are their hope.”

Renly looked down at him, and something in his chest twisted. Not pity. Not shame. Something older. Something raw.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confessed. The words slipped out in a whisper, dragged from somewhere deep and dark. “I wake each morning wondering which lord will leave me next. I make plans, and the gods piss on them. I fear…” He looked away, past the tent’s edge, to where torches flickered like dying fireflies in the fog. “I fear that I will fail them all.”

Loras squeezed his hands, tighter now. “You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

Renly met his eyes. There was no mockery in Loras’s face. No politics. Only faith.

“I am not Robert,” Renly said, voice low. “I cannot swing a warhammer like a thunderclap. I am not Stannis. I do not command with silence and scorn. I try to win hearts — but hearts don’t hold the line when the blades come.”

“You are not Robert,” Loras said. “You are not Stannis. That is your strength, not your weakness.”

Renly exhaled slowly, chest aching.

“Jaime Lannister rides to break me,” he said. “Jaime, who beat Stannis in the field. Jaime, who laughs at oaths and cuts through banners like reeds.” He looked down at Loras. “And I — I could not even best my brother.”

Loras stood, never letting go of his hand. “You are not alone,” he said again, more softly now. “You have me. You have the Reach. You have men who believe. You have a future, Renly.”

The tent rustled, wind whispering across the canvas like a sigh. Rain drummed gently against the roof above. The distant hammering had stopped. For a long breath, neither of them moved.

Then Renly pulled him into an embrace. It was clumsy, rough, but real. Loras leaned into it, arms firm around him. For a moment, Renly allowed himself to believe. To imagine that courage was something that could be given, shared. Borrowed.

The fire in the brazier hissed, casting dancing shadows on the tent walls. Tomorrow, he would rise. He would put the crown back on his head. He would mount his horse. And he would ride to meet whatever came.

Victory. Or ruin.

But tonight, he was only a man. A man with cold hands and a heavy heart. A man who needed someone to hold the weight of it with him. And for a little while, that would be enough.

Chapter Text

Jon

The Wall rose like a frozen god, pale and eternal, carving the horizon with its jagged crown of ice. Even from afar, it loomed — not just high but deep, as if the very bones of the world had heaved it skyward in defiance of time itself.

Jon could not breathe for a moment. His lungs filled with frost-laced air, his heart thudded painfully against his ribs. He had seen the Wall before, as a boy clinging to dreams of the Watch. In those dreams he touched it, cold and unmoving. But now... now it was different. Now he understood.

Eddard Stark rode ahead, his back straight in the saddle, grey cloak snapping in the wind like a banner of ice and iron. The Northern host trailed behind him — grim lords in black and grey, riders crusted with frost, carts laden with provisions. Wolves stitched on shields, banners fluttering with the snarling direwolf of House Stark. They rode as one people, one cause. And yet, Jon felt set apart.

He rode alongside Jojen Reed, who remained silent, wide-eyed, his green cloak damp from the sea spray and mist. They had crossed the Neck and the haunted lands beyond it. Now they faced the end of the world.

"It's alive," Jojen murmured. "Just like Greywater Watch. Old magic built this Wall. Older than the First Men. Older than kings."

Jon didn’t reply. He only stared. He could feel the magic, too — not in spells or voices, but in the weight of the Wall itself. It pressed on the soul, like being watched by something vast and unseen. His dragon stirred faintly in the back of his mind, far to the south in the reeds of Greywater Watch — a flicker of heat against this overwhelming cold. The bond remained, a distant heartbeat. But it was distant. He had chosen this.

The gates of Castle Black yawned open, ancient wood bound in black iron, creaking like old bones. The Watch stood waiting — a thin line of men, most wrapped in patched cloaks, faces hollow, beards rimed with frost. They looked more like beggars than warriors. Jon’s heart sank.

He had imagined the Watch as legends. The black-clad sentinels standing against the night. Instead, he saw bent backs, missing fingers, men too old or too young to fight, their eyes dull with cold and hunger. And yet, they stood.

Benjen Stark waited just within the gate. He looked older than Jon remembered, the hard lines of his face deepened, his cloak stiff with frost. His eyes, though — his eyes still held that Northern steel.

Jon dismounted before his horse had stopped moving.

“Uncle Benjen!” he called out.

Benjen crossed the distance in two strides and embraced him, rough and tight. Jon felt his breath hitch in his chest — not from cold, but from memory.

“You’ve grown,” Benjen muttered into his shoulder.

“And you look half a ghost,” Jon whispered back.

Benjen pulled away and smiled grimly. “I’ve seen ghosts beyond the Wall.”

Jon saw it in his face — the exhaustion, the weight of horrors unnamed. He said nothing more. He didn’t need to. The wind howled over the Wall like a beast denied. Snow whirled through the air. The North had brought its storm.

Jon followed his uncle and his father through the old gate, beneath the shadow of the great ice. The stones of Castle Black were blackened with soot and snow. Fires burned low in iron braziers, and the air smelled of smoke and boiled oats. He heard coughing from one tower, the groan of wood from another. Everything here felt tired. He looked up once more at the Wall. They had come to help. But help would not be enough.

The Lord Commander’s solar was a place of sparse warmth — a hearth, a chair, and the scent of old parchment and salt meat. Now, it was crowded with hard men and colder news. The fire crackled, but no one moved closer to it. Every lord present wore the North in their bones, and the heat of flames offered no comfort against the chill creeping through the air.

Benjen stood at the head of the table, a map of the Wall and the lands beyond spread before him. His voice was low, steady — the voice of a man who had seen death and come back to warn them.

“My lords,” Benjen began, eyes scanning the gathered company. “You all know why you’ve come. What we face is not rumor, not wildling campfire tales. Mance Rayder has broken every clan north of the Wall and united them. Warriors from the Thenn. Giants from the Frostfangs. Spearwives. Raiders. Those who’ve never bent the knee to anyone now march together.”

Rickard Karstark frowned, fingers tapping against the hilt of his sword. “And how many?”

Benjen looked at him. “We can’t know for certain. They move through forest, through snow, without banners or horns. But we’ve seen fires, watched movements. At least fifty thousand. Could be more.”

A murmur rippled through the chamber. Jon’s eyes swept over the map, noting the points marked in charcoal where the Watch had made reinforcement efforts. One looked worryingly close to Eastwatch. Another at the gorge near the Shadow Tower. And still the map felt too small for the scale of what they faced.

“And the Wall will not hold them?” asked Halys Hornwood, his voice skeptical.

“It will hold,” Benjen said. “For a time. But if Mance’s host keeps growing... he’ll find a weakness. Or make one.”

Jon stood near the window, Greycloak draped around his shoulders. He watched his father more than the others. Ned Stark’s face was grave, his eyes fixed on the wild expanse of the map as if it were a battlefield already burning.

“What of your numbers?” asked the Greatjon Umber. “How many black cloaks still stand?”

Benjen hesitated. “Less than two hundred. A third are green boys. A third are greybeards. And the rest...” He exhaled. “They’ll fight. They’re brave. But the Watch is not what it once was.”

“Gods,” muttered Ser Wylis Manderly, shaking his head.

Benjen turned then to the group at large. “I brought what men I could from Craster’s Keep. The traitors were dealt with. But the damage was done. We’ve held only because the wildlings haven’t yet forced the gate. That won’t last.”

“Then we hold them here,” his father said quietly. “At the Wall.” All eyes turned to him. “We study the layout,” he continued. “Strengthen every tower. Block every pass. Set our archers where they can see. We are not ironborn to slink in from the sea, nor Lannisters to buy a victory with gold. We are the North.”

He looked to Jon then, and Jon felt the full weight of that gaze settle in his chest.

“We guard the realms of men,” Ned said. No one spoke.

Then Benjen’s voice broke the silence again — lower now, harder. “The Wildlings are only half the tale.” Jon tensed. He had known this was coming. “They’re running,” Benjen said. “Not marching. They move south because the dead are behind them.”

Wylis scoffed lightly. “Dead men? Come now—”

Benjen didn’t flinch. “I saw them. With my own eyes. Not tales. Not shadows. I fought them. Blue eyes, swords of ice. Men turned to dead puppets, marching at their command. If we do not act now, all the North will burn in ice.”

Silence again — but a different kind. A deeper one.

Dacey Mormont’s knuckles whitened against the edge of the table. The Smalljon looked to his father, who said nothing.

“It was no blizzard,” Benjen said. “No madness of cold. The White Walkers are real. And they are marching.”

Jon looked at the map again, but this time he saw no lines, no markers. Just empty, blank white beyond the Wall — like a mouth waiting to swallow the world.

Aemon Targaryen, ancient and silent until now, spoke softly from his chair beside the fire. “We closed our eyes for too long. The darkness comes. It does not ask permission.”

No one laughed. Not now. And for the first time since entering the solar, Jon felt the unity of the North — brittle, reluctant, but real — begin to form around fear. A necessary beginning. And a terrifying one.

After the meeting, Jon stepped out into the courtyard, the old wooden door closing behind him with a muffled thud. The air outside was bitter and sharp, the cold cutting through cloak and wool as if it had claws. He didn’t mind. The wind helped steady him — reminded him he was still flesh and bone.

Above, the Wall loomed like a glacier swallowing the stars. Pale moonlight glittered across its vast surface, and the black stones of Castle Black shivered under its shadow. Jon drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the air of the true North — clean, frigid, merciless.

His head swam with the memory of the room: the voices of lords raised in disbelief, the stark truth in Benjen’s words, the flicker of fear that passed from one face to another as the reality of it all settled in. A storm was coming. Not of men or steel — but of something colder, older.

A quiet voice drifted from the shadows near the wooden stairs. "Do you doubt yourself, Jon?"

He turned and found Jojen standing nearby, arms folded beneath his green cloak, eyes fixed on him with that strange, unblinking calm that always made Jon feel as though he were being read like a book.

"Always," Jon admitted, his voice barely above the wind.

He looked toward the Wall — immense, unmoving. "I feel I belong nowhere, and yet everywhere. North, South, Wall… dragon and wolf alike."

His throat tightened slightly at the words. It was the first time he’d said it aloud, that duality he carried like a blade beneath his skin. The dragon blood whispered of fire, of something deep and old and dangerous. But the wolf in him — that was the part that watched the Wall in silence and felt its pull.

Jojen’s breath misted in the air. "My father used to say dreams guide us when paths are unclear," he said softly. "Trust your dreams. They speak truths we are often afraid to hear."

Jon watched him for a moment. There was no mockery in the boy’s face. Just stillness — like a pond beneath a sky full of stormclouds. He nodded, the words burrowing into his chest like seeds waiting for light.

Footsteps crunched lightly on the snow-packed stone behind them. "Jon." He turned.

Eddard Stark stood there, his grey cloak stirring in the wind, his face lined and resolute. But in his eyes, there was something else — not command, not burden. Something gentler.

Ned stepped beside him and looked toward the Wall. "We have much work ahead," he said. Jon straightened, the wind snapping his cloak against his legs. "Are you ready?" his father asked.

"Yes, Father," Jon answered without hesitation. It was true. Whatever fear he carried, whatever doubts — they were his, and he would carry them. He was no longer the boy staring at the Wall from afar. He had crossed into it now.

Ned nodded. "Good," he said quietly. His hand settled on Jon’s shoulder — firm, steady. "I need your strength now, Jon. You are my son, Stark and more."

The words hit harder than Jon expected. He looked into his father’s eyes and saw not just duty — but trust. Not command — but faith. There was something else there, too, unspoken. Pride, perhaps. And fear. A father’s fear.

"I won’t fail you," Jon promised, voice thick with something he didn’t name.

"I know," Ned replied.

And together, father and son turned toward the long night ahead. Toward duty. Toward war. Toward the wall between all men and what lay beyond.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

The wind carried the scent of river reeds and late summer decay, but Catelyn Stark smelled only memory.

As Riverrun’s towers rose faint on the horizon, her thoughts were far from the saddle. They drifted backward — through leagues of road and restless camps, to Winterfell’s godswood, and the last argument she’d had with her husband beneath the red leaves of the heart tree.

The North had stirred. The call to war had swept through the halls like wildfire in dry grass. The raven from Castle Black. Benjen’s voice, steady and grave. Mance Rayder was gathering the wildlings. The Wall would not hold. And worse — much worse — something older marched behind them. The dead were stirring in the snow.

The lords had answered swiftly. Too swiftly. Ten thousand men from Moat Cailin under Ned's banner, to ride north and hold the Wall. Ten thousand more with Robb, to ride west and cut the Ironborn out at the root. Every sword needed. Every shield counted.

And Catelyn had asked for leave. Not for peace. Not for escape. But for Riverrun.

"For my father," she had said, hands clenched around Ned's sleeve. "He is dying, Ned. Edmure says he may not last the moon."

Ned’s face had been unreadable, carved from that same Northern stone as the crypts below. "The South is not safe," he had said. "Riverrun is neutral yes, but still at risk. If you are caught between Tywin and Renly—"

"I will ride with Ser Rodrik. I will not wear my colors. No banners. No host. Only Sansa and Arya."

Ned had gone quiet at that, lips pressed into a grim line. He had looked to the window, as if hoping to find guidance in the wind or the hills. "You would take the girls?" he asked at last.

"They are Tullys as much as they are Starks," she had said. "They should see their grandfather before he dies. Sansa barely remembers him. Arya not at all."

He had said nothing for a long time. Then, finally, he nodded. "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell," he murmured. "And for now, it will be Bran.” She had kissed him once, without words, and left before the grief in her throat could betray her.

The road dipped and curved as the waters came into view, and for a moment Catelyn drew her horse to a halt atop the ridge.

Below, the rivers met like clasped hands — the Red Fork flowing wide and brown, the Tumblestone sparkling silver beneath the sun. And between them, rising proud and weathered as the bones of old kings, stood Riverrun.

Two sides of the castle kissed water. The rivers curled protectively around its stone flanks, moat and shield in one. Drawbridges gleamed where sun struck iron. The red and blue banners of House Tully snapped in the breeze, high above the towers, silver trout leaping, tireless as memory. Riverrun rose from the rivers like a dream half-remembered.

Catelyn sat frozen for a breath, her gloved hands tightening on the reins. Years had passed since she’d last seen her childhood home — yet in that instant, all the years fell away. She could almost see herself as a girl again, bare-kneed and laughing in the courtyard, chasing Edmure with a switch while Lysa pouted on the steps. But that world was gone.

The drawbridge lowered at their approach, chains groaning, and they rode through the gatehouse in the soft thunder of hooves. Guardsmen saluted smartly, helm plumes rippling in the wind. Catelyn inclined her head, but her thoughts were already turning inward, each stone and corner tugging old emotions loose.

It was the same castle she had left — and yet everything had changed. The outer yard was alive with motion: smiths hammering at blades, armorers checking fits, boys with buckets scrubbing down horses. The clang of steel echoed between stone walls. Packs were unloaded, carts rolled by, and everywhere were men in mail — too many to be called peace, too few for war.

Catelyn caught the glances. Soldiers and servants alike turned to mark her arrival. Not her — them. Two daughters, two direwolves, and a lady of the North riding into the heart of a river on the edge of flood.

Arya swung down with the quickness of a squire, eyes darting. Sansa dismounted more slowly, grace practiced into her limbs, her gaze fixed firmly forward.

Rodrik Cassel landed heavily, grunting. The old knight straightened at once and stepped to her side, offering his hand.

“Lady Stark,” he murmured. “Home again.”

“Home,” Catelyn echoed softly. But the word rang strange in her throat — brittle, distant. A shape she remembered, not a truth she felt.

Then came Edmure, striding through the yard with the proud, hurried steps of a man trying not to seem overwhelmed.

“Cat!” he called, voice too loud in the din. “Cat, you’ve come at last.”

He pulled her into an embrace that was half relief, half apology. He smelled of sweat and leather and river wind. She felt the tension in him immediately — the tightness in his back, the quickness of his breath.

Behind him came Marq Piper and Patrek Mallister — one sharp as a hunting hawk, the other smiling like summer gold. Boys still, in her memory. Now they wore swords at their hips and concern in their eyes.

“Lady Stark,” Patrek said, bowing, hand to heart.

“Welcome to Riverrun,” Marq added. “Such as it is.”

Catelyn nodded to each of them, but the words of greeting felt like stones skipping over deeper waters. They were not here for pleasantries. Not anymore.

Introductions were swift, formal. There were too many ears nearby. Too many men not yet sure whose war this would be.

Later, she thought. Later, in the solar — when the doors were shut and the light dimmed — they could speak freely.

But for now, she kept her face still, her voice warm, and let herself ride the current of old stone and watching eyes.

They climbed the tower in silence, the only sounds their soft footfalls and the distant rush of river water beyond the stone walls. Catelyn’s heart pounded with each step. Her fingers curled tighter around the stair rail, white-knuckled. She had not seen her father in almost four years, not since Robb was named heir, not since Hoster’s last, careful letter—words written with a trembling hand but still strong with pride. Now, every step felt like walking backward into childhood and forward into grief all at once.

When Maester Vyman opened the chamber door and stepped aside, the scent struck her first. Damp stone. Boiled leather. Bitter herbs. The air was thick with it, as if the room itself had begun to sour.

Hoster Tully lay in a great, carved oak bed beneath layers of heavy furs. He looked swallowed by them, his frame sunken, limbs too thin, as if time had gnawed him down to bone and memory. His once-ruddy face was pale, lined, collapsed at the cheeks. Only his beard, still streaked with red, held any trace of the lord he had once been.

He didn’t move at first. Then slowly, his eyelids fluttered. His eyes opened—watery, red-rimmed, but sharp as a trout's dart.

“Cat,” he rasped.

Catelyn had meant to be strong. Had meant to kneel and greet him with poise, to smile and speak calmly.

Instead, she whispered, “Father,” and sank beside him, her hand reaching blindly for his.

His fingers closed around hers, papery and weak but deliberate. She felt the tremble in him like the last flutter of a bird’s wings.

“The fish still swim,” he murmured.

“And the rivers still flow,” she replied, voice shaking. Tears welled and blurred the world around her. She blinked them away. Not now. Not yet.

Behind her, the girls waited. She turned and beckoned softly.

“Father,” she said gently, “there are two girls who would dearly like to meet you.”

Sansa stepped forward first, composed despite the flush in her cheeks. Her hands were clasped before her, posture perfect, though her eyes darted nervously across the sickroom. Her dress had been pressed and retied twice since arriving. Even now, she brushed her skirts with quick fingers as she approached the bedside.

“This is Sansa, my eldest daughter,” Catelyn said.

Hoster’s gaze studied her, slow but attentive. His lips twitched into the faintest of smiles.

“You’ve your mother’s eyes,” he rasped. “And your grandmother’s poise.”

Sansa blushed beneath the praise. She dropped into a curtsy, graceful and low, and bent to kiss the hand he offered. He squeezed it weakly before letting it go.

Then Arya moved forward, all gangly limbs, torn tunic, and eyes like sharpened steel. Nymeria padded behind her with the quiet menace of a hunting shadow.

Catelyn looked at her younger daughter and almost smiled despite herself.

“And this wild one,” she said, lips twitching, “is Arya.”

“A wolf pup,” Hoster murmured. His voice was fainter now, like leaves drifting downstream. “I see the Tully fire burns bright in her.”

Arya cocked her head and smirked. “I brought my direwolf. She doesn’t bite. Much.”

That drew a dry chuckle from the old man—a sound no louder than a breath but one that filled the room.

“Good girl,” he whispered, then reached up with slow, creaking effort to touch her hand. “Good girls, both.”

He sank back against the pillows, eyes fluttering closed again. His breathing was shallow but calm, like the hush before snowfall.

Catelyn reached for the furs and gently tucked them higher about his chest. She remained seated at his side, daughters flanking her, one solemn, one bold. The fire cracked in the hearth. Outside, the waters of the Red Fork whispered beneath the windows. For a moment—a single, aching moment—Riverrun felt whole again.

Later, in the high hall of Riverrun, they gathered beneath the faded tapestries of leaping trout and flowing rivers. The stone chamber was cool despite the fire crackling in the hearth, the tall arched windows leaking grey light that softened the edges of steel and worry alike.

A long table had been cleared of its usual trappings. In their place lay rolled maps, stones to weigh them down, and markers carved into the shape of towers, ships, and marching men. Catelyn took her seat near the end, flanked by Ser Rodrik and one of Riverrun’s guards. Edmure stood at the center, hands braced on either side of the war table, his jaw tight with effort and too little rest.

He had shaved that morning, but still looked unkempt, his auburn beard patchy and his tunic wrinkled where he’d leaned into it too long. His eyes flicked from map to sister and back again.

“We monitor every convoy,” Edmure said, dragging a carved horse across the map’s southern edge. “Lord Tywin’s men still pass south to King’s Landing. We let them pass.”

There was a bite to his words, but the resignation ran deeper.

“For now,” added Marq Piper. He stood with his arms folded, wiry and tense, his dark eyes sharp as a drawn blade. His voice held steel. “But let one of them stray too far from the road, or raise a banner in the wrong direction…”

Patrek Mallister nodded beside him. The youngest of the three, yet already battle-tested along the coast, he bore his armor even here, polished to a dull shine. “Our swords stay sheathed,” he said. “But our eyes stay sharp.”

Their words rang with discipline—but also with the heavy stillness of a bowstring drawn, waiting for release.

Catelyn listened in silence, her hands folded atop her lap. The firelight danced across her fingers, catching the silver of her ring, the only bright thing in the room. Her gaze moved slowly across the faces around the table: her brother, so eager to protect but untested; Marq, born for war but now forced into waiting; Patrek, trying to be patient in a world that rewarded haste.

They all wore the same expression beneath their armor and titles—restraint lined with worry. Riverrun balanced on a sword’s edge.

The bannermen of the Trident had agreed to neutrality when Robert died. It had kept the Riverlands from burning—so far. But the lions still moved, Tywin’s men traveling the roads, their banners furled but their armor visible beneath the cloaks. The Trident watched them pass. And let them pass. But for how long?

How long could Riverrun play the watchful gate while the kingdoms bled? How long before a single torch—one farm burned, one insult flung—shattered the illusion of peace? The rivers ran quiet now, but Catelyn could hear the coming flood behind it.

Rodrik Cassel shifted beside her. The old knight stood with hands clasped behind his back, his beard neatly combed despite the long ride south. He leaned in just enough for her to hear.

“The tides will turn, my lady,” he murmured. “They always do.”

Catelyn nodded slowly. Her eyes stayed on the map—on the little pieces carved to look like men. It was not peace they lived in. Only the breath before a scream.

That evening, as the shadows grew long and supper was being prepared belowstairs, Catelyn found her daughters in her old room, a quiet chamber high in one of Riverrun’s smaller towers. The walls were lined with faded tapestries of river scenes and summer hunts, the air thick with the scent of old wood and lavender. The windows were flung open to the cool dusk, and the distant murmur of the Tumblestone could be heard far below, whispering against the stones.

Arya sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, tossing a small carved stick back and forth between her hands. Nymeria lounged nearby, her golden eyes following the motion with the slow, steady patience of a predator. Across from them, Sansa sat near the arched window, a hoop of embroidery in her lap, Lady curled at her feet. The direwolf dozed, head resting on her paws, while Sansa's needle moved with a rhythm that was more habit than focus. Her fingers trembled slightly, though she tried to hide it.

Catelyn stood quietly in the doorway for a long moment, simply watching. Two daughters, two wolves, two pieces of herself that would grow into strangers and yet still belonged to her.

"Mother," Sansa said suddenly, glancing up as if sensing her presence. Her voice was soft, uncertain. "Do you think… do you think King Joffrey still remembers our betrothal?"

The question struck like a blade through cloth—clean and silent but sharp.

Catelyn crossed the room slowly, the sound of her steps softened by the rush matting. She sat beside Sansa and placed a hand gently on her daughter's trembling wrist.

"I am sure he remembers, sweetling," she said with a quiet smile.

But inside, her heart was ice.

It will never happen, she thought, the certainty cold and iron-clad. The match had been broken the moment Robert had passed. It had died on the tip of a raven’s wing, sealed with wax and treason and resolve.

Joffrey Baratheon—if he was truly that—would never have her daughter. Not now. Not ever. She and Ned had spoken of it in whispers, by candlelight, in the weeks after the news of Robert’s death. The South would not claim their daughters.

Not for peace. Not for alliances. Not for anything.

"He's probably forgotten already," Arya muttered from the floor, rolling the stick between her fingers. “Too busy hiding in his pretty red castle.”

Sansa stiffened. “He’s a king.”

Arya snorted. “So are Stannis and Renly. At least they ride to battle, not sit on a throne while others bleed.”

“Arya,” Catelyn warned, though her voice was soft.

But Arya only shrugged, unrepentant, her grey eyes flicking to her mother. “It’s true,” she said.

Nymeria stirred as Arya’s tone sharpened, but the girl reached to scratch behind her ears, calming them both.

Sansa had gone pale, her fingers tight around the embroidery hoop. Her voice, when she spoke, was small. “He was kind...”

Arya looked over, not with scorn but with something closer to pity. “Kind to you...”

The silence that followed was thick and fraying. Catelyn reached for both girls, drawing them closer—not as Lady Stark, but simply as a mother. One still clung to a broken dream. The other had heard too many broken truths.

“Come, both of you,” Catelyn said, drawing a breath. “Let us eat and rest. Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

They left the solar together, the direwolves padding silently behind.

Later that night, after the girls had gone to bed and the corridors fell quiet, Catelyn stood alone atop the battlements. The towers of Riverrun rose around her like watchful giants. Below, the rivers whispered through the dark, their currents veiled in moonlight.

She gripped her cloak tighter around her shoulders. The wind bit through wool and bone. Her gaze followed the flow of water as it wound past the castle walls and into the night beyond.

So much had changed.

The girls were no longer the children she had given birth at Winterfell. War had taken their dreams and scattered them like petals in a storm. Sansa stitched in silence, too careful with her words. Arya spoke too plainly, too fearlessly, as if already armoring herself for the world to come.

And she—Catelyn—felt older than her years, the weight of every choice pressing against her spine. She did not pray for peace. She prayed only for strength—to hold, to shield, to endure what was still to come.

The rivers whispered on below. And somewhere in their voice, she thought she heard the word soon.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The chamber of the Small Council smelled of ink, old parchment, and the sour tang of frustration that lingered like rot in a fruit bowl.

Tyrion Lannister climbed into his chair with a grunt, his legs aching from too many stairs and too little sleep. He rubbed at the ache in his temple and eyed the others seated at the long table through half-lidded eyes. The sun filtering through the stained glass behind the Iron Throne threw colored patterns across the stone floor, bright splashes of red and gold and green—mocking cheer in a room full of storm clouds.

Cersei sat to his right, upright and still as a statue, every line of her posture carved from tension. Her fingers drummed a silent rhythm on the polished table—impatient, angry, and perhaps... afraid. Pycelle hunched forward beside her, a bag of bones and wheezing breath, leafing through a stack of crumpled parchments with trembling hands.

Across from them, Varys folded his own hands into the sleeves of his lavender robe, his face composed in a mask of pleasant neutrality. He looked, as always, like a man about to offer a compliment laced with poison.

Tyrion poured himself a goblet of wine and sipped without ceremony. It was too early for strong drink, but too late to do without it.

He waited. It did not take long.

“Stalemate,” Cersei spat, her voice tight and brittle. “Three armies, three fools, and not a single foot forward.”

“A delicate balance,” Varys murmured in his smooth, unctuous tone. “Like a spinning plate, Your Grace.”

Cersei’s glare could have cracked stone. “Report,” she snapped at Pycelle.

Tyrion sat back, swirling the wine in his cup. The vintage was sour, like everything else in King’s Landing lately—grain shipments from the Reach had slowed to a trickle, the streets of Flea Bottom were filling with hungry mouths and angry whispers, and every merchant who dared dock in the bay now charged triple before even lifting a crate. The city was starving, and the court barely noticed.

The old maester fumbled for his scroll, finally extracting one with shaking fingers. He squinted down at the ink-stained words.

“Lord Stannis remains encamped within the Stormlands,” Pycelle croaked, his voice dry as parchment. “His forces are dug in deeply. Ser Jaime engaged Lord Renly’s vanguard—”

“And lost,” Cersei cut in, bitter as vinegar.

Pycelle coughed into his sleeve. “Lord Renly had numbers,” he said defensively. “Yet at great cost. His march has been halted. Ser Jaime has since gathered his men and holds the border still.”

Tyrion tilted his goblet toward the light and examined the sediment at the bottom. “A bloody tie, then,” he said, voice soft. “Not a victory. Not a rout. Merely more dead men to fertilize the fields.”

Three armies. Three kings. And none of them seemed eager to strike a final blow. Stannis in the east, grim and relentless. Renly in the south, handsome and hollow, propped up by Reach gold and his brother’s memory. And Joffrey… Joffrey played at kingship in the Red Keep, swinging blades at servants and crowing from atop the Iron Throne like a rooster in heat.

“And Tywin?” Cersei asked, leaning forward.

“Still encamped near Red Lake,” Pycelle rasped. “But a raven arrived this morning—Lord Tywin marches for King’s Landing.”

Cersei exhaled, and the tension in her shoulders eased a fraction. Even her eyes seemed to brighten.

Tyrion did not share her relief. His fingers tightened around the stem of his goblet. Tywin would come with an army, yes. And with it, discipline. Order. Control. And chains—for Tyrion, most of all.

Whatever sliver of influence he’d managed to carve for himself would vanish the moment the Lord of Casterly Rock crossed the gates. No more Hand in practice, no more quiet authority behind the throne. Just the dwarf again. The embarrassment. The expendable son.

“No new troubles from the North?” Cersei asked, turning to Varys.

“None,” the Spider said smoothly, his voice a balm. “The northern lords remain preoccupied with their wildling foes.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow at the careful phrasing. Preoccupied did not mean complacent. And certainly not conquered. He made a mental note. Always watch the North. If the wolves looked south, there would be blood. And gods help them if winter truly came. There would be little left to bleed.

“There is… other news,” Varys said, his voice feather-light, the kind of tone that preceded tidings best left unopened.

Tyrion leaned forward, intrigued despite himself. The Spider rarely sounded hesitant.

“From where?” Cersei asked, arms crossed.

“Essos,” Varys replied.

That single word shifted the mood like a sudden chill down the spine.

Across the table, Tyrion set down his goblet, wine sloshing faintly inside. Essos. He thought of merchant ships sailing from Pentos, of whispers in Volantis, of sellswords changing allegiances like cloaks. Across the sea, things always seemed distant—until they weren’t.

“The city of Meereen,” Varys continued, “has fallen to Daenerys Targaryen.”

The name hit the council like a stone thrown through stained glass. For a heartbeat, silence stretched.

Cersei scoffed. “The dragon whelp?” She tossed a glance toward Tyrion, lip curled. “Let her rule her slavers. That’s all she’s fit for.”

“Slavers’ Bay no longer slavers,” Varys said softly. “Her decree abolished it.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow. A child queen breaking chains? That sounded like something out of a bard’s tale. But there was something else beneath Varys’s words. Something that tugged at Tyrion’s gut.

“She does not rule alone,” the eunuch went on. “Three dragons have been seen at her side.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

Pycelle wheezed indignantly. “Old wives’ tales,” he muttered. “Children’s stories. Dragons are gone. Dead a hundred years or more.”

Cersei waved a hand, dismissive. “Let her play queen across the sea. She is no threat to us.”

But Tyrion wasn’t so certain. Three dragons. Not one. Three.

He stared down at the map in front of him, at the empty stretch of parchment marked only by the eastern sea. Fire, he thought. Real fire. Living flame born of blood and myth.

He tried to recall the last time he’d seen a dragon—not a carving, not a statue, but a dragon in flesh. Of course he hadn’t. No one alive had. Not in truth. But now, if the tales were real...

“The seed is strong,” the old saying went. But fire was stronger.

He drained his goblet in one long swallow and tried not to feel the ice crawling up his spine.

Tyrion set down his empty goblet and refilled it, slower this time. Fire in the east, wolves in the north, lions bleeding in the west. The world was splitting open—and somewhere in the cracks, Littlefinger was smiling.

“And Littlefinger?” he asked, swirling the wine.

Varys’s smile widened just a hair—barely enough to notice, but enough to make Tyrion’s knuckles tighten on the goblet stem.

“Safely arrived at Gulltown,” the eunuch said smoothly.

Cersei leaned forward, eyes sharp. “He sent word?”

“A raven,” Varys replied. “He is…” —a pause, that deliberate pause Tyrion had learned to dread— “working to persuade Lady Lysa to join her banners to ours.”

Tyrion barked a dry laugh. “And when pigs fly, they shall wear crowns.”

Cersei scowled, her knuckles whitening where her nails dug into her chair’s arm.

“He will succeed,” she snapped. “He must.”

Must, thought Tyrion, was the prayer of the desperate. The last words muttered before the dice landed badly.

He raised a hand. “Oh, I’m sure Lord Baelish will succeed. In something.” He sipped. “Though I suspect it may be more useful to himself than to us.”

Neither Cersei nor Varys answered, but he saw it in their eyes. The unspoken truth. Petyr Baelish had been sent to secure the Vale. But Littlefinger had never played a part he didn’t intend to rewrite.

Tyrion pictured Lysa Arryn—flighty, paranoid, easily flattered—and her absurd boy clutching at his mother’s skirts. The Eyrie might be impregnable, but its mistress was anything but.

He imagined Petyr, whispering into Lysa’s ear, conjuring promises, drawing power like a leech draws blood. The Vale’s knights were second only to the North in stubborn pride and hard steel—and now they waited in the wings, unaligned, silent. A sharp knife in someone else’s belt. Someone like Baelish.

The council dissolved soon after, a murmur of shifting cloaks and half-spoken threats. Pycelle wheezed his way from the room, Varys floated like fog behind him, and Cersei stalked off in a rustle of silk and resentment.

Tyrion remained behind, wine forgotten.

The map of Westeros lay before him like a battlefield yet to be scorched. Pins and markers jutted from it like wounds, each one marking a threat. A hope. A lie.

Three kings still vied for power. The Reach teetered. The North burned with cold fire. Dragons circled across the sea. And now the Vale—quiet, proud, and potentially devastating—waited for a whisper from a man with a dagger for a smile.

Tyrion traced a finger across the Vale.

“And who do you serve, Baelish?” he murmured aloud. “The Crown? The Queen? Or your own damn shadow?”

No answer came, only the crackle of the hearth behind him and the weight of too many secrets.

He finished his wine in one slow, silent swallow. The game deepened. And Tyrion Lannister was not sure he still liked the board.

Chapter Text

The Mocking Bird

The wind at the Eyrie was sharp, like a blade made of sky, clean and cold and merciless. It sliced through the thin mountain air, tugging at Petyr Baelish’s cloak until it snapped behind him like a banner. He stood on the Moon Tower balcony, high above the world, where the clouds moved like slow smoke across a sea of stone and snow. The Vale stretched out below him in all its pale grandeur — a kingdom in all but name, proud and veiled in frost.

He loved this view. Not for its beauty — though it was beautiful, in the way a knife could be beautiful — but for what it represented. Distance. Isolation. Power perched high above the noise and blood of the realm. No war touched the sky. Not yet.

Behind him, the Lady of the Eyrie wept.

"They whisper in the halls," Lysa Arryn said, her voice thin and tremulous, like a harp string about to snap. "They say I’m mad. That I see shadows where there are none."

Petyr did not turn at once. He let the silence linger just long enough for the doubt to grow — and then smothered it with velvet.

"Then they’re fools," he said, smoothly pivoting on his heel. "You’ve protected your son, your House, and your mountain fastness while the rest of the realm tears itself apart. They should admire your strength."

He moved to her with practiced grace, every step measured. Lysa’s eyes, always too wide, met his with a pleading hunger — not just for reassurance, but for love, for something more permanent than his smiles and whispers. She was still in her gown, her red hair half-unbound, her mouth soft and trembling. There had been a time, years past, when she was sharper, bolder. Time and fear had worn her down like water on stone.

"I did it for you," she whispered. "All of it."

Ah, there it is. Petyr took her hand gently, with just enough tenderness to feel real. “And I’ll never forget it,” he murmured. “You made the hardest choice a mother could make. And you did it for love.”

She trembled beneath his touch — not from cold, he knew, but from need.

He kissed her fingers lightly, reverently, and leaned in close, close enough that only she could hear the lie dressed as prophecy.

"Soon, all will be in place. Our enemies will turn on each other, and we will rise. The boy will be safe, and you shall sit beside me, not in fear, but in triumph."

He said it in the same voice he used when closing deals — low, intimate, irresistible.

Behind his eyes, the game moved forward three more steps.

Lysa closed her eyes and clutched his hand to her breast. Petyr held her there, steady as a prayer.

But all he could hear was the wind. And the wind sounded like wings.

The High Hall of the Arryns was colder than the winds outside.

The wind crept in through the stones, with silence and suspicion. Pale sunlight streamed through the tall arched windows like the fingers of the gods themselves — judgmental and cold. The Moon Door yawned wide at the far end of the chamber, its open mouth sealed only by a simple slab of sky-blue wood. Just beyond it, there was nothing but air and sky and the long fall.

Petyr Baelish stood in its shadow, and for once in his life, he felt small.

The lords of the Vale surrounded him in a loose circle of fur-lined cloaks and hard stares. They were not court men, not players like the fools in the Red Keep. These were mountain wolves and stone eagles — men raised on frost and honor, proud and stubborn to the last. They did not smile. They did not trust.

Lord Yohn Royce stood tall among them, a mountain in bronze. His cloak was as wide as a war banner, and his eyes seemed to look through Petyr, as if trying to gauge how much blood had been spilled to polish his shoes.

Ser Lyn Corbray leaned on a marble pillar like it owed him coin, his gloved fingers twitching too close to the pommel of Lady Forlorn. His mouth wore a half-smile, the kind that usually followed mockery or murder — or both.

Petyr Baelish felt their contempt as surely as if it had been spoken. So he smiled wider.

“King Joffrey sits the Iron Throne,” he began, his voice calm, measured — the merchant's tone, offering not goods, but futures. “And he offers friendship to the Vale. Protection. A place at the center of power.”

Royce’s grunt was thunder in the still room.

“Joffrey sits on a throne built by treachery,” he said. “That’s not friendship. That’s bait.”

Straight to the point, as always. Royce could gut a man with a sentence.

Ser Lyn snorted. “And what, Baelish? You’ll lead our knights?” His smirk widened. “The boy from the littlest finger who sells coin for smiles?”

That drew a low ripple of laughter, dry and brittle.

Petyr let it pass, unfazed. He clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head as if considering something deeper than their words.

“I offer what’s best for the Vale,” he said, softer now, coaxing. “Stability. Security. And your sons kept from the mud of southern wars.”

He let that hang in the air. The word "sons" was no accident. Most of them had one or two. He had read the ledgers, remembered the names. He had bought their debts and arranged their marriages. He knew what held them up — and what could break them.

But they weren’t ready yet.

A younger lord — Petyr didn’t know his name, some cousin to House Belmore — spoke up hesitantly. “Some wars find you whether you want them or not. And some of us remember Eddard Stark’s honor. He did not lie. He did not scheme. If he moves, many here will follow.”

That pierced the chamber more deeply than anything Corbray had said. A hush followed — not awkward, but reverent.

Petyr held his smile, though his jaw tightened for the briefest moment.

Ah, Ned Stark. Still casting shadows after all these years.

He waited half a beat longer than was polite. Then — lightly, as if brushing dust from velvet — he said “Then we are fortunate he has not moved.” He could feel their eyes still on him. Doubting. Measuring. Weighing. “And until he does,” he added, voice silk again, “you may rest easy. The Eyrie remains untouched.”

For now, he did not say. But the words curled in the silence anyway.

His gaze swept the hall — Yohn Royce’s set jaw, Corbray’s glinting eyes, the shifting feet of lesser lords unused to this kind of war. They would not follow him yet. Not as one.

But he didn’t need them all.  Only enough. Soon. Very soon.

That night, in the solar, Petyr Baelish wrote letters by candlelight.

The room was warm, but the air still smelled faintly of old stone and mountain wind. Flames danced in the hearth, casting shifting shadows on the walls — shadows he knew better than most. They moved like conspirators, flickering over carved shelves and velvet drapes, whispering secrets to no one but him.

The table before him was cluttered with parchment and ink, wax seals bearing mockingbird sigils, and careful drafts of half-truths.

To Queen Cersei, he wrote of progress. Of lords turning their ears toward reason. Of how much they valued peace — and the Queen’s regard. He exaggerated just enough to be believed.

To Varys, he sent only vague promises. Whispers wrapped in riddles. Lines that said everything and nothing. He told the spider what he expected to hear, that things were moving, ever so slowly — and that when they moved, it would be in the direction Varys most favored. Whatever that truly was.

And to the lords of the Fingers and Gulltown, he offered what he knew would silence questions, coins. More than enough to buy loyalty, or at least inaction. Petyr had learned long ago — gold never argued, and gold never questioned its orders.

From the bed behind him, Lysa watched.

Her red hair tumbled over her shoulders like tangled fire, her nightgown loose, falling off one thin shoulder, forgotten. She sat with her knees drawn up, hands gripping the edge of the coverlet like a girl awaiting bedtime stories.

She spoke softly. “Do they trust you?”

The question floated in the space between them. Not for the first time. Not the last.

“They trust what I offer,” Petyr said, dipping his quill once more into the ink.

He didn’t look at her when he said it. He did not add, and that is all I need.

Trust was a myth, like honor — a pretty fable told to children before they learned how the world truly worked. Men trusted what they wanted. And what they wanted could always be bought.

Lysa shifted behind him. The sheets rustled.

“You promise me,” she whispered. “You promise it will be soon?”

He let the quill still in his hand.

“In time,” he said, soothingly. “All things in time.”

In truth, the Vale was a stubborn beast. Proud. Mountain-born. Slow to stir, but impossible to stop once it did. Its lords clung to old honor like armor. Its knights believed their walls kept them holy. And the boy... the boy was the key to them all, and the lock.

But Petyr would tame it. The Vale would be his, just as Harrenhal had been promised and Riverrun waited like a ripe fruit. He would not take it with blades. He would take it with silks. With smiles. With shadows.

He pressed his seal to the final letter and watched the wax cool beneath his fingers. The game was not yet won. But the board was his. And the pieces were already moving.

Chapter Text

Eddard

The wind keened through the battlements of Castle Black, thin and sharp as a drawn blade. Snow swirled in lazy spirals, dusting the shoulders of black-cloaked sentries and piling in the corners of stone steps slick with frost. Beneath the Wall—taller than any tower of man, a monolith of pale-blue ice that scraped the grey sky—the yard bustled with grim purpose.

Eddard Stark walked through the chaos with heavy steps, his grey cloak clinging to his broad shoulders, its hem crusted in snow and mud. His breath fogged the air in slow, deliberate clouds, and each stride echoed like a drumbeat on the hard-packed earth. Behind him trailed a retinue of captains and bannermen, but it was the weight of the North at his back that he truly felt. Ten thousand men had come from Winterfell and beyond—lords of tall halls and mountain fastnesses, smallfolk with sharpened pitchforks, and boys who’d never held a sword.

The direwolf of House Stark rippled on canvas above the towers, flanked by the banners of House Glover, Hornwood, Cerwyn, Tallhart, and dozens more. The air stank of horse sweat, pitch, boiling stew, and too many bodies packed too close in too small a space. But beneath it all, Eddard could smell was the old cold of the Wall, ancient and absolute. It loomed above like a frozen god, older than memory, taller than fear.

He passed Lord Cerwyn by the eastern palisade, shouting orders at a cluster of green boys assembling a line of sharpened stakes. The man’s son, barely of age, struggled to hammer them into the frozen earth with clumsy effort. Beyond them, Galbart Glover was deep in discussion with two rangers of the Watch, his gloved hands moving sharply as he pointed toward a parchment map. All around them, the castle stirred with steel and anxiety.

Every man here had a task. Every sword would matter.

Eddard paused near the forges, where smoke curled skyward and sparks leapt like fireflies. Blacksmiths worked ceaselessly, reshaping broken blades, mending chainmail, and pouring arrowheads into waiting molds. The clang of iron was relentless, but it was not the clamor of ambition or conquest—it was survival, pressed into steel.

He turned away and climbed the steps to the Lord Commander’s Tower. Jeor Mormont was long dead. The halls where his voice once echoed now belonged to silence. But war had come again, and the table in the solar had been cleared for maps. For tokens. For plans that might buy them one more dawn.

Eddard Stark moved through the quiet with purpose, his boots soft on stone, his thoughts heavy as the stormclouds building beyond the trees. The army he had brought was brave, proud, and true. But it was too small. And the enemy that marched toward them was not only a host of men. It was winter. And winter had come.

The hall of the Lord Commander had once held only black cloaks and simple meals, but now it brimmed with Northern pride and wary eyes. At the high table, Eddard Stark sat straight-backed beneath a tapestry of faded Night’s Watch vows, the fire beside him snapping and spitting shadows up the stone walls. Benjen Stark stood at his left, gaunter than Eddard remembered him, his eyes sunken, voice worn thin. There was a tightness in his shoulders that no rest could ease.

Around the table sat the North's war-born sons: the Greatjon, as large as ever and twice as loud, his thick hand never far from the hilt of his sword; Galbart Glover, precise and grim, fingers tapping on a parchment map smeared with frost; Halys Hornwood with his fur-lined cloak draped over one shoulder, listening in hard silence; and Wylis Manderly, round and red-faced, but sharper than his bulk suggested. Dacey Mormont stood just behind her uncle’s chair, eyes like green steel.

Jon sat near the foot of the table, saying nothing, but watching everything. He was no boy now. There was weight in his gaze, and tension in the set of his jaw that Eddard recognized—his own reflection in a younger face.

Benjen began, his voice low but unwavering. “The wildlings are moving as one. I’ve never seen anything like it. Mance Rayder commands them—free folk, raiders, clansmen, Thenns, even mammoths and giants. They come south by the tens of thousands.”

“Tens of thousands?” Halys Hornwood frowned. “Are we certain of that number?”

“No,” Benjen admitted. “We’re certain it’s more. Fifty thousand at the least. Likely more than sixty. Maybe more than seventy. They’ve built camps deep in the woods beyond the Frostfangs. Our scouts see the smoke at night. It stretches for miles.”

A beat of silence followed. The fire cracked. The Greatjon muttered something foul under his breath.

“And when will they move?” Galbart asked.

“Soon,” Benjen said. “Very soon. They’re testing the western ranges. I’ve had rangers report skirmishes as near as Whitetree.” He paused. “They are preparing for war,” he added. “An assault. Not like we ever heard in the stories, I think… They’re fleeing.”

Murmurs stirred around the table.

“Fleeing?” Wylis Manderly asked, brows knitting beneath his silver hair.

Benjen’s eyes met his, and the room chilled a degree.

“Yes,” he said. “Things are stirring beyond the Frostfangs. Scouts have gone missing this past year. Campfires found abandoned, still warm, food half-eaten. The Others go quiet when they’re near. Even the wolves won’t approach.”

“You speak of shadows,” said Wylis cautiously, his heavy hands folded on the table. “My lord… these are stories. Children’s tales.”

Benjen looked up, and in that instant, his eyes were colder than the wind clawing at the Wall. “They are no longer stories,” he said, each word etched in stone. “I’ve seen them. The White Walkers. They move like smoke, silent and still. Their eyes glow like the heart of winter. Their blades are ice itself. Steel shatters on them. They do not bleed. They do not breathe.”

A murmur rippled through the room, disbelief colliding with unease.

“And yet you stand here,” the Greatjon said, brow furrowed, arms crossed in open skepticism. “How?”

Benjen was quiet for a moment, as if weighing the words before he set them loose. “Because the Children of the Forest found me,” he said finally.

The hall stilled.

“No man has seen the Children in a thousand years,” muttered Halys Hornwood. “They vanished with the giants and the green dreams.”

“They did not vanish,” Benjen said. “They retreated. As we pushed further into the woods, into their sacred groves, they fell silent. But they are not gone.”

Dacey Mormont leaned forward, frowning. “You expect us to believe the fair folk of Old stories are nursing wounded rangers in the woods?”

“I don’t expect you to believe,” Benjen said, voice tightening. “But I was dying. My blood was freezing in my veins. And they saved me. They know what marches. They remember what it was like before men built keeps and castles. They’ve seen this darkness before—and they fear it more than we do.”

Silence followed, heavy and uncertain.

“What proof have you?” Galbart Glover asked at last, cautiously.

Benjen held their gazes one by one. “Would you have believed me if I brought one of them here, in chains like a prize? No. You’d say it was a trick. A forest spirit. A dream. But I lived. That is proof enough.”

“You lived,” the Greatjon muttered. “And you expect the North to marshal itself on the word of… of tree-dwellers and shadows?”

Eddard’s voice cut through the murmur like a blade. “The North has stood for thousands of years because it listens to what others forget. The old gods. The old warnings. We do not need songs to tell us when the wind turns cold—we feel it in our bones.”

He looked to Benjen, then back to the gathered lords. “We hold the Wall. We reinforce the passes. No southern charge. No reckless glory. Let the Wall do what it was built for. Let them come to us, where the Wall is strongest and the ground favors the defense.”

“That’s cowardice,” the Greatjon growled.

“No,” Eddard said, grey eyes like stone. “It’s strategy. We are outnumbered six to one. The Wall is our strength. We use it. Or we die.”

Benjen nodded. “We’ve already begun sealing lesser paths. The Shadow Tower and Eastwatch have sent men. But it’s not enough.”

“We’ll do more,” said Galbart Glover. “Steel every gate. Post archers every span. No breach. No matter what comes.”

“Pray it’s only men who come,” Wylis muttered.

Jon leaned forward. “And if it isn’t?” No one answered.

At last, Eddard stood. “We are the North,” he said. “We were not made for soft beds and southern games. We were made to stand in the dark and say no more. If we falter now, all falls. This Wall is not just ice and stone. It is a promise. We hold. Or we die. And if we die, we die standing.”

The hall fell silent. Even the fire dared not crackle too loud.

Benjen said softly, “We’ll be ready.”

Eddard nodded, but in his heart, he knew readiness might not be enough.

The council dispersed slowly, men rising one by one from benches and furs, some in silence, others with murmured oaths or shared glances. Outside, the wind had thickened, howling down the corridors of Castle Black like a thing alive. Jon lingered a moment, eyes still fixed on the fading firelight, before Eddard sent him away with a quiet word and a promise to speak later.

Only Benjen remained behind, silent in the corner, watching the shadows twist on the old stone walls. When at last he looked to Eddard, there was something heavy in his gaze—not fear, but weariness. Old and bone-deep.

No words passed between them as they made their way to the stairs, cloaks drawn tight against the cold. They climbed in silence, step by frozen step, until the world narrowed to wind and ice and sky.

The top of the Wall opened around them like a grave carved from heaven. The black ice beneath their boots groaned faintly as they walked, frost forming in their beards. To the south, the torches of Castle Black glimmered like embers. To the north... only white, endless and vast. The Haunted Forest was a jagged line of shadow. Beyond that, nothing but snowfields and stormclouds.

“They’re close,” Benjen said. His voice was nearly lost in the wind. “Closer than the others think.”

Eddard said nothing at first. He stood beside his brother and gazed northward, his gloved hands clasped before him. “The scouts confirm it?”

Benjen nodded. “The wildlings march by torchlight. We’ve seen the fires. Mance Rayder has united them like never before. And something... drives them.”

Eddard turned. “What troubles you?”

Benjen’s jaw tightened. He looked north again, as if the truth might rise from the snows. “I’ve seen them, Ned. Not just the dead. Not wights raised by sorcery. But the Others. The white walkers.” Eddard waited. “They don’t speak. They don’t bleed. They glide over snow without leaving prints. I saw one. It didn’t move. It didn’t blink. But when I looked into its eyes...” He broke off, breathing hard. “Cold,” he said finally. “Colder than anything. Like being buried beneath the Wall itself.”

Still Eddard said nothing.

“You don’t doubt me?” Benjen asked, voice low.

“I believed you before you spoke.” Eddard’s tone was steady. “The dead walk.”

Benjen exhaled, long and slow. “I was surprised, when I heard what you’d done.” He said after a pause. “Refusing Robert’s son. Declaring for none of them kings.”

Eddard’s lips twitched. “It surprised me too.”

“You were always the loyal one,” Benjen said.

“And still am,” Eddard replied. “Only now, my loyalty lies where it always should have.”

Benjen studied him a moment. “I never thought I’d live to see you defy the realm.”

“And I never thought I’d live to see the realm make folly of itself so thoroughly,” Eddard said.

The wind cut between them. For a time, they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out into the encroaching dark.

“I almost told you to stay south,” Benjen said. “You’d have been safer.”

“I couldn’t,” Eddard murmured. “Not while the Wall stood in danger. Not while you still walked it.”

Benjen gave a quiet chuckle, almost lost in the wind.

“Still stubborn,” he said.

“Still Stark,” Eddard replied.

Below, Castle Black flickered with motion—men moving through snow, torches being lit, patrols changing. But above, only sky and snow, and the long shadow of what was coming.

Benjen looked north again. “They’ll be here by tomorrow night,” he said. “Maybe sooner.”

Eddard nodded slowly. “Then we meet them as we are. Brothers. And Northmen.”

They stood together in the wind, two brothers not touched since their youth, bound now by duty, memory, and the long night rising before them.

He found Jon near the archery yard, beneath a sky bruised with dusk. The frost had crept across the training field like a tide, silvering the earth, the bows, the boots of boys too young for the weight they carried. Torches burned low along the walls, casting flickering shadows that stretched long behind every man.

Jon stood alone, arms folded, breath fogging gently in the air. He watched a group of recruits loose arrows at straw targets—some hit, most missed. One boy fumbled with his string, fingers numb from cold. A ranger corrected his grip with quiet patience, then stepped back into the gloom.

"Father," Jon said softly, without turning.

Eddard came to stand beside him, his cloak brushing against Jon’s. They watched together in silence.

The sound of arrows thudding into straw, the scrape of boots, the distant clatter of hooves on frozen stone—these things filled the space between them. But it was the Wall that loomed behind it all, vast and unyielding, a monument to forgotten wars and remembered vows. Eddard glanced up toward its summit, imagining the winds screaming there.

Jon’s voice came again, low and uncertain.

"Do you truly believe they’ll come? The Others?"

Eddard did not answer at once.

He looked past the yard, to the forests beyond the Wall—black and endless, a land of breathless cold. The trees stood like silent sentries, bare branches sharp against the sky. Somewhere out there, he knew, the dead marched.

"They already have," he said.

Jon nodded slowly, though his jaw tightened. He didn’t speak again.

Eddard shifted his stance, the weight of years in his limbs. For a moment he said nothing. Then, his voice low and even, he spoke. “I want you to come to each war councils,” he said. “Stand beside me.”

Jon blinked, surprised. “Why?”

“You were raised with Robb,” Ned said. “You watched me rule beside him. Now it is time for you to learn how to lead.” He looked down at Jon, his expression unreadable. “Watch and listen. You’ll need it.”

And though his voice did not waver, his heart did. He felt it then—the dread he kept buried. The knowledge that this was no longer about the Wall, or the North, or even the living. Something greater stirred, something older than crowns.

When the time comes, Ned thought, he must be ready. Even if I am not there to see it.

He laid a hand briefly on Jon’s shoulder, rough leather against wool and fur. Eddard felt the ache twist beneath his ribs. His son stood straighter now. The boy he had raised in Winterfell was changing, was becoming something harder, sharper. It was happening too fast. And yet... not fast enough for what would be required.

He thought of Howland’s dream—of the white wolf with dragon’s wings, rising from snow and smoke. He had not spoken of it aloud. But it never left him. And now, with the dead stirring and winter pressing close, it stalked his thoughts like a shadow.

A king, the dream had whispered. A sacrifice, a storm, a fire reborn.

Eddard clenched his jaw. He did not want that life for Jon. He wanted him safe. Hidden. Ordinary. But the world did not care what fathers wanted for their sons.

He turned his head slightly, studying Jon’s face—so like Lyanna’s in moments, and yet wholly his own. There was resolve in him now. And something else. Something older than his years.

You’re not ready, Eddard thought but did not say. And still... you must be.

The wind stirred around them, tugging at their cloaks. The targets swayed faintly on their poles. A silence fell over the yard, dense and cold.

Side by side they stood—father and son, wolf and wolf—watching the dying light, listening to the breath of the coming dark.

Waiting.

Chapter Text

Jon

Snow drifted down from a black sky as Jon climbed the steps to Maester Aemon’s tower.

Each footfall was muffled by fresh powder, the steps slick with frost. The wind whispered along the battlements, threading through the stones like a ghost remembering how to haunt. Castle Black was quieter at night, though never still. Far below, a forge still rang—a slow, measured clanging that echoed like a heartbeat against the icy silence. Somewhere in the stables, horses shifted uneasily, snorting into the dark. The Wall groaned behind it all, that deep, ancient sound of ice settling—like the world itself holding its breath.

Jon drew his cloak tighter, the fur stiff with snow, the clasp near his throat trembling in the cold. His boots found the next stair, then the next, and the tower loomed closer with each breath. Aemon was waiting. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he had already gone to sleep, or worse—perhaps he would not want to hear what Jon had come to say.

He felt it again, that old fear—shame’s quieter cousin. What if Aemon thought him a fool? What if he had clung to this bloodline, this secret, only to find it meant nothing to the last Targaryen in Westeros? Or worse, what if it meant something terrible?

The truth itched beneath his skin, too big to hold in. Rhaegar. Lyanna. His mother’s name still sounded strange on his tongue, and his father’s stranger still. Not Eddard, who had raised him with quiet duty, but the shadowed man whose name echoed in songs and burned in Aemon’s memory.

He paused a step from the door. His heart was thudding harder. Words he had practiced on the ride north dissolved in the back of his throat. Would Aemon curse him for being born? Would he mourn him like one more ghost from a house long dead?

Jon swallowed and raised a hand. His knuckles struck the door once—twice—quiet, but firm. A pause. Then the latch shifted.

"Jon Snow," came the familiar rasp from within. "Come in, child. Come in."

The chamber was warm, a rare mercy in the North. Coals glowed red in the hearth, casting soft flickers of gold across the shelves of scrolls and glass jars that lined the curved stone walls. The scent of parchment and dried herbs hung in the air, mingled faintly with the bite of smoke. A kettle hissed quietly on the coals. The rest was stillness.

Maester Aemon sat in a high-backed chair near the fire, swathed in thick cloaks of black wool and fur, a blanket draped across his lap. His blind eyes, clouded and pale, stared into the flame with uncanny calm—sightless, but aware.

Jon stood just inside the doorway, reluctant to disturb the hush. It felt like stepping into a temple, not a tower. His voice, when it came, was almost a whisper.

"You heard it," Jon said quietly. "The horn."

Aemon turned his head slightly, the corners of his mouth twitching in the shadow of a smile.

"One for rangers returning," the old man rasped. "Two for wildlings." Jon didn’t ask for the third.  Silence swelled between them. The fire crackled gently. Aemon tilted his head, as if weighing the air. "And yet you come not with questions of tactics. What troubles you, Jon Snow?"

Jon hesitated. His throat felt dry. There had been a thousand ways to begin this. None of them came now.

“I have something to tell you,” he said at last. His voice sounded small in the stillness. "My father… Lord Stark… he told me about my mother." The words settled heavy between them, heavier than armor. “She’s gone now.”

For a long moment, Aemon did not move. The only sound was the slow shifting of coals in the brazier. “I grieve for you, child,” he said softly. “But I do not know what solace I can offer.”

Jon stared into the fire, as if the truth might shape itself in flame. Then he said it. “Her name was Lyanna. Lyanna Stark.”

He heard it again, and it still didn’t feel real. His mother had a name. A face. A history that did not begin and end with shame and silence.

Aemon’s breath caught—barely audible, but there. His fingers twitched slightly on the arm of his chair.

Jon saw the change wash over him like a slow tide: the old man straightened, turned his head toward the sound of his voice, and for a heartbeat his face was no longer weary but alert. Remembering.

“And my father…” Jon went on, almost faltering. “Not the one who raised me, but the one who wedded my mother…”

He swallowed. His chest felt tight, as though the air in the room had gone thinner.

“Rhaegar.” Aemon’s breath hitched sharply, and the name fell from his lips like a prayer broken by grief. “Rhaegar…” he said again, this time in a whisper, as if naming a ghost too long kept buried.

The weight of it pressed down on Jon. His legs carried him forward without thought.

“I… I thought you dead,” Aemon said softly, incredulously.

Jon stepped closer, cautious, unsure. "You knew?"

Aemon’s hands trembled faintly in his lap. His voice, when it came again, was rough and halting.

“There were letters. Sent in secret. From Rhaegar… and from others. Whispers of a child. A promise. And then… nothing. After the Trident, after Elia… and Lyanna…” He swallowed with difficulty. “I thought you lost with them. I burned the letters. I could not bear the ghosts.” He raised a hand—fragile, pale, old beyond counting. “May I?”

Jon didn’t answer. He only stepped forward, wordless, and knelt.

The maester’s hand brushed his cheek—light as a feather, as if he feared the truth would vanish at his touch. His fingers traced the lines of Jon’s jaw, the slope of his nose, the curl of his hair.

“Egg…” Aemon murmured. “You have my brother’s nose.”

Jon swallowed against the tightness rising in his throat.

There was moisture in the blind man’s eyes now, glistening at the corners.

Something shifted between them—something Jon could not name, only feel. Not just knowledge, not just blood, but recognition. A bond beyond words, beyond years. One last ember of a broken house, sparked to life again.

In the firelight, their shadows reached toward each other. And for the first time since he was told the truth, Jon did not feel alone.

The silence between them lingered like falling snow—light, quiet, but ever-accumulating. Jon sat across from the old man now, nearer the fire, its heat a small comfort against the chill creeping up from the stone. His fingers curled in his lap, his eyes fixed on the orange glow that danced against the hearth’s iron grating. Shadows swam along the walls behind them—shadows of truths spoken, and those still waiting.

“My father… Lord Stark, he spoke of a time I might have to lead," Jon said, voice low, thick. "But it wasn’t a plan. Not truly. He didn’t believe in thrones. Not for himself. Not for me.”

He didn’t say the rest: that even now, part of him feared he had disappointed Ned Stark by existing at all. That the only man he’d ever called father had carried too many secrets in his quiet gaze.

Aemon gave a dry chuckle, his cracked lips parting in the faintest smile. “Perhaps not a plan… but a hope. A seed, should all else fail.”

Hope. Jon turned the word over like a blade in his mind. Hope had never felt like something meant for him. He had grown in its absence. Now it felt dangerous.

“I never asked to be anything but his son,” Jon murmured. “Now I’m supposed to be a king? Because of a name? Because of blood I never knew?”

“There are kings crowned by gold, kings crowned by armies…” Aemon leaned slightly forward, his blind eyes fixed as if he could still see the world beyond them. “And kings crowned by silence. You are the only one I know who truly fears what’s coming. That alone makes you the one I would follow.”

Jon blinked. The words struck with more weight than he could bear. He looked at the old man and saw no jest, no flattery—only calm conviction, cool as water from a deep well. Something stirred in his chest that wasn’t pride but a heavier thing. Responsibility.

Aemon smiled faintly. “The realm does not need another banner. It needs a shield.”

A shield, Jon thought. A shield does not choose the blow it takes. It only holds.

His throat felt tight. The fire cracked again, sparks leaping like tiny stars.

“She never named me,” Jon said suddenly. “My mother. Did she?”

It had haunted him in silence, this absence. That even at her end, Lyanna had whispered only of the man who raised him. Never of the boy she birthed.

Aemon tilted his head, brow furrowing. “No. Not that I know. But if she had... Aegon, perhaps. Or Jaehaerys. Even Rhaegarion, after your father.”

The names curled around him like a cloak too fine to wear. He couldn’t imagine himself as any of them. They belonged in songs. He had lived in snow.

Jon shook his head. “I’m not a dragon. I’m not even a wolf. I’m something in between.”

“And between fire and ice,” Aemon said softly, “a new thing may be born.”

There was a quiet certainty in the old man’s voice that frightened Jon more than prophecy. Because it did not feel like destiny. It felt like inevitability.

Jon hesitated. “There’s something else.”

His voice lowered, and for a moment, the only sound was the hiss of the fire and the soft creak of wood as Aemon shifted, waiting.

Jon spoke of the dragon.

Of the way it had come to him—small and strange, but undeniable. Of black scales like polished obsidian, of golden eyes that burned with something not entirely earthly. Of how it had grown in secret, hidden beneath Greywater’s veils, now already the size of a small horse. Of how it seemed to respond not to commands but to him—his fear, his fury, his need. A living thing tied to him by invisible thread, always watching.

Aemon listened without blinking. The room seemed to shrink around them as the words spilled out. When Jon finished, a silence fell like a blanket.

At last, the maester whispered, “So the fire lives. Not just in the East, but here. In you.” He reached across the table with trembling fingers, laying a cold hand atop Jon’s. “I would see it before I die,” he murmured, voice thinned by age but weighted with yearning.

Jon tried to smile, but it did not reach his eyes. “You may get your wish,” he said. And he was not certain whether it was a promise, or a warning.

The coals hissed in the hearth. The old tower groaned faintly in the wind. For a time, they sat like that, two men bound by fate, one near the end of a long road, the other barely at its start.

Then Aemon spoke again, softer now, like a man dreaming aloud.

“You are not the only one left of your blood,” he said. “Across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen holds court in Meereen. She is young, alone, and bears the burden of fire as you do.”

Jon stirred. The name rang distant, half-remembered from overheard words and foreign letters. “I’ve heard the name,” he said. “They say she has dragons too.”

“She does,” Aemon said. “Three of them. Hatched from stone. She is the last daughter of a broken house, and you its hidden son.”

Jon stared into the flame. “A Targaryen,” he said quietly, and the word felt foreign in his mouth. Like armor he’d never worn.

“A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing,” Aemon murmured, his voice breaking. “But two… may yet find each other. And with them, hope.”

The word hung in the air again. Hope. Jon didn’t answer. But for the first time, he didn’t push it away.

Later, Jon stood atop the Wall.

The wind gnawed at him, bitter and restless, howling between the crenellations like the cry of something old and forgotten. His black cloak flapped behind him, its hem stiff with frost. The world below was darkness and fire—wildling camps scattered across the edge of the Haunted Forest, their watchfires blinking like embers cast across a sea of snow.

Ghost sat beside him, silent as the grave, his red eyes gleaming in the gloom. He did not pant, though the cold was biting. He did not flinch, though the wind cut like knives. The direwolf had grown lean and long as a shadow, his coat gone silver in the moonlight. There was something unnatural in his stillness.

Jon reached down and laid a hand between Ghost’s ears, fingers brushing through the thick fur. The wolf made no sound, but leaned subtly into the touch, as if grounding him.

He remembered the dreams.

They came more often now. Dreams of cold forests and warm blood, of chasing scents through tangled boughs, of moonlight on snow and bones beneath the ice. In them, he ran on four legs, silent and sure. He tasted wind and copper and the fear of prey. He thought they were only dreams.

But not all were of Ghost.

Some nights he dreamed of flight. Not the fall of the Wall or the drop from a tower, but of true flight—wings slicing the sky, scales catching the sun, fire swelling in his throat like breath. In those dreams, the world burned below him, green and gold and blue. Sometimes he flew alone. Sometimes with another, just out of reach.

And sometimes... he dreamed of the Neck.

Of twisted trees and rising mists. Of stone halls that moved and vanished, that shifted in place when he looked away. He would wake with mud on his mind and the taste of peat on his tongue.

He glanced down at Ghost. It had been the wolf who led him there, beneath Winterfell. Not long after his father told him the truth, the pull had come. A soft weight behind his thoughts, a whisper felt more than heard. Ghost had stirred first, growling low one night and padding silently from his chambers. Jon had followed without thinking, bare-footed and wordless.

Down through the godswood, past the weirwood, into the crypts. Ghost had led him sure as a compass, his white form luminous in the black.

They passed the kings of old, the Lords of Winterfell with their stone swords and solemn faces, until they reached a tomb Jon had never noticed before. Smaller than the rest. Marked only with a direwolf curled about a sword. Cregan Stark, said some faint corner of his mind. A name from Old Nan’s tales. Warrior of ice and fire, she’d once whispered.

There, buried deep behind stone, they had found it. The egg.

Smooth and cold to the touch. Black as midnight, with faint swirls of crimson and gold that shimmered when the firelight later touched it. It had felt... alive. As if it knew him. As if it had been waiting. Had Ghost felt the same pull? Had it come to them both? Was that what bound them together—some thread of ancient blood, wolf and fire twined?

And why had it been hidden there, beneath Winterfell? Why Cregan’s tomb? Who had placed it, and why had it called to him after so many years? The answers did not come. Only more questions.

He closed his eyes, and somewhere deep within, the dragon stirred—coiled heat and distant hunger. It was not fully awake. Not yet. But it was watching.

Not yet, he told it. Not yet.

Ghost’s ears twitched beside him, as if hearing the silent exchange. Snow began to fall again, soft and unceasing, muffling the world in white. Jon stood still, the wolf at his side, the wind behind him, and fire curled somewhere far below his skin.

The night was not silent. But it was waiting.

Chapter Text

Benjen

The wind had changed.

Benjen Stark stood still at the treeline beyond Castle Black, his breath rising in pale, curling plumes that vanished into the dawnless sky. The air had a taste now—thin, dry, laced with something metallic and old. It wasn’t just the cold. He knew cold. This was something deeper, more ancestral. A weight pressing down on the forest, as if the snow itself remembered blood.

The darkness before sunrise clung to the world like a shroud, and the trees around him stood tall and stripped, black skeletons etched against a field of grey mist. No birds called. No beasts stirred. Only the whisper of frost across branch and bark, and the faint, steady groan of the Wall behind him.

The scouts had returned the evening prior, faces hollow, horses trembling beneath them. Their reports had been sparse, but damning: over a hundred thousand wildlings—maybe more—camped in a crescent across the valleys and hills north of the forest, their fires stretching like a second horizon. Mance Rayder had done what no other had before him. He had not merely gathered raiders and clans. He had summoned entire villages. Families. Giants. Mammoths. Spearmen, skinchangers, and worse things that had no name in the tongue of men.

Benjen had seen it with his own eyes. And he had seen worse.

That night still lived inside him, sharp and jagged. Not as memory, but as scar. The mutiny at Craster’s Keep. The crackle of fire on wet wood. Men screaming in rage, in betrayal, in death. And through it all, Jeor Mormont, roaring like the old bear he had been, back to a wall of flame, blood soaking his beard as he held off the knives of his own brothers. Benjen had arrived too late. Just late enough to see him fall. Just soon enough to bury him with his own hands beneath a cairn of frozen stones, the only grave he could afford the man who had led them all.

"Bring them home," Mormont had whispered as he pressed Longclaw into Benjen’s grip. It had still been warm then—slick with blood, heavy with duty.

Benjen had brought them home. The few who had survived.

Now he stood again at the edge of the wild, Mormont’s blade hanging at his hip, the hilt worn smooth from gloved fingers. It had become part of him—weight and memory, oath and iron. The Lord Commander’s sword, passed not through ceremony but through fire. He wondered if it would be enough. He doubted it.

He moved slowly along the perimeter, his boots crunching faintly in the crusted snow. All along the treeline, men kept watch—archers from House Glover, sentries from the Watch, grim men from the mountain clans who spoke little and trusted less. They nodded as he passed, but few dared meet his eyes for long. Too many stories whispered about Benjen Stark now. Too many truths, and worse, half-truths.

The trees shifted slightly in the wind, and he stopped beneath one ancient pine, its boughs hunched with snow. He closed his eyes.

He could still smell the burning timbers of Craster’s hall. Hear the shouts. Taste the blood in his mouth. The Others had not come that night, but their shadow had lain thick on the land. They were near. Always near.

And farther back still… he remembered the frostfangs. The hunt. The endless silence between the trees. The moment the cold changed—not wind, but presence. The sound of steel breaking. The weight of breath turning to knives in his lungs. He had fought, bled, and fallen beneath an ancient pine, too weak to rise, too proud to call for help.

He touched Longclaw’s hilt unconsciously, feeling the cold through the leather.

The scouts spoke of shapes near the western edge of the haunted forest. Torches dying without cause. Figures glimpsed and then gone. Tracks that stopped in mid-step. The old signs. The signs from before.

Benjen looked north. Beyond the frost. Beyond the trees. The wind had changed. And the dead were coming.

He passed between tents and fire pits, his boots crunching over hardened snow, each step sounding louder than it should in the hush of cold dawn. The camp was restless—men moved like shadows between rows of canvas, breath steaming in the air, faces drawn with tension. The smell of pitch and boiled oats mingled with sweat and smoke, clinging to cloaks already stiff with frost.

Northern lords walked among their men, inspecting lines, checking spears, offering quiet words meant to steady nerves that would soon be tested. Most bore the grim faces of those who had fought before—but some were young, too young, their knuckles white where they clutched steel, trying not to look at the Wall.

Benjen felt their eyes follow him as he passed, some with recognition, others with fear. He didn’t begrudge them either.

Lord Cerwyn appeared near one of the fire pits, his fur-lined cloak too clean, too new. His face was pale beneath the hood, boyish still despite the sword at his hip. He gave a shallow nod, eyes flicking up toward the Wall before settling uneasily on Benjen.

“They say you saw them,” the young lord murmured. “The Others. Is it true?”

Benjen stopped, met his gaze. There was no sense in softening it. No use in gentling boys on the eve of war.

“It’s true.”

Cerwyn swallowed hard, throat bobbing. His eyes darted away like a child flinching from a tale too dark to finish. Benjen moved on without another word.

Near the eastern palisade, two voices cut through the early chill. Galbart Glover stood bent over a rough sketch of the terrain scrawled in charcoal on a scrap of hide, one gloved hand gesturing sharply as he spoke. Beside him, Lord Tallhart argued for boldness, his tone hushed but urgent.

“They’re bunched here,” Tallhart pointed. “We could send scouts round this ridge. A few hundred men. Hit the rear guard, burn their tents—”

Benjen approached, his shadow falling long across the map. He didn’t speak right away. He studied the hide, the ridges and markers hastily scratched into it. He imagined the snow. The trees. The cold that could hide a thousand bodies or a single shadow.

“No,” he said at last. “We hold. And we burn what trees we can to keep them from cover. Their strength is in numbers, not coordination.”

Tallhart frowned. “But ten to one—”

Benjen didn’t raise his voice, but there was something in it that made both men still.

“We fight where the Wall makes numbers useless,” he said. “Here, they cannot outflank us. They can only come forward and die.”

It sounded cruel, he knew. Cold. But truth often did.

He looked past them, toward the white mass of the Wall rising like a god behind the camp. That was where the real battle would be. Not in sorties. Not in raids. But at the base of the Wall, where men would freeze and scream and bleed, and hope the ice would hold.

He could see it already—arrows darkening the sky, mammoths falling to fire pits, giants roaring their last. But that wasn’t what haunted him.

It was what came after. The wildlings were only the beginning. And the cold would not stop at the gates.

Night had fallen like a curtain of ice.

Benjen Stark sat alone in his tent, Longclaw resting across his knees, the whetstone whispering against its edge. The steel was old, Valyrian-forged, dark as smoke and thirsty for blood. In the silence, the scrape of stone was the only sound—steady, methodical, familiar. He had done this before battles too many times to count. But not like this. Never like this.

Outside, the camp dozed in brittle quiet. Fires burned low. Snow drifted slow and silent through the air, caught in torchlight like drifting ash. The Wall loomed beyond, pale and immense, a god’s spine cleaving the world in two.

Then, the sound. A horn. Once.

Benjen was already rising when the second blast came. His heart beat once, hard. Men were shouting beyond the canvas now, boots thudding, armor rattling, the clamor of a thousand waking soldiers. The wildlings had begun.

Benjen pushed out into the cold. The wind bit like a fresh blade, but he barely felt it. His breath misted before him as he made for the stairs. All around, the camp stirred to life—men tumbling from bedrolls, grabbing bows, struggling into mail. Captains barked names and orders. Steel flashed in the torchlight. Somewhere, a horse screamed.

By the time he reached the Wall’s summit, Eddard and Jon were already there.

Eddard stood with arms folded, grey cloak wrapped around him like a shroud. The wind tugged at his hair and beard, snow clinging to his lashes. Jon was at his side, cloak billowing, Ghost pacing restlessly behind him. The direwolf’s red eyes reflected the fire on the horizon.

Because there was fire.

Far to the north, beyond the treeline, a wall of flame danced in the dark — wild and flickering, a great bonfire large enough to swallow a village. Its orange glow stained the snow red, and cast monstrous shadows that rippled like serpents through the forest. Mance Rayder had lit the night ablaze.

“A signal,” Jon murmured, eyes narrowing.

Benjen nodded. “He means to burn fear into us before he throws men at our gates.”

Eddard said nothing, but his jaw tightened. Below, horns answered—Northern men mustering, Watchmen forming ranks on the ramparts, archers taking their positions along the upper paths. The snow muffled footsteps, but the air itself was electric with tension.

“Have them ready the pitch,” Benjen said to a black-cloaked sergeant. “Boil it and bring it up.”

“And the rocks?” Jon asked.

“Every boulder we have,” Eddard said. “We bought time to prepare. We use it.”

From the height of the Wall, the world looked like a thing already ending. The line of the forest undulated like a beast breathing. And now, from beneath that line, came motion.

Shadows. Thousands of them.

The treeline fractured. Figures poured into the open, torch-bearing wildlings, charging mammoths, giants thundering forward on feet like tree trunks. They roared beneath the stars. Steel glinted in the firelight. War horns sounded again — theirs this time, guttural and defiant.

Jon drew in a slow breath. “It’s starting.”

Benjen laid a hand on his shoulder, firm. “Hold your ground.”

And then he turned and shouted down the line, his voice carrying like steel on wind.

“Stand ready! Archers, to the edge! No arrows until the signal! Wait for my mark!”

Beneath them, the Wall came alive. Bows were strung. Oil was heated. Shields were lifted. The black and the grey stood shoulder to shoulder.

Benjen looked out once more at the fire in the woods. It burned still. So did they.

The first arrow flew just before midnight.

It whistled down from the Wall’s edge and vanished into the black, lost in the sea of torchlight and shouting below. Then came the second, the third—a storm of them—falling in deadly rhythm. With a cry, Benjen raised his arm.

“Loose!”

A thousand bowstrings thrummed at once. Arrows rained down like stinging snow, dark streaks in the orange-tinted night. From the forest’s edge to the trench lines beneath the Wall, wildlings screamed and scattered, some stumbling, some falling.

Benjen moved along the Wall’s top, shouting orders, his voice hoarse against the wind. Behind him, crows and Northmen worked side by side, black and grey in a single line. Crates of stones were heaved into place. Pots of pitch steamed over iron grates.

Below, the wildlings came.

A tide of bodies rushed across the snow, some wielding axes, others with spears or rusted swords. Behind them came mammoths in harness, dragging crude siege towers cobbled together from scavenged timber. Giants lumbered near the rear ranks, hurling boulders the size of sheep.

Benjen braced as the first one struck the Wall. It hit low, not far from the gate, sending a shudder through the ancient ice. Dust and frost crumbled from the edge.

“Drop the oil!” he roared.

Black pitch poured from iron cauldrons, followed by fire. The flames roared downward, hungry and bright, catching on fur and flesh. Wildlings screamed as the trench ignited. Mammoths reared. One giant stumbled back, arms flailing, its body slick with fire.

But still they came.

“Again!” Jon barked from a station farther down the Wall, eyes narrowed, bow in hand.

Benjen glimpsed him between volleys—steady, sure, too calm for his years. Eddard stood beside him, directing men with the grim precision of a man who had seen too many wars.

Benjen ducked as a wildling arrow hissed overhead and shattered on the ice behind him.

“Giants are forming near the south gate!” a man called from down the wall. “They’ve got ropes—grappling hooks!”

“Cut them down!” Benjen shouted back. “Target their archers! Drop the rocks!”

A team of Northmen rolled a boulder toward the ledge, shoving it off with a grunt. It plummeted like a falling star and struck the base of a siege engine with a wooden scream, snapping timbers like twigs. The engine collapsed sideways, crushing men beneath it.

But another rose to take its place.

Flames danced in the trenches. Arrows filled the sky. Oil boiled. The Wall groaned beneath their feet, but it held.

Benjen gritted his teeth and nocked another arrow. His arms ached, his throat burned from shouting, but he did not stop. There was no time to think. Only to act.

Below, the enemy clawed closer.

Some made it to the base of the Wall. Ropes began to rise, hooks catching in cracks and grooves. A few wildlings began to climb, clawing upward with bloodied hands.

Benjen kicked one rope free. Another he cut with his dagger, sending the climber tumbling backward into the dark.

“Keep them off the wall!” he shouted. “Push them back!”

From behind, a second volley of enemy arrows came screaming. One struck a man two paces to Benjen’s left. The Watch brother fell without a sound, eyes wide, blood spilling down his cheek as he slid across the ice.

Benjen didn’t look away. He couldn’t.

He could see the faces now—men and women, young and old, wildlings driven by desperation and fear. Many had no armor, only leathers and furs. They came not for conquest, but escape. And yet they killed. And died. And kept coming.

The wall of flame beyond the treeline still burned, but now its smoke rose thick and fast, curling into the stars like a warning to gods and men alike.

And above it all, the Wall stood cold and unbroken. For now.

Benjen looked down again and saw the giants readying another wave.

He whispered, low and steady: “Let them come.”

The sky was beginning to pale at the edges, though the stars still held stubborn watch overhead. The Wall groaned beneath Benjen’s boots as another boulder slammed into its base—closer this time, with force enough to shake loose a chunk of ice that tumbled and shattered on the ground below. But it was not that sound that turned Benjen’s head.

It was a scream. And not from the front.

Behind him, across the courtyard and past the gates of Castle Black, came the clash of steel. A different rhythm—closer, tighter, too close.

He spun toward the noise.

Another scream—Northern, not wildling. Then the sharp call of a horn, not from the top of the Wall, but from the inner camp.

Benjen’s eyes narrowed.

From his vantage on the Wall’s walkway, he could see it: the campfires beyond Castle Black, scattered like stars across the snow. Men stirred in confusion. Torches flared. And from the shadows between the tents came shapes—dark, fast, armored.

“Attack in the rear!” a ranger shouted. “They’re inside the camp!”

Eddard had already seen it. Farther down the walkway, he stepped to the Wall’s edge, face pale in the torchlight.

“They’re inside the palisade,” he said, voice low.

“Saboteurs? How?” Jon asked, already reaching for his sword.

Benjen’s stomach turned to ice. “Not saboteurs. A second force. South of the Wall.”

Jon’s eyes widened. “But how—?”

“There’s no time.” Eddard cut him off. “They’ll rout the camp if we don’t move.”

He didn’t wait for reply. With a nod to Benjen, he turned and began down the stairs, cloak snapping in the wind, boots pounding ice. Jon was only a step behind, face set and silent. Behind them came a dozen men—Watch brothers, Northmen, two Mormonts and a Hornwood—swords drawn.

Benjen stayed.

He wanted to go. But someone had to hold the Wall.

The next wave of wildlings was already coming into view, forming a new charge line through the thinning smoke. Farther off, another siege engine—more organized, more dangerous—began to creak forward through the trees.

He could see both battles now. Below him, at the Wall’s base, men screamed and burned and bled. Beyond the camp, steel flashed in the snow. A column of men on foot surged between the outer tents—armored, fast-moving.

Who? How had they passed? He forced the question down.

“More arrows!” he barked. “Oil, now! Don’t let them climb again!”

They obeyed. Black brothers dropped pitch. A second boulder was heaved over the edge. The Wall held. The trench burned. Wildlings screamed and fell. The night roared around him like a wounded beast.

Benjen moved like ice through water—calm, cutting, unseen. He kicked over a hook as it caught. Shot two climbers in quick succession. Saw one ranger fall beside him, a black-feathered shaft in his gut. Another man caught an arrow in the jaw and crumpled where he stood.

Still, they held. Still, the line endured.

Out in the camp, beyond his reach, flames flickered over the northern tents. He could hear the sounds of struggle—axes clashing, men shouting orders. But then a horn blew—twice, strong and clear.

Benjen turned his head toward the sound.

He saw movement: a regrouping, banners rising again. The direwolf of Stark snapped back into view above a ring of soldiers forming ranks in the snow.

They were holding.

Jon, he thought. And Eddard.

Order had returned.

And on the Wall, at last, the wildlings began to falter. The bodies were too thick at the base. Their hooks splintered. The fire turned some back. The giants roared in frustration and retreated into the trees.

They weren’t breaking. Not yet. But they were pulling back.

Benjen lowered his bow. His arms trembled. His throat tasted of smoke.

“Stand your ground,” he told the Watchmen beside him, voice quiet now. “They’ll come again.”

He turned toward the camp one last time, watching the banners rise amid the smoke, and thought Who in the seven hells attacked from the south?

The snow was falling again. Thin, drifting flakes, soft as ash. They settled on corpses and tents alike, cloaking blood in white silence. The wind had changed once more—less wild, less biting—but colder all the same. As if the land itself were holding its breath.

Benjen Stark stood at the edge of the field behind the Wall, where the surprise assault had hit the Northern camp like a hammer. Smoke still coiled from scorched canvas and broken wagons. Men moved among the wreckage in silence, dragging the dead into rows, building cairns where they could. The wounded were hauled back inside Castle Black, their moans rising like steam.

He had descended the Wall just before dawn, when it became clear the wildlings were retreating. Jon and Eddard had returned from the rear flank, bloodied and exhausted but standing. Somehow, they'd rallied what remained of the defenses in time. Somehow, they had not broken.

But they had paid.

Benjen moved through the wreckage slowly, Longclaw slung across his back, the fur of his cloak stiff with blood and frost. The dead stared skyward, unblinking. Boys barely bearded, men twice his age. Some had fallen with swords still gripped in frozen hands. Others had burned in their tents before they could even rise.

In the shattered remnants of the main camp, the surviving lords had gathered in a tight semicircle near a makeshift command post, a charred wagon draped in black cloth. Dacey Mormont stood at its edge, helm tucked beneath one arm, her brow bandaged, blood drying in the corner of her eye.

"Three hundred dead," she said as Benjen approached. Her voice was hard, hollow. “Most from the southern flank. Cut down in their sleep or burned before they drew a blade.”

"Five hundred more wounded," Wylis Manderly added grimly, rubbing at a broken nose. His usually ruddy face had gone pale in the half-light. "Some won’t last the day. Some… might wish they hadn’t."

Benjen said nothing. The weight of it pressed into his chest like another layer of ice.

Rickard Karstark stood nearby, his great fur cloak hanging heavy with frost. Beside him, his son Harrion had blood down one cheek, a shallow wound he hadn’t bothered to clean.

“We drove them back,” Galbart Glover muttered. “They didn’t break us.”

“But they came close,” said Halys Hornwood. “We were fools not to guard the rear more carefully. We thought the Wall would keep us safe.”

“They knew what they were doing,” said Harrion, his voice sharp with anger. “They didn’t just stumble through. They planned this.”

“Through the Wall?” the Greatjon growled, his great arms crossed over a cracked breastplate. “There’s no gate in the south. Not without flying or turning to mist.”

“There are caves,” Galbart offered. “Old tunnels. Some collapsed. Others… perhaps not.”

“Old stories,” said Halys. “The Wall sealed them.”

Benjen’s gaze swept the field. He remembered the screams from the dark, the way the flames had risen behind them while they fought the front. He remembered the moment he realized it wasn’t a distraction—it was a trap.

“They knew where to hit,” he said. “And when.”

Smalljon Umber spat into the snow. “Bloody well means they’ve been watching us. Longer than we knew.”

Rickard Karstark shook his head slowly. “We underestimated him. We thought Mance Rayder was just a deserter with a crown of bones. But this… this was war in earnest.”

“Aye,” said Galbart Glover. “The bastard outplayed us.”

Eddard approached then, Jon at his side. Both wore blood and soot like second skins. Eddard’s eyes were grim hollows beneath his hood. Jon’s cloak had been cut and sewn at the shoulder with a tourniqueted strip of leather. They had fought hard—he could see it in the way they walked, the way they didn’t speak.

“We hold,” Eddard said flatly, as if daring anyone to question it. “But only just. They’ll strike again. We need answers before they do.”

Benjen nodded. “Scouts to the south. Now. We search every crevice, every root. If there’s a way through, we find it and seal it.”

“And if they come again before we’re ready?” asked Dacey, her tone quiet.

Benjen looked out across the burning wreckage. A cart wheel still smoldered. The snow falling on it hissed and vanished.

“Then we bleed again,” he said. “But we do not break.”

No one replied.

Around them, the wounded moaned in distant chambers. Men carried the dead to the pyres. Crows circled high overhead.

The night was gone.

But it had not left empty-handed.

And somewhere in the trees, beyond firelight and banners, Benjen knew they were watching.

Waiting.

Chapter Text

Robb

The fog clung to the shore like an old shroud, thick and low, muffling hooves and breath and the soft creak of leather. Robb Stark sat astride his horse at the edge of a broken treeline, grey cloak still and damp with morning dew. Ahead, down a narrow slope of frost-laced grass, the fishing village crouched in silence — or what remained of it.

Black smoke still rose in sluggish plumes. The scent of salt and soot mingled with old blood, carried inland by the tidewind. The Ironborn had struck before dawn, axes flashing through driftwood huts and half-awake smallfolk. But this time the wolves had been waiting.

Grey Wind prowled beneath Robb’s horse, ears pinned forward, nose twitching. He made no sound, but every line of his body bristled with anticipation. His muzzle was already red from the earlier skirmish on the coast, but the beast wanted more.

“To your lines,” Robb said, low and firm.

Ser Wendell Manderly turned to bark orders, his round face grim beneath his open-faced helm. Daryn Hornwood tightened the straps on his gauntlets and signaled to his flank. On the far left, Maege Mormont stood tall in her boiled leather and bear-fur cloak, her shieldmaidens crouched low behind her, axes gleaming in the cold mist.

Three hundred Northmen waited with their breath held.

Ironborn banners fluttered above the broken rooftops— gold krakens on black fields, smeared with soot. A dozen longships were beached nearby, hulls empty, guarded by only a few bored reavers. The rest had gone into the village, looting and burning.

They never saw the wolves in the woods.

Robb’s horse stamped once. He leaned forward in the saddle and raised his sword.

“For the North,” he growled.

A horn blew once—low, raw, and rising. And then they charged.

The slope came alive with hooves and steel. Northmen howled their war cries, spears level, shields up. Maege Mormont’s line surged like a flood down the left. Wendell led the right with a bellowing roar, his mace already raised. Daryn was at Robb’s side when they crested the last ridge and bore down on the startled reavers.

The Ironborn had only enough time to scream.

The first line broke like driftwood under axe and hoof. Robb swung his sword in a clean arc, opening a bearded man from collarbone to gut. Grey Wind leapt past him with a snarl, sinking teeth into another’s throat, dragging him down like a rag of cloth. There was no formation among the raiders — only panic, curses, and death.

Robb pressed forward, sword slick, his cloak snapping behind him. All around him the North crashed into the Ironborn like a thunderhead breaking on the shore.

There was no room for hesitation. Only the work.

The battle broke the village like a wave against brittle rock.

Robb plunged through the chaos, sword wet with blood, his heart thudding like a war drum. The Ironborn were already scattering—some trying to form shield lines in the alleys, others fleeing toward the ships—but it was too late. The North had fallen on them too swiftly, too hard.

Grey Wind was everywhere.

The direwolf ripped through the gaps between men like a specter from the old tales, faster than thought, red-eyed and furious. A reaver tried to strike him with an axe; the beast lunged, jaws clamping around the man’s arm with a sickening crunch. Another leapt to defend his brother, only for Grey Wind to bowl him over, teeth flashing, snarling and soaked. Blood painted the sand in wide arcs.

Robb found himself amid a knot of Ironborn trying to rally behind a broken cart. One charged him with a spear—Robb parried, turned the thrust aside with his shoulder, and rammed his sword clean through the man’s gut. Another came screaming, a curved blade swinging at his neck. Robb ducked beneath it, stepped in, and drove his knee into the man’s thigh, dropping him. Grey Wind finished the job.

“Push them!” Daryn Hornwood roared from nearby. “Don’t let them regroup!”

Maege Mormont and her men fought like furies. Robb saw her strike a man square in the helm with her axe, sending him sprawling into a half-burnt doorway. Jorelle, one of her daughters vaulted a toppled cart, cleaved down with both axes, and didn’t stop moving.

The Ironborn tried to flee to their ships—but Wendell Manderly’s men had already flanked them from the east, cutting off their path. The enemy was trapped, hemmed in by fire, steel, and death.

Robb didn’t feel tired. Not yet. He was cold, but not with fear. There was a focus in him, sharp and honed, like the edge of his sword. It moved him faster than thought.

He caught another coming out of a hut—young. The Ironborn stumbled, bloodied, blade trembling. For a breath, Robb hesitated.

The boy lunged.

Grey Wind was faster. The wolf slammed into him with such force that both vanished into the burning ruin. The scream that followed was short and wet.

Robb turned away.

It was nearly over now. The screams were fewer. The clash of steel softened, replaced by low cries and the hiss of embers. The last handful of Ironborn broke and ran, only to be cut down from behind. Grey Wind stood atop a pile of broken barrels, fur red and steaming in the sea wind, his breath ragged but eyes bright.

Robb raised his sword. “Hold! Hold!”

The Northmen obeyed. Slowly, the storm quieted.

Smoke drifted through the streets, thick with ash and salt. Dead men sprawled on the bloodied sand and in the shallows, where the tide was already beginning to lap at their corpses. The beach was theirs.

Robb stood among the ruin, chest heaving. The Ironborn had been crushed. But the war was not over.  The last screams faded with the wind.

A gull wheeled overhead, crying out as it circled the blackened village. Below, the tide crept back across the shore, licking at broken hulls and bodies strewn like driftwood. Smoke curled from the remains of cottages and overturned carts. The scent of brine, charred wood, and blood clung to every stone.

Robb Stark dismounted near the edge of the surf, Grey Wind padding beside him, the direwolf’s muzzle dark with gore. The beast moved in slow arcs, wary but calm now. The killing was done.

All around them, his men moved with quiet purpose—dragging corpses from the waves, binding wounds, prying weapons from dead fingers. Crows were already gathering atop the ruined thatch.

Ser Wendell approached from behind, helm tucked beneath one thick arm, his cheeks still flushed from the fight.

“Seventy-five Ironborn dead,” he reported, voice gruff. “A few more fled into the trees or out to sea, though not many boats stayed afloat long. We burned most.”

“And ours?” Robb asked.

“Nine,” Wendell said, a bit more softly. “Another dozen wounded. Nothing too grave.”

Robb exhaled slowly. The cost had been higher than he liked, but it was a cost he could bear.

“The smaller hosts are working,” he said, wiping blood from his sword and sheathing it.

It had been his decision weeks ago—to fracture his host of ten thousand into roving packs of two to five hundred, striking fast, retreating faster. The Ironborn fought like wolves in the night, quick and scattered. So Robb had taught the North to do the same. No siege lines. No fixed banners. Only hunts.

Wendell grunted. “We strike quicker than they can sail. But they’ll grow wary soon.”

Robb’s eyes lifted to the sea—flat and endless and grey.

“Let them,” he said. “There are fewer shores left for them to strike.”

Not far off, a pair of soldiers dragged forward a captive—salt-stained, soaked to the thighs, with a gash over one brow and defiance still gleaming in his eye.

“You win today, Stark,” the raider spat. “But you’re land-caged. The sea is ours. We’ll come again. We always do.”

Robb looked at him, cold and unreadable. He said nothing for a long moment. Then, calmly: “Then you’ll die again.”

He nodded once. The guards dragged the man away through the sand, past the scorched ribs of a longship still smoldering.

Victory. But like all victories in war—it smelled of fire and loss.

They made camp inland, tucked beneath the mossy ruin of an old watchtower that had not flown a banner in a hundred years. The stone walls were cracked and crooked, swallowed by vines and years, but it offered shelter from the wind and a high perch to watch the coast.

The fires were low. No songs rose. The men moved like shades—quiet, weary, and watchful. Grey Wind lay curled by the fire pit, eyes slitted, nose twitching as if even sleep could not dull his instincts.

Inside the tower’s half-collapsed hall, Robb sat on a rough-hewn bench beside a splintering table, the map before him drawn in charcoal and ash on stretched parchment. Circles marked where the Ironborn had landed. Xs where they'd been crushed. A dozen red lines traced the routes his warbands had carved into the salt shore.

His captains gathered close, armor half-unbuckled, cloaks damp with sea air. Daryn Hornwood, lean and sharp-eyed, pointed to the western bluffs with a gloved hand.

“No new movement from the west,” he reported. “The last raiding parties were seen retreating toward the sea. We've scouts patrolling the hill trails. Nothing larger than a dozen.”

“Good,” Robb said. He didn’t look up. “We press east. If they retreat, we chase them. I want no Ironborn left on our shores.”

Wendell Manderly stood nearby, a mug of watered wine in one thick hand. His brow was furrowed, the firelight painting shadows under his eyes. “We’ll need fresh horses if we’re to keep pace. The last march was hard on them.”

“They’ll get them,” Robb replied.

A creak at the tower’s entrance drew their gaze. A young courier stepped into the light, cloak dripping from the mist outside. He carried a weather-stained pouch of ravens’ letters, tied shut with Stark grey ribbon.

Robb took them without a word and thumbed through the seals. One from Deepwood Motte—Asha Greyjoy’s forces had scattered northward. Another from the Rills, brief but promising. Then the last. His hand slowed. He turned it over. Nothing from Moat Cailin.

His brow furrowed. “Still no word from Lord Bolton? Or Lady Dustin?”

Wendell shifted his weight. “Not in two weeks. Might be ravens lost in the weather. Winds have been cruel in the Neck.”

“Might be,” Robb echoed, though the words tasted of ash.

Maege Mormont stood with arms crossed, her bear cloak steaming faintly from the rain. “Those two were never much for talk,” she said. “Cold-blooded, both of them. Still… it’s strange.” The room held its breath a moment too long.

Robb nodded slowly, lips pressed thin. He folded the letterless scrap into his sleeve. “I’ll send another bird,” he said at last. “Two, perhaps.”

He did not speak again. But the silence around the table was not just of tired men. It was the sound of doubt settling in. Something was wrong. They all felt it. Outside, the wind howled faintly through the stones of the broken tower. And the sea, unseen but near, kept murmuring like a voice just out of reach.

Later, long after the last torch had guttered low and the men of the North lay wrapped in their cloaks beside fading fires, Robb walked the quiet camp alone.

Grey Wind padded silently at his side, the direwolf a shadow in the mist, paws leaving no sound in the damp earth. His fur was streaked with smoke and seawater, his muzzle crusted with dried blood. Yet his eyes were alert—glinting silver in the starlight, constantly scanning the dunes, the trees beyond, the shapes that might still move in the dark.

The wind shifted, carrying with it the briny tang of the sea and the bitter ash of burned wood. Robb breathed deep. The smoke reminded him of the battle, of screams and steel, of the warm spray of blood on his cheek and the sound of Grey Wind’s jaws closing on flesh.

They had won. The Ironborn were shattered on this stretch of coast. But the victory sat hollow in his chest, heavy and cold as a drowned stone. His hand dropped absently to Grey Wind’s head. The wolf did not flinch, only leaned into the touch with a low, steady rumble in his throat.

Robb’s mind drifted. He thought of Jon—his brother in all but name—marching northward beside their father. The Wall rising like a frozen titan before them. Did Jon feel it too, this sense of drifting into something vast and cold and old? Did he feel further away with each league north? Did he still dream of things he could not name?

He remembered their last embrace before Jon’s departure. His brother had looked back only once, Ghost already vanishing into the white. There had been something in his eyes—certainty, sorrow, something else.

He remembered their last days together before the world had changed — before Robert Baratheon died and the kingdom cracked open like a rotten chestnut. In those quiet days at Winterfell, Jon had speak to him once, in the godswood. They’d sat beneath the red leaves of the heart tree, the snow falling soft and silent, melting in their hair. Ghost lay curled beside Jon, still as a cairn, his eyes twin coals beneath the bone-white fur.

"Sometimes," Jon had said, voice low, as if the weirwood might overhear, "I see through his eyes. I run, I hunt. I feel the wind in my fur. I think… I think I become him."

And Robb had nodded. Not in jest. Not to humor him. Because he’d felt it too.

He hadn’t spoken of it much but there had been nights when the dreams came. Dreams of running — faster and freer than any man, his limbs longer, his breath colder, his senses alive to scent and shadow. Dreams where the moon burned red and the wind howled in joy or warning. Dreams where Grey Wind stood atop a hill of bones, fur bristling, and howled to a sky without stars.

Now, in the silence of the sleeping camp, with Grey Wind beside him like a living sentinel, Robb wasn’t sure it had been just dreams.

He wondered—did Sansa dream such things? Arya? Bran? Rickon? Or was it only him and Jon?

A low growl stirred beside him. Grey Wind sniffed the wind, hackles briefly rising before he settled again. Robb glanced around, hand drifting to the pommel of his sword—but there was nothing. Just wind and shadow and memory.

He thought of Theon then.

Theon Greyjoy, son of Balon, raised with the wolves, now caged in stone. Not chained—but not free either. Held in Winterfell under guard, a guest in name, a prisoner in truth. It was necessary. Theon had not resisted, not even when the guards had escorted him. But Robb still remembered the look in his eyes. Not anger. Not fear. Guilt. Or something like it.

And yet, what could he do with that? What did he owe the boy who had been his brother, and now bore the blood of his enemies?

Robb clenched his jaw. In battle, things had been simple. His first kill had come in the early raids, near Torrhen’s Square—a young Ironborn charging with an axe raised high, screaming curses. Robb had cut him down in one swing, too fast to think, too slow to forget. The man’s eyes had stayed open as he fell.

He’d vomited afterward. In private, behind the horses.

He wondered—had Jon felt the same, at the Wall? Did the dead linger in his sleep, as they did in Robb’s? He exhaled slowly. The stars above were faint and distant. Clouds were gathering.

"We go east," he said quietly.

Grey Wind flicked an ear but gave no sound. He only stood beside his master, still and silent and sure.

"Then home," Robb added.

The wind whispered again through the trees. Grey Wind raised his snout and sniffed the night.

Somewhere in the woods, a raven called once and was silent. And Robb Stark kept walking.

Chapter Text

The loyal servant

The ravens no longer flew from Winterfell.

Maester Luwin stood at the rookery’s high window, hands clasped behind his back so tightly the joints ached. Below, snow fell in slow spirals over the dark slate roofs, cloaking stone and soot in fragile white. The courtyard beneath, once alive with boys training at arms and stable hands laughing at spilled water buckets, now echoed with the dull rhythm of booted feet and shouted orders—soldiers’ voices, cold and sharp. Not Stark men. Not loyal men.

Red banners snapped in the wind above the gatehouse—Bolton crimson, the flayed man twisting in the breeze. Beside it hung the yellow banner of House Dustin, emblazoned with two crossed bronze axes beneath a black crown. Where once the direwolf flew alone, proud and gray against the winter sky, now only betrayal moved with the wind.

Luwin closed his eyes. He had seen the storm coming only after it had broken.

They had ridden in under banners of peace, cloaked in courtesy. Roose Bolton had spoken softly of duty, of holding the North together in Lord Eddard’s absence—of preserving the heart of the north while Robb marched west to war. Lady Dustin had smiled with courtly warmth and spoken of keeping order in the castle, of honoring Lady Catelyn’s trust. And Luwin, ever the cautious skeptic, had let them in.

He had watched Roose Bolton dismount in the yard, his pale eyes too still, too calm. He had seen Lady Dustin run a gloved hand over the stone walls as though measuring them for ownership. Ramsay Snow had come later, uninvited, unspoken of—like a shadow that crawled in after the door had been left ajar.

And then came the knives. Winterfell’s gates had opened to friends, and closed behind traitors. There had been no great battle. No last stand. Only silence. Only submission. Bran had tried—gods help the boy, he had tried. Standing straight in the great hall, wearing Lord Eddard’s heavy ring on his small hand, speaking in his soft voice of mercy and loyalty. He had yielded not from fear, but to spare the smallfolk, the maids and smiths and stableboys who would have died for nothing.

Now the wolves were caged. Bran and Rickon were confined—not in cells, no, that would have been too crude. They were kept in their own chambers, still warm with rushes and furs, still hung with childhood banners. But there were guards at every door. Servants watched them eat. Even their dreams were not their own.

And Theon Greyjoy walked free. Luwin had passed him once in the great hall. No chains on his wrists, no sword at his hip. His step was slow, uncertain, and his face had grown gaunt—hollow-eyed and sunken. He said nothing. His gaze shifted like a man lost in fog. And Luwin, ever the maester, had said nothing in return. He had not needed to.

The boy who had grown up alongside Robb and Jon, who had laughed beside Rickon, who had flirted with grooms and sneered at old scrolls—he was still there. Somewhere. But buried deep, beneath too many broken oaths.

Luwin turned from the window. In the rookery, the cages were silent. The birds still lived, fed and warm beneath their hoods. But no message left these walls now. The skies were watched. The wind belonged to other lords.

Still, he kept the ravens fed. Ravens, after all, sometimes fly when least expected.

Today, they gathered in the solar. The room was warm, too warm for Luwin’s comfort. The fire roared in the hearth as if summoned to mock the cold outside. Shadows clung to the rafters like cobwebs, and the rich tapestries—once bearing the direwolf—had been replaced with duller cloth, blood-colored and embroidered with flayed men. The air smelled of spiced wine, tallow smoke, and something more metallic beneath: the stink of ambition.

Maester Luwin moved like a ghost through the chamber, a silent servant in his own keep. He bore the decanter in both hands, careful not to let it tremble. The goblets were heavy silver, rimmed with wolves, though none in the room were wolves themselves.

Roose Bolton stood nearest the fire, though its warmth seemed to ignore him. He did not shift, did not blink. His pale face reflected the flames with no hint of life behind it—only calculation. He had the look of a thing bled white and left standing.

Lady Dustin sat where Lady Catelyn once held court, her gloves still on though she cradled her goblet in both hands. Her fingers were fine leather and iron rings. Her eyes never left Bolton's face, nor Ramsay’s, only flicked to Luwin once—sharp and dismissive.

And Ramsay Snow lounged by the door, legs crossed, blade in hand. He scraped it slow across a whetstone, again and again, a rasping whisper in the chamber like teeth against bone. His smile stretched thin, but it was his eyes that chilled Luwin. They never blinked, never stilled. A predator in a room full of carrion birds.

"The west is exposed," Roose said calmly, as if discussing harvests. "With Robb’s host divided, he cannot guard both fronts. If he rides north to the Wall, he leaves the flank open."

Lady Dustin sipped her wine and hummed approval. "He’s young," she said. "And trusting. Like his father."

"Like a pup following his nose into the snow," Ramsay muttered, not looking up from his blade.

Roose did not so much as twitch. "The Ironborn are ready. They strike first. We strike after."

"A squeeze between tide and knife," said Lady Dustin. She tilted her goblet gently, watching the wine catch the firelight like blood. "We claim victory before he knows he’s lost."

"And the boy?" Ramsay asked. His tone was casual, but the edge in it gleamed. "Still think we should’ve bled him when we took the gate?"

"No," Roose replied. "He’s worth more alive. As is Rickon."

"For now," Lady Dustin agreed, the corners of her mouth curving slightly.

Maester Luwin said nothing. He bowed when addressed. He filled their cups with steady hands and eyes cast low. But he listened. Every word sank into him like a needle into parchment, etched deep into memory.

These were not lords of the North. These were the teeth that came after the wolf left. And Maester Luwin, a man sworn to serve Winterfell, could only stand still as stone, praying for ravens that no longer flew.

That evening, he brought Bran his supper.

The tray was heavier than usual. Not with food, but with weight—the kind that settled in the chest and did not leave. The corridor to the boy’s chambers was lined with guards now. Not Stark men. Not men who called Winterfell home. These wore the colors of Barrowton and the Dreadfort, their eyes hard, their armor unpolished. One of them opened the door without a word when he saw the chain around Luwin’s neck.

Inside, the chamber was dim. The hearth crackled low, casting long, hunched shadows across the floor. Rickon lay curled on the bed like a kitten beneath a mountain of blankets, his breath soft and shallow. Shaggydog and Summer were not in sight. They had taken the direwolves away early—Lady Dustin’s decree. “Too wild,” she said. “Too dangerous.” Rickon hadn’t spoken for hours after.

Bran sat by the narrow window, his small hands resting in his lap. Snowflakes gathered like ghosts on the sill, and his breath fogged the glass in faint pulses. He did not turn when Luwin entered. The boy had grown quieter of late, more distant, his eyes often fixed on something far beyond the walls of Winterfell.

"Maester Luwin," Bran said softly. His voice barely stirred the air. "Will Robb come for us?"

Luwin set the tray down on the table. A heel of bread, a wedge of cheese, broth gone lukewarm. Food meant to sustain, not comfort. He pulled a chair beside the window and sat, letting the silence stretch for a breath, two.

"He will," Luwin said. "One way or another, he must."

It was the truth as much as he dared speak it.

Bran didn’t smile. He didn’t blink. He only nodded once, slowly, as if already knowing the answer.

Outside, the night deepened. Snow fell in thicker sheets now, muffling the world beyond the window. The room smelled faintly of wool, ash, and the bitter herbs Luwin had placed in a bowl to keep illness at bay.

He looked at Bran then—at the boy who climbed every tower, who had laughed in the yard beneath the pines, who had listened to stories of Old Nan and dreamed of knights. Now his castle was taken. And yet he sat as still and proud as any lord.

Luwin felt the urge to reach out, to say more—to offer some hope wrapped in wisdom, as he had done a hundred times before when Bran scraped his knees or asked about the stars. But this wound was deeper. This lesson crueler.

He thought of sending word. Of carving letters into bone or bark. Of tying messages to pigeons or hiding them in hollow book bindings. He thought of old tricks taught in the Citadel—how to pass secrets beneath a conqueror’s nose.

But the gates were locked. And the skies watched. Still… ravens sometimes flew when least expected.

He turned his gaze northward, to the unseen frostlands beyond the Wall. Somewhere in that dark, Eddard Stark marched with his sons, and the cold crept closer each night.

Luwin folded his hands in his lap and sat in silence beside the boy. Waiting. For snow to fall. For a gate to open. For a wolf to howl.

Chapter Text

Jon

They had come for days now.

Jon stood atop the Wall, his grey cloak snapping in the wind, breath misting before him in ragged bursts. The cold bit deeper each dawn, seeping through wool and leather to gnaw at the bone. Below, Castle Black stirred with the sluggishness of a wounded beast—fires sputtering, men limping, the smell of blood and pitch thick as fog.

The siege had ground them down.

Five days of assaults—waves of wildlings from the north, then strange incursions from the south. Somewhere, somehow, hundreds had breached the Wall. Some said through collapsed tunnels. Others muttered of old magic, forgotten paths, traitors in black. But however they came, they kept coming.

And each night, the fires were lit higher. Each morning, fewer men stood to see them.

Jon leaned forward slightly, gloved hands gripping the cold stone of the Wall’s edge. In the distance, the forest shifted—alive, brooding, watching. Something was out there. Something worse than fire or steel.

"Tell me again why we didn’t just burn the whole bloody forest?" said a voice behind him.

Jon turned.

Pyp was there, wrapped in a too-large cloak patched three times over, a bow slung across his back and sarcasm in his grin. Grenn stood beside him, hulking, broad-shouldered, his face freshly bruised and half-frozen, but grinning anyway.

"We talked about this," Grenn said. "It’s because some of us think fire is a precious resource. Not for burning trees every time you feel nervous, Pyp."

"I’m not nervous," Pyp said. "I’m practical. You’ve seen what’s out there. I’d sleep better if everything past that tree line was ash."

"And I’d sleep better if you stopped snoring like a dying cow," Grenn shot back.

Despite everything, Jon smiled.

He had met them only days ago—brothers of the Night’s Watch, not long from boys themselves. He hadn’t expected friends here. But then, the Wall had a way of stripping away the unnecessary. When you fight side by side in the snow, bleed into the same ground, share fire and rations in the dark—you learn who a man is.

They had fought with him every night since the siege began. Grenn with his sword, always on the front lines, his wide frame a wall of muscle and stubbornness. Pyp, lean and fast, sharp with his tongue and his aim both. They called him the funny one, but Jon had seen him weep behind a burned tent after the third night’s assault, wiping at his face like a boy ashamed of it.

Now they stood on either side of him, watching the woods as if they might crack open again.

"You think they'll come again today?" Pyp asked.

Jon didn’t answer right away. He looked at the sky—thin grey clouds stretched like skin over old scars. The wind keened low and long, whistling through the cracks of the Wall. Something in it didn’t feel right.

"They’ll come," Jon said. "And it will be worse."

Grenn grunted. "You always say that."

"One day I’ll be wrong," Jon replied.

"Let’s hope it’s today," Pyp muttered.

They stood in silence a moment. Below, men moved like ghosts—tending fires, refilling barrels of pitch, checking the ropes and pulleys. The Wall creaked beneath their feet, old and weary.

"Five days," Grenn said quietly. "Feels longer."

Jon nodded. "Because it is."

He thought of the bodies they'd burned. Of the men they'd buried in snow too shallow to hide their wounds. He thought of the silence between each wave of attack—how it settled like a question no one wanted to answer.

Jon had never killed before. The first time had been days ago, during the first attacks—just a shadow flitting beneath the Wall, one of the wildlings. He loosed the arrow by instinct more than aim. It vanished into the dark, and a heartbeat later came the thud. A body fell. But Jon never saw the face. He hadn’t known who he killed, or even what they looked like. It hadn’t felt real.

But when the alarm came from the southern camp—their own men under attack—and he and his father rode down to meet the assault, Jon had fought with steel in his hand. That time, there had been faces. Voices. Eyes.

A wildling girl charged him with a spear, screaming in a tongue Jon didn’t know. Jon parried and drove his blade through the woman’s chest. He felt the jolt all the way to his shoulder. The wildling fell without a word, blood steaming on the snow.

That night, after the fight was over and the camp retaken, Jon had stood alone by the fire, his hands still shaking. He had not slept. His father found him there.

Ned hadn’t spoken at first. Just stood beside him, gaze on the flames. Then he placed a hand on Jon’s shoulder and said, “The first time you feel it is proof you are not lost.” Jon hadn’t answered, but the words stayed with him. He wondered if he would still feel it the tenth time. Or the hundredth.

Now, five days later, he wasn’t sure which kill he was on. He wasn’t even sure how many he remembered. But that one—his first with a sword—remained. Not because of the woman he had slain. But because of how his father had looked at him afterward.

"I miss hot food," Pyp said suddenly. "And dry boots."

"I miss sleep," Grenn added.

Jon said nothing. What he missed was peace. A day without screams. A sky without fire. His siblings. Gods, even Theon.

The wind shifted again. And just for a heartbeat, the forest beyond the Wall seemed to shiver. He felt something stir in his chest—something heavy, ancient. Jon drew a breath. Today would be worse. He knew it in his bones.

He glanced across the Wall. Eddard Stark stood some paces down the line, wrapped in a black cloak trimmed with gray. His sword was already drawn, and his eyes scanned the horizon like a man reading the sky before a blizzard. Walder stood beside him, and The Greatjon behind them, pacing like a caged bear.

Flags snapped in the wind — the direwolf of Stark, the black of the Watch, and here and there, a dozen smaller banners from Karstark, Manderly, Hornwood. Once, Jon would have found pride in it. Now, he saw only the wounded, the limping, the men shivering beside barrels of fire and oil.

Below, men rushed to position. Archers climbed to their stations. Fire barrels were hauled to the edge, ready to be tipped. Snow crunched beneath armored boots. A few men muttered prayers.

Then— The horn. Once. Twice. The sound split the air like a blade. Grenn stiffened. Pyp stood. Jon drew an arrow and readied his bow. Then the forest erupted.

Thousands of wildlings surged from the trees — a tide of motion, fire, and fury. They screamed, raw with rage and desperation. Axes waved like torches, bone swords glinting. Painted faces. Wolves howling. Horns blaring. A mammoth burst through the trees, great tusks swinging, a rider clinging to its back with a warhorn at his lips. Another followed, then another. So many.

“Gods,” Grenn whispered. “That’s more than yesterday.”

“More than all the yesterdays,” Pyp breathed.

“TO ARMS!” came the shout from the line.

Jon stepped forward.

“Archers!” Eddard Stark’s voice rang down the Wall like winter thunder. “NOW!”

The Wall came alive.

Arrows darkened the sky. Barrels of oil tipped and splashed. Fire poured like molten death from above. The first ranks of wildlings screamed and fell, some crushed beneath mammoth feet, others impaled on sharpened stakes. But they kept coming.

Jon loosed his own arrow, then another. Beside him, Pyp cursed as his fingers bled. Grenn shouted to the men below, trying to rally those who froze in terror. A ladder slipped, dragging two black brothers down with it.

Jon grabbed a boy by the collar and yanked him back before he could fall.

“Breathe!” he shouted in his face. “Draw and fire!”

Below, chaos. Screams echoed through the gates, and the first waves hit the outer defenses. The Wall shuddered beneath their charge. Oil fires bloomed again. Wounded men screamed. Somewhere, a horn split. Mammoths thundered forward, crashing into wooden barricades and smashing them like twigs.

And still they came.

Jon stood atop the Wall, breath ragged, limbs shaking, watching the end of the world rush toward him in waves of fire and bone. But this was only the beginning. The worst had yet to come. The Wall moaned. It was an old sound, deep and low, like ice groaning under its own weight. Jon had heard it before, in the stillness of cold nights — but this time it did not stop.

The wildlings surged below, still screaming, still dying, still fighting. Arrows flew down in black flurries. Oil and fire rained. Giants slammed their fists into the gates. War cries echoed. But the moan lingered, rising like a mournful wind.

Then the wind changed.

It cut through his cloak like a knife made of hunger. Not cold. Something deeper. Older. Jon felt it in his teeth, in his bones, behind his eyes. His breath frosted harder, a rime of ice forming along his eyelashes. Beside him, Pyp stopped mid-draw. Grenn let out a low, wordless noise.

Something was wrong.

Jon stepped to the edge of the Wall and looked out, past the burning treeline.

At first, he saw nothing. Then, far beyond the dying fires and broken ranks of wildlings, the woods seemed to shift. Mist crept between the trees, unnatural and deliberate. It moved against the wind, swirling around trunks and drifting through branches like fingers of smoke.

The wildlings saw it too. They began to falter. The front ranks stumbled, then stopped. The sound of battle did not die — it choked. Cries became whispers. War horns faltered. Even the mammoths slowed, their riders shouting in confusion.

Then the screaming began. Not war cries. Terror.

Dozens of wildlings turned and ran, casting aside shields, weapons, even kin. They shoved and clawed each other in blind panic. And from the mist, it came.

A figure. Tall. Thin. Pale as hoarfrost. It wore no armor men would know, only glimmering shards of something that looked like ice and moonlight. Its face was neither man nor corpse, and its eyes— Jon’s breath caught. They were blue. Not sky blue or sea blue, but something unnatural, crystalline, and dead. Like shattered stars.

Then another emerged beside it. And another. White Walkers. They did not run. They did not shout. They did not rush. They moved like drifting death, graceful and slow, blades of ice in their hands. Behind them came the dead. A wall of rot and silence.

Wights poured from the trees, dozens, then hundreds, then more than Jon could count. Corpses with skin sloughing from blackened limbs. Twisted giants with ribcages torn open. Wolves with eyeless sockets. Birds with broken wings. Children with twisted spines and cracked teeth. Things that were once men. Things that were not.

And in their midst, crawling on walls of mist and shadow—Spiders. Great, pale spiders, tall as horses, their legs clicking like branches snapping in a frozen forest. They moved too fast, too smooth, as if the world bent to make way. The Wall groaned again. Not from battle — from memory. From fear.

On the ramparts, silence reigned.

Grenn whispered, “What are they?” No one answered.

Even Pyp said nothing, bow slack in his hand. Jon could not breathe.

The wildlings fled in every direction. Some fought, screaming defiantly. Others wept, swinging useless clubs and axes. But the dead did not falter. They closed the distance like tidewater.

On the Wall, men screamed for orders. Brothers of the Watch backed away from the edge. Some dropped weapons. One fell to his knees and prayed. Jon’s fingers curled around his sword’s hilt.

Then his father spoke.  “Saddle the horses,” Eddard Stark said. No one moved. “We ride,” he said again, louder. “We ride now.”

A man — one of the Hornwoods, maybe — stepped forward. “My lord, you can’t—”

“They are men,” Lord Stark said, pointing toward the fleeing wildlings. “We will not watch men die.” And that was the end of it.

Steel rasped from scabbards. Boots thundered on stone. The Wall came alive again — not in defense, but in fury. A line of Northern riders mounted swiftly: Tallhart with his warhorn, Glover already bloodied, Umber roaring for his armor. Benjen Stark rode ahead, Longclaw gleaming on his side.

Jon did not hesitate. He vaulted down the stairs behind them, the sound of hooves ringing in his ears. Snow and ash fell together. The dead were coming. And they would meet them.

They poured from Castle Black like a blade unsheathed — silent, fast, and deadly.

The gates had not opened in full. There hadn’t been time. They slipped out in a wedge of riders through the smaller sally port, hooves hammering packed snow and frozen earth. Torches flickered in the wind, trailing fire and smoke as Northern steel met the storm.

Jon rode between Robett Glover and a grizzled Hornwood knight, the weight of his sword oddly light in his grip. Grey shapes swirled in the dark ahead — not snow, but wights. So many.

They crashed into the chaos like a thunderclap.

Jon’s horse reared at the first clash, screaming. He steadied it, swung down, and drove his sword through the chest of a half-armored corpse whose lips still moved in silent prayer. The wight crumpled, fingers twitching.

To his left, Lord Tallhart’s horse vanished beneath him, pulled down by a pile of hands and teeth. The lord screamed as he fell — not in fear, but in fury — hacking even as he disappeared under the tide.

Glover fought ahead, roaring like a bear, sword cleaving through rot and bone. A frost-giant loomed up, its skin a patchwork of blue veins and scarred muscle. Glover struck once, twice — and his blade shattered against its shoulder. Then a dozen men swarmed it with spears, shouting the words of House Glover.

Jon tried to reach his father but could no longer see him. The snow swallowed all shapes, the dead moved too fast, too many.

Steel clashed around him. Arrows fell like hail. Screams filled the air — screams of men, of beasts, of things no man should name. And through it all, the snow came down, thick and endless, blanketing the dying.

The dead pressed from all sides. He turned — and saw Smalljon Umber. Encircled. The Greatjon’s son fought like a madman, a crimson axe in each hand. Gore painted him from brow to boots, his bellowing curses loud above the din. His blows scattered bone, shattered ribs. But even giants grew tired. He staggered, dropped to one knee. Three wights closed in.

Then a flash of black. A brother of the Watch — Jon never saw who — hurled himself between them, blade raised. He died instantly. But the moment bought Smalljon time.

Nearby, a strange sight: wildlings and crows fighting side by side. A tall raider in looted black fought with brutal grace, blade flashing beside a shorter clansman with feathers in his hair and blood on his teeth. No words passed between them — none needed. Dead men didn’t care for allegiances. On a ridge, Jon caught a glimpse of Walder fighting side by side with a giant, the wildling dwarfing even the largest man from Winterfell.

Then came the Greatjon. He was a wall of muscle, his greatsword broken in half, using the jagged end like a cleaver. He plowed through corpses like a man possessed — until one of the frost-wights struck low, burying a jagged blade into his thigh. He roared and dropped to one knee, snarling through clenched teeth.

From the storm, a blur of red and bronze crashed into the attacker. A wildling — massive, red bearded, shouting in a strange tongue — drove a jagged axe through the wight’s face. The blade snapped, but the wight was dead. The Greatjon blinked in stunned silence.

“Don’t just sit there, big man!” the wildling barked, hauling him up by the arm. “Plenty of dead left for both of us.”

And before the Greatjon could grunt a word, the wildling was gone — vanished into the battle like smoke into storm. Jon didn’t know his name. But he would.

All around him, the tide was turning. And not for the better. Men fell. Horses screamed. Fire sputtered. The snow ran red. They had pierced the first wave, but it was like punching holes in the ocean. Every man fought alone now.

Jon ducked under a frost-crusted blade and spun, slicing through a wight’s neck. A second slammed into him from behind — he rolled, kicked, stabbed upward. His sword went through its jaw and out the back of its skull. Bone cracked.

He was rising when he saw Benjen. Longclaw gleamed like starlight in his uncle’s hand. He moved like a dancer through death, slicing, ducking, pivoting. A White Walker came at him, blade like frozen glass. Benjen stepped inside the swing and drove the Valyrian steel through its breastplate. The thing shrieked — high and wrong — and shattered like brittle ice.

But for every one they felled, five more took its place. Jon turned slowly in a full circle. He saw ruin. Snow and blood. Men screaming. Horses rearing. Some ran, most fought — and the line buckled. Cracked. Broke.

They were surrounded. Steel clattered uselessly. Bows were empty. Fire had died. Even the bravest had begun to fall back. The Wall loomed behind them like a tombstone. Jon thought the night lost and wondered if this was where his story ended.

Then he felt it. Before he heard it, before he saw it, he felt it. A warmth bloomed in his chest — not a spark, not a flicker, but a buried coal catching sudden flame.

It spread like wildfire. Not on skin, but through sinew and marrow, as if his very blood remembered something older than himself. Jon staggered, chest heaving, breath suddenly sharp with heat. The air around him had turned molten. His limbs trembled. Fear. His fear. It burned inside him like dry pine, brittle and fast.

But it wasn’t alone. Something else met it — rose to greet it. Rage. Fury. Hunger. Freedom. It swelled like a second heart inside him. It wasn’t his. But it was near. Closer than flesh. The dragon.

It felt him. Felt his desperation, the fraying of his spirit, the moment his strength began to crack under the weight of the dead. It reached across the sky, through cloud and night, and answered his fear with its own fire.

Jon felt it as surely as his sword in hand — a presence vast and wild and ancient, awake and unbound. A fury too large for one man’s body.  A roar in his soul. He fell to one knee, gasping. And then — the sky screamed. Fury. It was a sound that split heaven.

The clouds above tore open like old cloth, a darkness giving birth to darker wings. Black as a starless midnight, the shape thundered through the sky, impossibly vast — not gliding, not drifting — but falling, diving, with the speed of a comet and the wrath of a god.

Fire lit the dark. A torrent of flame burst from the dragon’s jaws — gold and red and so bright it turned the night to noonday. It struck the dead like a wave, like a fist from the heavens. Wights caught in the blast disintegrated mid-charge, their bodies vaporized, their bones turned to ash. The line of death that had encircled them shattered like glass beneath a hammer.

Jon flung up his arm as heat seared across the battlefield, blistering snow into steam. The ground itself split. Ice cracked open. The bodies beneath the snow ignited where they lay, burning from within.

The Wall shook. Its ancient stones groaned with the force of it. Ice sheared from its face in jagged chunks, crashing like avalanches into the chaos below. And still the dragon raged.

It wheeled through the sky like a stormbird from legend, tail lashing like a whip, wings thunderous. Again it dove, again the fire came — a great arc of flame that swept across the battlefield in a scorching line, carving wights from existence.

The White Walkers saw it. They did not flee in panic. They did not scream. They simply… vanished. One blink, they were there — pale and terrible — the next, only mist remained. Gone, into the woods. Into the dark. The storm swallowed them. The wights did not follow. They burned.

Some tried to run, clawing over each other like rats in fire, but it was too late. Every step was fire. Every breath, death. And Jon Snow stood amidst ruin, breathless, bloodstained, watching the fire devour shadow. Ash and snow fell together.

Smoke curled in slow spirals above the battlefield, turning the world to greys and golds. The dead no longer moved. The moans were gone. Even the wind had gone still, as if holding its breath.

The survivors gathered near the Wall’s base, bloodied, burned, and breathless. They came from every corner of the battlefield — staggering from the treeline, dragging wounded comrades, or limping through smoke and ash. Men of the North with cracked shields and rent mail. Brothers of the Watch with burned cloaks and missing fingers. Wildlings with blood in their beards and terror in their eyes. No banners flew. No trumpets sounded. Only the wind whispered.

Snow fell again, slowly now, mingling with soot and the drifting grey flakes of burnt bone. The battlefield steamed beneath them — black earth bleeding through the melting frost, dotted with the carcasses of men, beasts, and things no song had ever named.

And then they saw it. The dragon descended through the veil of smoke, wings spread wide as castles. Its cry still echoed in the sky, a sound that lingered like thunder in the bones of those who heard it.

It landed in a crash of snow and stone, the ground trembling under its weight. Talons dug deep into the frozen earth. Black scales shimmered with residual fire, slick with half-melted ice. Steam rose from its flanks like breath from a forge. Its wings folded slowly, deliberately, like a curtain falling at the end of some dread performance. Its golden eyes burned — not with rage, but with something else. Recognition maybe. And then, the beast bowed.

It’s massive neck dipping low, it pressed its head into the blood-stained snow before Jon. As if kneeling. A silence deeper than death fell across the gathering. Jon took one step forward. Then another.

He felt no fear. The fire in him — the fire that had kindled in his chest when all hope failed — had not died. It pulsed still. Warm. Alive. The bond tugged at him, unseen but undeniable. He stood before the dragon. The heat of its breath stirred his hair, melted the crust of frost on his brow. Its eye, large as a small plate, blinked once. Watching.

Behind him, no one dared move. The wildlings kneelt — not in fealty, but in reverence. Some whispered names, not in the Common Tongue, but in guttural syllables laced with awe. Old words. Old oaths. Forgotten gods.

Then came the Watch. Grenn and Pyp stood frozen, expressions blank with disbelief. One brother made the sign of the Seven. Another fell to his knees wordlessly, head bowed.

Then the Northern lords. Lord Galbart Glover, face smeared with ash, stared wordlessly, sword slack in hand. Halys Hornwood stood still as stone, blood crusted on his gauntlets, eyes wide beneath his helm. Rickard Karstark leaned on his blade, breathing hard, saying nothing. Dacey Mormont, helm under one arm, studied the dragon with a soldier’s scrutiny—then turned her gaze to Jon, something unspoken flickering in her eyes.

Even the Greatjon stood tall, despite the blood matting his thigh and the pain that made him lean ever so slightly. His jaw was clenched, but not in defiance. He said nothing.

And among them stood Lord Eddard Stark. Still holding his blade, his cloak torn and caked with blood. His face was unreadable — not stern, not soft — but full of something deep. A man who had seen too many omens to ignore another.

Benjen stood beside him, breath caught in his throat, watching Jon not as nephew, nor as brother in arms, but as something... more.

Jon turned to them for only a moment, eyes scanning their faces — awe, fear, sorrow, hope. And something else too.

He turned back to the dragon. Slowly, he reached out — hand steady despite the cold — and pressed his palm to its snout. Warmth surged beneath the rough hide, not wild, not savage, but steady. Strong. The bond held. It always had. And always will.

And in that moment, everything else fell away — the dead, the living, the Wall, the war. Only this remained. Man and dragon. Fire and blood. Snow and storm.

Jon laid his other hand against the creature’s side, his fingers splayed wide against the beating heat beneath. He looked out over the battlefield. Burned. Broken. Silent.

He exhaled, a whisper more than a breath. “Winter came.”

He looked into the dragon’s golden eye. “Your name is Winter.”

And Winter roared.

A roar that split sky from stone. A roar that echoed off the Wall and rolled across the frozen forest. A roar that sang of war, of vengeance, of something ancient stirring again.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

The mist clung low over the Red Fork as dawn bled through the sky in bruised shades of violet and grey. The current ran slow that morning, as if the river itself mourned. Lord Hoster Tully drifted on its surface, pale hands folded over his chest, sword laid across his body. Flowers floated beside him—lilies and red tulips, the colors of Riverrun and the blood of House Tully. A thin line of blood still marked his side, where the silent sisters had cleansed the last of his suffering. It ran like paint across the white of his tunic, one last wound for a man who had carried many.

Catelyn stood in silence at the river’s edge, her hands wrapped tight around her cloak. Her breath misted as she exhaled, steady, but not calm. The water lapped softly at the banks, each ripple a whisper in the hush of mourning.

Beside her stood Edmure, eyes red-rimmed and jaw tight, the great black bow in his hands trembling slightly. He held it with both reverence and guilt. Three arrows sat in the grass at his feet. Behind them, Brynden Tully stood straight and still, one weathered hand resting on Edmure’s shoulder. His face was carved of stone, but his eyes… his eyes watched the boat, unmoving.

He had come down from the Vale for this. He had ridden hard and long from the Eyrie, alone save for a handful of men and the shadow of a niece he no longer recognized. Lysa had refused the journey. She had refused much, these last years. Brynden had said nothing of it aloud, but Catelyn had seen the disappointment on his face when he dismounted, and how long he had lingered beside their father’s bier before saying a single word.

Others had come, too. Jason Mallister stood among the mourners, tall and silver-haired, a crimson cloak clasped at one shoulder, his face drawn in solemn dignity. Lord Clement Piper was beside him, eyes rimmed red from drink or grief, perhaps both. He held his hat in one hand, fingers crushing the brim as he watched the boat drift. And Lady Shella Whent stood in black and grey, her lined face grave beneath a veil of lace, the last of her house, bearing the memory of the Trident and Harrenhal like a shroud.

They were few. The banners had been quiet since the fall of King Robert. But those who had remembered Lord Hoster came now in silence, gathered along the banks in solemn witness.

On the first shot, Edmure’s arrow hissed and fell short, trailing smoke that curled into the mist. A murmur passed through the crowd, but no one spoke. The second veered wide, disappearing into the reeds. Edmure cursed beneath his breath. On the third, the arrow flew true. The flame caught. The pyre lit.

Slowly at first—orange sparks licking along the edge of the boat, the cloth at Hoster’s feet darkening and curling. Then fiercely. The river mirrored the fire in streaks of gold and red, and the air filled with the crackle of burning wood and the faintest scent of smoke.

A light wind swept the smoke across the riverbank, and with it, something shifted in Catelyn’s chest—finality, heavy and cold. Her father was gone. Sansa sniffled beside her, dabbing at her nose with a linen square. Arya said nothing. Her face was stone.

Catelyn looked past the fire, across the water, toward the mists that swallowed the far shore. She said a prayer under her breath to the Seven and the old gods both, unsure anymore which might be listening.

The river burned behind them, its smoke trailing upward into the greying sky like a soul returning to the gods. Catelyn walked slowly, her steps measured and quiet, the hem of her cloak trailing through the damp grass. Around her, the mourners dispersed in twos and threes, their voices hushed, their footsteps muffled by dew. The scent of river mud and woodsmoke clung to the air, thick as grief.

She walked beside Brynden, neither of them speaking at first. Just the sound of boots crunching in wet grass and the distant cawing of gulls circling over the shallows. Somewhere upstream, a heron lifted into the air with slow, heavy wings.

The silence felt dense, as though too many words pressed behind it, too many things left unsaid.

“Lysa did not come,” Catelyn said at last, her voice low.

Brynden sighed, long and tired. “She would not.”

“She was his daughter. His blood.” She tried not to let the words sting, but they hung there between them like frost.

“She’s changed,” Brynden said. His tone was flat, almost apologetic, but there was a weariness in it that made Catelyn’s chest tighten. “She sees threats in every breeze. She won’t leave the Eyrie. Not for a funeral. Not even for family.”

Catelyn turned her face away, toward the water. A flock of ducks paddled near the far bank, unaware of the pyre still smoldering behind them. “She should have been here,” she said quietly. “We were sisters.”

“She is not the girl you knew, Cat.” Brynden paused, and his voice gentled. “She is not who I knew, either.”

Catelyn closed her eyes. The wind pulled at her cloak, threading through the braids in her hair, cold and clean and sharp as memory. For a heartbeat she was a girl again, sitting beside Lysa in the godswood, feeding birds with crumbs from the kitchens, whispering secrets between them like they were pearls.

Then time intruded. And blood. And men. And tears.

She thought of her sister as she had last seen her—sobbing on the eve of her wedding to Jon Arryn. It had not been a union of love, but one forged from duty, just like her own. Yet Catelyn had come to love Ned in time. She wondered what, if anything, her sister had found in the end. The girl she had loved, who once giggled at jests and plucked flowers for their mother, had vanished like mist on the moors. All that remained was a voice in her letters—paranoid, rambling, pleading. And now, not even that voice had come to bid their father farewell.

Another thread come loose, she thought. Another piece of family gone.

They walked on, the Red Fork fading behind them, and silence settled again, deeper than before.

That evening, the last light of day slanted through the solar windows, turning the stone walls of Riverrun the color of old brass. Dust danced in the air, stirred by nothing but memory. The warmth of the funeral fire had long since faded from Catelyn’s bones, leaving only an ache behind her eyes and a weight in her chest that sleep could not shake.

She stood at the window, hands clasped, watching the sun sink behind the towers her father had ruled, the battlements cast in deep shadow. The Red Fork gleamed below like a thread of steel, the last smoke from the pyre already lost to the wind.

Then the raven came. The soft beat of wings. The rasp of talon on stone. A quiet knock at the solar door.

Edmure entered with the parchment in hand, face grim. He passed it to her without a word. The seal was broken—he had read it first. Catelyn saw it in his eyes, the guarded sorrow, the faint tremble in his jaw.

She took the letter slowly. The wax bore the direwolf of Stark, pressed deep and cracked through the center.

In the hearth, the fire was low. Ser Rodrik sat near it, oiling a blade with care, his brow furrowed. Brynden stood leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, his face unreadable.

Catelyn broke the seal fully and unrolled the parchment. Her eyes scanned the lines, once, twice, not trusting what they read.

“It’s from Robb,” she said at last. Her voice was steady, but her hand trembled.

She read aloud, voice roughening with every line

“...Roose Bolton and Barbrey Dustin took Winterfell under false banners. Our men at Moat Cailin were massacred. Bran and Rickon are prisoners. Theon Greyjoy has been freed. I march to take back the North.” She paused to breathe, the words a knife in her lungs. “I ask for men, swift and true, to join us and crush the traitors. Moat Cailin must be reclaimed. Winterfell must be ours again.” She faltered, just slightly. “The North remembers.”

The silence that followed was long and heavy.

“Seven hells,” Edmure breathed, stepping to her side. His face was pale in the firelight.

Rodrik’s jaw clenched, the cloth he’d been using to clean his blade crumpled in his hand. “Five thousand men… gone.” His voice was low, almost disbelieving.

“Traitors,” Brynden said from the wall. His voice was cold and flat, like ice cracking beneath the weight of a river. “It was planned. Coordinated. They waited until the garrison was thinned, until the men were alone.”

Catelyn stared down at the letter. The words seemed to shift and swim across the parchment. Bran. Rickon. Taken in their own home.

“They raised no warning,” she said, the parchment crackling slightly in her grip. “They wore no sigil but ours.” Her voice cracked then, just slightly. “Bran. Rickon.”

Edmure looked at her, something softening in his expression. “You’ll go.”

She nodded. “I must.”

“Then take five thousand with you,” he said. “Knights and foot from our banners. Mallister and Piper will ride too, if I ask. You’ll not go alone.”

Rodrik rose, his blade forgotten. “I’ll ride with you, my lady.” His voice held steel now, and a loyalty that made her throat tighten.

Brynden stepped forward too, eyes dark. “So will I.”

She looked at them both—Rodrik with his worn hands and grey in his beard, Brynden, stern and silent, who had defied Lysa to stand here now. Two swords still loyal. Two shields I still trust.

She dipped her head, unable to speak. The words were buried somewhere beneath the weight of grief and fury.

But the fire in her heart—long banked—had begun to stir again.

Later that night, the halls of Riverrun lay quiet, the stones still holding the day’s warmth though the air had grown cool. A storm brewed beyond the windows, distant thunder muttering across the hills. Shadows stretched long across the corridors, and the scent of river mist crept through the shutters.

Catelyn walked slowly toward the chamber her daughters shared, a tray in her hands with bread, cheese, and warm broth. She did not expect them to eat, but it was something to do. Something to carry. Something to hold.

As she neared the door, raised voices stopped her in her tracks.

“They’ve got Bran,” Arya said, her voice sharp and shaking. “And Rickon. What are we doing here?”

“We can’t just go!” Sansa snapped back. “This is war, Arya. There are orders, and honor—”

“Honor?!” Arya’s voice cracked. “Joffrey has honor? The boy you cry over? He’s not even a real king! He’s a bastard born of incest.”

The words struck like a thrown knife, sharp and sudden. Catelyn’s breath caught.

Inside, silence followed. Then—

“Arya!” she said as she pushed the door open, voice cutting through the room like a whipcrack. Her heart was pounding. She hadn’t meant to speak, but the words had leapt out before she could stop them.

Both girls turned. Arya’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes fierce. She looked younger and older all at once—like a child in a war camp, too angry to cry. Sansa stood near the hearth, hands clenched in her skirts, her eyes wide and wet.

Arya didn’t flinch. “It’s true.”

Catelyn’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you hear that?”

Arya shrugged. “Does it matter?” she said flatly, then turned her face away, eyes fixed on some distant place beyond the stone walls.

Catelyn took a step forward. “Arya—”

But her daughter gave no answer. Her silence was more defiant than any shout.

Catelyn’s heart twisted. There were truths she had suspected—whispers half-buried beneath dreams still could not understand. But hearing it from her daughter’s lips, spoken so plainly and without fear, brought it all roaring to the surface. She turned to Sansa

Sansa’s face crumpled. “It’s lies,” she whispered, voice trembling. “He’s the king. He was always going to be king—”

“You still believe that?” Arya hissed. Her voice was low, but venomous. “Even now?”

Sansa looked as though she had been slapped.

“Stop it,” Catelyn snapped. “Both of you.”

Arya’s lips pressed tight. Without another word, she spun on her heel and stormed past her mother, out into the corridor, boots echoing like drumbeats.

Sansa sank to the floor beside the hearth, shoulders heaving.

Catelyn set down the tray and knelt beside her. For a long while, she said nothing. There was no comfort in words. Only warmth in closeness.

She drew Sansa into her arms and held her as the fire crackled. Sansa sobbed softly, her hands clinging to Catelyn’s sleeve like a child desperate to anchor herself.

The room smelled of old wood and damp wool, of tears and ash. Catelyn smoothed her daughter’s hair gently, remembering how soft it had been when she was just a babe—how golden it had looked in the sunlit gardens of Winterfell, before the world had changed.

Later, when Sansa had cried herself to sleep, Catelyn sat alone by the fire.

She thought of Arya, pacing the halls like a restless cat, full of sharp corners and buried wounds. She thought of Sansa, gentled by courtly dreams, broken by their collapse. One daughter too soft for the world. The other growing far too sharp for it. And she feared for them both.

At dawn, the banners were raised. Tully trout, leaping silver on a field of red and blue. Piper’s dancing maiden, graceful even in war. Mallister’s silver eagle, wings outspread as if to shield the realm. And Stark’s grey direwolf, silent and proud in the morning light.

They rippled in the cold wind atop their poles, snapping against the sky like voices crying northward.

Catelyn stood in Riverrun’s courtyard, cloak drawn tight around her shoulders as the sun rose pale and veiled through a shifting wall of cloud. Around her, the castle stirred like a waking giant. Men strapped on mail and checked their harnesses. Horses stamped and snorted, their breath rising in ghostly plumes. Blacksmiths shouted final orders; carts creaked under the weight of arms, salt pork, and hardtack. The riverlords had answered.

Five thousand. She thought.

They had come in silence that morning, without ceremony. Patrek Mallister in his silvered plate, cold-eyed and solemn. Ser Marq Piper laughing loud enough to hide the tightness in his voice. Knights and squires, bannermen and sellswords, even hedge knights with patched cloaks and dreams of honor.

They did not ride for conquest. They rode for justice.

Catelyn mounted her horse with measured care, her fingers stiff from the cold. Her mare was a dappled grey, placid and sure-footed. A warhorse, trained and seasoned, much like the woman now seated upon it.

Rodrik Cassel took position at her right, armored and stern, his beard white as frost. On her left rode Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, helm under his arm and face set like a drawn sword. His eyes scanned the line of riders like a hawk judging a flight.

Arya rode behind them, cloak pulled tight, her sword hidden but her posture alert. Catelyn caught her eye once, and Arya gave a short, silent nod.

Sansa rode farther back with the handmaidens, flanked by guards. Her hair was braided in the northern style now, her face pale but composed. She had not wept that morning. Not even once.

Catelyn looked skyward. The clouds were low and heavy, the color of ash. The sun was a weak smear behind them, pale and cold.

“If Winterfell still stands,” she whispered, “I will reach it.”

The words were barely a breath. Only her horse seemed to hear. And if it has fallen… then I will raise it again. She did not speak the rest aloud. Some oaths lived stronger in silence.

She spurred her mare forward. The gates of Riverrun opened like a jaw. And the banners followed her into the wind. North. Toward home.

Chapter Text

Eddard

The wind never stopped. It whispered down from the mountains and across the Wall, a mournful sigh that stirred ashes and snow in equal measure. It carried with it the stink of fire, of blood, of flesh burned on funeral pyres too hastily built.

Eddard Stark walked the courtyard of Castle Black alone, his boots crunching frozen slush beneath them. The morning sun was a pale ghost, weak against the chill. Above him loomed the Wall, silent and scarred. Beneath him, the blood of the North soaked into the stones. They had won. If this could be called victory.

Over half their host was gone. Umber, Tallhart, Mormont, Hornwood, Glover, all had bled, some to death, some to limping survival. The Night’s Watch had lost nearly a third of its brothers. The wildlings had been broken, their great host scattered to wind and frost. And yet… the dead were gone. Driven back by fire and fury. By dragonflame. By Jon.

Ned paused near one of the pyres. Smoke curled into the air from blackened logs. He saw the shape of a hand in the ash, fingers curled, now nothing more than memory. Someone had carved a direwolf into the wood before the fire took it.

“A son of the North,” said a voice behind him.

Benjen Stark stood with his black cloak stirring in the wind, face gaunt with exhaustion. Longclaw hung at his side.

Ned gave a slow nod. “Too many sons lost.”

Benjen looked toward the flames. “But not all.”

The council was called that evening in the great hall of Castle Black.

Snow and soot still clung to the stone walls, and the stink of ash drifted faintly on the smoke from the hearths. The flames burned high, but no heat reached the marrow of the men gathered there.

Eddard Stark entered in silence, flanked by Benjen and Maester Aemon, whose white eyes blinked slowly beneath his heavy hood. Behind them came Walder and several guards, not out of fear, but for ceremony. Men rose for Lord Stark, then sat again, more out of habit than hope.

Glover sat with his arm bound tight to his chest, face drawn, lips dry. Smalljon Umber’s fresh neck wound still seeped through the cloth. Galbart Glover had aged ten years in ten days. Dacey Mormont’s morning star lay across her knees, her knuckles white against the hilt. Harrion Karstark looked like he hadn’t slept.

Even the wildlings looked broken. They sat under loose guard, red-eyed, silent. Their designated leader brooded near the fire, arms crossed, eyes hollow. No one mocked. No one smiled. No one drank. This was not a victory feast. It was a dirge.

Ned took his place at the head of the table, his voice steady but heavy. “We lost five thousand,” he said. “More wounded.” The words hung like smoke. No one answered. “The Wall stands. Castle Black holds. And the Others are driven back. For now.”

Still nothing.

Then Galbart Glover gave a rasping cough. “They’ll come again.”

“They will,” Ned agreed. “And next time, we must be ready.”

Benjen stepped forward, his cloak still streaked with ice and blood. “The Watch cannot face another attack like this. We’ve barely a hundred brothers left fit to stand a post. The rest lie burned, buried, or broken. If they come again soon... we fall.”

A murmur passed around the table, not outrage, but resignation.

Maester Aemon’s blind eyes turned toward the sound. “The Wall was not meant to stand alone forever. It stood because the realm remembered its purpose. It stood because the realms of men gave men to the Watch.”

“Will they now?” asked Harrion Karstark bitterly. “With three kings and no peace?”

Aemon ignored him. “A new Lord Commander must be chosen,” he said instead. “We cannot wait. The brothers must vote before winter.”

“Who will lead them?” Glover asked. “Benjen Stark?”

Benjen shook his head. “There are better choices than me. I’m still a ranger, and my place is in the shadows beyond the Wall, not in a hall behind it.”

“Then who?” asked Dacey. “There’s barely anyone left.”

Ned looked to Aemon, then to Benjen, thoughtful. But said nothing

Rickard Karstark leaned forward, elbows on the table. “We’ve heard tales since we were children. Dead men in the snow. Blue eyes. Shadows. None of us believed.”

“And now?” asked Ned.

Karstark didn’t reply. But his face pale, slack with disbelief, was answer enough.

“Aye,” muttered the Smalljon. “I saw one cleave through six men with a blade that smoked the steel. It looked at me… and I forgot my father’s name.”

More voices murmured. A flicker of fear rippled through the hall, quiet, but real.

“They are not a story,” Ned said, low. “They are here.”

And still, none of them dared name what might come next.

The lords argued for hours. Some called for retreat, south, to rebuild and rally in strength. Others demanded vengeance on the wildlings, blind to the fact they had bled beside them. One lord wanted to burn the Gift to ash and salt. Another muttered about leaving the Wall altogether and fortifying the Neck.

“They’ll come again,” said Glover. “This time in darkness.”

“I saw the dead rise twice in one night,” Dacey Mormont swore. “You don’t burn them quick, they rise. You burn too slow, they scream.”

“The white monsters walked through fire,” Galbart Glover added. “I saw it myself. Steel melted on their blades.”

“I killed one.” Heads turned toward Benjen Stark. The wind seemed to pause. “In the woods, just before dawn. One of them came for me… tall as a spearman, eyes like blue fire. I thought it would cleave me in two.” He drew Longclaw and laid it on the table. The steel shimmered faintly, dark as smoke. “I struck. It shattered.”

Silence followed. Until Galbart Glover muttered, “Valyrian steel.” Benjen nodded.

Smalljon gave a hollow laugh. “So we need a thousand swords like that? Even with all the gold in Casterly Rock, we’d never arm a full host.”

Rickard Karstark’s mouth curled in a sneer. “And they melt regular steel like butter.”

Then Maester Aemon’s voice cut through the murmurs. “The First Men had no such blades.” They looked to him. “They fought with bronze. And fire. And cunning. The answers lie in the past. In the records buried beneath Winterfell and Castle Black, in the vaults of the Citadel. There are ways still. We must find them.”

The room grew darker despite the fire. And when the noise had thinned to silence, Ned rose.

His face was pale, lined with more than frost or age. When he spoke, it was not as a lord, but as a man who had carried too much, too long.

“I have something to tell you.”

Eyes turned to him. The flickering fire caught the scar on his cheek and the grey in his beard. Some of these men had bled for him in Robert’s Rebellion. Others had served House Stark for three generations. All had fought now under the same banners at the Wall. None of them knew what he was about to say.

“Jon Snow,” Ned began, “is not my son.” The silence became a weight. “He is the son of my sister, Lyanna Stark… and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen.”

Gasps. Murmurs. Shock, disbelief, fury. Karstark’s mouth twisted. Glover stiffened. The Greatjon let out a bark of breath that might’ve been a curse, or just surprise.

“I swore a promise to Lyanna,” Ned said, voice steady. “On her deathbed. To protect him. I lied, to my king, to my children… and to all of you.”

“And now?” asked Dacey Mormont. Her voice was like flint. “You speak of it now, when the dead march and the sky burns?”

Ned met her gaze. “Because now, you’ve seen what rides from the North. You’ve seen the truth we were raised to forget. And you’ve seen who faced it down.” He let the words sink. “You saw the dragon.”

Many heads turned to the empty chair where Jon might have sat, had he not been mourning with the dead.

“We need a king,” Ned said. “Not for pride. Not for crowns or for songs. But for survival. The realm must unite, or it will fall.” He looked across them. Into every pair of tired, grieving eyes. “I name my nephew,” he said. “A boy raised in Winterfell. A brother to my sons. A dragon who fought for the north.”

Silence. Then the Greatjon stood. “A son of the North, in that Iron chair.” He grinned. “I’d like to see that.” He laughed, that booming wild laugh of House Umber, and clapped the table.

Lord Hornwood, his hair streaked with grey, spoke next. “Lyanna was fierce,” he said softly. “Too fierce for court. I remember her riding past my hall, hair unbound. She said I had fat knees. Never laughed so hard in my life. I’d trust her son more than a dozen Lannisters.”

Glover nodded slowly. “Lyanna died a wolf. If her son is half the steel she was... he’s more king than the lot we have now.”

Dacey Mormont crossed her arms. “He has fire. And he bled beside us. That’s more than can be said of the crowned ones.”

One by one, they murmured assent. Some reluctantly. Some bitterly. But they came. And the hall that had been full of death and doubt now held something else. A name. A choice. A beginning.

The last debate, perhaps the most bitter, was about the wildlings.

“They’ve scattered,” said Benjen, his voice low but firm. “Most are women, children, the old. Twenty thousand, at best.”

“They’re still the enemy,” muttered Karstark. “You want to reward raiders with land?”

“They bled with us,” Walder said. “Died on our shield wall. The red-bearded one, the one who saved the Greatjon, slew more wights than I could count.”

“They crossed our border,” snapped another lord. “Raided our villages, stole from our halls.”

“They stood with us when the dead came,” growled Smalljon Umber. “That wildling giant crushed two ice-spiders with a tree trunk, and didn’t flinch when a wight took his eye. Saved twenty men doing it, two of mine. I’ll not forget that.”

Rickard Karstark scowled. “They only fought because the Others were worse.”

“Sometimes it takes fire to kill fire,” said Galbart Glover.

Voices rose again, overlapping, anger and memory mingling with weariness. And then Ned stood once more.

“I saw the look in their eyes when the dead came,” he said. “They didn’t fight for gold. Or for banners. They fought to live. Same as us.” His voice was quiet. Tired. But unshakable. “We find our true friends on the battlefield. Not at court. Not in feast halls.”

He turned toward the wildling elders, a small cluster under watch. Among them sat the red-haired man who had saved the Greatjon. Beside him stood a young woman, her hair the color of autumn leaves, her face grim and tired.

“If you wish to stay,” Ned said, “you will have land. In the Gift, and in the New Gift. You will build. Plant. Defend. And be defended. But you will live by the laws of the North.”

There was a long pause. Then the wildling rose to his full height. “You want us tame?” he asked, voice like a breaking tree.

“I want you alive,” Ned replied. “And I want my children to be.”

The wildling spat at the floor. “The king is dead. Mance Rayder. Killed by the cold ones, same as a hundred others. The ‘wildling host’ you fear? Gone. Shattered in snow.” He looked around the room. “We’ve no army now. No great warbands. Just old men and young girls, widows and orphans. You want us to kneel?”

“No,” Ned said. “I want you to respect the law. No stealing. No raiding. No taking what isn’t given. You don’t bend the knee to me. But you will not harm those who shelter you.”

The red hair man crossed his arms. “And when the cold comes again?”

“You stand with us,” Ned said. “And we’ll stand with you.”

A murmur passed between the wildlings. The red-haired girl whispered something to the man. He frowned, then nodded.

“Done,” he said. “We settle the land. We live by your laws. But we keep our ways, and our pride.”

“Keep your pride,” Ned said. “It has teeth.”

Benjen leaned in then, adding, “The Watch can’t hold alone. The Gift is theirs by ancient promise. It was meant to be lived in.”

Maester Aemon lifted his head, blind eyes unfocused. “Old pacts, renewed in fire. Perhaps that is how peace begins.”

The lords still looked wary, Karstark most of all, but slowly, one by one, they began to nod.

Then Dacey, her voice like steel, “Let them have the land. Better settlers than corpses.”

And with that, the deal was struck, forged not by crown or coin, but by blood and the cold wind of death.

The council dissolved like mist in the cold. Men rose slowly, their limbs heavy with fatigue, their hearts heavier still. No cheers marked the moment, no feast followed. Just nods, tight-lipped farewells, and the scrape of boots on stone. The fire burned low in the hearth, its embers mirroring the weariness etched into every face. Outside, the wind had quieted, but only for a breath—enough for the silence to settle. The kind of silence that came after war, when only the living remained to count the cost. Eddard lingered behind, gazing at the long table where men had debated life, death, and the fate of the realm.

That night, Ned climbed the Wall in silence, boots crunching over frozen blood and broken shafts of arrowwood. Splintered bolts still lay scattered where they’d fallen, half-buried in snow crusted red. The air smelled of soot and something older—burned flesh and cold iron. Black ice clung to the stone ramparts like scars. The wind had teeth again. And under the stars, amid the wreckage of survival, Ned Stark stood beside his brother.

“She would have been proud,” Benjen said.

They stood near the edge, where the black ice of the Wall met the pale sky. Beneath them stretched the wilderness, endless and white, a world unclaimed and unforgiving. The torches far below looked like dying embers, flickering in the dark. Above, the stars shone cold and sharp, a thousand eyes that had watched the Long Night before and might watch it again.

“Lyanna?” Ned asked, his breath curling in the frost.

Benjen nodded, his hood low over his brow. “I always suspected. You never said a word.”

“You never asked.”

“I didn’t need to.”

The wind stirred their cloaks, threading through the silence. Somewhere behind them, a crow called once—thin and ragged—and was gone. Snow whispered across the Wall like ash, soft and constant.

They watched the clouds drift beyond the horizon, where the North faded into myth and memory.

“Do you think he’s ready?” Benjen asked at last, his voice nearly lost to the wind.

Ned’s eyes stayed fixed on the dark. “No one is,” he said. “But he will be.”

They stood in silence a while longer, letting the wind speak where words could not. When at last Benjen turned and descended back toward the keep, Ned remained, eyes fixed northward until the stars blurred.

He made his way down the Wall alone, each step slow and deliberate, the weight of duty pressing heavier with every level he descended. Castle Black slumbered uneasily below, its courtyards still littered with signs of the battle—broken shafts, melted snow darkened with old blood, the scent of ash lingering in the stones. And there, in the stillness near the archery yard, he found Jon.

Ned approached quietly. For a long time, neither of them spoke. Then Ned said, “I’m sorry.”

Jon turned. “For what?”

“For the lie. For the weight. For not telling you sooner.”

Jon looked away. “You were trying to protect me.”

“Yes,” Ned said. “But it wasn’t enough.”

Jon’s breath fogged the air. “I don’t know how to be what they want.”

“You don’t need to know,” Ned said. “You only need to be what you are.” Jon looked up. “You are your mother’s son. And your father’s. But you are mine, too. In all the ways that matter.”

Jon blinked. “You mean that?”

“I do. And whatever comes, dragon, king, or the dead, you will never be alone.”

Jon swallowed hard. Then nodded. Ned laid a hand on his shoulder. Together, they watched the sunrise break over the wall.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The Dornish red had gone sour. Or perhaps it was his tongue—too many cups, too little joy. Tyrion rolled the wine across his palate anyway, letting it sit like a memory he couldn't quite spit out. From his window, the smoke of Flea Bottom curled in lazy spirals, trailing upward like the ghosts of better days. Somewhere down in that labyrinth of piss-stained alleyways and soot-caked bricks, the Gold Cloaks had beaten three bakers for hoarding barley. Tyrion had sent them with orders to seize the grain and distribute it. They’d returned with bloodied batons, three corpses, and no sign of the barley.

He sighed and took another sip. The wine had dulled nothing. “The joys of governance,” he muttered.

Once, he had thought power would come with satisfaction. A seat at the table. A voice that mattered. Instead, he had inherited the throne's rot—festering beneath gold and crimson, clothed in silk lies and plated armor. Tywin had ridden west with Jaime before the storm broke, off to save the realm—or bury it under banners and bodies. Cersei ruled from behind Joffrey’s snarling smiles, all poison and vanity, clinging to a crown she wore through her son. And Tyrion, the dwarf Hand of the King, was left with lice, riots, and a city gnawing its own ribs.

A knock interrupted his thoughts, soft but urgent. “My lord?” Podrick’s voice, ever meek. “The Small Council… they’re assembling now.”

Tyrion didn’t need to ask what fresh fire waited. He already smelled the smoke. “Of course they are,” he said aloud, rising with a grunt that pulled at old bruises and new weariness. He drained the cup in one swallow, left it on the sill, and tugged his doublet straight. “Let’s go see what kingdoms we’ve lost this morning.”

The Small Council chamber felt colder than usual. The fire in the hearth crackled behind its iron grate, but no one reached toward it. No one dared. The air was heavy with unspoken tensions, like breath held too long. Tapestries hung limp on the walls, their golden lions and black stags watching with embroidered indifference. The scent of parchment, dust, and something faintly sour—fear, perhaps—clung to the stones.

Tywin Lannister sat at the head of the table like a blade sheathed in velvet. His cloak, rich crimson, bore the lions of Casterly Rock gleaming in the candlelight. The man had only just returned to King’s Landing, and already the air bent around him like steel near a forge.

Jaime stood behind him, clad in polished armor but without a helmet. His hand rested lightly on the pommel of his sword, as if war might erupt in the council chamber itself.

Cersei sat stiff and regal beside Joffrey, the queen’s mask of serenity hiding a coiled storm. Joffrey, for his part, scowled with petulant fury, the expression of a child denied a toy, not a king ruling a kingdom. His fingers tapped a rhythm of impatience against the table’s edge.

Grand Maester Pycelle slumped in his chair like an aging statue, eyes half-lidded, head bobbing as if nodding off between wheezes. Varys, neat and quiet in his voluminous robes, folded his soft hands beneath his sleeves and smiled that little smile of his—a smile that never reached the eyes and always seemed to know more than it said. Ser Meryn Trant stood by the door, stiff and statuesque, hand resting on the hilt of his blade, useless and armed.

Tyrion stepped into the chill and took his seat without fanfare, his eyes flicking to each player in turn. Every chair was a sword in this room. “Shall we begin the bleeding?” he said, his voice dry as old wine.

Tywin did not so much as glance at him. “Jaime, you are to return to the Bitterbridge line. Hold the crossings. Neither Renly nor Stannis is to pass.” Direct. Commanding. No preamble, no warmth. That was Tywin Lannister—cutting through pleasantries like he did through enemies.

Jaime gave a slight nod. “If they try, I’ll send them back with broken noses.” Tyrion’s eyes drifted to his brother. Gods, how he envied Jaime’s simplicity—his certainty. You gave Jaime a sword and a line of men, and he was at peace. Tyrion had courts, coin, and Cersei. And the wine didn’t help.

“So, you ride back to war and bring nothing here?” Cersei’s voice was clipped, biting. “No reinforcements, no fresh men?” The insult was barely veiled. Her green eyes glittered like cut emeralds, and her mouth tightened in a line only wine could soften—though even that had stopped working lately.

Tywin didn’t flinch. His tone could have flayed skin from bone. “Kevan holds Red Lake. I reviewed our line and brought men for Jaime. That was enough.”

Joffrey slammed his fist on the table with all the fury of a boy denied supper. “I’m the king! I command the army—”

“You command nothing,” Tywin said, and he didn’t raise his voice. But he didn’t need to. The words hit the room like a dropped blade.

A breathless silence followed. Even the fire seemed to pause, its crackle swallowed by the weight of Tywin’s authority.

Tyrion leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth curling just slightly. If only he could bottle that voice, he’d sell it to every king who ever lived—and laugh when it shattered them from within.

Then Grand Maester Pycelle stirred, a sound like old parchment dragged over stone. He cleared his throat—a phlegmy rasp that echoed too loudly—and fumbled with a scroll bound in red wax, its seal already broken and smeared.

“Ravens from the North, my lords,” he wheezed. “Disturbing ones.” Tyrion leaned forward, interest prickling through the wine’s dull haze.

Pycelle unrolled the parchment with trembling fingers. “Lord Roose Bolton and Lady Barbrey Dustin have seized Winterfell in Lord Stark’s absence. Lady Catelyn Stark and her daughters march with five thousand men to retake Moat Cailin, led by her uncle, Ser Brynden Tully.”

The old man said it all without blinking, as if announcing a change in the weather.

Across the table, Cersei’s face twisted, all regal mask abandoned in a single sour sneer. “She dares take the girl from us. That girl is betrothed to the king!”

Joffrey’s voice rang sharper. “She belongs to me! She should be here already!”

Tyrion didn’t flinch at the boy’s fury, but he did watch his father closely. Tywin lifted a single hand. The silence that followed was immediate and absolute. Even the fire behind them seemed to lower its crackle, cowed by the gesture.

“A girl’s hand is meaningless if her house falls,” Tywin said. “The North is at war with itself.”

Tyrion studied him. His father’s tone was calm, but there was something colder underneath. Calculating. The Stark girl, Sansa, had been useful once. Now she was just another thread in a tapestry unweaving.

Then Varys leaned forward slightly, his smooth voice like a knife wrapped in satin. “There is more. Whispers from the Vale speak of unrest—Lords Royce, Belmore, and Redfort grow restless in their dissent. Lord Baelish’s influence over Lady Lysa may not hold.”

Tyrion tilted his head. Petyr Baelish, slipping? That would be a novelty. The man was slipperier than an eel in butter.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Jaime muttered. “No man controls Lysa Arryn for long.”

A brief laugh escaped Tyrion’s nose. That much was true. Lysa was unstable, dangerous—and fiercely paranoid. The only thing more volatile than her affections was her sense of betrayal. But what Tyrion heard, behind the words, was opportunity. The Vale cracking. The North bleeding. The Riverlands boiling. And in King’s Landing, vultures sharpening their beaks.

Varys cleared his throat softly, fingers steepled like a spider folding its legs after a feast. “There is… one more matter of note. From Highgarden.”

The pause was deliberate, stretched just long enough to tingle the spine. Varys knew how to make silence speak louder than whispers. Tyrion narrowed his eyes. He didn’t trust Varys on principle, but he trusted his instincts even less. And the pause meant it wasn’t mere gossip.

“Out with it, Varys,” he said, setting down his goblet with a soft click. “I don’t like long silences before bad news. I prefer short ones.”

Varys inclined his head as though granting a favor. “Lady Margaery Tyrell is said to be with child.”

The words hung in the chamber like a drawn blade. For a moment, even the hearthfire seemed to stop its crackling. Tyrion noted how every head turned, how even Joffrey blinked—slowly, like a lizard waking from a dream.

Cersei was first to break the quiet, her voice low and brittle as winter glass. “Renly’s child?”

“So it’s claimed,” Varys replied mildly, his tone soaked in ambiguity. “Though many would call it a Rose’s seed more than a stag’s.”

Jaime snorted, arms folded across his golden breastplate. “Didn’t take long for Highgarden to root itself in the crown.”

Of course not, Tyrion thought. The Tyrells were never fools. They didn’t ride to battle—they fertilized the realm with whispers and smiles, and let their roots crack the stones.

Tywin didn’t speak right away. His mouth thinned to a pale line, and he stared through the fire as though sifting the future from its flames.

“Whether true or false,” Tywin said finally, “it’s a stroke of cunning. The Tyrells are playing the long game and playing it well.”

Joffrey leaned forward, his tone petulant. “Why does it matter? Renly’s no king.”

Tyrion gave his wine a thoughtful swirl. “No, but a child unites. And a womb is more persuasive than a sword in times of uncertainty.”

And how uncertain it was—three kings, no peace, winter howling at the doors, and now a potential heir sprouting in the Reach like a carefully planted weed.

Cersei’s knuckles whitened where they rested on the polished wood. “The Tyrells are declaring their intention, one petal at a time.”

Do they even need to declare it? Tyrion wondered. The realm was so hungry for stability it might cling to any babe in a cradle—if that cradle came wreathed in gold and roses.

“Do we think they’ll crown the babe if Renly falls?” asked Jaime, eyes narrowing.

“They will offer it as claim… or bargaining chip,” Tywin responded. Always the strategist. Tyrion could almost hear the weights and measures clinking behind his father’s eyes.

Pycelle wheezed into his beard, blinking slow and damp. “A child of royal blood cannot be ignored.”

Then Joffrey slapped the table, petulance sharpened into cruelty. “I’ll have his head when I win! Him and the whore he crawled out of.”

Tyrion raised a brow, sipping the dregs of his cup. “Try to do it before he’s out of the cradle. It’ll save gold on executioners.” The room shifted. No one laughed. No one ever did.

Tywin rose. “We prepare for what comes. Whether rose or stag.”

“And in the North,” Varys continued smoothly, as if reporting on a distant garden's weather, “there are whispers of a vast wildling host, one hundred thousand strong, attacking the Wall. Only ten thousand men guard it.”

A cold shiver ran down Tyrion’s spine. He blinked, unsure if he’d heard correctly.  “One hundred thousand?” he repeated aloud. “Is that even possible?”

His voice cut across the chamber, incredulous. But Varys’s expression didn’t flicker. “Few saw it and lived,” the spider said. “And those who did sent no ravens.”

Tyrion frowned. How much could truly be known if there were no survivors? Still, Varys had a knack for plucking truth from the dead air. That was what unsettled him.

Pycelle made a dismissive noise, thick with phlegm. “Barbaric tribes. Let them freeze.” Tyrion resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Pycelle would say that—his world ended at the Blackwater.

But Varys raised an eyebrow, his voice lower now. “It is not cold they fear… it is something older.” The fire popped in the hearth. Even that tiny crack felt loud.

Cersei scoffed. “Children’s tales.” Tyrion glanced sideways at her, half-expecting her to sneer about grumpkins next. But her jaw was tight, and her fingers tapped at the table’s edge.

Tywin waved a hand, cutting through the air like a cleaver. “Enough.” He said. “The North is chaos. The Vale is impotent. Dorne moves, but we do not yet know toward whom. That leaves the Stormlands.”

He spoke as though rearranging chess pieces, as if everything were neat on the board. But Tyrion knew better. The board had cracked. The pieces bled.

“Where we have a stalemate,” Jaime said. “Stannis waits, Renly bleeds. No side dares strike.”

Tyrion swirled what remained of his wine, staring at the rippling red like it might give him answers. “So, we win by doing nothing?”

“We win by not losing,” Tywin said, with the certainty of a man who believed that holding still was a kind of victory.

“And the city?” Tyrion asked, his voice sharpened. “Flea Bottom riots. Grain is short.”

The words felt heavier each time he spoke them. He’d walked those streets two days past. He had smelled the hunger.

Pycelle wheezed, as if the thought of starvation made his lungs revolt. “The Riverlands have sent supplies—”

“Not enough,” Tyrion cut in, more forcefully this time. “I’ve seen the granaries. Rats eat better than most of the smallfolk. We’re months from winter and days from bread riots.”

He looked to his father, expecting concern. He found only calculation.

“We are feeding a city meant for peace during a war,” Tywin said. “Peace has grown too fat.”

Tyrion’s fingers drummed on the table. “And when the fat run out, the lean turn to cannibals. Hunger makes for bad politics, Father. It also makes for worse mobs.”

Cersei looked ready to spit venom. “Then starve the traitors first.” As if treason could be measured by how empty one’s belly was. She didn’t see it—didn’t want to.

Varys smiled faintly, eyes like glass. “Starve them all, and none will be left to crown your son.”

Joffrey shoved back his chair and stood. “I won’t be mocked in my own council!” The boy’s face was flushed, his lips a tight, furious line. His voice cracked like a whip that had never struck fear.

“You aren’t mocked,” Tyrion said, coolly. “You’re ignored.” A beat of silence.

Tywin stood slowly, his chair scraping the stone floor with a growl. “This council is adjourned.”

And just like that, the meeting ended—not with solutions, but silence. Not with unity, but fracture.

As the others filed out, Tyrion remained in his chair for a moment, staring at the last of the wine in his goblet. All the power in the realm, and still they could not conjure grain from air. He thought of the smoke rising over Flea Bottom. Thought of one hundred thousand wildlings pressing against the Wall. Thought of winter.

If this was victory, he wondered, what would defeat look like?

Later, Tyrion and Jaime stood on a stone terrace overlooking the Blackwater, the city sprawled below like a slumbering beast. Smoke curled up from chimney pots and cookfires, but thinner than before. Too many hearths were cold now, too many bellies empty. The river reflected the dying light in bruised shades of gold and crimson, and the sky above it all was streaked with smoke from Flea Bottom and the faint haze of distant pyres.

The scent of ash and sour wine hung in the air.

“She still thinks the North will come,” Jaime said, his arms crossed over the gilded plates of his armor. His hair caught the sunset like burnished copper. “That they’ll march down and bend the knee.”

Tyrion glanced over his cup. “They won’t,” he said. “And they wouldn’t even if we asked politely.”

He leaned against the balustrade, one boot resting on the stone edge, the other tapping a slow rhythm. From here, he could see the great sept rising like a pale husk, empty of prayer. Bells no longer rang for peace. Only alarm.

“She thinks Sansa will still marry Joffrey,” Jaime added, almost with pity.

Tyrion laughed—short, dry, humorless. “She thinks lords are loyal, wolves are tame, and snow melts on command.”

He swirled the wine in his goblet again, though it had gone stale. Flecks of sediment clung to the rim. His tongue felt thick. How many more councils would end in silence and smoke?

Jaime grunted. “She thinks herself safe.”

“She thinks wrong,” Tyrion said.

For a moment, neither spoke. The wind off the river was cool, but not clean. It smelled of burnt grain and boiled leather, of waste dumped too long in the gutters. Somewhere below, a child was crying, or a cat—Tyrion couldn’t tell the difference.

“Kings rule with fear,” he murmured. “But even fear grows thin.”

The words drifted between them like mist. Jaime said nothing, but his eyes lingered on the horizon, where the smoke met the stars. Even he looked tired. Tired of war. Tired of this city. Tired of what they'd all become.

Tyrion drained the last of his wine and set the cup down on the stone. “We used to dream of power, Jaime. Of having a voice in halls like this.”

Jaime’s lips twitched. “And now?”

Tyrion turned toward the dark. “Now I just dream of silence. And bread.”

Chapter Text

Jon

The fires outside Castle Black still burned, fed by the bodies of the dead. Smoke coiled into the pale sky in thin, grey tendrils, each one trailing like a mourner’s veil. The flames snapped and spat as frozen limbs cracked within them, bones giving way with dull, wet pops. The snow had begun to fall again—not the harsh, stinging kind that came on the wind, but the soft, drifting flakes that masked the world in white and made death look clean.

Jon stood on the threshold of the yard, his boots crunching lightly through slush and scattered ash. Around him, the remnants of battle lay quiet: snapped arrows lay sprayed across the ground, scorched black cloaks frozen stiff in the yard, discarded shields half-buried like gravestones. The stench of it clung to everything—charred flesh, blood gone sour, and beneath it all, a wrongness in the air that no fire could burn away.

Shovels bit into the ground where it could still be pierced. The brothers of the Night’s Watch worked with the hollow rhythm of grief, their hands blistered and red, shoulders hunched against the cold. No one spoke. The dead did not need eulogies here—only fire.

Jon moved through the yard like a wraith. Some looked at him with something in their eyes, others tried not to. Ghost trailed at his heels, a white shadow in the smoke, ears pricked, red eyes wary. The direwolf had not made a sound since the sun rose, but Jon could feel tension coiled in his muscles. As if something unseen still lingered at the edge of the world.

The great hall loomed ahead, its doors ajar. Inside, torches guttered low in their iron sconces, casting flickering halos of gold against the stone. The warmth barely reached beyond the hearth.

The storm inside had taken shape not in thunder, but in voices—low and urgent, frayed with fear. Lords and commanders huddled around the long table, cloaks dripping meltwater, boots leaving ghostly footprints in the frost-glazed floor. They stood close, as if proximity could ward off the truth inked across the maps. As if the lines of black and red could be unmade by argument alone.

No one turned when Jon entered. Ghost padded beside him, silent as snow. All eyes were locked on the table, on the blotched and wrinkled map at its center—stained now with soot, ash, and a smear of something darker.

His father stood by the hearth, scroll in hand, motionless save for the tightening of his jaw. His knuckles had gone white where they gripped the parchment. The flames at his side danced, casting lines of shadow beneath his cheekbones, but he did not blink. He hadn’t moved since the raven came.

Benjen stood just behind, arms crossed tight across his chest, lips pressed in a thin, unmoving line. There was a tension in his stance, a readiness to strike—but nowhere to aim it. Jon didn’t speak.

Galbart Glover leaned in, his sleeve brushing a dark smear on the edge of the map. His hand trembled as he pointed, finger jabbing toward the rough markings that signified Winterfell and its surrounding terrain. “He’s boxed in,” he said, voice dry and frayed like old parchment.

Jon watched the man’s face—gaunt and unshaven, eyes rimmed red from too many sleepless nights. There was something hollow behind them, something that hadn't been there when last they spoke in the war council, before death came knocking at their door.

“He has six thousand men,” muttered Lord Karstark, arms crossed and jaw tight. “And ten thousand come against him. Five thousand inside Winterfell, Dustin and Bolton’s treachery, and now five thousand krakens hammering his rear.”

The words struck like hammerblows. Jon’s breath caught, but he stayed silent.

Dacey Mormont’s voice was a low growl. “And Brynden Tully marches from the south, but too slow. He’ll never reach them in time.”

Her hands were fists, knuckles white where they gripped the fur-lined hem of her cloak. Jon remembered her laughing once, years ago, when Arya spilled wine at the harvest feast. There was no laughter now.

“If the Ironborn cut him off, it’s done,” said Harrion Karstark. “We’ll lose the Young Wolf.”

“Aye,” muttered Lord Hornwood darkly. “And the wolflings with him. Gods forgive us.”

A gust of wind hissed through a crack in the stone wall, rattling the torches. Jon edged closer to the fire, drawn not by its warmth but by the need to stand steady as the weight of what they said settled in his chest. His breath fogged in soft bursts. No one had seen him enter, or if they had, they no longer saw him. He was a ghost again, unseen, unspoken. They talked of Robb as if he were already ash, and Bran and Rickon as if they were names on a gravestone.

“They planned it,” Benjen said. His voice was low, almost a growl, and his eyes glinted in the firelight. “Dustin and Bolton keep him pinned. The krakens come from behind. Robb’s caught in a vice.”

The word lodged in Jon’s mind like a blade.

“A perfect trap,” Hornwood muttered again, softer now. “And we opened the gate.”

A silence followed, heavy and raw. It was the kind of silence that came not from peace but from grief too loud for words.

At last, his father folded the scroll in his hands. The parchment crinkled, stiff and bloodstained. His fingers shook—just slightly, but enough that Jon noticed. Enough to unmoor something inside him.

“They flew banners of peace,” Benjen said, and now his voice was bitter with ash. “They said they'd hold Moat Cailin in our name.”

“And I believed them,” Ned murmured.

He didn’t look up. His voice cracked—not with fury, but with something older, deeper. Not a lord’s anger, but a father’s regret.

“I left five thousand men with them. I trusted Roose. Barbrey. I…” He faltered, and in the pause, the fire popped behind him.

Jon had seen his father hurt before—in battle, in war council, in the godswood with wounds not of the flesh. But never like this. Never hollowed. It was as if the betrayal had carved something out of him.

“They smiled as they bent the knee,” Ned said softly. “Smiled and counted the hours.”

His eyes were far away now, fixed on something Jon couldn’t see. Ghost stepped closer to Jon’s heel, ears twitching.

“They always hated us,” said Dacey Mormont, her voice rough. “Lady Barbrey never forgave Lord Stark for not bringing her husband’s bones. And Bolton’s oath was always poison.”

“I should’ve seen it,” his father whispered. “Seven gods and old, I should have seen it.”

Guilt curled through the words like frost over glass.

“No one saw,” Galbart Glover said, his voice like gravel. “We were looking north. Fighting dead things.”

“They betrayed us while we bled,” muttered Ser Helman Tallhart, his face shadowed by the firelight.

“They betrayed him,” his father said. This time, his voice cut like cold steel. He lifted his head at last, and Jon saw what had returned to his eyes—not sorrow, but resolve. “My son.”

Jon looked around the room and saw only panic—panic dressed in mailed sleeves and noble words, wearing the mask of strategy. Lords leaned over the map, voices raised, parchment rustling, tankards forgotten. But their plans were slow things—deliberate, cautious, meant for campaigns fought with ravens and riderless scouts, not for the firestorm that had already begun.

They spoke of marching south, of reinforcing the rear, of sending word to the Riverlords, to the Vale. But all of it moved at the pace of tired horses and council chambers. None of it would matter by the time it reached Robb. Every delay was another twist of the knife already lodged deep in his brother’s back.

Six thousand men. Against ten.

He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and the war map was replaced by memory. Robb, grinning as he sparred in the yard, sweat in his curls and snow on his lips. Bran laughing from the rafters of the stables, Arya leaping barefoot through the snow, Rickon riding atop Shaggydog like a prince on a monstrous steed. They’d been children once. Untouched. Whole. Now…

Now they were pawns on a blood-soaked board, scattered and hunted. No, Not pawns, Jon thought suddenly.

Beside him, Ghost whined—a low, warning sound, as if he too felt the shift in the air. Jon’s eyes drifted toward the high window at the end of the hall. Snow gusted past it in curls, silvering the world beyond in white silence. Somewhere out there, in the wide grey sky above the Frostfangs, Winter stirred.

The words came unbidden, low, certain. “I can fly,” Jon said quietly.

The room stilled. Even the fire seemed to falter, the logs shifting with a soft hiss.

Ned turned to him, brow creasing, lips parting. “What?”

“I can fly,” Jon repeated, louder now, the words more sure in his mouth. “You speak of marching days, of weeks on broken roads. But I can reach him in hours. Maybe less.”

The lords blinked. Some frowned. Karstark scoffed, folding his arms with the air of a man who had buried too many sons. “You’d go alone?”

“I wouldn’t be alone,” Jon said. His voice was calm now, like ice over a deep river. “I have fire. Winter and I. He’s fast. Faster than any raven. If I go now, I can strike before the krakens do. Burn their sails. Break their charge. Robb needs relief—and I’m the only one who can give it.”

There was a pause, broken only by the hiss of a torch and the muted groan of the walls under the weight of ice and war.

Benjen’s voice came next, rough but quiet. “One dragon. One storm. Could be enough to turn the tide. Or enough to make them flinch.”

“No,” Ned said. The word lashed like a whip. “No—do you hear what you’re saying? You’ve never flown a dragon.”

Jon glanced sideways, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “First time for everything.”

But Ned did not smile. “This is not a jest.”

“I know,” Jon said softly. “That’s why I have to go.”

Glover stepped forward, his arm still bound from the last battle, eyes narrowed in wary disbelief. “You truly believe this creature will obey you? Carry you across the realm and into fire?”

Jon nodded. “He already has.”

“And if it turns against you?” asked Dacey Mormont, her voice a whipcord taut with doubt, but not disbelief. Her eyes searched his, sharp as a falcon’s.

“Then I’ll burn,” Jon said. “But not before I try.”

The hall fell still again. The crackling hearth, the winter wind beyond the stones, the shifting of armor—none of it reached through the thick silence. Jon stood still in its center, heart beating fast but steady.

Ned stepped toward him, eyes dark, voice thin with strain. “You don’t know what waits down there. Ten thousand enemies. Bolt and blade. And dragons die, Jon. Even the old ones.”

Jon met his gaze. “And brothers die. Sons die. If I stay, I might as well dig his grave myself.”

Ned’s lips parted as if to speak, but no words came. The lines on his face deepened, and for a moment he looked older than winter. He didn’t look like Lord Stark anymore. He looked like a father standing at the edge of a choice he could not bear to make.

Ghost pressed closer to Jon’s leg, a silent, pale sentinel.

All around them, the lords of the North shifted. There were no cheers. No cries of approval. Just quiet reckoning. Just the grinding of old gears, finally turning toward something new. Glover grunted—grudging, but real. Dacey crossed her arms but did not object. The Smalljon cracked his knuckles with a grin that held no mirth, only the heat of possibility.

“You raised me to do what’s right,” Jon said quietly, “Let me do it.” And no one stopped him. Not even his father.

Later, as the lords and commanders dispersed one by one, Jon remained behind in the hall’s dying quiet. Footsteps faded. Voices fell to echoes. The fire had burned low, casting only dull gold along the stone floor. Ghost sat by the door, watchful.

Jon stood near the narrow window slit, staring out toward the snowbound woods beyond the Wall. The trees were black against the white, skeletal and still. Somewhere out there, wind shrieked unseen through the pines. And somewhere beyond that, a war waited for him.

He felt his father approach before he heard the steps—slow, heavy, weighted not with armor but something older. Ned Stark didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was quieter than Jon had ever heard it.

“You shouldn’t do this,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to.”

Jon didn’t answer at first. His fingers brushed the frost-rimmed stone beneath the window, cold enough to bite. His breath clouded in front of him. He thought of Robb’s voice across a fire, of Bran’s laughter, of the way Rickon would drag his cloak through the snow to chase after the direwolves. Thought of all the things that might vanish if he did nothing.

He kept his gaze outward. “You told them the truth,” Jon said. “About who I am. And still, they follow me.”

“They follow hope,” his father said. “Not blood.” That made Jon turn.

He met his father’s eyes—those familiar grey eyes that had always looked at him with more weight than the world seemed to see. His father had aged ten years in the past ten days. There was sorrow in his face… but pride, too, buried deep.

“Then let me give them hope,” Jon said.

A silence settled between them, vast and aching. Jon heard only the wind outside, the faint creak of timbers above, the soft rustle of Ghost shifting by the wall. It would be easier, he thought, if his father had raged. If he had forbidden it outright. But Ned Stark’s silence was never hollow. It was full of meaning.

When his father spoke again, it was barely more than breath. “I was meant to protect you.”

Jon felt the words strike something deep. They weren’t meant for argument. They were grief. He stepped closer, lowered his voice.

“You did,” he said. “Every day of my life.”

They embraced then—no ceremony, no pageantry. Just the press of worn leather and fur, the strength in Ned Stark’s arms still solid, still familiar. But colder now. And tighter, like he was afraid to let go.

Jon didn’t want to let go either. But the moment passed. They pulled apart, and his father’s hand lingered at his shoulder, rough and steady.

“Fly swift,” Ned said. “And burn bright.”

Jon gave a nod, jaw tight. He turned without another word, cloak sweeping behind him. There was nothing else to say. Only to fly.

The dragon was waiting atop the tower. Winter crouched in the shadow of the battlements, still and watchful as nightfall. His scales shimmered black in the dying light, with glimmers of red flickering beneath his wings like embers beneath coal. He didn’t move—he waited. Snow melted around his talons in hissing puddles, steam curling from his nostrils with each breath. Even at rest, he radiated danger. Power. Fire, barely caged.

Jon’s boots echoed as he climbed the winding steps, each one a heartbeat heavier than the last. The wind had teeth up here. It bit his cheeks raw and dragged at his cloak like it meant to pull him backward, away from the edge. Storm clouds rolled thick above, roiling like smoke in the sky. Always south. Always toward danger. He didn’t stop.

At the top, someone waited. Maester Aemon stood beside a brazier, its flame flickering weakly against the cold. The old man’s robes hung off him like sails gone slack. Fur lined the edges, too large for his thin shoulders. He didn’t look at the dragon. He was waiting for Jon.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Aemon said, not turning. “The pull. The flame in the marrow.”

Jon hesitated. His breath caught on the chill. But he said the truth: “Yes.”

Aemon turned, blind eyes lifting toward the sound of his voice—though in that moment, Jon felt as if the man could see straight through him. Through skin, through doubt, into the furnace buried beneath bone and blood.

“You were born of winter,” the maester said, “but the fire was always there.”

Jon stepped closer, boots crunching frost on stone. His eyes flicked from the old man to the beast beside them. Winter shifted, wings rustling faintly. Jon could feel the heat of him now. Like standing beside a forge just shy of flame.

“He’s grown,” Jon said. “Too fast.”

“Describe him to me,” Aemon asked. His voice was paper-thin beneath the wind.

“Black,” Jon answered. “Deep as coal, but with veins of red near the wings. His eyes… gold. Bright. Not natural. And big. Bigger than he should be. The size of two horses, maybe more.”

He paused, glancing toward the beast’s folded wings—wide enough to blot the moon if spread. Jon thought of the first time he’d seen him take flight. Thought of that moment again now, and felt the weight of what he was about to do settle deeper.

Aemon bowed his head. “He should not be so large. Not yet.”

Jon gave a faint nod. “Jojen thinks it’s the magic of Greywater Watch. Something old. Wild. He said the castle sings to old blood.”

“And old fire,” Aemon echoed softly. “Perhaps the world sings to him too.”

The maester took a halting step forward. Jon reached for him instinctively, guiding his thin hand as he approached Winter’s snout. The dragon didn’t flinch. He lowered his head with slow, grave grace—steam spilling from his nostrils, warm enough to fog the maester’s robes.

Aemon’s hand pressed to the scales—rough, warm, alive. His fingers trembled. His voice broke.

“I’ve never touched one,” the old man whispered. “Not once. All my life, I dreamed… but I was born too late.”

Jon watched him in silence. There was reverence in the way Aemon’s hand stayed on the dragon’s snout, as if afraid that letting go would break the spell. As if this moment made the long years worth enduring.

“I heard their wings in my sleep as a boy,” Aemon murmured. “Read of their fire. I thought the line was ended. That we were ash, not flame.” A breath. “And yet here you are.”

Jon lowered his gaze. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only my second time flying him. The first was barely more than a leap.”

“You’ll learn,” Aemon said. “Targaryens do not choose dragons. Dragons choose us.”

Jon didn’t answer. But he looked at Winter, who was watching him now. Those gold eyes fixed on him not like an animal on its rider—but something older, deeper. Equal.

He thought, suddenly, of Daenerys across the sea. A girl he had never met, and wonder if he ever would. A name whispered in fevered dreams. Did her dragons grow this fast? Were they fire made flesh, like this? He imagined her reaching out across oceans with a will like his own, riding fire and fury, chasing the same storm. Was she thinking of him too? Of course not she did not even know of him.

Aemon turned his blind face to the sky. “Go, Jon. Go fast, go high, go well.”

Jon laid his hand against Winter’s scales—felt the pulse beneath them. Hot. Strong. Alive. “It’s time,” he whispered.

The dragon answered with a low rumble that shook the tower beneath their feet. No saddle. No reins. Just trust and fire and wind.

Jon climbed his back—hands firm, heart thrumming like a war drum. Winter shifted beneath him, wings stretching in anticipation. He turned once, just once. Maester Aemon was still standing there, one hand lifted, tears slipping silently down his cheeks. Not sadness. Not fear. Wonder. Jon faced the storm. And they flew.

They rose like a shadow reborn. The wind hit him like a hammer, screaming past his ears, biting through furs and flesh alike. Snow tore at his face, needles of ice against skin, but Jon didn’t flinch. His hands were knotted in the ridge of Winter’s neck, the warmth of the dragon pulsing through him like a second heartbeat. Each wingbeat was a thunderclap, each surge of muscle a challenge to the storm.

Below, the world fell away. The North stretched in silence and sorrow—ribbons of frozen river snaking through the woods, forests black with frost, rooftops half-collapsed under the weight of snow and time. Villages lay abandoned, crooked chimneys puffing no smoke, gardens swallowed by ice. The scars of war were written across the land in ash and silence.

Jon felt them all. Felt every mile like a memory. Somewhere down there rode his brother, fighting for breath beneath the crush of steel and betrayal. Somewhere, blades were drawn in his name. Somewhere, the last howl of the direwolf threatened to be silenced.

And still the dragon rose. The clouds broke around them like surf, swallowing Winter whole for a heartbeat before he burst through again—black wings stretched wide, smoke trailing from his jaws. He was flying straight into the gale, as if daring the storm to stop him.

Jon did not look back. Winter was already here. And fire had to answer.

Chapter Text

Robb                                                                 

The snow came without end. It blanketed the world in silence, falling from skies the color of old bone, muting screams, cloaking corpses. From dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, it drifted and piled, a white shroud over a field gone black with ash and blood. It dusted tents and spears, horses and helms. Even the dead, half-buried in frozen mud, looked peaceful beneath it. But Robb Stark knew better. There was no peace left. Not here. Not now.

He sat his horse beneath the battered banner of the direwolf, watching death creep closer with each gust of wind. The snow didn’t sting anymore. His skin had grown numb to it, just as his men had grown numb to hope.

Before him loomed Winterfell. His home once. Now a fortress cloaked in enemy sigils—the flayed man of House Bolton, pale pink and red against the dark stone, and the crowned axes of House Dustin, stiff and spiteful in the wind. They hung from towers like butcher’s flags, snapping when the wind shifted, cracking like whips across his conscience.

He had dreamt of returning to these walls since the day he rode with his Father. He’d imagined the gate flung open, his brothers running to meet him, Maester Luwin weeping with joy. But there was no joy here. Only smoke curling from shattered ramparts, and fire flickering behind arrow slits. The heart of the North had become its bleeding wound.

Behind him, the camp sprawled in sagging lines—rows of tents half-collapsed under the weight of snow, men huddled in cloaks too thin for winter, sharpening swords they could barely lift anymore. Smoke rose from cookfires like dying breaths. The scent of boiled oats and old leather clung to the air. But food was running short. Wood, shorter still. They burned shields now, broken bows, anything that would catch flame.

And still, it wasn’t enough. They had come with thousands. Proud men of the west coast, sons of the Rills and the Flint Cliffs, lords and bannermen who had answered the direwolf’s call. Now only six thousand remained. Less, if you counted the sick, the wounded, the fading.

They looked to him still. Waiting. Hoping. As if the boy they had followed from Moat Cailin might somehow conjure victory out of thin air. As if the Young Wolf could still outfight betrayal and starvation and frost.

But no raven came from Castle Black. No banners rose from the south. No gods stirred in their woods. Robb clenched his jaw and turned from the walls. There’s no way in. And no way out.

The tent was low and smoky, its canvas walls stained with soot and old blood, flapping faintly in the bitter wind. A single brazier burned at its center, its coals glowing a dull orange, too feeble to fight the creeping cold. Smoke coiled from it like a dying breath, and the warmth it offered stopped a foot away. Robb barely felt it.

Snow clung to every man who entered, turning cloaks to sodden blankets, soaking boots until the floor was a churn of slush and mud. Even here, under canvas, winter found them.

Robb stood at the head of the table, a scarred slab of wood hacked from some tree long ago. It was covered with parchment maps curled at the corners, inked lines now stained with wet bootprints and the occasional smear of blood. Carved markers marked enemy positions—flayed men, krakens, axes—and their own wolf heads stood clustered in a tight crescent. They hadn’t moved in days. Nor had he.

He kept his hands behind his back, shoulders squared, but his eyes stung from sleeplessness, and his legs ached from hours standing in this same spot. Command, he had learned, was less the shouting of orders than the quiet, crushing weight of waiting.

“My lady,” he said as Maege Mormont strode in, her mail still clinking from the wind outside. “Eddard. Daryn. Ser Wendel.”

They nodded in turn, but none bowed. Not anymore. These were not men with time for formality. They were the last of his council now—worn, frayed, but unbroken. Mormont's armor was dented, her face drawn. Eddard Karstark still bore the sour expression of a man cheated of vengeance. Daryn Hornwood paced behind them like a caged wolf. Ser Wendel Manderly looked as if he hadn’t slept since last moon.

Mormont didn’t waste breath. “The men are restless. And cold. We’ve burned half our stores just keeping them alive.”

Her voice was a rasp of salt and gravel, but it was truth. They had chopped every tree within reach, stripped wagons for kindling, broken barrels to feed the flames. Still, the cold pressed closer, a beast gnawing at their bones.

Karstark’s gauntlet struck the table with a sound like thunder. “We can’t wait. We break through the Ironborn before their reinforcements land, then turn to smash the gate.”

Bold. Always bold. But Robb saw the tremble in the man’s jaw, the sheen of desperation behind his scowl. They were all past bravado now. This was the talk of drowning men grasping at stones.

“They’ll be waiting,” said Ser Wendel. His cheeks were flushed, but not from heat. Fever, maybe. Or fear. “Bolton’s sorties have tested our every flank. They know we’re bleeding.”

Robb folded his arms. His fingers ached with cold. “And if we press the gates, the krakens fall on our back. The hammer and the anvil, only we’re the ones being crushed.”

That was the trap. They were the center of a noose tightening from two sides. The Ironborn in the rear, Bolton and Dustin before them. Either way, death.

“They planned this,” muttered Daryn Hornwood. He paced the tent’s edge like a ghost in a cage, the mud sucking at his boots. “Bolton waited until the krakens struck. Then sprung the trap. Seven save us.”

“Seven?” Maege Mormont spat onto the floor. “If any gods still watch the North, they do it with frozen eyes and closed fists.”

Silence fell. The wind howled beyond the canvas like wolves mourning the dead. Somewhere out in the night, a man screamed. Then silence again.

Robb looked back to the map. He traced the lines with his eyes—routes that led nowhere, supply trails already lost, reinforcements that would never come. The Wall had gone quiet. The Riverlords sent word but they would reach them too late. No Tully banners crested the southern hills. No birds. No fire. Only the black gate and a sea of enemies.

He could feel it—his command unraveling like a seam tugged loose. And all he could do was stare at the table and try not to show the weight pressing down on his shoulders.

And then his eyes flicked toward the far side of the tent. Meera Reed sat in the shadows, legs tucked beneath her, arms crossed over her chest. Her face was pale, drawn, but calm in the way a still pond might be calm—hiding something deep beneath. Snow clung to her cloak in damp patches that had yet to melt, and her boots were crusted with ice. She looked half-drowned, half-dreamed.

She had said little since her arrival, since the desperate ride through snow and darkness that had brought her to his camp like a ghost sent from the haunted past. And yet her presence filled the space louder than any warhorn. She didn’t pace. She didn’t interrupt. But she watched—everything, everyone—with the eyes of a hunter. Quiet, focused, unblinking.

He remembered the moment she had ridden into camp. Her horse had been lathered with foam, ribs heaving beneath torn tack, hooves slick with blood and slush. She hadn’t dismounted so much as fallen forward into his arms, breath ragged, lips cracked. Her cloak was ripped where branches had clawed her, and her skin had been raw with windburn. And still, she’d spoken before any healer could tend her—her voice hoarse, her message clear. She had told them of Bran and Rickon’s capture. Of the massacre at Moat Cailin. Of Dustin and Bolton's betrayal. Of blood spilled in the snow, and a kingdom cracking down the spine.

And because of her, they had turned east narrowly avoiding ruin. She had not come for glory. If not for her, we’d have walked into that trap blind. Robb thought.

Robb’s gaze met hers now, and though neither of them spoke, he felt the unspoken weight between them. Not fear. Not despair. Something steadier. Like ice beneath the river’s surface. Like a bowstring drawn but not loosed.

He wanted to say something. Anything. But words failed, so he only inclined his head, and she returned the gesture with the smallest nod.

The council dispersed soon after, their strategies stillborn. Lords muttered to themselves as they left, some too proud to admit defeat, others too tired to pretend they hadn’t already. Their footsteps faded into the howl of the storm. But Robb remained.

He lingered over the map table like a man reading his own sentence. He didn’t know what he was searching for—some overlooked path, a line he hadn’t drawn, a sign. Anything. As if the board might shift by sheer force of will.

He didn’t hear Meera return, only felt it, like the way one feels the first flake of snow on bare skin. When he looked up, she was there, near the flap, watching him through the storm-dark.

“You didn’t speak,” he said, not turning yet.

“There wasn’t much to say,” she replied. Her voice had the same stillness as before—soft but firm, a knife beneath wool. “They all know the truth. They’re just trying to fight it.”

He nodded once. “And what truth is that?”

“That we’re losing,” she said. “Slowly. Sharply. Like frostbite.”

He gave a bitter, tired laugh. “You have a gift for comfort.”

“I didn’t come to comfort you.”

That made him turn. She stood with her back straight, chin lifted, snow melting in strands of her dark hair. A knife hung from her belt, and her boots were still damp. She looked small beside the tent pole, but unshaken, unmovable. He had seen grown men break under less—lords twice her age, knights with shining armor and golden spurs. She had walked through a storm of blood and snow and brought truth with her, carried like a blade.

He studied her in silence. “You’ve barely rested since Winterfell.”

“I don’t sleep well.”

“Because of what you saw?”

Her eyes dropped to the map. She didn’t answer.

Robb stepped around the table, his voice lowering. “They took my brothers,” he said quietly. “Bran and Rickon. And I— I wasn’t there. I left them in good faith, with men I trusted. And now they’re… trapped in my place. In my home.”

Her voice didn’t soften, but there was something gentler beneath the edge. “You can still get them back. They’re alive. I saw them with my own eyes. Bolton and Dustin want them breathing. Hostages have more value than corpses.”

He swallowed. “And if they’re used to make me yield? If I break Winterfell and lose them in the process?”

Meera’s voice was steel wrapped in frost. “Then you strike fast, hard, and true—before they can use them at all.”

Her gaze burned into him now. No hesitation. No fear. He stepped closer. She didn’t move away.

“You risked everything to bring us warning,” he said. “You saved six thousand men. You saved me.”

“I saved the North,” she said quickly, eyes flicking aside.

“No,” Robb said, firmer now. “You saved me.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full. Full of breath not taken. Words not said. He saw it then, the thing neither of them had spoken of since she’d arrived. Not just gratitude. Not duty. Something else, raw and fragile and blooming in the heart of ruin.

Their eyes locked, and the tent seemed to shrink around them, the air suddenly warmer despite the snow pressing at the canvas. She didn’t step back. And he didn’t want her to.

For the first time in weeks, something warm stirred in his chest—not fire, but the faint glow of something still alive beneath the frost. It was dangerous, this closeness. Reckless. But so was everything else now. In the face of defeat, truth had a way of surfacing.

Then came the sound. A low, distant blast, long and mournful, like a horn blown by the dead. Robb froze. Outside, the horns began to blow in earnest—three long blasts, drawn from the lungs of giants. The call of attack. The call of blood.

The moment between them shattered. Robb was already moving before the final echo faded, his cloak sweeping behind him like a banner torn loose. Meera was beside him, spear in hand, her jaw tight, her eyes sharp once more.

He burst from the tent into chaos. The world outside had turned to war.

Snow fell in thick curtains, heavier now, smothering the night in silence even as the storm of battle began. Campfires hissed as wind and sleet rushed over the ridge. Shouts rose everywhere. Steel rang out. Horses screamed. The canvas of tents flapped like wings torn in a gale. And still the horns blew.

Runners sprinted through the slush, boots slipping in churned mud and frozen blood. Men scrambled to don armor, to grab spears and swords, to find their place in a battle they hadn’t been ready for.

Robb drew his sword, the familiar weight a comfort even as frost kissed the hilt. Ice crackled along the blade as it met the wind.

“They’re here,” Karstark growled, suddenly beside him, sword already drawn and steaming. His breath fogged in the air like smoke from a dying fire.

From the rear line, hooves pounded the frozen earth. Scouts came galloping in, mud and snow flinging from their cloaks. One shouted breathlessly as he dismounted.

“Ironborn! From the woods near the river! Five thousand, maybe more. They’re hitting hard!”

“Positions!” Robb roared. “Archers to the north ridge, spears to the east bank! Form the shield wall along the center line—now!”

His voice cut like a sword through the din. Men moved. Slowly, clumsily, but they moved. He pushed through the chaos, armor clinking, snow clinging to his boots. The wind tore at his face, but the fire in his blood pushed back the cold. And then it came.

The Ironborn struck like a black wave rolling in from the riverbanks—howling men with salt in their beards and madness in their eyes. Their axes gleamed wetly in the firelight. They charged from the trees, battle-hardened reavers in leather and chain, crashing through the outer sentries like a tide of steel and blood.

Greyjoy banners rose behind them—golden krakens writ in shadow, pulsing in the wind like dark omens. They fell on the rear flank first, smashing through supply lines, cutting down horses still tethered, slashing tents as men stumbled half-dressed into the snow. Flames erupted as torches met canvas. The scent of burning wool and flesh filled the air.

Robb fought his way up the ridge, each breath a burst of fire in his lungs. He struck down a reaver with a hooked axe, parried another, then buried his blade in a man’s throat with a roar. Around him, the chaos surged.

Karstark fought with grim ferocity, his blade hacking with brutal rhythm. Mormont’s voice rang from the front lines like thunder. “Hold the bloody line!”

They tried. Gods, they tried. But the Ironborn were only half of it. From the front, the great black gates of Winterfell groaned. Then swung wide. Like a mouth opening for a feast. And from that mouth poured death.

Bolton’s men rode first, pale armor glinting beneath the torches, flayed banners whipping like flails in the wind. Behind them came the Dustin’s riders, their spears low, voices high and wild. They screamed as they charged, not for glory or fear, but for hate. Hate given form. The pincer had closed.

Robb saw it unfold in moments—the flanking collapse, the panic spreading through the line. Ironborn from the back. Bolton and Dustin from the front.

His voice tore the air. “Shields! To me! To me!”

What was left of his center surged toward his call, but they were too slow. Too few. Arrows rained down from the walls. Screams split the dark.

Ser Wendel Manderly was the first to fall, a blade carving open his brow beneath his helm. He crumpled with a groan, blood soaking his furs. Hornwood’s horse reared, panicked, and bolted into the throng, vanishing into the chaos.

Robb fought like a man possessed, his sword flashing in arcs of silver and blood, but the dread had settled in his bones.

We can’t hold.

 He turned, heart hammering, trying to find Meera. She was there. Near the command tent, standing firm, spear gripped tight in white-knuckled hands, her braid whipped loose by the wind. She wasn’t shouting. She wasn’t fleeing. Her eyes were fixed on the storm behind the hills.

And then he saw it. The first flame.

A flicker in the dark sky—orange and crimson, not from any campfire or torch, but from the heavens. His breath caught. And then came the sound. A roar, vast and terrible, rolling across the battlefield like thunder made flesh. It shook the ground beneath his boots. He turned his eyes upward, toward the snow-swollen clouds. Something moved in the sky. Something black. Something burning.

The roar came again, louder this time. Not a horn, nor the bellow of any beast known to men. It was deeper—older. The cry of something primal, something from before names. It did not sound like battle. It sounded like the world itself had cracked.

Robb froze mid-stride. Around him, the battlefield staggered. Steel stilled. Blades, mid-swing, hovered in hesitation. Men turned their eyes skyward. The Ironborn halted, shields half-raised, uncertain whether to press or flee. Even the warhorses shrank back, their snorts sharp with fear.

The storm above churned in a sickly whirl of black and grey, snow swirling like torn feathers. And through it, something moved. A shadow. Vast. Winged. It split the clouds with impossible wingspan, blotting out moonlight and smoke alike. For a heartbeat, Robb thought it might have been a hallucination born of blood loss and desperation.

But then came the fire again. It fell like the hammer of a god—golden-red, searing, absolute. It did not flicker or dance. It consumed. A roaring torrent washed across the Ironborn flank, melting ice and armor alike. Men screamed as kraken banners went up in flames, their war cries drowned in their death wails. Siege towers turned to skeletons of charred timber, folding in on themselves like paper in a hearth.

And then a second wave—more precise, more merciless. It arced across the front lines where Dustin’s cavalry surged, cutting through horses and riders as if they were parchment. Flames curled through the air like living things, devouring everything they touched. The flayed man banner ignited in an instant, curling and blackening until it was nothing but ash.

The shadow above turned. Wings beat once—massive, thunderous—and the wind of it knocked men to their knees. The beast circled overhead like death incarnate. Its body was midnight, scaled and sinewed, and from its chest poured steam and smoke like a forge run wild. Its eyes were molten gold.

“Gods above…” Daryn Hornwood whispered behind Robb. “What is it?”

But Robb did not answer. He could not speak. His jaw had gone slack, his voice vanished with the wind. His heart pounded in his ears, louder than drums. He knew. Not what. Who.

The dragon shrieked a sound so vast it split the air Horses reared. Tents collapsed. Trees swayed. Fire still curled at the corners of its lips, smoldering from deep within. And on its back rode a figure cloaked in grey. He sat tall, sword strapped to his hip, hair wild with wind. The cold did not touch him. The smoke parted for him. Jon. Robb’s mouth moved, but no sound came.

It was like seeing a ghost. Not the boy he’d grown up besides, but a legend made flesh. A man reborn in fire and storm. The Ironborn, so savage a moment before, broke. Some screamed and turned. Others dropped their weapons and ran. Some fell to their knees in prayer or surrender. Bolton’s men, caught between fire and flight, shrieked in terror. The rest stood frozen, swords limp in their hands. They had no word for this.

Robb took a step forward, dazed. His sword hung forgotten at his side. The blood on his face had gone cold.

He felt Meera come to his side, silent as ever. Her voice was quiet, carried on the wind. “He came for you,” she said.

Robb swallowed hard, the words catching in his throat. “He flew for me,” he said.

And in his chest, beneath the numbness and soot and blood, something stirred again—hope, like flame in winter.

Chapter Text

The Loyal Servant

Smoke curled above the walls of Winterfell, thick and bitter as grief, curling in tendrils toward the bruised sky. Maester Luwin stood in the eastern tower, his breath misting the glass as he looked out over the ruin. The last tongues of flame guttered on the far ridge, licking at scorched tents and broken siege towers like dying ghosts. Below, the battlefield was a charnel field—Ironborn hacked apart mid-charge, flayed riders twisted in blackened armor, Northern men collapsed mid-run, arrows still jutting from their backs. And something else. Ash.

It blanketed the corpses like snow, only darker—grittier. It filled the crevices of stone and crunched beneath boots. The dragon’s breath had not just killed—it had rewritten the ground.

Luwin had seen fires before. Blazes from siege, from torch, from spite. But this… this had been a cleansing. A rebuke carved into the earth.

Below, the castle reeled. Screams still echoed in the inner bailey—not the screams of battle, but the higher, sharper cries of disbelief and terror. The stables had broken. Half the horses had bolted, the rest thrashed and kicked, maddened by heat and shadow. The soot-streaked walls still trembled. On the ramparts, men darted like ants in a storm, shouting orders no one truly heard. Banners that had flown only hours before—those pale flayed men, those bronze-crowned axes—had been scorched to curls of black cloth and fluttering ash.

Luwin closed his eyes, placing a trembling hand against the stone. It was warm. Not just from the fires. From the memory of the heat. As if the rock itself had not yet finished remembering.

The air reeked of scorched hair and melting steel. Somewhere, a woman wept. Somewhere else, men barked commands with shaking voices.

A dragon had descended on Winterfell.

Luwin’s fingers pressed tighter to the stone. For a heartbeat, he imagined another age—a city of Valyria burning under moonlight, dragons sweeping low over towers, fire in their bellies and prophecy in their wake. But this was no ancient vision. This was now. This was real.

He had not seen Jon Snow up close—only the silhouette, high and black against the snow-laced sky. And then the flame, golden and terrible, pouring from a mouth lined with shadowed fangs. But he knew. They all knew. The boy who once mended scrolls in this very rookery had returned. Not as a ward. Not as a bastard. As a storm made flesh.

From the godswood, a thousand crows burst into the air at once, blackening the canopy before vanishing into the sky like spilled ink. As if the old gods themselves had exhaled.

Luwin turned from the window at last. His robes whispered across the stone floor, frayed hems dragging through soot. Above him, the rookery stirred—ravens shifting in their cages, unsettled, croaking half-formed warnings in the dark.

He had penned no messages. His inkwell sat full, his parchment blank. To whom, he thought, would I even write?

Every lord he once reported to was now either a thousand miles away, or watching the sky for fire. And what words could carry what had happened here? What words could explain it?

He reached for a quill, then stopped. The fire hadn’t touched the castle walls directly, but it had scorched deeper than stone.

“Winterfell has fallen to fire,” he whispered. Then after a moment, quieter still— “But still stands.” For now.

They gathered in the great hall, though “gathered” felt too neat a word for it. They clustered like survivors after a shipwreck—wet, shaken, silent, but too proud to admit they were drowning. The stone chamber still bore the scars of battle. Black scorch marks marred the walls. Chunks of timber had fallen from the ceiling near the northern arch. The great oaken doors stood ajar, as if no one dared close them, in case the fire returned.

No banners flew. The flayed man of House Bolton and the crowned axes of House Dustin had been torched in the fighting—scorched into curled black rags that clung to the iron hooks in tatters, flapping in silent surrender whenever the wind stirred. No one had tried to raise them again. Perhaps no one dared.

Maester Luwin stood at the edge of the chamber, half-shadowed beneath the mezzanine. He had always kept to the margins, the silent eye in the storm. Now more than ever, he knew his role—to listen, to watch, to remember.

Lady Barbrey Dustin paced before the long table, her boots snapping against stone like whip cracks. Her furs hung askew from one shoulder, tangled in soot and sweat. Her braid, once so neatly coiled, had come partly undone, strands of gray streaking wild across her brow. There was a tremor in her hand when it rose to wipe her cheek. She was afraid.

“A dragon,” she spat, voice sharp as a broken fang. “You all saw it. Black as night. Fire in its breath. It was him. Jon Snow.”

She whirled toward Roose Bolton as if blaming him might undo what had happened. Luwin saw the desperation in her eyes, barely masked by outrage.

“I knew there was something wrong about that boy,” she hissed. “Always brooding, always watching. But I thought, gods help me, I thought he was Brandon’s bastard. Not… not this.”

Roose Bolton did not flinch. He had not blinked in some time. His pale eyes fixed on nothing and everything at once, unreadable as a frozen lake. His gloved fingers remained steepled before him, unmoving, untouched by panic.

“Still a bastard,” Ramsay muttered from the corner, grinning like a wolf with a belly full of blood. “Just a hotter one now, eh?”

No one laughed. Not even Barbrey. She slammed a goblet down onto the table, the clang echoing through the stone like a thrown gauntlet.

“He burned the field! Burned two hundred of my riders where they stood! And we have the Stark boys, why didn’t it stop him?”

She said it like a mother robbed of children, though Luwin knew the truth. She had no love for Stark blood.

Roose’s voice came slow, cold, and measured. “Because the dragon is not trained. Nor is Jon Snow. That was not strategy. That was rage.”

Barbrey stepped forward, voice rising with disbelief. “Rage that burned half our strength.”

“Rage that’s coming back,” Ramsay said, and there was hunger in his voice. Something unhinged. “We should flay them. The boys. Flay them, hang what’s left from the walls. Send the dragon a message.” He said it like a jest. But his eyes gleamed.

Roose finally turned his head. Slow. Precise. “If we flay the wolves, we lose what little we have left,” he said. “While they live, we have some protection.”

Barbrey stared at him, uncomprehending. “And when that fire comes inside the walls?” Her voice faltered. Even saying it aloud made it more real.

Roose looked away from her—looked to Luwin. “How long has it been,” he asked softly, “since Winterfell last saw a dragon, maester?”

Luwin stepped forward into the torchlight. His robes brushed ash as he moved. “More than a century,” he said, voice hoarse. “Not since the Dance. But none so large as… that.”

He hadn’t wanted to say it aloud. But the weight of the moment demanded truth, not comfort.

Roose nodded slowly. “Then we are in uncharted waters.” He said it not with dread, but with something colder. Calculation.

Luwin looked at each of them in turn—Barbrey trembling beneath her fury, Ramsay grinning like a dog off leash, Roose unmoved and implacable—and he felt the enormity of the shift. The old world had cracked. The rules they’d played by—alliances, hostages, bannermen—were ash now, just like the banners on the walls.

A dragon had come to Winterfell. And the boy they had all overlooked had descended from the sky like a reckoning.

They found Theon Greyjoy in what had once been the steward’s solar, though there was little left to suggest comfort. The tapestries had been torn down. The hearth was cold. The windows, once shuttered in oak, were cracked from the pressure of dragonfire in the air. Soot lined the walls in ghostly streaks, like the afterimage of a fire that hadn’t quite touched the room but had scorched it all the same.

He wasn’t chained—Roose Bolton prided himself on the illusion of civility—but he may as well have been. Two guards stood like statues at either side of the narrow doorway, spears in hand, faces pale and tense from the battle still smoldering outside.

Theon sat slouched in a hard-backed chair near the center of the room. His tunic was torn at the collar, damp with sweat and smoke, clinging to a frame that looked thinner than Luwin remembered. His eye—just one now, swollen and discolored—barely lifted when they entered. He did not stand. He did not speak.

Luwin stepped into the room behind Lady Barbrey and Roose, robes whispering faintly over stone. The heat from the dragon’s arrival had not yet left the keep, though here it settled into a sticky cold, the kind that lingered when the fires passed but hadn’t taken you with them.

“I told you he was wrong,” Lady Barbrey hissed, gesturing toward Theon like a viper striking. “He grew up with Jon Snow. He must’ve known something.” Luwin could hear the strain in her voice now.

Roose raised a gloved hand, stilling her with a single motion. “Let him speak.”

Theon’s head turned slowly, strands of greasy hair falling into his eyes. When he finally looked up, it was through a veil of pain and something worse—apathy. One eye was blackening fast, the other ringed red from smoke or tears or both.

“I don’t know anything,” he said flatly.

“You lived with him,” Barbrey snarled. “Under the same roof, at the same table. Did he whisper his secrets in the dark? Did he plan this all those years ago?”

Theon let out a sound—short, bitter, jagged. It might have been a laugh, though there was no joy in it. “Jon Snow? He barely spoke to me.”

Ramsay circled behind, boots scraping on ash that had blown through the shattered window. “But he left Winterfell,” he said, grin curling like a wound. “Right? With that boy. That frog-eater. You saw it.”

Theon nodded slowly, his jaw tightening like someone expecting a blow. “He left. Took the frog-eater with him. The quiet one. Reed’s son.”

Barbrey blinked. “The Crannogmen?”

“Aye.” Theon gave a faint shrug, wincing. “Jon said nothing. Just rode out one night with the boy and the giant.”

Luwin caught the flicker of confusion across Roose’s face, the smallest crack in his otherwise glacial calm.

“You said Reed?” Roose asked.

“Aye,” Theon repeated. “Jojen. One of Howland’s. Came with his sister, but she stayed behind. It was him Jon rode with.”

“You didn’t think that strange?” Barbrey hissed.

Theon gave another shrug, more hollow this time. “Everything about the boy was strange. He brooded like Ned Stark, fought like a bloody shadow, and looked at me like I was already beneath the sea. But no. I didn’t think it strange.” He paused, gaze dropping. “I thought he was just leaving. Like the rest of us wanted to.”

Luwin watched him closely—watched the slump of his shoulders, the twitch in his fingers, the sheen of drying blood near his temple. When the dragon had come, there’d been chaos in the halls. Guards scattering. Men screaming. And in the confusion, Theon must’ve tried to flee. Or hide. And someone, some soldier loyal to Roose or Ramsay or just frightened out of his wits, had beaten him for it.

Not that Theon resisted. There was no resistance left in him.

Roose studied him in silence for a long moment, then turned toward Luwin. “Can he be trusted?” The question hung there like a blade.

Luwin hesitated. Theon had once been proud—arrogant, even—but that had been another life. The boy who had mocked, who had strutted, who had betrayed… that boy was gone. What remained was ash and ruin.

“He’s lost everything,” Luwin said at last. “His pride. His name. Whatever loyalty he had… it belongs to no one now.”

Theon laughed again, dry and joyless. “True enough.”

Barbrey turned away in disgust, pacing back toward the window, where smoke still smeared the horizon.

“We’re surrounded by ghosts and dragons,” she muttered. “And all we have are broken men.”

Roose’s gaze sharpened like a scalpel. “Then we’d best start planning like broken men. Before Winterfell becomes our tomb.”

His voice was level. But even in that voice, Luwin heard it—the edge of something uncertain. Not fear, exactly. But the first taste of defeat.

Later, when the hall had emptied and the war room grown cold, Maester Luwin sat alone in his chambers, hunched over the desk where he’d written letters for two generations of Starks. The brazier had long since gone out. He hadn’t lit it again. The chill in the room felt fitting now—like the breath of the old gods pressing in through the stone.

The ink on his quill had dried mid-sentence. The parchment still lay beneath his fingers, curling at the edges where it had soaked up heat and sweat and doubt. He had meant to write a warning. Or perhaps a plea. He wasn’t sure anymore. The words had seemed urgent only an hour ago. Now they felt small.

Outside, the wind crept through the cracks in the shutters—not with the howling fury that had accompanied the dragon’s arrival, but softer now. Mournful. Reverent. As though the storm itself had bent the knee.

He sat in silence for a long time, listening. And then his eyes drifted down to the old leather-bound ledger resting open on the corner of his desk. The record of Winterfell’s births. The names were all there, etched in neat, unbroken lines.

Robb Stark. Firstborn. Loud lungs, hungry from the first breath. Sansa. Delicate as a fawn. Arya. Kicked the moment she emerged. Bran. So quiet he thought the child stillborn. Rickon. The wild one. And Jon… there was no line for Jon. Jon’s name had never been written.

He had been there, of course. Cradled in Catelyn Stark’s arms, drawn to her heartbeat like any babe to warmth. She had nursed him when she could, held him when the wind howled through the stones. Brought into the world under shadow and snow, yes—but not without love. There had been no ink to mark his name, no feast nor fanfare. But he had not been a shadow. He had been a small light beside the fire, and she had pulled him close to the circle.

And yet tonight, as the sky split and the earth trembled, Jon had come. Not as a bastard. Not as a boy. As something else entirely.

A tremor moved through Luwin’s hands, and he pressed them flat against the old wood to steady himself. The knuckles were knobby with age now, joints stiff. But he could still feel the memory—Jon at ten, struggling over his letters, stubborn to the point of tears, refusing to quit. Jon at twelve, eyes gleaming as he tracked a wounded stag through the Wolfswood, barefoot in the snow. Jon in the sickbed, burning with fever, clinging to life while his siblings cried outside the door. And now Jon… with wings.

The dragon had been like nothing Luwin had ever seen—no tapestry nor tome could have prepared him. Its wingspan had blotted the moon. Its fire had turned night into day. And riding it, cloaked in Stark grey, eyes full of purpose, was that same boy. No longer a shadow.

Luwin closed the ledger with quiet care, brushing his hand over the worn cover.

“He came back,” he whispered into the dimness. “For them. For all of us.”

Hope stirred in his chest. A fragile, persistent ember, kindled from the wreckage. Bran and Rickon still lived. Somewhere inside those walls, his little lords were breathing. The fortress had not crumbled. Not yet. And Jon… Jon had not come to burn. He had come to save.

Not fire and blood. But fire and mercy. And perhaps… perhaps, that was the difference. Luwin lifted the quill again. The ink had dried to crust, but his hand no longer shook.

There were still ravens in the rookery. Still ears that might listen. Still hearts left to stir. There were still words worth writing. So, he dipped the quill, found fresh parchment, and began again.

Chapter Text

Robb

The smoke still clung to the air like fog—thick, acrid, and heavy with the scent of scorched pine and charred flesh. It curled low over the field, slithering through broken pikes and shattered shields, wrapping itself around the corpses like a funeral shroud. Robb Stark walked across the ashen earth, his boots sinking into mud turned black with soot and blood. The crunch beneath his steps could have been bone or burnt wood. He didn’t look too closely.

All around him, men moved like ghosts—silent, slow, eyes hollow with exhaustion and things they dared not speak aloud. Some limped, others bore one another on makeshift litters, their breath misting in the frigid air. No one cheered. No one sang. There was no victory in their eyes—only the stunned, trembling quiet that followed a storm.

Winterfell loomed beyond the carnage, its walls dark with soot and stubborn defiance. Stone that had once seemed cold and enduring now looked bruised, battered, smoke-kissed. A castle scarred.

And above it all, the dragon circled.

A black shape against a grey sky, wings vast enough to blot out the sun. It wheeled lazily above the broken field, steam rising from its nostrils, firelight still flickering beneath its scales. The men below flinched at each pass, even now. Fear ran deep, even when the fire had turned to ash.

Robb squinted through the haze, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand as the dragon banked low, cutting through the last light of day. Wind surged in its wake, snapping torn banners and making the trees shiver. It descended with a roar that rattled through ribs and marrow, the force of its landing shaking loose snow from the ruined towers. Talons gouged deep into frozen earth. Steam hissed from its nostrils. Golden eyes, too bright to be natural, swept across the dead.

And then, from its back, slid Jon Snow. No—not Snow. Not anymore.

He wore no crown. No gilded cloak or polished plate. Just worn leathers streaked with ash, a sword strapped to his back, and the same grim Stark frown that Robb had grown up beside. And yet the men looked at him differently now. As if he had stepped from the pages of a song. As if the fire itself had made him new.

Robb stepped forward, throat tight. The words sat bitter behind his teeth. So much time lost. So much he hadn’t said. The last time they’d spoken, Jon had been little more than a shadow in his wake—a half-brother wrapped in silence and duty. And now...

Now he brought fire on wings.

Jon met his gaze with a half-smile. Wry. Familiar. Human. "You're staring."

Robb let out a slow breath. “You flew.”

Jon shrugged. “Seems I did.”

“I didn’t believe it at first. When they said it was you.”

“I wouldn’t have either,” Jon said. “Until today.”

A long silence stretched between them, thick with memory. The crackle of flame, the groan of the wounded, the flutter of cinders. It all seemed to fall away for a moment.

Then Robb crossed the final steps and pulled him into a rough embrace. Jon didn’t hesitate. It was not a king’s welcome, nor a soldier’s greeting. It was what remained between them after all the titles and battles and bloodshed. It was brotherhood. And it held.

“Thank you,” Robb murmured, his voice barely audible. “You came.”

“You needed me,” Jon said, voice low. “And Winter too.”

Robb pulled back slightly, glancing toward the grey sky, where snow still fell in soft spirals. “You named it?”

Jon nodded once. “Felt right.”

Robb let out a shaky breath. Half a laugh. Half a sob. “We’ll talk. You’ll tell me everything. But not yet.”

Jon turned, gaze drawn like iron to stone—to the blackened towers of Winterfell. “Not until we take her back.”

They stood there a moment longer in the smoking dusk, ash drifting around them like the ghosts of all they’d lost. Two sons of Winterfell, once boys beneath the same roof, now men shaped by fire and frost and sorrow.

The war wasn’t done. And neither were they.

The council gathered in a ruined hall just beyond the tree line, beneath a sloped canvas stained with smoke and patched in three places where sparks had tried to claim it. Snow drifted in through the gaps. The air smelled of wet leather, blood, and the faint, bitter tang of burnt pine.

A long table—little more than a butcher’s slab of splintered wood—had been dragged into place. Maps were spread across its surface, stained and torn at the edges, pinned in place with daggers, stones, and the occasional dented goblet. Torchlight hissed and snapped in the cold wind, casting long, flickering shadows across the makeshift tent walls. Snow was falling again, light and slow like ash—almost gentle, if not for the red mud it fell into.

Robb stood at the head of the table, one hand planted on the wood, the other curled in a fist at his side. His breath clouded with each word, each thought unspoken. Jon stood beside him—silent, steady, watchful.

Across from them, Eddard Karstark loomed, grim as ever, his gauntlets streaked with dried blood. Maege Mormont was beside him, her furs stiff with frost and gore, her face lined with fatigue and fire.

Meera stood just behind, near the rear of the gathering. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, not from fear—but from having just survived. Her dark hair clung to her brow, damp with snow and sweat, her cheeks flushed with cold and purpose.

They had survived the slaughter. Now came the harder part.

“They’ll have closed every gate,” Karstark muttered, jabbing a finger at the map. “Barred every postern. Bolton and Dustin will expect us now. A frontal assault would be madness.”

“They have the advantage,” Maege added, crossing her arms. “Stone, height, archers. Half our force died today. We can’t afford a siege.”

“And Bran and Rickon are still inside,” Robb said, voice tight. “We wait, they die.”

The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating. The crackling of the torch flames seemed louder than it should. Outside, a gust of wind rattled the canvas. No one spoke. Even Jon remained still, eyes fixed on the map, his face unreadable.

Then Meera stepped forward. Her voice was calm. Deliberate. “Let me go in.”

Heads turned. Robb’s eyes found her first.

“I can get past the walls,” she said, each word a stone placed with care. “I know Winterfell. I lived there. I was fostered in the castle months before the betrayal. I know the servants’ passages, the dumbwaiters, the drainage tunnels beneath the godswood wall. The layout hasn’t changed.”

“That was before a siege,” Karstark growled, his scowl deepening. “They’ll be watching.”

Meera didn’t blink. “Not every gate. Not every crevice. I grew up in the Neck. I can slip through mud, through water, through cracks no one else sees. I don’t need to fight. I just need to open one gate.”

Robb took a step back, something tightening behind his ribs. “No,” he said, brows drawing together. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I can do it.”

“You could be caught,” he said, louder now. “Tortured. Killed. I won’t ask that of you.”

“You’re not asking,” Meera said quietly. “I’m offering.”

Jon’s eyes flicked from her to Robb, saying nothing. But Robb could feel the weight of that silence.

“This isn’t a plan,” Robb said. “It’s a gamble.”

“It’s a chance,” Meera replied, her voice softer but no less certain. “And better than none.”

Maege Mormont nodded, rubbing the dried blood from her jaw. “She’s right, lad. We’re out of time. The dragon bought us a breath, but Bolton will be rousing his men by dawn.”

Karstark snorted. “Let the girl try. She has more spine than my brothers.”

Robb looked down at the map, but he didn’t see it. Not truly. His gaze blurred, thoughts swarming. Winterfell. Bran. Rickon. The last pieces of his family still inside those walls. And here was Meera Reed—small, mud-streaked —offering herself like a blade slid across a throat. Not for glory. Not for vengeance. Just for them. And for him.

She met his gaze then. Something passed between them, steady and quiet and terrifying.

She was not beautiful in the way the south praised. Her braids were undone, her clothes stained, her boots soaked through with snowmelt and blood. But she stood with the stillness of someone who had known death and chosen to keep walking. She looked at him with the calm of cold rivers and old oaths.

He saw her clearly then—not just as the girl who rode through the blizzard to save them, not just as the scout, the shadow, the knife in the dark—but as someone brave enough to step into fire for what she believed in.

“I shouldn’t let you go,” he said, voice raw and low.

“But you will,” Meera answered.

He swallowed. His throat was tight. Gods, he wanted to stop her. To tell her no. But instead, he reached forward and tapped the map.

“A torch in the tower,” he said. “That’s your signal. We ride the moment it lights.”

She nodded once. No ceremony. No promise. Just trust. And then she turned, and disappeared into the dark.

They waited in silence, hidden among the trees and ruined outer structures that ringed Winterfell like broken teeth jutting from the snow. Old guard towers long collapsed served as half-shelters. Burnt out wagons sat abandoned in the dark. The forest pressed in behind them, thick with shadow and ice. Only a handful of riders remained near the walls—Robb, Jon, Eddard Karstark, and Maege Mormont. The rest—two hundred men—waited deeper in the woods, horses saddled, weapons drawn, breath steaming like ghosts in the branches. All sworn to ride the instant the signal came.

And still, the signal did not come.

The cold had grown sharper in the hours since Meera had vanished into the dark. It bit through wool and boiled leather and mail alike, creeping through gloves and collars like something alive. No one complained. No one even shifted. They were beyond comfort now.

Snow began falling again, thin and fast, like ash shaken loose from some unseen skyfire. It coated their cloaks, their helms, their brows, turning steel and skin to silver and white. The ground beneath their horses was a churn of frozen mud and ice.

Robb sat motionless in his saddle, eyes fixed on the battlements ahead. Winterfell loomed before them—his home, his ruin, his prize. The grey towers rose like frozen sentinels against the black sky. No horns sounded. No banners flapped. No light shone from the windows. Just cold stone and darker shadows.

He imagined Bran and Rickon behind those walls. Alone. Afraid. Maybe waiting for rescue, maybe not even daring to hope for it anymore. He imagined them hearing the banners change, hearing doors break, footsteps in the night. He imagined their faces, what they might look like now. Older. Sadder. Changed.

He clenched his gloved hands around his reins tighter, his knuckles aching with the pressure. But more than the boys—more than the walls—his thoughts kept turning to Meera.

He had watched her go. No armor, no standard. Just a knife at her hip, a hood pulled low, and eyes like still water. She’d vanished between shadows, swallowed by stone and snow as though the castle had taken her back into its bones.

And every heartbeat since, he had wondered if that had been the last time he’d see her.

“You trust her,” Jon said softly beside him.

Robb nodded, still staring at the walls. “I do.”

There was no hesitation in the words. And yet the certainty of them made his chest tighten. Trust was easy on a battlefield. But this wasn’t war. This was faith.

“She’s brave,” Maege Mormont said from behind. “And quiet as snow in spring. She’ll do it.”

Robb still said nothing.

Because the longer the minutes stretched, the harder it was to believe. What if she’d been caught? What if she was bleeding in some dark corner of his home? What if the signal never came? What if they had gambled everything on one reed, and lost it all?

And he hadn’t said what he should have. Not truly. After, he’d told himself. If there was an after.

Karstark shifted in his saddle, muttering something sharp beneath his breath. Jon’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword. Beside him, Grey Wind stood still but tense, ears flicking, nose raised to the wind. Even the direwolf could feel it—something shifting.

Time slowed. Hearts beat loud in stillness. The men in the woods did not move, did not speak. It was as if the whole world held its breath.

Then—

A flicker. Orange, faint and wavering, against the dark grey stone of the tower. A torch. Alive. Burning.

Robb stood in his stirrups, mouth dry, breath caught in his throat. His heart punched once in his chest.

“She did it,” Jon said, already turning, voice sharp with wonder and command.

Robb wheeled his horse. “Sound the horn. Now.”

The signal blew once—low, long, and full of fury. From the woods, the riders surged forward like a wave breaking loose, hooves hammering frost and snow, cloaks streaming behind them. Torches flared. Blades gleamed.

Robb drew his sword, lifting it high. It caught the light from the flame in the tower and gleamed like vengeance.

“Winterfell,” he shouted, voice hoarse and full and rising, “is ours again!” And they charged.

The gates creaked open like jaws unsticking after sleep. No horn was sounded. No shout of warning. Only the wind, and the snow, and the distant clatter of boots.

For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then Robb spurred his horse forward, steel drawn, cloak snapping like a banner in the dark. He could hear his mount’s breath steaming in the cold, the dull thud of hooves over frozen ground. Behind him, his riders surged forward like a silent tide—Karstark’s men first, grim-faced and bloodied, then Mormont’s bear-cloaked warriors, then the rest. No banners flew. No drums beat. Just blades, breath, and the pounding of Northern hearts.

The courtyard loomed ahead, dim and smothered in shadows. Torches burned low in their sconces, flickering against soot-streaked walls. The guards atop the inner parapets were sluggish, hunched against the cold, unaware.

By the time the alarm rang out—hoarse voices and the clang of steel—it was already too late.

The clash began in shadow. Robb struck down a man in Dustin’s colors before the soldier even raised his spear. Steel met bone with a wet crunch. Another came from the side, swinging wild with a woodsman’s axe. Robb caught the blow on his shield and drove his sword into the man’s belly, fast and merciless.

Beside him, Jon fought with a calm that made the world seem slow. Each cut was clean, each movement deliberate. Where Robb was fire, Jon was frost—still, sure, and deadly. Grey Wind tore through the chaos with a howl, blood in his teeth and snow in his fur. Winterfell had been theirs once. Now they took her back, one stone at a time.

Arrows flew from unseen angles. Screams rose through the smoke. A soldier in Manderly blue was dragged down by two spearmen before Maege Mormont roared through them like a bear, swinging her axe in a wide, red arc.

Doors slammed. Ladders crashed. The fight spilled into every crevice—into the kitchens, the towers, the narrow back stairwells. Flames leapt from the stables as a hayloft caught fire. Somewhere, a horn blew, short and frantic, then fell silent mid-blare.

Robb charged toward the godswood, where he’d heard Rickon and Bran were last kept. A knot of Dustin riders blocked his path—black shields painted with dying trees. He and Karstark broke them apart like a wave hitting rocks, their blades singing with every stroke.

Then, he saw her. Meera. She stood just beyond the chaos, bloodied but upright, her spear dark with gore. Her braid had come loose, curls damp with sweat and snow. Her green eyes found his across the yard. She didn’t smile, didn’t cry out, just nodded once. A silent oath passed between them—I lived. You were right to believe.

For a moment, he wanted to stop. Run to her. Say something that had waited too long to be said. He almost faltered. Almost. But the battle dragged him on. And then he saw them.

The flayed banners. Crimson and pink, twisting in the smoke like flaps of raw skin. House Bolton’s mark, flying defiantly above the great keep. And beneath them, Ramsay Snow.

He stood atop the stone stair with two of his hounds at heel, their eyes reflecting firelight like coals. His black leathers looked lacquered in blood. He grinned like a man at a feast, blade drawn, watching the carnage unfold.

A Mormont soldier fell screaming nearby, pierced through the throat. A bolt took a Karstark man in the back. Ramsay didn’t flinch. He raised his sword as Robb approached.

“So the young wolf returns,” he sneered. “Did you bring your pup? Or did he run south like your mother?”

Ramsay raised his sword in salute, mocking, a jagged grin stretching across his face like a split wound. His dogs growled at his side, snapping their jaws at the blood in the air. Snow fell between them, flakes hissing as they met torchlight and steam.

Robb climbed the steps two at a time, sword drawn, heart thundering. All around them, Winterfell roared—shouts and steel, men dying, hooves pounding, wolves howling.

But for a moment, all Robb saw was the bastard in black, standing where his father once ruled.

“Come then,” Ramsay called, voice high and wild. “Come see what I did with your brothers.”

Robb said nothing.

“Oh, don’t go quiet now,” Ramsay laughed. “Bran screamed. You wouldn’t believe it. All that crawling—what a waste. So I put him out of it. Cut him clean, guts and all. Rickon took longer. Squirmed like a pup with a broken leg.”

He twirled his blade lazily, eyes gleaming.

“I flayed their wolves too. Peeled the big one’s skin off like wet bark. Hung the pelt over the gates. Maybe I’ll wear it when I fuck your—”

Robb roared and charged.

Their blades clashed with a burst of sparks, steel grinding, and Ramsay grinned even as he staggered back. He fought like wildfire—unpredictable, cruel, reckless. He feinted high, then swept low toward Robb’s knee, aiming to cripple. Robb blocked and stepped in, trying to batter him down with sheer strength.

But Ramsay was quicker. A knife appeared in his off-hand—small, hidden in his sleeve. He slashed upward, catching Robb’s forearm with a hiss of pain. Blood welled beneath the sleeve. Robb recoiled.

“Got you,” Ramsay grinned. “You should’ve brought your bitch wolf.”

Robb advanced again, slashing hard, hammering Ramsay back step by step, but the bastard was fast. He ducked, rolled, spit in Robb’s face and drove a boot into his shin. Robb grunted, staggered—and Ramsay lunged.

The hidden knife came again, straight for Robb’s throat. But Grey Wind was faster.

The direwolf erupted from the shadows with a howl, a grey streak of fury. One of Ramsay’s dogs yelped, torn aside in a blur of teeth. The other fled, tail tucked, vanishing into the smoke. Grey Wind leapt at Ramsay’s side just as the bastard turned— knocking him off balance.

Ramsay swung wildly, catching Grey Wind with a glancing blow, but the wolf twisted away, growling low, circling.

That was all the opening Robb needed. He surged forward, sword raised. Ramsay tried to block, but too late—Robb's blade hammered down, forcing Ramsay to one knee. The next strike knocked the hidden dagger from his hand. The one after that sent Ramsay sprawling across the stone.

Robb stood over him. “You’re lying,” he said, voice shaking with fury. “They’re alive.”

Ramsay coughed blood. “Does it matter? You’ll never find their bones.”

He reached for something—another blade, another trick. Robb drove his sword through the bastard’s chest. Ramsay gasped, mouth wide, blood bubbling. His eyes widened in disbelief.

“No more flayed men,” Robb said. He twisted the blade.

Ramsay collapsed on the steps of the great keep, twitching once, then went still.

Grey Wind stood beside him, muzzle dark with blood, breathing heavy. The wolf growled once more for good measure, then turned his gaze toward the yard.

From below came the clash of battle still raging—Karstark’s men locked with Dustin spearmen near the well, Maege Mormont’s bears roaring as they drove toward the inner towers. Robb could hear Eddard Karstark shouting orders, steel meeting steel again and again.

The castle still fought them, but the tide had turned. He looked down at Ramsay’s corpse, then up at the bloody banners flapping in the wind. And then he turned to rejoin the fight.

The hall fell quiet, save for the crackle of torches and the slow hush of the snow drifting through broken windows. Smoke clung to the high beams like ghosts, and the faint scent of blood still lingered in the air, iron-rich and bitter.

Winterfell was theirs. The battle was done. The banners torn down. The bodies counted and burned. Snow fell in slow, thick silence over the blood-soaked stones of the courtyard, as if the gods themselves were trying to cover what had happened. To bury it.

Robb walked alone through the inner yard, each step a struggle. His limbs felt heavier than his armor. His cloak dragged behind him, stiff with dried blood. The sword at his hip may as well have been forged from stone.

He passed the corpses in silence. Men from House Dustin, their crimson cloaks soaked through and frozen to the mud. Bolton men with the flayed man scorched from their shields. Even his own — Northern riders, Mormont spearmen, Karstark scouts — all lying still beneath the snow. Faces he had known. Names he had spoken. Laughter he would never hear again.

And still, they had won. But it did not feel like victory. A shout pierced the quiet — urgent, sharp — and a soldier came running through the frost-laced archway, waving toward the broken doors of the Maester’s Tower.

Robb ran. His boots slipped on the slick stone, heart hammering louder than the wind. He burst through the shattered doorway, sword half-drawn — and stopped. There, in the low firelight of the tower’s hearth, he saw them.

Bran, small and pale, sat huddled beneath a fur too large for him. Rickon crouched beside him, shaking. Both boys looked like shadows, wrapped in threadbare cloaks and weeks of fear. The fire had burned low, casting their faces in gold and orange, flickering like candlelight through a storm.

Bran lifted his gaze first. His eyes — dark, solemn — widened. “Robb?” he said, barely a whisper.

Robb fell to his knees before he could speak. “It’s me.”

Rickon stumbled forward, a broken sob tearing from his throat as he threw himself into Robb’s arms. Bran followed more slowly, as if afraid it was a dream that might vanish.

Robb held them both, tighter than he ever had. Their bodies were thin. Too thin. They trembled in his grip, and still, he held them.

“You’re safe,” he whispered. “You’re safe now.”

Rickon buried his face against Robb’s chest, fingers clenched in his cloak like a drowning man grasping for rope. “They said you weren’t coming.”

“I’m here.”

Bran was quieter. His voice carried a weight far beyond his years. “Maester Luwin…”

Robb looked past them — and saw.

The old man lay by the hearth, half-sitting against a carved wooden chair. Blood had dried beneath him in a wide stain that reached the edge of the rug. His robes were torn at the side, and his hand — old and trembling — rested near a broken quill and a sheet of parchment torn mid-sentence.

And just beside him, in the corner of the room, lay the body of a Bolton guard. His mail glinted with soot and blood. A knife — Luwin’s own, likely taken from a nearby table — was buried in the man's throat.

Robb swallowed. He died protecting them.

Robb rose slowly and crossed the room. He knelt beside the old man, brushing the soot from his brow. Luwin’s face was calm in death, eyes closed, lips parted just slightly. As if he’d been mid-breath. Mid-warning. Mid-watch.

“I’m sorry,” Robb whispered.

He thought of every letter Luwin had sent. Every word of counsel. The soft-spoken reprimands, the quiet patience, the kindness hidden behind the chain and duty. He had been there for all of them. Tended every bruise, eased every fever, written every birth. A loyal man. A good man.

Behind him, Bran sniffled softly. Rickon still clung to his arm. Then he heard footsteps. Meera entered, quiet as snowfall. Mud caked her boots. Blood streaked her cheek. Her face was pale but steady. She met Robb’s eyes — just for a moment — and in her expression, he saw it: sorrow, relief, and something deeper.

She said nothing, only lowered her gaze to the boys and stepped back. Then Jon entered the tower. Silent, steady, smoke still rising from the edges of his cloak. His hand came to rest on Robb’s shoulder, firm.

“We have it back,” Jon said.

Robb nodded slowly, eyes still on Luwin. “At a cost.”

Jon did not answer. There was nothing to say. The fire crackled. The snow whispered against the windows. And in that small tower, surrounded by loss and victory, Robb felt the truth of it settle deep in his bones.

They had won. But it was not the end. Still, Bran and Rickon lived. Meera had made it back. Jon had returned. Winterfell stood, scarred and battered, but standing. The krakens had been driven off. The traitors burned or broken. The direwolves had survived.

And far above them all, as snow blanketed the rooftops of the ancient keep, the stars began to emerge behind the thinning clouds. The wolves had come home. And the North would remember.

Robb stood alone beneath the scorched remnants of the flayed man banner, now hanging in tatters above the inner yard. It flapped limply in the cold wind, its pink and crimson threads blackened by fire and blood.

He didn’t feel the cold anymore. He barely felt anything. Just the weight in his limbs, the dull echo of exhaustion. Around him, the keep still stirred with the quiet aftermath—soldiers moving the dead, putting out smoldering beams, dragging away debris. It would take weeks to repair what had been lost. Weeks, perhaps, before Winterfell breathed freely again.

He was still staring at the banner when footsteps crunched behind him.

“I thought I’d catch you before I left,” came Jon’s voice.

Robb turned. For a moment, the tiredness lifted. Just a little. “You’re leaving already?”

Jon nodded, eyes shadowed by wind and memory. “I have to ride north. Father needs to know what happened here—about the traitors, about the krakens, about Winterfell. And about the cost.” He didn’t say Luwin’s name aloud. He didn’t have to.

Robb nodded slowly. “You’ll fly, I suppose.” He gave a crooked smile. “Still feels strange, saying that to you.”

Jon returned the smile, a faint flicker. “Stranger for me, I promise you.”

They stood together in silence. The snow gathered at their boots, quiet and persistent.

“We’ve locked Roose, Barbrey, and Theon in the dungeons,” Robb said, voice low. “Barbrey won’t stop screaming about dragons and bastards. Roose hasn’t said a word. And Theon...” He exhaled. “He won’t talk about any alliance. Whether he knew. Maybe he didn’t.”

“Maybe,” Jon said. “Or maybe he’s just too ashamed to admit it.”

Robb looked down at the earth. “I don’t even know what to do with him. He looks broken.”

Jon didn’t answer. There were no easy answers left between them.

Robb changed the subject. “And the dragon. What’s it like? Riding him?”

Jon’s expression shifted, softer, a trace of awe breaking through the tired lines of his face. “Like falling,” he said. “And never hitting the ground.”

Robb gave a low chuckle. “You named it Winter. So, what, when it flies into battle, you can yell ‘Winter is coming’ and frighten them all to death?”

Jon flushed, faintly. “That’s... not why I named him that.”

Robb laughed more freely now. “No, of course not.”

Jon looked off, then back again. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Gods,” Robb said, grinning. “Only you, Jon.”

The moment stretched again, quieter now, more solemn. Then Jon said, “You should talk to her.”

Robb frowned. “To who?”

Jon gave him a look.

“Oh,” Robb said. “Meera.”

“She risked everything to warn you. And then opened the gates. She’s... different,” Jon said. “But you’ve always liked different.”

Robb didn’t reply.

Jon pulled him into a brief hug. “Take care of them. Bran. Rickon.”

“I will.”

They parted with few words left. Jon crossed the yard toward Winter, the dragon curled in the snow like a living shadow. Its scales still steamed faintly, and its golden eyes flicked once toward Robb.

Jon climbed onto its back with the grace of long practice. Robb raised a hand. Jon waved once, then vanished into the sky, the beat of wings sending snow swirling in all directions.

Robb stood there long after the clouds had swallowed them, the storm above and the world below silent again. Smaller now, perhaps. But stronger too.

The godswood was still. Not the silence of peace, but the hush that follows a storm. The kind of quiet that settles into stone and bone alike, that wraps around the heart like a slow breath.

Snow drifted down from a pale sky, fine as powdered glass, blanketing the scorched soil and shattered branches. It danced on the surface of the black pond like ash on an old mirror, leaving ripples that faded into stillness. The heart tree stood at the center, ancient and watching, its pale face streaked with tears of red sap, unmoved by victory or grief. Its leaves whispered with no wind.

Robb Stark walked the worn path barefoot. The cold stone bit into the soles of his feet, but he welcomed it. The pain helped him feel real. After fire and blood and dragons, after betrayal and retaking, he needed something solid. Winterfell had changed—his home, once full of echoes and warmth, now bore the scent of ash and blood. Smaller now. Quieter. And yet, it breathed again.

She was there, beneath the heart tree. Meera Reed sat cross-legged beneath its pale boughs, half-shadow, half-snow. Her long hair was damp, dark strands clinging to her cheeks. Her frog spear lay beside her knees, forgotten. Her eyes were on the weirwood, sharp and distant, watching. She didn’t turn at his approach, but Robb knew she had heard him. She always did.

He stopped a few paces behind her, watching her. The curve of her shoulders. The calm strength in her posture. The way she belonged here, as if carved from the same quiet as the weirwood itself.

“You never stop watching,” he said softly.

Meera looked up. Her face was composed, but her eyes were ringed with exhaustion. “Old habits,” she said. “In the Neck, you don’t live long if you don’t watch the shadows.”

Robb stepped closer and eased himself down beside her. The snow soaked into his trousers, but he didn’t flinch.

“They say we’ve won,” he said. His voice barely broke the quiet. “But it doesn’t feel like a victory.”

“No battle ever does,” Meera replied, her gaze drifting across the pond. “Only those who never fought think war is glory.”

He didn’t argue. The truth of it lived in his chest, a dull ache behind every heartbeat. So they sat in silence. The kind that wasn’t empty, but full. Full of what they didn’t say.

The snow whispered down around them, dusting his hair, her shoulders, the white roots of the heart tree like old bones in the ground. The weirwood watched with bleeding eyes, and Robb wondered what the old gods saw when they looked at them.

“You were the one who opened the gate,” he said at last. “You saved us.”

“I had help,” Meera said. “You brought the dragon.”

Robb smiled faintly, warmth beneath frost. “Jon did.”

Their eyes met then—his storm blue, hers green and full of secrets. And in that shared glance was everything they couldn’t put to words: the dead they carried, the fire they had walked through, the threads that had bound their fates together since the first howl of warning at his war camp.

“My father used to speak of dreams,” Meera said, voice quieter now, almost reverent. “He called them puzzles. Visions wrapped in fog. He said your father believed him, even when no one else did.”

“I used to think dreams were just stories,” Robb murmured. “Not anymore.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze lingered on the carved face of the heart tree.

“He dreamed of this,” she said. “Of wolves burning. Of a wolf with dragon wings. He always said the gods were watching.”

Robb turned his head to look at her fully. “Do you regret staying? Not going north with your father?”

There was a pause. Her breath fogged between them, curling in the air like something alive.

“I did,” she said. “But not now.”

Her eyes locked with his—clear, unflinching, the color of moss in morning light after rain. There was strength in them. And something else. Something dangerous. Something tender.

Robb looked away first. His pulse thudded like the distant beat of hooves in snow.

The weight in his chest shifted, not lifting, but changing. Becoming something that scared him in a different way.

“I’m leaving soon,” he said. “Moat Cailin won’t retake itself.”

“I know.”

“I’ll come back.” He said it with more certainty than he felt. “To Winterfell. To you.”

Meera smiled. Not soft and shy, but sharp. Sure. Like the edge of the knife she kept at her belt. “I’ll be here.”

Robb hesitated. Then he reached for her hand. His calloused fingers brushed hers—mud-streaked, scarred, real. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t move at all. And then, slowly, she leaned forward.

The kiss was quiet, uncertain at first, then real. Her lips were cold from the snow, but warm beneath. His hand found her cheek, and her breath caught. The weirwood said nothing. The gods, if they watched, gave no sign. Snow settled on her lashes.

When they parted, his forehead rested against hers. Their breath mingled, warm between them.

“Will you wait?” he asked, unsure if he meant weeks or years.

She nodded. “Just don’t make me come drag you back.”

He laughed—quiet, weary, honest. “Deal.”

They stayed there, beneath the blood-red leaves and the whispering snow, with nothing but the old gods to witness. Neither warriors nor lords. Just a boy and a girl, breathing. Hoping.

And for the first time in days, Robb Stark felt the cold begin to lift.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

Tyrion swirled a goblet of Dornish red and watched the last sliver of sun bleed into the horizon like a wound that would not close. It streaked the sky above Blackwater Bay with sickly shades of orange and rust, as if the gods themselves were smearing blood across the heavens. Another day gone. Another inch lost.

Below the Tower of the Hand, King’s Landing groaned and fumed like a great beast chained too long in its own filth. The clamor of carts bounced over broken cobbles. Far-off shouts rang through the narrow streets—too high-pitched for trade, too angry for prayer. Somewhere, a baby wailed. Somewhere else, a hammer struck iron in short, panicked rhythm. Repairs, maybe. Or weapons. Or coffins. These days, it was hard to tell.

The bells tolled again. He didn’t know which one. They all rang too often now. The sept bells cried for the dead, the harbor bell for storms, the Great Bell for war, and yet all sounded the same—dull, hollow, ceaseless. Like the heartbeat of a dying city.

Tyrion took another sip of wine. It was bitter, full of fire and fruit. Not the good kind. Not like the old days when Arbor gold or Essosi sweet reds flowed freely in the cellars beneath the Red Keep. This was Dornish, thin and sullen, like a grudge remembered too late.

But still less bitter than his thoughts.

“Keep the city safe,” his father had told him before riding west, his voice all steel and finality. “Keep your nephew in line. Keep your sister from losing her wits entirely.”

As if those tasks were comparable to holding a sword or mustering men. As if King’s Landing could be kept in hand like a well-trained gelding, when in truth it was more like a blind mule drunk on wildfire—mad, stubborn, and liable to kick down the whole bloody realm on a whim.

Tyrion sighed. “Another triumph,” he muttered. “Truly, the stuff of songs.”

He downed the rest of the cup, throat burning, and set it aside on the stone sill. The wind off the bay tugged at the corner of his cloak as he turned, preparing for the daily charade they called the small council. A ritual of riddles and ruin, of parsing lies and pruning rot while pretending there was still something left worth preserving.

On his way to the chamber, he passed two Gold Cloaks dragging a baker from a stall by the collar of his tunic. The man cried out in protest, flour clinging to his hands like guilt. Bread theft? Or treason? Or both. These days, there wasn’t much difference. Hunger had a thousand faces in the capital—seditious, sallow, and angry.

The guards ignored Tyrion’s glance. One even nodded. They’d grown used to the sight of the dwarf moving through the bones of power, but whether with respect or disdain, he no longer cared to guess.

By the time he reached the council chamber, the torches were already burning. Their light guttered against the carved wood panels like flames dancing on old scars. The heat inside was oppressive—stale with sweat, secrets, and smoke.

The usual cast had gathered, Cersei, perched by the fire, all cold poise and sharper edges, her lips pursed into a blade's shape. Grand Maester Pycelle hunched beside a parchment scroll, one bony hand fumbling to unseal it, the other trembling around his sleeve. Varys stood near the window, composed as ever, soft hands folded in front of him like a careful lie.
Ser Meryn Trant loomed behind them, dull-eyed and slack-jawed, his sword belt creaking with each slow shift of his weight. No Joffrey. A small mercy.

Tyrion lowered himself into his chair with a grunt and forced a smile. “A toast?” he said dryly. “To surviving one more day in paradise.”

Cersei didn’t answer, though the corner of her mouth twitched—just enough to show she’d heard him, and hated him for it.

Pycelle sniffled wetly and blinked over his scroll like a man caught between sneezing and weeping. Varys offered a smile as thin as parchment and just as warm.

Tyrion leaned back, his fingers drumming lightly against the wood. The sun had set. The game resumed. And the city waited, hungry and boiling and doomed.

Pycelle cleared his throat, a sound like a dying cat beneath a blanket, and shuffled a fresh scroll with trembling fingers. The paper crackled in his hands as if it too were weary of the news.

“We’ve received fresh ravens from Gulltown and the Eyrie,” the Grand Maester announced, voice thin but portentous.

Tyrion didn’t lift his eyes from his goblet. “Tell me the Vale hasn’t sprouted wings and flown away.”

No one laughed. Least of all Pycelle, who blinked slowly like a man trying to hold in wind.

“Worse,” he said. “Blood has been shed.”

That was enough to pull Tyrion’s gaze up. Across the table, Cersei tilted her head with feigned disinterest.

“It began with a quarrel at the Gates of the Moon,” Pycelle continued. “Between Ser Lyn Corbray and Lord Yohn Royce.”

Cersei arched a brow, her mouth curling into something like disdain. “Royce. That old stonehead still lives?”

“He does,” Varys said smoothly, folding his hands like a man folding secrets. “And quite loudly. He accused Ser Lyn of abusing his influence over Lady Lysa… and of using Baelish’s name as a bludgeon.”

Tyrion let out a breath and leaned back. “Which,” he said dryly, “I’m sure Ser Lyn did.”

He could almost picture it. Corbray, ever vain and viperous, swaggering beneath moonlight, sword half-drawn, invoking Petyr Baelish’s name like a lord, not a servant of the crown. And Yohn Royce, all bronze and bellowing outrage, stepping in like an old bear defending his den.

“He drew steel,” Pycelle said gravely, “on Lord Royce’s second son. The boy is dead.”

The room went quiet. Even Cersei straightened, her lips parting, the mockery draining from her face. She wasn’t so drunk on her own bile as to dismiss the killing of a highborn son, not when the Vale was already precariously poised.

“And the response?” she asked, her voice cool again.

Varys answered before Pycelle could catch his breath. “Lord Royce has called his banners. House Redfort stands with him, as does Hunter. Corbray has retreated to the Eyrie… where Lord Baelish has, it seems, closed the gates.”

Tyrion’s fingers began tapping against the table. A rhythm. Or a warning.

“So. The Gate of the Moon sees blood,” he mused aloud, “and now the Bloody Gate sees a siege. Poetic.”

Pycelle wheezed as if he’d run to the Eyrie himself. “A civil war,” he croaked. “The Vale is dividing.”

“Over Baelish?” Cersei asked in disbelief. “They’d fight over that weasel?”

Her tone dripped with disdain, but Tyrion heard the nervous twitch in it too. They all knew Baelish was a pestilence—he made chaos like some men made coin—but the fact that the Vale would splinter for him spoke to deeper rot.

“They fight because they fear him,” Varys said, his tone soft, almost gentle. “And because some support him… while others wait. Wait for a man they trust.”

There it was. The whisper under the whisper.

Tyrion looked up sharply. “Stark,” he said. “Of course.”

Varys inclined his head, just a breath. “They know him,” the Spider said. “Eddard Stark fostered there. Brynden Tully served there. Some of these lords remember Lord Stark’s youth at the Eyrie. They remember a hand that did not tremble.”

“A Northman’s name carries weight in the Vale,” Pycelle added, with something like reluctant admiration. “Even now.”

Tyrion rubbed his chin, eyes narrowing. So much still came back to Eddard Stark, even now. Even after all these years, after Jon Arryn’s death, after Robert’s death. His words still held weight in the Vale, still echoed like a commandment from a more honest age. Some lords, it seemed, still saw him not just as a relic, but as a rightful guide. And if, Seven help them, Stark ever turned south—if he raised his voice or his sword for Joffrey—it might yet sway the hesitant and silence the doubters. Tyrion didn’t believe in miracles, but he’d take a quiet declaration over anything.

“It carries weight yes” Tyrion said “But not enough to stop bloodshed, which suits Baelish, I’d wager. Divide, then rule.”

“Or die trying,” Cersei muttered, though her voice lacked its usual venom. Even she was beginning to realize they were all standing on a ledge, blindfolded and bound, while men like Petyr danced behind them with knives.

Tyrion reached again for his cup. The wine was warmer now, but no sweeter.

The thought had barely settled when the chamber doors slammed open.

Joffrey Baratheon stormed in, all flaring gold cloak and scowling petulance, his crown askew on that too-proud brow. He walked like a man expecting the world to bow with each step, though he barely cleared five feet in height. His cheeks were flushed, either from drink or rage—or both—and his hands twitched at his sides as if itching to strike someone, anyone.

“You’re all late,” he snapped, though it was he who had kept them waiting. No one corrected him. Not even Cersei.

Tyrion suppressed a sigh and merely lifted a brow. The boy-king was more dangerous when ignored, but indulging him only fed the fire. A losing game, either way.

Joffrey marched to the head of the table and slammed his gloved palm down on the map. “I want a map,” he barked. “Of the North. All of it. We need to send a thousand knights to Winterfell and drag the Stark girl back for her wedding.”

So that was today’s obsession. Sansa. Tyrion watched the boy with narrowed eyes. Some days it was his crown. Some days it was dragon skulls. Today it was his betrothed.

Cersei’s expression tightened. She moved with careful grace, not a mother now but a lioness circling a volatile cub. “You’ll have your queen, Joff,” she said smoothly. “When the time is right.”

“The time is now!” Joffrey shouted, eyes wild. “You said her mother would bring her. She hasn’t. She’s at war with us!”

Tyrion leaned back in his chair. He could feel the headache blooming behind his eyes already. “Not with us,” he said coolly, “but with everyone else. Wildlings, Ironborn. Even her own bannermen.”

He glanced at Pycelle, who looked eager to contribute if only to move the storm along. The old man cleared his throat with theatrical effort and unfurled another scroll. “News from Moat Cailin,” he croaked. “Lady Stark with Ser Brynden Tully are pressing the siege from the south. The rebel lords under Bolton and Dustin hold the pass, defiant for now.”

And there it was. Tyrion’s fingers resumed their tapping. Bolton and Dustin—names that had once fought beneath the Stark wolf, now sunk in treachery.

“What of Winterfell?” Cersei asked, her voice sharper now, like ice through silk.

Pycelle hesitated—just a flicker, but Tyrion saw it. “Whispers,” he said carefully. “That the castle was taken under a false peace banner. That the Stark boys were captured. That Greyjoy walks free.”

Tyrion’s hand tightened around the stem of his goblet. That was the worst kind of report—fragmented, conflicting, laced with fear. Too many ifs, and not enough certainties.

“Madness,” Cersei snapped. “Why aren’t we sending riders?”

“Because they’d be turned to bones before crossing the Neck,” Tyrion said. “The North is no place for Lannister steel. Best we don’t forge new enemies while we’re still choking on the old ones. We’ve two stags already butting heads in the south.”

And barely enough coin for food, he thought but didn’t say aloud.

Joffrey’s face flushed deeper. “We should burn them all!”

Tyrion opened his mouth to answer, but it was Varys who spoke, voice smooth as ever, laced with silken foreboding.

Varys’s tone cut through the room like silk drawn across steel. “Your grandfather has returned to the Westerlands. Lord Tywin is massing his strength near Red Lake. Ser Jaime prepares to strike from the borderlands, to finally break Renly’s line.”

The words hung like a slow-turning blade. Tyrion watched his sister’s mouth flatten into a thin red line.

Cersei shifted in her chair, spine straightening with visible restraint. “He left us,” she said coldly. “He reinforced Jaime’s host and rode west again. King’s Landing is bare.”

Tyrion raised his goblet in mock salute, letting the Dornish red catch the flicker of torchlight. “A poor choice of words,” he said, savoring the way her eyes narrowed.

Pycelle, seizing the moment to reinsert himself, gave a coughing wheeze and lifted his scroll like a drowning man clutching driftwood. “Your Grace, may I remind you that the Westerlands still feed the capital, even now. The roads grow more dangerous by the week, and the Crown owes the Iron Bank—”

“Silence,” Joffrey snapped.

The word cracked like a whip. Pycelle withered, blinking, shrinking deeper into his robes with all the dignity of a turtle reeling into its shell.

Tyrion sipped his wine again, masking his contempt behind the cup. The boy ruled with tantrums, his court cowed by sharp words and sudden cruelty. It was like watching a child playing with wildfire.

Varys leaned forward slightly, his voice softer now, but with that same eerie weight that always made the room grow quieter. “There is more.”

Tyrion didn’t even lift his head. “Of course there is,” he muttered into the rim of his cup.

Varys continued. “Rumors from the Wall. A great battle. Thousands of wildlings. Northmen defending the Night’s Watch. Dead things walking and a creature of flame in the sky.”

There was silence at that. Even the usual shuffle of Pycelle’s parchment stilled. Tyrion’s brow furrowed.

Cersei scoffed, breaking the stillness like snapping twigs. “Fairy tales.”

“They say the snow burns,” Varys said. “And the dead walk again.”

It was a simple sentence, calmly spoken, but it sent a ripple through the air like a chill wind down the spine. Tyrion studied the eunuch.

Joffrey snorted. “Then let them freeze again.”

Pycelle cleared his throat, voice rasping like dead leaves. “The North is breaking,” he wheezed. “A war within a war. A wolf biting its own tail.”

Tyrion’s gaze swept across them all—his mad nephew, his bitter sister, the rotting mouthpiece of Oldtown, the spider whose eyes never blinked. Then down at the table, where maps and wine stains blended like spilled blood.

“And yet… they hold,” Tyrion said, slowly. “The Vale burns, the Reach is under siege, the Stormlands shattered… and still no raven flies with surrender.”

“We’ll have their heads,” Joffrey declared, leaning forward like a dog straining at its leash. “All of them.”

Cersei’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Tyrion noticed the faint tremble in her hand as she reached for her cup.

Tyrion’s fingers drummed softly against the carved edge of the table. “Careful, Your Grace.”

The air thickened with quiet. Even Joffrey, now slouched in his chair like a sulking lion cub, had run out of names to curse.

Tyrion reached for his goblet again, swirled the red wine, and tilted it lazily toward Varys. “What of Dorne?”

At once, all eyes turned to the eunuch.

Varys folded his hands with his usual practiced delicacy, long fingers like pale spiders interlacing on the table. “The Martells remain... silent.”

Pycelle nodded. “Not a word. Not a raven. No emissary has left Sunspear since Robert’s death.”

Cersei frowned. “They sulk in their deserts. Let them. Doran Martell was always slow to anger.”

“Too slow, perhaps,” Tyrion murmured. “And yet... they’ve moved no banners, voiced no allegiances, shown no favor. That silence is louder than most cries of war.”

He thought of Sunspear—its heat, its quiet palaces, the long memories carved into its stones. Elia Martell’s name had not been spoken in this room in years, but her ghost still lingered.

“They will not move without cause,” Varys said. “But they remember Elia.”

Cersei’s expression stiffened, lips paling.

Tyrion swirled the last of his wine, watching it spiral like blood in a cup. “So. The Vale teeters. The Reach festers. The Stormlands burn. The North is a storm of its own. Dorne waits, quiet and coiled.”

He looked up, met Varys’s calm, unblinking gaze.

“And we?” the spider asked.

Tyrion leaned back, the smile fading from his lips.

“We wait too,” he said softly. “But waiting, in King’s Landing, is a dangerous game.”

Chapter Text

Eddard

The wind off the Wall carried the scent of snow. Eddard Stark stood in the solar of Castle Black, a draft seeping through the stone like cold breath. Outside, the world was white and silent, save for the distant creaking of timbers and the low flap of Winter wings as the sound curled around the towers. The shadows of dusk were already long, gathering in corners like waiting specters.

He stood beside his brother Benjen when the raven came.

The bird was pale gray, near white in the dim light, its feathers ruffled and stiff from ice. It beat its wings feebly as it landed on the sill, talons scraping stone. The message it bore was tied with a black ribbon—an ill omen in itself. The parchment bore the seal of the Eyrie, the moon-and-falcon wax cracked, half-smudged with stormwater and dirt. As if the thing had flown through fire and storm just to reach them.

Maester Aemon unrolled the message with stiff fingers mottled by age. Samwell Tarly stood behind him, his expression pale, eyes flitting between the old man and the Lords around him like a rabbit watching hounds.

Aemon’s voice was thin but firm after Samwell told him of the message, the cadence of each word carrying centuries behind it.

“...Lord Yohn Royce has taken up arms against Ser Lyn Corbray, citing the corruption of Lord Baelish. Fighting has broken out across the Vale. Smaller houses have declared for one side or the other. The Eyrie holds firm, but the mountains no longer answer as one.”

Silence followed the reading like snow after thunder.

Benjen exhaled sharply through his nose. “Seven save us. Another fire lit.”

Ned said nothing for a moment. He stared at the parchment, but in his mind, he saw something else— valleys, sheer cliffs, falcons on high wind. The Vale had always been a bastion of order. Cold, proud, aloof—but stable. Now even it burned. Jon Arryn’s ghost had not been at peace, it seemed.

He turned toward Aemon. “How old is this raven?”

“Six days, my lord,” the maester said, blinking slowly. “It flew through a storm, it seems. And alone.”

Ned nodded once. That evening, he called a council.

The hall of Castle Black, once a refuge of discipline and duty, now hosted the last embers of the Northern host. What strength remained had gathered there, between black stone walls and beneath a roof scorched by dragonfire. The fire pit burned low, smoke curling upward into the dark beams like grey ghosts.

Around the long table stood the men who had bled and burned for him—what was left of them.

Robett and Galbart Glover, both gaunt, both grim. Rickard Karstark with his wild white beard and thundercloud brow. Halys Hornwood, lean as a spear, and the Smalljon Umber, his face still bearing the bruises of the Wall’s last battle. Dacey Mormont leaned forward in her chair, arms crossed, jaw set. Her furs were still stained with blood. Behind them loomed others—bannermen, younger sons, tired warriors—each marked by frost and loss.

Benjen stood to Ned’s left, as he had so many times before.

Jon was there too, farther back, a shadow on the edge of the firelight. He leaned against a beam, arms folded, his cloak dusted with snow. His presence was quieter now—less boy, more blade. Ned could see it in the way the others glanced at him. Something had shifted.

Even Jojen Reed had come, though he was small and pale among them, flanked by silent Walder.

Ned took a breath, and began.

“We cannot ignore this,” he said, voice low but carrying.

“The Vale is breaking.”

“The Vale is not the North,” Rickard Karstark replied, his voice rough as bark. “Forgive me, Ned. But we lost five thousand men at your side. Another five thousand guarding Moat Cailin were butchered. We have traitors in chains and ash in our mouths.”

Dacey Mormont nodded slowly. “The North is bleeding, not marching.”

“And the Watch is barely holding its own,” Benjen added, voice low and steady. “If another attack comes—”

“I am not speaking of war,” Ned said, and paused. The room quieted further. The fire cracked behind him, the only sound. “I’m speaking of peace.”

The word fell like a stone into still water.

Rickard Karstark’s brow furrowed, the lines on his face deep as old ravines. “Peace? We have barely finished burying our dead. And you would send more south?”

“We have no strength to spare,” Galbart Glover added. “Not for broken mountains and petty quarrels. Let the Vale bleed if it must.”

Dacey’s arms remained folded. “How many blades would you send, Lord Stark? Fifty? Five hundred? We’ve not that many whole left.”

A murmur passed through the room like wind through dry grass. These were not the proud men who had ridden north behind him, not the fierce lords who had howled for justice and defense. They were the remnants. Men who’d lost fathers, brothers, sons. Men who’d held the line at the edge of the world and stared into an abyss of death and cold. Men who were, despite all, still standing.

Ned let the silence linger. Let them stew in their doubt, their weariness, their dread. Let them remember how close they had come to the end.

He let the doubt settle like dust, thick in the throat, heavy in the chest. Let it gather in the cold spaces between the lords’ shoulders, in the shifting of boots on stone, the soft crackle of the fire in the hearth. He could feel the weight of their losses pressing down on them all—names unspoken, faces buried. His silence was not hesitation. It was mourning.

Then Benjen rose beside him, steady as a pillar of black granite. “My brother does not speak of war,” he said quietly, but clearly. “He speaks of duty.”

The words were simple, but they cut through the gloom like a bell.

“And diplomacy,” added Jon, stepping forward now. His voice was soft, but carried. He stood like a man grown, no longer the brooding boy Ned had once watched train with Rodrik in the Winterfell yard. The dragon in him hadn’t stolen his calm—it had deepened it. “If the Vale falls to chaos, we all suffer.”

His presence turned a few heads. Some lords looked to him as if only now seeing what he had become. Others looked back to Ned, waiting.

Still, hesitation lingered. These were lords, yes, but they were also fathers, brothers, men whose halls now echoed with silence. They did not wear their grief openly—but it was there. Behind narrowed eyes. Beneath calloused hands.

“They are not our concern,” grumbled Lord Hornwood, his voice like gravel and ice. “Not now.”

And that was when Eddard Stark lifted his voice. It did not rise in anger, nor thunder. But it filled the chamber all the same—clear and cold as the wind over the Wall.

“My lords,” Ned said, and the weight in his voice drew every gaze. “I know the blood we’ve spilled. I feel it in my bones, as do you. I lost good men at Moat Cailin. I burned friends atop the Wall.”

He turned, letting his eyes meet each face in turn. Karstark’s grief-hardened stare. Glover’s guarded silence. Mormont’s steady defiance. Hornwood’s weary skepticism. These were his bannermen. His people. His burden.

“We are tired. But the dead do not rest,” Ned said. “And the realm cannot stand divided if we are to survive what comes.”

He stepped forward, out of the shadow of the fire, into the flickering light, where every scar on his face showed, every year etched into the lines beneath his eyes.

“The North is quiet now. The krakens crawl back to sea. The traitors rot in our dungeons. But it was not peace that bought this calm—it was unity. Jon’s fire at the Wall. Robb’s steel at Winterfell. Meera Reed’s courage in the dark. Together, we made peace in the North.”

He paused, breathing slow.

“And that peace means nothing if the rest of the kingdoms fall to chaos.”

His voice dropped, but the hall leaned in to hear him.

“The South is torn. Three kings bleeding each other dry. The Vale now burns—not from foreign foes, but from within. If we let them war unchecked, they will fall. And then what?”

He looked to the blackened timbers of the ceiling, as if he could see through it to the stars, and beyond that, to what waited in the long night.

“The dead will not stop at the Bloody Gate. Nor will the cold respect a mountain pass.”

A rustle moved through the lords like wind through leaves—murmurs, shifting feet, a flicker of recognition. Not all understood. But some did.

“We must send envoys,” Ned said. “Soldiers, if we must. To bring peace where we can. To sow unity where none remains.”

Dacey’s voice cut sharp through the quiet. “And if they don’t want peace?”

He turned to her, unwavering. “Then we show them what the North has learned—that only united can we stand against winter.”

He turned at last to Jon, who stood beside him now, silent, eyes burning with something deeper than flame. “I may wear no crown,” Jon said. “But I will not wait for kings and councils to do what must be done.”

Another silence, but this one hummed with decision, not doubt.

Then Rickard Karstark spoke again, voice softer now, the edge of defiance dulled by grim understanding.

“You want to march south to end a petty war… so that we may live through a greater one.”

Ned nodded once. “Yes.”

Karstark gave a tired grunt, then looked to the others. “Then I say send ravens first. Send peace before blades. But if they spit on your banners, we ride.”

Others began to nod.

“We’ll find our swords if needed,” said Dacey, fierce and true.

“One last march. If it spares a hundred later,” added Glover, his voice a rasp.

Benjen murmured, “The Old Gods willing.”

And Eddard turned his gaze back to Jon, who said nothing more. Ned saw it in his eyes. Something rising. A beginning. A burden. A purpose. He hoped Jon will be ready for it.

Chapter Text

Whispers from the North

Lord Paxter Redwyne – Arbor

The parchment smelled faintly of pine, wax, and cold—like something that had no business reaching the warm, perfumed air of the Arbor. Lord Paxter Redwyne held it lightly between two fingers, as though afraid it might crumble like ash and vanish, leaving only its chill behind.

He stood in the sun-dappled hall of his manse, surrounded by stained glass and golden wine, and yet the letter made the warmth seem thinner. Outside, gulls wheeled over the harbor, calling sharp as knives. The wine in his goblet trembled slightly as he brought it to his lips.

“Dead men walking,” he muttered, sipping his Arbor gold. The vintage was sweet, but suddenly too heavy on his tongue. “Old tales. Northmen love those.”

Still, he did not toss the scroll aside. The script was unmistakably Stark. Precise. Steady. No room for drama in those hard, blocky letters. No courtly flourishes, no flourishes at all. Just the facts, laid bare like a body in snow

“The dead rise. We have seen them. We ask peace in preparation for the war to come.”

He laughed, a short bark of sound meant to push away the creeping unease, but the wine caught in his throat. He coughed, wiped his mouth, and read the line again.

“We ask for peace.”

He stared at those words a long while, fingers tapping the stem of his goblet. No pledge. Just that quiet warning.

He refolded it slowly, methodically, and set it beside the peach tart on the tray beside him. The fruit’s scent was sweet and warm. The letter’s was not.

“Even wolves feel winter,” he muttered.

But he did not throw it away.

Lord Mathis Rowan – Bitterbridge Camp

The air in the command tent smelled of damp canvas, sweat, and oil from the braziers. Maps covered the central table, pinned by daggers and flanked by half-drunk cups of cider. Outside, Bitterbridge groaned with restless steel—shouts of captains, the thud of training, and the distant clash of blades echoing in the pale afternoon light.

Lord Mathis Rowan stood with one hand on his hip, the other tossing a rolled raven-scroll down onto the table like it was another delay in a day full of them.

“Another tale from the snows,” he said, half amused, half tired. “Dead men and demons. What’s next? Giants? Talking trees?”

His son, tall and hawk-nosed, picked it up with interest. The laughter in his throat died as he read.

“It’s from Stark himself,” he said. “Not some hedge knight or drunk septon.”

Rowan snorted. “That’s what makes it worse. I’d rather he’d gone mad.”

He poured himself a strong cider, the motion smooth but tense. His gaze drifted to the slit in the tent that passed for a window. Beyond it, the green hills of the Reach were barely visible—blurred behind mists and smoke from cookfires. Somewhere beyond those hills, Jaime Lannister was sharpening his sword. Somewhere beyond those hills, the war for the throne still burned hot and senseless.

“If he’s lying,” Mathis said, “he’s desperate. And if he’s not…”

He didn’t finish the thought. The silence in the tent grew heavier than the parchment on the table.

Lord Yohn Royce – The Gates of the Moon

The hearthfire burned low in the great hall of the Gates of the Moon, casting orange light across the runes etched into Yohn Royce’s heavy bronze armor. Snow hissed softly against the shutters, driven by the winds that howled down from the Giant’s Lance like the breath of gods.

The scroll sat on his knees, its wax cracked, the parchment stiff from cold. The raven that brought it had nearly collapsed on the rookery ledge, its claws bleeding, one wing dragging. It had flown hard, alone. That alone gave the words weight.

Yohn didn’t need to read the letter twice. He had known Eddard Stark since boyhood—stone-faced, solemn, honorable to a fault. A man shaped by winter, not words. There had never been guile in him. Nor exaggeration.

The flames popped in the hearth as he whispered, “He never lied. Not once.”

Around him, the Vale trembled on a knife’s edge. Corbrays still hide in the Eyrie with Baelish whispering poison into young Lord Robert’s ear. House Redfort had raised their banners, and Hunter followed them. Blood had already been spilled beneath moonlight. And more would follow.

And yet this letter—this quiet plea from the Wall—spoke not of feuds or revenge, but of shadows moving beyond the world of lords and banners. Of a colder enemy. An older truth.

Dead men walking. Peace, not swords. He stared at the flickering seal, the bold black strokes of Stark’s name. Outside, the storm thickened. Yohn Royce leaned forward and fed the letter into the flames. The parchment curled, blackened, vanished into embers. But he did not look away. Not until the last cinder had crumbled. He had committed the words to memory.

Prince Doran Martell – Water Gardens

The letter had arrived on the wings of a thin-boned raven, salt-dusted from the Stepstones and exhausted from the journey. It bore no sigil, only a smear of northern wax cracked by heat and age. The parchment smelled faintly of pine and old smoke—an aroma that did not belong in the warm, perfumed air of the Water Gardens.

Prince Doran Martell unfolded it with slow, deliberate fingers. He sat beneath the arches, where soft fountains murmured like memories and orange trees dropped golden fruit into the still blue pools. The sun was low on the horizon, casting a long amber trail across the water. His hands did not tremble as he read.

Eddard Stark. Lord of Winterfell. Warden of the North. A name like carved granite—weathered, immutable, unswayed by wind or tide. Some called him a relic, a holdover from a time when oaths meant more than gold. But Doran knew better. Men like Stark did not pass—they waited. Endured. And now, after all these years of silence and war, the old wolf had raised his voice again. Not in fury, not with threat. But with warning.

“The dead rise. We have seen them. We ask peace in preparation for the war to come.”

Doran read the line twice. Then a third time, more slowly.

It was not a cry for help. It was not a summons to arms. It was the sound of a gate creaking open into something deeper than war—a truth long buried under southern arrogance. He folded the letter once. Then again. And again.

When it was no more than a strip of parchment pressed between his fingers, he lit it with a taper and held it until the flame kissed his knuckles. Ash drifted into the pool beside him and disappeared into ripples.

“Even relics speak truths,” he murmured. “But timing is all.” He turned from the water.

Laid across the table behind him was a map of Westeros. Dorne glowed golden under the candlelight, but his gaze did not rest there. It moved north and east, to the torn heart of the Stormlands.

Doran’s hand lingered over the Stormlands. The North wanted peace. The North wanted stillness, silence. But Dorne had not forgotten Elia. Nor what had been done to her. Nor the fire smoldering beneath their own sand.

Peace, yes. But not yet. The wheel turned. And sometimes, the only way to slow it was to let it crack.

Ser Davos Seaworth – Stormlands Camp

The wind whipped the tents like sails caught in a storm. Cloth snapped, metal rang, men shouted over the clang of hammers and the thudding of boots. In the distance, the faint bray of a warhorn echoed from the treeline—just drills, but tense ones. The camp moved like a beast waking from slumber: slow, hungry, and ready to strike. The banners of the fiery heart flapped red and gold under a gray, sunless sky.

Davos Seaworth walked between the rows of soldiers and smiths, past wagons stacked with grain and barrels sealed in pitch. They were making ready to march—into the Reach, into battle, into the storm that was his king’s war.

Among the usual stack of scrolls—supply manifests, wounded counts, captured scouts—one raven scroll had been tucked beneath a sealed wax pouch. The seal was northern: a direwolf pressed deep in dark wax, stark against the pale parchment.

He knew before opening it that it would not bring good news.

He read it once, then again, slower. His brow creased.

The ink was unadorned. No flourish. No appeal. Just the weight of hard truth laid bare by a harder man.

“The dead rise. We have seen them. We ask peace in preparation for the war to come.”

Davos turned the parchment over, checking the hand again. He had never met Eddard Stark, but he heard enough. And now the man wrote of corpses that did not stay dead and storms that no sword could weather.

He didn’t hesitate. He turned on his heel and made for Stannis’s tent.

The king stood alone beneath its canopy, hunched over a map lit by guttering lanterns. His hair was thinner than last year. His crown sat on a stand nearby, cold and untouched. The table before him was littered with reports—Renly’s last sightings, Reach bannermen’s movements, sightings of Lannister riders in the west.

Davos placed the scroll between two daggers stabbed into the wood.

Stannis read it standing, hands clasped behind his back, eyes narrowing with every line. His mouth did not move. When he finished, he held the parchment in the firelight until the shadows danced on the letters.

“Do you believe it?” Davos asked.

Stannis said nothing for a long time. The candle flickered. His jaw clenched.

“He’s not a liar,” Davos added, quieter.

“No,” Stannis said at last. “He’s not.”

He didn’t sit. He didn’t tear the letter. But his fingers pressed into the wood of the table until the knuckles blanched.

Behind them, the sound of marching feet picked up again—boots against stone, swords unsheathed in practice, the hammer of preparation.

War waited. Renly still held the Reach like a suitor grips a bride. And now the North whispered of a darker foe. Davos stepped back into the cold.

Lord Tywin Lannister – Red Lake

The raven arrived at dawn, black wings cutting through the golden mists that rolled in from the lake. Its arrival disrupted nothing. The camp was already awake, the Lannister host in constant motion—hooves clattering on packed earth, smiths bellowing orders, squires oiling links of mail and sharpening blades. The scent of wet iron and boiled oats hung thick in the morning air.

Tywin Lannister sat in the command tent, bathed in cold sunlight that filtered through the crimson canvas. His armor was already buckled tight, gold and crimson polished to a dull gleam. He read the scroll once, in silence. Then again, slower.

The fire popped behind him. The maps before him did not move, but the shape of the war twisted in his mind with every line.

Kevan stood near the open flap, arms clasped behind his back, waiting. He knew better than to interrupt his brother’s reading.

“Dead men. Walking corpses. Ice spiders in the north,” Tywin said at last, his voice flat as iron.

Kevan shifted slightly. “It’s from Eddard Stark. He wouldn’t say it lightly.”

“That is why I’m reading it twice,” Tywin said. He laid the letter down, carefully, as though it were a contract that needed signing.

The seal had been unmistakable.  

“He asks for peace,” Tywin said, as if tasting the word for the first time. “And we are at war. Curious timing.”

Kevan stepped closer. “Do you believe it?”

Tywin didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted to the banner outside, where the golden lion flared in the wind. Beyond the hills, Red Lake shimmered in the early sun, placid and wide. Somewhere across those waters, Renly Baratheon was still massing his green-and-gold host, dreaming of crowns.

“I believe Stark believes it,” Tywin said at last. “That is dangerous enough.”

Kevan frowned. “If he speaks truth, and we ignore it—”

“If he speaks truth,” Tywin cut in, “then the kingdom is already lost. What we do here is not to choose which shadow to fight, but to ensure our banner flies when the sun returns. If it returns.”

Kevan was silent.

Tywin rose from his chair and moved to the map. His gloved fingers traced the spine of the Reach, the Goldroad, the rivers that would bleed when they marched.

“Stark’s letter asks for peace. But peace does not come freely. He offers no allegiance. No armies. Only warnings.”

His voice was calm. Final.

“Send ravens to Jaime. I want the assault to happened before the next moon end”

He looked back to the letter once more, its edges curling with the morning damp.

Then, with deliberate ease, he placed it into the brazier.

The parchment blackened, curled, and crumbled.

“Let the wolves howl,” Tywin said. “We have lions to feed.”

Lady Olenna Tyrell – Highgarden

The letter smelled of pine, wax, and northern cold — as if the winds of the Wall themselves had clung to the parchment all the way to the Reach.

Lady Olenna Tyrell held it with two fingers, as though it were an unfamiliar fruit and she suspected poison in the rind. Her rings clicked softly as she turned it, frowning.

She read slowly, her eyes narrowing as she scanned each line. Her lips moved faintly, repeating certain words under her breath: the dead rise… unity… peace before fire… silence for now…

“Dead men walking,” she muttered at last, her voice dry as bone. “And wolves howling for peace.”

Margaery sat across from her in the shade-dappled garden, a tray of sugared plums untouched beside her. She rested a hand gently on her belly, fingers drawing absent circles. Her eyes remained fixed on Olenna, silent but listening.

“Rhaella would have liked this,” Olenna went on, waving the letter slightly. “A good ghost story. Spine-tingling. Add some dancing corpses and a silver-haired prince and you could sell it to the fools in Oldtown as gospel.”

She paused, then snorted softly. “Eddard Stark always wore his honor like armor. Perhaps now he’s using it as a shield.”

The letter trembled just slightly in her hand. Whether from the breeze or her fingers, none could say.

Margaery tilted her head. “Do you think he’s lying?”

Olenna gave her granddaughter a long look. “No. That’s the trouble. I think he believes it. Every word. And that, my dear, is far more dangerous than a liar.”

She leaned back against the cushioned bench, sighing through her nose. The perfume of lemon blossom and lavender floated on the warm air, but the words in the letter brought a chill beneath her skin.

“Peace,” she said. “In this season? While stags and lions are still goring each other?”

She glanced over at the half-finished map of the Reach laid out nearby. The borders still smoldered with uncertainty. Renly had sent a summons again. Jaime stirred in the east. And now Ned Stark, long silent, had sent a whisper wrapped in truth.

“If it’s true,” Olenna said, plucking a fig from the silver bowl beside her, “we’ll all be dead soon enough. If it’s not, he’s grown old and sentimental. Either way…”

She took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed.

“I’ll not lose sleep over snow.”

And with that, she handed the parchment to her handmaid without another glance, turned back to the garden, and began discussing Margaery’s next dress as if the end of the world were nothing more than a change in season.

Chapter Text

Jon

The wind was sharp atop the Wall, slicing through leather and wool with a chill that bit to the bone. But Jon no longer shivered at it. After all he’d seen—flames against frost, death beneath moonlight, dragons above burning snow—it was not the cold that troubled him now. It was the silence that gnawed at him.

Ravens had flown—dozens of them. Black wings across a grey sky, his father’s word. Carried south under the direwolf seal of House Stark, beneath words shaped with care: The dead walk. The realm must unite. Winter is not coming. It is here. None had returned.

Jon’s hands, gloved and stiff, rested on the frost-crusted merlons of the Wall’s edge. He stood still, as if carved from ice himself, his gaze fixed southward across the vast white waste of snow and cloud. The world seemed to curve before him, the horizon bending beneath the weight of sky. Somewhere down there, beyond the long miles of wind-scoured ice and torn wilderness, the Kingdoms still stirred. Still schemed. Still bled. Too scattered. Too proud.

He thought of the ravens and where they might’ve landed—on the spires of the Eyrie where Aunt Catelyn’s sister held court for a young Lord Robert, or the battlements of Highgarden where stag and lion tore each other to pieces for crowns carved from dust. He thought of Dorne, still and watchful, of the Stormlands still waving Stannis’s banner. And of King’s Landing, a city forged by Aegon the Conqueror, his own blood, now choked by a false king, a lion with false antler clutching at a throne never meant for him.

No word had come. No aid. No host marching north. No peace offered, nor even false promises. The world refused to listen. And the North bled.

Five thousand good men had fallen at Moat Cailin. Cut down by treachery, by Boltons and Dustins, Northern names turned sour. And another five thousand had stood beside him atop this Wall when dead things poured through the snow. Many of them lay in the cold earth now. And still, they endured. Still, they fought. Still, they hoped.

He clenched his jaw, the bitterness thick as the frost beneath his boots. Had they suffered for nothing? Had they stood alone in the snow just to be forgotten? The South had not forgotten them. It had ignored them.

He turned slightly, looking down from the Wall’s height. Below, the courtyard of Castle Black stirred with life. A slow, grim rhythm of preparation. Black Brothers and Northern men moved through the drifts, faces drawn, shoulders squared. Horses were being saddled and shod. Steel was being sharpened in quiet corners, the rasp of whetstones as steady as any prayer. Provisions were counted by gloved hands, barrels of salt pork and dried beans lashed tight to supply carts. Every voice was subdued, every step measured.

A token garrison would remain. Just enough to hold the castle, to guard the Wall’s heights should the dead return too soon. The rest would ride south. But not all the way.

Jon's eyes narrowed. There was still work to be done. Winterfell came first—there were ghosts to bury and traitors to behead. After that, the Vale.

The silence of the realm had answered his ravens. Now they would carry their truth not in ink, but in footsteps. In fire. In blood if need be. If the realm would not come to them—then they would go to the realm.

The wind moaned behind him as Jon turned from the edge. He lingered only a moment more, watching the sky pale to the east, where the light struggled through a veil of grey cloud. Then he descended the icy steps alone, boots crunching over frost-hardened stone.

He walked the long corridor behind the rookery tower, torchlight flickering across the damp walls, until he reached the wooden door carved with the old Night’s Watch oath.

In the solar, the fire had burned low. Maester Aemon sat by the hearth, wrapped in layered furs, his sightless eyes milky with age but somehow still keen. The room smelled of parchment and ash, with just a hint of the pine resin that stewards burned in the brazier to keep the damp at bay. Time moved slowly here, as if the stones themselves remembered a thousand winters.

Jon stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. He’d been in this room before—seeking counsel, quiet, a kind word—but today, the air felt heavier.

The old man turned his head slightly. “You’ve come to say it, haven’t you?”

Jon paused, hand still on the doorframe. “Say what?”

Aemon’s smile was faint but knowing. “The name.”

Jon moved toward the old chair across from him and sank into it. His limbs felt stiff, not from cold, but from the weight he carried now. From the truth of who he was. The fire crackled between them, but its warmth did little to touch the cold gathering at his core.

“I’ve thought on it,” Jon said quietly. “Long and hard. It doesn’t feel… real, not entirely. But it’s mine. My burden.”

It had kept him awake more than once. Who he had been. Who he was now. The boy who was raised at Winterfell dreaming of ranging beyond the Wall, lost in snow, and the man now poised to carry dragon blood into war. He felt like both, and neither.

Aemon tilted his head. “You chose?”

Jon nodded. “Daeron.” The name settled in the room like falling snow.

Aemon’s breath caught, a soft intake that trembled with memory. “Not Aegon?”

“No.” Jon’s voice was steadier now, though low. “Daeron, like the Young Dragon. He united the realm. Fought not for madness, but peace. And he died young. I hope not to follow him too quickly in that.”

Aemon chuckled, a dry rasp that sounded more bone than laughter. “He was brave. Foolish. Perhaps that suits you.”

Jon allowed himself a small smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’ve said it yourself, Maester. A Targaryen alone is a terrible thing. I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not,” Aemon said, and the old man’s voice carried a rare conviction. “And the realm is lucky for it.”

They sat like that for a time, the silence between them not empty but full. Full of memory, weight, legacy. The crackle of flame, the faint wind moaning beyond the walls—it all seemed to hush in reverence.

Then Aemon reached out. His fingers were bony, fragile as twigs, but his touch was steady. He brushed the sleeve of Jon’s cloak.

“You’ll be the first of us to walk the south in fire and truth in a hundred years,” he said. “Make it count.”

Jon bowed his head—not in fealty, not in shame—but as a man acknowledging the enormity of what stood before him. Duty, legacy, blood. The realm would not save itself. And he would not wait for its permission to try.

He found his father in the yard. Snow crunched underfoot as Jon crossed the courtyard, the sky above flat and grey. Lord Stark stood near the stables, cloaked and armed, already prepared for the day. He looked up as Jon approached, his expression unreadable.

“You sent the raven?” Jon asked as he approached.

“To Robb and Lady Stark,” Ned said, voice level. “Moat Cailin is theirs again. They’ll march east and assess the Vale. Eight thousand strong. If it falls to madness, we’ll bring order.”

Jon nodded once. “And us?”

“We ride to Winterfell. It is time.”

It is time. The words echoed through him like a bell tolling the hour of truth. No turning back now. No more masks. No more waiting.

Jon took a breath. “Then I’ll go as who I am.”

Ned looked at him, and for a long moment, said nothing.

Jon stood still beneath his father’s gaze. He wore black and red now. A quiet three-headed dragon, stitched in deep crimson, marked his heart. Yet the cloak across his shoulders was grey wool, plain but strong, clasped with a lone direwolf pin. Ice and fire. Stark and Targaryen. A boy who was once neither, now standing tall in both.

His hair was tied back in a simple knot, the wind tugging at loose strands that curled at his temple. He had shaved that morning, not for vanity but ritual—he wanted to be clean for this, for truth.

“I am Daeron Targaryen,” Jon said. “And I’m ready.”

Ned’s eyes didn’t leave his. He closed them slowly, and when he opened them again, something flickered there—something old and buried. A father’s grief. A vow made in blood and silence, long kept.

“Lyanna would be proud,” he said, voice rough with memory.

“I hope you are too.”

“I am,” Ned said softly. Then, after a breath, with a flicker of unease behind the pride: “And afraid.”

Before Jon could reply, his father reached into his cloak, the movement slow, almost reluctant. From within the folds, he drew out a scroll, its edges worn soft with age and weather, the parchment yellowed and stained at the corners by salt or sweat.

“A raven came last night,” he said, offering it without unfolding it. “From Howland.”

Jon’s breath caught in his throat. “He’s alive?”

Ned nodded once. “Alive. And watching. He asks for you. Says the time has come for you to meet them.”

Jon frowned. A question formed before the words did. “Them?”

A pause. Ned’s expression shifted. “He said the greenseer will be there. The one in the roots.”

Bloodraven. The name didn’t pass his father’s lips, but Jon felt it nonetheless, settling into the silence between them like fog across a frozen lake.

“He wants you to go north of the Wall,” Ned continued, “to a place he calls the Heart of the World.” He looked directly at Jon now, and Jon saw no doubt in his eyes—only quiet dread. “Says you’ll know it when you see it.”

“You’re not going,” Ned added after a pause. His voice dropped lower. “Not alone. The Others still walk that land.”

“I won’t be alone,” Jon said. “I’ll fly.”

Ned's gaze sharpened in that Stark way, cutting straight through to the bone. “On Winter?”

Jon nodded. “Low and fast. I’ll avoid open skies. He’ll carry me where I need to go.”

A long silence followed. Ned stared at him, eyes narrowed with the weight of too many battles, too many sons nearly lost. Then he spoke, quieter than before. “They called to you.”

Jon’s voice was calm, steady. “And I have questions of my own.”

A gust of wind curled between them like breath from the godswood. The snow swirled along the edge of the yard. Ned’s cloak shifted with it.

Then his father said, “I sent Wylis Manderly east, to Eastwatch. He’s taking a ship for Volantis.”

Jon arched a brow. “To what end?”

Ned almost smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maester Aemon didn’t tell you? I sent a raven to White Harbor, asked Lord Wyman to send ships to Meereen.”

Jon blinked. The weight of that name hit like a thunderclap. “You’re bringing Daenerys back?”

“If she’ll come,” Ned said. “The old maester made a compelling case. Said we might need more than one dragon to face what’s coming.”

“Do the other lords know?”

“Only the ones I trust.”

Jon was quiet for a long moment, the idea circling through his mind like a hawk above a dead field. Then, softly, “She freed slaves. They say she’s kind.”

“Kindness is no shield against darkness,” Ned replied. “Even those who do great good can be twisted by power.”

Jon glanced toward the sky, where snow and cloud bled into one endless expanse. “Let’s hope she takes after her mother, then.”

“And not her father,” Ned said.

They stood there together, shoulder to shoulder, as the wind pressed in and the light dimmed. Above them, the sky churned — grey and wide and waiting.

Chapter Text

Robb

The Vale was quiet as they marched.

Its mountains loomed like old gods carved from cold stone—immense, unblinking, and older than oaths. Snow dusted their peaks like powdered bones. The narrow paths twisted through jagged passes, the cliffs above sheer and shadowed, with falcons wheeling far overhead. Wind came in shrill, biting gusts, sharp enough to cut through furs and armor both. It whispered through the pines and howled through the clefts, a voice of ice and warning. Even the horses walked lighter, as if the ground itself might betray them.

Robb rode at the head of the column, Grey Wind pacing just behind, a silent wraith with his ears pricked and tail low. The direwolf’s muzzle twitched at every scent the wind brought. Robb had learned to trust that. There were men behind him—eight thousand of them—but it was Grey Wind he looked to first when the air grew still.

The banners of the North and Riverlands snapped in the mountain wind. They had come through valleys cloaked in mist, past half-abandoned holdfasts and villages where ravens lingered on broken rooftops. Ser Marq Piper and Patrek Mallister rode ahead to scout the paths, flanked by lean outriders. Behind came the main host—long lines of spearmen and archers, the clang of hooves and the groan of cart wheels echoing endlessly in the narrow passes. Hosteen Frey rode near the rear, sour-faced as ever, muttering about mountain goats and broken trails.

His mother rode with Uncle Edmure and the Blackfish just behind the vanguard. She was quiet that morning, her face drawn, her shoulders set in silence. She had argued, more than once, to send the girls home. Gently. Firmly.

But the letter from his father had said otherwise.

“If they are still with you,” Lord Eddard had written in that same sure, unbending hand that had once guided Robb’s own, “bring them with the host. There are still ironborn in the north, and it is time they see the shape of the realm for what it is. Winter is Coming. And we must be ready.” So they came.

Sansa rode close to their mother, wrapped in a thick blue cloak lined with grey fur. Her hood was up, her eyes downcast, as if the mountains themselves might swallow her if she looked too long. Lady padded beneath her horse, silent as snowfall, her pale eyes ever-watchful.

Arya, by contrast, rode ahead with the scouts, her seat light and loose as if she were born to the saddle. She wore no cloak, only a worn leather jerkin and riding boots stained with mud. Her dark braid bounced as she leaned to whisper to Nymeria, who padded along at her side, tall and wild and lean with golden eyes that missed nothing.

Robb watched them from a distance, his breath clouding before him. They had changed. Both of them.

Sansa spoke rarely now, and when she did, it was soft, careful, as if every word had to be measured before she gave it. Her courtesies were still perfect, her posture faultless—but there was something missing in her, something dimmed. Whatever light she’d carried as a girl had flickered. And Arya… Arya had grown wilder. She moved like her wolf now—sharp angles, quick reflexes, always watching, always alert. There was little softness left in her.

He wondered what had happened at Riverrun. But something had broken there. Some part of them had been left on the riverbank with their grandfather’s ashes.

I should’ve been there, Robb thought. We all should have been.

Hoster Tully had deserved a farewell from his whole family. But war did not wait on mourning. The Ironborn had burned the western coast. The Boltons had turned traitor. And the realm was splitting apart like river ice under spring thaw.

Duty had called him elsewhere. As it always did. So now he rode east. Into the Vale, not home. And his sisters rode with him, children still, though the war had carved new shapes into both of them.

Brynden Tully rode silently beside Lady Catelyn. His eyes were sharp, always scanning the ridgelines. He said little, but Robb could feel the readiness in him, the way his hand hovered near the hilt of his sword whenever the wind shifted.,

Let them come, Robb thought. We’ll meet them in the high passes or the valleys below. But let the Vale bleed no more.

Grey Wind lifted his head, nose twitching, and gave a low, warning growl. And the march went on.

Arya doubled back through the column with the easy speed of a shadow. Her horse, a rangy brown courser, weaved between soldiers and supply wagons with hardly a tug on the reins. She rode light in the saddle, as if the mountain wind buoyed her. When she pulled up beside Robb, there was a sharpness in her grin, and something eager in her eyes.

“You sure there’s going to be a fight?” she asked.

Robb glanced over, keeping one hand steady on the reins. Arya had grown. Not like a lady—thin shoulders, wild hair, and windburned cheeks—but grown all the same. The sword on her hip was worn smooth at the hilt. Not a toy. Not for show.

“I hope not,” he said.

Arya made a face. “I hope there is. I want to see who wins.”

He snorted, but not unkindly. “The realm wins if there’s no blood.”

“That’s what Lady Catelyn said,” Arya muttered, shifting in her saddle with clear disdain.

Sansa caught up a moment later, her grey palfrey picking its way carefully across the stony ground. She rode with the posture of a princess, back straight, hands gloved and still. Her blue cloak was fastened with a silver wolf’s head, and her hood had slipped back just enough to show the auburn braid falling over one shoulder. Her face was pale, thoughtful.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said quietly to Arya.

“It’s true,” Arya shot back.

“You want people to die.”

“I want the right people to lose,” Arya said, flashing a grin as sharp as the edge of her blade.

The sisters locked eyes for a heartbeat too long. Tension coiled between them, raw and invisible. Sansa’s jaw tightened, her lips thin with distaste. Arya looked like she was daring her to say more.

Beneath them, their direwolves reacted.

Lady, pale as snowdrift, gave a low, warning growl—almost a chiding murmur of disapproval. Nymeria, darker and leaner, growled back, teeth flashing briefly beneath her muzzle. Not a challenge. A warning. The wolves mirrored their mistresses in everything, and the chill between the sisters had long since passed into their shadows.

Robb watched them both and felt something twist inside him. They had been girls once. Just girls. Sansa with her songs, Arya with her scrapes and stones. Now one moved like a soldier and the other like a statue.

He shifted in his saddle, voice calm. “That’s enough.”

Neither of them replied. Sansa looked away. Arya spurred her horse a little ahead, dark braid snapping behind her. Robb didn’t follow. He let them ride.

And then he pressed on, alone. The wind rose again, curling down from the high ridges like the breath of giants. Grey Wind padded at his side, silent and watchful. Somewhere behind, Lady and Nymeria fell into place again, the sisters trailing behind with their wolves and silence. And Robb kept his eyes on the narrowing trail ahead, where the Vale was waiting.

That night they camped beneath the towering cliffs of the Giant’s Lance, the great mountain rising like a jagged white fang into the stars. Its slopes were dusted with old snow and shadow, sheer faces that caught the moonlight like the blade of a titan’s axe. Winds raced down from the heights, dry and sharp and merciless, tearing at the tents and snuffing out smaller fires. The earth here was thin and stony, roots clawing for breath, and silence ruled the passes like an old ghost.

The army huddled low beneath the ridgeline, their fires flickering like scattered stars fallen from the sky. Horses snorted in their makeshift pens. Men muttered quietly, their voices swallowed by the cliffs. Every sound felt distant here—muted, flattened. As though the mountain itself disapproved of noise.

Robb sat alone on a slope just above the camp, his cloak wrapped tight around his shoulders. Grey Wind prowled nearby, padding silently over rocks and snowdrifts, pausing now and then to stare into the darkness, nose lifted to catch scents the men could not. A sentinel with teeth.

But even the direwolf’s presence brought little comfort.

Robb's eyes wandered northward, past the stars, past the icy wind and brittle sky, to Winterfell. He thought of the walls. The scorched gates. The trees blackened at the edge of drgonfire. The home he had sworn to reclaim, and had—but not without cost.

And he thought of her. Meera.

She had been smoke in the trees and storm in the dark—sharp-eyed, quiet-footed, laughter rare but true when it came. She had not said goodbye before they left Winterfell. There hadn’t been time. Just a glance across the snow-covered yard, the soft press of her fingers at his wrist... and then, in the still hush of the godswood, a kiss.

He remembered the feel of her mouth, cool from the falling snow, the way her hands had curled at his collar as if trying to hold something fleeting. The old gods watching, silent and unmoving, red leaves spinning down around them like blessings or warnings. It had not been desperate, nor hurried. Only true.

He’d meant to tell her more. He still meant to. But duty had turned his path east, not home. The war would not wait, and neither would the realm. Peace before love. Duty before desire. That was the price.

“She’ll understand,” he murmured aloud, though there was no one to hear him but the wind. “She has to.”

But the wind howled harder then, whistling between stone and canvas like a warning. Grey Wind lifted his snout and gave a long, low howl in answer, deep and mournful. It rippled through the camp, set the horses stirring, and sent a chill deeper than snow down Robb’s spine.

Because in that sound, he thought he heard her voice.

Chapter Text

Jon

The wind over the haunted forest was colder than any wind Jon had known. It wasn’t just cold—it was old. It moved like something remembering itself, threading through the canopy with a whisper that sounded like names half-forgotten. But Winter cut through it like shadow through flame, wings slicing the mists as the pale black dragon descended.

They had flown for hours. North of the Wall. The forests grew stranger with every league. Pines gave way to warped birches, their limbs crooked like broken fingers, and the ground below turned to soft, black loam veiled in fog. Branches hung low, heavy with frost and silence. Jon sat still in his new saddle, forged by northern smith, his breath white in the air, his eyes fixed on the curling horizon of trees.

Then he saw it. A hollow grove, ringed in weirwoods older than the Wall, older than men. Their faces were twisted, mouths open in silent screams, and the red sap oozing from their eyes looked like blood that had never stopped bleeding. They stood in a circle, guarding the pit at the grove’s center—a wound in the earth, round and gaping like the mouth of a dead god. There was no sound here. Not birdsong. Not branches creaking. Even the wind held its breath.

Winter landed with eerie grace, his talons crunching softly in the frost. He did not roar. He did not move. He simply lowered his head and waited, great golden eyes burning like two twin lanterns in the murk.

Jon dismounted slowly, boots pressing into the brittle moss, hand on the hilt of his sword more from instinct than fear. The silence pressed in around him like weight.

Then a figure stepped from the trees.

“Lord Reed,” Jon said.

The man before him looked like a ghost from a forgotten age. He was hunched, wrapped in a dark cloak streaked with frost and dirt. His once-brown hair had faded into shades of grey, his beard patchy and unkempt. The eyes were the same though—still sharp, still watching. But there were shadows under them now, long ones.

“You’ve grown,” Howland Reed said.

“And you’ve vanished,” Jon replied.

The man gave a faint smile, brittle as bark. “That’s what the world does to dreamers. It swallows them.”

They clasped hands, and Jon felt more than callus and skin. There was something hollow in Howland’s grip, something worn thin. As though the years had taken more than time from him. Jon wondered what he had seen, what he had done to carve that silence into his bones.

“Come,” Howland said, turning toward the grove. “They’re waiting.”

Jon followed without question.

The weirwoods loomed above them like witnesses. Their pale limbs reached inward as if clutching the secret buried in the earth. They passed between two ancient trunks and descended into the hollow. Roots hung from the walls like ropes. The ground grew damper with each step. And then the light changed.

Pale green fire flickered along the narrow passageway, emerging from stones inset in the rock—glowing softly like dying stars. The air was close and rich with the scent of earth and sap, as though they were walking into the veins of the world itself.

Jon said nothing. His heart beat slower here. Or faster. He couldn’t tell.

All he knew was that something waited in the dark. Something old. Something watching. And that whatever lay ahead, it would change everything.

The cave widened into a vast hollow. It was not merely a space carved from stone. It felt grown, not built — as though the roots had shaped the rock with purpose, coaxing it open over centuries. The air was damp and cool, heavy with the scent of moss, decay, and something older than either. Roots curled along the ceiling like veins beneath skin, some thick as a man’s leg, others pulsing faintly with a greenish, mournful light. From the walls, pale lichen shimmered like ghost-flame, and tiny motes of dust hung suspended in the air, unmoving, as if time itself hesitated here.

The ground sloped downward into shadow. Pools of still, black water dotted the floor like mirrors left for forgotten gods. Jon saw reflections in them—not his own, but others. Faces twisted and strange, old as stone, their eyes flickering like candleflames in the deep. They did not blink.

His boots made no sound against the damp earth. Every breath felt loud, every heartbeat a drumbeat in a room that had not known men for ages. Something watched from the dark, not with hatred, but with the slow, unblinking patience of trees.

Then they stepped into the light.

Small figures moved beyond the shadows. No taller than children, but there was nothing of childhood in them. Their skin was bark and moss and memory — dappled in green, grey, and brown. Their limbs were long and nimble, their movement impossibly graceful, like reeds swaying in wind that wasn’t there. Eyes gleamed gold and green, luminous, but cold. They watched without blinking, without warmth, ancient things born when fire was new.

Some wore cloaks of squirrel fur and shadow; others moved bare but for feathers and vines that hung like ceremonial garb. Their hair coiled in wild tangles, threaded with beads of bone and polished seeds. One’s braid clinked faintly with what looked like teeth.

Jon’s hand drifted toward his sword, a motion born of instinct, not thought.

He had faced Wildlings and beasts. Fought wights and White Walker with burning steel. Ridden a dragon born in smoke and ash, and burned rider on their horses. But this — this shook something deeper. A child’s fear of the woods at night. The hush before the gods spoke.

One of the creatures stepped forward, smaller than the rest, slight as a girl. Its head tilted to the side, owl-like. Its voice came high and sweet, but hollow, as if spoken through a shell.

“You fear us.”

Jon’s throat worked. “You’re real.”

It glided closer, toes brushing the stone like mist on water. “We are. And were. And will be, until the last tree falls.”

Another stepped from behind —taller, older, face like the bark of a weirwood, lips thin and cracked, nose flat. Its eyes held time, and something beyond it.

“So long since one of your kind entered here,” it said. “Not a crow. Not a thief. Not a butcher… A song.”

Jon blinked. “What?”

“A song come walking.”

His voice caught in his throat. “Was it you? Who saved my uncle?”

From the shadows, a smaller child emerged. Golden sap dripped from fingers like slow tears. It nodded.

“We found him still fighting,” the small thing said. “A dagger in one hand. A shattered sword in the other. We made the cold one flee and healed him.”

Jon bowed his head. “Thank you.”

The creature gave no reply. Its stare was long, unfathomable, like roots sinking through ice.

“How is this place safe?” he asked.

A third answered, from somewhere behind. “Old magic,” it whispered, “woven when the world was young. Stronger than cold. Stronger than death… For now.”

Then came the voice—old, brittle, but deep as stone.

“You have questions.”

It did not echo. The sound moved through the cave not like air, but like pressure, curling around the roots and through the still pools, a sound felt more in the bones than in the ears. It bent the silence, warped it, like roots twisting slowly through ancient rock.

Jon turned toward the shadows, his breath misting in the chill.

From the far edge of the chamber, something shifted—or perhaps it had always been there, crouched at the limits of sight, hidden among the great coils of the weirwood roots. They parted like fingers, revealing the figure cradled at their center.

He was not just a man. He was the memory of one. A husk, carved from ash and bone, half-swallowed by the heart tree as if it had grown around him and claimed him. Pale skin, dry and brittle, stretched like parchment over a skull-like face. His mouth was a thin seam, his nose a shallow ridge, almost gone. One eye was red—deep, bleeding red, brighter than flame, brighter than blood. The other was a hollow void, milk-pale and sunken, as if the world had long since stopped reflecting in it.

His hair hung in pale, brittle ropes, long and tangled, thick with feathers and moss. Strands of lichen clung to him like mourning veils. His ribcage rose and fell faintly, a ghost of breath. His arms were woven through with roots that pulsed and shimmered faintly green—some pierced his skin, like thorns driven deep and long ago, others curled about his shoulders, his legs, like a lover’s grasp that would never let go.

The heart tree behind him had grown around his spine. Its bark peeled in places, revealing smooth inner wood that pulsed with faint, reddish light. The cave’s mossy walls breathed with him—or perhaps because of him. The pools near his feet had gone utterly still.

He did not blink.

“Bloodraven,” Jon whispered.

“Brynden,” the man said. “Once. But names are dust, and I am bound to wood and whisper.”

Even the Children stepped back at his words. Not in fear, but reverence. As though the voice that spoke was not merely old, but sacred.

Howland Reed stepped forward and bowed his head. “He watches,” he said. “Always.”

Jon stood still, caught between awe and unease. The smell of moss and ash clung to the air, and the roots around the cavern floor pulsed softly with life, like something just beneath the skin of the world was stirring.

“You said I was called,” Jon said. “Why?”

“Because you are the song,” Bloodraven rasped. “The song that was sung in smoke and salt. The blade reforged. The heart that burned. The song of ice and fire.”

“I never asked to be part of a song.”

“No one does,” Howland murmured. “But some are written in the first lines, before the ink has dried.”

Jon’s voice was hoarse. “And you think I can stop them?” He asked. “The Others?”

The roots stirred faintly. The fire cracked. A child’s whisper, from the shadows, “Even the singers cannot see that far.”

Jon turned back toward the being in the tree. His pulse beat harder in his throat. “Then what am I meant to do?”

“To walk the path the old stories dreamed of,” Bloodraven said. “Azor Ahai. Eldric Shadowchaser. The Promised Prince. The Last Hero. The one who was shadow and sword. They are not names, they are burdens.”

Jon hesitated, staring into that one red eye, bright as coals under snow. Then, voice low, he asked. “How do I stop them? The Others. How do you kill what’s already dead?”

The roots around Bloodraven shifted. “You don’t kill death,” he rasped. “You deny it. You unmake what binds it.”

Another child spoke. “Stone of fire,” it whispered. “And the old flame.”

Jon frowned. “What does that mean?”

But Bloodraven only watched him, his red eye unblinking. “You will find what you need in forgotten things. Burned places. Black glass beneath black mountains.”

Jon swallowed, but the questions pressed harder now. “Why was Winter’s egg hidden beneath my family’s tomb? Why under Cregan Stark?”

A pause. The firelight dimmed, as if even the flames held their breath.

“Because blood calls to blood,” Bloodraven said at last, voice hollow as wind in catacombs. “The cold must sleep where warmth once stood watch. Cregan guarded more than bones.”

“But why?” Jon asked. “Why now? That egg was silent for years. Why did it call to me now?”

Bloodraven’s red eye gleamed like a dying star.

“Because time ripens. Because threads tighten. Because the wind turned east and the ash stirred. Or perhaps… because the boy named Snow was more than that.”

Jon’s brow furrowed. “That’s not an answer.”

“There are no answers. Only songs,” Bloodraven said. “Some sung in truth. Some in lies dressed as truth. Some hummed in the dark by things that have no mouths. You hear them now. That is enough.”

Jon felt the weight of that, more than he wanted to admit.

“And if I fail?” Jon asked. “If the White Walker wins?”

“Then the world ends cold. And silent.”

One of the children stepped forward, silent as snowfall. In their small, bark-colored hands rested a blade, long and lean, blacker than the void between stars. It drank the firelight instead of reflecting it, the edges shimmering with a dark, red sheen, as if it remembered blood. The curve of the blade was elegant, menacing—like a smile meant for war. Its hilt gleamed faintly with silver, but there was something else beneath the wrapping. Something that shimmered like shadow stitched with silk and ash.

“Dark Sister,” said Bloodraven.

The roots coiled around him shivered at the name. Even the cave seemed to grow colder.

“She drank the blood of kings and cowards. She flew with Visenya and knew Aegon’s fury. And now she is yours. Not for pride. Not for glory. But because the realm will not bend to honor alone.” He paused. “Take what is yours,” he said, after a long moment. “With fire. And with blood.”

Jon’s hand trembled as he reached forward. His fingers brushed the hilt—and the world lurched.

Heat surged through him. Not flame, but memory. Echoes. Steel biting through flesh. Screams on dragonback. Fire above cities. Cold beneath the world. The blade was not metal—it was history, and rage, and oath, and purpose.

His breath caught in his throat, eyes widening. Not from pain—but recognition. As though the blade had been waiting for him.

The shadows along the cave wall shifted like things alive. The green fire flared higher for a moment, casting flickering shapes across Jon’s face. And all around him, the Children of the Forest bowed their heads—not in fear, but in solemn reverence. As if something had passed between them all, something older than kingship, deeper than prophecy.

Bloodraven’s voice rasped like wind through dead branches. “There were other songs,” he said. “Songs that could have passed. Songs that will never be sung.”

He leaned forward, or perhaps the roots dragged him down, coiling tighter around his arms and ribs, yet his one red eye burned brighter—fixed on Jon with a focus that pierced bone.

“And in all those songs, there was always fire and there was always ice. If the flame flickered, if the frost fell wrong… the songs became dark. And cold.”

Jon felt the hair rise on his arms. The air around him was thick now, not with heat or cold, but with weight. Like he stood not just in a cave—but in the center of all that had ever mattered.

“There were many,” Bloodraven went on, his voice splintering like roots cracking stone.

“One cradled in shadow across the sea, where snow never touched him. One veiled in gold and silk, fed lies sweet as milk. One who drew his blade at the world’s end but never rose again. One draped in black who died nameless in the snow…”

Bloodraven paused, not for breath, but like a drowning man treading the waters of memory. The silence he left behind was vast.

“This” he said, after some time “is the song, we chose. Me, and the others before me. We watched. We waited. We saw the paths twist and break. But this thread… this thread we held.”

The fire cracked again. The cave whispered in its bones.

Jon looked down and saw his own reflection in one of the black pools. Not the bastard of Winterfell. Pale and uncertain, sword trembling in his grip—he barely knew the man staring back. And Dark Sister trembled too, as if alive in his grasp.

“Let us hope,” Bloodraven finished, “it will lead to salvation... and not to doom.”

At the mouth of the cave, the light of dawn filtered through the mists, painting the roots in shades of gold and ghost. The forest beyond waited in silence, the world hushed as if holding its breath.

Jon turned, Dark Sister sheathed at his side, Winter waiting beyond the trees.

Howland Reed stood beside the arching roots, his face shadowed beneath his hood. In the pale light, he seemed older than before, not merely aged, but worn thin, like parchment left too long to the sun. His eyes were distant, touched by things no man should carry.

“You’re not coming back with me,” Jon said.

Howland smiled faintly, the kind of smile that has forgotten how to be true. “No. The man I was died the day he walked beneath the heart tree. What remains… belongs here.”

Jon stepped closer. “You have children. Jojen and Meera.”

Howland’s gaze softened. “They were my joy,” he said. “My lanterns in the dark. But this—” he gestured to the roots above them, to the hollow earth behind — “this is where I am needed. The past has teeth, Jon. Some of us must feed it.”

A silence passed between them, heavy with words left unsaid.

“Will you tell them?” Jon asked.

Howland nodded slowly. “Tell them I watched the tides turn, and I chose to stand where the world began. Tell them I loved them, more than anything. Tell them I remembered.”

Jon felt his throat tighten. “I will.”

Howland stepped forward then and placed a hand on Jon’s shoulder. “You carry the fire now,” he said. “But do not let it consume you. Even dragons must not forget they were born of blood.”

Jon swallowed. “I’ll come back.”

“No,” Howland said. “You won’t. But something else will. The boy I met in Winterfell is already gone.”

Jon said nothing.

The wind stirred the trees. And then he turned, climbed onto Winter’s back, and rose into the pale light of morning, the cave falling away beneath him like the closing of a book.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

The Bloody Gate opened with a groan that echoed like the voice of the mountain itself, ancient and begrudging. Its rusted chains clanked as the iron portcullis began its slow ascent, shedding flakes of red-brown into the cold wind. The sound reverberated off stone cliffs and vanished into the morning mists that clung to the peaks like shrouds.

Catelyn sat high in her saddle beneath the looming archway, her gloved hands steady on the reins. The mountain wind gnawed at her cheeks and tugged loose strands of auburn hair from beneath her hood. She kept her spine straight, her face composed, but her eyes flicked up to the jagged teeth of the Mountains of the Moon.

Behind her stretched the host — eight thousand men, bristling with spears and banners, a tide of steel and fur. The crests of House Stark, Tully, Blackwood, Bracken, Frey, Mallister, and Piper rippled like defiance in the high mountain breeze. The sound of hooves clattering on stone mixed with the low murmur of voices and the occasional bark of a captain's order.

Grey Wind walked just ahead, his massive frame low and alert, pacing beside Robb’s mount with a predator’s grace. His fur rippled like smoke, and his golden eyes flicked toward every outcrop, every shadow that might hide an arrow or an ambush. Lady moved with regal quiet at Sansa’s side, her silver fur unruffled by the wind, her gaze calm and watchful. Arya brought up the rear of their vanguard, riding with mud on her face and wild joy in her grin. Nymeria loped close behind the outriders, her shoulders slick with melting frost, her eyes bright with hunger and purpose.

Catelyn’s gaze fell upon the riders who had come to meet them — a small contingent of Vale knights, steel-helmed and straight-backed, lined before the gate like statues carved from the very rock. Their surcoats bore the sigil of House Waynwood.

Their captain stepped forward, helm tucked beneath his arm. His beard was touched with silver, and his jaw was clenched so tightly it seemed carved from granite. His gauntlets were polished, but his eyes held no warmth.

“Lady Stark,” he said, bowing with stiff formality. “Ser Donnel Waynwood, by the grace of the Eyrie. You may pass. But know the Vale is not whole.”

Catelyn dipped her head in acknowledgment. “We seek peace, not war,” she said.

The knight did not smile. The wind caught his cloak and tossed it like a torn banner. “Then you ride a rare road.”

The path into the Vale wound like a silver ribbon laid carelessly across a giant’s palm, threading its way through jagged peaks and mist-veiled slopes that clawed at the sky. The Mountains of the Moon loomed on all sides, cruel and pale beneath the morning sun, their white caps blinding in the light, their lower crags swallowed in shifting veils of fog. The air grew thinner with each step into the heights, crisp and sharp in the lungs, and each hoofbeat echoed strangely against stone, as if the mountains themselves listened.

Snow flurries danced through the wind like shards of glass, catching in the manes of horses and the furs of riders, melting slowly into damp patches on leather and wool. Somewhere above, a hawk cried, the sound distant and piercing — a single sharp note that rang like warning.

Catelyn rode in silence, her cloak drawn tightly around her shoulders. Beneath her, the horse picked its way carefully along the path, hooves clicking against the frost-bitten stone. The silence stretched, too long, too deep. No birdsong. No rustle of underbrush. Only the whisper of wind and the endless crunch of snow. Even the voices of the men behind them had faded to murmurs, as if the mountains swallowed sound with the same cold hunger they swallowed warmth.

“The silence unsettles me,” she said finally, her voice low but firm.

Robb pulled his horse alongside hers, his hood shadowing most of his face. Only his mouth was visible, set in a grim line. “You think there are eyes in the rocks?” he asked.

“I think there always are,” she replied.

Behind them, Ser Rodrik Cassel’s voice floated up through the stillness, pitched low in conversation with the Blackfish.

“I fought beside Yohn Royce once,” he said. “A hard man. But an honest one.”

Brynden Tully, grey of beard and still iron-shouldered despite the years, gave a curt nod. “He’ll come. If only to hear what we say. He will not bend to Lysa easily.”

“Nor to Baelish,” he added, voice rougher. “There are men in the Vale who remember his climb too well.”

Catelyn said nothing, but she looked up again at the mountains. There were no ravens overhead. No distant horns. Only the sound of banners flapping behind them — Stark grey and white, Tully red and blue, Blackwood ravens, Bracken stallions, the pink maiden of House Piper. A host of houses, some of them barely held together by duty or shared grief. They had come for peace. But peace rode with swords.

The day passed into dusk as the path widened and the walls of the Eyrie’s lowlands emerged through the snow-veiled cliffs. The camp sprawled beneath them like a half-woken beast, fires kindling in the dimming light, flickering like eyes in the growing dark. Tents rose in careful rows along the ridges — wool and canvas in Stark and Tully colors, pulled tight against the cold. Guards paced between the cookfires, their breath rising in white plumes. The sharp wind off the heights carried the smell of pine, ash, and boiled oats.

Beyond the encampment, the road climbed ever upward, narrowing into the long, treacherous ascent to the Eyrie itself — a pale sliver high above the cliffs, barely visible in the failing light. It was a castle of sky and wind, unreachable by armies but never far from the politics that stirred the valleys below.

Catelyn stood at the entrance to her tent, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the mountains beyond. The fire inside cast a golden flicker against the canvas, but she did not turn toward its warmth. She had once thought the Vale a place of beauty — a kingdom in the clouds, serene and proud. Now it seemed something else entirely. Cold. Silent. Coiled like a serpent that had not yet struck.

She wrapped her arms tighter across her chest and watched as the last of the sun slipped behind the peaks.

Inside the command tent, the air was thick with heat and unease. A brazier burned low in the corner, its coals crackling, casting shadows that danced along the tent’s canvas walls. The light flickered across maps and sigils, illuminating the drawn faces of tired men. Soot clung to the ceiling like a bruise, and the sharp scent of pine smoke clashed with oiled leather and damp wool.

Tensions burned brighter than any fire.

Lord Nestor Royce sat near the center, arms folded across a breastplate etched with runes. His jaw was tight, lips pressed into a thin, pale line. He looked every inch a Royce — proud, immovable.

“The High Steward will not act without his cousin’s blessing,” he said, voice clipped and cold as slate. “And Lord Yohn will not swear to any council until he sees how this plays.”

A pause followed, the kind that measured not silence, but strategy.

“Then we show him,” said Robb.

He stood beside the map table, hands braced on either side, the torchlight catching the edge of his jaw. Dust still clung to the hem of his cloak, and his boots left damp prints on the rug beneath them. His words weren’t loud, but they struck with purpose.

“We came for peace, not war. If that’s not clear, we make it clear.”

In the background, Edmure let out a half-laugh, more bitter than amused.

“The Vale’s pride is thicker than its walls,” he muttered.

Ser Rodrik, standing with hands clasped behind his back, turned a sharp look on the younger lord — not a rebuke, not quite, but a warning to mind his tongue. Words moved faster than swords in a tent like this.

Uncle Brynden leaned over the map, his shadow long in the firelight. He tapped a callused finger on a parchment-marked village nestled near the base of the Eyrie.

“There are lords still loyal to Lysa… or to Baelish,” he said. “Grafton, Belmore, even Coldwater Burn rides under the falcon banner. They’ll balk at any talk of Northern soldiers too close to the Gates.”

“Let them balk,” Edmure said. “They opened their gates. They can close their mouths.”

His voice was flint striking steel — enough to draw glances, but not protest.

Then Catelyn spoke, her voice clear, cutting through the murmur like a blade through thread.

“We are not conquerors.”

The room went still. Even the fire seemed to hush.

All eyes turned toward her. She stood a little apart from the table, her hands folded before her, her bearing calm but unyielding. The years had etched care into her brow, but the weight she carried had forged something stronger beneath — not steel, but ironwood.

“We are here because the Vale teeters on the edge of war,” she continued. “We do not push it. We steady it.”

Robb gave a slow nod, subtle but unmistakable.

The tent flap rustled. A gust of mountain wind swept through, scattering parchment and drawing a shiver from the brazier. In stepped Maester Colemon, pale-faced and thin-lipped, wrapped in grey and white robes dusted with frost. He bowed stiffly, his movements more formal than warm.

“My lady regent has received your letter,” he said. “She regrets that illness prevents her from leaving the Eyrie, but she offers to send Lord Robert’s voice in her stead.”

“Her son is eight,” Robb said flatly.

Colemon blinked once, then replied, “A boy can carry truth, if truth is what’s given.”

Brynden grunted. “And whose truth does he carry? Hers, or Baelish’s?”

The silence that followed was not empty. It was an answer, louder than words.

Catelyn stepped forward, her gaze fixed on the maester.

“Tell my sister we will convene a gathering of Vale lords in two days. Let all who wish for peace attend. And if Lysa cannot leave her tower, she may at least descend to meet her kin.”

Colemon bowed again, but deeper this time. “I will convey your message.”

He turned and left, his footsteps light and quick on the canvas floor.

The moment he was gone, Robb exhaled, the tension in his shoulders loosening as if he’d been holding breath the whole time.

“She won’t come,” he said.

“No,” Catelyn agreed, folding her arms. “But Baelish might.”

“And that,” Brynden murmured, “may be worse.”

Outside, the wind howled again — not a gust this time, but a long, low wail, rising through the tents like the voice of a wolf mourning in the dark.

That morning, the hall was cold as stone and old judgment, the audience chamber of the Gates of the Moon, nestled at the mountain’s foot where the high road began its perilous climb. Once the stronghold of House Arryn before the Eyrie was raised above the clouds, it now served as the Vale’s threshold, a place where travelers were weighed before being allowed to ascend.

Banners of three great houses hung above the dais, their colors shifting in the torchlight, and around the long narrow table, the lords of the Vale gathered, wary, proud, and far from united. Catelyn sat beside her son, Robb, with Brynden and Edmure flanking them. Across the aisle stood Lord Nestor Royce and a dozen Vale bannermen, the lords of the Fingers, and of the Gulltown coast. Some came wary. Others came armed. And some did not come at all.

Robb stood when the murmurs quieted. “We thank you for receiving us. We come not to rule, nor to demand. We come to speak, to listen. And to offer a path away from war.”

Lord Grafton of Gulltown, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, nodded once. “We welcome Northern courtesy. But the Vale is no keep without walls. What you call war, some call it justice.”

A mutter of agreement rippled through his side of the table.

Then the door opened with a soft creak.

And Petyr Baelish walked in, all smiles and mock humility.

“My lords,” he said, bowing low. “How generous of our northern cousins to bring their banners and blades in such numbers. One hopes the reach of their hospitality does not extend to our borders.”

“Lord Baelish,” Catelyn said evenly. “We are not here for threats.”

“Of course not,” he said smoothly. “Just ravens, swords, and a host camped at the base of our gates.”

Edmure shifted beside her, his jaw tight.

Lord Redfort raised his voice. “We’ve heard whispers from the Vale’s heights. That the boy, Robert is unwell. That Lysa does not leave her chambers. That Baelish speaks with her voice.”

Baelish's smile did not waver. “Lady Lysa remains cautious. A virtue in uncertain times.”

“And what of young Robert?” asked Yohn Royce. “Will he sit this council?”

Baelish inclined his head. “He rests under Maester Colemon’s care. But I bear his seal.”

He lifted a ring with the Arryn falcon, let it glint in the torchlight like a silent challenge.

Across from him, Lord Belmore leaned to Grafton and whispered something. Grafton’s expression twisted. Lord Royce, seated with arms folded and his daughter Ysilla beside him, said nothing more, but Catelyn caught the flint in his eyes. Tension knotted like rope.

Then Brynden spoke.

“Enough shadow games. You speak for Robert, yet the Vale tears at itself. A month past, Lord Yohn Royce and Lyn Corbray drew blades in a council hall, over your authority. Men died. The falcon banner stained with blood. And now?”

Baelish’s smile thinned. “Royce wanted his own hand upon the falcon’s wing. So did Corbray. I merely offered compromise.”

“You offered chaos,” Lord Redfort growled.

Baelish turned to Catelyn. “Surely you understand the burdens of rule, my lady. Family can be… difficult.”

Catelyn said nothing. But her eyes stayed on his, steady, sharp, unblinking.

He looked away first.

The first day of the council ended with nothing resolved. Accusations hung in the air like frost. Alliances whispered behind tent walls. And as Catelyn stood in the fading light, she felt it, the weight of a storm not of swords, but of secrets. And somewhere in the high reaches above them, her sister watched it all unfold.

That night, sleep did not come easily.

Catelyn stood alone in her chamber, a narrow room with walls of veined stone and a single arrow slit overlooking the moonlit valley. Beyond the torch-lit yards of the castle, the Vale stretched vast and quiet beneath the stars. The air was thinner here, colder than the Riverlands, yet sharp with a kind of clarity. She found no comfort in it.

Behind her, Arya and Sansa slept, Sansa curled tight with Lady beside her, Arya sprawled across the bed’s edge with Nymeria beneath. Her daughters… girls no longer, but not yet women. War had changed them both. Changed all of us.

Catelyn wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Ned’s letter had said to bring them. She obeyed. Yet every step into these mountains felt heavier. The Eyrie was no haven. Not anymore. And the Vale, once so distant, so sheltered, was now just another corner of a bleeding realm.

She thought of her sister and felt nothing but cold.

Lysa should have been here to bury our father. Should have sent a raven, or a word, or a sign she still remembered her blood. But Lysa had sent silence.

And Petyr…

Catelyn closed her eyes, fingers tightening on the windowsill. She had not seen him in years. And when she did, it was not the same boy who had once challenged Brandon Stark. That boy was long gone.

And what was he now? She feared the answer.

The torch outside her door flickered and hissed, casting shadows against stone. Somewhere below, she heard Ser Rodrik’s voice, low and weary. And the clink of armor, the soft tread of sentries walking their path. She thought of Jon, of Ned. So far away. So burdened.

We are alone here. But we are Starks. We endure.

Chapter Text

Robb

Mist clung to the high ramparts of the Gates of the Moon, where grey stone met cloud and the Vale unfolded like a secret beneath the sky. More gatehouse than palace, the old Arryn stronghold crouched at the base of the Giant’s Lance like a brooding sentinel, its towers lost in the drift of early snow and rising fog. Wind whispered between narrow windows, and the iron crests above the battlements wept rust in slow streaks.

Within the high-vaulted hall, torchlight flickered against veined pillars and cold banners. Robb stood at the long table at the chamber’s heart, gauntlets tucked beneath one arm, his jaw set in the manner of his father before is court. Grey Wind paced behind him in a slow, deliberate arc—massive, silent, and watchful. The direwolf’s eyes shone like cold embers in the dim light, and already a few knights gave him wide berth. Let them. Let them remember that the blood of wolves had come to the Vale.

The table stretched long and narrow, flanked by noble lords of the eastern mountains, their cloaks damp from travel, their eyes sharper than their courtesy. No banners of war had been unfurled, not yet—but the hall bore no signs of peace either. Only old pride and new doubts tightly bridled.

Yohn Royce stood among them, clad in runed bronze that shimmered like old forest bark. He did not fidget or shift like the younger lords. He stood rooted—broad, immovable—a stone carved to resemble a man. Beside him sat his daughter Ysilla, calm-eyed and observant. Her hands were folded atop the table, still as marble, but her gaze missed nothing. There was steel behind that calm. Robb could sense it.

Further down, Ser Symond Templeton slouched with aristocratic boredom, drumming calloused fingers along the grain of the oaken table, his jeweled rings clicking in uneven rhythm. Across from him, Ser Albar Coldwater leaned forward just slightly—young, keen, and untested. The knight’s hand twitched now and again near his sword hilt, as if daring the moment to spark. And near the back, watching all of them like a crow in silver armor, sat Ser Lyn Corbray—lean and sharp, his smile full of teeth.

Robb scanned the hall. No swords had been drawn, no threats yet spoken aloud, but the feel of them was in the air—a brittle tension, like ice stretched thin.

At his side, his mother, Lady Catelyn Stark, she sat with her spine straight and her mouth set in firm restraint, her expression unreadable. On either side of her, her daughters mirrored different reflections of her strength.

Arya leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes darting across the room, watching every lord like a hawk among hens. There was no pretense in her; she wore her leathers like armor and her gaze like a blade. Nymeria crouched beside her chair, large and quiet, but the tip of her tail flicked with unease, mirroring her girl’s restless energy.

Sansa, by contrast, sat poised with the grace of a painted lady in a Hall of Songs. Her back was straight, hands folded lightly in her lap, chin lifted in careful composure. She wore a deep green gown trimmed in grey and silver, the colors of her house subtle but deliberate. Her hair was braided back from her face in the Tully style, but her stillness was pure Stark. Her eyes did not wander. They held steady ahead, cool and composed. She did not watch the lords—she waited for them to speak. Like her mother. Like a lady.

At her side sat Lady, pale-furred and calm, her head resting near Sansa’s feet, her golden eyes half-lidded but alert. She radiated a quiet menace, and the Vale knights gave her no less room than they did her darker sister.

Robb glanced at them all, all gathered at one long table. He could feel the weight of it pressing down, not just from the lords but from the stone itself. This hall remembered Arryns and executions. It had watched peace be born and undone more than once. And now it watched them.

Robb folded his hands before him, the leather of his gloves creaking softly. "I thank you for your welcome," he said, voice level, measured—not cold, but not bending either.

Lord Yohn Royce gave a curt nod. His bronze armor caught the torchlight like dull fire. "We do not turn away guests in the Vale, Lord Robb."

"Nor do you raise your swords," said Ser Lyn Corbray, lounging back in his chair like a man born for provocation, "unless it’s at each other."

A faint chuckle from Templeton followed, the kind that held no warmth. Beside him, Albar Coldwater stiffened slightly, eyes flicking from Robb to Corbray and back.

Silence followed, brittle and sharp. Robb let it hang, meeting each gaze in turn. The hall felt smaller under so many eyes, thick with watchfulness. Grey Wind moved behind him in slow circles, the pads of his feet inaudible on stone, but his presence like a shadow pulled taut.

"I am not here to name enemies," Robb said at last, steady as the stone beneath them. "Only to speak as a son of the North. And a son of House Tully."

Across the table, Royce’s brow twitched, not quite a scowl. "You say that as if the Vale answers to Riverrun."

Robb didn’t rise to the bait. He let the silence stretch just long enough to make the point. "I say that as one whose father fought for these lands, whose uncle rules Riverrun now, and whose blood runs with yours through the veins of Lady Catelyn."

The response was subtle—a few nods, a flicker of consideration in Redfort’s eyes, and Ysilla Royce folding her hands more tightly. Cool, but not hostile.

It was her who spoke first. Her voice was low but firm, a clarity beneath the surface calm. "Then speak plainly, Lord Robb. Why come to us now? After years of silence? After sending no ravens when King Robert died?"

Robb hesitated—not from doubt, but from weight. He drew a breath, the words coming as Jon had once given them to him, edged with truth and burden.

"Because the dead walk," he said.

Stillness swept through the hall like a sudden frost. Even Corbray’s smile faltered, if only for a breath. Firelight flickered along the stone walls, but no one moved.

"They marched on the Wall," Robb continued. "They took thousands of wildlings. They shattered brave men on both sides of it. You may have heard whispers."

Corbray scoffed, recovering his smirk. "We’ve heard many things. Wights. Dragons. Ghost kings. All from your North."

"And all unproven," muttered Templeton, arms crossed now, as if that could shield him from the weight of belief.

Robb did not raise his voice. "You ask why we come now? Because soon there won’t be a South and a North. There’ll be the living and the dead. My father believes peace between the kingdoms is the only hope for any of us."

"Peace under whose banner?" asked Royce, not confrontational—merely cautious, wary.

Robb met his gaze, unwavering. "We’re not here to name a king today. Only to stop another war from breaking the realm."

The council dragged long past sundown, and the hall grew colder with every passing hour. Outside, wind howled across the stone slopes like something wounded, but inside, the voices of men scraped harder than any winter gale.

Maps were unrolled across the long table—parchment curled at the edges, ink fading, borders marked in blood and pride. Names were spoken and forgotten in the same breath. Accusations were tossed like knives across a table meant for peace, not bloodletting.

The Vale lords argued not about the dead his father had warned of, but about old wounds. Grudges buried shallow. A marriage pact broken thirty years past. The dowry of Lord Redfort’s daughter still unpaid. The grazing rights along Coldwater Creek disputed since the Blackfyre Rebellions. Who had answered Lysa’s summons. Who had stood back in silence. The pettiness stank like rot beneath perfume.

Robb listened, jaw tight, hands folded behind his back. Then he endured. That was the difference. Listening was courtesy. Enduring was a duty.

Yohn Royce, broad-shouldered and immovable in his bronze-plate, held court like a mountain come to judgment. “We will not follow Littlefinger,” he said, voice gravel and iron. “But neither do we march for Riverrun or Winterfell. The Eyrie is sovereign.”

His daughter, Ysilla, kept her place beside him, sharp-eyed and silent. Robb wondered what she truly thought.

Ser Symond Templeton gave a crooked smirk. “Then let the realm burn around us. We’ll still have our mountains.”

Ser Lyn Corbray rolled his eyes, lounging in his seat with the confidence of a man who knew he could draw a blade before anyone blinked. “Unless the fire climbs that high.”

Robb’s patience snapped like ice underfoot. “The fire already has.”

They stilled at his voice—firm, loud, but not shouting. Grey Wind stirred behind him, hackles rising like a second shadow. But only for a moment.

“We are not your bannermen, Stark,” muttered Coldwater, voice sharp with pride.

“No,” Robb said, “but you are men. And the Others do not care what banners you fly. When the Wall falls, when snow turns to ash, your old names won’t matter.”

A pause. The weight of that truth hovered above the firelight.

“A convenient tale,” said Corbray, reclining again, fingers toying with the hilt of his blade. “One to stir frightened men.”

Ysilla Royce leaned forward now, brows knitting. “He’s not wrong. You saw the raven from Lord Stark. And the seal. If Eddard Stark says the dead walk, I believe him.”

Her father nodded slowly, the movement reluctant but genuine.

And yet, the old dance resumed. Voices rose again, not in outrage but in politics. Half the lords were too proud, too wounded by Littlefinger’s smug rise or too wary of Lysa’s paranoia to rally behind anything.

Robb’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He could see it now—the same stubborn blindness that had let the realm burn when Robert died. They wanted to protect their hills and halls while winter swept across the world like fire.

He stood abruptly. “If you cannot trust my father’s word, then trust your own eyes,” he said, cutting clean through the din. “The realm burns. The North bleeds. The Wall barely held. And you—” He swept his gaze across Templeton, Coldwater, Redfort. “You sit in your mountains and speak of sovereignty while the world crumbles.”

Templeton straightened, frowning. “We speak of caution,” he said. “Not cowardice.”

“Call it what you will,” Robb replied, voice low and bitter. “But caution won’t stop what’s coming.”

Ysilla Royce tilted her head slightly. “Then what do you suggest, Lord Robb?”

He took a breath. “Talk,” he said. The word surprised even him. “You want peace? Prove it. Show it. Choose your words like you’d choose your swords—carefully.”

The silence that followed wasn’t hostile. It was considering.

At last, Yohn Royce gave a solemn nod. “We came to listen,” the old lord said. “So speak, Stark. Tell us what your father asks.”

The council did not end in unity. But it did not end in ruin either. No blood spilled. No swords drawn. No oaths made, but none broken either.

That, Robb thought, as he looked to his mother’s still face across the room, was a start.

Chapter Text

Sansa

The hall was narrower than Riverrun’s and far colder than Winterfell’s, carved not for splendor but to endure. The walls were hewn from ancient stone, their weight pressing down with the memory of battles long past. Thin beams of daylight slanted through high, narrow windows, but they brought no warmth, only a pale gleam that flickered against the old banners above—House Waynwood’s winged knight, the moon-and-falcon of Arryn, the three broken lances of House Corbray.

Bronze-clad knights stood along the perimeter, still as statues, their faces shaped by frost and discipline. Their helms glinted dully in the shifting light. No one spoke, yet their silence filled the hall more surely than a trumpet call.

Sansa sat beside her mother at the high table, posture flawless, hands folded neatly in her lap, as she’d been taught since she was small. Her gown was of blue and grey wool, the Stark colors, simple but clean. The hem had been mended twice on the road from Riverrun, but she wore it with quiet dignity. She wore her hair loose, brushed smooth, the auburn catching faint gold from the hall’s torches. Beneath the table, Lady lay with her chin on her paws, ever watchful.

The lords of the Vale arrived in clusters, cloaks damp from the mountain snow. Their boots echoed as they entered, soft voices rising and falling like wind across stone. They spared glances for her mother, and longer ones for Robb seated at the end of the table—but when their eyes drifted to Sansa, they lingered.

"She has her mother’s beauty," whispered an older knight behind his gauntlet, the words just loud enough to carry.

"A flower of the North," said another, voice low and dry. "Betrothed to Joffrey, is she? A pity.”

Sansa heard them. She always heard. But her expression didn’t change. Her gaze stayed calm, her back straight. She knew what she was meant to be: poised, serene, unmoved. Her heart, though—it beat a little faster. Not with fear, exactly. With knowing.

She had never seen a southern court, never danced beneath the chandeliers of the Red Keep. Her dreams of King's Landing had faded, but not died. Somewhere deep inside, a part of her still held onto stories—knights in shining mail, queens whose words swayed kingdoms, girls who were loved for their grace and honored for their name. But the stories had frayed at the edges.

The war had changed her. So had the fall of Winterfell, the stories of Bolton, Dustin and Greyjoy taking her home, her brothers. Her mother’s counsel in the war councils had changed her. She was still Sansa, still her mother’s daughter, but now she knew, being a lady was not just songs and silks. It was armor. And some armor looked like beauty.

Beside her, Arya slouched low, arms crossed tight over her chest, her hair wild and unbrushed. Nymeria sprawled beneath her like a great shadow, eyes flicking toward every noise. Arya looked at the men like she wanted to fight them all. Or flee them.

She kicked at the stone floor once, then muttered, “Why do they keep looking at you?”

Sansa didn’t turn. “Because I’m the eldest daughter of House Stark,” she replied softly, as if reciting something from a lesson.

Arya snorted. “They’re not looking at you like that.”

Sansa said nothing. What could she say? That Arya was right? That the glances had weight, calculation, something she could feel even if she didn’t yet understand all the shapes it took? They looked at her the way men looked at jewels locked in iron cases. Some with longing. Some with envy. Some with hunger. She folded her hands more tightly.

At the front of the hall, Lord Royce spoke in low tones with Lord Belmore, their heads bent together like old stones weathered by time. Royce’s heavy bronze armor gleamed dull in the torchlight, a relic from a more brutal age, while Belmore’s finer cloak twitched with every turn of his head, as if anxious to be anywhere else. Beside them, Ser Symond Templeton leaned closer to Lady Ysilla Royce, whispering something behind his hand. She did not laugh, though her mouth moved as if she might have—until her eyes flicked toward Catelyn, and her face cooled again to steel.

Even the lords who had once muttered disdain for aunt Lysa’s rule now sat straighter in their seats. The council chamber had become a stage, and the players—each one—knew the world was watching. There was no thunder in the air, no shouting, no horns. But tension coiled behind every glance. Not fear. Not quite hope.

Something else. A waiting.

The chair for the Lord Protector of the Vale sat empty at the end of the long table, vacant and too large, like a crown no one dared claim. The silence around it spoke louder than any herald’s trumpet.

It was like a play. Not one of the silly ones her Septa used to let her read, where princesses wept into rose-petaled handkerchiefs, but one of the true dramas—where a glance might mean murder, and a bow could mask betrayal. Sansa watched carefully. The way Lord Belmore’s mouth tightened when Lord Nestor Royce approached too closely. How Ser Symond’s eyes flicked toward her too often to be polite. How Lady Ysilla smiled with her mouth, but not her eyes, and flinched ever so slightly whenever the Eyrie was mentioned.

They were not friends, these men and women. They were not allies. They wore smiles like armor and watched each other like hawks. Every word was a courtesy—and a weapon.

Arya would have called it lies and pretended not to care. Arya hated pretense. Hated sitting still. She hated pretty gowns and proper posture and the sharp little games adults played. But Sansa…

Sansa had learned. She had listened to her mother. She had watched how Lady Catelyn folded silence into strength, how she ruled a room not by shouting, but by knowing when not to speak. She had watched, and watched again. She’d seen how the Tullys dealt with lords who wanted too much, how Maester Vyman’s words soothed, how Ser Desmond watched the windows, not the men. She had paid attention.

And now she sat straight and still. Poised. Present. Let them look.

She caught her mother’s glance across the table—a flick of the eyes, barely a nod—and Sansa answered with one of her own. Controlled. Calm. This was her role. Not to speak. To be seen. To be measured. She was a Stark of Winterfell and a Tully of Riverrun, and if her gown was patched, it still bore the wolf’s colors proudly.

A servant appeared at her side and poured wine—red diluted with mountain water. She murmured her thanks, though her throat was dry and her stomach tight. She would not drink. Not now. Not while she was being watched.

She turned her attention to Robb. He was trying to project strength, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. His hand drummed quietly against the table’s edge. His sword was at his side—not just for show, she thought. He looked older now than when they’d left Winterfell. More than just his beard or his height. The weight of it all was in his eyes. The burden of command.

“Do you think they’ll listen?” she asked softly.

Her mother didn’t answer at once. Her gaze was sharp, following the flow of whispered words around the table like a hunter following tracks in the snow. Sansa knew that look. She had learned what it meant.

When her mother finally spoke, her voice was low. “They came. That is something. It’s more than we had two moons ago.”

“But not all of them,” Sansa said.

“No.” Her mother’s lips thinned. “Not all.”

Lady Lysa Arryn had not answered the call. Nor had Petyr Baelish. But his name passed between these lords like a drawn knife. Even unspoken, it echoed.

Sansa had never met him, but she knew of him. She had heard his name since they entered the Vale—Littlefinger. Heard it in the murmurs that fell quiet when she approached, in the cold edge of Lord Redfort’s voice, in the shadow behind Lady Ysilla’s stare. She knew he had once loved her mother. That much had been said behind too many closed doors to be denied. And she knew he had risen far.

She didn’t understand what power he truly held. But she could feel it in the way grown men flinched at his name. He was clever. And dangerous. And present, even in absence.

Sansa understood these things. She had watched. She had learned. She was not a child anymore.

But deep inside, beneath her calm, beneath the straight back and folded hands, part of her still imagined the stories might be true. That honor might win, that the good might triumph, that a lady could be both admired and safe. That cleverness did not always wear knives behind its teeth.

“You’re being watched,” Arya muttered again, and this time her voice held more warning than annoyance.

Sansa turned slightly.

A man had entered the hall, not tall, but graceful, dressed in charcoal gray and pale green. His beard was neat, his smile warmer than it should have been. Petyr Baelish. Sansa did not know why, but the sight of him made her feel… odd. As if the air had changed.

His eyes swept the hall. When they found her, they did not look away. He smiled. He moved like he belonged. That was the first thing Sansa noticed. Petyr Baelish did not stride in like a knight or stalk like a wolf, he glided, as if the council chamber had been waiting for him all along.

The murmur of voices shifted, caught in the undertow of his presence. Some lords stiffened, others glanced away. A few made space. No one called his name, but everyone saw him. Even Robb faltered. His hand paused on the rim of his goblet, expression unreadable.

Petyr reached the table with a bow so polished it bordered on parody, yet somehow, it charmed. His cloak caught the light as he rose. “My lords. My ladies. I beg pardon for my lateness. The mountain roads are treacherous this time of year.”

Lord Belmore gave a snort. “You live in the mountains, Baelish.”

Petyr’s smile didn’t falter. “And yet, the roads remain treacherous. Some truths, Lord Belmore, remain true no matter how often they’re stated.”

A few lords chuckled. Others frowned. Sansa didn’t laugh. She couldn’t look away from him.

He turned to her. “And you must be Lady Sansa,” he said gently. “The heart of the North come south. The stories undersold your grace.” He bowed lower than he had to anyone else.

She rose on instinct, curtsied with practiced grace. Her heart beat strange and fast. She didn’t understand it. There was something in his voice, not unkind, but too kind. Too smooth. Like silk over a blade.

She had read of such men — clever courtiers, silver-tongued lords who said one thing and meant another. But those were stories. Weren’t they? He spoke like the songs, but something in her stomach twisted.

Her mother stepped between them, her expression tight. “Lord Baelish,” she said. No warmth. No welcome.

He bowed again. “Lady Stark. How radiant as ever. Though I confess I expected to see you again under less... formal circumstances.”

“And I expected never to see you again at all,” Catelyn said.

That silenced the murmurs.

Petyr only smiled. “Ah. The bite of the North.” He turned to Robb next. “Young wolf no longer. My condolences for your hardships, Lord Robb. I trust you’ll find the Vale more hospitable.”

Robb offered a nod. “We’ll find the Vale what we make of it.”

The air crackled. Courtiers leaned in, watching. Petyr took a seat. Sansa felt Arya tense beside her, whisper something rude under her breath. But Sansa wasn’t listening. Baelish had looked at her again. Not with lust. Not exactly. It was… calculation. As if she were a piece on a board, and he was already planning his next move.

She looked down into her goblet, lips pressed tight.

He sees me. Not as a girl. Not as a lady. As something useful. But isn’t that what power was? To be useful? To matter?

He’s clever, she thought. And dangerous. But charming, too. Too charming perhaps.

Still, she didn’t hate him.

That night, sleep did not come easily. The skies above the Vale were star-strewn and sharp, clearer than those of Winterfell, but colder too—so clear they looked painted on glass. The wind hissed along the eaves of the tower like a restless ghost.

In the small chamber she shared with Arya, Sansa sat before a narrow mirror, brushing her hair in silence. The bristles caught in windblown tangles, but she barely felt them. Her thoughts wandered.

Behind her, Arya was already curled under the heavy mountain furs, snoring softly, her sword belt coiled beside her like a snake waiting for its next quarrel. Nymeria was curled at the foot of the bed, twitching in her sleep. Lady rested by the door, eyes half-lidded but never fully closed.

Sansa stared at her reflection in the darkened glass. She tilted her head slightly. The girl in the mirror looked calm, poised. A proper lady. But her eyes... they shimmered with something else. She was no child now. Not anymore.

The lords of the Vale had whispered her name—not with scorn, but with interest. She had seen how their eyes lingered, how their glances flickered between her and her mother. “A rose of the North.” “A prize fit for a prince.” “As fair as her mother.”

They didn’t speak to her. Not directly. But they measured her. And she had let them.

Sansa had sat still, chin high, gaze calm, hands folded just so. A lady of House Stark. She hadn’t stumbled. She hadn’t flushed. She hadn’t fidgeted. And Baelish had bowed to her.

That thought returned like a snowflake melting on her skin—unexpected, fleeting, and oddly warm. Petyr Baelish.

There was something about him that unsettled the others. She’d seen it in the way Lord Royce’s mouth tightened, in the stiff way her mother spoke to him, in the way Arya muttered and glared. Even Robb had gone still.

But Sansa didn’t understand why. He hadn’t raised his voice or made demands. He hadn’t insulted anyone. He was charming. Soft-voiced. Graceful. Polished like a courtier from one of her books.

Yes, he had looked at her strangely. Like he was reading a page no one else could see. But it hadn't been lewd. Not like some of the other lords, who tried to sneak glances when they thought she wasn’t looking. Baelish looked at her as though he already knew her. As though he remembered her before they’d ever met.

He was Mother’s once, she thought, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. And now he sees her in me.

That should have chilled her. And maybe, in some quiet place inside her, it did. But it also gave her a feeling she didn’t have a name for. Not pride. Not fear. Something else.

He had been the cleverest man in the room. And he had bowed to her.

She stood, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders, and crossed the cold stone floor to the narrow window slit. Outside, the wind pulled at her hair. The courtyard below was lit by flickering torches, their orange glow making long shadows dance along the walls of the Gates of the Moon. She could hear men’s voices, muffled and wary—laughter, but not easeful laughter. The kind that lives where tension clings like fog.

She wondered what Baelish was doing now. Plotting, no doubt. He seemed like a man who never truly slept. The kind of man who was always working, always watching. The kind of man who could play a dozen games at once, and win most of them.

Was he dangerous? They seemed to think so. Her mother. Robb. Uncle Bryden. Even the Vale lords. They all reacted to him, stiffened around him, like people wary of a storm they could not see. But Sansa didn’t feel that.

He had smiled at her. And she had smiled back.

He’s clever, she thought again. And funny. Maybe dangerous, she corrected silently. But so are they all. They all wanted something. And if Petyr Baelish wanted her? She wasn’t sure what that meant. But he hadn’t looked at her like a child. Sansa closed her eyes and let the cold mountain air brush against her cheeks.

I am Eddard Stark’s daughter, she told herself. And I have learned.

When she turned from the window, her expression was calm. Thoughtful. And just a little curious.

Chapter Text

The Trout in the Mountain

The halls of the Eyrie whispered. Not with voices meant for her—never that—but with rustling skirts and breathy fragments that curled around corners and slipped between the stones like cold air through a cracked window. Lysa Arryn stood still at the arch of the upper gallery, hands tightening on the carved stone balustrade. Below, two serving girls passed in hushed conversation, unaware—or pretending to be.

“…Lady Sansa, so graceful—”

“—her hair, like spun copper. And Lord Baelish, did you see how he—?”

The rest was lost to distance, or perhaps drowned by the roar behind Lysa’s eyes. She did not move. Her fingers dug into the stone. She pressed her lips together and stared down with a brittle, frozen calm.

They thought she didn’t hear. They always thought that. As if the Lady of the Eyrie had gone deaf along with growing old. As if her high perch made her blind. But the walls spoke to her, the steps whispered when the servants scurried, and the air itself carried their secrets. She knew. She had always known.

From the moment they came—the wolves and the trout, with their banners and their furs and their honeyed diplomacy. From the instant she heard about that girl, with her sweet-voice and long-limbs, with her mother’s eyes and her mother’s smile, Lysa knew what was coming.

She’s only a girl, Lysa told herself again, turning away from the gallery, skirts hissing like snakes along the stone floor. A girl with a pretty face and a name. That’s all. That’s all. That’s all.

But the serving girls looked too long. The guards stood straighter when she passed. The knights bowed too deeply, lingered too close. And Petyr… Petyr had smiled at her.

Not the tight, cunning smirk he wore for the world, but something softer. Something… too soft. A flicker of an old fire, something that had once belonged—

Lysa stopped mid-step. Her hand went to her chest, fingers curling like claws. Her heart fluttered, sharp and frantic, like a bird battering itself against a windowpane. The corridors of the Eyrie narrowed around her. The stones pressed too close. The air turned thin. Steep and high and cold—too high, too far, too much.

She leaned against the wall and breathed.  Inhale. Hold. Swallow. Push it down. Sansa was her niece. Her guest. Her blood.

But the girl walked like Catelyn. Tilted her chin like Catelyn. Smiled like her, that soft, false smile, sweet as rot. And the way the lords' sons watched her—like she was something precious, untouched, draped in grace and mystery. As if she were a maiden of songs. Not a trap. Not a thief. Not a threat. But Lysa knew better.

Catelyn had played the same role. Sainted sister, the perfect Tully rose. Always spoken of with reverence, always with sorrow—“Catelyn was kind,” they said. “Catelyn was wise.” No one remembered how she had stolen everything. The first smile, the first kiss, the first promise— All taken. All hers. Always hers.

Lysa blinked away tears she did not remember forming. Her cheeks were flushed. Her palms damp. She turned sharply and descended the steps like a storm cloaked in velvet.

She found herself in the solar, though she did not remember walking there.

One moment she was clutching the cold balustrade, and the next, she was inside the round chamber of pale stone and lonely firelight. The hearth had burned low, its coals glowing with dull red anger, casting the tapestries into swaying shapes that moved when she turned her head. The wind hissed softly through the shutters, pushing against the glass like ghostly fingers trying to find their way in.

Catelyn smiled from one of the walls, stitched in soft thread, her hair gold in the firelight, her eyes forever calm. Lysa turned away. Too quickly.

She crossed the room on bare feet, the hem of her gown dragging behind her like a trailing shroud. The goblet waited where she had left it—a delicate thing of Vale silver, too fine for such shaking hands. She poured.

The wine splashed against the cup’s edge, spilling crimson over her fingers and down the sleeve of her pale blue gown. The silk drank it in eagerly. Lysa did not wipe it away. She only stared.

Let them whisper, she thought. Let them say she drank too much, or not enough. That she loved too little. That her rage was unbecoming. Let them clutch their pearls and speak in corners when she passed.

She knew the truth, even if they didn’t. She was not some madwoman teetering on a ledge. She had always been the one pushed—pushed aside, pushed down, pushed behind. But she had endured. She lifted the goblet to her lips and drank deep. Petyr had always loved her.

Not Catelyn. Never Catelyn. That was a lie—one of many lies men told to make their songs sweeter, their treacheries neater. It was Catelyn they had given to Brandon Stark. It was Catelyn who had stolen the songs. But it was her—Lysa—who had been kissed first. It was her hand he had taken in the godswood. It was her name he had whispered behind the red leaves of the old tree as their bodies pressed together and her breath came ragged through the cold.

He had taken her maidenhead beneath the weirwood, and she had bled for him as a bride does. He had looked into her eyes, not Catelyn’s.

Catelyn had stolen him after that. She always did. Even in silence, she stole. She stole with her perfect stillness and her poised smiles, with her father's favor and her mother's cool pride. With her better dress and her better name. And now her daughter was doing the same.

Lysa clutched the goblet tighter, so tight the metal bit into her palm. Her knuckles went white.

She had given Petyr something far more precious than a kiss. More than her virtue. More than her youth.

I had your child, she thought bitterly, wine burning on her tongue. I bled and screamed for you, while you chased songs and shadows. She set the goblet down too hard. The base rang against the stone table like a dull bell. And still—still you look at that girl.

Robin was sleeping in the next room, curled beneath a mountain of white fox furs, his pale face just visible between folds of softness. His small hands were clenched into loose fists, as if still grasping at something even in dreams.

Lysa set down her goblet on the table, too quickly, the base ringing dully against the stone. Her fingers trembled. She did not light a candle as she crossed the threshold. She knew every stone of this path. Every shadow.

She moved barefoot across the cold floor, her blue gown whispering behind her like a ghost still chasing warmth. Her breath clouded faintly as she reached his bedside, and she knelt there, slowly, reverently.

One hand reached forward and hovered—just for a moment—before she touched his hair, brushing a lock behind his ear. His curls were damp with sleep, and he murmured something unintelligible, turning his cheek into the pillow like a child seeking refuge in a mother’s breast.

Her breath caught in her throat. “I’ll keep you safe,” she whispered, and her voice trembled like frost on a branch. “From the lions. From the stags. From the wolves.”

She drew closer, lowering her lips to his brow, her hand splayed protectively over his small shoulder.

Her voice hardened. Thinned. “No little wolf bitch will take what’s mine.”

She kissed his forehead once, gently. Her lips lingered there too long.

Then she rose, slowly, like a woman rising from prayer, and left without sound.

She returned to the solar in silence, but inside her, a storm howled. Her wine was still waiting, but she did not drink. Her heart beat too fast, too hard, like it wanted out. She felt it in her neck, her temples, her teeth.

The whispers were louder now. The giggling of the servant girls, just beneath the silence. The turning heads of the knights. The way Petyr’s eyes clung to Sansa just a moment too long.

They were watching. Plotting. Just like before.

Just like when Catelyn had smiled her smiles, offered her sweet, quiet words, made the men listen. It was always Catelyn they turned to, never her. Catelyn who stood taller, walked straighter, laughed at the right moments and was silent when it pleased them.

And now her daughter had come to do the same. Sansa smiled like her mother. Sat like her mother. She tilted her head the same cursed way. All the lords looked at her, even the old ones, and the younger ones tripped over their tongues.

And Petyr…

Lysa picked up the brush. She stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. Then dragged it through her hair in quick, savage strokes.

Each pull tore tangles free with a hiss of pain, but she didn’t stop. She welcomed it. Welcomed the sting. The mirror before her was misted with breath, her own face flushed and pale, her eyes too wide.

She leaned in, close enough to fog the glass with every word.

“She’s only a girl,” she hissed. “A girl. A child. And Petyr loves me. He always has.”

The words came fast now. Desperate. Fragile.

“He kissed me first. He whispered to me beneath the weirwood. He said I was beautiful. That he would never leave me. He promised—”

But even in the saying, the doubt returned. Like a rot curling at the root.

What if he looked at her the same way he once looked at Catelyn? What if he thought— No.

She would remind him. She would speak to him soon. Show him what they shared. What she’d given. She had killed for him. Lied for him. Poisoned a husband, silenced maesters, smiled through madness.

A little wolf girl wouldn’t take that from her. No one would.

“I gave you everything,” she whispered to the fire, her voice trembling. “And I’ll not lose you now. Not to another Catelyn. Not to her.”

The flames crackled softly in the hearth, warm and hungry. The shadows on the walls stretched long and thin, like arms reaching. Behind her, the wind howled through the shutters of the Eyrie, high and lonesome, like a scream swallowed by snow.

And Lysa Arryn smiled through her tears, her face lit by fire and madness.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The fire sputtered as if tired of warming liars. Tyrion sat hunched in his chair by the hearth, swirling what little wine remained in his cup — a bitter Dornish red, thick with sediment and disappointment. It was one of the last unwatered casks in the Tower of the Hand, and it tasted of old smoke and spoiled promises. He watched the sluggish swirl of it, as if it might whisper secrets, then drained it with a grimace.

“The world is unraveling,” he muttered to the flames, “and I’m expected to stitch it back together with parchments and promises.” The fire snapped but gave no answer.

He rose stiffly, joints aching from long nights hunched over scrolls and maps. His limp was worse today — the damp heat, perhaps, or just the weight of another day spent pretending the realm was not falling apart.

Crossing the room, he parted the heavy drapes and stared out over King’s Landing. From this height, the Red Keep looked less like a fortress and more like a tomb — high walls, locked gates, guards with hollow eyes, as if the whole place were bracing for its own death. Beyond, the city sprawled like a dying beast beneath a haze of dust. The leaden sky pressed down on the rooftops, trapping the heat and the stench alike. Smoke, sweat, and shit — the scent of a starving capital.

There had been another riot in Cobbler’s Square three days past. Or was it four? The reports all blurred now — bread wagons overturned, bakers dragged from their stalls, a goldcloak beaten with his own truncheon. Tyrion had ordered more sellswords to reinforce the City Watch, brutes from Myr and Norvos who took their coin in blood. That had helped. For a day.

Now the streets were quieter, yes — but colder, angrier. Every crack of a cudgel planted another seed of rage. The people were hungry, and the sellswords had no discipline. They struck too quickly, too hard. Some even took what food they were meant to guard. One woman’s child had been trampled underfoot during the grain riots near Flea Bottom. Tyrion had sent coin. The mother spat in the steward’s face.

The grain stores were shrinking. Almost all food came by the western roads now, from the Lannister heartlands. The riverlands had once fed the capital as well — but less and less these days. Tyrion suspected even the food stamped with lion seals was being hoarded or diluted long before it reached the bakers. They’d flogged three merchants for grain theft this week alone. And still the loaves grew smaller.

Worse, Stannis’s ships still haunted the waters beyond Blackwater Bay, lean shadows just out of sight, waiting like wolves. No trade reached the harbor without risk. Even now, he imagined them anchored in the fog, silent, watching. The smallfolk whispered in their huddled alleys and wine sinks. They spoke of kings. Of stags. Stannis. Sometimes Renly. But never Joffrey.

Tyrion pressed his forehead to the cool stone of the window arch and exhaled through his nose. When his father finally returned, riding in triumph from whatever battlefield he'd turned to rubble, he would find a city on the brink — and a king too young and too cruel to be feared. He would find a crowd with empty bellies and full knives.

And all of it, Tyrion feared, might come undone in a single hour of fire and fury.

A knock broke the silence behind him.

He turned, sighing. “Come then. Let’s see what new fire we’re meant to piss on.”

The door swung open, and in they came like players onto a crumbling stage.

Cersei, already seated, wore crimson silk with golden lions coiled at her sleeves. Her eyes were sharp, watchful, and utterly humorless. Pycelle wheezed his way in next, scrolls clutched in both hands like lifelines, his white beard trembling with each step. Meryn Trant stood by the door in polished armor, blank as a boiled egg, and Varys — silent, smooth, unreadable — waited already at the far end of the table, his black robes unbroken by even a sigil.

Tyrion crossed to his seat, the limp dragging behind him like a reluctant shadow. He poured what little wine remained from the decanter — too thin, too sour — and set it down untouched.

He laced his fingers together and gave them all a smile too tired to be mocking. “Let’s have it.”

Pycelle cleared his throat, phlegm crackling like dry leaves in his throat. “We begin with the North.”

Cersei snorted, smoothing a fold of crimson silk across her lap. “Of course we do.”

Pycelle broke the crimson wax seal with fingers that trembled too much for Tyrion’s liking. “Lord Eddard Stark has written again. This time, to all the lords of the realm.”

He peered down his nose, squinting as if the ink offended him. “‘The dead march,’ he says. “The Wall was nearly overrun. Thousands lost. Some say a great beast turned the tide.”

“A direwolf?” Cersei asked dryly, arching a golden brow, her voice thick with amusement.

“A dragon, perhaps,” Varys murmured, his voice the brush of silk across skin, hands resting like folded wings on the polished wood.

Tyrion’s eyes flicked to him, studying the smooth planes of the eunuch’s face for any hint of a smile. “Is that a jest, my lord?”

The Spider offered his usual inscrutable expression. “Only a whisper, my lord. One among many.”

Cersei rolled her eyes and looked to the ceiling as if petitioning the Seven for patience. “He expects us to believe in ghost stories? If the North is freezing to death, let them do it quietly.”

Tyrion didn’t reply. He watched the firelight glint off her goblet, watched her fingers tighten on the stem.

“He also writes that the traitors Roose Bolton and Barbrey Dustin are dead,” Pycelle added, licking his lips. “Their heads placed upon the gates of Winterfell.”

“Then he still rules,” Varys said smoothly, as if observing a piece on a cyvasse board.

“Winterfell, yes,” Cersei snapped. “But the North is broken. He rules ashes.”

Tyrion steepled his fingers again, feeling the weight of a hundred rumors pressing in like cold fingers. “Yet somehow, the broken North took back Winterfell and crushed a rebellion. Interesting ashes.”

He let that hang, like smoke on still air. No one spoke.

“There is more,” Pycelle croaked, reaching for a second scroll, smaller, unsealed. His hands shook more this time. Tyrion wondered if it was from age or unease.

Varys interjected, his voice low and even. “The Bolton forces did not fall to mere steel. Some say...a beast. Vast. Black. Others talk of an army of ravens feasting on men and horses.”

A muscle in Cersei’s cheek twitched. She laughed — short, sharp, cold.

Tyrion frowned. “We’ve heard such tales before.”

Pycelle gave a derisive snort. “Superstition. Northmen see shadows and name them gods.”

“Still...” Varys tilted his head. “They say the creature obeys the Starks. That it came for Robb himself.”

Tyrion leaned back in his chair, watching the smoke curl toward the rafters. “Direwolves do not breathe fire.”

“No,” Varys said, eyes still fixed on the parchment in front of him. “They do not.”

A moment passed. The fire crackled behind them, the faint hiss of heated sap like a whisper in the dark.

“Stannis,” Pycelle said next, his voice rasping from the dryness in his throat, “is on the march.”

That stilled them. Tyrion set down his goblet, suddenly very awake.

“Marching west, from Storm’s End,” the old man continued, tugging the scroll higher for a closer look. “Ten thousand men at his back. Quiet, ordered. No banners flapping. No trumpets. Just purpose.”

“Highgarden,” Varys said, his fingers steepled over his belly, eyes heavy-lidded but alert.

Tyrion nodded grimly. “The Reach is bleeding. Jaime and Father pushed too deep, too fast. They seized Bitterbridge — a stronghold with good river access. From there, Jaime means to link up with Father and make a hard push on Highgarden.”

He gestured toward the map, where small stone lions had been placed over the Mander’s southern bend.

“But Randyll Tarly—” Tyrion tapped a finger near a fork of the Mander north of Highgarden, “—has not been idle. He pulled his forces back across the Mander. A retreat, yes, but a calculated one. He stopped Father before he could cross.”

Cersei’s lip curled. “Cowardice.”

“Caution,” Tyrion corrected. “Say what you will of Tarly, but he knows the land better than any man alive.”

“And what of Renly?” Varys asked.

Tyrion dragged a small green stag across the table and placed it near Cider Hall. “Encamped in the hills. Watching. Waiting. He holds the uplands. If Father and Jaime push too far, he’ll strike their flank.”

Varys nodded. “And now Stannis comes from the east. That makes three armies in the Reach.”

“Let the brothers kill each other,” Cersei muttered, folding her arms. “Then we’ll clean what’s left.”

“They are not children wrestling in the hay,” Tyrion said, voice sharper than before. “Each one marches with half the realm behind him.” He leaned over the table, studying the movement of stone, the fragile dance of kings and men. “Stannis has siege engines and seasoned infantry. Renly has numbers and charm.”

Cersei’s eyes narrowed.

“And we,” Varys said, “are left with half a city. And dwindling grain.”

Tyrion didn’t answer. His mind had already gone to the outer gates, to the food riots in Flea Bottom, to the whispers of bakeries looted and sellswords butchering boys for stolen bread.

The map lay before them, littered with lions and stags, stone tokens in a game that had long since broken its own rules. Yet it wasn’t war that frightened him most.

“One more note, my lords,” Varys said, plucking a slip of parchment from the pile before him. “From Volantis. Ships seen near its harbor bearing the merman of White Harbor.”

Tyrion raised an eyebrow. Volantis? That was far indeed — too far for mere trade if one believed in war.

“Trading?” Cersei asked, her voice clipped.

“Possibly.” Varys raised a thin brow. “They flew no banners of war. But Lord Stark sends his men far and wide.”

Her mouth curled. “Perhaps he plans to run.”

Pycelle snorted, pleased by the notion. “The North has always been a harsh mistress. Even wolves tire of snow.”

Tyrion tapped the map with a single finger. “Or perhaps he’s spreading roots.”

The room stilled for a beat. Even the crackle of the fire seemed to pause, as if weighing his words.

Varys continued, “Balon Greyjoy is dead. A storm — or a shove. No one knows. But his brother, Euron, returned from exile and now rules the Iron Islands.”

“A madman,” Cersei said with contempt.

Tyrion leaned back slightly. “Which makes him no worse than any other king these days.”

His gaze drifted toward the Iron Islands on the painted table. They seemed so small — jagged outcroppings, forgettable. But that had always been their trick. Ironborn didn’t conquer like lions or wolves; they raided, struck from shadows, then vanished before reprisal. Smoke and salt and sails.

“The North?” Tyrion added. “They broke the krakens on the rocks.”

Robb Stark drove the Ironborn back from their shore. But the Krakens never vanished. They waited, like rot in the hull of an old ship. Euron would rebuild his fleet, faster than expected. And with Balon gone, the chains were off.

“Still,” Varys said, his voice as calm as falling snow, “Euron builds a new fleet. And he dreams of dragons.”

Cersei scoffed. “So do poets.”

Tyrion didn’t laugh. He stared at the Iron Islands a moment longer, fingers curled near the place on the board where Greyjoy tokens once stood.

Let the kraken vanish beneath the tide, he thought. But if it rises again, it will rise where no one watches.

“And finally,” Pycelle concluded, “news from the Vale.”

Cersei’s eyes narrowed, the crimson silk of her gown shifting like blood. “What now?”

Pycelle adjusted his spectacles. “Lady Catelyn Stark and her son entered with eight thousand men. The feuding lords fell silent. The Mountain Council has been summoned.”

“They dared march into the Vale?” Cersei hissed, her voice curling with fury. “With my daughter still betrothed?”

Tyrion did not sigh — though it took effort. “She is not your daughter.” He said flatly.

Cersei’s smile was thin, sharp as broken glass. “Not yet.”

Tyrion’s jaw tensed. He glanced at Varys, who tilted his head, robes as still as shadow.

“They say the Vale has not seen peace in moons,” the eunuch said softly. “And now… wolves walk among their halls.”

Tyrion let the words settle like dust in an old chamber. Wolves, indeed.

What the Iron Throne should have done, Tyrion thought bitterly. But all the swords they had were already bleeding in the Reach. His father had taken the lion’s share west, marching on Highgarden like it was ripe fruit waiting to fall. There were no men left to send. So Stark took the matter into his own hands. The last thing Eddard Stark would suffer was letting Jon Arryn’s homeland sink into chaos.

Some sliver of him hoped — foolishly — that a raven might still come, bearing Eddard Stark’s seal, declaring fealty to King Joffrey now that the North was at peace. The man was dutiful to a fault. But no raven had come.

Across the table, Cersei rose abruptly, her hands clenched at her sides. “It’s all slipping,” she said. “All of it.”

Tyrion studied her — the stiffness in her shoulders, the brittle glint in her eyes. Every day she frayed more. She snapped at shadows. Screamed at servants. She spoke of Sansa as if she were already wedded, already bedded. Her sense of time twisted by fear and fury.

She’s unraveling, he thought. Just like Joffrey. Gods help them both if she slips further.

He looked down at the map. So many markers. So many sigils. Kingdoms scorched and bleeding, wolves and stags and lions in endless motion, none winning, all losing.

Then, without a word, Tyrion pushed back his chair and left the room. The fire behind him guttered low.

Chapter Text

Sansa

The Gates of the Moon were quiet in the morning, hushed and pale beneath a sky of soft gray light. Sunlight filtered through narrow windows cut high into the stone, casting shifting patterns of lattice and shadow across the flagstones. The air was cool, touched faintly with the mountain’s breath. Even the wind seemed to whisper here, polite and restrained, as if it too belonged to a more noble house.

Sansa moved through the hall like a shadow stitched in silk. Her steps were light, deliberate, trained — the measured grace of a lady raised in a great house. Her gown today was pale blue and dove-gray, trimmed in soft white, the Stark colors subtle but unmistakable. Her mother had chosen it for her, saying the Vale needed to be reminded of who she was. Not just a daughter of the Tullys. A Stark. Winterfell’s blood.

Her hair had been brushed to a sheen that caught the morning light, and braided into a coronet like her mother once wore. Once, Sansa would have smiled at her reflection, turned and tilted to admire the fall of her skirts or the shape of her waist. But this morning, she had only stared, wondering if it was truly her that looked back.

They had begun to call her Lady Stark now. Not the wolf girl. Not Lady Tully’s daughter. Not even Sansa. Lady Stark.

And with that name came eyes. So many eyes. Lords in council chambers. Pages in corridors. Maesters. Squires. Even knights. All of them watched her with that same half-hungry, half-reverent gaze. She felt it behind her, beside her, clinging to her skin like warm breath.

They spoke of her beauty in hushed tones — the high curve of her neck, the gold glint in her auburn hair, the cool reserve in her gaze. They compared her to her mother. Some even said she had surpassed Catelyn’s grace.

Sansa smiled when they did. She always smiled. She kept her chin lifted, her posture poised, her voice sweet when spoken to and quiet when not. She was everything they expected a lady to be.

And still, inside, it stirred something uneasy. A marriageable maiden. That was what they saw. That was what she was. Not more.

There had been a time she would have been thrilled by the attention — blushed at compliments, dreamed of princes and suitors with swords and silver tongues. But the world had broken in quiet places no one could see.

Now when she walked into a room and saw the way the lords of the Vale looked at her, she did not feel pleased. She felt assessed. Like jewelry in a display. Like coin.

And she had learned — slowly, quietly, from her mother’s side — that the way men looked at a woman was not always the same as seeing her.

They saw a daughter of the North, yes. A symbol. A tie to Riverrun. A claim, a dowry, a future wife to be won, or placed, or bargained for. But not Sansa. Never truly Sansa.

She stopped at a stone archway that opened onto the garden court. Ivy curled like lace along the balustrade, its leaves silvered with morning frost. The flowers that remained clung stubbornly to the last days of warmth, their petals kissed with frost. She leaned forward, drawing a breath, letting the wind kiss her cheeks. Even here, there was no true privacy.

From somewhere near the training yard came the sharp sound of steel against steel — rhythmic, purposeful. Robb had insisted the soldiers drill every day. The threat might be far from the Vale, but the memory of Winterfell’s fall was near.

And then — footsteps behind her. Measured. Unhurried. Deliberate, like someone who wanted her to know they were coming, but not too soon.

“Lady Sansa,” came the voice.

She turned slowly, the breeze stirring a few strands of her hair loose from the braid. And saw him.

Lord Petyr Baelish stood in shadow, half-lit by the pale light of morning. His cloak was deep green today, trimmed in sable. His smile was soft the kind that suggested secrets and ownership in equal measure. As if he had been waiting there for her all along.

“My lord,” she said politely, dipping her head, as she had been taught.

Her voice was poised, her tone calm, but her heart gave the faintest flutter. Petyr Baelish always appeared like this — soundless steps, soft voice, a smile she could never quite read. She kept her eyes on the garden, where the frost still clung to the petals like tiny diamonds. It was easier to look at the flowers than to meet his gaze.

“You’ve made quite the impression on our mountain knights,” he said, his voice as smooth as oiled velvet. “Half the Vale speaks of your beauty. The other half whispers of your name. Lady Stark, now — the North reborn in a maiden’s grace. And here I thought the snows bred only warriors.”

Sansa folded her hands together more tightly. “So I’ve been told.”

She meant it to sound distant. But her cheeks flushed anyway. It was strange — knowing eyes followed her, hearing herself described in honeyed phrases. Beautiful. Noble. Like her mother.

“But I wonder,” Petyr said, stepping forward just enough for her to feel the shift in the air. “Do they see what I see? When you sit in council, do they notice how quiet you are? How still. You listen more than you speak, and you remember what others forget. That is rare.”

Sansa blinked. The compliment was unexpected — not about her hair, or her smile, but her mind.

“You remind me of a cat in tall grass,” he continued. “Silent. Still. But always watching. Waiting. There’s something dangerous in that kind of silence.”

“I don’t strike,” Sansa said, almost too quickly.

Baelish chuckled, the sound low and fond. “No, not yet. But I’ve known many players, my lady. The ones who smile and wait are the ones others should fear.”

She turned her face away again. The breeze stirred her braid like a ribbon. “You said that once… about my mother.”

His voice was softer now. “I loved your mother with all my heart. Everything I did, I did for her.”

Sansa hesitated. “And now?”

There was a pause. She felt it — long, deliberate.

“Now,” he said slowly, “I look at you and remember everything I admired in her. The grace. The pride. But you… you have something else. Something colder. Something sharper. You could be more than she ever was, Sansa.”

That startled her.

No one had ever said that before. Her mother had been a tower in her eyes — beautiful, strong, unshakable. The thought that she, Sansa, could be more… it felt too large to hold.

“I’m not my mother,” she said, gently.

“No,” Petyr said. “But you are your father’s daughter. And the blood of Tully and Stark runs proud. Do you know what I see when I look at you, sweet girl?”

She didn’t answer.

“I see a future. One you may not yet grasp, but it’s there. And when the time comes, you must seize it. Do not let others use you, Sansa. Let them think you’re the piece… while you become the player.”

She looked up at him then. There was something in his eyes that made her feel… taller. Older. He believed in her. He saw her.

No one had ever spoken to her like that. Not Robb. Not even her mother.

A silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, but full.

Then came the soft knock of a cane against stone.

“My lady,” called Maester Colemon from the corridor. “They’re assembling.”

“Thank you,” she said, and turned to leave.

As she passed Petyr, he stepped aside with a courteous bow — one hand to his heart, as if she were already a queen.

“Good fortune at the council,” he murmured. “I suspect they’ll listen to you soon enough. If they don’t…” His smile tilted, unreadable. “They will learn to.”

Sansa said nothing.

But she felt the heat of his eyes on her back as she walked away — not warm, not cold. Just… sharp. Measuring. Like a coin between two fingers, waiting to be flipped. Yet as she descended the steps, she felt oddly light, as if the world had turned in her favor and she hadn’t even noticed.

The council hall was colder than the morning garden. Even with a fire crackling in the hearth, the heat barely reached beyond the first row of stones. The air smelled faintly of ash and old parchment, and the vaulted rafters seemed to drink in every warmth, casting the long table beneath in blue-gray light. Shadows crept along the walls like quiet listeners.

Men gathered in slow-moving knots — Vale lords in pale mountain furs, brooches shaped like falcons glinting at their shoulders; Riverlanders in rich velvets and crimson cloaks trimmed with blue. Their voices hummed low like bees behind stone. The banners above their heads — the silver falcon of Arryn, the leaping trout of Tully, and the direwolf of Stark — swayed slightly in the cold draft that never seemed to leave the hall.

Sansa sat beside her mother at the end of the table, hands folded neatly, back straight as a brush. She did not fidget. She had learned not to. Across from her, Arya had no such discipline. Her fingers tapped the pommel of her small sword, restless and loud in the silence. One sharp look from their mother stilled her — not forever, but long enough.

Robb stood near the head of the table, tall and still, conferring in low tones with Ser Brynden and Ser Rodrik. His hand moved across the map laid out before them, fingers pausing over known roads and troubled strongholds. He wore his sword openly, and his cloak — gray and white — hung heavy at his back.

“We thank you for your presence, my lords,” Robb said, voice firm, carrying easily to every corner. “The Vale has known unrest these past weeks, but we are here now to restore order and decide its future.”

There were murmurs, nods, the scrape of wood on stone as men settled into their chairs. Sansa felt the tension uncoil slightly — not peace, but the shape of it, if only in outline.

Old Lord Belmore leaned toward Ysilla Royce, whispering something behind his hand. Ysilla’s lips tightened, but she nodded all the same. Further down, Yohn Royce sat like a statue carved from stone, his wide frame wrapped in a deep forest cloak, his face as unreadable as iron.

“We are not blind to your loss, Lord Yohn,” Robb said, gentler now. “Nor to your anger. Lyn Corbray’s actions were not sanctioned. But we cannot allow blood feuds to rule this council.”

Lord Royce did not rise, but when he spoke, his voice filled the space like a challenge hurled across a battlefield. “My son, Robart, was slain defending honor. And Corbray still walks free.”

There was a flicker of unease. A few lords looked away, others shifted in their chairs.

Catelyn’s voice followed swiftly, calm and even. “Justice will be done,” she said. “But justice and vengeance are not the same. If we let murder breed more murder, the Vale will never know peace.”

Sansa could feel the room tilting between grief and pride, between caution and fury.

Then Petyr Baelish spoke, smooth as ever, his tone like balm on raw skin.

“Indeed,” he said, rising just slightly from his chair. “And peace, my lords, is a rare coin these days. If you want a realm where your sons live long enough to wear your cloaks, perhaps we should discuss solutions, not swords.”

The silence held for a beat too long.

Sansa glanced toward him instinctively — and found his eyes already on her.

He did not speak to her, not directly, but the smile that tugged at his lips was unmistakably for her. A flicker, soft and secret, just for a breath before it was gone. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.

She looked away, toward the flickering hearth, willing herself not to seem shaken. It was foolish, she knew — he was only being kind, only watching. But the way he looked at her made her feel seen, deeply seen, and she wasn’t sure yet whether that was a gift or a threat.

Across the table, Ser Rodrik cleared his throat, unimpressed. “Spoken like a man who rarely draws one.”

Laughter followed — a few low chuckles, the kind that made the tension ease just enough.

But Sansa noticed the way Baelish didn’t react. His smile never slipped. He did not laugh or scowl. He simply returned to his seat, adjusting the folds of his cloak with the same precision he used to arrange alliances.

And for a moment, Sansa wondered what he truly wanted from this council. From the Vale. From her. Then the doors opened.

Whispers rippled across the chamber like wind stirring tall grass. Heads turned. Voices faltered. Even the fire in the hearth seemed to draw back on itself as Lysa Arryn entered the hall.

She moved slowly, draped in her Arryn blue cloak, its hem whispering against the stone floor. Her auburn hair was piled high, pinned with silver falcons, but a few wisps had come loose and clung to her damp temples. Her steps were light, almost floating — as if she feared her feet would betray her. Her hands, held tightly at her sides, trembled just enough for all to notice, yet no one dared speak.

Sansa felt the tension ripple down the line of seated lords. Even those who had spoken boldly minutes before now turned cautious. Yohn Royce’s jaw flexed. Lord Belmore frowned deeply. Maester Colemon blinked in alarm.

Beside her, her mother rose halfway from her seat. “Lysa,” she breathed. “She wasn’t meant to—”

Her sister walked slowly toward the table, ignoring the stares, her eyes scanning the room like a hawk on a high wind. She paused, letting the silence stretch. Her gaze passed over Robb — unreadable — then to Catelyn, and finally to Sansa. It lingered there.

“They said you would come,” Lysa said, her voice surprisingly clear. “But I did not believe it. You always preferred the Riverlands, Cat.”

Sansa could feel all eyes shift toward her, though none dared meet her gaze directly.

“Lysa,” her mother said again, gentler now. She stepped forward from her place at the table. “You should be resting. We would have come to the Eyrie—”

“I am not some frail bird in a cage,” Lysa snapped. Her voice rang sharply off the stone. The lords flinched. Arya blinked in surprise, then leaned forward with a scowl. Robb's hand went to the table’s edge, gripping the wood.

Then Lysa turned her head, and her eyes locked with Sansa’s. Pale blue, wide and wet.

“They whisper about you,” she said coldly. “Of how pretty you are. Of how sweet you sound. Just like your mother.”

Sansa’s breath caught in her throat. She sat very still, willing her face to remain calm. Her fingers curled in her lap beneath the table, invisible.

She didn’t understand what she had done. Had she offended her aunt? She had spoken little in council, only when addressed. She had been courteous, silent. Careful. And yet—

Baelish stood slowly behind the lords, every motion practiced, controlled. “Lysa—”

“Do not ‘Lysa’ me!” she hissed, voice rising to a shrill chord. “You think I don’t see it? All of you… watching her. Smiling at her. Like Cat all over again.”

The hall froze. No one moved. Even Arya had gone quiet, her hand slack on Needle’s hilt. Sansa could feel the thunder of her own pulse. Somewhere near the hearth, a log cracked and fell in a burst of sparks.

Baelish didn’t raise his voice. “Take her out,” he said softly to Maester Colemon.

The maester hesitated, clearly torn, but obeyed. He stepped forward as gently as he could.

“I won’t be humiliated,” Lysa hissed, her eyes darting. “Not again.”

Baelish crossed to her, his movements slow, soothing, like a man calming a frightened horse. “Come, my love,” he murmured, close now. “Not here. Not like this.” His voice was tender. Too tender. It unsettled Sansa more than Lysa’s shouting.

Lysa trembled visibly but allowed herself to be led away. Still, she looked back once — not at her sister, not at Robb, not even at Baelish. She looked at Sansa. And her glare lingered like smoke in the lungs, clinging long after the doors had shut.

Sansa exhaled — shallow, shaky. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath.

Across from her, Arya muttered, “She’s mad,” under her breath, shaking her head like it was too obvious to need saying.

Catelyn didn’t answer. But her hand found Sansa’s beneath the table, and squeezed gently. Her touch was warm, firm. Reassuring.

Robb stepped forward again to address the lords, but the spell of command was broken. Where before the council had been tense but focused, now it was unsteady. Men glanced at one another, whispered behind palms. The earlier momentum had fled like warmth from the hall.

The rest of the meeting passed in clipped exchanges, half-heard agreements, and cold deferrals. There would be no true decisions today.

Later, as they stepped into the gray courtyard light, the breeze tugging at their cloaks, Arya scowled again. “She’s mad,” she repeated, louder this time.

Their mother didn’t speak at first. They walked slowly, the clack of Arya’s boots and Sansa’s softer steps echoing off the walls. Overhead, the sky was pale, the color of old milk.

Sansa touched her arm. “Was she always like this?” she asked, hesitantly.

Her mother’s face was tired, and full of sorrow. “No,” Catelyn said at last. “But she was always… fragile. And fragile things break, when bent too far.”

Chapter Text

Arya

Arya hated the Vale. The air here felt wrong. Thin and dry, like the breath of ghosts. It clung to the back of her throat and left her lips cracked no matter how much water she drank. Even the wind seemed to whisper too much, sighing through stone corridors like it mourned something long buried.

Everyone spoke in quiet, careful voices — about honor, about banners, about bloodlines and names she didn't care to remember. Lords with waxed mustaches and heavy rings, ladies wrapped in silks that rustled like lies. They watched Sansa and Robb with something like reverence, but Arya… Arya might as well have been part of the furniture.

She wasn’t pretty like Sansa, with her clever smiles and perfect hair. She wasn’t quiet like Rickon, content to sit at mother’s side. Arya was too much — too loud, too fast, too sharp around the edges.

Too Stark, she thought bitterly.

The Gates of the Moon crouched low and solid around her, all gray stone and colder shadows. Its towers did not rise like spires but hunched like waiting beasts. There were no grand balconies, no golden domes, just narrow windows and arrow slits, and halls that echoed too long after your voice had left them. It was a place built to endure, not to welcome. A cage made of mountains and memory.

She had taken to vanishing into it. Slipping through servants' halls and half-forgotten stairwells, losing herself in the warren of gray stone. No one stopped her. No one called her name. Most days, it felt like she’d disappeared and the world had simply let her.

Let them forget me, she thought. I do better in shadows.

Needle hung at her hip, hidden beneath her tunic. She’d drawn it earlier, in one of the side courts where no one ever lingered — not the knights, not the maids, not even the birds. There were no squires willing to spar with a girl, no matter whose daughter she was. They bowed and smiled and turned away. Cowards, all of them. But the straw dummy didn’t flinch. The blade cut clean. The sound it made — soft, slicing — was the only honest thing she'd heard all week.

She should have been with Father and Jon, helping hold the Wall, riding through snowstorms and death. Not trapped here in this brittle nest, where Sansa smiled like a painted doll and every man looked at her like she was some prize to be unwrapped. Arya’s stomach turned just thinking of it. They looked at her sister as if she were a story come to life. And Arya? She wasn’t in their stories. She was a smudge at the edge of the page.

She kicked a pebble down a stairwell and watched it skip off the stone, dancing into the dark. Then she followed.

Her boots thudded quietly as she descended, each step taking her further from the great halls, from the polished courtyards where men trained under banners, and into the belly of the keep — where the stones smelled older, damper, almost like Winterfell’s crypts. Arya liked it better here. No one tried to stop her or remind her to curtsy.

Her feet carried her toward one of the smaller watchtowers, the one tucked behind the kitchens and the old rookery wall — quiet, unassuming, half-swallowed by ivy and time. Some whispered that maesters and septons used to go there to pray.

Prayers, she thought. Or secrets. She smiled at the thought.

The corridor grew narrow, the kind built for servants and shadows. Light leaked through thin arrow slits, gray as old parchment. The air tasted of damp stone and dust, and somewhere far off, a raven croaked once and then fell silent.

She padded softly. Her boots made almost no sound on the worn stone, and the sound of her own breath felt too loud. The guard presence had thinned lately — most of the knights and house retainers were busy playing politics in the main hall, their swords traded for words, their eyes elsewhere.

Fewer eyes. Easier to move unseen.

Needle shifted at her hip with every step, but the familiar weight was comforting. She was halfway up the servants’ stair — a narrow, spiraling climb of chilled stone and worn steps — when she heard it.

“…not again, Petyr. You said it would be our son, not hers—”

Arya froze mid-step. Her hand shot out to steady herself against the wall.

The voice was unmistakable — high and strained, trembling at the edges like a thread pulled too tight. Lysa. Her tone cracked with every word, not like a woman whispering a fear, but screaming one barely held in check.

Then came Baelish’s voice — smooth, measured, touched with something between flattery and oil.

“My sweet… my dove. Sansa is only a girl. You know how they look up to older men—”

Arya’s jaw clenched.

Lysa’s voice cut through again, sharper now. “Don’t lie to me, Petyr. Don’t ever lie to me again.”

Arya moved without thinking — crouching low, keeping to the curve of the wall. She crept upward one slow step at a time, every sense burning. The voices were coming from just ahead, behind a door left ajar, pale light spilling from its crack like spilled milk.

She pressed herself flat against the wall, crouched low beneath the level of the latch. The cold stone bled through her tunic. Her fingers hovered near Needle's hilt. Inside the chamber, the air felt heavier, thicker — the kind of air that held secrets like a sealed tomb.

“I did it for you,” Lysa hissed. “I gave him the poison. Just like you said. For us. For Robert.”

Arya’s breath caught.  There was a pause, long and shivering. Arya dared not even blink.

Then Petyr again, his tone like silk stretched over steel. “Yes. For us. It had to be done.”

“I killed Jon. Petyr. I killed him. For you.”

Lysa’s voice cracked open then — not like ice, but like glass. Not a confession, but a collapse.

“And now you look at her,” she spat, “like you looked at Cat.”

There was a crash — sharp and sudden — the unmistakable shatter of something glass or porcelain against stone.

Arya flinched despite herself, her fingers tightening into fists.

Inside the room, silence stretched again.

Then Baelish, gentle and slow, each word like a hand on silk. “I have always loved you. But you must calm yourself. You know how unstable things are already. One whisper…”

Arya’s pulse raced like a horse in full gallop. Her blood pounded in her ears. She didn’t understand all of it, but she knew enough.

Poison. Jon Arryn. Lysa.

“She’ll take you away,” Lysa sobbed. “Just like her mother.”

Arya’s skin prickled. She backed away slowly, one step, then another, moving like a shadow with her breath held tight in her chest. Her boots made no sound. She didn’t dare look back. She didn't dare stay.

She turned at the stair’s curve and fled, as fast and silent as she knew how. Down, down, into the quiet cold. Her cloak billowed like smoke behind her as she broke into a run. She had to find her mother.

She ran through the keep like a storm wind, hair flying wild behind her, boots striking the stone floors in a sharp, echoing rhythm. Her lungs burned, but she didn’t slow. She barely saw the servants she passed or the guards at their posts. One called out something — a name, a question — but Arya didn’t hear it.

She didn’t stop. She couldn’t.

The corridors blurred around her — pale limestone walls, Arryn banners, carved doors and high windows that let in the thin, cold light of morning. Her feet knew the way. Her mind raced faster than her legs, faster than her breath.

She killed Jon Arryn. She poisoned him. She thinks Petyr’s in love with Sansa.

It spun through her like a chant. Each repetition made it real.

A sharp turn. Two steps up. Past a column and a broken suit of armor. The door to the small solar was half-closed, candlelight flickering beneath the frame. Arya didn’t knock.

She burst through with a gasp, her cloak catching the edge of the door and whipping back as it swung open.

Catelyn looked up from a desk piled with scrolls and seal-stamped ravens. Maester Colemon sat nearby, sorting parchments. Ser Rodrik stood behind them, arms folded.

“Arya?” Her mother said, startled. Her mouth was halfway through a command — something calm, controlled, motherly — but it died the moment she saw her daughter’s face.

Arya was panting, hands on her knees. Her hair clung to her forehead, and her eyes were too wide.

“I heard them,” Arya gasped. “Lysa and Baelish. Arguing. She said she poisoned her husband. For him. For Robert.”

For a breathless second, the room went still. Only the fire crackled. Only the wind outside moaned.

Then Catelyn stood. Her chair scraped violently against the stone as she pushed it back, forgotten. Her face had gone pale. “What did you say?”

Arya tried to steady herself, swallowing air like water. “She said she did it. Gave Jon Arryn poison. And Petyr told her to.”

Maester Colemon dropped the scroll he was holding. His face drained of color. Ser Rodrik’s hand went to the pommel of his sword out of instinct, his knuckles pale.

Catelyn didn’t speak. Not right away. Her face was tight, drawn — not grief, not fear, but something cold, honed. She looked older in that moment. Not like a mother.

“She thinks Petyr loves Sansa,” Arya added, voice lower now, less breathless. “She said it like she hated her.”

Catelyn inhaled sharply. Whispered something under her breath — names, maybe, or memories. Arya caught fragments a pound, a mockingbird, a stag, a falcon. She didn’t understand.

Then her mother turned away from the desk and walked slowly to the narrow window. She placed both hands on the sill and gripped it. Her knuckles turned white.

Her voice, when it came, was low and brittle. “When I was a girl,” she said, “Lysa cried over everything. Lost dolls. Harsh winters. Petyr. Always Petyr.” She spat the name like it tasted foul.

Ser Rodrik stepped forward. “My lady… what do we do with this?”

Catelyn turned slowly, the wind from the window stirring the ends of her hair. “We confirm it.”

Colemon’s voice was uncertain. “And if it’s true?”

“Then it means everything started here,” she said. “Not in the South. Not with the Lannisters. But with my sister.”

Arya stepped closer, her boots clicking quietly now on the stone. Her voice was small but certain. “Mother… you believe me, don’t you?”

Catelyn dropped to one knee, her hands resting gently but firmly on Arya’s shoulders. Her eyes met hers.

“I believe you, Arya. I believe you more than anyone.”

Arya nodded. Her throat felt thick, dry.  “Will we tell Sansa?”

“No,” Catelyn said, standing. “Not yet. Not until we’re sure. I won’t let Petyr twist her heart like he twisted Lysa’s.”

Arya swallowed hard. “He already looks at her strange.”

Her mother’s mouth thinned to a line.

“They’ll deny it,” Ser Rodrik warned. “They’ll say the girl misunderstood. That she made it up.”

Catelyn’s reply was quiet steel. “Then we gather the lords. And we make her speak in front of them all.”

Colemon hesitated. “And if she won’t?”

Catelyn turned to face them fully now. There was no hesitation in her voice. “Then she’ll have her chance to scream.”

They gathered in the High Hall of the Eyrie beneath pale marble columns and storm-silver skies.

It had taken them two days to climb from the Gates of the Moon, two days of switchbacks and wind and narrow mule tracks that clung to the mountainside like threads. Arya had ridden behind Mya Stone most of the way, and for once, she hadn’t minded being told to follow.

Mya was quick-footed and sure, her hands strong on the reins, her eyes sharper than any knight’s. Arya had liked her instantly — not because she smiled much, or spoke softly, but because she moved like someone who trusted her own limbs. And when Mya talked, it wasn’t to flatter. It was to teach. Lean forward here. Keep your heels tight. Trust the mule. Trust the path, not your fear.

Arya had asked, casually, who her mother was. Mya had shrugged. “Some servant, I suppose,” she said. “Never met her. But my father was King Robert. He said so himself, once.”

Arya had looked at her — the dark hair, the strong jaw, the blue eyes like a cold river. Mya looks more like Robert than Joffrey ever did. The thought came hard and cold, and it would not leave her.

She’d heard it before — when lords and ladies talked when they thought they were alone — but now she knew. Mya was Robert Baratheon’s daughter. And Joffrey... Joffrey had Lannister gold in his hair.

The climb had been harsh, but Arya had liked it. Liked the bite of the air, the ache in her calves, the way the Vale unfolded below her in sharp cliffs and green hollows. She’d felt free, somehow, halfway between sky and stone.

But now the sky was above her again, not around her. Pale light filtered through high windows like sifted ash. The High Hall of the Eyrie was cold. Even with torches burning and braziers lit, the chill clung to the marble floor and seeped into her bones.

Arya stood beside her mother, one hand resting on Needle’s hilt. The weight of the blade was a comfort. The air was so thin it hurt to breathe, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t fidget.

The room was full of lords — Yohn Royce in his heavy bronze, Anya Waynwood with her quiet eyes, Ser Symond Templeton, Lord Redfort — and others she didn’t know as well, all armored, all grim. Their cloaks barely moved, their expressions even less.

Robb stood like a carved wolf, broad and unmoving, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked like their father now — not just in stance, but in presence. Even his silence had weight.

Sansa was further down the hall, standing beside Lady Ysilla in blue and white, a snow-colored mantle over her shoulders. Her face was still, pale, she did not like the journey up here.

Robert Arryn squirmed on the weirwood throne, coughing into a linen kerchief embroidered with little falcons. His fingers gripped his doll so tightly Arya thought the seams might split.

And then the doors opened.

Lysa Arryn entered like a winter storm — white and gold from head to heel, her hair coiled in a coronet, her eyes wide with something sharp and too bright. Pride, perhaps. Or madness.

She moved slowly but with purpose, each step measured. Her sleeves brushed the stone floor like wings.

Behind her came Petyr Baelish, all soft voice and softer steps, his robes a neutral gray, his mockingbird pin gleaming. His smile was gentle, too gentle. Arya watched the corners of it like one might watch a blade in its sheath.

He scanned the room, warm and mild, but when his eyes fell on Sansa, the smile tightened. Just for an instant. His jaw clenched. Arya saw it. So did her mother. She heard Catelyn’s breath catch beside her. A sound almost too quiet to notice. Almost.

“My lords,” her mother began, with quiet authority. Her voice carried across the High Hall like snow sliding off a roof — soft, but unstoppable. “We did not come to make war. But truths have come to light. Truths we can no longer ignore.”

The hall stilled, save for the faint crackle of torches and the distant cough of her little cousin on his throne. The boy fidgeted, pulling his mantle tight around his thin shoulders, blinking at the grown-ups with wide, watery eyes.

Lysa’s voice sliced through the silence like a drawn blade. “Truths? No. Accusations. Whispers.” Her gold-edged sleeves flared as she rose from the weirwood throne, her fingers tightening on its arms. “You come to my home with swords and songs of grief, and expect me to bow?”

Arya saw her mother’s jaw tighten, but it was Lord Yohn Royce who answered first. He stepped forward, his bronze-and-iron armor clinking faintly. “We come to know what happened to Lord Jon Arryn,” he said, deep-voiced and unflinching. “And why.”

That silenced even the whisperers in the wings.

Catelyn’s face was stone. “You told me the Lannisters killed him,” she said. “Was that true, Lysa? Or was it a lie you fed to every corner of the realm?”

Lysa’s hands gripped the throne so tightly her knuckles blanched. Her eyes darted — from her mother, to the bonze lord, to the knights watching with guarded faces. “I did what I had to!” she snapped, voice rising like a winter wind. “The Lannisters—”

“Enough with the Lannisters,” snapped Lady Anya Waynwood from across the hall. Her voice, usually measured, cracked like a riding crop. “Speak plainly.”

Petyr Baelish moved at last. Smooth as melted wax, he stepped forward, his hands folded calmly in front of him, voice as soft as lambswool. “Surely we need not drag every dark thing into the light. Jon Arryn is gone. His son lives. The Vale must look forward.”

But Lysa wasn’t looking at her son. Her gaze was fixed elsewhere — past the crowd, past the lords, past the noise. On Sansa.

“You came here,” she said, her voice quieter now but no less sharp, “in your silks and your mother’s face.” Her eyes gleamed, fever-bright. “All quiet and lovely and watched by every man in the hall. You think I don’t see how he looks at you?”

Sansa froze, color draining from her cheeks. She shrank as she stood, the way a deer flinches from a hunter’s arrow.

“Lysa—” Baelish interjected quickly, stepping toward her, a hand reaching out. “You’re upset. Not here—”

“Don’t tell me what I feel!” Lysa screamed, jerking away from him. Her voice echoed off the marble. “I gave you my life, Petyr! I drank your moon tea, swallowed your schemes, smiled through every lie, and still, still, you only ever looked at her.”

She jabbed a trembling finger at Sansa. She flinched again, her hands curling around her side.

“She’s a child!” Catelyn’s voice cracked like ice. She stepped before Sansa, fierce now, protective. “Have you lost your wits?”

Lysa was trembling now. Her face was a mask of fury and grief, powder streaked with tears. “I bled for you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I lost our child—” Her breath hitched. “I gave him the poison. Just like you told me to! And still you love her more!”

Gasps scattered through the hall like a dropped tray of silver. Even the wind seemed to pause.

Little Robin let out a startled whimper, his doll clutched tightly to his chest.

Petyr’s mask cracked. Just for a breath — a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a flicker of panic behind the practiced calm. He stepped forward, one hand outstretched toward Lysa, the other tucked into his sleeve like a man steadying himself.

“Lysa, please—” he began.

But she tore herself from his reach with a sob that echoed like thunder.

“You promised me everything,” she cried. “And now you’ll have nothing.”

Baelish reached for her, voice dropping into that soft, silken lilt he used like balm on open wounds. “My lords, my lady… grief makes monsters of us all. Lysa has long been unwell. I’ve done my duty to House Arryn—”

But Lady Anya Waynwood was already rising, the steel of her voice colder than the mountain air. “You poisoned Jon Arryn,” she said, her finger pointing at Baelish. “Your own liege lord.”

Baelish turned toward her, still smiling — too tightly now, like a man wearing a mask too long in the sun. “False claims,” he said quickly. “I would never go against House Arryn. I—”

“We heard it,” said her mother. Her voice was low and measured, but her eyes had never been harder. “My daughter heard it. When you and Lysa were talking.”

“You said he was frail,” added Lord Redfort, his lined face drawn into a grimace. “That his death was natural. Now we know better.”

Baelish’s eyes flicked from lord to lord, calculating, desperate for a sympathetic glance. He shifted his weight, feet subtly angled toward the side door, as if rehearsing escape.

“The girl misunderstood,” he said finally, the smoothness in his voice strained, like velvet stretched over thorns. “How can we trust the future of the Vale to a child’s tale?”

“Because that child had no reason to lie,” Catelyn answered coldly. “And every reason to fear what she heard.”

The lords turned, one by one, to Arya. She didn’t flinch. Her hand stayed steady on Needle. Her chin lifted. “I know what I heard,” she said, voice clear and defiant. “She said she poisoned Lord Arryn. For Petyr. Because he told her to. She said it like a secret she’d been keeping too long.”

A murmur moved through the chamber like dry grass catching flame. The weirwood throne creaked as Sweetrobin shifted, whimpering into his kerchief.

“Lords,” Baelish said, his tone softer now, almost pleading. He turned slowly, palms out, as if offering himself. “The girl is brave. But confused. Children hear half a thing and think it’s the whole. Lady Lysa has always been… delicate.”

“You called Jon Arryn a father once,” said Lord Redfort. “And now his name is mud in your mouth.”

“She was grieving,” Baelish insisted. A drop of sweat slipped along his temple. “It was a private moment. Misheard, misread—”

“There was nothing private in that voice,” Arya snapped. “She was screaming.”

The word hung there and with it, the last of his composure cracked.

Yohn Royce stepped forward. “Tell me then, Baelish. Why did you keep us from council? Why silence the riders from Runestone and Riverrun both? Why install Corbray, a killer, at Lysa’s side and bar me from my own cousin’s halls?”

Baelish’s charm cracked. “Because someone had to keep the Vale from devouring itself.”

“You fed the teeth,” said Lady Waynwood.

Baelish’s mask slipped again, not shattered, but frayed. He licked his lips. His eyes darted toward the dais — and lingered on Sansa.

He took a half-step in her direction, barely perceptible, like a gambler hoping the dice might still come up sweet. “Sansa—” he began.

She looked away. She didn’t flinch, didn’t cry — only turned her face, as if willing herself to vanish. And that, more than any outburst, broke something inside him.

Baelish stood very still.

“You brought war to these mountains,” said Lord Grafton. “We all feel the cracks beneath us now. You pushed and whispered and maneuvered. But in the end, you only ever served yourself.”

His gaze snapped to her mother now, voice thinning into desperation. “I did it all for you.”

Her silence was louder than any rebuke. Then: “No,” her mother said. “You did it all for power. And now your time is over.”

Yohn Royce raised his voice, grave and final. “Petyr Baelish, you are under arrest for the murder of Lord Jon Arryn. You are hereby remanded to custody until judgment is passed.”

Steel rasped against scabbards. The knights of the Vale stepped forward as one.

Baelish backed away. One step. Another. But the cold stone of the High Hall met his heel. There was no escape here. No back room to vanish into. Only silence. Only stares. And the whisper of old lies dying at last.

Two guards moved for Lysa, taking her gently by the arms. Her tears had not stopped, but her resistance had. She sagged between them, broken, her sobs echoing against pale marble.

Baelish flinched as the knights turned toward him.

“I’ve only ever served House Arryn,” he said, one last time. His voice cracked at the edge. “All I’ve done—”

“Was for yourself,” said Catelyn. “And now you’ll answer for it.”

Sansa stood frozen where she was, face pale and unreadable, lips parted slightly, but no words came. Arya didn’t think. She reached for her sister’s hand — and to her surprise, Sansa took it. Her grip was trembling but sure.

They stood like that as the doors swung open and the guards led Lysa away in tears. Petyr Baelish walked between the knights, his head bowed low, silent at last.

And Arya Stark — for the first time in weeks — no longer felt alone in the Vale.

Chapter Text

Catelyn

The Vale was quiet now. Too quiet.

Catelyn stood on the narrow balcony of the High Hall, her cloak pulled close around her shoulders, though the cold still crept through the wool and into her bones. The morning wind bit like a northern knife, sharp and thin, slicing through the veil of dawn as if to punish the stones for remembering. It whistled low across the peaks, and the breath it stole from her lungs left her feeling smaller than she had in years.

Before her stretched the world in stone — jagged ridges, ancient cliffs, and valleys lost to the clouds. The Mountains of the Moon stood unmoved by all that had passed, cruel and proud in the pale light. They did not care for mortal schemes. They had seen blood before.

Petyr Baelish would die before the moon turned. That much had been decided. There would be no trial, no plea, no last-minute bargain whispered in a dark corridor. The lords had spoken, and for once, no one had whispered back.

She tightened her grip on the balcony rail — rough-hewn marble, cool and damp beneath her fingers. Her knuckles whitened. She stared not at the view, but beyond it, beyond the endless folds of stone and ice, beyond the sky itself, into memory.

He had cried. Petyr Baelish had wept when they dragged him away in chains.

Not for Jon Arryn. Not for Lysa. Not even for the child he had orphaned and poisoned with his poisoner's whispers. No, he wept for what he had lost. For the webs that had slipped through his fingers. Lysa’s madness, Sweetrobin’s weakness, Sansa’s quiet grace, Arya’s defiant strength — they had all eluded him in the end, like coins flipped wrong, like pieces on a cyvasse board that no longer played to his tune.

She felt no triumph in it. No joy. Only a heavy, hollow ache.

There had been a time — gods forgive her — when she had not hated him. When he had been only Petyr, a boy with clever eyes and eager hands, always underfoot in Riverrun, always chasing her with poetry and foolish pride. He had clung to Edmure's shadow and dared to challenge Brandon Stark for her favor. He bled then too, she remembered — bled for love. And even then, she had thought him harmless. A child playing at duels and dreams. A boy who fancied himself a lord in a tale.

Perhaps that had been her first mistake. Or perhaps her first sin.

Now, the game was done. His lies lay broken. His masks had fallen. The man she had once pitied — almost once loved, in some innocent girl’s way — had become a spider fat on secrets, spinning war and chaos into profit and power. But in the end, it had all unraveled. The web had torn.

And Lysa…

Her sister had not screamed when the lords stripped her of title and power. She had laughed. That hollow, brittle laugh still echoed in Catelyn’s mind. It had not come from joy, nor rage, nor even madness. It had sounded like something breaking. Something inside the soul.

She had thought she might hate Lysa, for what she had done. For the man she had chosen. For the poison. But hate would have been easier. Instead, Catelyn felt only the ache of grief — bitter and cold, like the wind curling around her now. Her sister, once so soft, so fearful, so eager to please, had become a shell of herself. A creature made by loneliness, molded by loss, and shattered by love unreturned.

Catelyn bowed her head. The wind tugged at her hair, loosened a strand from its braid. She did not move to fix it.

Below, the Vale stretched silent and still. But the peace was uneasy. Too much had been spilled to ever go unnoticed. Too many truths brought screaming into daylight. The ghosts would linger here, long after the walls warmed again.

And still… there was work to do. She turned from the balcony and made her way back into the hall, her steps slow, deliberate, as if one misstep might collapse everything. The wind at her back whispered like a warning.

The storm had passed. But it had not gone far.

The corridors of the Eyrie were unusually still, save for the echo of her own footfalls. Her shadow followed her closely, long and slender in the cold morning light.

The inner solar was modest compared to the High Hall, but no less solemn. The windows were narrow slits of glass, letting in a pale gray that did little to warm the room. A low fire hissed in the hearth, as if reluctant to burn in such a place. The air smelled of parchment and damp wool.

The lords of the Vale had convened once more — but this time, there were no raised voices, no trembling accusations, no women sobbing in doorways. It was no longer a court of fury and chaos. Only the slow, careful shaping of what would come next.

Catelyn paused at the threshold and studied the gathering. They looked like carved pieces of stone themselves — grim, unmoving, and too proud to let weariness show. The high lords of the Vale were not men and women given easily to change, yet now they sat across from one another without reaching for swords.

But she could still feel it: the tension beneath the surface. Like the mountain air before a rockslide. Mistrust lingered, faint and persistent, like ash clinging to snow.

Lady Anya Waynwood sat stiff-backed, her hands folded over one another, the rings on her fingers catching firelight. Her face was composed, but Catelyn saw the tightness at the corners of her eyes. Beside her sat Ysilla Royce, a woman of few words but heavy presence, her gray wool cloak trimmed with dark fur, her eyes sharp and unyielding.

Lord Horton Redfort stood in silence near the corner, arms folded behind his back, the red of his house sigil gleaming on his chest. His face betrayed nothing. In contrast, Lord Belmore paced like a restless hawk along the edge of the hearth, boots scuffing against the stone with each turn.

Ser Symond Templeton leaned against his cane near the long table, and Catelyn thought he looked like a man who had seen enough of the world and would rather not see more.

“The execution must be done swiftly,” Lady Anya said, her voice calm and clipped. “No fanfare. No spectacle.”

“A quiet death,” Ser Symond agreed with a nod. “He is not worth the blade of the Eyrie’s honor guard.”

“But still a noble,” Belmore muttered, pausing in his pacing. His lip curled with distaste. “Of the Vale, now. You would treat him as a common brigand?”

“He was never of the Vale,” Ysilla Royce snapped, her voice like flint striking stone. “He wormed his way in through lies and poison.”

There were nods around the room. Soft grunts of agreement. Murmurs in the chill air. Not a single voice spoke in Petyr Baelish’s defense.

Catelyn stepped further into the room, and when she spoke, her voice was low but clear.

“What of the boy,” she said softly. “He is innocent in all this — a child, not a conspirator. A pawn in a game that stole his father and shattered his house.”

The chamber quieted at once. Even Lord Belmore ceased his pacing. Catelyn felt their eyes turn toward her — old eyes, weary eyes, noble eyes — and for a moment, she let them see the grief in her own.

“He is Jon Arryn’s blood,” said Lord Redfort after a pause. “That cannot be denied.”

“But he is not fit to rule,” muttered Symond Templeton. “That cannot be denied either.”

Catelyn’s fingers brushed the edge of the table as she moved to her seat. The wood felt cold.

“Then let him not rule alone,” she said. “Let the Vale keep its rightful heir… and name a hand steady enough to carry him.”

The words hung in the air like the first snowflake before a storm.

“Lord Royce has honor,” Lady Anya Waynwood said after a moment, her chin lifting. “And the respect of every banner here. Let him serve as Lord Regent until the boy comes of age.”

“If he ever does,” someone whispered — it was unclear who. The words floated like smoke and dissolved just as quickly.

There were murmurs. A nod here. A silence there. The kind of silent that Catelyn had come to recognize — not resistance, but reluctant consensus.

“The boy is small for his age,” said Ser Vardis Egen, rubbing his weathered hands together for warmth. “He coughs with every chill. He has no stomach for solid food, and his fits... grow worse with the seasons.”

“He would not survive a winter in Gulltown,” muttered Ser Jasper Redfort. “Let alone a march to war.”

“Then he must be protected, not abandoned,” Catelyn said sharply, the edge in her voice cutting through the gloom. “He is a boy, not a burden.”

“And yet we cannot build the Vale on a child’s sickbed,” said Symond Templeton, with less cruelty than weariness. “We must prepare for what may come. Hope is not a plan.”

A grim silence followed. Even the fire in the hearth seemed to settle, as if listening.

“Then name an heir,” came Lady Ysilla Royce, arms crossed beneath her dark wool cloak. “Jon Arryn did not leave the boy without blood. There is another.”

“Harrold Hardyng,” Lord Redfort said. “He rides well, fights clean, and carries the blood of the Arryns. Jon Arryn’s sister’s line. He is of the Vale.”

“And old enough to stand as heir presumptive,” added Lady Anya. “Should the gods take young Robert...” She let the rest hang unsaid, but the meaning was clear to all.

Catelyn felt the shift in the room. It wasn’t dramatic. No slammed fists or declarations. Just a subtle stilling — the moment when uncertainty gave way to direction.

“Let the boy keep his crown of stone,” said Ysilla Royce, “but give the Vale a sword to hold beside it.”

The nods came more readily now. Fewer whispers. The shadows that had crept so long across these stones were finally beginning to lift.

“Then let it be written,” said Lord Redfort at last, rising to his full height. “Harrold Hardyng shall stand as heir to the Eyrie, unless the boy grows strong enough to best him.”

No dissent came. Only silence. And the sound of old wounds beginning, just barely, to scab over. The Vale had bled in silence long enough.

Later, in a smaller chamber tucked behind the Eyrie’s solar, Catelyn sat with her uncle beside a low-burning fire. The hearth crackled with a faint protest, as though the flames themselves could not pierce the chill in her bones. Shadows shifted across the stone walls, long and wavering. A jug of mulled wine sat untouched between them, its steam long faded into the air.

Brynden Tully sat opposite her, one hand around a goblet of watered wine. His dark grey cloak was flecked with the white of mountain dust, and his eyes, though tired, held the same quiet vigilance he had always worn in battle and in council.

“We’ll send her to Riverrun,” Catelyn said, her voice low and flat. “She’ll stay with Edmure.”

The words tasted heavy. They sounded like exile, like failure.

Brynden gave a grim nod, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “She’ll never be the same.”

Catelyn looked into the fire, the orange tongues licking at charred logs. “No,” she whispered. “But I can’t bring myself to hate her. I remember her smile. Before everything. Before Petyr.”

She hadn’t meant to say his name. But it lingered, like the bitter smoke from an old pyre.

“I’ll go with her,” Brynden said. “To keep her safe.”

She turned to him, her expression softening. “You still watch over her.”

“I watch over you.”

That made her blink. She hadn’t expected it — but perhaps she should have. Uncle Brynden had always stood where others faltered. He had fought her father’s wars, protected her children, guarded her silence when it was all she had left.

She smiled then, faintly, touched by the same sadness that had never quite left them, not since the days of Riverrun’s riverbanks and the summers of their youth.

They sat in companionable quiet for a time, the fire sputtering now and then. Outside, the wind howled along the towers.

Then — the beat of wings. A shadow against the sky. A raven came as the light began to fade, wings soaked in snow and wind, its feathers slick with ice. It arrived like an omen, dark and insistent, clawing at the chamber’s peace.

The maester brought it in without a word, laid the parchment gently before her, and withdrew. The seal was stark grey, the wax cracked from the cold.

Catelyn broke it with steady hands, though her heart fluttered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her eyes scanned the page once — then again, slower. She knew the hand. Knew the weight of each letter.

“Moat Cailin is secure. Winterfell is ours again. Bolton and Dustin are dead. Their treachery ended. We march to Moat Cailin. The North and its allies are willing to speak of peace. Let the Vale meet us there, if they would share in the realm’s future.”

The parchment trembled in her grip, crinkling where her fingers clenched.

“He’s coming,” she whispered.

It felt like breath returning to her lungs. Like a thaw after a long, hard freeze.

By nightfall, the lords of the Vale had gathered once more, called without horns or ceremony. They came dressed not in fur-lined finery, but in travel cloaks and armor, as if the weight of winter was already pressing close. There were no accusations now. No shouting. No clenched fists or furrowed brows.

Only the letter, passed from one hand to another, from Royce to Waynwood to Redfort to Templeton. They read it in silence, some with narrowed eyes, others with brows raised, as though daring hope to touch them again.

And when they looked to one another, what passed between them was not defiance. It was something quieter. Acceptance.

“We will send riders,” Lady Anya Waynwood declared, her voice as steady as the stone beneath their feet. “We will meet Lord Stark at Moat Cailin.”

And one by one, the others agreed. Not with joy. But with something quieter. Something steadier.

Later, she found them beneath the old oak tree in the garden, where the snow clung to its bare branches like frostbitten lace. The wind was hushed here, caught between high stone walls and hedgerows stripped for winter. A scattering of icicles hung from the low boughs, catching what little light remained and bending it into silver.

Arya sat cross-legged in the roots, her gloved hand gripping a small blade — not Needle, but a duller one she used for carving. She was working at the bark with quiet intensity, scoring shapes into the wood. Not just slashes or names this time, but a snarling face — a wolf’s, perhaps, or something fiercer. Her brows were furrowed, jaw tight with focus.

Sansa knelt nearby, the hem of her deep blue cloak fanned out across the snow. Her hands were folded in her lap, eyes closed, face tilted slightly toward the bare canopy above, as if in prayer or deep thought. Lady sat beside her, curled like a white stone at her feet, while Nymeria lounged close to Arya, her long muzzle resting lazily on her sister’s boot. Every so often, the two direwolves would lift their heads just enough to nudge against each other, tails brushing — not quite play, but not quite stillness either. Some quiet, canine bond renewed beneath the frost.

Catelyn paused at the edge of the garden path, watching them from beneath her hood. The sight stole her breath for a moment. They looked like children again — but Catelyn knew they changed. Shaped by grief and war and silence. Yet there was something in the way they sat that struck her. A closeness. Not warmth exactly, but gravity — as if they had finally begun to turn toward each other.

“You should be inside,” Catelyn said gently, her voice soft so as not to disturb the hush.

Sansa opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder. “We needed air,” she said. “And quiet.”

Arya didn’t lift her head. “We’re going to Moat Cailin?”

Catelyn stepped closer, her boots crunching lightly in the snow. She nodded. “Soon.”

Arya only grunted and scratched deeper into the tree, the blade biting a little harder into the grain. Nymeria lifted her head as if in answer, then dropped it again with a low, contented sigh.

Sansa rose slowly, brushing snow from her gloves. “Will father really make peace?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but her eyes held a tension — a flicker of the girl she’d once been, trying to reconcile the father she remembered with the world as it was now.

Catelyn looked from one daughter to the other. Arya had stopped carving but still knelt in the roots, her head turned away. Sansa stood with a quiet grace, one hand resting unconsciously on Lady’s back.

So different now. So scarred and stubborn and strong.

“He will try,” she said. “And we will stand beside him.”

That seemed to settle something. Arya gave a curt nod, and Sansa let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Lady nuzzled against Nymeria once more, and this time the larger wolf allowed it, eyes half-lidded with something that almost looked like peace.

They walked back together, the three of them, footfalls muffled in fresh snow. Sansa and Arya did not speak, but they did not walk apart. Catelyn caught the way their shoulders nearly brushed. Not close enough to be called affection. But no longer distant, either.

And as they passed under the stone archway into the keep, Catelyn felt the wind shift behind her.

Not cold, this time. But rising. The storm was not yet passed. But the wolves had found their footing again.

Moat Cailin rose through the morning mist like a memory half-healed. The towers were jagged shadows in the dawn, half-ruin and half-fortress, yet banners snapped defiantly in the wind. The direwolf of House Stark flew proud above the gatehouse, flanked by the white sunburst of House Karstark, the Merman of Manderly, the giant of Umber and many more. But it was the last banner, highest of all, that turned every head.

Red and black. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen.

Catelyn heard the stir of voices behind her, whispers, hisses of breath, a muffled oath. She did not turn to look. “So it begins,” she said quietly.

Bronze Yohn Royce urged his horse closer, his weathered face drawn with suspicion. A band of linen still showed beneath the edge of his cloak, where Corbray’s blade had found flesh, just above the ribs. He rode tall, but not untouched.

“What is this?” he asked, pointing a gloved hand toward the dragon banner. His voice was low, but hard as the stone of the Vale.

“Hope,” Catelyn said, still not turning.

The other Vale lords were silent, but she could feel their unease like frost down her spine. Anya Waynwood’s face had gone pale. Ser Jasper Redfort murmured something under his breath, and Harrold Hardyng looked to Sansa, searching for clarity in her gaze. She gave him none.

She thought of the Vale behind them, and the blood that had nearly soaked its stones. The feud between Royce and Corbray had ended not with war, but with honor, a duel beneath the gaze of gods both old and new. Lyn Corbray had come dressed in silver and defiance, Lady Forlorn gleaming in the morning light. Fast as rumor, fierce as pride.

But Yohn Royce, clad in ancestral bronze and silence, met him with iron resolve. Their blades clashed in a dance of fury and control, sparks flying, breath heaving. It had not been swift. It had not been easy.

Yet in the end, Royce’s blade had struck true. Not clean, but final. Corbray fell with steel still in his hand and rage on his lips. No banners changed hands that day. But something colder had broken, the last shard of chaos Petyr Baelish had sown.

Catelyn sat stiff in her saddle, her eyes fixed on the gates that yawned open before them like the mouth of winter itself. She had passed through them once as a bride, again as a grieving daughter. Now she returned as something else entirely, a mother, a diplomat, and the last bridge between kingdoms too proud to bow and too weary to stand alone.

Her horse slowed as the drawbridge was lowered, chains groaning like old wounds opening. The clatter of iron echoed over the quiet camp, reverberating off the ruined towers and mist-laced walls. The men in Manderly colors stood at attention along the battlements, their cloaks heavy with frost, their faces carved by war and grief. No one cheered. Too many banners had burned. Too many sons had not come home.

When her horse’s hooves struck the stone yard, Catelyn felt her breath catch in her throat.

Eddard stood at the base of the keep steps, flanked by the Greatjon and Maege Mormont, both grim and broad-shouldered, shaped by frost and fire. Ned's cloak hung damp with snowmelt, his face more lined than when she had last seen him, but his eyes... his eyes were the same. Grey and steady. As quiet and deep as a Northern sea.

Then Arya was no longer beside her. The girl vaulted from her saddle before it had stopped moving and tore across the yard, a blur of dark hair and brown leather.

“Father!” she cried, her voice cracking open.

Eddard dropped to one knee and caught her in his arms, holding her tight to his chest. “My little wolf,” he said, and there was a tremble in his voice. “You’ve grown.”

Catelyn dismounted slowly, her legs unsteady beneath her. The sight of them—father and daughter, reunited in the pale hush of morning—twisted something inside her chest.

Robb stepped forward next, his bearing all commander, though his eyes shone with boyhood and longing. “Father,” he said simply. “It is good to see you well.”

“And you, son,” Ned replied, gripping his shoulder with firm pride. “You did well. The North remembers. And so do I.”

Sansa came more slowly. She walked with the poised grace she had learned in the Vale, every step considered, every breath held with care. She moved like a lady now, not a girl.

“Father,” she breathed.

Ned did not hesitate. He stepped forward and wrapped her in his arms.

“My sweet girl,” he murmured, brushing his hand against her hair.

Sansa pressed her face into the rough wool of his cloak. “I missed you,” she whispered.

“And I you.” He leaned back just enough to meet her gaze, brushing a strand of auburn hair from her cheek. “You’ve grown into your mother’s strength.”

That made her smile, small and bright as snowlight through trees.

Arya, arms crossed, eyes narrow, looked around the yard. “Where is Jon?”

The question struck like a spark in dry tinder. And then the wind shifted.

A great shadow spilled across the yard, vast and moving, eclipsing the pale sun. A roar followed—deep, thunderous, ancient. It cracked the sky open and sent ravens fleeing from broken towers.

The men in the yard looked up, shielding their eyes. Steel rang faintly where a sword was half-drawn in reflex. A few horses danced uneasily, snorting and stamping.

The dragon circled once, then twice, its wings slicing the clouds like blades of night. It was massive, black as the void between stars, its wingspan broader than the yard, each movement stirring gusts that lifted cloaks and banners. Its scales shimmered with hues of midnight and deep frost, a living shadow wreathed in smoke. Golden eyes like twin lanterns locked on the yard below—intelligent, patient, and quietly terrifying.

Then it descended, slow and graceful, its massive wings folding as it alighted just beyond the far wall with the soft thud of settling doom. The earth quivered with the impact. Its tail curled around the broken flagstones like a serpent’s coil. Steam rose from its nostrils with every breath, and when it exhaled, the air turned white.

Arya’s mouth fell open. “Is that—?”

“Winter,” Ned said simply.

The dragon gave a low growl, a sound not quite threat, not quite comfort—a claim. A reminder. The men on the walls flinched. One of the younger squires crossed himself. Lord Redfort’s jaw tightened. Ser Jasper muttered a curse beneath his breath.

Among the Riverlords, some exchanged wary glances, but it was the Vale lords who reacted most sharply. Lady Anya’s knuckles whitened on her reins. Bronze Yohn Royce stared like a man watching a tale turn true.

Upon the dragon’s back sat a rider in black and red cloacked in grey, his figure straight as a spear. Jon.

He dismounted with practiced ease, his boots landing lightly on the stone. His grey cloak billowed in the wind, and his armor gleamed faintly beneath. He moved with the quiet power of someone who no longer needed to explain himself.

His face was calm. Still. But something about him had changed. Catelyn felt it at once—not just the way the men around her looked at him, but something deeper. As if a storm had stepped into a man’s skin.

Arya turned to her father, wide-eyed. “Why does Jon have a dragon? Do we all get dragons now?”

Laughter rippled through the yard—nervous, tentative, but real. Like spring cracking through frost.

Robb grinned. “Only if you’re part dragon yourself.”

Catelyn took a step forward. The dragon—Winter—shook out its wings with a sound like silk tearing the sky, then settled again, curling low to the ground like a cat before a hearth. Its eyes tracked every movement, golden and slow-blinking. The creature was big now, as big as the towers of the Moat. It had grown beyond nature, beyond reason.

She looked at Jon then. He had grown taller, broad of shoulder and sure of step. He wore a black and red tunic, finely cut but plain in its lines, with a crimson three-headed dragon stitched over his heart. Over it hung a grey cloak fastened at the shoulder with a wolf pin wrought in silver, Stark and Targaryen bound in thread and cloth.

His hair, once wild as the wind, was tied neatly behind his head, and his jaw was shaved clean. A long sword hung at his hip, its scabbard dark as ash. The pommel gleamed red like a bloodstone—or a ruby. The silver crossguard curled into two opposing dragon heads, their mouths open in silent roar. It was not the sword he’d had before. It was not the boy’s weapon he’d once trained with in the yard.

And he was no longer a boy.

A breath caught in her throat. For an instant, Catelyn saw him not as he stood now, strong and strange and full of shadow—but as he had been. A babe in her arms, black curls damp with sweat, clutching her finger as if afraid to let go. A boy trailing after Robb through the halls of Winterfell, their laughter echoing against stone. A child who had cried once in the dark after a nightmare, and who she had kissed quiet and held until sleep returned. Her son.

Catelyn felt it in her bones—the weight of what stood before her, and the distance that had crept in behind it. She had feared for him. Feared what war and dragons and fire might make of him. She feared still.

And she hoped—fiercely, silently—that what was to come would not break him.

Not this boy she had held, and raised, and loved. Not her son.

Chapter Text

Robb

The wind off the bogs stank of rot and salt, creeping in through every crack of Moat Cailin like a memory that would not leave. No matter how many braziers they lit, the damp clung to the stones, curling in their bones, whispering of death. The hall—if it could be called that—was more ruin than refuge, a place built to break men, not host them. Its roof hung low like a blade, its walls weeping with old age. Yet here, beneath rotting beams and flickering torches, the fate of kingdoms was being weighed.

Robb stood near the hearth beside his father, the flames behind them throwing long shadows that marched like soldiers across the broken floor. The fire offered little warmth. His sword-belt felt too heavy. His breath steamed in the air like the breath of a hound before a fight.

They had come from snow and hill, marsh and riverbank. Lords of mountain and coast, of stone halls and crannog towers, riding with their banners high, their doubts higher still.

Yohn Royce entered first, cloak sweeping behind him like a war banner. He moved with the weight of history, every inch a mountain forged into a man, grim and immovable. Behind him came Ser Harrold Hardyng, younger, sleeker, a knight still burnished by the sheen of expectation. The heir presumptive of the Vale.

Then came Uncle Edmure, flushed and stiff as a board, his face already reddening with indignation, and Brynden Tully at his shoulder, eyes sharp and mistrustful, as though even the stone beneath his boots might betray them. Robb could almost hear the muttering between them, the quiet grumbling of Tully blood made restless by northern cold and unfamiliar halls.

And behind them, in twos and threes, came the rest. Lords of the Vale. Lords of the Trident. Men who had once bled for Robert’s crown. Men who had once fought beside his father. They filled the damp, narrow hall of Moat Cailin like ghosts summoned for judgment.

All of them gathered beneath one crumbling roof. And still, it felt colder than the wind outside.

On the walls of Moat Cailin, the banners of House Stark, Arryn, and Tully hung heavy with moisture, their colors dulled by fog and soot. But it was the last banner that drew every eye. The smallest of them, yet hung highest behind his father’s seat. Red and black. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen.

There it was.

Robb stared at it for a long moment, his jaw set tight. The dragon had been raised. There was no turning back now. Whatever came next, Jon could not go back— not to Winterfell, not to the quiet life of a boy who dreamed of stories of ranging beyond the Wall. He had stepped into the storm now. They all had.

Robb remembered the night Jon had told him. After they had retaken Winterfell, when the snows were still red with Bolton blood and the walls smelled of smoke and iron. They had sat beside the hearth in the Great Hall, ghosts flickering on stone. Jon’s face had been calm, but his eyes—his eyes had burned like ice catching fire.

“She was my mother,” Jon had said. “Lyanna. Your aunt. And Rhaegar...”

At first, Robb hadn’t wanted to believe it. Couldn’t. His blood had roared with protest, his father’s voice echoing in memory—honor, duty, silence. But the truth had bled through, slow and undeniable.

Winter had been proof enough. A dragon did not follow anyone but another dragon. And Jon had not been raised to command beasts of flame and sky. But Winter came when he called. That alone had silenced most doubts.

Jon was not Eddard Stark’s son. But he was still Robb’s brother. He would always be.

Robb glanced at the dragon banner again. It swayed gently in the rising heat of the brazier like a tongue of fire ready to speak.

The murmurs started before all the lords had even taken their seats, soft as wind through dry grass but sharp enough to slice the mood to ribbons.

“Madness,” someone hissed behind a mailed hand, low but not low enough.

“A jest. Has to be.”

“That’s dragon’s blood, I heard. On the tower.”

Robb could feel the shift—like wolves circling, scenting something unknown. The air had grown heavier, more brittle, the kind of silence that comes before a sword is drawn.

Then Yohn Royce’s voice cut through it like a thrown axe, hard and deliberate. “Lord Stark,” he said, every syllable like iron dragged across stone, “I must ask what banner is that, and why does it fly above Moat Cailin?”

A beat passed. Then another. Every face turned. Even Edmure shifted, his fingers twitching at the arms of his chair, uncertain if he should be offended or afraid.

Eddard Stark did not rise. He sat still, his gloved hands folded neatly over the wolf’s head pommel of his sword where it rested at his side. His gaze swept the room like a tide.

“It is the banner of House Targaryen,” he said, calm and cold as northern stone. “And it flies for a reason.”

Silence. Not a rustle. Not a breath.

Robb let his eyes scan the crowd. His mother’s face was unreadable—mask still, jaw set, her fingers twined tightly in her lap. Arya, halfway out of her chair, leaned forward, eyes bright and watchful like Nymeria on the hunt. And Sansa—Sansa sat as if carved from winter itself, pale, unmoving, regal in her stillness.

Behind the table, the fire popped and cracked, a single log giving way. The sound made some flinch.

Then Catelyn’s voice rose, sure and strong, cutting through the frost. “It is not a symbol of war,” she said. “It is our hope.”

The words struck like a stone tossed into a frozen lake.

Royce’s jaw tightened. His broad shoulders barely moved, but Robb could see the tension coil through him like a drawn bow. Lady Waynwood frowned, deep lines carved into her brow. Around the hall, eyes flicked between lords and kin, assessing, recalculating. Doubt was not gone, but it had been shaken. No one answered.

Robb’s throat was dry. He hadn’t even spoken, and yet he felt as though he’d marched three days in armor. The weight of it all sat squarely on their shoulders—on Jon’s most of all. The dragon was no longer a whispered myth. It had flown, it had landed, and now it perched above their heads, breathing fire into old wounds.

Then, his father stood. Slowly. Deliberately.

Eddard Stark wore no crown. There was no silver filigree in his cloak, no gemstone upon his chest. But the room stilled at his rising all the same. He looked older than Robb remembered. Greyer at the temples, gaunter in the cheek. But his back was straight. His hands steady. And his eyes—those grey Stark eyes—held the quiet command of a man who had stood on the edge of the world and seen what waited beyond.

“There is much to say,” Eddard Stark said, his voice low, but so clear it seemed to fill the stones themselves. “And little time to say it.”

All the warmth of the brazier could not thaw the stillness that followed. The lords sat frozen, breath visible in the cold, and waited.

“My lords,” his father continued. “You were not summoned here for feasts or flattery. War burns the South. The dead march in the North. We are running out of time.”

A silence fell, thick and wary, like mist before a storm. Chairs creaked faintly as men shifted, unease creeping through steel and velvet.

“We have seen what comes beyond the Wall,” Ned said. “I stood on the Wall when the Others came. Half our men died to hold the line. And still they came.”

A ripple passed through the gathered lords. One man coughed. Another whispered into a gloved hand. Armor plates groaned as shoulders tensed and fingers drummed against polished wood. Some looked away. Others frowned.

Yohn Royce leaned forward, his great hands clasped atop the table. His voice rumbled from deep in his chest. “I believe you, Lord Stark. My son... Waymar. He was lost to those woods. He was a fine blade. Wildlings was not the cause of his death.”

His voice did not tremble, but his jaw clenched tight at the memory.

Across from him, Lady Anya Waynwood looked down at her clasped hands, as if searching the creases of her skin for some answer. Her lips were pressed into a flat, hard line.

Others remained stiff, too proud or too frightened to speak. The firelight played on their faces, casting flickers of shadow that danced like ghosts.

Lord Jason Mallister narrowed his eyes, the feathers on his silvered cloak rustling as he shifted. “You speak of peace, Lord Stark. But what peace can we make with those who do not even heed the gods?”

“Not peace with the dead,” His father said. “Peace among the living. A truce, a council, a reckoning, call it what you will. But we must end this war amongst ourselves or none of us will survive the winter.”

Ser Marq Piper scoffed, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. “Easier said,” he muttered. “Renly, Stannis, Joffrey, they’ll not share a table.”

“They might,” Ned said, a faint steel entered his voice, “if that table is the realm.”

Robb watched them all—the flicker of disbelief in their eyes, the guarded glances traded between bannermen. They still believed in borders, in crowns and grudges. They did not understand the tide that was coming for them all.

He knew the look of men who still thought they had time to play their games. But time was bleeding out with every breath.

Then his father dropped the stone that broke the pond.

“There is another claimant,” he said.

Whispers burst like sparks across the hall, skipping from lord to knight to lady, barely restrained. Robb sat up straighter, every muscle drawn taut.

“I speak of a boy,” he said, his words steady even as the storm gathered, “but not just any boy. A son. Of Lyanna Stark. And Rhaegar Targaryen.”

Silence, then the room exploded. Voices clashed like blades. Chairs scraped back. A cup fell and rolled, forgotten. Some shouted, some gaped, others simply stared as if the air had been punched from their lungs.

“A Targaryen?” Edmure’s voice cut through the rising din like a whip crack. He had risen from his seat, red-faced and rigid, the veins in his neck taut. “You speak treason, brother!”

“No,” said Ned calmly. His voice did not rise, but it rolled across the stone like quiet thunder. “I speak truth. Truth long buried, but no less real.”

Lord Bracken surged to his feet, the old warrior’s hand twitching near his sword hilt. His beard bristled like a storm about to break. “Where’s your proof?” he demanded.

Ned raised a hand, and the gesture alone silenced him. “Let him speak for himself.”

The great doors of the hall creaked open, and the murmur died to nothing.

Jon stepped through, framed in light and smoke, as if the gods had parted the world to let him in. He wore a tunic of deep black and crimson, its fabric embroidered with fine thread—more regal than Robb had ever seen him wear, but still stark in its austerity. At his heart gleamed a stitched sigil: the three-headed dragon of Targaryen, its red coils catching the light like fire woven into cloth.

Over it he wore a heavy grey cloak, clasped with a brooch of shaped like a wolf’s head, jaws parted in silent roar. The fur lining whispered of the North, but the cut of his garb belonged to no one region—half Stark, half stranger.

His hair was tied back at the nape, revealing the strong lines of his face. He had shaved, Robb realized, the familiar shadow of scruff gone, replaced by clean skin and sharp angles. There was steel in the set of his jaw, but no arrogance. Only purpose.

At his hip hung a sword, too long for a simple knight’s blade—its hilt silver, red and narrow, the guard shaped like twin dragon heads facing outward. The pommel caught the torchlight like a burning eye. Robb knew the name, Dark Sister.

Ghost padded behind him, silent and white, a shadow in snow. His red eyes glowed like twin embers in the gloom. The direwolf stayed close to Jon’s heels, neither aggressive nor tame—just watchful, like death on a leash.

Robb whispered the name before he could stop himself. “Jon.”

Jon did not look to him. He walked with measured steps, steady and unhurried, past the staring nobles of the Vale, the Riverlands, and the North. Past banners that had once dismissed him as just a bastard. He did not falter, even as whispers hissed at his back.

He stopped just before the dais, before Royce and Glover, Frey and Manderly and all the others who now held their breath as if the air itself waited.

“I was raised as Jon Snow,” he said. His voice was calm, grounded in gravel and truth. “A bastard of Eddard Stark. But I was never his son.” The silence was total. Even the fire seemed to dim. “My mother was Lyanna Stark. My father, Rhaegar Targaryen. They were wed in secret. In love. And I am their son.”

The ripple of disbelief surged again, this time louder—like a wave crashing against stone.

“A lie,” someone muttered behind a mailed hand. “The wolf’s bastard speaks treason.”

But his father rose once more. He didn’t raise his voice. “It is no lie.”

From the folds of his cloak, he drew forth a scroll. The parchment was yellowed with age.

“This is the record of their marriage,” Ned said. “Officiated by a Septon of the Seven. Witnessed by three Kingsguard—Arthur Dayne, Gerold Hightower, Oswell Whent.”

He held the scroll high, then slowly lowered it.

“I found it in the Tower of Joy, hidden beneath the very bed where my sister died. Howland Reed kept it safe with him for more than a decade, until the time was right. That time is now.”

Lord Wyman Manderly stirred, his jowls trembling. His voice was low, almost hesitant, like a man asking about a dream he hoped wasn’t real. “And the dragon? Is it true, then? The beast that flies above us is his?”

Robb stepped forward, almost without realizing. His voice was quiet but firm. “He calls him Winter.”

This time, the murmur that followed did not sound like disbelief—but awe. And fear.

Jon’s voice was steady. “I did not ask for this birth. I did not seek a crown. But I will not flee from who I am. The war must end. And the realm must live.”

He paused, and in the silence, even the fire in the hearth seemed to draw back into itself.

“My name is Daeron. Daeron Targaryen. I am the blood of the dragon and the wolf. And I will not let the world die screaming in snow.”

For a heartbeat, the room was still. Then—

Voices erupted like a volley of quarrels loosed at once, rising not in unity but chaos.

“A Targaryen king—” cried a knight near the back, half-risen from his seat.

“—he’s still a bastard—” snarled a Riverlord whose name Robb didn’t even know.

“—by law, perhaps—” came another, sharper and cooler, from the Vale's end.

“—who witnessed this wedding? The Kingsguard? They're all dead!” shouted a bald lord with wine-stained lips.

“—dragon or not, he’s untested!” a grizzled Northman growled, thumping his gauntlet on the table.

Chairs scraped. Cloaks flared. The hall bristled like a field before a storm.

But before the noise could fully erupt into something worse, Catelyn stood. “Enough.” Her voice rang out like a command on the battlefield. “You have heard the truth. Do not let old hatreds blind you to what is at stake.”

Robb watched the fury ebb, the wave crest and fall. A few lords shifted uneasily in their seats. Others avoided looking at her directly.

Yohn Royce rose next, slow and deliberate, his great frame casting a long shadow in the torchlight. His eyes were hard bronze beneath his thick brow. “I knew Arthur Dayne. If he gave his sword to a cause, it was no folly.” Royce turned his gaze to his father, meeting it without flinching. “And I believe you, Lord Stark. For the sake of the Vale, I believe you.”

His words settled like an anvil.

Edmure stood abruptly, his chair toppling behind him. “You would bend the knee to a Targaryen boy?” His cheeks were red, fists clenched, and his voice trembled with disbelief.

“I would stand beside a man who can unite the kingdoms,” Royce replied, unfazed. “If it means ending this war before the dead reach our gates.”

“The dead.” Brynden Tully muttered, arms crossed over his chest, his expression carved from granite. “You speak as though they're real.”

Ned’s voice was low, but each word carried. “They are.”

From the corner, Dacey Mormont stepped forward, her leathers stained and sword-hand bandaged. “We fought them at the Wall,” she said. Her voice cracked slightly but did not waver. “Half our men died. Half of what’s left bear wounds that will never heal.”

Her eyes swept the room. No one met them.

“You don’t need to believe in Jon’s name,” Robb said, rising now beside his father, his voice calm but iron beneath the words. “But you must believe in what’s coming.”

Galbart Glover stepped into the torchlight, frowning, his mail rustling as he shifted. “The war in the South still rages. Three kings still lay claim.”

“Then let them speak for themselves,” Ned said. “We send ravens to all corners of the realm. We call for a Great Council of Kings in peace. Not with swords, but with voices. Let them come and decide what realm remains.”

A pause. Then—

“And if they refuse?” asked Anya Waynwood, rising with her grey skirts rustling like leaves on stone. Her tone was cautious, yet no longer dismissive.

“Then we march,” said Daeron, his voice calm—steady as snowfall. “But not for conquest. For survival.”

He looked at each of them in turn. The lords of the Vale. Of the North. Of the Riverlands. His gaze did not flinch, did not beg.

“I have no interest in war or conquest. Only in peace. In unity. And in life.”

Silence followed. The lords exchanged glances, not with suspicion now—but with the weight of inevitability settling into their bones. The torches flickered, smoke curling like ancient ghosts between them.

At last, Lord Wyman Manderly stood, rising like a hill against the light. His voice was slow, deep, deliberate—measured like judgment.

"Then let it be done. Let the ravens fly. Let the kings come and speak, if they still dare. And if they do not..." He turned his bulk toward Daeron, looking him full in the face. "Then we shall speak for them."

A beat.

Then, one by one, the lords nodded. Others spoke low oaths. A few merely bowed their heads. But the choice had been made. The storm was coming, and they had chosen their side.

Daeron stood tall at the head of the hall, unflinching beneath the weight of a hundred eyes.

And above them all, through the narrow slit windows of Moat Cailin’s high walls, the banners of direwolf and dragon danced side by side—red and grey, fire and ice.

A pact had been forged.

Now the realm would be asked to answer.

Chapter Text

Tyrion

The council chamber was empty—only him, and old wine.

Tyrion sat alone at the long carved table, dwarfed by chairs made for greater men, a half-empty goblet before him, its contents long gone tepid. Dornish red, sharp and dry, the kind his father had once dismissed as “fit only for field tents and funeral feasts.” Appropriate, then. The realm had become both—a battlefield of whispers and a graveyard of certainties.

He swirled the wine slowly, watching it slosh against the sides like blood circling a drain. “You wanted power,” he murmured, lips curling in something too bitter to be a smile, “and now you get to drink while the world burns.”

The raven’s scroll lay beside him, curled and slightly crumpled at the corners from repeated handling. He didn’t need to open it again. He’d read it three times already: once for disbelief, once for clarity, and a final time in the desperate hope it had somehow changed in the moments between.

It hadn’t.

He had hoped—quietly, stubbornly—that the letter from the North might offer some flicker of reason. A nod of loyalty from Eddard Stark, perhaps. A tired plea for peace, even if spoken through gritted teeth. Something—anything—that would not send the whole bloody board tumbling to the floor.

Instead, it had delivered fire.

A Stark had been crowned. A Targaryen too.

Daeron, they were calling him. Not Jon Snow. Not the brooding bastard boy from Winterfell with his solemn grey eyes. Now, he was a king. A dragon. The son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen.

Tyrion didn’t know whether to laugh or drink himself blind. He chose the latter for now.

He poured the rest of the wine into his goblet—sluggish and thick at the bottom of the bottle. Arbor Gold might have suited the Reach’s delusions, but this? This was a moment for fire on the tongue and ash in the throat.

The candlelight around him flickered with each breath of wind, casting wild shadows across the stone walls, making them shimmer like heat over scorched iron. The chamber stank faintly of old ink and melted wax, and yet the stench outside was worse—King’s Landing festering under a lid of smoke and stormclouds. Riots in the alleys. Grain thefts in the dockyards. Market fights turned to bloodbaths. The city was a blister ready to burst.

And still, Joffrey sat the Iron Throne. A crown too heavy for his wit, too brittle for his pride, too sharp for his hands. A boy in lion’s skin, snarling at ghosts and throwing tantrums when the wind did not bow.

Tyrion leaned back in his chair, exhaling slow and long. The realm was splitting like a rotten fruit, its skin bursting with rot—and he, gods help him, was expected to keep it from collapsing entirely.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment, thinking of the weight of the raven. A new king rising in the North with the Riverlands and the Vale backing him . A Targaryen by name. A Stark by blood. And a dragon overhead.

Too many kings. Too many crowns.

He heard the footsteps then—slow, hesitant, like the tread of men coming not to speak, but to argue. The sound echoed against the chamber’s high stone ceiling, drawing near with every creak of leather and clink of steel.

The far doors groaned open. Time to begin.

The council was assembled—or what passed for it these days.

Cersei paced along the edge of the chamber like a lioness confined to a too-small cage, every step sharp as the clink of a blade against stone. Her golden hair was disheveled, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and her eyes shimmered with fury that had nowhere to go. Fury without clarity.

Grand Maester Pycelle sat slumped at his end of the table, eyes glassy behind thick folds of drooping skin. He blinked slowly, like a man awoken from too many naps, and muttered to himself beneath breath that smelled faintly of sour milk and cloves.

Joffrey sprawled in the high-backed, gilded seat at the table’s head, limbs draped like a petulant cat. He wore a crimson doublet crusted with gold lions, his crown askew on his flaxen curls, his expression an ungodly mix of boredom and barely-contained contempt. Every now and then he kicked his foot against the leg of the table, just to hear the thunk.

Only Ser Meryn Trant stood motionless, armored from shoulders to heels in polished steel. His hand rested lazily on the pommel of his sword, his face a blank wall of obedience and stupidity. And for once, Tyrion Lannister wished the man would speak, if only to break the silence.

As for Varys—well, Varys was simply gone. Not dead, not arrested, not dismissed. Gone. The spider had vanished from his web without so much as a strand left swaying. The Red Keep had been searched high and low—chambers, tunnels, servants’ cells—but there was no trace. No scent. As if the eunuch had dissolved into the very stones.

Tyrion took a breath, feeling the dry rasp of it in his throat. He tapped the scroll lightly against the edge of the table. “Shall I?” he asked mildly, his tone flat, almost bored.

Cersei’s head snapped toward him, her eyes twin blades. “Read it.”

So he did.

With exaggerated care, Tyrion unfolded the parchment, smoothing it out over the polished oak as if it were a piece of delicate silk and not a flint to the powder keg. He scanned the familiar words again, lips curling faintly.

“From Eddard Stark,” he said, “Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell, addressed to the lords of Westeros.” He cleared his throat. “Let us begin the litany of disaster.”

Tyrion began to read.

“Let it be known to the realm, the trueborn son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, wed under the light of the Seven and the eyes of the old gods, has returned. His name is Daeron Targaryen, called Jon Snow in youth, now revealed, crowned at Moat Cailin by Lords of the North, the Vale, and the Trident.”

The words fell into the chamber like stones dropped into a still pond.

The air thickened. Pycelle’s breath hitched. Cersei stopped pacing mid-step. Even Joffrey ceased his bored kicking and sat up slightly, brow furrowing. Tyrion didn’t look up. He could feel their silence like pressure on his chest.

He continued.

“He was hidden to protect him from Robert’s wrath, guarded by House Stark and raised as a brother to Robb Stark. We have uncovered records kept—proof of wedding witnessed by Ser Gerold Hightower, Ser Arthur Dayne, and Ser Oswell Whent. Proof of marriage, annulment, and birth. These documents remain in my care.”

Cersei’s breath came sharp, audible. She had gone pale beneath her rouge, her lips a bloodless line. Across from her, Joffrey’s jaw twitched, his hands tightening around the carved lions on his armrests.

Tyrion’s voice stayed smooth, but he read faster now, wanting to get it done.

“Let no man doubt the blood that flows through him, dragon and wolf alike. Let the realm judge this truth not with swords, but with council. We call for peace, a great council of the kings and claimants, to face the darkness gathering beyond our wars.”

He reached the final lines, drawing out the words like nails being tapped into a coffin.

“And let it be known, the dead rise in the North. They care not for crowns. If the realm stands divided, it will not stand at all.”

“Signed, Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North. Witnessed by Edmure Tully, Lord of Riverrun, Yohn Royce, Lord of Runestone, and sealed with their banners.”

Tyrion lowered the parchment slowly. He laid it on the table, let the silence fill the void it left.

For a long moment, none of them moved. The candlelight hissed and popped in the sconces. The city outside groaned and moaned and burned on, but here, in this chamber, time had stopped.

Then— “A lie.” Cersei’s voice was flat and cold as marble. Her lips were drawn thin, her face pale beneath its powder. “A desperate lie from a tired old wolf. Rhaegar loved Elia. He would never—he would never wed that northern whore.”

Her voice cracked at the edges—not from doubt, but rage barely contained.

Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “And yet,” he said, “apparently, he did. There is a signed marriage record. Witnessed by three members of the Kingsguard. Quite thorough.”

Grand Maester Pycelle leaned forward with a grunt, his trembling fingers pressing at the tabletop like a man groping through fog. His eyes blinked rapidly as he squinted toward Tyrion. “Where is this so-called record?” he wheezed. “There is nothing of the sort in the archives of Oldtown.”

“It was taken,” Tyrion replied, calmly. He swirled what was left of his wine and let it rest on the lip of the goblet. “Stolen, if you prefer. Hightower’s journal, with the signatures of Dayne and Whent as witnesses. Ned Stark claims to have it in his possession.”

“A forgery!” Cersei hissed, slamming her palm against the table. The sound rang through the chamber. “It must be! Rhaegar would never break his marriage vows—never abandon his children with Elia—”

“Technically,” Tyrion murmured, “an annulment is not abandonment. And such things are rare… but not impossible.”

Cersei’s eyes snapped to him. “What do you know of these things?” she spat.

He ignored her, turning instead to the parchment still laid before him like a tombstone.

“Thirty thousand swords from the Vale, Riverlands, and North,” Tyrion said, tapping a finger atop the seal. “More, if their ravens are to be believed. And...”

He leaned back, his voice dry.

“Sansa Stark has been betrothed to Harrold Hardyng, heir presumptive to the Vale. Quite the alliance, if I may say so."

The goblet in Joffrey’s hand slammed down with a wet thud. Red wine splashed across the polished oak and dribbled down onto his silk sleeves.

“She was mine!” he bellowed, rising so violently his chair nearly toppled behind him. His face had gone scarlet, spit flying from his lips. “Mine by right! That little bitch—traitor! I’ll have her skinned and flayed, I’ll send her father her fingers one by one—”

“Enough!” Cersei barked, grabbing his wrist, but Joffrey wrenched free.

“No!” he shouted, fists clenched at his sides. “He’s a bastard! A traitor’s bastard with a stolen name and lies for banners! I’m the king! I’ll gut him and his wolf and every one of his whores!”

Tyrion sipped his wine with a pointed slowness. “Not quite the composure one hopes for in a king,” he said mildly.

“Shut your mouth!” Joffrey shrieked, face twisted in fury. His crown slipped askew in the outburst, and one of the rubies glinted oddly in the torchlight.

Pycelle cleared his throat, a feeble sound, like old parchment crumbling. “Even if this Daeron is trueborn… the matter of succession is… delicate. It was never confirmed… not publicly…”

“Then we deny it,” Cersei said, jaw clenched, each word bitten out like nails. “We name them liars, all of them. It’s treason, against Robert, against the Iron Throne!”

Tyrion tilted his head, watching her. “Is it treason ?” He asked, “if the boy truly is Rhaegar’s son and heir? If so, then Robert built his kingdom on sand. And you, dear sister, have married into a lie.”

Cersei slammed her palm on the table again, the sound cracking like a whip. “I won’t hear it.”

“They’ve asked for a council…” Pycelle said, voice trailing into a whisper. “Not war… A gathering of kings…”

“A trap,” Cersei spat, pacing now, her eyes wild.

“Perhaps,” Tyrion said with a sigh, “but if you refuse, and war follows, you become the aggressor. The villain.”

He drained what remained in his goblet, and felt the bitter heat of Dornish red flood his mouth. The taste lingered, metallic and sharp, like the smell of blood before battle.

He looked at each of them in turn. Joffrey’s face was crimson with rage. Cersei’s with denial. Pycelle seemed ready to crumble to dust.

The silence that followed was not peace—but something worse.

Dread.

He looked around the table, letting the news from the North settle. The silence had turned thick as fog, pressed in by the weight of implications none of them dared speak aloud.

Tyrion allowed the stillness to linger a moment longer before breaking it, his voice dry and deliberate.

“Storm’s End has fallen to Aegon Targaryen—or so he calls himself. The Golden Company hold the castle. Dorne has declared for him after flaying Stannis from behind.”

He let the words hang like a noose above them.

Cersei flinched, just barely—but Tyrion saw it. Stannis had been her monster in the dark, her certainty that worse men loomed. Now he was gone. And worse had come.

Tyrion turned his gaze back to the others. Joffrey’s mouth twitched in fury, but the boy-king said nothing.

“The North,” Tyrion went on, fingers tapping lightly on the table, “the Vale, and Riverlands follow this... Daeron.” He leaned back in his chair, letting his words strike like pebbles against a glass window. “That leaves… us. The Westerlands. A crippled Reach. And a mad boy.”

Joffrey's eyes went wide, jaw tightening until his teeth ground together audibly. “We will crush them,” he hissed through clenched teeth, glaring at Tyrion as if sheer rage could shatter armies.

Cersei snapped instantly, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. “Call every banner left. I want them dead—the wolf, the dragon, all of them!”

Her tone cracked like a whip, but no one moved. Not Pycelle, who shrank into his robes like a dying turtle. Not Meryn Trant, who stood unmoving at his post, face unreadable beneath the steel.

Tyrion said nothing for a moment. Just raised his cup and drained it dry.

The wine was bitter now, the dregs tasting more like ash than fruit. Or maybe it was his mouth, soured by the rot of what he knew. Tyrion let the goblet fall back to the table with a soft clink and rubbed his temple with two fingers, trying to massage away the headache blooming behind his eye.

Gods help us, he thought bitterly, we may need to take that council after all.

Chapter Text

The Spider

The flames trembled in their sconces, shadows twitching across the walls like spiders made of smoke. Varys moved silently in the small room, each step soft as breath. His hidden chamber was cluttered with parchment, broken seals, and half-finished letters — the detritus of a man too burdened for sleep. Ink stained his fingers, though he hadn’t written in hours.

A raven cawed once beyond the stone, distant and hollow, the sound swallowed quickly by the stillness.

He stared at the scroll again, hands as still as marble. He didn’t reach for it. He had read it thrice already — not for understanding, but disbelief. Then clarity. Then the faintest, most terrible echo of certainty.

Lyanna. Rhaegar. Marriage. Child. Daeron.

It wasn’t possible. No — it shouldn’t have been possible.

He sat, slowly. The plush velvet of his chair gave no comfort. The room felt suddenly colder. The words on the scroll — traced in Eddard Stark’s tight, deliberate hand — might as well have been a blade drawn across the neck of every plan Varys had ever laid.

He had not expected this. But the raven laid the truth bare and clean.

A great council, Stark wrote. To prevent blood. To unite the realm. To stop the dead.

Varys laughed — a soft, dry thing that scraped out of his throat and vanished into the dim chamber. “He plays the spider now,” he murmured. “How droll.”

But it wasn’t funny. Because this was not how it was meant to go.

Not like this. Not now. Not with a Targaryen born of fire and ice crowned while the game was almost done. Not with the North, the Vale, and the Riverlands at his back. Not with the quiet, steady hand of Eddard Stark, of all men, raising a king in the dark.

Varys leaned back in his chair, but it did not help the weight pressing on his chest. The words still burned.

Daenerys had not yet landed. Aegon had only just claimed Storm’s End. Dorne was moving, but not swiftly. And now this… this Daeron. Jon Snow reborn with fire at his back and three kingdoms at his feet.

A trueborn heir, with proof. Marriage records. Names. Signatures. Arthur Dayne. Gerold Hightower. Oswell Whent. Names whispered in dusty chambers, names best left undisturbed.

“I should have waited,” he whispered.

He rose from the chair, the motion slow, like smoke rising from cold ash. He paced once, then halted mid-step, hands clenching inside his sleeves.

“No,” he said aloud, sharply. “No. The time was right.”

He forced himself to recount it, to rebuild the scaffolding of the plan that had seemed so perfect mere weeks ago.

Robert was dead. The Iron Throne was brittle, fractured. The boy-king Joffrey ruled in name only, and his name was worth less each day. Tywin had moved south to crush Renly leaving the city vulnerable. Jaime was still in the Reach, chasing shadows and rebels in golden armor. The capital was ripe for the taking — soft, undermanned, and blind to the storm on its doorstep.

The Reach was cracking, its lords fracturing along lines of loyalty and ambition. The North bled from its wounds. The Vale was adrift, its high seat ruled by whispers and madness. It had been the moment. The only moment.

“Aegon would have marched on King’s Landing,” Varys murmured to himself, his voice low and bitter. “And the gates would have opened for him.”

He could almost see it — banners unfurled, streets cheering, bells tolling not for war, but for the return of a dragon. A boy with Valyrian eyes and the name to silence a realm. With the city his, the lords would have flocked like crows to a feast. They would have crowned him not in fire, but in law. And when Daenerys arrived, it would have been too late. The throne would already be filled.

But now... Now the game had changed.

This Daeron had stepped from the shadows, as a crowned king. With the North, the Vale, and the Riverlands kneeling. With Eddard Stark’s word and three Kingsguard ghosts beside him.

Varys drew a long, tight breath. All of it — the years of whispers, the grooming, the secrets ferried in silence — all of it teetered now, like a tower built too high on a cracked stone.

He looked again at the scroll.

“I should have waited,” he said once more. And this time, he meant it.

He had never really cared for Jon Snow’s parentage. Whispers had always existed — soft murmurings in smoky halls or behind closed sept doors — of Ashara Dayne, of Brandon Stark's reckless appetites, of a maid too pretty for her station or a camp follower lost in the sand. Names with no teeth. A northern bastard was hardly a threat worth investigating.

Not an important piece, he told himself.

But now — now the boy stood not as a bastard, but as a king. With proof. With names. With banners. And the eyes of the realm upon him.

He had been blindsided. And that was unacceptable.

Varys’s gaze dropped to the table, to the map that stretched across it like a battlefield. Pins stabbed into the parchment, each a dagger of intent. King’s Landing at the center. Vulnerable. Fractured. Reeking of rot.

To the south, Storm’s End now bore Aegon’s golden sun-and-dragon. That had been the first victory — a planned, precise strike. Aegon had taken it without wasting his army, without fire or siege. That had been their signal to the realm. But it had not been heard. Dornish spears were drawn. They followed Aegon, yes — but on their terms.

Varys drummed his fingers against the edge of the table, slow and deliberate.

He must move soon. That much was clear. Delay was death.

But where?

Marching on King’s Landing might grant him the city, the throne itself. But at what cost? Would the lords of Westeros see it as conquest… or desperation? Would they whisper “usurper” and see only another war-hungry dragon come too late?

Stark has seized the moral high ground, Varys thought bitterly. A call for peace. For unity. For truth.

Should Aegon deny the claim? Even the thought turned sour on his tongue.

Too dangerous. Deny it, and you acknowledged its weight. Deny it, and you ignited the realm’s doubt. You made Daeron real in the minds of those who would have forgotten him otherwise. You planted a seed.

But to accept it? To share the legacy?

Varys nearly laughed — the sound bitter as ash.

Aegon was supposed to be the one. The prince who was promised not by prophecy, but by preparation. Crafted in exile like a blade in shadow. Polished in Pentos, in Essos courts, under Illyrio’s gaze. Taught languages, history, strategy, poise. The perfect king — not because of blood, but because of design.

And now this... Daeron. A ghost. A bastard. A northern raised child taught to fight, not to rule. Unmannered, unpolished. No court experience, no lords shaped by flattery or coin. A king carved from hardship, not ceremony.

But what if that was what the realm wanted? What if the people believed in him? In his silence, his scars, his truth? What if they wanted him more?

Varys began to pace again, his robes trailing behind him like smoke. Every step echoed faintly in the chamber — like the ticking of a dying clock.

One misstep, and the game he had spent a lifetime playing would be lost.

Perhaps… perhaps a council was inevitable. Perhaps they should embrace it. Use it. Turn it into a stage.

Aegon had been groomed for such performances — calm, handsome, eloquent, the right blend of humility and majesty. A council could give him legitimacy. Let the realm choose its king.

But… Every second they delayed gave Daeron more time to become more than rumor.

And rumors, Varys knew, were far easier to kill than living kings with banners behind them.

He ran a hand slowly across his bald scalp, as if trying to smooth the tangle of thoughts gathering there. “Aegon must act. And soon,” he whispered to the flame.

He had spent his life in shadows. In silence. His strength was never measured in blades or banners, but in secrets — each one gathered like a thread spun into a tapestry of control. He had outlived mad kings and pretty queens.

But now?

Now, the threads were unraveling. And fast.

He sat once more, his limbs folding slowly, as if the weight of failure had begun to settle across his shoulders. His hands folded across the soft mound of his robes, fingers twitching unconsciously.

He had no army. No banners. No face to rally men or inspire poets. His only weapons were silence, fear, and time.

And time — that most loyal and obedient servant — had abandoned him.

Daeron Targaryen had changed everything. Not with a sword. But with a name. A name heavy with myth and fire and ghosts. That name alone would stir the hearts of old men in the Reach and Dorne.

And there was the girl. Daenerys. He had not expected her to live. The plan was never for her or her brother to live. But she had lived. Thrived. Built a name from blood and fire and broken chains. Spotted near Volantis. A fleet behind her.

And dragons. Real dragons.

His mind raced, parsing the board with every breath.

If Aegon marched and Daenerys landed, they would be rivals. But if Aegon delayed… if he hesitated while Daeron spread his tale across the realm? Then the boy might become king — not by force, but by consent.

He closed his eyes. For a moment, there was only the rustle of parchment and the dim crackle of the sconces. But then the whispers returned. The ones he had ignored.

A beast in the North. A firestorm at Winterfell. Something unnatural.

At first, he had dismissed them. A giant crow. A thousand black wings. A direwolf large as a hall, black as night. Talking trees. Walking dead. Mad tales. Snow-born myths.

Too inconsistent… and yet too persistent.

He had assumed it was northern mythmaking. Desperate men shaping stories to make sense of the dark.

But what if it wasn’t?

What if the tale of a beast that obeyed the Stark had teeth?

He stood once more, straighter now, spine lengthening like a marionette tugged by unseen strings. His face — round, unreadable, serene — had returned to stillness. The Spider had found his posture, wrapped himself once more in the illusion of control.

But inside, panic still whispered like silk across skin. The kind of panic that did not scream but slithered — quiet, cold, coiling tighter with each heartbeat.

Varys reached for the flint and touched it to wick. The new candle sputtered, then caught, casting a halo of trembling light across the table. Its glow was weak. Uncertain. Flickering in the stale air like the last light of a dying star — or worse, the last moment of control slipping from a hand too cautious, too clever, too slow.

He moved to his writing table.

Scrolls lay strewn in disarray — some sealed, others opened, most waiting. So many names. So many promises made in ink and shadow.

One scroll he pulled forward with a careful hand, the wax seal broken and curling at the edges. Illyrio’s.

Old friend. Old conspirator. Greedy, but patient.

Varys dipped his quill, watching the black ink bead at its tip like venom.

Then he wrote:

“The dragon-wolf has shown his teeth. Aegon must be bold, but not reckless. He cannot deny the claim — yet — but he must rise above it. Suggest peace, not submission. A council, on our terms.”

Each word was calculated.

“He must march — but not to King’s Landing. Not yet. Let Daenerys burn her path first. Let Daeron call his banners. We move after they bleed.”

He paused. For just a moment, his eyes flicked toward the candle again. It wavered.

Then he pressed onward.

“Remind Aegon, the realm does not love kings. It loves stories. And ours must be the last one they believe in.”

A flourish. Light, elegant, and practiced. He did not sign with his name. Varys never did. That name never touched parchment. Spiders did not leave footprints. He sealed it, the wax hardening quickly in the cold draft.

Then, silently, he reached for the next scroll.

This one was blank. Fresh. Unmarked.

But at the top, in small, precise lettering, a single name had been written.

“Daenerys Stormborn.”

His hand lingered above it, unmoving.

He stared at the name for a long time, lips pursed, breath shallow. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he dipped his quill again. The ink clung this time, darker than before.

“Perhaps it is time the Spider cast another thread.”

When he sealed the raven, the wax hissed softly under the flame. He leaned back, breath slow, chest tight, the hollowness settling deep in his bones.

For decades, he had worked toward one goal. One boy. One throne.

He had betrayed friends, sacrificed innocents, dismantled kingdoms before they were born — all for that single thread. The perfect heir, the reborn realm.

But the game had changed.

And the Spider — the Spider had always known how to survive.

Chapter Text

Jon

Two weeks, and not a single answer that mattered.

Jon stood atop the ramparts of Moat Cailin, alone beneath a sky that looked forged from cold iron. The wind keened through the broken stones, tugging at his grey cloak like a mourner’s wail. Below him stretched the vast, sunken mire of the Neck — a land of ghost waters and drowned secrets, where the marshes swallowed sound and memory alike. The reeds swayed like watchers in the fog, and the crumbling towers of the old stronghold rose like the ribs of some long-dead giant, half-consumed by mud and time.

Far below in the courtyard, men drilled with discipline — shields clashed, captains barked orders, and booted feet moved in a steady rhythm over the sodden earth. They bore three banners: the direwolf of the North, the falcon of the Vale, and the trout of the Riverlands. Once, these same men had marched beneath the stag to overthrow the dragon — now, they stood in shield walls for the dragon, their boots pounding in unison through the churned mire.

The ravens had flown — more than a dozen, each sealed with the direwolf of Stark and the three-headed dragon of Targaryen. A call for peace and unity. A plea, not a threat. And the realm had answered with silence.

Well, not quite silence. There had been words, and none that mattered. From the Westerlands came courteous refusals. The Reach offered vague platitudes, as soft and empty as flower-scented air. Dorne had sent no reply at all. In the Stormlands, a new king had risen. And in the Crownlands, the whispers grew darker by the day — talk of treason, of heresy. And the Lords of the Narrow Sea? Divided. Some houses backed the boy who called himself Aegon, the golden prince with his sellsword army and pretty name.

Jon had hoped for peace. He had given them truth. And the realm had given him courtesies.

Above the battlements, ravens circled, distant and black against the cloud-silver sky. A murder of wings above a field of ghosts.

Behind his thoughts, Winter stirred. Sleeping now in the shattered godswood, coiled among weirwood roots and broken stone. Jon could feel him, faint and deep, like a second heartbeat thrumming beneath his skin. The bond had grown stronger of late, almost unnatural. Sometimes he could feel the way Winter tasted the wind, could feel the flick of his tail as if it were Jon’s own limb. The dragon had grown fast — too fast. The maesters whispered of bloodlines and magic, of old Valyria’s temper, but none could explain it. Some muttered that it was the cold, that the magic in the North fed him like a hidden fire.

But Jon knew better. The cold didn’t feed Winter. The cold obeyed him.

He turned from the wall, boots thudding against wet stone as he descended the winding stair. The ramparts behind him blurred into mist. Every step downward felt like descending deeper into history, into something ancient and watching. Moat Cailin had stood for thousands of years. It would endure long after they were all dead — king, dragon, wolf alike.

The air was thick with the smell of wet stone, old wood, and oil. He passed guards from all three kingdoms, a Manderly beside a Royce beside a Blackwood and none of them looked at each other as enemies. But peace was dead. And war had begun to breathe again.

The great hall of Moat Cailin had never seen so many lords.

It was not a hall meant for grandeur — no carved pillars, no marble floors, no painted windows to scatter the light. Just a long stone chamber with damp walls, a vaulted ceiling blackened by centuries of smoke, and a hearth that spat more soot than flame. The air smelled of peat fire and old ash, and the cold clung to the stone like lichen. Moss had crept in through broken mortar near the far end, and patches of the floor were damp where the marsh bled through the cracks.

Yet it held the weight of history like a crown. This was the place where the old Kings of Winter had stood, where southern hosts had shattered against Northern resolve. There were no tapestries here — only silence and stone and memory. And now, it held the lords who would march south not for conquest, but for peace.

Jon sat at the high end of the oaken table, beside his father. The chair beneath him was hard, but the burden heavier still. His father's face was drawn but steady, pale in the glow of the hearth, the lines around his mouth deeper than before. They had all aged too quickly.

Robb stood behind them like a sentinel, a hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. He no longer wore a boy’s look — the easy laughter was gone, replaced with the gaze of a commander, sharp and flinty. Beside him stood Rodrik Cassel, white-haired and watchful, and Galbart Glover with his thick arms folded, his face set in a grim frown.

The Blackfish was there too, half in shadow, arms crossed, eyes narrowed beneath thick grey brows. He watched the room like a hawk among crows, every movement, every murmur, weighed and measured.

Lord Yohn Royce sat like a mountain of bronze, his runed armor catching what little light the fire dared cast. He said little, but his presence was a statement in itself — Runestone stood with the dragon. Across from him sat Wyman Manderly, cheeks flushed from exertion, breath wheezing, but his gaze as shrewd as any merchant’s. His rings clicked softly as he shuffled his fingers atop the table, a lord of numbers and vengeance.

Further down the table, Horton Redfort, long-faced and tight-lipped, whispered to Jason Mallister. Harrold Hardyng sat stiff-backed, his jaw clenched, eyes flickering now and then toward Jon — not with hostility, but wariness. Maege Mormont stood near the back, arms crossed over a mailed chest, her face weathered and fierce beneath a crown of unbound hair.

And the Freys were there too. A pair of them. Younger sons with narrow eyes and overly polite smiles. They had come, as they always did, when they smelled power.

High lords and bannermen, old blood and new, all crammed into a hall that remembered the old North. Some wore furs. Others wore steel. A few, like Manderly, wore velvet lined with fox and badger. The Vale lords gleamed in bronze and silver, while the Riverlords wore darker hues, forest greens and deep blues, the colors of rivers, reeds, and sorrow.

None of them spoke of peace anymore.

The maester’s voice rang out, echoing against the damp stone walls like the toll of a bell before battle.

“Ten thousand from the North,” he said, eyes squinting down at the parchment, the candlelight trembling in his spectacles. “Fifteen thousand from the Vale, and twenty thousand Riverlanders ready and provisioned. Forty-five thousand swords, with supply lines through Harrenhal and Seagard.”

Murmurs rustled through the gathered lords like wind through dry leaves. Wyman Manderly shifted his bulk forward, his fingers drumming against the table. His breath rasped in his throat like wind through a broken reed, but his tone remained steady.

“We have ships from White Harbor and Maidenpool,” he said, the rings on his fingers glinting as he gestured. “Enough to secure the Blackwater — if Stannis’s ships retreat.”

Lord Yohn Royce scoffed quietly, the sound like a boot grinding against gravel. His massive arms crossed over his chest, bronze armor whispering against itself.

“Gold does not win war alone,” he muttered. “And the lions have made too many enemies.”

Edmure Tully leaned forward then, elbows on the worn wood, his face somber beneath the candlelight.

“They have gold still,” he said grimly. “And Tywin.”

That name darkened the room more than any shadow.

“Old,” Maege Mormont growled. “But not dead. And still dangerous.”

All eyes turned to Lord Stark.

His father rose from his seat with the slow gravity of a man who had carried too many wars on his shoulders already. His grey eyes swept the table, quieting the room without a word. Then, simply:

“We march in two weeks.”

A breath held.

“We ride light and fast,” he continued. “Strike before the Lannisters can entrench. King’s Landing is the key. If we can take the city, the war can end before it begins.”

Maps rustled. A few men nodded. A few more frowned.

“What of the other stags?” asked Ser Harrold Hardyng from further down the table. His brow was drawn tight, concern plain in his voice. “Renly in Highgarden. Stannis lost in the stormlands.”

Robb straightened behind their father, his hand tightening around the pommel of his sword. His eyes — blue and burning — met Ser Harrold’s without flinching.

“Let them come,” he said coldly. “If they wish to fight the dead, they’ll find allies. If they come for crowns — they’ll find fire.”

That drew a low ripple from the room. Some bristled. Some looked to Ned. Others exchanged uneasy glances, wondering if fire meant dragons or war, or both.

Jon rose slowly, the movement deliberate, quiet. His voice did not rise.

“We do not march for conquest,” he said. Calm. Clear. And the room, for all its steel and pride, stilled to listen.

“We march for unity. For survival.” His hands rested lightly on the table. “I’ve seen what waits beyond the Wall. We’ve fought it. The dead do not care if you are king.”

For a long moment, there was only the soft crackle of the fire and the distant whistle of wind through the cracks in the walls. Lords looked down. Some stared at Jon, some at the map, others at their cups.

Then, from the far end, Yohn Royce rose — not slowly, but with the weight of decision.

“Spoken like a true king, Your Grace,” he said, his voice low but iron-strong.

The fires had burned low by the time Jon found his father in the old tower that served as Eddard Stark’s solar. The chamber smelled of ash and old parchment. A single candle flickered on the edge of the table, its flame bending to the rhythm of the wind outside. A map of Westeros lay stretched over the oak, weighed at the corners by stones and stubs of melted wax. Shadows danced across its surface, painting rivers and roads in motion.

Outside, the wind howled through the broken slits in the stone — the voice of the marsh, restless and cold.

His father stood at the map, still in his leathers, fingers brushing over the Crownlands like a man tracing an old scar.

“She’s coming,” he said, without looking up.

Jon stepped closer, boots soft on the worn rushes. “Daenerys.”

His father nodded, then pulled out a scroll from beneath a small stack of ravens’ replies.

“From Wylis,” he said. “He speaks of sails from Meereen, Volantis, and White Harbor. He says she brings two thousand Unsullied, and a Dothraki khalasar.”

Jon felt a chill creep beneath his skin. “And dragons.”

“That too.”

His mouth had gone dry. “Do you trust her?”

“I don’t know her,” Ned said simply, eyes never leaving the parchment. “And that worries me more than knowing her well.”

Jon exhaled, his breath fogging in the cool air. “And Aegon?”

A pause.

Ned’s jaw tensed. His eyes grew distant, drawn back into memory.

“I saw Elia’s children with my own eyes. Dead. Torn apart. The boy’s head dashed against the walls. What they showed Robert was a mess of bone and pulp, but… I remember Rhaenys. I remember the babe. That boy died in Maegor’s Holdfast. This one…” He shook his head, the candlelight catching in the silver of his beard. “Too convenient.”

“You think he’s false.”

“I think he might be. And I think the Golden Company would prop up a goat if it wore a crown.”

Jon glanced toward the window. His reflection stared back faint and flickering in the glass — half in shadow, half in firelight.

“If he is Rhaegar’s son… if he truly is my kin…”

Ned turned to him at last, his gaze heavy, but not unkind.

“Then we’ll know when we meet him. Truth has a way of rising.”

Jon lowered his voice, uncertainty curling beneath the words. “Should I withdraw? Renounce my claim? Bend the knee?”

“Not yet,” Ned said, firm but quiet. “The realm knows your name now. The realm listens. You were chosen here, in the cold, by men who know the cost of war. Let the south see that.”

Jon nodded slowly, but the doubt remained.

“And if he’s true?”

Ned stepped forward, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. His grip was steady. Grounding.

“Then we will bend the knee. But not to gold. Not to swords. Only to truth.”

Jon looked down at the map — at the tangle of rivers and cities, of battlefields past and still to come. Ink and parchment… and blood.

“So much for peace,” he said.

“Peace is a crown built from bones,” Ned replied. “Let’s try and make sure there are fewer.”