Chapter Text
Prologue
The World Will Be Covered In Snow, Chapter 16
“You are at the edge, Jon,” Rhae said, her voice soft and melodic, like the rustle of leaves in the wind. “It was not wise for you to travel alone at night beyond the Wall. You are closer to death than to life.”
Jon could only nod weakly, his grip tightening on the dragonglass blade. He didn’t know if he had the strength left to use it, but if the infection continued to spread, he might not have a choice.
“I can help you,” Rhae continued, her gaze unwavering as she looked down at him. “But I need something in return.”
Jon’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What... what do you want?” he managed to rasp out.
“A promise. You will owe me a debt, Jon Snow. A debt that I will collect in time. When the moment comes, you will do as I ask, without hesitation, without question. Do you understand?”
Jon’s mind was clouded with fever, his thoughts muddled and sluggish. He didn’t understand fully what she was asking, but he knew he had no other choice. He was dying, and this strange, spectral woman was his only hope. The weight of her words pressed down on him, but he nodded, the barest inclination of his head.
“I... I promise,” he said, his voice trembling with exhaustion.
Rhae smiled, a faint, almost sorrowful smile, and reached into the folds of her cloak. She withdrew a small bundle of herbs, their leaves dark and glossy, with an unnatural sheen to them. With a flick of her wrist, she lit the herbs, and a thick blue smoke began to curl up from the smoldering leaves.
“This smoke will take you away. It will carry your soul to another time, another place, far beyond this cavern. While you journey, your body will heal, free from the pain that binds you. But remember, Jon Snow, that this is not without cost. When you return, you will be bound by your promise to me.”
The blue smoke swirled around Jon, its scent strange and intoxicating. It filled his lungs, his mind growing hazy as the world around him began to fade. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, the pain in his body receding as the smoke worked its magic. His eyelids grew heavy, his limbs numb, and soon he was sinking into a deep, almost death-like sleep.
As the darkness closed in, the last thing Jon saw was Rhae’s face, her expression unreadable, as she watched him drift into the void. The sound of her voice echoed in his mind, a final, haunting whisper that lingered in the silence.
“Remember your promise, Jon Snow. Remember.”
And then there was nothing but darkness.
As he felt he might be swallowed by the void, a hand reached out to him. He could not see it, but he felt its presence, warm and firm, guiding him through the blackness. A voice, familiar and yet distant, whispered in his ear—a voice he had heard before, in the midst of battles, in the silence of the night.
“Look upon just one record of the past, Jon Snow. Look and believe.”
The darkness began to lift, though not entirely. It peeled away like a heavy curtain, revealing a faint light—cold, gray, and distant. Jon found himself standing on a rocky plain, the dawn barely breaking on the horizon. He was no longer in the cavern, no longer dying from the infection that had ravaged his body. Instead, he was different. His limbs felt heavy, his skin rough and thick, his breath deep and powerful. He was still Jon Snow, but at the same time, he was someone else—someone from a time so ancient it was barely comprehensible.
He stood, not as himself, but as another man. A man of the past, yet also a reflection of his own soul, the echoes of which had traveled through the ages. This was no mere vision. It was a life he was reliving, a memory that had been buried deep within him, now unearthed by the smoke and the magic of the old gods.
Jon, or the man he had become, looked down at his hands. They were large, calloused, the hands of a warrior who had fought many battles. He flexed his fingers, feeling the strength in them, the raw power that coursed through his body. He was a sturdy man, thick-limbed and deep-chested, his skin weathered by the elements. His furs were heavy, and the pelt of some great beast draped over his shoulders. He turned his head, instinctively checking his surroundings, his eyes sharp and alert, his senses heightened.
The cold dawn light revealed a vast, untamed landscape—mountains in the distance, forests dense and dark, and the open plain stretching out as far as the eye could see. There were no castles here, no walls, no signs of the world Jon knew. This was a time before men had bent the land to their will, a time when survival was won through strength and cunning, not through titles or oaths.
He carried a short spear in his left hand, its blade fashioned from chipped flint, the edges sharp and lethal. In the girdle of his kilt, he could feel the weight of a stone ax, its head heavy and brutal, lashed to the handle with sinew. These were his tools, his weapons, the instruments of a life spent in constant battle with the elements, with beasts, and with other men.
Jon—or the man he had become—felt a sense of familiarity, a deep connection to this life. It was as if he had always known this place, this body, and this existence, even though it was so far removed from his own. He could feel the strength in his muscles, the sharpness of his instincts, the primal intelligence that guided his every action. This was a life unburdened by the complexities of politics and war, a life lived in its rawest, most essential form.
As he stood there, the voice whispered to him again, softer this time, almost tender.
“This is who you were, Jon Snow. This is where your bloodline began, in the dawn of the world. This spirit has been passed down through the ages, from father to son, from warrior to warrior. Now you live and heal. ”
Somewhere In Essos, 20,000 years ago, before the events of Game of Thrones
Jon Snow, endowed with a spiritual sense, was praying to the gods his tribe had always worshipped—the Ice-gods. He knew little about the origins of his tribe, only a legend that their forefathers had come from behind the mountains, driven sunward and southward by the cold. These gods resided in the blue-black ice of the mightiest glaciers that descended from the high snow mountains. The central glacier's massive face was in the valley, while the ice flowed down smaller valleys to the east and west, reaching the sea. In spring, the children of the Ice-gods, born in the snowy hills, came forth as great bergs from the valleys and sailed southward. Thus, the central glacier, the house of the gods, moved but little.
Old Nan, who had witnessed the birth of everyone in the tribe, said that her grandfather had told her, when she was young, that in her youth, the glacier's face was perhaps a spear's cast higher up the valley than it stood today. It was a towering wall, as tall as twenty forest pines set one upon the other, sloping backward to its crest. Mostly, it was clear black ice, cracking and groaning when the gods within talked, and heaving forward an arm's length when they were angry, shaving off rocks and driving them forward. Jon did not know who or what these gods were, but he feared and believed in their terrible power, as his forefathers had done. The tribe's fate lay in their hands.
In the autumn nights, when the mists rose, some had seen vast, shadowy figures moving before the glacier and advancing toward the beach where the people lived. They had heard them laugh, and their priest, Petyr the Magician, and Lysa the Witch-Who-Hid-Herself, Petyr's lover, claimed to have spoken to them. But Jon had never heard them speak, though he had sat face-to-face with them at night, which no one else dared to do. Sometimes, when he was well-fed and happy, he doubted the gods' existence, attributing the noises to natural causes.
Yet there was one thing Jon could not doubt. Deep in the ice, visible only in certain lights, was a figure known as the Sleeper. It appeared to be a long-nosed creature with huge curling tusks and a vast head covered in red hair, behind which swelled an enormous body. This god, a gigantic elephant of the early world caught in the ice, must have been frozen during a glacial period hundreds of thousands of years ago. Jon could not doubt its divinity, though he wondered why it chose to sleep forever on the ice.
Jon, after discussing with Val, his proud and fair wife, climbed to the glacier in the dark to seek the gods' counsel. The matter was urgent. The tribe's greatest man, The Mountain, ruled with brutal strength. According to the tribe's law, the mightiest ruled until a stronger challenger killed him in single combat. The mountain had killed his father to become chief. Now he oppressed the tribe, seizing others' food and garments and taking women at will. None dared resist him, as he was sacred. Any man could challenge him, but killing him otherwise was forbidden, leading to the slayer's exile.
Jon desired to challenge the Mountain, Gregor, due to his cruelty and misrule, knowing Gregor would eventually kill him out of jealousy. Long ago, Jon would have been murdered if not for his beloved status as the tribe's great hunter. Gregor had already tried to kill Jon secretly. Once, a poisoned spear narrowly missed Jon while he visited his pit traps. He recognized it as Gregor's spear, coated in a poison made from a rotted cuttlefish mixed with herb juice. Jon kept the spear and told no one but Val.
Worse followed. Jon's daughter, Asa, a girl one year younger than his ten-year-old son Hali, disappeared. They believed wood wolves or bears had taken her. Two days later, Jon found her body outside his hut, her neck broken and the marks of a great hand on her throat. He knew Gregor had done it, as everyone did, but none spoke out. The Mountain had the right to take any life in the tribe.
Jon's blood boiled with rage. He talked with Val, saying he wanted to challenge Gregor.
"That's what he wants," Val replied. "He thinks he's stronger and will kill you without reproach. But I know you can conquer him. I've wished it for a long time, but you wouldn't listen."
She then wrapped herself in her skin rug and pretended to sleep, saying no more.
In the morning, she spoke again and said, “Hear me, husband. Counsel has come to me in my sleep. It seemed to me that our daughter, who is dead, stood before me, saying:
“Let Jon Snow, my father, go up at night to make prayer to the Ice-gods and seek a sign from them. If a stone falls from the crest of the glacier at dawn, it shall be a token to him that he must fight Gregor and avenge my blood upon him and take his chieftainship; but if no stone falls, then, should he fight, Gregor will kill him. Also, afterward, he will kill Hali, my brother, and take you, my mother, to be one of his wives."
“Now, Jon Snow, I say that you will do well to obey the voice of our child who is dead and to go up to make prayer to the Ice-gods and await their omen.”
Jon Snow looked at her doubtfully, putting little faith in this tale, and answered. “Such a dream is a thin stick on which to lean. I know well, Val, that for a long while you have desired that I should fight Gregor, although he is a terrible man. Yet, if I do, he may kill me, and then what would happen to you and Hali?”
“That which is fated to happen to us and nothing else, Husband. Shall it be said in the tribe that Jon Snow was afraid to avenge the blood of his daughter upon Gregor?”
“I don’t know, Val, but I know also that, if such words are whispered, they will not be true. It is of you and Hali that I think, not of myself.”
“Then go and seek an omen from the Ice-gods, Husband.”
“I will go, Val, but do not blame me afterward if things happen awry.”
“They will not happen awry,” answered Val, smiling for the first time since her daughter died.
For she was sure that Jon Snow would conquer The Mountain if only he could be brought to fight him and thus avenge their daughter and become chief in his place. Also, she smiled because, for reasons of which she did not speak, she was sure also that a stone would fall from the crest of the glacier at dawn when the sun struck upon the ice.
Thus it came about that, on the following night, Jon Snow slipped from the village of the tribe and, walking around the foot of the hill that ran down to the beach on the east, scaled the cleft between the mountains until he came to the base of the great glacier. The wolves that were prowling around the place, still winter-hungry because the spring was so late, scented him and surrounded him with glaring eyes. But he, the Hunter, was not afraid of the wolves; moreover, woe had made his heart fierce. So with a yell, he charged at the biggest of them, the leader of the pack, and drove his flint spear into its throat, then, while it writhed upon the spear, gnashing its red jaws, he dashed out its brains with his stone axe, muttering:
“Thus shall Gregor die! Thus shall Gregor die!”
The wolves knew their master and sped away, all save their leader who lay dead. Jon Snow dragged its carcass to the top of a rock and left it there where the rest could not reach it, purposing to skin it in the morning.
This done, he went on up the cold valley where no beasts came, because here there was nothing to eat, till he reached the face of the glacier, a mighty wall of backward-sloping ice that gleamed faintly in the moonlight and filled the cleft from side to side, four hundred paces or more in width. When last he was here, twelve moons ago, he had driven a stake of driftwood between two rocks and another stake five paces lower down. Because of late, it had seemed to him that the glacier was marching forward.
So it was indeed, for the first stake was buried, and the cruel, crawling lip of the glacier had nearly reached the second. The gods were awake! The gods were marching toward the sea!
Jon Snow shivered, not because of the cold, to which he was accustomed, but from fear—for this place was terrible to him. It was the house of the gods who dwelt there in the ice, the gods in whom he believed, and who were always angry, and now he remembered that he had brought no offering to propitiate them. He went back to the place where he had killed the wolf, and with difficulty, with the aid of his sharp flint spear and stone axe, he hacked off its head. Returning with this head, he set the grisly thing upon a rock at the foot of the glacier, muttering:
“It bleeds, and the gods love blood. Now I swear that, if I kill Gregor, I will give them his carcass, which is better than the head of a wolf.”
Then he kneeled down, as men have ever done before, that which they fear and worship, and began to pray after his fashion:
“O Mighty Ones,” he said, “who have lived here since the beginning, and O Sleeper with a shape such as no man has ever seen, Jon Snow throws out his spirit to you; hear ye the prayer of Jon Snow and give him a sign. Gregor, the fierce and hideous, kills his own children lest in a day they should slay him as he slew his father, rules the people, and does evilly. The people groan, but according to the old law may not rebel, and to speak, they are afraid. Gregor would kill me, and my little daughter he has killed, and her mother weeps. I, Jon Snow, would fight him as I may do under the law, but he is strong as the wild bull of the forest, and if he prevails, not only will he kill me, but he will also take Val, whom he covets, and murder our son Hali and perhaps devour him. Therefore, I am afraid to fight, for their sake. Yet I would take revenge and slay him, and I live in the cave and rule the People better, not devouring their food, but storing it up for them; not taking the women, but leaving them to be the wives of those who have none. I have brought you an offering, O Gods, the head of a wolf freshly slain, which bleeds, the best thing I have to give you, and if I kill Henga, I will bring you a richer one, that of his dead body, because our fathers have always said that you love blood.”
Jon paused, for he could think of nothing more to say; then, remembering that as yet he had made no request, he went on:
“Show me what I must do, O Gods. Shall I challenge him in the old way and fight him openly for the rule of the tribe? Or, since if I fear to do this, I cannot stay here among the people, shall I fly away with Val and Hal and, perhaps, Tyrion, the wise dwarf, the Wolf-man who loves me, to seek another home beyond the woods if we live to win through them? Accept my offering and tell me, O Gods. If I must fight Gregor, let a stone fall from the crest of the glacier, and if I must fly to save the lives of Val and Foh, let no stone fall. Here, now, I will wait till an hour after sunrise. Then, if a stone falls, I shall go down to challenge him, and if it does not fall, I shall give it out that I am about to challenge him, and in the night I shall slip away with Val and Hali, and Tyrion if he chooses; whereby you will lose worshippers, O Gods.”
Pleased with this master argument, which had come as an inspiration, since he had never thought of it before, Jon ceased praying, a terrible exercise that tired him more than a whole day’s hunting or fishing, and, remaining on his knees, stared at the face of ice in front of him. He knew nothing of the laws of nature, but he did know that heavy bodies, if once set in motion, moved very fast down a hill, going quicker and quicker as they came near its foot. Indeed, once he killed a bear by rolling a stone down on it, which overtook the running beast with wonderful swiftness.
This being so, he began to marvel at what would happen if all that mighty mass of ice moved in good earnest instead of at the rate of only a few handbreadths a year. Well, he knew something about that as well. For once, when he was in the woods, he had seen an ice child born, a vast mass as large as a mountain, which suddenly rushed down one of the western valleys into the sea, sending foam flying as high as heaven. That had hurt no one, except, perhaps, some of the seals who were basking in the bay, because there was no one to hurt. But if it had been the great central glacier that thus moved and gave birth, together with the other smaller glaciers of the west, what would have happened to the tribe upon the beach beneath? They would be killed, everyone, and there would be no people left in the world.
He did not call it the world, of course, since he knew nothing of the world, but rather by some word that meant “the place,” that is, the few miles of beach and wood and mountain over which he wandered. From a great height, he had seen other beaches and woods, also mountains beyond a rocky, barren plain, but to him, these were but a dreamland. At least, no men or women lived in them, because he had never seen their smoke rising or met them while hunting or warring.
Thus he thought, and it seemed to him that he grew smaller and smaller in the face of those mighty mountains, till at last he became a tiny point. And still, the god that dwelt in the glacier, who took the form of a gigantic ice worm, took no heed of him but stayed as quiet as it had ever been for ages, wrapped in its icy sleep.
Jon Snow shivered and, trembling, crept closer to the edge of the glacier and prostrated himself before it. Hours passed, and the great moon sank, and the cold gray dawn began to show, but no answer came to his prayer.
“Why do you not speak to me?” he muttered. “The stone falls, or it does not fall; why do you not give me a sign?”
But the glacier remained silent and motionless. For, as it chanced, no sun lay upon its crest, and nothing stirred it from its sleep.
Moreover, beyond them, dimly outlined was the great Sleeper—a mountain of a god with huge tusks, a curling nose longer than the body of a man, a head like a rock, ears as big as the sides of a hut, and a small, cold eye fixed upon him. Behind all this, vanishing into the depths of the ice, was an enormous body as tall as three men standing on each other’s heads. There was a god indeed, and looking at him, Jon Snow wondered whether he would ever awaken, break out of the ice, and come rushing down the mountain.
To see him better, Jon Snow rose from his knees and crept timidly to the face of the glacier to peer down a certain crevice in the ice. While he was engaged, the sun rose in a clear sky over the shoulder of the mountain and shone with some warmth upon the glacier for the first time that spring—or early summer. Its rays penetrated the cleft in the ice, and Jon Snow saw more of the Sleeper than he had ever done before.
Truly, the Sleeper was enormous, and behind him was something like the figure of a man, of which Jon had often heard but never seen so clearly. Or was it a shadow? Jon could not be sure, for just then a cloud floated over the face of the sun, and the figure vanished. He waited for the cloud to pass away, and well was it for him that he did so, for just then a great rock, loosened by the sun’s warmth, came thundering down the slope of the ice and, leaping over Jon, fell upon the spot where he had just been standing. It made a hole in the frozen ground and crushed the wolf’s head to a pulp, and then, with mighty bounds, it vanished toward the beach.
“The Sleeper has protected me,” said Jon to himself as he turned to look after the vanishing rock. “Had I stayed where I was, I would have been like that wolf’s head.”
Suddenly, he remembered that this stone had fallen in answer to his prayer; it was the sign he had sought. He removed himself swiftly, lest another stone follow. After running a few paces down the frozen slope, he came to a little bay hollowed in the mountainside and sat down, knowing he was safe from falling stones. Confusedly, he began to think. What had he asked the gods? Was it that he must fight Gregor if the stone fell, or that he must not fight him? Oh, now he remembered. It was that he must fight, as Val wished him to do, and a cold trembling shook his limbs. Talking about fighting that raging giant was easy enough, but doing it was another matter. Yet the gods had spoken, and he dared not disobey the counsel he had sought. Moreover, by sparing his life from the falling stone, surely they meant he would conquer The Mountain. Or perhaps they meant they wished to see Henga tear him to pieces for their sport, for the gods loved blood, and the gods were cruel. Moreover, being evil themselves, would it not please them to give victory to the evil man?
Unable to answer these questions, Jon Snow rose and walked slowly toward the beach, reflecting that he had likely seen the last of the glacier and the Ice-gods who dwelt there. He was about to challenge Gregor to fight to the death. As he neared the place where he had killed the wolf, he was astonished to see someone skinning the beast. His fingers tightened on the haft of his spear, for this was a crime against the hunter’s law—that one should not steal what another had slain. Then the head of the skinner appeared, and Jon smiled and loosened his grip. This was no thief; this was Tyrion, his slave, who loved him.
Tyrion was a strange-looking man—a large-headed, one-eyed dwarf with a great chest, long arms, and a powerful build but with thick little legs no longer than those of an eight-year-old child. He had a monstrous, flat-nosed, big-mouthed face, yet always wore a smiling, humorous air. It was said that when he was born, a long time before— for his youth had passed—he was so ugly that his father threw him out into the woods, fearing that his father, who was absent killing seals farther up the beach, would be angry with her for bearing such a son. She intended to tell him the child was stillborn.
When the father returned, he searched for the infant’s bones but found the babe still living, though with one eye dashed out against a stone and its face scarred. Still, this was his firstborn, and being a man with a merciful heart, he brought it home into the hut and forced the mother to nurse it. She did, like one who is frightened, though why she was frightened, she would not say, nor would his father ever tell where and how he had found Tyrion. Thus, Tyrion did not die but lived. Because of what his mother had done to him, he always hated women and lived much in the forest, earning the name “wolf man.” He grew up the cleverest of the tribe, for nature, which had made him ugly and deformed, gave him more wits than the rest of them and a sharp tongue that he used to gibe at the women.
Therefore, they hated him and made a plot against him. When a time of scarcity came, they persuaded the chief of the tribe, Gregor’s father, that Tyrion was the cause of ill fortune. The chief drove him out to starve. But when Tyrion was dying from lack of food, Jon Snow found him and brought him to his hut. Though Val, like the rest of her sex, loved him little, he remained as a slave, for this was the law: if anyone saved a life, that life belonged to them. However, Tyrion was more than a slave. From the hour Jon Snow braved the wrath of the women and possibly the anger of the chief by rescuing him when he was starving in bitter frost, Tyrion loved him more than a woman loves her firstborn or a young man his one-day bride.
Thenceforward, Tyrion was Jon’s shadow, ready to suffer all things for him, and even refraining from sharp words and jests about Val or any other woman Jon favored, though doing so meant biting a hole in his tongue. Tyrion loved Jon, and Jon loved him, for which reason Val, who was jealous-hearted, came to hate him more than she had at first.
There was trouble over Jon saving Tyrion’s life after he had been driven out to starve as an evil-eyed and scurrilous fellow, but the chief, Gregor's father, a kindly man, ruled that since Tyrion had been thrown out twice and brought back again, the gods meant him to die in some other fashion. Now that Jon had taken him, Jon must feed him and ensure he does not hurt anyone. If he chose to keep a one-eyed wolf, it was his own business.
Shortly after, Gregor killed his father and became chief. The matter of Tyrion was forgotten. So Tyrion stayed with Jon, loved by him and Jon’s children, but hated by Val.
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