Upon a River of Blood [ASOIAF/GOT SI]

by Jajasx222

Summary:

A man from another world dies and wakes as a boy in the North. A bastard named Jon Snow.

But Jon Snow is no longer the quiet child of Winterfell. He remembers another life, one filled with machines, memory, and the knowledge of what’s to come. With Winter on the horizon and the South already scheming, he chooses action over silence.

From the black walls of the Night’s Watch to the burning rivers of the Riverlands, Jon, forged anew as Daemon, will reshape Westeros with steel, fire, and foresight. He builds, he plans, he kills, and he remembers. And the game of thrones is no longer played by the rules the lords remember.

A character-driven, realistic self-insert fic exploring war, prophecy, power, and the long night ahead.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1 — The Cold That Knows

The cold in Winterfell always finds a way in, even with the hearths and the hot water pumping through the walls. Doesn’t matter how many furs you wear or how close you stand to the hearth. It always seeps under the skin, creeps into the bones, it whispers... but maybe that’s just Bloodraven fucking with me.

It’s not the kind of cold I grew up with.

Not before I woke up in this body.

Back then, snow was weather. A nuisance. An excuse for city shutdowns and missed deadlines. Now? It’s part of the architecture. The North breathes it. Eats it. Wears it like a second skin.

I tighten my grip on the training sword and step into the courtyard.

Ser Rodrik calls my name, his voice rough like a worn whetstone. Across from me, Halder waits. Bigger than me. Older. Stronger. But dumb and predictable.

“Your turn, Snow,” Rodrik says.

I nod and step into the circle. I’ve been here before—hundreds of times. Halder’s strong, but he overcommits. Too much shoulder, not enough hip. Wide swings. Poor recovery. No balance.

He’s a builder’s son, not a fighter, at least not yet. When Rodrick is done with him, he will be a man-at-arms of House Stark.

I lower my stance slightly. Left foot angled. Right knee is loose. Keep the center of gravity mobile. I tighten my grip just enough to keep control without wasting energy. Most of the others here don’t even think about their grip. I have come a long way for an engineer.

Halder charges first, like I knew he would.

He brings the blade down in an overhead arc, telegraphed from the moment he moved. I don’t meet it; it would be pointless. He is just too strong for me to try. I slide sideways, just outside the line of attack. Let his momentum burn itself out. His sword crashes down where I was a second ago, the tip bouncing off stone with a dull crack.

He tries to recover and swing back.

I’m already moving. My practice sword snaps forward—first a jab to his sternum, not hard, but enough to disrupt his breath, it hits a bit lower than intended. Then a pivot on my back foot and a clean horizontal strike across his ribs. Thwack.

He grunts, staggers.

I could end it there. But I don’t.

“Two points for Snow!” Ser Rodrik shouts, loud enough to bounce off the courtyard walls.

The boys around the circle groan or cheer, depending on who they’re backing. Strange how things can change in a couple of years; they always wanted the bastard to lose before. I step back, my sword lowered, and I give it a couple of twirls. Showmanship is important after all. Halder recovers his stance, face red from the blow, more from frustration than pain.

Rodrik raises a gloved hand, signaling a pause. “Hold.”

He paces slowly across the yard, his white whiskers fluttering slightly in the wind. “That’s two clean strikes—ribs and stomach. You let him inside your guard, Halder. Again.”

He’s frustrated now. I can see it in his eyes—too wide, breathing too fast. He tightens his grip. That’s his second mistake.

“Come on, Halder,” someone yells. “Don’t let the bastard dance around you!”

I ignore them. Always ignore the crowd.

Halder swings again, a fast diagonal meant to catch my shoulder. I drop my weight and duck beneath it, sliding to the side and swatting his blade off-line with mine. A classic bind-and-deflect. The kind they’d teach in any fencing club back on Earth—though they'd call it something in French, and everyone would wear masks and foam. Safety equipment in Westeros is lacking.

Halder spins, trying to keep me in sight. Too slow.

I’m behind him now.

I don’t strike. I tap his back lightly with the tip of my sword. A quiet message: you’re don,e big boy.

Halder turns, red-faced and panting. I meet his eyes—not to mock him, but to make sure he knows it wasn’t luck. That I chose not to humiliate him.

He nods once. Respect. Frustrated, but not angry. That’s something, the boy is quick to anger most of the time, at least when he is not fighting Robb, you can’t show disrespect to your future lord after all.

Ser Rodrik clears his throat. “Match to Snow.”

Robb claps, laughing. “Well struck, Jon! That was… quick.”

Arya’s eyes are wide from the balcony. Bran’s practically hanging off the railing. Even Luwin, up on the battlements, leans forward a little.

But Lord Stark isn't here; he rarely is. When he is—when duty or courtesy compels him to stand at the edge of the yard, arms folded beneath his dark cloak—he watches in silence. No cheers. No scoldings. No nod of approval. His eyes follow every movement, but they never rest on me for long. Maybe it’s better that he isn’t here today.

At least then I don’t have to pretend this distance doesn’t bother me.

The truth is, we barely speak now.

Not unless it’s something official—something cold and clean and practical like the North as a whole. Most weeks it’s updates on the shipments from the Blackworks, the metalworks on the Snowmelt, the White Knife’s fork that runs west of Winterfell. Lord Stark, let me construct it. Trusted me with it. That’s the closest we come to conversation these days—iron quotas and tool weights, construction and designs…

But before, it was different. Before I asked the question.

"Who was my mother?"

His jaw clenched. His eyes shifted to the flames. And then came the lie.

"I will tell you when you are older, Jon, it does not matter."

But it did. It does. And I told him so. I said I deserved to know the truth, it spiraled out of control after that. We haven’t spoken truly since. Not about family. Not about blood. Not about who I am. Just steel shipments, progress report,s and the occasional nod in passing.

For fucks sake you are not a boy craving approval stop it!

I roll my shoulder and step back, letting the wooden sword rest against my leg. My breathing’s steady. I’m not even winded.

It’s not just skill. It’s a calculation.

Every move in that fight came from a database of experience this world doesn’t have: martial arts, physical conditioning, and stretching. In a real fight, with steel? Halder would be bleeding out before he knew he’d lost.

And I’d still be walking away.

“Jon the Builder!!” the others cheer.

“Will you ever tell me where you learnt to move like that?” Robb asks, slapping my shoulder.

I give him a small smile. “Practice makes perfect, Robb.”

“You and our sayings.” He laughs, looking at me with mirth.

It’s easier than explaining the truth. That saying I used to teach martial arts on weekends. That confessing I remember YouTube videos and physics lectures more vividly than I remember my mother’s voice. Both my mothers’ voices…

We fall into casual talk, the boys of Winterfell laughing, sweating, jostling one another like pups. I let them have it. Let myself smile, just a little. But my eyes are already scanning the walls, there is work to be done even if martial training can’t be skipped.

Maester Luwin stands above, watching, hood drawn. Tonight, we’ll meet again. Another “experiment.” Another lesson. He thinks me a genius, he tried to convince me to go to the citadel a few times, even tried to convince Eddard, to no avail, of course. Gifted. I let him think that. I feed him half-truths wrapped in plausible wonder.

Blueprints for reinforced storehouses. Adjustments to the granary insulation. He calls them brilliant. I call them basic survival. Because winter is coming. And next time, the Wall won’t be ready. Unless I make it ready.

I watch Arya sneak a snowball into her sleeve. She’s clever and sneaky, probably going to throw that to Sansas’ face, knowing her. Bran climbs the fence post to get a better view. He’s fearless. And I know what’s coming for him. I’m going to stop it, fucking Lannisters.

I turn away from the training yard as Rodrik calls the next pair forward. The air bites my face. My boots crunch against the stone and snow. A thin frost clings to the walls of Winterfell, whispering of the cold to come. Summer snows, they call it. As if naming it makes it less absurd. Snow in summer. Sunlight and sleet on the same day. The maesters say it’s just the way of things, that the seasons don’t obey reason even if they try to rationalize it and make a cosmology around it. They follow no pattern, no calendar. A summer can last a decade. A winter, a generation. Crops die. Rivers freeze. Families starve. And people—people forget.

They talk of seasons like weather. But seasons are war. Seasons kill. The North knows that more than anyone. Old men going out one they and not coming back, so they are not a burden, even if a lot of my projects and plans are to change the way of things.

This isn’t just the North. This is the world. And the world is wrong.

No one understands that but me.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Order. Balance. But here the gods—or the Others—spin a crooked wheel and no one knows where it stops, even if the last winter was when I was much younger…

Fourteen years, almost five and ten.

Fourteen years of waking up in this body, playing the long game, adjusting small levers of fate. I don’t know why I was brought here. Or how. But I do know one thing:

I won’t waste this life the way Jon Snow did.

I’m not here to fight for honor or names or the love of ghosts.

Even if the memories of my first life feel distant and cold, I will make use of the knowledge they bring.

I’m here to prepare.

And when I go to the Wall – when The Fall of Man approaches - it won’t be as a bastard running from shadows. Not as some shamed boy desperate to belong.

But weapons ready and plans in motion. A crown on my head and Seven Kingdoms at my back.

Not as a bastard running from shadows. Not as some shamed boy desperate to belong.

Because I won’t just be Jon Snow, the bastard of Winterfell. I will be Daemon Targaryen, first of my name, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Realms of Men.

And hopefully a Dragonlord… if I don’t manage to get myself eaten by them.

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I meet Arren outside the old stables. A sharp young man of twenty, once a blacksmith’s apprentice in Torrhen’s Square. Quick hands, quicker mind. He bows his head when he sees me—he still hasn’t gotten used to not calling me “m’lord,” and it’s been 3 years since he started working for me.

“Everything’s ready,” he says. “We’ve got the new batch of pig iron cooling and the bellows working better than ever.”

“Good,” I nod. “Let’s see it.”

We ride west, past the market road and the frozen fork that connects to the White Knife further south, where the river splits like a trident. On the far fork, nestled between two ridges, the Blackworks hums with heat and noise. Smoke rises in steady plumes, but it’s no chaotic forge—it’s a system now. A rhythm.

Steel is the future of the North. Even if food is what is needed, we will need steel to survive the inevitable war that is coming.

Arren talks as we ride. He’s excited, and I let him ramble. I like hearing it through his eyes—what we’re building here. What he thinks we’re building.

“We’ve got three new molds ready,” he says. “Ingots, spadeheads, and those bars you drew for the… the pressure supports.”

“Struts,” I correct softly.

“Aye. The blast holds longer now. Nearly double what we had last month. Still warping the tuyere ends too fast, though.”

“We’ll fix that. Clay’s too fine. We need coarse sand and ash mix, like in the hearth bricks. Tell Garrick.”

He nods eagerly. “Right away.” As he scribbles on his notebook.

From a distance, the Blackworks don’t look like a forge at all.

Not in the way a traveler would expect, anyway—not with the clatter of horseshoes and open fires, not with smoke rising in choking black coils from a soot-caked roof. No, from the hill above, it looks more like a little fortress grew out of the bones of the riverside. Angular. Stone-bound. Heavy with purpose.

The outer yard is rimmed with stacked cordwood and iron carts groaning under the weight of raw ore, pig iron bars, and broken castings waiting to be smelted again. Heavy pulley arms swing from reinforced beams overhead, lifting buckets of coal and limestone to catwalks built into the walls. Waterwheels line the stream like giant teeth sunk into the river’s edge, turning steadily, endlessly, each one feeding motion through hidden shafts beneath the stone. They rise and fall with perfect timing, pounding ingots with a deafening tempo. A second set of wheels drives the bellows—massive leather lungs—feeding a constant breath into the furnaces. No more waiting for winds or men to stoke the flames. This place breathes on its own.

And at the center of it all, behind a row of iron grates and pulleys, stands the egg.

A furnace unlike any in Westeros. Round-bellied, smooth-lined, fireproofed with layers of lime and hard clay. A dozen clay tuyeres—narrow nozzles—jut from the lower rim, channeling bursts of air directly into the heart of molten pig iron. The heat is staggering, the roar like a caged dragon.

Inside, impurity dies, and steel is born.

The others still call it a miracle. They don’t understand the method, only that it works.

The Bessemer Process. The Jon Snow Process now. Or the bones of it, anyway.

My proposition to decorate the egg with scales was turned down, wonder why…

Around it, men move carefully, faces hidden behind leather masks, lifting crucibles and pouring slag off the top. The heat is immense, even from the catwalk above. The roar fills your bones.

This is no forge. It’s a refinery. A prototype Bessemer converter made by candlelight and stubbornness. I remember reading about Henry Bessemer and the revolution he sparked for my material science test. Now I stand above a miracle that shouldn’t exist for another thousand years, or ten thousand, seeing how slow Planetos advances.

We step onto the catwalk that rings the egg. Beneath us, molten pig iron glows bright orange, swirling slowly, impurities rising to the top in dancing patterns of darker slag. One of the foremen uses an iron rod to stir, guiding the bubbling surface toward the pour spouts.

“How long’s it been cooking?” I ask.

“Thirty minutes,” Arren answers without missing a beat. “The air pressure held steady. We’ve got nearly a ton ready.”

I exhale slowly. “Faster than last week.”

“Cleaner, too. Garrick says it cuts easier on the mill.”

That makes me smile.

Faster. Cleaner. Stronger. This is more than weapons. This is rail, chain, and rebar. This are gates that hold, bridges that don’t collapse, watchtowers that rise overnight. This is steel for cities...or armies.

“Did the insulation hold during the test pour?” I ask.

“Better than expected. The lining only cracked once near the south tuyere. No breach.”

“Good. Patch it with wet clay and volcanic ash. Then cure it slower this time. Two days.”

Arren nods and scribbles the note down in his slate.

Below, the slag begins to cool on the trenchline, glowing in a pale arc of wasted impurity. What’s left in the furnace will be stronger than any blade forged in King’s Landing, Lannisport, or Oldtown.

But the Blackworks was never just about swords.

That’s what people assume, of course. Lords think of forges and picture knights in gleaming plate, hammering steel into blood. But I didn’t drag an engineer’s soul into this world just to make better blades. War is only one kind of power. Wealth builds another.

Inside these walls, we make hinges and locks, nails and rivets by the bucketful. Lanterns to be fitted with glass panes from a partner I have near White Harbor. Still can’t figure how to make clear glass, at least that project has been kept a secret, I don’t want a Myrish assassin to cut my throat while I sleep. Ploughshares stronger and lighter than anything the world has ever seen. Hoes, shovels, scythes—all cut from our steel, polished to a mirror’s edge. We press iron bands for barrels, fittings for carts, braces for timber frames, even fine needles and fishhooks sharp enough to shame a Myrish craftsman.

And people buy them. Gods, do they buy them.

Our shipments ride west to Barrowton and the Rills, south to Torrhen’s Square and east to the port at White Harbor, where merchants are already whispering of a new standard in northern steel and its unheard-of quantity.

I step through the heavy doors into the overseer's chamber—more of an office carved into stone than a room, with parchment-littered tables and a wall-mounted chalkboard scratched with columns of figures and symbols only a handful of people in the North could decipher. And most of them work here.

Seren stands at the center, grease on his sleeves, eyes bright behind round lenses we ground ourselves from Myrish glass. A lowborn genius from a fishing village near the Last River, he had a mind made for numbers and the stubborn patience of a man who knew what starvation looked like, while Arren helped me keep my schedule and keeps tract of half a hundred projects all over the place, Seren helped me administer them, he was a —Gods— send.

"You're late," he says, not looking up from the ledger.

"I'm the lord of this operation," I say. "I can be late."

"You say that, but last week you chewed out Garrick for misplacing half an hour's pig iron schedule."

“Garrick doesn’t know the difference between a crucible and a piss pot.” I mutter, looking at the papers in the desk.

He laughs at that, poking fun at Garrick — the chief blacksmith — a fan favorite around the blackworks. He finally looks up. “We’re behind.”

My jaw tightens. “By how much?”

“Seven hundred weight of raw billets. We had a clay tuyere crack in Furnace Three, and the bellows team on Wheel Two snapped a gear shaft. I’ve got a blacksmith and two apprentices reworking it, but the delays ripple.”

I nod, already shifting gears.

“What’s current daily throughput?” I ask.

“On the newer furnace line? With full airflow and continuous feed, we’re running near five and a half tons a day. But only when the river holds steady.” More than two thousand tons of steel a year if it held steady for 365 days of the year.

“And the water?”

“Snowmelt is still strong. Might push six tons with wheel four if we upgrade the cam track.”

I tap the edge of the ledger with my knuckle. “That’s still not enough.”

He blinks. “It’s not?”

“No. Not if we’re going to keep filling the orders from Barrow Hall, Saltpans, the grain lords of the Green Fork, and White Harbor’s new contracts in Essos.”

His brows rise. “You signed those already?”

“I sent a raven yesterday; the orders from Braavos are massive.” I say, folding my arms as I study the draft. “We might have to keep the bloomery furnaces running at night. Hire more men and start double shifts. The strain will crack the crucibles. The bellows will give out. And then we’ll rebuild them stronger.”

Seren grimaces. “They’ll keep breaking.”

“And we’ll keep repairing them,” I reply, my voice firm, trying to keep frustration from my voice, everything just kept breaking. “Until they don’t break anymore… or until some Ironborn fuck burns it all to the ground.” I pause. “Speaking of that.”

I tap the map— south of barrowtown on the river on its journey toward the sea, cutting between pine-clad hills, the three long rivers on he western shore of the north citing deep into the north in the map, the Stonemelt, the Rills River, and the Barrowflow.

“The chain is almost set up on the mouth of the Barrowflow,” I say. “Lady Dustin will be happy.”

Seren snorts. “As if she ever would be happy with us.”

I don’t smile. “She’s not in this for happiness. She’s in this for leverage. The Barrowlands depend on the new fortifications for coastal defence. The river runs right past her lands—if the Ironborn ever sailed up again, it would be her cattle they’d steal, her villages they’d torch. She knows what this chain and towers mean.” It’s the main reason the Dustin and Ryswells had accepted the funding of the fortification on the mouth of the rivers, fortified towers and steel chains.

“Still odd, her warming up to House Stark after all these years,” Seren says carefully.

I shrug. “Gold talks louder than old feuds. We’re paying her levies to help man the tower foundations. Her coffers swell with every shipment of steel parts sent through the ferry point. She gets roads. Her people get jobs. And she gets to feel like a queen of something again.” Its not going to bring her husband back but its something, hopefully enough so that she sends more than a token force when war comes.

His gaze lingers on the map. “And the coin for all this? Steel doesn’t smelt itself.”

I grin. “The gold’s coming. More than I dreamed.”

And it was. The trade in refined steel alone had tripled House Stark’s income in the past three years. Cast ploughshares were selling as fast as we could ship them to White Harbor. Tools, hinges, saw blades, even steel reinforcements for carts and pulleys—every holdfast wanted them. And not just in the North.

“Moat Cailin’s western ramparts have been stabilized,” I continue. “We’re rebuilding the south tower from the foundation. Soon it won’t be a ruin guarding the Neck—it’ll be a fortress again, we’ve expanded the docks at White Harbor. Built a grain granary outside Deepwood. And we’ve three engineers drawing plans for a high bridge across the Last River near Last Hearth—one that won’t collapse every spring thaw. New sluiceworks near the Long Lake. A proper timberyard in Wolfswood with pulley cranes. The rice fields near the Moat have been doubling in size for five years straight.”

Once, the North was quiet. Not peaceful—just quiet. Cold and proud and sleeping under its own weight. But no longer. Roads are being laid where there were none. Old keeps breathe again. It wasn’t easy, convincing Lord Stark. And I was worried he would take the project from me after that fight. But he is a pragmatic man, and he sees how all this is helping his people, the tide is too strong to stop now.

I gave him numbers. Charts. Letters from distant traders willing to pay silver and gold for Northern steel. Diagrams of the bellows and the turbines. Proof, not dreams. I made him see the North not as it was, but as it could be—rich, strong, proud, and self-sufficient.

He listened. He gave me coin. Gave me men. Gave me a chance.

And I didn’t waste it.

They see only the iron and the gold. I see what comes after. I see ships built from our own lumber sailing three times faster than any other, bound with our own nails, taking steel, glass and a dozen other products all over the world. I see the day the North feeds itself, arms itself, trades on its own terms. Prepared for the storm…

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The wind is colder today.

Twilight bleeds into the sky, casting long shadows over the pines. Winterfell rises, timeless and grim against the darkening sky. Familiar. Impenetrable. Home, though never wholly mine. Winterfell was a fortress in name, but that word didn’t do it justice. It wasn’t a castle like those of Earth — not even close. Not like the clean-cut stone keeps of Europe, the symmetrical châteaux of France, or even the towering strongholds of Japan or the crusader castles scattered across the Middle East.

Winterfell was gigantic, absurd even. Probably the second-largest castle of Westeros. There were two curtain walls — the inner, high and black with age, and the outer, nearly a hundred feet tall and wide enough for five men to walk abreast on the ramparts. It would be very hard to build siege towers that high, and even then, you would have another wall to take after it. You’d need fifty thousand men, three years, and a miracle to take a fully garrisoned Winterfell commanded by someone who knew what they were doing.

I’d read somewhere once upon a time that the largest castle on Earth by land area was Malbork Castle, in Poland. It was impressive. Huge, even. It could swallow a city block. But Winterfell? Winterfell would swallow Malbork whole and still have room for dessert.

And yet, the show version I remembered — the one from HBO — had always struck me as… smaller. Cinematic. Neat. Built for camera angles, not snowstorms. That version had one gate, a handful of towers, and yards that felt like a school courtyard. It looked like a high-budget Earth castle. Something you could walk across in ten minutes.

This Winterfell? It took half an hour just to walk from the East Gate to the stables near the godswood, and longer if snow had drifted over the southern walk. From above, the whole thing must look more like a stone city than a castle — a city fortified by generations who knew that the cold wasn't just a season, it lasted years and it was the enemy.

This keep, these stones—they’ve seen kings come and go, banners rise and fall. But now, for the first time, I wonder if it’s ready for what’s coming.

A Nights Watch deserter has been caught. I know what it means.

The lion stirs. The hawk is dead. And the stag will come north.

Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms, Usurper, is on the road to Winterfell.

And he’s not just coming for old friendship’s sake. He’s coming for Ned. For his loyalty. For his blood.

For his daughter.

At least I’ll get to see Cersei Lannister with my own eyes. George always did rave about her beauty in the books…

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 — Embers and Echoes

 

Flames roared like oceans in the sky.

I stood atop a broken ziggurat, surrounded by marble giants crumbling beneath fire. Dragons screamed above me, hundreds of them—winged titans whose shadows eclipsed entire city blocks. Their scales shimmered with unnatural color: molten gold, deep obsidian, pale emerald, and the sickly pink of raw flesh. They bathed a city in fire—wide boulevards and riverside temples, market squares and towers of glass-like stone—all melting beneath the storm.

People ran. They screamed in a language I couldn’t understand, their skin blistering before my eyes. Some tried to fight back with spears and bolts, but what is iron to dragons?

I looked down. My hands were covered in blood—not mine. I was wearing black armor, smooth and shining, lined with red glyphs that pulsed like coals. Something ancient, and not quite steel. I tried to speak, but no sound left my throat.

Then I woke up.

 

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Sweat clung to my skin. The sheets were tangled. Dawn crept pale through the narrow double windows of my chamber. I sat up slowly, still half in that burning dream.

That made it the third dragon dream in two months.

This one... if the imagery meant anything, it must have been Valyria during the Spice Wars. I remembered reading about it from a Maester's treatise on Freehold expansionism. One of the few times the dragonlords clashed directly with the Rhoynar before Nymeria's exodus. A forgotten war, for most. But not for me. The imagery burned too clear.

They feel so real.

The dreams were different from memories. They weren’t Earth, and they weren’t Westeros as I knew it. They felt layered, thick with metaphor and meaning. I didn't know if they were prophetic or just echoes of Blood of the Dragon trickling down into my consciousness. Maybe both.

A soft sound startled me—a shuffle against the cold stone floor. I turned my head.

There, sitting near the hearth, was a white shape. Small. Still. Watching me.

"Ghost," I whispered.

The pup blinked slowly. His eyes were red as coals, burning with the quiet intelligence that had unnerved more than one stablehand. He was bigger now, growing fast. Silent as snow.

There was something uncanny in the way he looked at me—no, not just uncanny. Familiar. Like recognition. Ghost didn’t just see me; he understood me, mirrored something buried deep beneath skin and bone.

I knelt before him, and as he pressed his cold nose into my palm, a shiver went through me. Not of fear, but of connection. I could feel something more than warmth—there was presence. Awareness. It was like standing before a mirror that reflected not your face, but your soul.

Warging, such a strange feeling… but gods I love magic.

I thought of the old stories, the ones Luwin dismissed, and the First Men whispered in the long nights. Wargs. Skinchangers. The blood of the wolf in the blood of the man. In the tales, they had been feared and revered. And here I was, looking into eyes that knew me, and wondering how far the line blurred.

If I could master that bond… if I could see through Ghost’s eyes, feel what he felt, hunt when he hunted… the implications were enormous. Scouting. Communication. Even battle. The battlefield advantage alone—eyes that never blinked, that didn’t need light or language. And in the far North, beyond the Wall, it might be the difference between life and death. here 

But it was more than utility. I thought of the old tales of Bloodraven—the old sorcerer-knight who had once sat the Iron Throne has the hand of the king, who had vanished beyond the Wall and whispered into the minds of men through ravens and trees. But not me, years of trying and no contact. They said he had a thousand eyes and one, that he saw through the weirwoods and dreamed in roots and snow. If even half the tales were true, then perhaps the path was not closed to me either.

If he had done it—if he had bound mind and beast, root and blood, to the pulse of the living world—then why not me? I wanted to do magic dammit! Not just the passive dragon dreams I received ever more frequently.

I didn’t need a thousand eyes. A few might be enough. Ghost’s and few ravens. The eyes of the wolf, the hunter, the survivor. Eyes in the sky that watched where mine could not, saw over hills and across rivers.

The North was deep and dark and vast. If I could master what stirred between us…

I had tried before.

When I was younger, I read the old stories in secret. I whispered to the godswood trees, stared into the eyes of crows until my vision blurred. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something beyond myself—some great current of thought or presence. Nothing happened.

Not until now.

Maybe I had needed Ghost. Maybe that was the missing key. It wasn’t just any animal. A direwolf was different—older, closer to the old gods than any hound or hawk. The bond between a Stark and their direwolf was sacred. And every Stark with one… eventually felt it.

Robb talked in his sleep sometimes, voice low and strange, and Grey Wind would whine as if hearing something only they shared. Even little Bran sometimes spoke of dreams where he ran on four legs. We were all changing, slowly.

And now, so was I.

That thought stayed with me as I dressed. That—and the burn of fire in my veins.

But it was more than utility. It felt like a truth I had always known, long before Jon Snow was reborn into this world. A whisper in the blood. A tether between souls. I didn’t just want to explore that path—I needed to.

"You're not just a pup, are you?" I murmured. Ghost only blinked, then pressed closer. We stayed like that a long moment. Quiet. Connected. As if two hearts beat in rhythm.

I stood at last, slowly. The fire in my dream might have been ancient, but the fire in my blood was very much alive. slowly. I scratched behind his ears, murmuring soft nonsense to him. Ghost was a comfort I hadn’t known I needed.

I thought about the past two months as I dressed. The South had moved slowly. Robb, Bran and I had ridden to the execution of the Night's Watch deserter ourselves, and I’d recognized the man immediately. Will, one of the three rangers Waymar Royce had taken into the forest.

When Lord Stark pressed him, cold steel at his throat and Ser Rodrik scowling nearby, he spilled everything.

I had interrupted. I couldn’t help it. When he started describing the cold, the silence, the way the Walker's eyes glowed like blue suns—I stepped forward and asked questions myself. Lord Stark frowned at that, but didn’t stop me. Will described Waymar Royce standing proud, sword drawn, as the Walker approached—how the blade had shattered like glass with a single touch. He spoke of the others in the trees, watching with pale, inhuman faces, and the way they moved—like smoke, or shadows on ice.

Ned had listened, grave and unmoved, but I saw it—something flickered behind his eyes. Doubt. Not in the story, but in what to do with it. No one said the word 'truth,' but the possibility hung in the air like breath on a cold morning.

No one did.

But I watched how Luwin’s hands tightened. How Ser Rodrik frowned deeper than usual.

They dismissed it out loud, but I had planted something. A seed. It would grow.

Eventually.

 

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She stood in the corridor like a statue carved from bitterness.

Catelyn Stark’s gaze was cold and pale as hoarfrost. Her hands were folded neatly at her waist, fingers tight against the fabric of her gown. Behind her, the sunlight bled through a tall window, casting a long shadow over the stone floor. It might have been poetic, if it didn’t feel like a blade across my throat.

She was beautiful—undeniably so— hers was a beauty that carried weight. A woman shaped by five children and northern winters. Her hips were wide, her waist full beneath the folds of her heavy gown, her figure matronly but stately. Her heavy breasts, though modestly bound, pressed tight beneath the embroidered fabric. She moved with the calm authority of someone used to being listened to, and obeyed.

Her hair was a deep crimson red. It framed her face in a cascade of braids and coils, pinned precisely in the Tully southern fashion. In the right light, it gleamed like flame—and this morning, it seemed to smolder.

Ned is a lucky man…

Her eyes, though, held no warmth for me. They were like polished river stones: blue-gray, hard with judgment. They flicked over me now, from the clasp at my collar—wolf’s head steel, cast in my own forge—to my hands, calloused and ink-stained from accounts and diagrams. I wasn’t just a boy anymore. Not just a bastard. And that disturbed her more than I could guess.

"Snow," she said, and the title tasted sour in her mouth. I didn’t miss it.

"Lady Stark," I replied evenly.

We stood there for a breath too long.

Her voice was smooth but tight. "Your secretary is looking for you. He said it was urgent."

"Thank you," I said.

"Do not make him wait."

With that, she turned on her heel, skirts whispering against the stone, and disappeared down the hall.

I didn’t hate her. But I could no longer afford to care what she thought of me.

 

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Wintertown was alive.

Where once it had been a scatter of timber huts and old stones nestled in the shadow of Winterfell’s walls, now it was swarming with people. Wide avenues of packed earth, slowly being replaced by stone, wove between sturdy longhouses, smoke curling from hundreds of chimneys. Children ran, dogs barked, and smiths sang over the clamor of hammer and anvil.

Banners fluttered above storehouses and guild halls—House Stark’s grey direwolf flew above more than just guild halls and storehouses now. The town was pushing at the walls of Winterfell like a wave at a breakwater. Whole streets had been widened and lined with flat river stones from the White Knife's many fords. The once-scattered huts had given way to rows of longhouses, workshops, and alehouses, each competing for space and sound. Soot-blackened chimneys rose into the cold air like the masts of ships in a crowded harbor, and the scent of fresh bread mingled with smoke, pitch, and manure.

Fisherwives called out their morning catch from shaded stalls, their baskets lined with river trout and knuckled crabs. Potboys darted between booths with pails of stew for the workers, and dogs nosed at the refuse in gutters still lined with frost. The grocers had started using waxed parchment instead of cloth wraps, and foreign spices—cinnamon, pepper, even saffron—could be found if one knew where to look. There was money here now. Not just coin, but ambition. Young men from Deepwood, Barrowton, even White Harbor had come to apprentice with smiths and brewers. Traders came with them, and gossip too: of dragons across the sea, of war in Myr, and of a king finally making his slow way north.

Arren met me near the new distillery site. He was a short man, bald as an egg, with thick arms and clever eyes. His boots were caked in clay and ash.

"You missed the first pour," he said, grinning. "Still smells like boiling piss."

"Only before it’s aged. Give it a year in oak, and you’ll weep with joy."

The distillery was a broad timber and stone structure. Inside, copper stills glinted in the sunlight, and coils of tubing hung like intestines from wooden rafters.

"The mash tun’s already been filled twice," Arren said, patting the wooden barrel like a child. "In a few days, we’ll have enough to bottle."

"And how much do you think a bottle will fetch in King’s Landing?"

He grinned. "A golden dragon for a good cask. More, if the southrons develop a taste for northern fire. And ships can carry dozens of barrels. Hundreds."

"So it becomes the new fur trade of the north."

"Better. Less fleas."

We laughed, and I leaned against the doorframe, watching as the first workers filtered in with sacks of malt and firewood. The wind carried the scent of yeast and smoke.

Whiskey. That word alone had stirred both skepticism and excitement in the older lords. The drink itself was not new—there had always been crude barley liquor and harsh northern grain brews—but this was something else. This was craft, refinement, science.

We were pioneering a new process. I had spent long hours poring over texts from the Citadel, scribbled fragments from old Rhoynish traders and Volantene alchemists, and even one dubious Pentoshi journal on spirit purification, seeing what was possible and trying to figure out how it was done on earth with half remembered memories of diagrams and Wikipedia. What we had now was a copper pot still with a coiled condenser, cooled through flowing springwater in a stone trench we’d dug ourselves. The setup gleamed like polished bronze, the still bellied like a cauldron, capturing and refining each drop of the clear spirit. Firewood fed the furnace beneath, and the mash fermented in great oaken tubs—yeast-fed, warm and pungent.

The first run was always rough, too high in impurities, but the second and third distillations? Clean. Fiery. Pure. I didn’t like it, but the lords loved it.

Once drawn, the liquid would be aged in oak casks—seasoned from the old logging groves west of Barrowton, the wood burnt slightly to open its pores. The barrels would sit in underground vaults—cool, consistent, shielded from the wild swings of northern weather. There, over seasons, the sharp edge of the spirit would soften, take on hints of wood, smoke, and time.

"Eventually," I had told Arren, "we’ll distill to nearly pure spirit. It won’t just be for drinking. Imagine medicine—true antiseptics, tinctures, balms. A battlefield salve cleaner than anything maesters can boil."

He had blinked at me like I’d spoken in Yitish, “antiseptic?” I heard him mumbling, then just nodded, grinning his sly brewer’s grin. "And maybe even light a fire with a single drop."

Yes. That too. Northern fire. For healing. For war. For gold. I liked gold, a little too much maybe. This venture—the whiskey trade—was mine. Not the Starks’, not Winterfell’s. While the Blackworks and the foundries belonged to the house, tied by name and legacy, the distillery had been chartered in my own name, with land granted and cleared beyond the jurisdiction of the castle proper. A personal holding. My own risk, my own gold, and, soon, my own profit. That meant something in the North, where names were carved not just in stone, but in what you built and kept. With whiskey, I could fund projects without asking leave. I could hire men, make trade contacts, and wield a kind of quiet independence most bastards only dreamed of.

The wind carried the scent of yeast and smoke.

From the street below, a burst of raucous laughter echoed.

I turned.

There he was.

Theon Greyjoy swaggered out of a brothel with a girl on each arm, tunic half-buttoned and eyes full of wine and pride. His belt hung crooked, and he looked pleased with himself, like a rooster after the storm.

"Jon!" he called, waving. "Don’t tell your father, aye? I was only inspecting the foundation."

"Of her virtue?"

He roared with laughter, one of the girls rolling her eyes and slipping inside.

He eyed the distillery behind me and whistled a hundred copper pots inside. "You planning to drown the whole Southron nobility?"

"Just warm their bellies. Fill our coffers."

He clapped me on the back. "Well, here’s to that. Gods help us if you ever take a wife—she’ll wake to the scent of grain and boiled barley for the rest of her days."

I smiled faintly, but my mind was already elsewhere. The construction, the shipment schedules, the next trial batch of barley from Deepwood Motte…

Theon’s laughter faded behind me as I glanced south, toward the rolling hills beyond Winterfell's walls. "The king’s party is close—last I heard, they’re near Castle Cerwyn. Not far at all."

Theon’s face tightened for a moment. "About time. The North’s been waiting for months. Rumors say the king’s entourage is bigger than anyone expected—knights, lords, even some southern sell-swords. Could bring trouble."

"Trouble’s always near," I said with a shrug.

He shook his head, stepping closer. "You should have a woman, Jon. It might steady you—give you something more than ledgers and laws to think about."

I laughed dryly. "The kind of women you talk about come with many gifts, Theon. Disease is the most common."

He chuckled. "You’re impossible."

We fell silent, watching the distant smoke curl from the chimneys of Wintertown, the heartbeat of the North growing louder with every step the king’s party took toward us.

Theon Greyjoy. A friend, if you could call him that. We’ve known each other long enough—grown up in the same halls, crossed paths in battles and feasts. But there’s always been a distance between us, a line drawn in shadows and silence.

Robb trusts him. Closer than I ever was. Theon’s quick with a joke, a smile, easy in the company of others. But I see what lies beneath—that restless edge, the flicker of something unsteady in his eyes. A hunger for belonging, or maybe just escape.

I don’t trust him. Not fully. Not like I trust Ghost at my side or Seren with my coin. Theon wants to belong. I see it in the way he carries himself—half a boy trying to stand like a man, half a man still searching for a home. It’s the hunger behind his bravado, the way he laughs too loud in crowded halls, like he’s trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.

He’s caught between two worlds. Born a Greyjoy, raised a Stark ward, torn between the cold iron of the sea and the solid stone of Winterfell. His father, Balon, has never truly accepted him—not as a son. Theon craves something more, some shred of approval that might fill the emptiness left by his father’s cold gaze.

That longing… it’s a dangerous thing. It made him vulnerable, made the path to betrayal seem like the only way to grasp the belonging he so desperately seeks. But it wasn’t inevitable. Betrayal isn’t a shadow that looms over a man’s fate—it’s a choice.

Theon chose to betray us, yes. But maybe he did so because no one ever gave him a real chance to be loyal. Maybe if he’d felt truly welcomed... I don’t excuse what he did and it's always hard to have him close knowing what might happen, but maybe, just maybe, Theon could be useful for my plans.

 

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Robb was waiting in the courtyard, dressed for training.

Steel glinted on his shoulders, not quite lordly plate but something more than the simple brigandine he wore last year. His new sword belt was dyed Stark grey, and the hilt of his longsword bore the mark of the direwolf in silver, small luxuries that were ever more common for us. A small fluffy ball stood beside him, tail twitching, muzzle wet with fresh snow. He had grown even larger.

Robb has always been my truest brother. He never called me Snow unless we were joking. Never reminded me of my place. If anything, he forgot it more often than I did.

When we were boys, he used to share everything. His food, his dreams, his bruises. We bled together in the yard and stole cakes from the kitchens and dared each other to climb the highest spires in the dark. When he cried the night Mother scolded him for calling me his brother in front of her kin, I knew he meant it.

We learned to fight side by side. Laughed the first time we saw girls in the village bathing and ran until our lungs burned. He was always the bold one. I was the quiet watcher. But it worked. Like two blades crossing, neither dulling the other.

"You’re late," Robb said, grinning.

"You’re early," I countered.

We met with a clasp of forearms, firm and warm. The cold never quite touched us in that way—not when we stood together.

"I thought you might have vanished into the Blackworks again," Robb said, stepping back. "Or buried yourself in your barrels of Northern fire!"

"It’s whiskey," I corrected. Wonder if they are ever going to call it that… "And I don’t drink the product! The barrels of it may just keep Winterfell solvent this winter."

"And drunk."

"That too."

He laughed, motioning me toward the covered archway where the squires usually gathered. A fire crackled nearby, fed with dry spruce and oak. It scented the air with something almost sweet.

For a moment, we stood in silence, watching the yard. Bran was taking bow lessons again, his stance too narrow. Arya, gods help her, was mimicking a stablehand's sword swings with a stick, fiercely ignoring the sewing mistress’s calls. I felt a strange pang in my chest—not quite nostalgia, not quite dread.

"They’ll all be here tomorrow," Robb said, softly.

"Aye. King Robert. The queen. Half the court."

He didn’t need to say more. The idea was enormous. And dangerous.

Robb shifted his weight. "Do you remember when we used to race down the west wall, barefoot, even in winter?"

"You always beat me."

"You let me win."

I smiled. He remembered.

"But it’s not a game now," he said. "Father’s asked me to stand beside him when the king arrives. Speak with the southern knights. Host the prince."

I glanced at him. "You’ll do well, Robb, there is no need to feel nervous."

He shrugged, the movement oddly tight across his shoulders. "I’m not sure I want to. At least not like this. The queen—Lannister. Everyone says she’ll be watching for signs of weakness. That the boy, Joffrey… there are rumors from the merchants. Proud and cruel."

"Just be polite and show a bit of deference, keep their pride inflated and nothing will happen."

He turned to me then. "You speak like you're not one of us. Like you're already watching from the shadows."

"Aren’t I?"

Robb’s brow furrowed. He was trying to say something—carefully, maybe even kindly—but there was steel beneath it.

"You've built something," he said. "This... trade, your workers, your accounts. The Blackworks, the whiskey, even the damn new ravencotes. You're not just Jon Snow anymore. You're someone important, father wants you to be there tomorrow, after Bran, or Rickon if mother can get him to stay still for a bit"

"For fucks sake, do I really have to? You may call me brother, but the southerners are more uptight when it comes to bastards."

He didn’t deny it. “Mother will be furious too, but it is what father wants.”

"You're the one they’ll look to when the time comes, Robb. I'm not trying to take anything. I just want to build something that’s mine."

"I know that," he said quickly. "Truly, I do. I just…"

He looked away. Grey Wind huffed and pressed his head against his thigh.

"I don’t want us to drift apart. We’re brothers."

"As much as we can be."

"No." His voice was hard now. "Exactly that. No less."

I looked at him, truly looked. At the young man he was becoming. At the echo of our father’s face shaping itself in his even through his Tully colors, the weight of leadership beginning to settle on his shoulders.

"Robb," I said. "No matter what happens, I’m with you. Always. But we both know the world won’t treat us the same."

He nodded, slowly. "It should."

"But it won’t, not unless I make it." Just wait cousin, just you wait, and we will change the world together.

He exhaled through his nose. "When I’m Lord of Winterfell—"

"If." It was a little joke between us, me usurping him. Catelyn didn’t like it very much.

"When," he said, more firmly now, eyes full of mirth. "When I am, I’ll find a place for you. A real one. Not just steward of spirits or master of ink. Moat Cailin or maybe Lord of the Blackworks, if you like the sound of it."

I shook my head, smiling. "‘Lord of Steel.’ Has a ring to it."

We stood in silence again, brothers born in different fates.

A raven cawed flying from the rookery tower. I saw it in his face, he had an idea, probably a dumb one…

"You have that face again, what are you planning?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing you wouldn't aprove of."

“You are an idiot you know that.” What did I do to deserve such a loyal brother I will never know, but Robb kept surprising me every day.

“And the queen?” I asked, half-joking.
He paused. “I’ll try not to look at her too much.”
We laughed.

Beneath it, I felt the truth. The game was already drawing us in.

He’s my brother.
And I’ll hold the line with him.

Until the game swallows us both.

Chapter 3: Chapter 3 — The King’s Arrival

Chapter 3 - The King’s Arrival

 

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The morning sky in the North is the color of smoke, pale grey and veined with streaks of cold blue. Above the towering ramparts of Winterfell, banners flutter in the brisk northern wind—wolves on grey, the dire sigil of House Stark, sewn freshly and hung high. Snow still clings in patches to the battlements and the rooftops, but the worst of winter’s breath has faded into the memory of the long night. Now, the stones of Winterfell hum with preparation and purpose.

Courtiers, grooms, cooks, and soldiers move through the bailey like threads in a loom, each pulling their weight in anticipation of the king’s arrival. The scent of roasting boar, pinewood smoke, and freshly turned earth fills the air. I overheard Old Nan muttering about omens and kings under dark skies, but even she keeps herself busy with a broom and a curt tongue for any who get in her way.

Stalls have been set up just beyond the inner gates. Vendors from White Harbor and the barrow towns came early, hawking sweets, iron trinkets, and dyed fabrics to the swelling crowd. Farmers from the surrounding lands stand with caps in hand. Free riders and smallfolk line the roads, eager for a glimpse of southern finery. Laughter and gossip mingle with the nervous beat of hooves on stone.

But not everyone is celebrating.

I watch from a narrow ledge high atop the First Keep. The wind tugs at my cloak, snapping it behind me like a torn shadow. Beneath me, the ancient fortress stretches out in measured lines, stone and frost and steel. I watch it all—every movement, every flicker of change—with quiet detachment.

Winterfell is so beautiful.

The Blackworks’ ravencotes are silent for once. My men are down in the yard or among the traders, having a day off. And still, I can't shake the weight in my chest.

Winterfell has grown. The meadery is larger now, the stores better stocked. There are new stone paths, new walls, repairs underway. Ned finally talked to me about repairing the broken tower after two years of nagging him. But this moment—the king approaching—means something else. A turn in the wheel.

I glance left.

On the other side of the courtyard, Bran is perched on a merlon, too young to understand the full stakes of claiming the wall and looking out. His eyes scan the treeline to the south. Looking for a crown. I envy him, in a way—he is ignorant of what comes with the king.

A few minutes later, we are all in the courtyard by the gate. We are dressed in our finest—Lord Stark in black wool trimmed with silver thread and his greatcloak clasped by the direwolf of House Stark, stoic as ever; Robb in a dark blue tunic with grey stitching, his sword at his side, eager and proud; Sansa in a flowing dress of deep forest green and soft cream, her hair in elegant northern braids adorned with tiny silver bells; Arya fidgeting in a simple grey dress she clearly despises, boots peeking out from under the hem. Even Rickon wears a small wool surcoat with a pup-sized direwolf stitched on the chest. Only I wear black—not by tradition but by choice, the leather and wool fitted to my frame like a second skin and a black coat over it. Hopefully, they won't notice that the band holding my hair in a bun is red. We cut a solemn, strong line against the cold stone of the gatehouse.

Then I hear it: the horns.

Three long blasts. The sound echoes across the fields and halls, rising like the howl of some ancient beast.

The gates open.

And through them comes the King's party.

First ride the outriders—lean men in fine mail, their banners snapping gold and crimson. Lannister colors. Then come the guards in Baratheon black and gold, their antlered helms glinting in the light. Tall destriers paw at the earth, kicking up dust. The king's household knights follow, armor polished to a sheen, many bearing proud sigils from the Crownlands, the Stormlands, and the Reach.

Then comes the royal wheelhouse, drawn by eight heavy horses, gold-framed and immense. It bears the queen and her children, the curtains drawn.

But all eyes turn to the rider at the head of the procession.

King Robert Baratheon.

He rides a massive black courser, its coat as dark as jet and its breath steaming in the cold. Robert himself is even larger—broad of chest, thick of neck, his beard gone mostly to grey. A velvet mantle of blue and gold drapes his shoulders, but it’s the hammer strapped to his saddle that draws murmurs from the men. He is too fat to swing it.

Robert is laughing as he enters, deep and booming. His eyes sweep the crowd with familiarity and hunger. The kind of man who measures the worth of a place by the meat on the spit and the firmness of a handshake.

"Winterfell!" he shouts, pulling back on his reins.

A roar answers him. The people cheer, though not all smiles are genuine. We all kneel. Gods I hate this, this butcher celebrated the death of my baby siblings and here I am kneeling.

As the king greets Ned my eyes are elsewhere. Cersei Lannister is like a painting come to life, flawless. She stuns the eye so completely that for a moment, all thought in my head quiet. I’ve seen beauty before, even grace, but never like this. Hers is the kind that turns heads in every hall and leaves silence in its wake. She carries herself not like a queen by marriage, but by right. There is steel behind the silk, something sharp behind those eyes. I feel it at once. She is not a woman to be underestimated. But beauty can be a kind of armor—and sometimes, a weapon. I remind myself to be wary.

Jaime Lannister is no less striking, though in a different way. The golden twin, they call him, and it’s not wrong. He looks as if he belongs in the Seven’s own court—tall, an arrogant look, blinding in the sun. Yet under the charm and polish, I see something else: a killer’s ease, a predator's grace. His every movement is practiced, deliberate, deceptively casual. He’s the kind of man who smiles as he sizes you up, who wields arrogance like a sword and expects you to admire it. And the worst part is—it’s hard not to. He’s beautiful, and he knows it.

Joffrey, though... Joffrey is the rot beneath the rose. Golden hair, fine clothes, the posture of a prince—but there’s something brittle in him. Something mean. His smile is all edges, and his gaze lingers too long on Sansa. He looks at Winterfell as if it’s beneath him, as if he’s doing the North a favor by gracing it with his presence. I feel the urge to warn Robb, or Bran, or even Arya. But the boy is still just that—a boy. Spoiled, soft-handed, and cruel in ways he hasn’t yet been made to pay for. That will be a problem. Soon. Very soon.

Finally it is my turn to greet the king. His gaze stops on me for a second and I feel like my hearth stops.

I bow low. “Your Grace.”

"So this is the Steel Stark mm? Gods, boy, Jon kept nagging with copper counting because of you, aren’t you a bit too pretty to be Neds lad?"

I keep my face still, but my lips twitch.

“It comes from my mother, I am sure, Your Grace." Like my Father actually, my real Father. "Looking at Lord Stark... well, it's obvious, isn't it?”

Robert laughs and steps forward. “Seven hells, look at you! They told me you’d turned to steel in the north, and I’ll be buggered if it isn’t true. Steel Stark, is it? That what they call you now?”

“A jest, Your Grace. Nothing more.”

Robert’s grin widens. “Well, jest or not, I like it. Every king needs steel. And it seems I have been buying from you!” He quickly loses interest after that and demands to visit the crypts. My Mothers bones, she hated you.

The crowd watches, whispers passing like wind through dry leaves.

I stand straight, eyes calm. Inside, I’m measuring the distance between the courtiers and the guards, between myself and the wheelhouse. Already, the game has begun.

I bow once more and step back beside Robb, who looks at me with a half-grin and something that might’ve been pride.

 

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Winterfell’s Great Hall had always loomed in my mind as the heart of the North — vast, solemn, unchanging. But that night, with banners raised and candles blazing, it felt like something else entirely. Not just the seat of House Stark, but a stage. And every soul within it, a player in a game I had only just begun to understand.

Servants moved swiftly between tables, polishing silver, laying trenchers, and lighting more candles than I’d ever seen gathered in one place. The scent of roasted meats already hung in the air, spiced with cloves and smoke from the roaring hearths. I stood near one of the carved pillars along the side of the hall, clad in black, as always. While Eddard managed to get me with them outside, the feast wasn’t his realm to rule and even my best tunic couldn’t hide what Catelyn saw me as. Bastard. Outsider. Observer.

My eyes moved across the room. Lords and ladies of the North took their places — Manderlys from White Harbor, Glovers from Deepwood Motte, the dour men from Last Hearth. Theon Greyjoy lounged at the far end of one table, laughing too loudly at something no one else found amusing. Typical.

But it was Catelyn Stark who drew my gaze, even as I wished she wouldn’t.

She sat at the high table beside Robb, her posture flawless, her smile measured. She looked past me several times without ever truly seeing me. Not tonight. Her civility was like ice — smooth, cold, and sharp beneath the surface. She said nothing, did nothing. And still, her silence pressed harder than any insult.

Robb sat proudly to her side. He looked older in his new tunic, more lord than boy. His back was straight, shoulders squared, but I could see the tension in the way he clasped his hands behind him, the way his heel tapped against the stone floor. He was nervous. I would have been too. The King was coming.

When the doors opened, all conversation ceased. The herald’s voice thundered through the hall:

“All rise for His Grace, Robert of House Baratheon, First of His Name—”

The words went on — titles, victories, gods — but Robert Baratheon barely waited for them to finish. He entered with the presence of a storm, broad-shouldered and bearded, every step heavy with the weight of rule and wine. He laughed as he walked, already reaching for Robb before the boy had fully bowed.

Behind the King came the rest of his entourage — Queen Cersei in emeralds and scorn, Jaime Lannister like a golden blade beside her,  Prince Joffrey trailing behind with charm in his eyes. And then, shorter than them all but with a presence of his own, came Tyrion.

He didn’t strut like his brother, didn’t smirk like Theon. He walked with quiet purpose, eyes darting about with a curiosity I recognized. He saw everything — including me. Our eyes met for half a breath.

After the king had been seated, and wine poured into goblets of polished gold, I made my way to the lower end of the table, among the lesser lords and southern knights. Not my true place, but close enough to see, to listen.

I wasn’t expecting much company, but Tyrion Lannister claimed the seat across from mine with the air of a man who feared neither judgment nor gossip. He settled in like he owned the table, goblet in hand, eyes already dancing with amusement.

“You must be the Bastard of Winterfell,” he said, studying me with those mismatched eyes. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Snow.”

“And you must be the Imp of Casterly Rock,” I replied, voice even. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you too.”

He raised his goblet in salute. “So many names, so little wine. Gods, we ought to start a club for misfits and monsters. Do bastards in the North read, or do you just… design?”

I smirked. “We have eyes. And books. Some of us even use them.”

That earned a bark of laughter. “A sharp tongue! Excellent. I’d feared all you Starks would be brooding wolves, staring into fires and muttering about honor.”

“I do that too,” I said. “Just with a book in one hand.”

His brow rose. “And what do you read, Snow? Tales of knights and monsters? Old families’ histories you’ll never be part of?”

“Stars,” I said simply. Those requests from Casterly Rock must have been his.

That caught him. His expression shifted from amusement to interest. “Stars, is it? Now that’s a surprise. A bastard astronomer. I may faint. I read about your little invention… you called it… a telescope?”

“A bigger, more complex Myrish eyeglass, really,” I said. “With mirrors and calibrated lenses. Not a toy for sailors, this one sees past the clouds.”

His eyes sparkled. “I had one made in Casterly Rock after hearing the rumors. Cost a fortune and half my pride convincing the smiths it wouldn’t explode. But when I saw the Father and his little daughters dancing around him—” He exhaled, the memory clear in his gaze. “—who would’ve thought other planets have moons?”

“Humanity takes itself too seriously,” I said. “Some still think everything revolves around our world. Some even say the world is flat. Despite all evidence to the contrary.”

“Ah, yes,” Tyrion muttered. “The sort who think dragons are a hoax and think thinking is treason.”

“Exactly. I figure if the stars are suns, then maybe other suns have planets too. Why not? Why should this world be special?”

“Like you wouldn’t know what being special is, bastard. You have a mind and most don’t.” He really likes to smirk, doesn’t he?

“Touché” I said.

He sipped his wine; eyes locked on mine. “And what does your sightings in the skies tell you, Jon Snow?”

“There’s order, sure,” I said. “Mathematical, even. But meaning… meaning’s harder. Maybe we see it because we want to. Maybe we’re just apes with stories, trying to make sense of the dark.”

Tyrion leaned forward, wine forgotten. “You sound like a philosopher, Jon Snow.”

“Maybe I’m just a lonely boy with a telescope and too much time. Or I am as bored as you are.”

Tyrion let out a wheezing laugh. “Touché.” He narrowed his eyes. “What in all the Seven Hells does ‘touché’ mean anyway? You lot in the North inventing words to confuse us civilized folk?”

Dammit… I can’t slip up like this. I smirked. “It’s old tong slang. Sort of. It means ‘hit,’ or more precisely, ‘you got me there.’ Like conceding a point in a duel of wits.”

“Ah,” he said, grinning. “Leave it to a bastard astronomer to fence with words.”

“Touché again,” I said, raising my brows.

He clinked his cup against mine. “Now you’re just showing off.”

We sipped in companionable silence a moment. Around us, laughter and music filled the hall, but I barely heard it.

“No,” he said, and his voice softened. “You’re not just a lonely boy. Your gaze is too sharp. Too hungry. He tapped his fingers on the rim of his goblet. “Tell me, Jon. Do you believe the stars tell the future?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. “No. But they might tell something. About time. About cycles. About how little we are. They were here before us. They’ll burn long after we’re dust.”

“Beautifully said,” he mused. “And yet people prefer flames in a bowl and robed fanatics whispering doom.”

“Because stories feel safer than silence,” I said. “People want purpose more than truth.”

“That, my dear bastard, is both cynical and poetic.” He smirked. “Touché, I believe.”

“You’re learning,” I said with a grin.

“And just like that, the North corrupts the South,” he muttered, pouring himself more wine.

“Give it time, and we’ll have you wrapped in furs and naming your direwolf.”

“I was thinking more a shadowcat,” he replied, “less loyalty, more teeth.”

I laughed. “Then you’re already halfway there.”

“Ah,” Tyrion said with a grin, raising his cup. “to find a man after my own heart in this cold land. Heresy in the sept, madness in the Citadel. You’d get along splendidly with the alchemists of Qarth.”

“Warlocks,” I corrected, smirking. He knew that. Just another test, another baited hook. “I doubt they’d take a Northman seriously.”

“No one takes them seriously. But if you survive them, you leave with knowledge. And bit mad probably.”

“Doesn’t knowledge always burn a little?” I asked.

He laughed at that. “And most lords think books will bite them!”

I tilted my head. “Too many swords, too few books I say.”

“It’s their lose at the end, they would believe anything,” he said. “Just as they want to believe a Lannister is made of gold or a Stark is carved from snow and sorrow.”

“That’s what stories are for,” I murmured.

“To lie beautifully,” Tyrion replied. “And perhaps… to reach truth by accident.”

We sat in silence a moment, letting that hang between us. Around us, laughter and music filled the hall, but I barely heard it.

“After watching the skies with your contraption I have found myself thinking about this a lot, I might as well bring it up to the source of my troubles.” He tapped his fingers on the rim of his goblet. “Tell me, Jon. Do you think there’s life beyond this world?”

I blinked. “Do you?”

“I do,” he said. “If as you say worlds are going around other stars. Thousands of stars. Millions of worlds. Why would this one be special?”

“I’ve wondered the same,” I said. “But if there is life out there… why haven’t they found us?”

“Maybe they have,” Tyrion said, eyes glinting. “And they looked, and turned away.”

We both looked over as Theon tripped over his own feet, sending a tray of bread tumbling.

“Tell me that’s not a Greyjoy,” Tyrion said, squinting. He snorted. “If there’s intelligent life out there, they’re steering clear of him.”

We laughed, and a beat passed.

He gave me a long look, and his voice lowered. “Let me give you some advice, Jon Snow.”

I arched a brow. “Oh?”

“Oh yes,” he said, draining his goblet. “Bastards with minds are always dangerous. Because you have nothing to lose, and no reason to believe the world is as it claims to be. Don’t let them drag you down. Don’t let them belittle you into silence. You’re a bastard—wear it like armor, and no one will be able to hurt you.”

I studied him a long moment. “You speak from experience.”

He raised an eyebrow. “All dwarfs are bastards in the eyes of their fathers.”

“Touché,” I said, quietly.

This time, he didn’t laugh. He only nodded, as if the word had never meant more.

We talked most of the night — about the Valyrian star charts, the ancient cosmology of Yi Ti, and a comet Tyrion claimed his uncle Gerion saw during a trip in the Stepstones. I found myself forgetting the cold edge of the hall, the judgmental glances. With Tyrion, there were no masks. Just wit, and a hunger for knowledge that mirrored my own. A dwarf and a bastard wondering about the world.

Later, Robb stood and raised a toast. His voice carried over the hall, clear and strong, and for a moment, everyone looked at him not as a boy, but as the heir to Winterfell. Even Catelyn’s expression softened. She placed a hand on his arm, pride flickering through her usual restraint. I clapped and cheered with the rest.

If only the Queen stopped glaring at the King, well... he could take his hand out of that serving girl’s clothes too.

 

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The hall had emptied slowly, like a tide pulling back from shore. Laughter dimmed. The king had drunk deep, clapped Robb’s shoulder, kissed Catelyn’s cheek, and finally staggered away to his chambers, flanked by Ser Barristan and two Lannister guards. The fire crackled in the hearth. Trays of half-eaten meat and spilled wine sat forgotten. What remained were whispers, and those with reason to linger in them.

I stood by the pillar nearest the musicians’ corner. A bard plucked gently at a lute, slow and deliberate. Not the riotous songs from earlier, but something older. Northern, though his voice held no chill.

“You’ve stayed late,” I said, not looking at him.

“So have you,” the bard replied, fingers dancing across the strings. His voice was rough and charismatic.

“Most bards prefer coin to cold,” I said, then turned. “But you strike me as someone who’s learned to survive in both.”

A faint smile ghosted his lips. “I go where the wind carries me.”

“North wind, lately,” I said.

His hands paused on the strings for just a beat. “Aye. It carries interesting tales. Of bastards with long shadows. Of crows that speak in riddles.”

“And kings,” I said. “On both sides of the Wall.”

A silence bloomed between us. The fire popped. He stared at me.

“You know who I am,” he said eventually. It wasn’t a question.

Please don’t run, you would ruin everything.

 He started playing a harp. A slow song that spoke to me of grief.

“I have a guess,” I said, voice low. “You play well, bard.” Giving him a lifeline.

He looked at me, really looked. “And what does the Bastard of Winterfell want with a man who sings songs?”

I stepped closer. “I want what you want. Survival. Something better than endless blood in the snow.”

“That’s a dream,” he said. “And dreams die fast in winter.”

“Not all dreams,” I said. “Not if someone plants them deep. Not if they burn.”

He exhaled through his nose. “You’ve fire in you, lad. I can feel it. But fire burns both ways.”

I nodded. “Then we’ll have to choose our paths carefully.”

He strummed a final, low chord. The song ended, but the silence remained.

“Why not reveal me?” he asked. “You could earn favor. Prove your loyalty.”

 “Or maybe I’m waiting to see if you're worth the silence.” I said.

His smile returned, sharper this time. “You want something.”

“Just a word, when the cold comes don’t fight the wrong people, there is only one enemy.” I tried to give gravitas to the statement, and I believe he understood. Hopefully it will be enough.

He stood, lute in hand and harp slung over one shoulder, and dipped his head slightly. “When the winds shift, Snow… I will remember this night.”

Gods, that was the most cryptic talk of my life...

He walked away without another word, vanishing through the arch like just another minstrel. He was never seen in Winterfell again.

 

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The clang of swords and the rhythmic thud of boots echoed through the Winterfell yard. The air was crisp, edged with the sharp bite of the northern wind, but sweat beaded on my brow as I parried Robb’s latest strike.

"You're holding back," he grunted, pushing against my blade.

"Maybe," I said with a smirk, twisting to disengage and step aside. "Or maybe you’re just slow."

Robb laughed, catching his breath. "You're lucky I like you, Snow."

We had been at it for a while now. But we weren’t alone long. The doors to the yard creaked open, and Jaime Lannister stepped through like a golden lion in a den of wolves. His armor glinted in the low northern sun, each step precise, rehearsed, confident. Several guards trailed him, and just behind, Tyrion walked in, a goblet already in hand. A few nobles loitered above, watching from the ramparts.

"Practicing, boys?" Jaime asked, resting one hand on the pommel of his sword. His gaze swept over us lazily, but lingered on me a moment too long. "Or playing?"

Robb straightened. "Would you care to find out, Ser Jaime?"

Jaime chuckled, stepping forward. "Oh, I don't duel heirs. Not without cause." He turned his eyes to me. "But bastards? Bastards are fair game."

I stepped forward, eyes steady. "If you’d like a real match, Ser Jaime, I’d be honored."

A hush fell. The tension prickled my skin like frost. Jaime studied me, lips curling in amusement.

"You’re bold," he said. "Very well. Let’s see what the North teaches its bastards."

The crowd thickened. The king himself arrived with Lord Stark, Cersei, Catelyn, and the rest. Even the younger Stark children watched with rapt eyes. I stretched my shoulders, adjusted my grip. Longclaw wasn’t mine yet, but the sword I borrowed was well-balanced. Jaime drew his blade with a flourish, an extension of his arrogance.

We circled.

He moved with the grace of a dancer and the precision of a killer—like water flowing across stone, light-footed and unbothered by the weight of his golden armor. I’d fought men before—grizzled Karstark men with scars and broken noses, Umbers who swung swords like axes, even Rodrik Cassel himself on good days—but Jaime Lannister was something else entirely.

He didn’t fight like a knight. He fought like a man who had already decided the world would bend to him. There was an ease in his movement, a contemptuous confidence in every shift of weight, as though he already saw how I’d lose.

The yard was quiet—quieter than I’d expected. Lords and ladies, servants and stablehands, all watching. Somewhere to my right, I heard Robb mutter something under his breath. The king was laughing. Cersei looked disinterested. Tyrion looked intrigued. I only had eyes for Jaime.

He smiled as our blades met with a crisp, musical chime. I struck low—a feint—then twisted upward, aiming for his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch. With the flick of his wrist, he deflected the blow, guiding my momentum away. His counter came instantly, a circular flourish that nearly took my feet from beneath me.

I recovered fast, planting my right foot deeper, pressing in. I drove him back a pace, testing his rhythm. He gave ground easily, too easily—then pivoted. I barely tracked his movement before his blade sang past my ribs, the air sharp with its passage. Just shy of flesh. Deliberate.

“Not bad,” he murmured. His voice was smooth, amused, meant for me alone. “But predictable.”

The words weren’t meant to insult, but to measure. He wanted to see how I’d react. So I didn’t. I watched him instead.

He advanced again, faster this time—his sword weaving a pattern I didn’t recognize. I parried high, then low, and felt the tremor in my bones as steel struck steel. Sparks danced where our blades kissed. His every movement was polished, calculated. My arms began to ache. My breath came shorter.

He was toying with me.

I adjusted my stance. Lowered my center. Shifted my weight to my back foot. He feinted left, and I didn’t bite. He slashed right, and I caught it with the flat of my blade, then twisted—stepping into his reach. For a moment, just a moment, he overextended. I saw it.

I moved.

Steel grazed his shoulder—just a graze, but it was real. The crowd gasped. A dozen voices cried out. I heard Arya cheer. I saw Robb’s grin.

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “You’re full of surprises.”

His smile deepened, something behind it sharpening. And then the tempo changed.

He came at me hard, no longer playing. Fast! Too fast… His strikes were no longer flourishes—they were meant to end the fight. I parried again and again, my arms screaming with each impact. His blade blurred. He forced me back, one step, then two, then five. I ducked a horizontal slash, rolled beneath a thrust, came up swinging—but he was already pivoting, already turning my momentum against me.

Steel clanged, sparks flew. My feet slid through dust and gravel, boots scraping against the stone. My legs burned. My knuckles split.

Still I fought.

We locked blades—face to face now. His breath was steady. Mine ragged. He leaned in, golden hair clinging to his brow. He broke the lock, faster than I could react, spun his blade and struck. I blocked the blow—but the force of it jarred my wrist. My grip faltered. He didn’t miss it. He stepped inside my guard, his sword a blur—and stopped.

Cold steel kissed my throat.

We froze.

The yard was utterly silent.

His eyes met mine. Green, bright, and unreadable. Something passed between us in that breathless moment. Not mockery. Not disdain. Something else…

“Yield?” he asked softly.

I hesitated. My chest heaved. Sweat dripped into my eyes.

“Yield,” I said.

He lowered his blade.

I stepped back, sheathing my own, trying to calm my pulse. The applause was light, polite. No roar. No triumph. Just the measured clapping of nobles who hadn’t expected much and were now politely surprised I’d survived.

Jaime offered a short bow—precise, courtly, performative. I returned it.

“Thank you for the match,” I said, honest.

His smile returned, less smug this time. “It’s been a while since someone made me work for it. You have a future bastard.”

I nodded once, then turned—but not before catching the way his eyes lingered. It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t curiosity. It wasn’t even suspicion.

It was calculation.

As if he were reevaluating everything he thought he knew.

I walked back toward Robb, the pain in my shoulder flaring now that the adrenaline ebbed. But Jaime’s gaze stayed with me, hanging in the back of my mind like a question with no answer.

Curiosity? Recognition?

The crowd dispersed. The training yard emptied. But that look lingered, burned into the back of my mind like an afterimage of fire.

Notes:

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Chapter 4: Chapter 4 — Blood and Stone

The morning felt colder than it should have been.

A brittle stillness clung to the stones of Winterfell, the kind that slipped into your bones before the sun rose. Outside my window, frost clung to the wooden rails, and breath fogged the air even indoors. It was quiet.

But my mind wasn’t.

I’d known this day was coming. I’d known it for ten years.

This is it. The thought came without emotion, smooth as polished steel.
The first real fracture. The day the wolf pup falls.

Bootsteps echoed in the courtyard below—pages and squires hurrying to saddle horses, tighten straps, oil leather. The royal party was preparing to hunt, and all of Winterfell bent to accommodate them. Robert Baratheon’s laughter already boomed across the walls like thunder rolling in from the sea.

I sat by the small hearth, staring into dying embers. My hand clenched around the mug of small beer I hadn’t touched. I could go. I should go. The king had invited me personally, in his thick-chested voice, slapping me on the back like I were already one of his own bastards. A Baratheon in all but name. The man was charismatic and had a way of dragging you in.

If I go, I miss the tower. If I miss the tower, Bran falls. If Bran falls… everything spirals.

Brans fall. Joffrey’s assassination attempt. Catelyn arrests Tyrion. War comes to the Riverlands and then grows and grows.

The urge to accept was strong. A hunt with Robert Baratheon, a chance to speak, to gain ground. In another life I would have accepted.

Robb found me in the yard, arms crossed, hair still damp from the steamhouse. He looked flushed and excited, practically vibrating with purpose.

“You’re not dressing?” he asked, one brow lifting. “They’ll be leaving soon.”

I shook my head. “I pulled something in my shoulder with the kingslayer” I said, rolling it slightly, wincing. “Could do more harm if I strain it.”

Robb didn’t buy it. He studied me too well now. “That didn’t stop you when we sparred yesterday.”

“Didn’t have a royal audience watching,” I muttered.

He laughed and clapped me on the arm. “Your loss. The king’s drunk already. Might be the only time you outride him.”

I forced a smile. “I’m needed here.”

He gave me a long look, then shrugged. “Suit yourself. The king will ask after you.” He doesn’t believe me.

I nodded and watched him go, his cloak trailing behind like a banner. Behind him, Theon strutted through the gate like a rooster, bow already slung across his back. Jory Cassel followed, flanked by half a dozen Stark guards.

I waited until they disappeared into the forest, hooves crunching frost, hounds baying in the distance. The echoes faded. Winterfell sighed in their absence.

Stay in Winterfell. Stay near Bran. Be ready.

I took the long walk through the quiet halls to the tower. Maids passed me with linen and baskets, startled at seeing me. I nodded but said little, they just giggled and kept going whispering to each other. That is happening more and more lately. My boots barely made a sound.

The broken tower stairs loomed ahead.

My pulse quickened.

But no—not yet.

Arren intercepted me near the library stair, nearly colliding with me as he rounded the corner. He was, cheeks flushed from running.

“Lord Stark asked for you,” he said, panting. “In the solar. Something about the Wall.”

I stopped mid-step. The Wall? My heartbeat stuttered. I nodded once and turned toward the Great Keep, leaving the musty scent of old parchment and the comfort of dusty stone behind.

The corridors were quieter now, emptied by the preparations for the hunt. Only a few guards remained at their posts, their faces unreadable behind Northern steel. Ghost padded silently behind me, a white shadow in my wake. I paused at the solar’s heavy wooden door, hand resting on the iron handle, and drew in a breath.

Then I stepped inside.

The solar was warm with firelight. Books lined the walls, old banners hung between high-arched windows, and the heavy scent of pine smoke clung to the air. Lord Stark sat behind his massive oaken desk, his brow furrowed as he leaned over a spread of maps and aged scrolls. The yellow light caught in the strands of grey at his temples. The sun outside cast pale streaks through the lattice windows, but Ned Stark was a silhouette of solemn resolve.

Maester Luwin stood to the side, murmuring something about logistics and available transport wagons. Lord Galbart Glover was beside him, arms crossed, the red hand of his house stark against his green doublet. They were in the middle of some quiet discussion, which trailed off as I entered.

Father looked up at once.

“Jon,” he said, voice even, eyes unreadable. “Good timing.”

I stepped forward. “Lord Stark, you asked for me?”

He gestured to the parchment in front of him. “I have decided to heed your word.” His voice held no emotion—just the stark weight of duty. “I want you to draft a shipment of weapons and armor for the Night’s Watch. Take from the stocks here in Winterfell. You’ll coordinate with the steward to order replacements from the blackworks. They’ve improved in recent years.”

I blinked. My mouth parted slightly. Had I misheard?

“You’re—approving it?” I asked, the words faltering from my tongue.

He met my eyes without flinching. “I am.”

I stepped closer, heart pounding. “But… I’ve brought this before. Over a year ago. More than once.” I remembered the cold rejection, the patient nods, the polite disinterest. “You said the Watch had enough. That it wasn’t our concern. Might I ask what has changed?”

Ned Stark didn’t speak for a moment. He leaned back in his chair, fingertips steepled before him. His expression was that same stoic mask he wore at executions and in war councils, but his eyes were distant.

“You did,” he said finally. “You kept asking. You didn’t let it go.”

He reached out and tapped a finger against the map. “And I have eyes, Jon. I read the reports Luwin shows me. I see the dwindling numbers, the aging men. I have talked to Benjen recently, he brought me letters from Lord commander Mormont, the watch is struggling. I should not have needed reminding.”

Maester Luwin cleared his throat softly. “The smiths say the iron supply is strong this year. And the new apprentices are skilled—better than expected.”

“I won’t send them scraps,” Father said. “I’ve authorized new chainmail, fresh greaves, and sharpened steel. Not rust. Not cracked leather.”

Lord Glover nodded. “About bloody time. The Old Bear’s been patient, but even Mormont’s temper has limits.”

I looked down at the scrolls. The shipment was no token gesture—there were real numbers: blades, armor, tools, even three reinforced wagons of dried rice. The supplies to repair Castle Black and its elevator. It was enough to last the Watch a year, maybe more. I recognized some of the phrasing from the letters I had drafted and abandoned, buried under my mattress.

“Thank you,” I said finally, voice quiet. I swallowed, tried again. “I will start on in immediately”

My father’s gaze held mine, calm and firm. “The Wall is a duty,” he said. “We forget that at our peril. And duty, once ignored, tends to return in darker forms.”

A silence fell, heavy and old.

In the flickering firelight, his words sounded like prophecy.

I bowed my head. My hands clenched slightly at my sides, then released.

“May I oversee the inventory myself?” I asked.

“You may,” he replied.

“And I’ll pen the reply to Lord Mormont.”

“Good,” he said simply. “Let the Old Bear know Winterfell remembers.”

Something inside me cracked, quietly. I turned to go, pausing by the door.

“Father… good luck on the hunt… and be careful.” Voice cracking slightly. Gods you are a man, speak like one!

“Thank you Jon.” It was enough for now.

Not all fractures could be mended. But this one had been too delayed. It could be reforged, if not quite healed.

One fracture averted. Another waits above the tower.

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The sun dipped behind the western wall of Winterfell, throwing long shadows across the yard. The light was soft and golden, the kind poets liked to write about—the kind that didn’t belong to a day like this.

I stood in the archway near the base of the First Keep, back against the stone, pretending to watch the stablehands lead the last of the horses from the stables. Maybe I stand like this too much, aura farming has a limit. But my eyes tracked upward, past the eaves, to the ancient stones of the tower.

Any moment now.

The tower loomed above me, blackened by centuries of wind and smoke. It was quiet tonight, unusually so. The royal party was out hunting, and the court followed like hounds on a leash, leaving Winterfell hollow and half-empty. All the better.

My fingers twitched at my side.

This is it. This is where the fracture starts. This is where everything breaks.

I had replayed it a thousand times. Bran’s hand on the stone. His small boots on the crumbling ledge. His eager, innocent smile as he clambered toward the voices he shouldn’t have heard. And then—Jaime. Golden. Deadly. A blur of motion and a cold whisper: “The things I do for love.”

And Bran fell.

Unless he didn’t.

The air was still. From the far side of the yard, I saw movement—quick and nimble—making its way up the rough side of the tower. There he was. Bran. Eight years old, fearless, joy in his limbs as he climbed the stone like it was part of him.

I swallowed.

He was faster than I remembered.

Higher.

Damn it, Bran.

My boots crunched on the gravel as I stepped closer, keeping to the shadows. From above, I heard faint voices—laughter, breathless and close. A woman’s murmur. A man’s low reply. I could only catch the edges of the words, blurred by stone and wind.

They’re in position.

My heart thudded. One wrong move and I spooked them. Too late, and Bran was a criple or worse, my intervention bringing a worse outcome.

I took another step forward and craned my head upward. “Bran!” I called, voice pitched low, like a warning between brothers. “Bran, come down!”

He hesitated.

A flicker of motion caught my eye near the top of the tower. A window. A shadow pulling back from it.

I raised my voice slightly, still keeping it light. “If your mother sees you up there, she’ll tan your hide. You know how she gets when you climb near the roof!”

Bran paused, legs wrapped around a stone outcropping. He was maybe twenty feet from the window. Close—too close.

“Jon?” he called down, confused.

I stepped into the open, face tilted up to meet his. “Come down. Now. Please.”

He hesitated. He always hesitated. He loved climbing. Loved the view. The wind. The rush.

But this time… this time he listened.

“Alright,” Bran sighed, and began to descend, slower than he had climbed, sulking a little. “You sound like Septa Mordane.”

I let out a long, silent breath. My knees went weak for a moment. I didn’t move until his boots hit the grass.

He landed beside me with a soft grunt. “You never tell me to come down. You used to cheer me on.”

“I’m older now,” I said. “Wiser. Taller. More beautiful” I winked rapidly at him like a love struck Sansa.

He laughed a little. Then wrinkled his nose. “You’re not wiser. If you were you wouldn’t nag me like mother!”

I forced a smile and clapped him gently on the shoulder. “Well, maybe not. But trust me, today’s not the day to break your neck.”

Behind us, high above, a shadow moved near the tower window again. A face—pale, golden-haired, sharp-eyed—leaned out.

Jaime Lannister.

He saw me. And I saw him.

Our eyes locked.

I didn’t flinch.

Jaime’s expression didn’t change, but his head tilted slightly, just so. Then he was gone, retreating into the shadows of the tower. Another shape—slighter, but moving with urgency—followed. Cersei, no doubt.

They hadn’t expected witnesses. And now they had none.

I rested a hand on Bran’s back and guided him away from the tower. “Come on,” I said softly. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I want some late night blackberry bread.”

Bran groaned. “They always burn the bottom.”

“That just makes it better!”

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Later that night, I stood alone in the godswood, Ghost resting silently at my side. The weirwood’s red eyes watched me, and the old leaves rustled in the wind. I said nothing to the tree. Not tonight.

Bran was safe. Whole. Sleeping in the bed he was meant to be broken in.

I sat on the cold stone bench and stared up at the moon. My breath misted in the air.

He’s safe. He lives.

The words repeated in my head like a prayer.

But my mind refused peace.

I knew what had happened in that tower. Even without seeing it, I knew. The voices. The motion. The raw look in Jaime’s eyes when he saw me. The way Cersei had fled like smoke vanishing into shadow. I didn’t need to see them.

They were in the middle of it.

And I had interrupted.

My fists clenched slowly at my sides.

What if I’d had someone interrupt them? Someone that they couldn't silence and had the weight to tell on them. What if someone else had come with me—Theon? Robb? What if Septa Mordane had passed near the tower? What if Catelyn, already wary, had looked up and seen more than she should?

I wondered, if it would have been better to do that but…

The entire kingdom could have come crashing down around us. Just like that.

If I tell…

My mind chased the branching futures, faster than thought. Robert Baratheon—already unstable, already drinking more than eating—would explode with fury. The woman he married, the children he believed to be his… all of it exposed as lies. His grief would be matched only by his rage.

He would not listen to counsel. He would not wait.

Cersei would die. Jaime would hang. The children—gods, the children—Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen…

They’d be bastards by law. Abominations by rumor. Targets by both.

Robert wouldn’t let them live. He’d rage and roar and order their deaths in the name of justice. Ned would try to stop him. He might even defy him.

And if Ned stood in Robert’s way, Robert might do something even worse.

And Tywin Lannister…

My stomach twisted.

Tywin wouldn’t weep. Tywin would act. Quietly, brutally, with the cold logic of a lion who never forgives a wound. He would not mourn his daughter and son. He would avenge them. He would raise the West. He would march, with gold and steel and every bannerman he could buy or terrify into line.

King’s Landing would bleed. Riverrun would fall before it even chose a side.

And the realm would shatter before even the red comet came blazing across the skies.

All for a truth I didn’t need to tell.

Not yet.

Telling the truth doesn’t always mean doing the right thing. Sometimes, the truth is a sword aimed at the world’s throat.

Sometimes, silence is the only way to keep the peace, breathing just one more day. And above that… I couldn’t stand he thought of Myrcellas’ and Tommen's head splattered with a Warhammer. The death of children should be avoided, I won't be indirectly responsible for that.

I looked down at Ghost, who lay curled beside the roots of the weirwood, his red eyes flickering with faint light. He didn’t move, didn’t blink. He just stared into the trees, still as snow.

I sank to one knee beside him and scratched behind his ear.

“No one dies today,” I whispered. “Not Bran. Not Jaime. Not yet.”

The words trembled in the air like frost.

I had bought time. Just time. That was all. No burning of the Riverlands would start in a moon.

But time is a dangerous thing to hold. With one choice, I had split the road. The future I remembered had fractured, jagged and bleeding. Every moment from now on would ripple outward, changing things I couldn’t see, couldn’t control. That’s a scary though… I really need to clear my mind.

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The stone steps into the crypts were cold beneath my feet. I moved without a torch or lantern; I didn’t need them. The light of dawn could be seen by the tunnel’s entry, and I knew this part of the crypt like the palm of my hand.

Also, Ghost's eyes are much better than mine.

I came here often, when the others slept. Ghost padded behind me like a pale shadow, silent save for the soft pat of his paws. The Stark kings loomed to either side, centuries of carved faces in solemn stone. Dust swirled in the air, disturbed by nothing but memory.

Most people came here to grieve.

I came here to think.

The smell of earth, stone, and time settled into my lungs. Familiar. Comforting, in its own way.

I passed the great lords—Rickard, Brandon, Cregan— the Starks had like 5 names they kept reusing. I stopped before her. Lyanna. Her statue was younger than the others, though her face was carved with sorrow older than all of them. She knelt beneath her stone canopy, flowers long withered in the vase beside her.

I sat on the cold stone before her and rested my hands on my knees.

Ghost settled beside the statue, his head on his paws. The red of his eyes caught a glimmer of light from some crack in the ceiling. It made him look almost… haunted. The name Ghost suits him, quiet, scary.

I looked up into her face.

“You didn’t die crying, did you?”

I swallowed, jaw clenched.

“You died bleeding, giving birth. And no one remembered your son. They buried him in a lie, called him a Snow. Called him nothing.”

I stared down at my hands. Pale, scarred, too young to hold this much weight.

“What would you think of me?” I whispered. “If you could see me now? I can barely remember you, the mind of a man in a baby’s body, too much for it.”

A bastard, with a soul from another world. A ghost inhabiting your child’s skin. Even if my last life feels so distant from me.

I rose and stepped closer, placing my palm on the cold stone of her tomb. “You were brave. Foolish, maybe. But you chose. Rhaegar… gods, I still don’t know what to make of him. He started a war for a song, for a prophecy. He left his wife and children for a crown of thorns. Even then many still praise him.”

And yet—

“Maybe you loved him. Maybe that’s the truth. Maybe you were both wrong, and everyone paid for it.”

The quiet between us stretched long. It was the silence of the dead, full of judgment and forgiveness alike. I just stood again and kept walking. Cregan, Brandon, oooh a Thorren! Those are rarer.

I walked for more than an hour thinking of everything and nothing, Ned had though Robb and me meditation when we were children, even if he didn’t call it that. He stared at the weirwood for hours cleaning Ice, I just walked in the tombs of forgotten kings.

I sat again, leaning against a wooden panel near a tomb—newer than the stonework, maybe added after the crypt had flooded decades ago. I remembered when the rot had nearly taken part of the floor two levels down, the risk of collapse was too big. Maester Luwin had overseen repairs himself.

My shoulder pressed against the panel as I exhaled.

And something gave.

A click. Then a creak.

I froze.

Ghost stirred.

Slowly, I turned and felt the panel shift slightly behind me. Cold air touched my skin. Air that hadn’t moved in decades.

I rose again, heart thudding in my chest, and pulled at the edge. The wood splintered with a soft snap. Behind it lay stone—smooth, dark, and sealed. Not the rough, weathered masonry of the rest of the crypt. No, this had been placed with care. Almost reverence.

There was no inscription. No letters. No sigil.

Only silence, and stone, and something waiting behind it.

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It took me the better part of an hour to work the stone loose.

I dared not use a hammer—it would echo too loudly—but a pry bar and my hands, aching and blistered by the end, were enough to crack the seal. A hiss of air escaped as dust curled around me.

Inside lay cloth, blackened and soft with rot. Velvet once, now eaten by age. Silver thread clung to its edges like cobwebs.

My fingers trembled as I peeled it back.

There, nestled within the shroud, was something that should not exist.

A dragon’s egg.

White, veined with crimson. As smooth as marble but warm beneath my touch—living warmth, pulsing like a heartbeat. I stared at it, breath caught in my chest.

“This wasn’t in the show,” I said aloud, voice hoarse. “Not in the books either.”

My eyes flicked to the statue. “Who are you?” It was very weathered, but it was lithe and… soft?

Ghost growled low behind me. Not a threat, not fear—unease. I felt it too, through the bond. Not just warmth now, but a scent, strange and ancient: fire, stone, and old blood.

“Did Rhaegar leave this here?” I murmured. “Did someone know I’d come back?”

No… This is the tomb of a woman…

I tried to read the inscription on the base. Was that a W?

S…r…ow

Sara Snow!!! Jacaerys you little bastard!!!

I just couldn't stop laughing, a hundred and seventy years later I find the dragon egg Jacaerys Velaryon gifted his little Stark lover. Two bastards in love. And now I profited from it.

Was this always here, hidden, waiting for no one?

The egg sat motionless, but something about it felt… expectant. As though it knew. It feels warm.

My mind reeled. If this had been here all along, buried beneath Winterfell, what else had been hidden by fate and fire and grief? Had I missed this in the books? What else had I missed in my memories?

I thought of Daenerys—her dragons, her fire. But this egg wasn’t black and red and gold. This one was white, veined red like bleeding marble. Ice and fire. Like me.

A shiver worked its way down my spine.

Do I show it to Ned?

Do I demand the truth from him? If he saw it—if he touched it— could I use so he tells me what he’s hidden all these years? Would he finally say my mother’s name aloud?

Or do I keep it secret? It could be dangerous. More than dangerous. If someone learned I had this, even whispered it…

The egg was heavy in my hands. Ancient. Sacred.

Or a curse.

Could I even use it? Could I hatch it? I had no blood magic, no Targaryen rite, no red priest or dragonbinder. Just a name buried in lies. The egg felt warm but distant…

Maybe it wasn’t meant for now. Maybe it was meant for the comet. I could try blood sacrifice but were would I hide a dragon? I couldn’t sacrifice someone to fire without everyone thinking I was crazy either.

The memory stirred—red fire in the sky, the rise of dragons, the breaking of slavery. That hadn’t happened yet. Not here. Maybe… maybe when it did, I would know what to do.

Carefully, I wrapped the egg in cloth again—fresh linen of my cloak this time—and crept back to my chambers. I lifted the mattress and tucked it deep beneath, cushioned in furs and wool. Ghost watched me the entire time, his red eyes alert and silent.

The servants know not to disrupt my room too much. There were papers everywhere and I have ripped into the last servant that touched my room.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at my hands. They didn’t tremble anymore.

“Magic has a cost,” I said quietly. “Dragons are fire made flesh.”

I reached out and rested a hand against Ghost’s fur. He was warm too. Solid. Grounding.

“I need to be sure I’m ready,” I whispered. “Before I wake anything.”

Chapter 5: Chapter 5 — Surprise

Summary:

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update from my end: I've recently joined the ranks of the newly unemployed! (yay…?)

While not so good for me (I have to eat), the upside is that you'll keep getting your chapters regularly at this pace as I dive deep into writing mode until I get a new job. So, silver lining, right?
Check my sites if you want to read ahead!

Winterfell had changed.

It hadn't crumbled. The stones still stood, the godswood still whispered, the ravens still circled the rookery. But something beneath those stones had shifted—politics, I thought. Power, like a sudden frost in summer.

Robert Baratheon and his retinue were preparing to depart at first light, the banners of House Baratheon of Kings Landing flapping like tired sails on the walls of Winterfell. The sound of hooves being moved from the stables.

Servants whispered more cautiously. Guards stood a little straighter. Maester Luwin moved with uncharacteristic tension, as if sensing that everything old had been brushed aside to make way for a new, more dangerous game.

And Ned Stark—father by destiny  and uncle by blood, though I could never call him that—he had changed too.

There was less softness in his eyes now, and more weight on his shoulders. Since the morning, they came from the hunt, he no longer walked the walls at dawn or joined Rickon in the godswood. He met with Luwin, with Robb, with messages arriving by raven. The South had reached its cold fingers past the Neck and wrapped itself around Winterfell’s heart. The Hand of the King.

I stood by the training yard, watching Robb spar with Ser Rodrik, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

Sansa had wept last night. Not openly, not dramatically—just a single, happy tear wiped quickly with a sleeve after the announcement.

Betrothed.

To Joffrey Baratheon.

It had been delivered like a gift: golden boy and northern lady, South and North entwined in peace. No one questioned it. No one dared.

I had watched her face when they announced it. She’d tried to smile. I wondered what she imagined—fine dresses, courtly love, golden-haired children. The South was still a dream to her.

But I knew Joffrey. Not just from the week of his stay, not just from the arrogant tilt of his head or the cruel glint in his eye. I remembered what he became. What he was, beneath the silks and smiles.

If he ever hurt her, if they crossed paths again… I’d be ready. That much I swore, quietly and without fanfare.

Ghost brushed against my leg. I reached down and scratched behind his ear.

“I wonder if things would’ve been better if you’d torn his throat out the first time we saw him.” I muttered.

Ghost huffed, which I took as agreement.

The air smelled of woodsmoke, tallow, and coming rain. Winter wasn’t here yet, but it watched. It waited.

Around me, the castle moved with strange energy. Arya darted between the stables and the kitchens, chased by a frustrated Septa Mordane. Bran sulked near the kennels, daydreaming about his journey south. Rickon wailed whenever anyone tried to explain that Father was leaving. And Robb—he trained harder than ever, jaw set like ice.

Something had fractured. Something had begun.

I looked up toward the Great Hall. That night would bring the parting feast, one final celebration before the road claimed half our household. And I’d be expected to sit in the shadows, to raise my cup and lower my eyes.

Still a Snow. Still on the outside.

Or so I thought.

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The Great Hall of Winterfell blazed with firelight and laughter. Long tables groaned under the weight of roasted boar, venison pies, fresh loaves still steaming, wheels of cheese and trenchers of spiced apple. Casks of ale, mead and northern fire flowed freely — whiskey, dammit! — and the hall buzzed with the clamor of armored men and courtiers in silks alike.

It was the last night of the king’s visit. Tomorrow, the royal procession would begin its long ride south, with Ned Stark soon to follow. The North had changed in less than a fortnight.

I sat beside Robb near the lower end of the high table. I wore black, as ever—plain, functional, but clean. The Stark direwolf was stitched in silver thread on my chest. No one commented on the detail. But some noticed.

Catelyn Stark sat beside her husband, expression fixed, but her wine cup had been drained more than once. Sansa shone in pale blue, speaking softly to the queen and to Septa Mordane. Arya looked miserable beside them, and every so often she glanced toward the door.

Ned Stark had not smiled much tonight. He answered Robert’s jests with small nods and the occasional ghost of amusement, but his eyes remained distant, storm-dark. Duty pressed down on him.

And the king—gods, the king was drunk.

Robert had already stood for toasts twice. Once for Ned—“the only man I’ve ever trusted sober or bloody hungover”—and again for the honor of House Stark. Now, red-faced and booming, he tore a drumstick from a bird the size of a hound and waved it like a sword.

“You Northerners know how to feast!” he bellowed. “In the south we nibble—rabbit food and sweetmeats. Here we eat like men!”

The crowd roared their approval. Ser Rodrik coughed ale through his nose. The royal bannermen pounded the tables. Even Queen Cersei’s lips twitched in disgust— her eyes icy and distant.

Then Robert staggered to his feet again, steadied by Ser Barristan Selmy on one side and Renly on the other.

“Oh, but I’ve something more!” he called, eyes sweeping the hall. “Something fitting for this land of wolves. Something... bold!”

Silence rippled outward from the dais.

Robb glanced at me, smirking. The fuck is going on Robb! I felt something twist in my gut. No one had warned me of an announcement.

Robert reached into a leather pouch hanging from his belt. His hand came out with a rolled parchment, thick and bound in black ribbon, wax-stamped with the crowned stag of House Baratheon.

“This,” he said, voice lowering just enough to make everyone lean in, “comes not just from me—but from your Lord Eddard Stark, and the will of the realm.”

He looked straight down the table.

“Jon Snow,” he said.

A hundred eyes turned to me.

I froze. My hand tightened around my cup.

“Come here, lad.”

My feet moved before my thoughts caught up. The murmurs swelled behind me as I stepped away from the benches, walked past knights and stewards and lords. The king waited on the dais, Ned beside him, watching me with an unreadable expression.

I stopped at the base of the dais.

Robert raised the scroll high, sealed with the crowned stag.

“Your father asked this of me. And your service to the North, to the realm, and to Winterfell has not gone unnoticed. You have wisdom beyond your years. Honor, I daresay, that puts grown men to shame.”

He looked around the hall, one arm raised like a priest at a sacred altar. “Too long have we let the sins of fathers stain the brows of sons. A child does not choose his birth, nor the cold words men put behind his name.”

He turned back to me. “And so, for service rendered, for blood given, and by my hand as king... I name you trueborn.”

The hall gasped.

Robert broke the wax seal and unrolled the parchment with theatrical flourish. The firelight danced across the vellum.

“Henceforth,” he read, voice ringing, “you shall be known as Lord Jon Stark, a true son of Eddard Stark of Winterfell, with all rights and inheritance that come with the name, and lordship over the lands of Moat Cailin are transferred to him and his blood hence forth. In the name of His Grace Robert of the House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, and sealed in the sight of gods and men.”

He handed me the scroll.

I took it with both hands.

My heart thundered. The parchment felt heavier than it should—heavier than chainmail, heavier than Ghost curled against my chest on a cold night.

Behind me, the silence had shattered into shouts.

Lord Glover was first to rise, raising his cup. “The King speaks true!”

The Northmen cheered, and the Southerners clapped politely. Roose Bolton did not smile, but he dipped his head. Ser Rodrik looked stunned. Old Maester Luwin’s smiled proudly. The northern lords approve? Have I really done enough to gain their approval already?

At the high table, Catelyn Stark turned to stone. Her hands lay clenched on either side of her trencher, knuckles white.

Sansa stared, mouth parted. Arya looked triumphant.

Ned still hadn’t moved.

And neither had Cersei.

The queen’s gaze burned through me. Jaime leaned back against a carved pillar, arms folded, studying me as if I were a riddle written in Valyrian. Tyrion simply sipped his wine, his eyes sharp and alert.

“Stand tall, boy. You’re Stark now,” Robert said. Then, leaning in close, his voice slurred with wine and fire, he added, “One day you’ll thank me for this. Or curse me.” He slapped my shoulder so hard I almost staggered. Then he turned back to the crowd.

“Drink! Eat! Gods, you’re too sober! Someone find me a whore!”

The feast erupted into noise again, though changed—more uncertain, charged. I returned to my seat amid stares and whispers. Robb grinned as I sat.

“You’re my brother now,” he said, clinking his cup to mine. “No more bastard talk.”

My voice felt distant. “Aye.”

I sipped from my cup and found it empty. Ghost had appeared at my feet, silent as snow, pressing against my boot.

Jon Stark.

It didn’t feel real.

Had I wanted this? Yes. Once. A thousand times over. Even if I already had a name for myself. But not like this.

I looked down at the parchment again, rereading the words I had memorized already. Royal seal. Signature. The handwriting of the king.

A choice had been made tonight. And not by me.

Ned Stark hadn’t said a word to me about this. His silence hung in the space between us like a blade still in its sheath.

Later, much later, when the torches burned low and the laughter dulled to murmurs, I would step outside into the snow and feel the cold bite deep into my skin.

The parchment remained in my hand, though I could no longer feel my fingers. I read the words again by moonlight, the black wax seal catching a silver gleam. The wolf in me stirred restlessly.

I was Jon Stark now I guess.

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I turned the scroll over in my hands again.

Jon Stark.

The name stared back at me in looping royal script, sealed in black and gold. I had never once expected to hear them spoken aloud, let alone by the King of the Seven Kingdoms, in front of the entire North.

And now I held them.

I had imagined it might feel like winning something, like a long-denied truth being made whole. I had imagined that it would close the wound I carried every time someone said “Snow” like it was a curse.

Instead, it felt like a blade pressed flat against my palm. Gift and threat both.

I kept thinking of Lord Stark—no, Father—and the way he hadn’t moved as Robert spoke. His eyes hadn't flickered. But I could see satisfaction in his gaze, and nervousness. I imagine it came from asking his friend Robert to legitimize the son of the man he killed. Of the fallen dynasty he replaced.

It was done. The realm would recognize me now. I was no longer the bastard. I was Jon Stark, of Winterfell. My signature would carry weight. My words, legitimacy.

And that changed everything.

Not just for the name. For what I could do with it.

For years, I had been planning. Gathering knowledge, mapping timelines, waiting for events to fall into place. The Long Night. Daenerys. The dragons. The Wall. The Others. All of it had hung over me like a storm cloud I couldn’t yet reach.

With a name, I could ride to any Northern holdfast and be taken seriously. I could write to Lord Reed, to Lord Glover, even to Manderly. They would open my letters. They would listen. I could summon builders to repair holdfasts along the Last River. I could fund patrols. I could speak of defenses and not be dismissed as a bastard boy with southern books in his head.

I had land now. Moat Cailin. Ancient, still half-ruined, but still standing like a broken fang at the narrowest part of the realm—where the swamps of the Neck squeezed the continent thin. Long abandoned by strategy and stripped of its former glory, it had once been the gate to the North, impenetrable to any southern host foolish enough to try their luck. Most had forgotten that. But I hadn’t.

In the past few years, as coin from Winterfell’s renewed trade flowed northward, I’d set things in motion. Quietly. Deliberately. Stone by stone, Moat Cailin was being restored. Not the high towers or ceremonial halls, no—those could wait. First the walls, the dikes, the kill lanes, the hidden walkways. Practical structures. A fortress first, a home second. Laborers came in droves, and with them came opportunity. Villages sprang up around the Neck’s northern edge, supplying the construction crews with tools, timber, grain, and ale. And as those settlements grew, so did the need for food.

I had remembered something—something from before. Rice. A crop the North had never thought to try, but perfect for the swampy, waterlogged lands fed by the upper branches of the Fever River. Rice should have never worked in the Neck. I knew that—every book I’d ever read, every lesson I’d been taught, every map of temperature and rainfall confirmed it. It wasn’t warm enough, not for long enough. The marshes of the neck were too cold, too volatile, too prone to sudden frosts. In any sane world, it would have failed. But Planetos isn’t sane. This is a world where summers last three years and winters can gnaw on the bones of the living for a decade or more. The plants here have learned to bend without breaking. A specific strain of short-grain rice from the northern deltas of Yi Ti—bred in shadowed paddies and seasoned by storms—had taken to the bogs like it had always belonged. It was hardier than it had any right to be, and stubborn besides. I’d watched the first sprouts push up through muck and chill like they meant to outlast winter itself. And somehow… they had.

When I proposed its introduction, Maester Luwin had hesitated, but the results had proven him wrong. After buying seeds and knowledge from Braavos new fields had bloomed where there was once only bog and reed. Tens of thousands of people moving to the opportunity. Entire families now worked lands that had once been deemed useless. And they would call me lord.

Let the South whisper of pageants and jousts and the favors of silk-clad ladies. I would build something harder. Something lasting. Not just a castle, not just a name. A force. Drilled, trained, honed. Not wild levy-men summoned by banners and given rusty spears, but a true core of soldiers. Formations. Disciplined movements. Combined arms. Cavalry coordinated with infantry, archers who could shoot by signal. Tactics no northern lord had cared to study since the First Men stopped carving runes into their blades.

I would teach them myself if I had to. I remembered. Gods help me, I remembered warfare from history textbooks. From another world entirely. I remembered what modern armies could become when discipline was matched with purpose. Alexander, Napoleon, Charlemagne. I remembered what a trained force could do against a rabble in the times of the Roman Empire.

And now, I had the right. The lands. The keep. The name. Jon of House Stark, Lord of Moat Cailin. With lordship came duty, yes—but also command. And I would use it.

Oh, I would use it.

And Winterfell itself—Father would leave. I knew that already. He would ride south with Robert, into a lion’s den.

That left Robb in charge.

And now it left me as a trueborn son. Not the heir, no. But not nothing either.

That meant opportunity. I could convince Robb to follow the reforms in my own lands. And danger.

Catelyn would never accept me. Nor Sansa. But the Northern lords had cheered. They had raised their cups. They remembered the blood I shared. The name did not change their memories of me as Ned Stark’s boy, raised beside his trueborn children.

Still, I could not afford to move too fast.

Everything I did from now on would be watched. Not just by Father and the lords, but by the South. By Cersei. By Varys, if he still slithered in the shadows. By Littlefinger. By those who might wonder why a legitimized bastard would start writing to Night’s Watch commanders or asking about dragonglass.

So I would move quietly.

A name is not a shield. It is a sword. And like any sword, it cuts both ways.

But I could use this. I would build networks. Fund loyal men. Spread my influence, not by force, but through loyalty and preparation. Whisper the right warnings. Help Glover reinforce his keeps. Write to House Reed and speak of the things that stir beyond the Neck. Begin work on the holdfast I dreamed of—Moat Cailin, maybe. A fortress of the future.

Let the world see Jon Stark, trueborn and dutiful. Let them see the wolf while the dragon prepares.

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The godswood was quiet save for the rustle of wind through the red leaves clinging to the weirwood’s branches. The face looked a bit more angry today. Beneath it, the snow was patchy—thawing and refreezing, hardening into frost-bitten crusts. I stood beneath it, staring up at those eyes, red and ancient.

Footsteps crunched behind me. I didn’t turn. Only one person walked like that—heavy from training, but still trying to move light. He had asked me to come here.

“You left before the end of the feast,” Robb said.

“I wasn’t hungry,” I replied. “You’re energetic for someone who drank half the king’s ale.” I paused. “I suppose you have answers,” I said, voice flat.

Robb raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one who was made a Stark in front of half the North and the whole royal court. I’d say I should be the one asking if you have anything to say.”

I looked at him then. There was no mirth in his eyes. Nor mockery. Only the kind of quiet patience we used to share during play hunts in the woods behind the kennels. When we didn’t need to talk to understand each other. Carefree children, before I decided to do something with all this knowledge.

“I didn’t ask for it,” I said. “Not like that.”

“No,” he said, “but I did.”

I blinked. “What?”

He gave a faint smile and looked down at the frozen pool beneath the weirwood, its surface dusted with hoarfrost.

“I spoke to Father,” Robb said. “Two nights after we came back from the hunt. He was brooding again, you know how he gets—silent, pacing. He said something about legacy and duty, and I—well, I asked him.”

“Asked him what?”

“If he’d ever thought of legitimizing you,” Robb said, glancing at me. “And giving you land.”

The cold air burned in my lungs.

“You asked him that?” This boy…

“I didn’t beg. I didn’t command,” Robb said, raising his hands. “I just... asked. I told him you deserved better than endless duty to Winterfell. I reminded him of what you’d done, the way you think, the way you see things no one else does. I told him we’d be stronger with you by our side, that I would have a loyal vassal in the future.”

“And he actually listened?”

Robb hesitated. “He said nothing at first. Just stared into the fire like he always does. But when I left, I saw thinking.”

I shook my head. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you're my brother,” Robb said, voice suddenly sharp. “Because I’m going to have to wear that damn mantle one day, and I’d be a fool not to want you beside me. Because I trust you more than half the men who’ll bend the knee to me if Father ever—” He stopped, swallowed. “If he goes.”

I looked away. The weight of what he’d done settled slowly over me like snow.

“I always thought...” I began, but my voice cracked. I cleared it. “This changes a lot, you know? Most of my plans for the future depended on my status... or were held back by it. I didn't expect this at all.”

"I could see you didn't, you looked like a fucking statue while the King spoke!" He laughed. And with horror I realized he must be right. Oh Gods, Arya will make fun of me!

Robb moved closer, brushing a hand along the rough bark of the heart tree as I stood up. “You don’t need to thank me or make it up to me, you don't see how much everything you have done has changed the north, you don't speak to the grateful lords and the fattening smallfolk,” he said. “But I know you will.”

I stepped forward, still shaken by what he had admitted. “I do thank you. Not just for asking Father—but for believing in me. For seeing what I've been trying so hard to do, for helping me convince Father of my craziest ideas, really Robb... I always thought it would be Luwin and me, but you have always been there. I haven't appreciated it like I should.”

“I’ve always seen it, you know?” Robb said simply. “Since we were boys. You used to talk about grain stores and canals while the rest of us were playing at knights.”

“I didn’t think it mattered to you then.”

“It does now.”

We stood in silence again, letting the words hang between us. Then Robb stepped forward, his boots crunching through the frozen moss. "This will help you, Jon. The name Stark carries weight."

I stepped away from the tree, my breath clouding. “Robb, you do know what some lords will see, an army, a banner... you’ll make me a threat, we have talked a lot about what I think I could do as a lord, it might shake things up.”

He laughed, short and bitter. “You’d be the first threat who actually gives a damn about the North. I don’t want yes-men and sycophants. I want commanders. Lords with spines. You’re already planning things in that head of yours, aren’t you?”

I hesitated.

“You are,” he said, nodding. “I see it in your face. You’re already finishing the rebuilding of that ruin in your head. You’re thinking of how to train men. How to make them ready. How to organize your lands, how to make taxation more efficient, how to make people’s lives better.”  Robb nodded slowly to himself. “Then build what we need, Jon. At Moat Cailin. Quietly, if you must. Let the lords think it’s just border defense. Just the new quirky Lord Stark doing his duty. But make ready.”

I stared at him. “You’d trust me with that?”

“With my life,” Robb said. “I already have, more times than I can count.”

We stood again in silence, the godswood breathing around us. I just looked at Robb trying to convey what I felt to him.

I looked up at the carved face of the old gods. Its eyes seemed to glare less now. Maybe it was only the wind, but something in me shifted too.

“Father’s leaving soon,” Robb said after a long moment. “South, to King’s Landing.”

I nodded. “He won’t be back for a long time.”

Robb’s mouth tightened. “I’m not ready.”

“You’ll have to be,” I said, meeting his gaze. “And you’re not alone. You’re right—what you said earlier. The North will look to you. And they’ll start looking to me now, too. Between us... We can start laying the foundation.” It might as well be pitched now. “We don’t have to change the world in a moon’s turn. But bit by bit—small reforms, subtle changes. Improvements to how the holdfasts are provisioned. Roads. Better records, maybe a network of riders between key villages. Training for the young squires, proper education for stewards. We start where no one will object.”

“Smart,” Robb said. “Keep it quiet. Make it seem like efficiency, not revolution.”

“It is efficiency,” I said with a faint smile. “It just happens to be revolutionary, too. At least get people to stop shitting where they eat.”

He laughed—more genuine this time. “You’ll need scribes, riders, a smith or two. Maybe a good steward, you will be moving a lot.”

“And you’ll need someone to keep the lords busy while I build,” I added. “We work together, always. No matter how wide the river grows between us.”

Robb nodded. “Always.”

We clasped wrists, like warriors sworn, but it was more than that. It was a pact forged not only by blood, but by trust.

"And father, he is going to a snake's pit, Robb. I could help him there too, as much as I could help here, I will try to convince him to take me with him, but he won't say yes."

“I’ll miss him, and Arya, Bran and Sansa… Gods, it’s all so fast.” Robb said, eyes distant.

“So will I, Robb.. so will I.”

We stood a while longer under the weirwood, two brothers no longer boys, not yet men, but something sharper—something beginning.

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Later I entered the Great hall I had been working on organizing the supplies for the watch for a while and was feeling peckish. I would leave tomorrow at the same time as the royal party with the caravan towards Castle Black.

A the flicker of movement from the corner of my eye—a silent shadow shifting just beyond the hearth’s glow. I turned slightly, heart tightening. There, seated against the far wall, was Jaime Lannister. His golden hair caught the firelight, his pale green eyes calm but sharp, fixed intently on me.

Jaime’s gaze was unreadable—warily curious, almost like a scholar studying a complicated puzzle. Not hostile, but cautious.

My mind raced. Jaimie’s eyes had followed him since the first day they came to Winterfell. Had I let slip a hint of knowledge that shouldn’t be known? My every gesture, every carefully chosen word replayed in my head. Was there a crack in my armor Jaime had seen? Had I misstepped, revealing more of himself than intended? Did he suspect I knew about what he was doing in the tower?

I clenched my fists beneath the table, willing calm into my veins. Jaime said nothing—just held that quiet, unwavering gaze. The tension between us thickened the air, heavy but unspoken. I understood that for now, this watchful silence was a game neither of us dared to break.

Chapter 6: Chapter 6 – Blood and Warnings

Chapter 6 – Blood and Warnings


The courtyard lay hushed before dawn, its wide slabs glazed with a thin sheen of frost, glinting like glass in the flickering torchlight. Above, the towers loomed, shadows stretching long over Winterfell’s keep as the last stars faded behind a soft gray veil of cloud. The banners hung still, caught in the breathless cold, while below the ramparts the great convoy stirred to life like a beast awakening from slumber.

I stood at the threshold of Father’s study, arms folded against the chill, watching as the mass of caravans prepared to march north.

There were nearly two hundred and fifty wagons in total, arrayed in careful columns like a slow-moving army of industry. Some bore plate mail—new-forged, burnished to a dull shine, stamped with black direwolves on the breast. These were meant for the Watch’s new cadre of rangers and officers—no more patched mail scavenged from corpses or centuries-old armor too rusted to mend. The swords that accompanied them—three and a half thousand longswords and arming swords forged in the Blackworks—were bundled in oiled leather, ready for immediate use. Alongside them lay racks of pikes tipped with dark iron for wall defenses, and dozens of heavy crossbows and ballistae, destined for the towers and gates of Castle Black.

The barrels of purified steel arrowheads would be distributed among the ranging parties, sharper and better balanced than anything they’d used before—capable of piercing wildling leathers, or the bones of darker things if it came to it, used in the more than two thousand fast-draw crossbows. Bolts of canvas, tightly rolled and tarred against the weather, were marked for new tents, windbreaks, and outer fortifications beyond the Wall—temporary shelters where no warmth would reach but the walls of black cloth.

Barrels of salted pork and beef stood stacked three high, beside baskets of dried beans and hardtack bread—supplies meant to last the winter and feed not only the brothers of the Watch, but the new builders and craftsmen Jon had quietly arranged to send. There were barrels of pickled vegetables, smoked fish, and fruit preserved in vinegar, all carefully rationed for long-term storage at cold temperatures. A few crates bore Winterfell’s seal and were marked for the sick and wounded: willowbark, poppy milk, powdered sage, clean linen, iron tongs, and stitched bandages.

Behind them came wagons of treated lumber—long pine beams, carved and measured for palisades, scaffoldings, stairs, and repaired walkways atop the Wall. More wood had been cut from the Wolfswood and seasoned in preparation; it would be used to reinforce the crumbling towers at Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower, where the old wood had turned soft and rotten and rebuild the ones that have already collapsed. Resinous pitch in sealed clay urns would waterproof the beams and help line the fire trenches in front of The Wall—trenches meant not for warmth, but for burning things that might crawl through the snow.

Bales of wool and fur, woolen cloaks, leather gloves, padded underarmor, and new boots—all sewn or cobbled in the North—were stacked in heavy bundles. Ghost would’ve howled if he smelled the mountain of treated hides behind the linen wrappings.

And then there were the barrels of whiskey. Not the sweet kind brewed for feasting, but the bitter, biting spirits distilled in Winterfell’s new cellars. The Watch would use it to dull pain, clean wounds, or perhaps to barter with wildlings, if my instincts proved right. Some would see it as luxury, but I knew better—it was survival in liquid form.

Pure alcohol to prevent infection, the distilleries are already proving their worth.

At the very rear, under guarded tarpaulins, were the first shipments of experimental goods from the Blackworks: mechanical winches, and a small forge designed to be transported and reassembled at Castle Black. They were still in their infancy, but Jon had plans. Small carts loaded with siege hooks, new chains, and spools of northern rope stood ready beside them—tools to secure pulleys or build lifts along the face of the Wall. When trouble comes, the Watch would not face it with torches and prayers alone.

Hundreds of men moved about—engineers barking orders, blacksmiths tightening straps and chains, wagon drivers checking wheel grease, carpenters hammering down last crates, laborers swinging sacks onto their backs or balancing loads atop carts. The yard echoed with the low murmur of voices, boots on stone, the clank of chain on steel and iron.

More than a thousand tons of supplies… and it’s just the first caravan, hopefully many more will follow.

Their breaths fogged the air like smoke.

Later, those sounds would rise north, to the foot of The Wall and the frostbitten ramparts of Castle Black.

One thing at a time, first this talk, tomorrow the supplies.

“Come in, Jon,” Father said, even before I reached the door.

His voice, calm and low, carried a weight that tugged at the air. When I stepped into the study, I found him standing beside the tall window, one hand pressed to the dark wood of the desk, as though steadying himself. The light from the lanterns cast long shadows across the stone walls, throwing the outlines of maps, scrolls, and old swords into a flickering dance. His frame, usually so certain, looked smaller somehow—drawn, like the taut strings of a bow left too long under tension. There was resolve in his posture, but grief too.

Father motioned to a chair. I hesitated, glancing out the window first. Beyond the thick glass, the last wagons of the supply convoy rumbled through the courtyard gates. Their wheels ground against the frost-slick stone, steel-bound and heavy. Riders in wolf-cloaks flanked the column. Smoke plumes rose from chimneys and torches guttered in the wind. It looked like something from a song: the North, armed and proud.

“I wanted to speak to you before I left,” he said, voice quieter than before.

I crossed the room and slowly lowered myself into the offered chair. The carved armrests were cold beneath my fingers. “I assume it’s about the convoy,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not just that.”

My stomach tightened. I steeled my voice. “It’s about my name. And the lands.”

“Yes.”

The lanternlight trembled, flickering against his face. He turned, pacing slightly, hands clasped behind his back like a commander before a campaign. “You’ve heard the rumors of why I gave you land. Why I asked to legitimize you.”

“I have,” I said. My voice didn’t waver. “But I’d rather hear the truth from your lips.”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Good. Because you deserve the truth. You deserve it—for what you are and what you’ve done.”

A sudden tightness clenched my throat. I said nothing.

“You’ve seen Winterfell change, Jon. You made it change. The Blackworks, the distilleries, the fields, the rice, the towers and supply lines—it all carries your mark. But it’s more than that. None of it would mean anything if the people of the North didn’t believe you belonged here. That your name means something.”

He reached to his desk and lifted a scroll bound in black ribbon and a map. The seal was his own: the direwolf of Stark in dark wax.

“Moat Cailin stands in your name. Lands from the Saltspear to The Bite to the headwaters of the Fever. You are the lord of those lands, as long as the North endures.”

My eyes swept over the map stretched across the table, its thick parchment grooved with the creases of age and use. But this time, his gaze was not aimless. My name was there now—etched in ink and intent—along the Fever River’s course, and lines demarked my new lands. From the salty shores of the Saltspear to the jagged inlet of the Bite, nearly three hundred miles from sea to sea, and a hundred miles to both sides of the Fever River. Forest, marshland, and fertile lands fell beneath the boundary lines that defined my domain. The river carved its path eastward, threading through hills, hollows and marshes until it vanished into the sea, where the springs were born from stone and snow. The territory was vast—larger than most southern kingdoms’ fiefs, with enough holdfasts, crofts, and villages to demand bannermen of his own. It hit him slowly: this was not a token gift. It was a command that rivaled the power of Karhold, or Last Hearth, or even the Dreadfort. Jon Snow—no, Jon Stark—was now a lord in truth.

This makes me a major lord of the North.

I was now the owner of the rice farms and had tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people that flocked to the area with the fields, the rebuilding of the moat and all the projects being done in the area. Now I must develop that potential.

My hands trembled slightly as I took the scroll. Its weight was modest, but the meaning behind it felt like iron. My voice came as a whisper:
“Father... thank you.”

The words weren’t enough. Not even close. But they were all I had. I looked down at the rolled parchment in my palm—tied with black and grey ribbon, sealed with the direwolf sigil of House Stark. It didn’t feel real. Even after everything I’d done, everything I’d fought for and bled toward, part of me still thought this was something he’d take back. That the old cold silence between us would return, that the man before me would revert to that careful, quiet distance he always wore like a second cloak.

But he didn’t.

Ned Stark just stood there, eyes on me, not like a liege lord looking upon a bannerman—but like a father seeing his son for the first time in full. Something shifted in his face. Something unguarded, rare, almost vulnerable. He took a slow breath and said, “I should have said it sooner.”

My brows furrowed.

“Said what?”

He crossed the room, no longer stiff-backed or formal, just a man whose duty had carried too many silences. “That I am proud of you, Jon. That I have always been.”

The words hit like a hammer blow. They shouldn't have undone me, but they did. My throat tightened.

He continued, quieter now. “You’ve never made things easy. Gods know I didn’t make it easy either. I thought—perhaps foolishly—that if I kept you at arm’s length, I could protect you. From whispers. From questions. From the truth.”

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. My heart pounded in my chest like it wanted to escape.

“I know what people said,” he went on, voice low. “About you. About me. About your mother. I know what I made you carry without answer. And still you rose above it. You never once brought shame to my name. Not once. You bore every wound and doubt with more grace than I did.”

I stared at him, the same way I had a hundred times as a child—hoping for some sign of warmth, of acknowledgment. And now that it was here, I didn’t know how to hold it.

“I…” My voice cracked. I clenched my jaw and tried again. “Even when we fought, even when I hated your silence—when I thought you chose Robb, or the name Stark, or your own pride over me—you were always there when it mattered. You had the right words when no one else did. Maybe you weren’t always kind, but you were steady. And I needed that more than I knew.”

He exhaled. “I was afraid, Jon. Afraid that if I loved you too openly-” His voice was steady, but his eyes betrayed him—wet with held-back storms. “You are my son in every way that matters. I raised you. I watched you grow. You are blood of my blood, and I would have died for you a thousand times over if that could’ve protected you.”

Something sharp and old inside me cracked—something I hadn’t let myself look at in years. I’d spent so long pretending I didn’t need to hear those words. Pretending that being strong meant being self-made, self-hardened, untouched by the quiet ache of a boy who had longed for his father’s pride. Because of all this… I didn’t bring up how his words could be constructed to me not being his son.

I had never been a Stark in name, and still he’d given me everything else—his discipline, his lessons, his look when I failed, his rare approval when I didn’t. Even his silences were a kind of love, measured and aching.

I wiped at the corner of my eye before it could betray me. “You didn’t have to give me Moat Cailin. Or your name.”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t do it out of obligation. I did it because you’ve earned more than I ever gave. And because I am tired of watching the world pretend you are less than you are. Let them see what I see. Let them know what I know.”

His voice was hoarse now. “You are the best of me, of us, Jon.”

I looked away, because I couldn’t look at him and keep my composure. The scroll in my hand felt like it was burning now. I let out a breath, thick with everything I wanted to say and couldn’t.

So instead, I whispered, “I will make you proud.” I will keep everyone safe.

“You already have.”

The fire crackled softly beside us, casting long shadows on the stone walls. Ghost lay curled near the door, his red eyes half-closed, but watching.

A long moment passed between us. The space felt full now, not empty. Not like all the years before. This was not duty. This was not command. This was something harder. Something truer.

I stepped forward, uncertain for a heartbeat—then I reached out and pulled him into a brief, rough embrace. He stiffened, startled, but only for a breath. Then his hand came up and rested against my back, firm and quiet. No words. No grand gesture. Just presence. Solid and real. When we stepped apart, neither of us said anything more about this moment. We didn’t need to.

He inclined his head. “This unrest in the South—it may become more than words. More than daggers in the dark. You have the right to brace your land. To protect your people.”

“I will,” I said, glancing again to the flickering silhouettes of the last wagons vanishing beyond the gate.

“Come,” he said.

We stepped into the corridor. The cold stone greeted us like an old friend. The echoes of the departing caravan faded behind us—clatter of hooves, shouted commands, the jangle of steel-bound casks. Ahead of us stretched a different silence: the quiet of parting, of things left unsaid.

“Jon,” he said gently. “I’ve heard from Robb you wanted you ask me to come south with me—to serve in King’s Landing.”

I cut in before he could finish. I had prepared this speach “Yes... I thought I could help. The court. The politics. You know I can navigate them better than you, I can guide you. My knowledge—”

He stopped and turned to me. “You could help. You will. But not there. Not now. The North needs you. Moat Cailin needs you. The Watch needs you. Let me handle the snakes of King’s Landing. You’re needed here, where your strength matters more than your blood.”

I swallowed the disappointment, even though I knew he would reject the proposal, nodded slowly. “I will not be idle.” You can’t have Rhaegar’s son in the capital can’t you?

His hand came to rest on my shoulder. The pressure was light, but it steadied me. “I know.”

Ghost brushed against my leg again, circling once, as if sensing the strain in our voices. His red eyes met mine briefly before he padded down the hall, a silent shadow.

I drew a breath. “Father... the Lannisters.”

He tensed. “What about them?”

“I can’t prove anything,” I said, slowly. “But I’ve seen things. Bits and pieces. Jaime’s gaze is too calculating. Queen Cersei’s too measured. I’ve felt it— They are snakes, you can’t trust them.”

He didn’t scoff, didn’t dismiss it. Instead he nodded. “I’ve sensed it too.”

“And Petyr Baelish,” I went on. “He plays both sides. Too eager to be useful. He has too many webs and no loyalty. I’ve heard whispers from the merchants —he’s tied to brothels, debts, rumors.”

Ned Stark’s gaze darkened. “So, he’s dangerous, but clever. A man like that survives because others ignore him.”

“Don’t ignore him,” I said. “Use him if you must. But never trust him. Don’t trust anyone.”

“I won’t,” he said quietly.

A pause. We both knew what I wanted to ask next, and yet... the outcome was already decided.

I took another breath. “Father... my mother.”

His expression changed. Not hardened. Softened. His mouth opened, then closed again.

“You may have my name now Jon.,” he said at last, “And you carry my blood. That’s more than most bastards ever get.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s enough. For now.” I knew that if I pressed him it would end up in a fight like the last time. I can’t have that after mending bridges like this…

He looked as though he wanted to say more. But he didn’t. Instead, his hand returned to my shoulder, and we stood there—two men bound by secrets neither wholly chose.

“Go north, Jon, supervise the convoy to the wall and the repairs in Castle Black.” he said. “Then make Moat Cailin a fortress worthy of its name. Keep Winterfell safe. Keep Rickon and my wife safe.  Advise Robb like you always have. Keep the North ready.”

“I will,” I said.

He met my gaze, unblinking. “Be wise. Be strong.”

“I will.”

We embraced again, and in another life this would be one of the last times we saw each other, but not this one, I would make sure of it.

I watched him turn away, his cloak a shadow beneath the torchlight.

I clenched the scroll in my hand.

Winter is coming.

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The yard was chaos.

Horses snorted and stamped as stable boys rushed to harness them. Wagons creaked under the weight of steel and timber. Lannister guards barked orders with the easy arrogance only red cloaks could manage so far from home, while Stark men worked quietly alongside them—flashing looks but saying nothing. Snow crunched underfoot, muddied from the endless comings and goings.

I stood near the line of wagons marked with the direwolf of Stark and the black crow of the Night’s Watch. Each one stacked with crates of swords, spears, shields, furs, chainmail, and barrels of preserved food— my doing.

I had spent weeks on this. Pulling favors. Talking to Garrick, Seren and the smiths. Trading excess lumber from the wolfswood for better ore. Bargaining with merchants to secure hardened oats and dried meat. Lord Stark had signed the orders, but it was me who had written them, organized them, driven the effort forward.

In canon, the Watch had been a starving shadow of itself.

Not anymore.

“You sure they’re not for your own little rebellion?” Tyrion asked from beside him, sipping mulled wine and watching the caravan. “Hundreds of these big steel reinforced wagons of yours,” he said. “You’d think the Night’s Watch was planning to invade the South.”

“Only if the South forgets what’s coming from the North.”

He sipped, then smiled. “You sound almost like a Stark now. Grim, ominous, entirely without punchlines.”

“You’ve been too long in the capital. Here, people mean what they say.”

“An unfortunate habit,” he muttered. “No wonder you all wear so much fur—must keep the honesty from freezing your bones.”

I let out a breath, not quite a laugh.

He peered at me sidelong. “You’ve done something remarkable here. That shipment will buy the Watch another generation—perhaps a future.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it just means they’ll die slower.”

Tyrion studied me, and something sharpened in his gaze. “You carry too much weight for your years. It’s almost unnatural.”

I glanced down at him. “And you drink too much wine for your height.”

“Touché,” he said, grinning. “But I’m not wrong. You walk like a man ten years older. Maybe twenty.”

“Bastards grow twice as fast in mind and three times bigger beneath the pants.”

He laughed and kicked me in the leg. At least the journey north wont be boring with Tyrion there.

The farewells began soon after.

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Arya found me just as I was checking the final wagon. One moment I was speaking with Arren about saddle straps, and the next, a missile of wool and fury slammed into my ribs.

“You promised,” she muttered into my chest, her voice breaking, her fists clenched into the back of my cloak like she could hold me there by force of will.

I froze. Just for a second. Then I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, tighter than I should have. She smelled like leather and fresh pine. Like Winterfell. Like home.

“I know,” I whispered. “And I meant it.”

“You said you wouldn’t go far. And now you’re staying, and we’re leaving.”

Her voice trembled, but she didn’t cry. Arya never cried. She just held on, defiant to the end, as if daring the world to take one more thing from her.

“I’ll be here when you come back,” I said, pulling back to look her in the eyes. “And I’ll write. You won’t even have time to miss me before you’re back in the yard yelling at me.”

“I don’t yell,” she lied.

I reached beneath my cloak and pulled out the bundle I’d hidden all morning, wrapped in grey fur and tied with a leather cord.

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”

I handed it to her. “Open it.”

She did, fast and impatient, unwrapping the fur with calloused fingers and holding the blade reverently once it was revealed. A short sword. Slim, pointed, made for piercing rather than slashing. Black leather hilt. Northern steel.

Her breath caught. “You made this?”

I nodded. “Sansa has her Needles and now you have yours. It’s light. Quick. Suits you.”

Arya turned it in her hands with something like awe. “She’s perfect.”

“She’s yours,” I said. “Stick them with the pointy end.”

She laughed, but it was cracked, raw at the edges. Then she hugged me again—harder this time, tighter, like she could brand the memory of me into her bones.

“You better not die,” she whispered fiercely. “Or I’ll find you and kill you again.”

I kissed the top of her head. “Deal.”

Bran was waiting on the steps of the keep, getting ready to leave.

“I thought I’d see you before we left,” he said. “Arya said you were hiding in the armory.”

“Not hiding. Making things.” I knelt in front of him and pulled out a Steel long sword, a bit thinner than most, but with a mean edge. “For you.”

His eyes widened. “Really?”

“It’s not Valyrian, or magic, or anything like that. Just steel. But it’s real. And it’s yours, every warrior needs a sword.”

Bran took it carefully, as though it might break in his hands. “I’ll practice every day.”

“I know you will.”

He smiled, and it was wide and bright and proud. “I’ll be a knight someday.”

I swallowed the ache in my throat. “You’ll be the greatest of the seven kingdoms, they will whisper your name in the same breath as Barristan and Arthur Dayne, the next time we see each other I hope you are able to beat me, little brother.”

He threw his arms around me. I held him for as long as I dared.

Sansa came last.

She approached like she was walking through court—spine straight, chin high, every gesture polished until it gleamed. There were guards and ladies-in-waiting behind her, but they kept a respectful distance.

“Jon,” she said with a small curtsy. “I’m glad we had a chance to say goodbye.”

So formal. So distant. And yet… I could see the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.

“I have something for you,” I said. I opened a small wooden box and held it out.

She blinked and stepped closer. Inside, a delicate necklace rested on velvet—silver strands woven with lapis and moonstone. The colors of House Stark and the cold northern skies.

Her hand hesitated, then lifted the necklace from its bed. “It’s beautiful.”

“You always liked pretty things,” I said softly. “This one comes from home.”

She didn’t smile exactly, but her mouth twitched, and her fingers traced the stones like they meant more than she could say.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Truly.”

I inclined my head. “Be careful in King’s Landing, Sansa. The courtiers there smile with their teeth.”

She gave a small, weary nod. “I’m not a child anymore.”

“No,” I said. “But you will always be my little sister.”

I hugged her even if it wasn’t proper in her mind. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment—just a moment—I saw the little girl who used to braid Arya’s hair and cry when snow melted. I wanted to say more, to warn her, to beg her to stay, but the words died in my throat.

There was nothing more to say.

Gods I hope I can change things.

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I stood on the battlements as they disappeared into the snow-dusted horizon.

Wheels cracked over rutted ice. Horses kicked up cold earth. The banners—Baratheon’s stag, Lannister’s lion, Stark’s direwolf—whipped and tangled in the wind like omens. From up here, the procession looked like a creature dragging itself to war.

And maybe it was.

Below, the forges still burned. Men shouted. Chains clinked. The last of the crates bound for the Wall were being sealed and marked. I watched it all as if from a great distance, like I was floating behind my own eyes.

I should have felt proud.

Instead, I felt… haunted.

I’d changed the path, bent the future, stocked the Wall and saved lives not yet lost—but the Game was still in motion. The pieces still moving.

Ned Stark would go south. And if I didn’t intervene, he would still die.

He told me to stay. Told me to take care of things here. Told me to let go.

But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

He was my father—even if he wasn’t. And I was done letting good men die while I kept my silence.

I walked back down into the blackworks, where the smoke stung your eyes and everything was shaped by fire. Garrick gave me a thumbs-up from the far end of the forge. He was shaping a double-headed axe now, big and brutal, too fine for common use.

He was getting better. We all were.

I watched the last crate get sealed. Marked for Castle Black. It would be weeks before we arrived. But when the Wall stood its last stand, they’d have more than rusted swords and empty bellies.

In the days before the royal procession left Winterfell, I’d spoken with a handful of those I trusted. People I met in my work for the north, capable and loyal. Quiet conversations, always in passing, always veiled in other matters. I couldn’t afford to speak plainly—not yet. But the time was right to begin.

Seren had been the first. He understood instinctively what I was trying to build. He was Northern, but sharp in ways the lords overlooked—literate, patient, good with people. He asked all the right questions, and he didn’t flinch when I spoke of long roads and hard change. I told him what I needed: someone to begin organizing the land around Moat Cailin, someone to take the bones of a dead stronghold and breathe life into it.

“I need more than a banner,” I said to him. “I need roads. Mills. Training yards. A place that doesn’t just hold the Neck—but feeds and arms the North. We have talked extensively about this Seren, and you have everything you will need in these books. You know what to do land divisions and reform, settlement incentives, four field crop rotation, steel ploughs, watchtowers, the bones of a bureaucracy to handle everything in the lands. Cort will go with you; he has his orders too.”

He’d nodded without hesitation. “I’ll ride tonight.”

Along with him, I sent two blacksmiths—men I trusted from the Winterfell forges—and three score engineers, administrators, carpenters and stonecutters mostly, to begin laying foundations.

By the time I rode south myself, I wanted something waiting—walls rising, fields cleared, stores measured. And most of all, people. A future.

I told them to start drawing up maps of the land, listing every village and farmstead, to find the men willing to train and the boys old enough to hold a sword. An army wouldn’t grow overnight, but it would grow. Not just a fighting force, but a professional one—disciplined, loyal, capable. Not beholden to fading bloodlines or feuding bannermen but bound to a purpose. Bound to do something more.

They would not fight for the old North.

They would fight for the one I intended to build.

The beginnings of my Royal Army.

I turned back toward the gates, where the dust of the procession still lingered in the cold.

I thought of Arya, brave and wild. Of Bran, so eager to fly. Of Sansa, walking headlong into a den of lions. And of Ned—burdened, noble, doomed.

They didn’t know what was waiting for them. But I did.

And I wasn’t going to watch them die. Ned didn’t want me to go to Kings Landing? I would find an excuse to go anyway, stop Robert’s death and delay the war or in the worst case get everyone out of the capital safe.

If I could save them—I would.

And if I couldn’t?

Then gods help the ones who took them from me.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go here: jajasx222.carrd.co
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Chapter 7: Chapter 7 — Cold Truths and Old Blood

Chapter 7 — Cold Truths and Old Blood

The wind carried the scent of pine and distant snow as we rode north. Frost rimmed the edges of my cloak, and my breath steamed before me in the cold air. The hooves of our escort crunched against the newly paved road, a straight, proud line cut across terrain that had once swallowed travelers whole. Here and there, stone mile-markers had been set in place, carved with the direwolf sigil and distances to the next holdfast. A few farmers had already built near the edges, scratching new life from frozen soil.

The journey had been long, but good company made the miles pass quickly with good weather. Conversation and laughter lightened the burden of distance, and the wagons, sturdy things reinforced with steel bands along the axles—held up better than expected. A few minor breakdowns, a cracked wheel here, a slipped yoke there, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a hammer, some sweat, and a little swearing. The improvements had proven their worth.

Uncle Benjen is a gloomy man though.

The new bridge over the Last River gleamed with pale granite, its arches proud and sound. I slowed to take it in. The old wooden span had rotted through years ago, now it was stone, wide enough for carts to pass side by side, flanked by steel lanterns and lined with carved wolves’ heads. Progress. Real, visible progress.

And yet nothing could prepare me for what loomed ahead a few days later.

At first, it seemed like a low mountain range on the horizon. But as we drew closer, the Wall became a living thing, pale blue and blinding in the daylight, a jagged wound carved across the throat of the world. It stretched from one end of the earth to the other, a glacial monolith that caught the sky itself and held it fast. A storm crow flew near it and vanished into scale. The closer I rode, the smaller I felt.

The Wall did not rise, it loomed. A colossal stretch of ice and shadow, it split the world like the spine of a god. Seven hundred feet high and as wide as a river at its base, it swallowed the horizon, reaching east and west until it faded into a haze of white. Up close, it seemed not like something built, but something that had grown—an ancient glacier carved by forgotten giants. Wind howled along its face in keening gusts, and its surface shimmered blue and silver where the sun struck it, slick in places, jagged in others, as if it had moods of its own.

This was no mere fortification. It was a monument to fear. And resolve. And something older than both.

How did they do it? I wondered, not for the first time. How did men build this, in the dark of the world’s first winter, with no cranes or steel or dragons to lift the ice blocks into place? The songs said Bran the Builder led the work, with help from giants, from the Children of the Forest, from ancient spells whispered into the stones and wind. Maesters scoffed at such tales, of course, they preferred rope pulleys and man-power, sweat and generations of labor. But no rope or man could explain this. This thing.

It was not just the size. It was the weight of it. A weight he could feel with the senses he was developing with the help of Ghost. And the knowledge of what it was built to keep out.

Bran the Builder, they said. A king with giants at his side and magic in his blood. The Pact, signed in sap and shadow. The Long Night, when darkness swallowed the world and fire flickered on the edge of extinction. All of it, shaped into this monstrous wall of ice and magic and forgotten warnings.

Castle Black sat huddled at the foot of the Wall like a forgotten child clinging to a giant's leg. It was not a castle in the southern sense, there were no soaring towers, no polished halls of stone, no shining banners. Instead, it was a place of function and endurance, built not to impress but to survive. The buildings were scattered haphazardly, as if they’d been set down at different times by different hands, with little thought for elegance or design. Most were of old black wood, weathered by snow and wind, patched in places with stone or thatch where repairs had been made over centuries of hard winters. Roofs sagged under layers of crusted snow, and smoke drifted listlessly from crooked chimneys.

The gates yawned open, and we rode through.

The courtyard was more mud than stone, churned by booted feet and wagon wheels, frozen in patches and slick in others. A massive ice and wood stair climbed up to the Wall itself, an impossible construction of ice and timber that creaked ominously in the cold, held together by ancient bolts and hope. At its base, a wide gatehouse yawned open like the mouth of a cave, leading into the shadowed tunnel that pierced through the Wall to the haunted forest beyond.

There were signs of life, if one looked closely. Black brothers moved with purpose, tending to horses, mending tack, dragging fresh-cut logs to the smithy or hauling sacks of grain toward the granaries. Ravens cawed from their rookery atop the old tower, their black wings sharp against the pale sky. Ghost prowled ahead of Jon as they entered the yard, his red eyes wary, his ears pinned flat. As they drew closer to the Wall itself, the direwolf slowed, then growled, deep and low, the sound vibrating in his chest like a warning. Jon laid a hand on his fur, puzzled. Ghost didn’t like the Wall. Neither did I.

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The interior of Castle Black smelled of smoke, damp wool, and old wood. It wasn’t rot, not quite, but there was something weary in the stones. Unlike Winterfell, which pulsed with ancient heat from the hot springs below, Castle Black felt cold even when fires were burning. The place clung to its own chill. A memory of winter buried in every beam.

I was led through a side stairway by a steward with a mop of straw-blond hair and a sleepy expression. "The Lord Commander’s expecting you, my lord.” he mumbled, before giving Ghost a nervous glance and hurrying away once I'd dismissed him.

Mormont’s solar was modest but well-lived. The bear banner of House Mormont hung beside the fireplace. A thick bearskin rug covered most of the floor. The air was warm with the crackle of flame, and a caged raven hopped back and forth on a perch near the desk, eyeing me with unsettling focus.

“Corn,” it squawked. “Corn, corn, corn.”

I tried not to smirk, but the word stuck in my mind. Corn. It had taken me far too long to notice how strange that was. Back in my first life, corn—maize—had been a crop from the so-called New World, unheard of in Europe before ships crossed oceans. And yet here it was, growing in Westeros like it belonged. But no potatoes. No tomatoes, no cocoa, no avocados, no tobacco, not even a whisper of them in maester scrolls. No coffee either, gods help me, few ships came from the Summer Islands. The absence gnawed at me in ways I hadn’t expected. No chocolate. No peppers. And worst of all… no pizza. That thought stung more than it should have. I’d have killed for a hot, bubbling slice. Still, there were pumpkins in the Vale. I’d had a surprisingly decent stew made with squash and honey once in White Harbor. But what we truly needed, what Westeros didn’t know it was starving for, were potatoes. Resilient, filling, easy to grow. A miracle crop, really. I made a mental note to bring them north once I could get my hands on some, if I ever did. At least the rice was coming along. The fields in the Neck were spreading fast, soaking up the warm marsh waters like they’d always belonged there. We were getting there, one step at a time. But gods, I missed pizza.

Mormont sat behind a heavy oak desk, scratching something into a parchment with a quill that looked like it had seen better years. When he saw me, he grunted, waved a calloused hand, and gestured for me to sit.

“You’re taller than your father,” he said. “Though I suppose you’ve had… different experiences.”

I gave a small smile. “More books, fewer battles. So far.”

He snorted. “That may change sooner than you think. Sit. You’ve caused quite the stir, Lord Stark.” He pointed to the letters in his desk. “Word from White Harbor, Torrhen’s Square, even the Rills—supplies arriving in quantities we haven’t seen in centuries. Grain, lumber, finished steel, woolen cloaks that don’t itch like fire ants. And rice, lots of it.”

Word of House Stark supporting the Night’s Watch spread faster than I expected. Once the lords of the North realized that Winterfell had opened its granaries and sent steel, timber, and wool, the rest followed, some out of duty, some out of fear of being seen as less loyal than their neighbors, and a few, I think, out of true belief in the cause. With the harvests kinder every year, their surplus flowed north: dried meats from White Harbor, barley and oats from the Barrowlands, lumber from Deepwood Motte, wool from Flint’s Finger, even smoked fish and new-minted nails from Bear Island.

I sat down across from him, resting my gloved hands on the table. Ghost lay at my feet, silent but alert.

“Rice grows well in the Neck,” I said. “Better with some northern adaptation and water channels. We’ve reclaimed marshes and redirected flows.”

“The Neck,” Mormont said with a dry chuckle. “Always thought the place was fit only for frogs and fever. But you’ve done more in five years than the most lords manage in fifty.”

“I had time,” I replied. “Time to study what wasn’t working. The Wall stands, but its foundations have been crumbling for a long while.”

The raven flapped its wings. “Corn, corn!”

“I don’t know what you’ve taught that bird,” I said, “but it’s got strange taste in words.”

Mormont grunted, waving me to a chair. “He only says what he hears. Apparently, he's overheard enough of my mealtime laments to develop an obsession.” He poured us both a cup of watered wine.

I gave a small laugh, then tilted my head. “Corn.”

The bird looked a me weirdly.

Mormont leaned back, the firelight catching on the bald crown of his head. “Well. You’re odd, but useful. I’ll take that. We need that, gods help me.”

Hey! I’m not weird…

He poured himself a cup of dark liquid from a pewter jug, offered me none, then drank it like medicine.

“I won’t waste more of your time with pleasantries, you are needed to supervise the reconstruction of the castle. I’ve read the ledgers. I’ve seen the wagons. You’ve done more for the Watch in half a year than the Crown has done in fifty.”

I inclined my head. “The Wall isn’t just a ruin to me, my lord. It’s a warning. And if the Watch falls, there will be no one left to hear it.”

He stood slowly and walked to the window slit, staring out at the Wall’s looming edge and the courtyard.

“The Watch thanks you for it.”

I accepted the cup, feeling its warmth in my hands. “It wasn’t just me. I had help. Good people. Good minds. I only pushed them.”

“And that,” he said, “is what a commander does.”

The raven flapped down from its beam to the table and pecked at a crust of bread. “Corn,” it repeated.

I took a sip, let the warmth settle in my chest. “How bad is it, truly?”

Mormont’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Bad. Though I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise.” He leaned forward. “We’ve a thousand men on parchment. Maybe eight hundred and fifty can still swing a sword. Half that can do so properly. The rest are broken men, thieves, poachers, and boys. We have maybe three dozen knights. A handful of veterans. The rest… I won’t call them useless, but t, ey’ll need shaping. Years of it.”

“Desertion rates?” I asked.

“A few. Not as many as usual. The supplies that have been trickling until now help. The new food helps, so does coin in the pocket and proper boots on the feet. But still… some slip away. Some always do.”

I nodded slowly. “And what of the castles?”

“We man three, Castle Black, Eastwatch, and the Shadow Tower. The rest are ruins. The builders have started patching Long Barrow and Greyguard, under your orders. It’s a start. But until we have men to fill those halls, they’re bones with no flesh.”

I frowned. “What about the stewards? The builders? Are they holding up?”

“They’re the backbone of the Watch right now,” Mormont said. “The new tools, the carts, the forges, they will do more good than you know. Small victories. They matter.”

I let my gaze drift to the hearth, where the flames cast long shadows across the stone floor. “And yet, it’s not enough.”

“No,” he said. “Not yet. But gods, boy… the Watch has not been this well-supplied since Queen Alysanne rode north on Silverwing. That was a hundred years and more past. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Supplies mattered, gods, they mattered more than I ever realized. Warm cloaks, full bellies, boots that didn’t split after three weeks, but even as I saw the crates unloaded and my engineers start measuring the place where the new lift was going to be set up, I couldn’t shake the hollow feeling. It wasn’t just the Wall that was cold; it was the halls, the yards, the barracks. Too much space and not enough voices. Not enough footsteps echoing on stone.

“What more do you need, Lord  Commander?”

“What we really need,” said Mormont as we stood above the yard, watching a half-drilled line of recruits stumble through the unloading of supplies, “is men. The men we have are soft,” he said. “And few. Boys from gutters, second sons no one will miss, thieves, rapers, bastards. Fewer good men each year. Even Gold Cloaks in the capital are better trained. And they don’t freeze their cocks off.”

Then I asked, “What would you do, if you had a thousand good men?”

He gave a low whistle, thoughtful. “I’d reopen five more castles. Send patrols west and east every week. I’d march north of the Wall and crush whatever wildling clans dare mass together. I’d reinforce Eastwatch by Sea, build ships again, real ones, not those rotted driftwood things we have now. And I’d start training lads the moment they arrived.”

I nodded slowly. “You’ll have your thousand. If you listen to me.”

He gave me a look like he didn’t believe me, but wanted to. “And where will you find them, Lord Stark?”

I took the book I had been writing for the past moon, many thoughts across the years abut how to save the watch written upon it, a well thought out plan.

“You would need to make a lot of reforms to the watch and its lands. House Stark will back it.”

Mormont read the first few pages and then turned to me. “The old lords will howl.”

“Then let them. You need bodies who can hold a sword and remember how to use it. Discipline. Incentives. Food. Protection. Maybe even families.”

Mormont blinked. “Families? At the Wall?”

“You have wide lands to the south, Lord Commander.” I clarified. “Look around. The land is empty. There’s space. Give people incentives to work the land and they will flock to it, the forest are full of game and you have a few parts where the land is fertile, the coast has fish and much potential, and the Northern Mountains in Watch land have many closed mines. With the right incentives people will come, money will flow, and with that more people will come.”

Refugees too, once the war in the south starts. I will send some here and the rest will settle my lands.

“It becomes a cycle…” Mormont keept listening and reading. “What more, Stark?”

“Incentives to serve the watch, spread word wide and far. If a man serves five years, ten years—maybe he earns the right to settle nearby a piece of land for himself. To Farm. To Guard. Raise sons who grow up with the Watch in their blood. In no other lands in the Seven Kingdoms except my own can men own land so easily, people would come.”

“And when they do,” Mormont said, “this old Wall may yet hold.”

“Let the old watch die, tradition has killed it and held it back, keep the parts that are useful and make a new future for this place. I will invest in this, and so will Robb Stark now that he is regent in the North, the lords will follow.”

And when the dead arrive in less than a decade, the lands will be able to support the tens of thousands of men I will have with me to man the Wall.

The raven flapped and screeched again, as if in agreement. “Corn!”

I smiled faintly. “Potato.”

Mormont frowned. “What in the seven hells is a potato?”

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The air inside Castle Black has slowly changed these past few days. Braziers stood in corners now. Fires burned in hearths once cold. Roofs no longer leaked over the bunks, and in the kitchens, the stoves sang with the scent of stew. You could almost believe the place was alive again. Lord Commander Mormont had taken my suggestions and my book as a holy revelation and kept asking questions and studying the text. Hopefully soon I would see him move to start the change of the wall.

I stood before the lift, watching as a team of builders from White Harbor tested the new mechanism. The entire structure, ropes, pulleys, weights, was built from scratch, stronger and more efficient. One man cranked the wheel with effort, but not strain, and a dozen men rose smoothly into the sky, balanced and lifted with the grace of a crane. Soon, we would begin setting it up.

It wasn’t just the lift. Repairs were underway across Castle Black. The new smithy was almost finished, stocked with northern steel and proper tools. A new roof had been fitted on the rookery. Even the old tunnels beneath the Wall, once collapsed or ignored, were being cleared by pick and torch. There were new forges, freshly stocked pantries, fletching tables and armorers’ benches. And all around me, men were working, not just brothers of the Watch, but craftsmen and laborers who had come north at the behest of their lords, or for gold, or for honor.

This was the fruit of a moon of effort. Of planning, letters, deals struck in Winterfell’s halls. The lords of the North had begun to open their stores because of honor, and because House Stark had spoken.

Still, for all the wagons and walls and iron nails, I had come to the rookery for something else. Something older. Something I couldn’t build with stone or steel.

I climbed the tower alone.

The rookery had always seemed a place removed from time. The stairs curled like a snail’s shell, narrow and steep, the walls lichen-stained and moss-choked. I ran a gloved hand along the stone as I ascended, and the chill of it felt like a memory.

At the top, beneath the ravens’ loft, sat Maester Aemon.

He was cloaked in black and grey, his head bowed over a cup of steaming tea. The brazier beside him hissed and popped. Ravens stirred above, restless in their sleep.

He didn’t look up as I entered. He didn’t need to.

“You walk like a man who knows who he is, Jon Snow.” he said.

I stood in silence.

He turned his head slightly, and those cloudy, milk-white eyes seemed to look through me. “Come closer, child.”

I knelt beside him, slowly, carefully. Up close, his face was older than any book could describe. His skin was parchment, his hands like bone wrapped in silk. But there was fire in him still. The embers of a dragon.

“I don’t go by Snow anymore,” I said.

He reached out, and I took his hand in mine. I brought it to my face. His fingers trembled as they brushed my cheek, tracing the shape of me like a blind sculptor.

“I remember this face,” he whispered. “You are my blood, there is no denying that. Your hair… it’s hers.”

I closed my eyes, but the tears still came. Hot. Relentless.

“My mothers.” I said.

A deep breath. “Lyanna Stark was winter’s fire. She defied a kingdom and loved without fear. And Rhaegar… Rhaegar was many things. Too many, I fear. But he loved her.”

“They said he kidnapped her,” I muttered. “That she was stolen. That she died screaming.”

“Lies,” Aemon said with iron in his tone. “Lies wrapped in grief and swallowed by history. He crowned her of his own will. She went to Dorne for love, not chains. They were children trying to remake the world with poetry and prophecy. Your father sent letters to me, many of them. He was the first of my kin that remembered my existence since Bloodraven.”

“Then everything they said was wrong,” I said. “The whole war—”

“Was fought on false ground.” His voice dropped. “And I… I remained silent. When the ravens brought word of Elia and her children slaughtered, I said nothing. When Lyanna died in childbed and your name was buried, I stayed here and read letters. I told myself it was not my place.”

I said nothing. His hand was still against my cheek. His breath was labored now.

“But it was my place. I was a Targaryen once. I was blood of the dragon. And I let my kin be torn apart.”

He pulled his hand back. “Forgive me. I have lived too long with ghosts.”

“You’re the first one who’s seen me,” I said. “Truly seen me. Everyone else guesses, or suspects, or wonders. But you knew. You remembered.”

“You are no ghost, Jon… or Daemon. You are fire and snow. You are fire and ice made flesh. There is power in that. Power, and danger. They wanted to call you Visenya, you know?”

We sat in silence for a while. The ravens above muttered, wings shuffling.

“What can you tell me about them?” I asked quietly. “Rhaegar? Elia?”

Aemon nodded. “Rhaegar had the soul of a singer and the mind of a scholar. He should never have been a warrior. Elia… she was a rose from Dorne, and gentler than the court deserved. She was not jealous. She understood. She only wanted peace.”

“What would he think of me?”

“I think… he would have wept,” Aemon said, “to see what became of you. And I think he would be proud. You carry his mind, his drive.”

I looked down at my hands. Scarred. Hardened. Not princely things.

“Uncle Aemon…” This poor man, this poor forgotten man.

“My blood...”

He embraced me and I him, my blood sung as if it had found a long-lost ember.

“Look at me, weeping like a child.”

He fell silent again, and I let him be. His hand was warm on mine. I stayed there for a long time. Long enough to feel the sun shift behind the Wall. Long enough to hear the ravens stir with hunger. Long enough for my tears to dry.

Maester Aemon had gone still, his clouded eyes turned slightly toward the fire. I thought he’d dozed, lulled by memory and age. But when I shifted, his hand tightened on mine.

“There is more,” he said, his voice no louder than a breath. “Isn’t there?”

I nodded, though he could not see it. My heart thudded against my ribs.

“Yes,” I said. “There is.”

Carefully, I reached into the satchel at my side, one I had kept wrapped in furs and bound with leather cords. I untied it with deliberate hands, slow and ceremonial. It felt like breaking a vow to take it out, to show it. I had told no one yet. Not even Robb.

Inside, cradled in dark wool, was the egg.

I unwrapped it and placed it between us.

The firelight caught the shell in flickers of shadowed red and burnished black. It was heavier than it looked. The scales shimmered faintly.

Aemon’s lips parted. His breath hitched.

“Dragon,” he whispered.

I said nothing. There was nothing to say.

He reached for it blindly. I guided his hand until his fingers brushed the shell.

At his touch, the old man shivered. Not from cold.

“I thought they were all gone,” he murmured. “Dead. Cursed. Lost in Valyria, or crushed at Summerhall.”

“One remained,” I said. “Buried beneath the crypts at Winterfell. Deep. Asleep.”

He ran his fingers over it, reverently, as if he were touching the bones of a god. “I’ve dreamed of them. Of wings unfurled. Of fire in the darkness. I never thought I’d feel one again.”

“Do you think it can hatch?” I asked, not knowing why I needed the answer.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. But it is not the egg that matters.”

He turned his head to face me fully. “It is you. You are the dragon reborn into snow. You are the ember that escaped the ash.”

“Then why do I feel so cold?” I whispered.

“Because you have not yet burned,” Aemon said. “But you will. You must.”

He lifted the egg with both hands and held it close to his chest, as if to hear its forgotten heartbeat.

He handed it back to me with great care, and I wrapped it again in wool and silence.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” I admitted. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.”

“Kill the boy, Jon Snow. And let the King be born.”

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 8: Chapter 8 — Shadows and Sights

Chapter 8 — Shadows and Sights


The training yard at Castle Black rang with the clash of wood on wood, curses, and the sharp bark of Ser Alliser Thorne’s commands. Snow still clung to the corners, packed hard under boot and blade. I stood at the edge of the circle, watching a boy flinch beneath a hail of blows.

He was large, not in strength, but in... size—his pink face flushed and streaked with tears, breath wheezing in great, ragged gulps. The other men jeered as he fell again, struggling to rise, only to be knocked down by a smug, sharp-faced lad I didn’t recognize.

“Get up, piggy!” someone shouted.
“Come on, Tarly, try hitting back!” another jeered.

Tarly.
I stepped forward.

“That’s enough,” I said, voice low but firm.

The boys stopped. Not because of my tone, but because of Ghost, silent as snowfall, appearing at my side, eyes red as ember coals, lips curled slightly. The sharp-faced boy backed away fast.

Ser Alliser turned toward me, sneering. “You coddling him, Stark? Think this is Winterfell’s nursery?”

“I think if you want swordsmen, breaking their ribs the first day isn’t the way to get them,” I said coolly. “Let him breathe.”

Thorne didn’t argue. Not aloud. He walked off, muttering under his breath about “stark softness.”

I knelt beside the boy. He looked up at me through watery eyes, blinking behind a mess of sweat-damp hair.

“You all right?” I asked.

He nodded, then shook his head, then tried to nod again. “Y-yes. No. I—I suppose so. I’m Sam. Samwell Tarly.”

“Jon Snow,” I said out of habit, then paused. “Jon Stark now, actually. Long story.”

His eyes widened. “You’re the Jon Stark. Lord Eddard’s… I mean… I heard the men talking. That you brought wagons. Food. Oil. Stone. Steel. Even books!”

“Some of them,” I said, smiling faintly. “You’re a Tarly, you said?”

He nodded, gulping. “Yes. Of Horn Hill. But my father... he sent me here. Said I was a disgrace. That I—” His mouth clamped shut, pain blooming in his face like a bruise

Samwell Tarly, you have too much potential to be wasted here playing at being a warrior.

“Come with me, Samwell.”

I took Sam to the library, if the name still fit. The room had once been larger, but rot and frostbite had collapsed a corner wall years ago. Shelves leaned like drunks, scrolls crumbled at the touch. We were already clearing space for stone repair, and I'd promised Maester Aemon more wood from the shipments coming from the Wolfswood. Still, Sam looked at it like it was a sept.

“I didn’t know the Watch had so many books,” he murmured, reverently tracing a broken binding. “So many old names.”

“They’ll be dust if we don’t organize them,” I said. “And copied. Preserved.” I took a book from the shelf, probably one of Aemons seeing as it was in High Valyrian.

He blinked at me. “You read Valyrian?”

“Yes, it just comes easily to me,” I said, then grinned. “But I’ve got a project for you.”

He followed me through the winding corridors, down to the rebuilt quartermaster’s hall. The room still smelled of new pine and ink. On the table were ledgers, some freshly bound, others salvaged and rebound. Pages of numbers, marks, shipments, and notes lay in neat rows beside my own annotations.

“I had them start this when we reached Mole’s Town,” I explained, laying one open. “Every bolt of cloth, every stone block, every iron nail from White Harbor or Barrowton. I’d like to think even Braavosi bankers would be impressed.”

Sam stared, brows furrowed. “You… you’ve been recording this by weight? And volume? Oh! You’re even using different symbols for local versus southern grain!”

I raised a brow. “You recognize that?”

“Of course! It’s the old Oldtown system. Archmaester Thryn used it in his treatise on harvests. But I thought no one outside the Reach still used that!”

He is well read. He could be the man I need to help me in the Moat, he hasn’t given his vows yet…

I leaned against the table, watching him light up as he flipped pages, muttering to himself. He caught himself after a moment, flushing. “I’m sorry. I just—it’s remarkable. Most lords would’ve just tallied by the cart.”

“I’m not most lords,” I said. “And neither are you.”

He turned pink again but said nothing.

I showed him around the castle after that, past the scaffolding on the collapsed wall, the rebuilt kitchens with their repaired ovens, the forges that now burned night and day. “I want the Watch to be able to house and feed a thousands of men again.” I said. "Then grow past that.”

He looked at me wide-eyed, the weight of those words settling in. “But there aren’t even six hundred of us, are there?” Sam said, voice hesitant.

“No,” I admitted. “Not yet. But there will be. The Lord Commander is planning big changes. And supplies are flowing in, men will follow. And I mean for the Watch to be ready for them.”

Sam nodded, slowly. “It’s ambitious…”

I gave a short laugh. Then I stopped us before the new storerooms, thick stone walls and iron-banded doors, filled with barrels, sacks, tools, iron, even some smoked meat and cheese. “This is what your mind will help protect. Numbers, plans, rotas, inventories. If one of those goes wrong, men die. And I think you understand that better than most.”

He blinked at me, a bit stunned. “Me?”

I nodded. “You. I’ve seen the way you notice things. You have a keen mind, Sam. The Lord Commander has given me leave to put his men to work where I want them, and you would be wasted in the yard or moving stone and wood. I want you to help me organize the rebuilding of Castle Black.”

Sam looked as if he might faint. “I’m no builder, Jon. I’m not even a fighter. I’m... I’m a coward.”

I stopped and looked him dead in the eyes. “You’re not a coward. You made it here, didn’t you? You stayed, when you could’ve run. That’s more than most. You don’t need to swing a sword to serve the Watch. Just your mind.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t deny it either. Instead, he glanced up at the rafters, then down at the half-repaired stone flooring. “The east hall needs sealing before the snows come,” he said quietly. “And the eastern granary roof will leak in two weeks unless the pitch is reapplied. I told that to Ser Ottyn last night, but he grunted and walked off.”

I smiled. “Then don’t tell Ottyn. Tell me. And tomorrow, you start rewriting the ledger. From scratch. We'll go through every name, every bunk, every hammer and sack of oats.”

Sam looked at me, then at the bustle of Castle Black beyond the half-open gates, men clanking with tools and shouting orders in the yard. Then back to me.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll do my best, Lord Stark”

“Just Jon, Sam, and that’s all I ask,” I replied. “But I think your best might surprise even you.”

He blushed furiously, and for a moment we stood in companionable silence. The wind moaned low through the high towers, carrying with it the scent of smoke, pine, and cold stone. The Watch was still broken in many places, but it was no longer crumbling, in the next fortnight most of the rebuilding would be done and I could go back south. Hopefully with a new steward with me.

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The Wall was a mountain made by men.

Climbing it wasn’t as hard as I expected, not now that the new winch system had been set up, the pulleys oiled, and new ropes and steel chains wound tight by the smiths. The cage groaned its complaints, but it bore me steadily skyward, past white-crusted stone and gleaming patches of ancient ice, until the whole world seemed to fall away beneath me.

When I stepped out onto the top, I almost staggered.

The top of the Wall was no longer a desolate strip of wind-blasted ice. Crews of black-clad men had labored day and night, restoring what had once been left to rot. Stone and timber walkways now ran along the length of the Wall's crown, replacing the crumbling, frost-slicked paths with solid footing. Trenches had been carved for drainage and defense, and small watchposts with thick wooden siding and shuttered windows had been raised at intervals, each equipped with a coal brazier and iron chimneys to hold in warmth during the worst of the cold. It wasn’t comfort, not exactly, but it was a far cry from the bone-deep misery the Watch had once endured aloft. For the first time in generations, men could live atop the Wall, not just survive it.

The wind struck me like a blade, sharp and whistling, and the cold clawed at every exposed inch of my face. But the view, gods, the view. The North spread before me like a map drawn by giants. Endless forests of dark pine rolled out toward the horizon like waves frozen mid-crash. Here and there, black mountain peaks jutted up like the jagged teeth of some buried god. Everything was so vast, so open, that it felt almost unreal, like the land beyond the Wall had slipped into another age entirely, where no time passed and no men had ever walked.

Behind me, footsteps crunched on hoarfrost.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” came Tyrion’s voice, cheerful and tinny in the thin air. “Though I admit, the chill does terrible things to my poor southern parts.”

I turned, grinning. He was bundled up in so many furs he looked more bear than man. He waddled past me, waddled right up to the edge of the Wall, unlatched his breeches with some difficulty, and relieved himself into the wind with theatrical flair.

“Gods,” I laughed, “you really did it.”

“Of course I did it,” he said, shaking himself and buttoning back up. “How many men can say they’ve pissed off the edge of the world?” He looked over at me, his expression suddenly more serious. “But you didn’t come up here for that, did you?”

“No,” I said, voice quiet. “I just needed to see it.”

“It’s quite the sight.” He murmured.

“It’s breathtaking. This place... it feels ancient.”

“It is ancient,” Tyrion said. “Thousands of years old. Built by a hero-king with magic and giants, or so the stories say. But I suspect he had better engineers than anyone admits.”

I smiled faintly. I’d often wondered that myself. In my other life, something like this would have been a marvel even modern machines would struggle to match, the ice would melt at the bottom because of the pressure. Ten thousand men, ice fused with stone, some say weirwood used in the foundations, how had they done it? Did the First Men and the Children truly summon sorcery to shape this frozen monolith? Or had they simply built and built, generation after generation, bound by fear of what lay beyond? The wall was higher and wider in some places, like people over millennia had just dripped water and waited for it to freeze.

I leaned over the edge, staring out into the white beyond. The Haunted Forest stretched out, cloaked in mists and snowfall, the land falling away and then rising again into foothills and jagged peaks. And farther still, so far my eyes couldn’t reach, was the land of the true north. Where the dead stirred and the cold had a mind of its own.

The wind shifted, and something in it whispered.

Not a sound. Not quite. A feeling. A pressure behind the ears, a chill in the bones. A call that wasn’t in any tongue I knew, but that still sent the hairs on my neck standing on end.

In Castle Black, Ghost gave a low, uncertain growl.

He hadn’t followed me onto the lift, but I’d caught glimpses of him below, pacing along the base of the Wall. He hated this place, more than I understood. The direwolf wasn’t just uneasy, he was afraid. That more than anything told me I was right to be uneasy too.

“Jon?” Tyrion said softly. “Are you well?”

I blinked. I hadn’t realized I’d gone still, hadn’t realized my fingers had curled around the hilt of my longsword. The wind howled again, this time lower, stranger, like the breath of something massive and ancient exhaling just over the edge of the world.

“I’m fine,” I said, though my voice lacked conviction. “Just listening.”

“Not to that wind, I hope. That way lies madness.”

I gave a humorless chuckle. “Shut up and give me that wineskin you always carry around.”

“Not wine, Northern fire!” He exclaimed and passed it over; I took a big gulp. What the fuck was that? It felt like something was calling me.

“Whiskey.” I corrected half-heartedly.

Tyrion’s eyes studied me, weighing something. “You look like someone who’s seen ghosts.”

“I feel like it at least,” I said, before I could stop myself.

That quieted him. For a long moment we both stood there, staring northward, the cold seeping through even the thickest of furs.

The wind moaned again, closer now. The sky above was clear, but the light was wrong, too pale, as if the sun itself feared to shine in full.

I turned away, finally. Whatever called from beyond the Wall, it wasn’t meant to be heard by Tyrion, it was just for me. I had heard it. And worse, I’d understood it just enough to know that it knew me in turn.

When I descended, Ghost met me at the base, his fur bristled, his eyes locked onto mine. He pressed close, as if to say, Don’t go out there. Not alone.

I crouched and ran my fingers through his fur. “Not alone Ghost,” I whispered. “I always have you.”

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The forest beyond the Wall was a different world.

I moved quietly, my steps muffled by the snow that blanketed the earth like ash. Ghost padded beside me, his red eyes wary and glowing. The air smelled older out here, older than men, older than castles, older than even memory. Wind moved through the branches like the breath of something ancient.

It had taken a week of persistent arguments, midnight conversations, and more than one shouting match to convince Lord Commander Mormont to let me go.

He wasn’t convinced. Not that day. Nor the next. Mormont had grown fond of me, I knew, in his own gruff, reluctant way. But more than that, he feared what would happen if the new Lord Stark, now half a myth among the Watch, vanished beyond the trees. “You’re a symbol, Stark. What happens if the new Lord of Moat Cailin freezes to death pissing under a pine tree north of the Wall? The realm doesn't need another dead hero.”

It was Maester Aemon who finally swayed him.

"He sees more than you think," the old man said quietly one evening, after hearing me out in the rookery. "Let him go, Jeor. Not as a ranger. As a Stark. As something more."

The next morning, Mormont signed the writ with trembling fingers and a scowl that could have cracked stone. “You get a day, boy. No more. You don’t come back by then, I’ll send a search party.”

He handed me the letter with the seal. “And for the love of the gods, don’t make me regret this.”

I already had a cloak packed. Ghost was waiting at the gate.

The pull had grown stronger with each step I took, like a thread of ice winding around my spine, drawing me deeper into the forest. Ghost padded silently at my side, ears pinned back, uneasy but unwilling to leave me. I followed the call without needing to question it—not instinct, not reason, but something deeper, older. I knew where I was going, even if I had never been there before.

When I stepped into the grove, the world changed.

It was a place of stillness, so complete it felt unnatural, no bird call, no wind through the branches, only the hush of snow settling. The grove opened like a wound in the forest, and in its heart stood the tree, a great weirwood, its bark pale as dead flesh, its leaves a deep crimson that shimmered in the dim light like old blood. Its carved face stared from the trunk in agony and solemnity both, sap weeping from their eyes in thick red tears. The air felt thick with memory, with grief, with judgment. The kind of silence that demanded reverence.

The call in my chest became a roar, louder than thought, louder than breath. It wasn’t sound, not really. It was a knowing. A command carved into my bones. I staggered forward, heart pounding, and fell to my knees before the largest tree. Its face was twisted in an expression I couldn’t name, part mourning, part expectation.

This was the place. The godswood where the Night’s Watch swore their vows. The place I should have knelt as a boy. But I was no longer that Jon Snow. I had changed fate. And I knew now—I had always known, somewhere, that this moment had been waiting for me.

I had come to listen. I had come to see.

I stepped into the ring of trees. Ghost stopped at the edge. He whined low in his throat, ears flat, but he didn’t follow.

I turned back, just once, and nodded to him.

“I have to do this,” I whispered.

Then I knelt before the central tree. Its carved face wept tears of red.

My fingers touched the bark, and the world vanished.

It wasn’t like sleep. It wasn’t like dreaming. It was like drowning in memory. I was dragged beneath an ocean of time and blood and shadow. I fell through centuries, and I landed in the hollow of a dead tree, staring at a man who had no right to be alive.

He was part of the tree, or the tree was part of him. A crown of bone and roots had grown through his skull. His skin was gray and stretched thin across his face, his lips sunken, his eye milky with blindness, yet deeper than void. He was cloaked in black feathers, and the memory of his sword still clung to his side, even though he no longer wore it.

Bloodraven.

Brynden Rivers. The last greenseer. My great-great uncle. Antlers of blackened root curled through his skull, tangled with ravens that watched with knowing eyes. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The truth poured from him like blood from a wound.

First came fire, cold fire, remembered fire.

A blade lay resting in darkness, cradled by the bones of the world. Not buried, not lost, only waiting. Dark Sister. The sword of Visenya Targaryen. It pulsed with history and rage beneath a mountain of roots, moonlight sliding across its edge like a whisper of murder. I saw bloody handprints scorched into stone near its resting place. One was mine.

Then a city, a manse cloaked in fog and velvet decay. Cobwebs thick as gauze veiled the corners. Beneath a floorboard, in a chest lined with red velvet and sealed in dust, it slept. It was a crown made a weapon. Blackfyre. No fire danced on its blade, but the steel remembered kings. The air around it stank of old oaths and spilled blood. In the distance, I heard laughter, bitter, regal, doomed.

Flames consumed the world next. Crimson skies cracked open like broken eggs. Beneath a bleeding moon, three dragon eggs split, sinew and shell and fire. Screeches filled the sky. Wings erupted, dark as ash, wide as storms. Dragons rose. Not from stone, but from sacrifice. From pain. Fire kissed the womb of the world, and the world screamed.

In a broken hall of black stone, Daenerys Targaryen knelt. Her silver hair matted with ash. Her hands trembling. In her arms lay a child, small and still, wrapped in blood-red silk. She held him as if to warm him, as if to breathe life back into him. But there was no life. Only tears.

Then my face, reflected not in still water, but in the blade of a sword I had never touched. Steel bright as morning. My eyes were the color of summer storms over Valyria: deep violet, rimmed with flame. The face was mine, but the man was not. A crownless king in exile.

The vision twisted.

Steel rang like a bell in the dark. Men shouted. Northern cries. “Winterfell!” “Stark!” “For the North!” “The Dragonwolf!” Blades clashed in the snow. A lion’s roar was silenced by a sword through the throat. Red cloaks burned. Smoke curled over a torn banner, gold on crimson, rent by axe and frost. Wolves hunted among the dead. I stood on a lake of blood surrounded by corpses that whispered insults to me.

The sky bled fire. Ash fell like snow, coating broken shields and shattered helms. Men died with my name on their lips, some in praise, some in terror. The Dragonwolf, they called me. Crowned in black steel and rubies, a cloak of fire and soot trailing behind, I strode across the battlefield like a ghost made flesh. My sword was red to the hilt, steaming in the cold air. Around me lay the ruins of houses, falcon, stag, lion, kraken, all fallen, all burning. Their dead stared with empty eyes, mouths open in eternal screams. Ravens circled overhead, crying out truths I could not bear to hear. Northmen knelt in the mud, bloodied and hollow-eyed, swearing fealty not with words but with sacrifice.

Then came the throne.

Not the Iron Throne of stories, but something older, crueler. A mountain of swords driven into the flesh of a dead god. Blades twisted like roots, fused by heat and hatred. Blood dripped from its heights, running in rivulets down the steps, fresh, endless, red as the weirwood’s tears, it looked like a river of blood. I stood before it, drenched in gore, the crown heavy upon my brow. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of it all. The weight of prophecy, of vengeance, of the countless dead who brought me to this moment. Behind me, the corpses stirred. They called to me, not with voices, but with expectation. Called me a king. A savior. A monster. I could no longer tell which.

And then came the silence .

The forest lay in ruin, blanketed in endless snow. No birds. No wind. Only the sound of ice cracking as they came. Pale riders atop gaunt horses, their eyes burning like ghost-fire. The White Walkers moved like whispers, soundless and cold. I saw flesh turn black at their passing. The weirwoods wept frozen tears.

And then came the spiral.

A field of bodies, twisted and arranged with terrible purpose, arms, legs, skulls forming a symbol too old to name. A spiral of death. The wind howled around it, but the corpses did not move. They were part of something larger, something watching. I felt it watching me.

The vision surged, the weight of it crushing, until I fell back into my body like a man thrown from a cliff. My breath was ragged. My fingers dug into the snow. Ghost was howling.

And the tree in front of me bled.

I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. The images burned into me. They filled my lungs like fire. My skin cracked beneath them. My blood boiled.

Too much.

I tried to cry out, but my voice was gone. All that remained was the sound of wind through dead leaves, and the taste of blood in my mouth.

The tree released me like it had exhaled.

I fell back into the snow like a broken branch. My limbs refused to move. My mouth was open, but no breath came.

The cold was a living thing. It crept into my bones and coiled around my heart.

Above me, the weirwood wept in silence.

Then something warm brushed against my face. A wet nose. Hot breath.

Ghost.

He whined, low and desperate, and nudged me with his snout. I couldn’t respond. My fingers wouldn’t obey me. I had no strength left. The visions had emptied me. I had gone too far.

I thought of Sam, still pouring over ledgers. Of Robb, somewhere to the south. Of Arya’s wild grin. Of Daenerys, cradling a child she could not save.

And I thought of the swords, Dark Sister, Blackfyre. Waiting.

The world faded.

Ghost curled around me, his thick white fur pressing into my side. He growled softly at the trees, at the sky, at the cold.

I slipped into darkness, wrapped in warmth and silence and the steady pulse of something that would not let me go.

Not yet.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 9: Chapter 9 – Shadows in the Snow

Chapter 9 – Shadows in the Snow

 

The world was white and still.

Snow drifted gently over me, clinging to the fur of my cloak, dusting Ghost’s back like powdered ash. He lay half-curled around me, his breath a faint plume in the cold morning air. I couldn’t feel my fingers. My eyes ached. When I moved, something cracked, ice had crusted over the blood beneath my nose, frozen where it had bled in the night.

I sat up slowly, groaning. The weirwood stood behind me, ancient and still, its red eyes watching me in silence. Its mouth bled red sap like blood. The grove was untouched by wind or storm, the snow falling gently through the air as if time itself hesitated here.

The vision… the dream… the truth. It was all slipping from me like water through my hands. Images came in flashes, jagged as broken glass: A woman with silver hair kneeling in ash. A sword of night and flame, black as sorrow. A cave in the bones of the world where something old waited, hungry and aware. My own face, too—older, crowned, shadowed in blood.

I clenched my jaw. My fingers throbbed, white at the tips, the flesh stiff. Frostbite, or close to it. I forced them into a fist. I wouldn’t forget. I couldn’t forget. The cost of ignorance was too great now. I had seen too much.

The location of Valyrian steel, the way to hatch dragons, the future, so much useful information…

Ghost nudged me, whining softly. His red eyes searched mine, worried. He had felt it too, something. A presence vast and strange. Not just Brynden, but something older and bigger still. I brushed the snow from my cloak and staggered to my feet.

Each step away from the tree was harder than I expected, like walking through wet sand. My legs were trembling. My lungs burned. But I made myself move, one foot in front of the other, back toward the Watch. Back toward warmth and brothers and war.

The wind howled through the pines as I walked. The snow whispered of death and memory. And still, fragments echoed in my head like a song I couldn’t forget.

"A blade in the dark. A face with purple eyes. A spiral of corpses. A child crying in a hall of ruin."

The Wall loomed somewhere ahead, beyond the trees. But I no longer felt its safety the way I once had. There were things in this world that no stone or ice could stop.

The snow crunched beneath my boots as I walked, my legs stiff, my cloak heavy with frost. My breath came in slow, steady clouds. Each step away from the weirwood felt like leaving behind a truth too great to carry.

And yet, my mind raced, fevered and full. Not just with the images I had seen, but with the truth I had kept buried.

I wasn’t only building roads and draining swamps to feed the North. I wasn’t forging steel in new ways or commissioning kilns to blow glass for lanterns and lenses simply for the Watch’s benefit. I told myself it was all for survival, for the war to come. The Others would not care for crowns or thrones or gold, only fire and blood and death. And yet…

That wasn’t the whole truth, was it?

I wanted the throne.

Not just to wield it as a weapon against the Long Night, but for myself. I wanted to stand atop a world and remake it with my own hands. I wanted to see the engines of war I designed sweep across battlefields. I wanted to see the granaries full in every holdfast because I had put them there. I wanted my seal on letters that reshaped the world. I wanted power, not only for the good it could bring, but because power itself drew me like a blade to the hand.

Even now I could see it, the Iron Throne, not just in fire and blood, but solid and real. Bleeding swords, yes… but also the seat from which the world could be saved. Or destroyed.

The vision had shaken me. I had seen what it would take to get there. The screams. The fire. The broken bodies. A lake of blood. My own face drenched in it.

It had made me feel… wrong. Unclean. I was meant to stop that war, not cause it.

But the war is coming either way.

The North is not enough. The Wall cannot stand alone. The South is fractured. The realm is weak. If I do not rise, if someone else takes the reins of power, they will fail, and the dead will sweep us all away.

I am the best candidate. Not because I’m Rhaegar’s son. Not because of dragons or bloodlines. Because I remember the world that was. Because I know how to win. I understand the shape of what must be done, even if it’s cruel, even if it breaks me.

Let it.

Let the songs call me a tyrant. Let history scorn me.

I will hold the realm together through the Long Night. I will bear the crown. I will bear the guilt.

No matter the cost.

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The entrance to Castle Black loomed in the distance, I could see plums of smoke for the top of the wall, the new towers on top like a jagged crown of soot and stone, its wooden walkways gleaming with fresh ice. The wind had teeth again. Snow whipped past my face, stinging skin already cracked and bruised. Ghost padded ahead of me, silent as the grave, his white fur ruffled and stiff with frost.

The gate guards spotted us as we neared. Their shouts broke the morning hush.

“Seven hells, is that Lord Stark?”

“Fetch the Lord Commander!”

Steel boots clattered across the ice-packed yard. I saw shapes moving atop the Wall, and the clang of the lift’s chains echoed down like bells of alarm. Two men ran forward, grabbing my arms like I was made of glass.

“You’ve been gone a full day,” one said. “We thought you’d fallen through the ice or worse.”

I didn’t answer. My tongue felt slow. My hands were numb. I let them lead me like a wraith into the courtyard, Ghost stalking at my heel, eyes burning red in the morning gloom.

Inside the rookery tower, warmth wrapped around me like a second skin. Maester Aemon was already waiting, a cup of steaming broth in one hand. He did not ask what had happened. He touched my wrist, gently, found the chill in my fingers, and nodded to Clydas to fetch blankets.

I looked at myself in the mirror. Were my eyes more purple?

He cleaned the blood from my nose in silence. Rubbed a salve of bear fat and pine resin on my fingertips. I did not speak. I couldn’t.

But Aemon’s blind eyes turned toward me as if he saw straight through flesh and bone.

“You looked beyond the Wall,” he said softly, not as a question but a truth. “And something ancient looked back.”

I didn’t reply. He didn’t expect me to.

“The Wall remembers,” he said. “It stands, not only with stone and ice, but with memory. When you touch what lies beyond, it touches you back.”

His words settled in the air like falling snow—light, but heavy when they landed. I didn’t know what I’d touched. But it still clung to my skin like frostbite.

Did Bloodraven show me all that, why now and not in all these years?

By the time I was warm enough to walk again, the summons came.

Lord Commander Mormont stood in his solar, arms crossed, bear cloak slung over one shoulder. A kettle of mead steamed near the fire.

“You were gone a day and a night,” he said, his tone gruff but measured. “I had half a mind to send a dozen men after you.”

I met his eyes. “I went to think.”

“You went beyond the Wall. Alone.” He grunted. “Not wise.”

“No,” I admitted.

He stared at me for a long moment, waiting for more, for an explanation of my injuries. I gave him none. Whatever I had seen, whatever had seen me, was not something I could explain, not yet. It was mine, not his.

Mormont sighed and poured a cup of mead. “Don’t vanish again without telling someone. I need you breathing.”

He handed me the cup. “Drink. Then sleep. Whatever you went looking for, don’t let it hollow you out.”

I nodded, though the cold inside me was deeper than hot drink or blankets could banish. Still, I drank, and I said nothing more.

I have much thinking to do. How do I recover Dark Sister? That cave must be in Bloodravens weirwood.

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Sleep would not come.

I lay still for a long time, staring at the wooden beams above me, my breath frosting in the air with each slow exhale. The ache in my limbs was deep and familiar, like the aftermath of fever, but colder, as if something inside me had been touched by winter itself. I could still feel the ghost of the vision clawing at the edges of my thoughts. Images flared and faded: purple eyes weeping flame, snow buried in screams, a hand holding a sword of night, a cave, a woman, a crown.

I turned my face to the wall. My fingertips still throbbed, raw where frostbite had kissed them. Ghost lay curled beside the hearth, watching me with quiet patience. I always knew where he was these days, I could even see though his eyes almost voluntarily. I envied him. There was a kind of serenity in a direwolf’s silence, no doubt, no regret, no memory. Only instinct. And yet… he had howled at the tree, as if he too had seen something beyond bark and bone too.

I sat up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else.

The keep was quiet at this hour. One of the brothers snored in the hallway, a sound as steady as tide on rock. I wrapped my cloak around me, tucked a strip of leather into my belt to hold it close, and slipped out of the dormitory. The Wall loomed above, a white shadow lit by moonlight, and Castle Black slept beneath it like a frozen beast.

But the library was always open.

It had once been a grand hall, or so the carvings over the lintel suggested, two swords crossed beneath a direwolf and a crow, half-worn away by time. The braziers were nearly out, and the flames sputtered as if reluctant to keep watch over so much forgotten knowledge.

I lit a taper and wandered the shelves.

I told myself I came to understand what had happened to me beyond the Wall, to find context, or answers. But the truth is, I was looking for purpose. I needed to believe the visions meant something, that I had not been touched by old gods and ancient magics only to return empty-handed.

The books were brittle and half-rotted. Scribes had copied over some again and again, erasing the older words. Others were in High Valyrian, barely legible. I found ledgers, names of men long dead, their patrols recorded in blocky, efficient script: “Dispatched beyond the Gorge, Ser Maerwyn commanding. Four rangers lost in a blizzard. One returned raving, speech rendered incoherent.”

I read that one twice.

Another scroll mentioned red eyes in the snow and “a shadow walking beside a great elk.” A different ranger report, three hundred years old, referred cryptically to “the Watcher in the Trees. It did not move, but the snow turned red where it stood.” No one had followed up. No one had returned. It had been written, noted, then filed away. And forgotten. More reports of trees walking and killing men.

The Watch had forgotten what it was.

I found a bundle of maps tucked in the back of a warped shelf, most of them too decayed to read. But one held together, old, cracked parchment covered in fading ink and careful lines. A map made after the Targaryen conquest, I guessed. There were patrol routes etched in, arcing well beyond the Wall, into the white void that passed for the far north. One trail extended almost to the top of the page. Near the edge, a circle drawn in red ink bore a name in Valyrian: The Ghost Hill. A great weirwood drawn on top of it.

I knew where that was. Not exactly, but enough. Bloodraven. Brynden Rivers. The last greenseer, half-dead and rooted beneath the trees. Now I knew where to find him.

This must have been a map from his time in the watch.

I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until I heard the thud of a dropped book and a muttered curse.

I snuffed my candle and crouched. If Armon catches me out of bed he will be mad, I am supposed to be resting from the frostbite.

But the figure that entered wasn’t one of the old hands or Lord Mormont. He was round, nervous, and burdened with too many books, which he promptly tripped over.

“Gods,” he whispered. “Stupid, stupid…”

“Careful,” I said softly as I stepped from the shelves.

Samwell Tarly nearly jumped out of his skin.

“J-Jon!” he stammered. “I—I'm sorry, I didn’t think anyone would be— I just—!”

“It’s fine,” I said laughing, kneeling to help him gather the spilled tomes. “You’re not the only one who couldn’t sleep.”

He blinked at me, red-faced. “I thought… maybe I could read. I don’t sleep well with the others. There’s too much noise.”

“I know the feeling.” I glanced at the titles he carried. A History of the Reign of Aenys I, an herbal compendium, a treatise on castle foundations.

“You’re reading about herbs?” I asked.

“I thought…” He looked down. “I need to know more about medicine, I don’t recognize a few of the thing you brought.”

“Good job, Sam. You could have asked me though. You are doing an incredible job with the supplies; my schedule has been moved forward a sennight thanks to your help.” I said.

He looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head.

“It has?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I need more men like you. Smart ones.”

He hesitated. “You don’t mind… talking with me?”

“I’d like that,” I said. “You’re not what the others think you are.”

“I’m not?”

“No. And I think you could be something more.”

I saw it now, clearer than before. In another life, Samwell Tarly had stabbed a White Walker through the heart, unearthed lost truths buried under centuries, and become one of the few men in the world who could read the truth beneath legends. He had been vital. And I would not let this timeline forget that.

He was quiet for a long moment.

“I’m not brave,” he said at last. “But I want to help. I want to… learn.”

I smiled. “That’s more than most here will ever say.”

He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something spark behind his eyes, not just fear or longing, but determination.

“Then teach me,” he whispered.

“I will.”

We sat there, side by side, paging through the yellowed texts. We talked most of the night and I taught him about my inventions, I talked to him about what I hoped to accomplish in the wall and in my lands, we discussed many things, from administration to history. Sam was easy to talk to, and his mind was as sharp as a sword. By the time we were done the fire had gone out in the brazier, and the cold crept in again, the morning light came from the windows. But it didn’t seem to matter.

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I waited until noon. No one watched me as I slipped into the spare storeroom beneath the rookery, where Ghost stood guard. The direwolf rose silently and padded behind me as I knelt and opened the old chest, hidden beneath tarps and discarded cloaks. Inside, swaddled in black wool, lay the egg.

White and red. Veins like blood curled beneath its surface, and when I touched it, it was warm, not like a stone warmed by sunlight, but like the skin of something sleeping. Or something dreaming.

I held it in my hands for a long time, weighing not just the stone, but the meaning behind it.

I’d read the histories. Daenerys’s tale was still fresh in my mind: the pyre, the screams, the ash, the miracle. She had walked through flame and brought forth death and wings. I’d studied everything I could get my hands on about Valyria, dragon-lore, fire-binding. But none of it told me how, or why, this one had come to me. Or what it wanted.

It pulsed faintly against my skin.

I’d seen it before, in the vision. Nestled in snow, resting on a burning anvil. Blood dripping across it, smoke rising. The cry of something being born echoed in my skull.

Fire. Blood. Sacrifice.

Those weren’t metaphors, were they?

I set the egg down gently. Part of me wanted to lock it away again, bury it, forget it existed. A dragon was power. A dragon was fire given form. In the wrong hands, it would raze cities, turn armies to ash. In mine… would I be better? It would be too small for war, for many years. But after that, it could be a weapon to centralize power.

I wanted to believe I would only use it to stop the Long Night. To burn the White Walkers, to break the frozen tide that was coming.

But I had already admitted the truth to myself, hadn’t I?

I wanted power. Not only for the good I could do, but for what it was. The ability to shape the world, not merely survive it. A dragon would make me more than just a king with strange dreams. It would make me a symbol.

Or a monster.

Ghost nudged my arm. I exhaled and placed the egg back in its wrappings.

Not yet, I told myself.

But soon.

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I found the Old Bear on the west wall, overlooking the rebuilt barracks. Smoke rose from new chimneys and shouts echoed in the distance, men hammering timber, hauling stone, shouting curses as they raised beams under the morning frost.

“You’re up early,” Mormont said, not turning.

“I never slept.”

“Hmph. That’s a curse more of us share these days.”

We stood in silence for a while, watching two new recruits fumble through a stack of shields. A raven landed nearby, feathers slick with dew, and cawed once before flapping off toward the rookery.

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

“Go on.”

“Do you ever think… about the weight of it? Lordship. Rule. Power.”

Mormont turned his eyes on me. They were sharp, tired, but not unkind.

“I gave up Bear Island when I took the black,” he said. “Left it to my son. You know how that turned out.”

I nodded. Ser Jorah. The exile. The shame.

“Aemon was offered a crown once,” Mormont went on. “He refused. Said he knew too well what power would make of him.”

I swallowed. “Did he ever regret it?”

“I don’t think so. He feared what he’d become if he said yes, he wanted Aegon to be king. I didn’t understand that when I was young. I do now.”

“And if the kingdom needed him? If the world needed him?”

He gave a tired grunt. “I’ve had three ravens from the Shadow Tower. Strange lights. Wildlings found frozen with swords still in their hands, and no wounds. Tracks that vanish halfway through the snow. I’ve lived long enough to trust rumors, if enough men repeat them.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.

“What have you decided?” I asked.

“We prepare. Slowly. Quietly. I can’t move too fast or half the Watch will think I’ve gone mad. But once Eastwatch, the Shadow Tower, and Castle Black are rebuilt… I’ll begin. The Gift is coming back to life. Northern lords are sending timber, grain, even volunteers. Some men want to stay after I talked to them about your ideas. Start farms. Raise children. Can you believe it?”

I could. I had hoped for it.

He looked out at the snowy fields stretching south, then north again.

“You keep speaking of duty,” he said. “But I’ve served long enough to see what men really follow. Not duty. Not honor. They follow conviction. Will. If you’ve got that… men will follow you. Whether you want them to or not.”

I turned my face to the Wall.

“They’ll need someone to follow,” I said. “When winter comes.”

“Then be ready to pay the price,” Mormont said. “Because lordship, boy… it doesn’t ask what you want. It only asks what you’ll give.”

I am not speaking of lordship Jeor Mormont, I am speaking of kingship, but thank you for your words anyway.

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Three days passed in bitter wind and hard work. The Wall loomed silent, a cold sentinel watching over our every breath, as hammers echoed against stone and timber. The black brothers moved with purpose, more than I remembered from my other life, more than when I first arrived. There was an urgency to them now, a quiet belief that things might change. And perhaps they would. I’d made sure of it. Tyrion had left yesterday, back south, not before telling me he would write from time to time.

Castle Black, that ancient, rotting ruin of a fortress, was slowly taking on new life. The slope-roofed towers I had designed were rising quickly on either side of the old central hall, built with sharply angled pine beams and black slate shingles quarried from the Frostfangs. The timber came from the Gift and the new forges; the labor from the Watch and the willing smallfolk Mormont had allowed to settle within the lands. The new smithy was already active, the chimneys coughing smoke into the pale sky, and I’d seen the glimmer of raw steel cooled in new molds I had helped design, better alloys, new methods.

I’d commissioned a kiln, too, in the lower yard. A primitive one, but it would do. For glass. For pottery. Concrete would come next, if the lime proved strong enough.

Castle Black was no longer a decaying outpost at the edge of the world. It was becoming a fortress again, a symbol of what the Night’s Watch had once been, and what it needed to be.

And still the cold crept closer.

I had taken to walking the yard at night. Ghost followed me silently, his pale fur like snowlight, his eyes ever-watchful. The dreams hadn’t stopped since the vision beneath the weirwood. I still saw flames and frost, heard screaming crows and the echo of ice shattering like glass. I saw a great hall of fire turned black with soot, and a sword that burned cold in my hand.

Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I saw a throne of ash and snow. And myself upon it.

I hated that the visions had implanted themselves so deep in my psyche.

It was just past midday on the fourth day when the horn blew once. Not wildlings. Not enemies. Just rangers returning. I was reviewing the ledgers with Sam near the forgehouse, marking supplies and lumber deliveries. I looked up at once, though. Something was wrong.

The wind shifted. Ghost growled.

The party rode into the yard half an hour later, slow and grim-faced. Five of them. One slumped in his saddle, arms slack, reins wrapped around his wrists. He barely moved. The others dismounted quickly and whispered with Bowen Marsh, who went pale as salt.

I walked over before anyone called me. I felt it in my chest—like a chill behind the breastbone.

The slumped man was young. Dylen, I remembered. He was from the Flint Cliffs. Just a boy, really. His skin was wrong. Pale like milk left out in winter. His lips were blue and cracked. His eyes fluttered beneath lids that didn’t close properly.

Maester Aemon arrived within minutes, carried on a litter. “Lay him flat,” he said. “Carefully.”

I knelt beside Dylen as they laid him on a bed of furs in the great hall. Mormont was already there, standing behind the firepit. The flames crackled dimly; someone had just stoked them with peat and pine.

“He was fine when we left,” muttered one of the rangers. “Two days out, he started shivering. We thought it was just the cold, but then he started… saying things.”

“Saying what?” I asked.

The ranger hesitated. “Whispers, milord. Things about trees. About eyes watching. About snow that sang.”

That chill behind my ribs deepened.

Dylen’s lips moved. Faintly. I leaned in.

“...blood in the bark… he watches… red eyes… all the bones… all the cold…”

I looked at Aemon. His blind eyes were focused nowhere, and yet I felt him see more than most. His hands were on Dylen’s temples, gentle and still.

“He is dying,” the old maester said softly.

The room was silent save for the snapping fire.

I touched Dylen’s brow. It was hard. Frozen hard, like stone pulled from the snow. His breath was shallow. His pulse—if it still existed, was fluttering like a leaf caught in a storm.

Then it stopped.

A long breath out. His chest fell.

And did not rise.

No one spoke.

Dylen was dead.

I looked to Aemon, who gave a slow nod.

“I will prepare the rites,” he whispered.

But I didn’t move. My hand hovered over Dylen’s face, about to close his eyelids.

And then he moved.

It wasn’t a twitch. It wasn’t a death spasm.

It was a jolt, as if something unseen pulled his spine straight with invisible wires.

Most of the fires close to the body went out suddenly.

His eyes snapped open.

And they were blue. So blue they seared.

Ghost snarled beside me.

Dylen’s hands spasmed. His mouth gaped wide, too wide, as if the jaw had forgotten its hinges, and a low hiss escaped his throat. His limbs began to thrash.

The ranger beside me screamed. One of the stewards dropped the basin he held.

I didn’t hesitate.

I drew my sword and stood over the thing.

“Back!” I shouted, voice firm. “Everyone back!”

The… thing on the furs sat up. It was Dylen’s body, but the soul behind the eyes was gone. Or worse, replaced.

Holy shit!

Mormont had drawn his own blade, old and broad-bladed, not made for finesse but for cleaving meat from bone. “Jon!” he said, “what in the name of the Gods is this?!”

“Not the Gods,” I said. “The Others.”

The wight lunged for us.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 10: Interlude I – Stone and Seeds

Interlude I – Stone and Seeds

POV: Seren

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The marshes had changed.

Where once there had been only bog and peat and the lazy trickle of black water through tangled reeds, now there was order. Elevated canals cut the wetland like veins, bound in timber and stone. Wooden sluices opened and closed at set hours, releasing the water in measured flow, feeding the vast fields below, square, tiered paddies of rice and barley, their green shoots swaying with the breeze. Oxen turned slow, sweat-dark under the sun, drawing water up from the trenches with creaking wheels. Beyond, men in wide straw hats spread seed, and behind them came barefoot boys singing work songs as they chased the birds away with sticks.

Seren stood atop a narrow wooden platform, arms crossed, watching the valley unfold like a living map. From here he could see the bone-white thatch of the grain barns, the black-and-red banners flying over the estate at Greenhollow, and the cranes by the riverbank lifting timber and stone with groaning pulleys. The sun was warm. The earth was warmer. Somewhere in the stillness, a frog croaked.

He had helped build this.

Not in a year, nor two, but in five, five long years since he’d stood before Jon Stark in the Great Hall of Winterfell, expecting to be sent home for arrogance. He still remembered the way the snow clung to his boots then, and the way the firelight caught in the purple of Jon’s eyes. Seren had seen what mattered even then.

“You turned fish into gold,” Jon had said, unrolling the parchment. “Fourfold increase. You restructured the dockside, redirected the inlet tide with nothing but driftwood and scrap, and paid your laborers with half the catch. No blood. No theft. No lord's favor. You did that on your own.”

“I was hungry,” Seren had said. “So were they.”

That had been enough.

Now he watched thousands of acres of tamed wetland below him, where families worked with pride and no one begged for crusts. The scent of warm mud and growing things filled the air. This land was stubborn, but it had bent to steel and vision.

The North will never starve again, he thought, and his chest tightened.

The work had not been easy, for five years this place has expanded, and trouble came with it. The Neck was no gentle plain, it fought back. The soil was half-water, half-root, and sank underfoot like a dying beast. The first canals they dug collapsed within weeks, the banks swallowed by the mire. Sluice gates warped in the heat and split in the frost. Insects bred in the stagnant pools faster than the fish did, and the first snowfall nearly destroyed everything. But Seren had grown up in saltmarsh and tideflow. He knew the way of drowned land.

He began with basket weirs and willow bundling, ancient tricks of the crannogmen. Where timber sagged, he used stone ballast from collapsed ruins nearby and the new concrete Jon had invented, more and more concrete. Where carts failed, he laid plank roads and wide-footed sledges. At night, he sketched by torchlight, testing layouts for tiered dikes and flood-retention basins. During the day, he worked with his hands alongside Northmen, the freedmen and farmers Jon had sent to him, southerners and smallfolk, a few former wildlings, and even one maester disgraced for tinkering with pumps too much.

One night, Jon sat with Seren in the granary loft, eating boiled barley and eel. He listened as Seren explained the trouble with the channel gradient, how the high tide pushed back the water intake, how iron pumps rusted in the marsh air.

Jon had stared out over the darkened fields for a long time. “What if we built elevated catchment pools?” he asked finally. “Stacked reservoirs above the paddies, not beside them. Feed them through the slope, let gravity do the work.”

Seren had blinked. “That’s… not how we’ve done it.”

“Good,” Jon had said. “Then it might actually work.”

It had.

Now, a series of terraced cisterns climbed the hill to the west, fed by diverted springs dammed with stone and reinforced with concrete. They trapped the rainfall and held the upland runoff long after storms passed. At dawn, sluices released the water downhill in measured steps, enough to flood the paddies when needed, then drain just as quickly into the next row. Crops once unthinkable in the North now grew in stubborn abundance, wild rice, green wheat, even yellow melons along the sunnier ridges. Tens of thousands of men toiled the land and tamed the northernmost marshes. Enough food for millions of men, women and children, enough to feed the North.

It wasn't just food. With Jon’s approval, Seren had begun testing hemp retting and reed-plaster for brickwork. A dyehouse stood beside the main canal now, extracting pigments from swamp blossoms. And in a nearby village, Jon had ordered the construction of a “learning lodge”—not a maester’s tower, but a place where orphan boys and farmer’s sons could learn counting, irrigation, land-mapping, and letters.

There were failures, of course. The second dam burst during a thaw and flooded three rice villages. A fungus wiped out half the barley crop one humid day. And more than once, lords from the old families sent riders to remind Seren that this was northern land and not his to tame like some reachman dandy. Thank the gods this is Jons land now.

Now, standing above the valley of green, water, rising timber, stone, and seemingly infinite farmlands, Seren understood what Jon had meant. The Neck had not died. It had only slept, waiting for men who saw not just what was, but what could be.

And in the distance, cranes creaked skyward, lifting stone to heights the marsh had never known.

He turned as hooves approached along the plank road. A black-cloaked rider from Castle Black, carrying a scroll sealed in wax. Another summons, perhaps. Or a warning. Either way, the work would continue. There was too much worth saving now.

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The Neck narrowed as he rode north, the swamp giving way to firmer earth and shallow rises of stone. The sky hung heavy with mist, turning the world gray at the edges, but the black causeway was solid beneath his horse’s hooves. For centuries, the kings of the south had broken their armies here, where the land itself fought alongside the North. And now, for the first time in generations, the Moat was waking.

Moat Cailin loomed ahead like a half-buried giant stirring from sleep. What remained of its towers jutted like broken teeth from the earth, dark basalt and green-veined stone worn smooth by time and war. Yet where once the ruin had brooded in decay, now it pulsed with motion and purpose. Seren slowed his mount and took in the sight from the hillock.

Great cranes, powered by windlass and oxen, swung timber scaffolds into place along the southern wall. Stonecutters from White Harbor and masons from the hills of Last Hearth labored side by side with freedmen and crannogmen. Gigantic blocks, many untouched since the Age of Heroes, were being levered back into alignment, re-seated with concrete and reinforced with iron braces forged in Winterfell’s own forges. Sparks flew from the courtyards where rivets were driven into iron doors thicker than a grown man’s chest.

The old causeway, once broken and overgrown, had been cleared and widened. A new road of timber, gravel, and sun-dried brick stretched southward, wide enough for two carts abreast, with room for mounted outriders. Supply wagons rolled slowly through the mist, laden with grain, nails, rope, quarried stone, and, more rarely, barrels of pitch. The bottleneck was almost gone. Soon, the spine of the North would be open again, from the Gift to Greywater to the Kingsroad.

One day, Seren thought, this place would be more than a ruin reborn. It would be a fortress unlike any in Westeros.

He could see it already, rising in his mind’s eye like a dream half-remembered. Twenty massive towers, each shaped by necessity and age, rounded, squat, wide at the base and flared at the crown like the ancient watch-trees of the Neck. Rebuilt in stone and Northern concrete, with walls as thick as small houses, resistant to fire, time, and siege. Their faces would bear no ornament, only the crude dignity of Northern craftsmanship. Every angle calculated, every inch layered in function.

A vast curtain wall would span the marsh on either side, anchored by stone pylons sunk into the bedrock and tied together with iron. A keep, broad, low, and cold, would rise from the heart of the Moat like a sleeping beast, its windows narrow, its parapets wide enough for war engines and shield-walls. Below it: cisterns, armories, granaries, deep vaults and command halls carved into the ancient stone. It would be a bastion of the North—not just a shield, but a hammer.

Running water with Jons new systems were being set up, and massive vaults being built under the keeps. Gates of black steel would replace the rotted timbers, hung on dragonbone hinges. Portcullises would drop with a thunderclap. Murder-holes and arrow slits would line the entry passages like the teeth of a beast. Ranged along the battlements: scorpions, ballistae, racks of tar, and barrels of dragonglass. When the wind blew, it would carry the scent of oil and stone dust, not swamp rot.

And below all of it, the causeway would run like a black ribbon through the reeds, straight and dry, reinforced with stone pilings, patrolled from dusk to dawn. A lifeline. A warning.

But it would take time.

Even after five years of toil, sweat, and blood, Seren knew they were only halfway there. The stones still rose crooked in many places. The marsh still tried to swallow the foundations. Every cartload of mortar, every bar of steel, every trained mason, they all came slowly. Winters stole weeks. Floods took more.

And yet, it would stand. One day, it would stand tall. It was already an impressive castle and more defensible than most in Westeros.

When the world looked north and asked, where is the strength of House Stark?—they would look here.

And find their answer.

At the gatehouse, Seren dismounted and was met by a broad-shouldered man in a rust-colored cloak. Ser Cort, once a hedge knight of little repute, now wore a black breastplate adorned with a white direwolf badge. His beard was salt-and-pepper, but his eyes were sharp.

“Inspection, is it?” Cort said, smirking. “You missed the rain. We had three feet of it last week. Flooded half the lower yard.”

“I’d rather miss the rain and not the rot,” Seren said, shaking his hand. “Let’s walk.”

They toured the perimeter as masons hoisted new murder holes into the wall’s belly—angled so boiling oil or scalding pitch could be poured without exposing the defenders. At the towers, newly constructed horn-platforms rose above the tree line, linked by signal flags and mirrored lights for clear-sky communication. Cort gestured to one.

Cort’s jaw tensed. “This time, it won’t take a thousand crannog arrows to hold the pass. We’ve got steel now. Cauldrons. Ramparts wide enough for artillery carts.”

Seren nodded, gaze sweeping the causeway where carts moved in double file. “And food, roads.”

He glanced back at the Moat itself, its towers rising like a crown of jagged stone, half-finished, half-forgotten. But stronger now. Solid. Awake.

“Jon once told me this place was the keystone in the arch of the North,” Seren said softly. “Whoever holds it can break armies, or let them pass.”

Cort grunted. “He’s right. This isn’t just a choke point. It’s a blade held to the South’s throat. And now we’ve sharpened it.”

As they stood in the shadow of the gatehouse, the wind picked up, carrying the scent of stone dust, pitch, and old salt. From the horn tower, a call echoed, long, low, steady. A test, only a drill. But it carried like a warning through the mists, across the Neck.

Seren didn’t smile. But he felt something settle deep in his chest. Pride.

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The crannogman was older than the marsh, or so it seemed. His face was carved by a thousand seasons, lined and knotted, brown as bark. He stood barefoot in the mud, a frog spear slung over one shoulder and a bone necklace tapping against his chest. They called him Harlan Reed, uncle to Lord Howland. A ghost of the old ways.

“I should have stayed in Greywater,” he muttered as Seren dismounted, boots sinking into the spongy earth.

“You would’ve, if it hadn’t started flooding,” Seren said, offering no false sympathy.

Harlan gave him a sharp look. “ It’s the trees and the water and the spirits who live between. They rise when the land is troubled. And it is troubled, steward.”

Seren didn’t smile. “The trouble is that your people are starving. These new fields, the dikes, the rice paddies, they work. But we need hands to tend them. Your knowledge. Your wisdom. You’ve seen the difference it makes.”

Harlan squinted past him, where children knelt in neat rows of flooded furrows, planting grains with their toes. “Aye. They’ll eat. And forget the old songs.”

“No,” Seren said, voice firm. “They’ll live. That’s the beginning of remembering. Not the end of it.”

Harlan shifted his spear. “You came from stone halls and banners. What makes you think the Neck can change without breaking?”

Seren looked around. At the sluices guiding water through the carved wooden gates. At the wind-cranes lifting bushels onto barges. At the tiny shrines at the edge of every paddy, where frogs and reeds were offered in thanks. “Because it already has, look at this, Lord Reed.”  Seren motioned to the farms and canals as far as the eye could see. “The old spirits will walk these lands still—but so will your grandchildren. And they’ll have rice, and roofs, and roads.”

The old man grunted. “You talk like a lord.”

“I serve one,” Seren said. “And he remembers every soul, living and dead. The North is rising, my lord. We need the Neck to rise with it.”

Silence followed, long as the mist. Then the old crannogman nodded. “Fine. I’ll teach. But the bogs keep their secrets. If the trees start whispering... don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Even the men clinging to the old world are coming to our side Jon… If you could see this you would weep.

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Seren found them in the long barrack hall beside the south wall, the offices were this would be done in the future were almost done, but not yet. A map was spread across the table, thick parchment painted with new roads, tower sites, port icons and red flags marking granary zones. Arren was there already, his hands ink-stained, glasses perched low on his nose. Ser Cort, armored in a padded vest and oiled leathers, stood like a stone beside him.

“Good,” said Arren, without looking up. “You’re late.”

“I was convincing a bog ghost to share his secrets,” Seren said. “How’s the census?”

Arren cleared his throat. “One hundred and ninety-eight thousand, six hundred and eleven souls, as of last moon. Concentrated along the moat, the coasts banks, and the new Neck settlements. That includes children.”

“That’s a forty-three percent rise in just a year,” Cort said. “We’re going to need more walls.”

“We’re going to need more of everything,” Seren muttered, scanning the map. “Let’s talk roads.”

Arren tapped a dotted line stretching from Moat Cailin to White Harbor. “The King’s Road bypass is already halfway paved. Stone footings, timber bridges, ironwood mile markers. Once the Neck road meets it, trade from both coasts can funnel straight to Winterfell.”

The road network, once little more than muddy tracks and half-forgotten game trails, had begun to take shape like the veins of a living thing. Wide, hard-packed roads of gravel and concrete ran from Moat Cailin to the western and eastern shores, linking the riverine hamlets with the hill settlements. Surveyors marked out future stretches in charcoal and chalk, cutting through dense thickets and ancient groves with careful precision. Watchtowers were rising every ten miles, simple stone affairs with signal horns and rain-catch cisterns, each one a torch against the wilds. It wasn’t just movement the roads enabled; it was safety, trade, vision. For the first time in living memory, the southern marches of the North would be more than forgotten hinterlands, they would be connected.

“And the villages?” Seren asked.

“Twenty-two new ones settled,” Arren replied. “Mostly freedmen, smallfolk from the Reach and Westerlands, even some Valemen, and of course a lot of Northmen. The incentives worked, five acres, tax-free for a year, one goat per head. They’re building with thatch and sod, but we’ve sent teams to reinforce with timber and stone.”

North and south of the Fever River, new villages were rising on dry ridges and terraced banks. Some were no more than clusters of thatched homes and half-dug root cellars, others boasted timber halls and communal grain pits. Former poachers, debtors, and even a few southern refugees had taken Jon’s offer of land and safety, clearing brush, planting seed, raising walls. There were arguments, scuffles, failures. But every week another homestead staked a claim, another longhouse was framed in pine and ash. Even the crannogmen, ever wary of stone and change, had begun to edge outward, their boat-homes tied alongside new piers of timber and rope. The Neck, it seemed, was breathing for the first time in a hundred years.

Where once there was nothing but moss and sedge, fields now rippled with hardy grains and green rice. Northern barley, low-sun flax, and black beans had taken root alongside the watery paddies, their rows meticulous and foreign. Cattle grazed in controlled pastures beyond the marshlines, and smoke from new kilns curled into the sky. At the edge of every settlement, there were signs of something more, brickyards, soap vats, tanners, and even a crude paper mill near the eastern reaches, where cottonwood pulp ran white in the creek. Trade had begun flowing before the towns were finished, bartering saltfish for nails, oil for seed, labor for lumber. It was messy, organic, promising.

“Any unrest?”

“A few raids near the marshlands south. Brigands. Ser Cort’s riders handled it.”

“Handled it,” Cort repeated flatly. “No mercy for raiders. The coasts are to be safe. And we’re placing watchtowers, every ten miles, on stone footings. Two stories, with horn bells and fire cages. We’ll see a threat before it sees us. We are training more and more men. Two thousand five hundred standing men under arms, as of last count. Half of them trained to what I’d call proper northern standard—shield walls, halberd drills, small unit cohesion. The rest are still green, but they’ve stopped pointing the sharp end at themselves, so that’s something. We are eating coin though.”

“We make coin faster than we can use it lately, the northern fire trade is expanding faster than expected” Arren Said.

“”Whiskey”” Cort and Seren corrected on instinct.

Seren nodded. “The new ports?”

Arren smiled. “Saltstream, on the western shore near the mouth of the Fever River, deep enough for deep-draft ships, dock already half-raised. And Driftway on the eastern shore to The Bite, for traffic from the White Harbor and the narrow sea near the Bear’s Neck. Timber, rice, peat, smoked fish, exports increasing by twenty percent each quarter.”

“How is the bureaucracy I have been setting up doing?” Seren asked.

Arren sighed. “Growing. Slowly. Too slowly. We’ve set up regional wardens, three per sector, with scribes trained in tallies and grain-chits. The problem is literacy.”

Taxes were the battlefield. Under Jon’s guidance, they were overhauled to be not only just but visible. Levies were collected twice yearly by appointed grain-factors and escorted by sworn guards. Most paid in coins, but wheat, smoked fish, charcoal, or labor days were accepted. Hoarding was outlawed. False measures were punishable by loss of charter. Yet no man paid in blood unless he broke faith or law. The aim was not punishment but permanence: to anchor each man to the land he worked, to his neighbors, to a realm that would not vanish at the first frost or the next war.

To manage all this, Jon had insisted on a structure that could survive him. “A kingdom without ledgers is a grave with a banner,” he’d said. Seren had helped draft the reforms that created the Warden Councils, groups of literate men and women assigned to clusters of villages, trained in law, numbers, and logistics. Most were commoners elevated by skill, not blood. Each Warden reported monthly to Moat Cailin and quarterly to Winterfell. Slowly, the land began to speak through ink and seal, not just sword and horn.

In time, the settlements began to form a rhythm. Villages grew along the new roads, their houses raised in orderly rows with shared wells, smokehouses, and grainyards. Young men who might have taken up swords for a dead cause now turned them into plows. Refugees from southern lands found peace in the Neck. The crannogmen, once elusive and secretive, began to trade frogskins and healing moss in the open markets. New smithies rose, fed by forges from Winterfell. Glassblowers, carpenters, midwives, even singers, all found place in the growing tapestry of land and law.

It wasn’t perfect. Banditry still flared where the law was thin, and some old families resented seeing bastards in coats of office. But the land was changing. Rooting. And with every beam raised, every stone laid, every oath sworn and kept—Seren believed it could last.

“Then we teach,” Seren said. “Or we bring in lowborns from Oldtown who can read. The new schools being set up will help in time. What about the taxes?”

“Tiered, like Jon wanted,” Arren answered. “Ten percent from landowners, five percent from smallfolk, none from the first year of settlement. All in grain, labor, or coin. The new law is harsh on hoarders and tax dodgers, but fair. And we’ve already tripled reserve stores.”

“Good,” Seren murmured. “We’ll need it come winter.”

“And the forges?” Ser Cort asked.

Seren allowed himself a brief smile. “The new smithies at Saltstream and Moat Cailin are operational, the steel converters are working. Steel output is steady. We’re arming the towers with steel-tipped bolts. We’ll be casting a chain for the Fever River soon. And I have men trying to reproduce Myrish swivel scorpions for the western shore, we can never be sure with the Ironborn.”

Cort gave a rare grin. “Good. I like fire and steel.”

They fell quiet for a moment, the map between them.

“We’re building something,” Seren said at last. “Not just defenses. A realm. From stone, seed, and blood.”

Arren nodded. “The land will feed the people. The walls will protect them. And the law... will make them stay.”

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The candle burned low, casting soft golden light across the field-desk inside Seren’s room. The night outside was filled with distant hammering, the murmur of voices, and the creak of wagons being drawn into the supply yard. But here, inside, it was still. He moved the reports aside and reached for the sealed parchments, his fingers stained faintly with ink and ash. He had come to dread the letters, each one a reminder that the realm never slept.

The first was from Jon, and it was brief, written in the same hand he remembered from the first summons years ago. “Send obsidian to the Wall. All we have. As much as we can get. Urgent.” Nothing more. No explanation. But it chilled him all the same. Jon did not use words like “urgent” lightly. Seren leaned back in his chair, staring at the flap of the tent. Obsidian. They had unearthed caches of it by chance in the stony hills west of Greywater, and begun carving it into arrowheads and spearpoints almost as a curiosity. Now, it seemed, the old names held true, dragonglass, and something more. He would divert half the carts meant for White Harbor as jewellers before sunrise.

The second letter was written on thicker parchment, crested with a merman holding a trident. Lord Wyman Manderly’s seal, pressed deep and scented faintly with rosewater and sea salt. Seren already knew what it would say. “Two hundred armsmen, in exchange for rice—four hundred barrels.” A fair trade. More than fair. Manderly was playing his part well, building up his coffers with trade while feeding his people. White Harbor’s tenements were fuller than ever, but fewer children went hungry now. Rice paddies and flat-bottomed boats had changed that. Still, Seren had no illusions: loyalty flowed more surely with food than with banners.

The third was from Maester Luwin, sober and exact, as always. “Robb has recovered from the his small fever. Rickon’s sleep is still troubled, he wakes talking of wolves and snow. Along the King’s Road, more disappearances. One burned wagon. No survivors.” Seren closed his eyes for a moment. The boy’s dreams unnerved him. He had seen too much in the past five years to dismiss such things out of hand. And the King’s Road, if trade faltered, the rest would follow. Banditry? Or worse? They would need more outriders, more watchposts. Maybe even ravens stationed along the road.

He opened his own ledger and began to write, the quill moving steadily through the candlelight. A short summary for Jon, though it grew with every line. Obsidian shipments diverted. Manderly’s deal accepted. New roads progressing, forges strained. Census near complete: one hundred ninety-eight thousand souls under their protection, north of the Neck. New charcoal kilns needed. Food reserves were ahead of schedule, but only just. “Your people believe in you,” he wrote near the end, more personal than he intended. “And they follow me because I wear your colors.”

Seren folded the parchment, sealed it with his mark, a hammer set beneath a weirwood tree, and set it aside. The wind shifted through the canvas walls, and the scent of the marsh drifted in: water, earth, and fire. So much had changed. So much still could.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 11: Chapter 10 — Ashes in the Snow

Chapter 10 — Ashes in the Snow


The scream of the steward still echoes through the hall.

Dylen, what used to be Dylen, is already on his feet, staggering with jerking, unnatural movement, limbs twitching like a marionette cut loose from its strings. His eyes glow like twin shards of ice. There’s no soul behind them. No pain. No mercy. Only hunger.

The room erupts into chaos.

Benches overturn. Men scramble back, shouting over one another. The air grows colder with every breath, each exhale turns to mist. Frost flowers bloom on the flagstones. Ghost lets out a savage growl, his white fur bristling, hackles high.

I don’t hesitate.

My sword is already in my hand, drawn in one clean motion. I plant myself between the wight and the others. “Clear the hall!” I shout. “Get them out—”

The thing lunges.

I meet it head-on, slashing low at its knees. The steel bites deep into bone, severs muscle, but Dylen doesn’t scream. Doesn’t fall. The momentum alone should’ve dropped him, but he just keeps coming, dragging the leg behind him like it weighs nothing.

The sword does nothing.

Ghost hurls himself at the wight again, jaws snapping. Teeth sink into the dead man’s forearm and yank. Bone cracks, but the wight doesn’t falter. Its other hand claws at me, nails like shards of frozen glass. I stagger back, parry high, swing low. The arm hangs by a single tendon. Still, it strikes.

“Burn it!” I roar. “Fire—get fire!”

But the hearth’s too far, and the coals scattered. The brands are half-burnt or out. The cold’s creeping too fast, one breath, two, and my fingers are already stiff. I see my own breath in clouds, and for a mad instant, it reminds me of dragon smoke. Would that I had fire.

A flash of movement, Lord Commander Mormont storms through the room, armor half-buckled, white hair wild around his shoulders. “Stand fast!” he bellows. “Hold the line, drive it back!”

But even he pauses when he sees its eyes.

For one heartbeat, he just stares. And I know the thought in his head is the same in mine: This should not be.

Then his voice returns. “Flames! Oil! Anything that burns!”

A steward, a lad named Tolland, slips on the stones and drops the torch he carried. It skitters across the floor, sputters, nearly dies.

The wight’s head turns toward him with eerie precision.

It moves faster than any corpse should. One stride, then two, then it’s on the boy. On its way there a Black Brother takes one of its arms with his sword and another punches a knife into its back. But the thing just doesn’t stop.

Tolland screams as it bites his throat. I’m moving before I think, shoulder slamming into the wight’s flank, my sword hacking into its back. I hear ribs shatter. Still, it turns toward me.

Then Ghost barrels into it again, and this time, the wight’s off-balance. It crashes into the overturned bench, tangled in splinters.

“Jon!” Mormont shouts, tossing something through the air.

A heavy clay lantern, pine oil.

I catch it. Just barely.

Without thinking, I smash it across the wight’s chest. The oil splashes out in great, sticky arcs.

A spark from the torch.

Then flame.

The thing shrieks in defiance. In rage. It thrashes, ignited, the blue fire turning gold and red. The cold begins to lift, slowly, as the stench of burning flesh fills the air.

By the time it stops moving, there’s little left but scorched bone and blackened cloth.

Silence returns to the hall. Heavy. Dreadful.

The smell lingers.

Mormont breathes heavily beside me. “That...” He just couldn’t find the words.

I glanced at Tolland in the ground, his throat open, he was already dead.

The smell of burnt flesh still clings to the air, acrid and foul, but there's no time to gag. Before the fire even gutters, the door bursts open behind us, four more brothers storm into the hall, weapons drawn, responding to the screams.

And then the unexpected happens, poor Tolland, no more than ten and seven years old opens his eyes, a cold blue in them.

I thought that they couldn't raise more south of the wall... fuck!

“Another one!” someone shouts.

“Hold!” Mormont bellows, but panic wins.

Three men rush it. One, a veteran called Torm, swings with a heavy axe, sharp and well-forged. The blade crunches into the wight’s shoulder and drives deep into the collarbone. Any man would fall screaming. But Tolland doesn’t scream. He doesn't even slow.

His other hand flashes out, inhumanly fast. It grabs Torm by the face and tears.

Blood sprays like mist. Torm's scream is short, wet, and then he’s on the ground, twitching, the right side of his face a ruin of torn flesh.

I move again, faster than thought, driven by something deeper than instinct. My longsword slashes downward, taking off the wight’s arm at the elbow.

It doesn’t stop.

The severed arm keeps moving, fingers clawing along the stone floor like a spider made of ice and rage. One of the younger recruits recoils, screaming, stomping on it with his boot. The hand claws through the leather.

“Fall back!” I shout. “It’s going for the Old Bear—!”

And it is. That dead, frostbitten face turns toward Lord Commander Mormont, the thing that used to be Hareth, shambling straight for him, ignoring everyone else. The glow in its eyes flares brighter, fueled by something older than hate.

Mormont stands his ground, jaw clenched, short sword held steady. But he’s not fast. Not anymore. He won’t survive if it reaches him.

There’s no time.

I seize a lamp from the wall, a thick, brass-bellied thing full of whale oil, heavy in my hand. My fingers are trembling, frost-stung and still raw from before, but they obey. I rip the stopper off with my teeth.

“Get clear!” I scream.

I don’t wait to see if they do.

I hurl the lamp straight into the creature’s chest.

The oil soaks it, dark, viscous, sticky. The impact drives the wight back a step. I grab the torch one of the brothers holds, push past him, and slam the fire straight into the spreading oil.

The world explodes in orange.

The wight ignites in a roar of flame.

It doesn’t flinch. It screams. The sound is worse than pain. It's rage, a howl that echoes in bone, that curdles the air. It flails violently, striking walls, knocking over tables, trailing fire. The room fills with choking smoke.

“Back! Back, damn you!” Mormont yells, shielding his face from the heat. Men pull away, shielding their eyes. Someone is praying, loud and fast. Another is sobbing.

The burning thing slams into a pillar and collapses, still screaming.

It takes too long to die.

When it finally stops moving, it’s little more than blackened bone and wet ash, a shape smoldering on the stones. The air is still cold, but the chill has receded. Slowly. Reluctantly.

Silence descends. Except for the crackle of fire and the moan of wind beyond the walls.

I stand in the center of it all, bruised, panting, hands scorched where the fire licked me. My forearms are red, the skin raw, but the pain feels distant. Familiar. Controlled.

Fire has never hurt me quite the way it should.

As a child, I used to play too close to the hearth in Winterfell. My hand would hover too near the flames. Maester Luwin once said I lacked fear of heat. But even now, with oil-burns turning my fingers red and raw, I know this: the fire hurt less than it should. I should be in the ground screaming; this won’t even leave a scar.

I clench my hand. The pain comes. Belated. Manageable.

I remember the visions in the weirwood grove. The shadow of wings… the hiss of burning blood… a scream, and a dragon hatching in the snow.

Mormont speaks beside me, his voice hoarse. “Jon. That was… what in the Seven Hells was that?”

I look at the corpse, if it still counts as one.

“The dead,” I murmur, “don’t stay dead anymore.”

The others stare at the charred remains in silence. One man kneels. Another mutters a prayer to the Father. Samwell stands near the edge of the group, eyes wide, hands shaking. Maester Aemon is in the other side of the room locking at me with sightless eyes that can see too much.

The weight of what just happened settles over them like snowfall.

… this was only the beginning.

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The stench of burned flesh hung in the air long after the flames died. Smoke coiled up through the rafters of the hall like a serpent seeking escape, but there was no wind tonight, no cleansing chill. Just the acrid memory of what had happened.

I stood over the blackened bones. My sword was still in my hand, but it felt heavier now. The grip slick with sweat, knuckles white. Ghost pressed against my thigh, silent and tense, his red eyes never leaving the scorch mark on the stone.

The corpse, or what had been one, was gone now, reduced to ash and fragments. But it didn’t feel gone. Not really. A piece of it still clung to us. To me.

Across the room, Bowen Marsh stood over the severed arm. The damn thing was still twitching. Fingers curling and uncurling as if clawing through some nightmare. When Marsh dropped it into the brazier, it bucked once, reflex or rage, I didn’t know, and then cracked apart in the fire with a sound like wet wood bursting.

No one spoke. No one could.

I heard the whispers anyway.

“It wouldn’t die…”

“What in the Seven Hells was that?”

“Blue eyes. I swear, they glowed—glowed.”

“Stark burned it. Fire did it. Only fire...”

I said nothing. I didn’t look at them.

I stared down at my hands instead, slight burns, blistered where I’d gripped the lamp too long. Maester Aemon had wrapped them, but they still ached, dull and hot. Yet even through the pain, I remembered how slow it had been to come. Like fire, reluctant to burn me.

I saw Sam leaning against the wall by the stairs, his face pale and soaked with sweat. His hands shook. He was clutching a leather-bound book like a shield. Like he didn’t know what else to hold on to.

I crossed to him.

“You all right?” I asked.

He flinched. “I… I think so.”

But I could see the lie in his eyes. He wasn’t all right. None of us were.

“That thing,” he whispered. “It wasn’t natural.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

Sam didn’t reply. His mouth opened once, then closed. He just stared at the ashes.

I felt Ghost lean against me, fur bristling. The flames might’ve lit up again, but the air hadn’t warmed up. If anything, it was colder now.

Gods, its one thing seeing it on a screen… what would thousands of them do to an army?

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They summoned me late. After the hall was emptied and the bones scattered to ash. After the whispers gave way to silence again, and only the wind moved outside the Wall.

Lord Commander Mormont stood beside the hearth in his solar, firelight dancing across the dark wool of his cloak. He didn’t look at me when I entered.

“Close the door, Stark,” he said. “Sit.”

I sat. The silence stretched out long and taut, like a drawn bowstring.

Then he said, without turning, “You saved my life.”

I blinked. I didn’t expect thanks. Least of all from him.

“I didn’t have time to think,” I said. “Just acted.”

“You acted right,” he said, and finally turned. His eyes were rimmed red, from smoke, from weariness, from too many winters and not enough hope, this man had seen the watch go to the dogs for decades. “You saw what none of us were ready to see. And you moved.”

“I got lucky.”

“No,” he said. “You knew.”

His gaze bored into me.

“You have fire in you, Stark. I’ve known boys break at the first arrow. You faced a walking corpse and burned it down. That’s more than instinct... I won't ask, you have earned that much from me, but tell me what this is.”

"Corn!"

I looked down at my bandaged hand.

“I’ve… heard of things like that before. In old books. Tales of the Long Night. The Others.”

Mormont let out a grunt. “Stories. Ghost tales.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “That thing wasn’t a man. It wasn’t even a beast. It didn’t feel pain. Didn’t bleed. Didn’t stop.”

Mormont stared into the fire for a moment. “So we burn our dead now.”

I nodded. “Everyone brought from north of the Wall. If they fall, you burn them. Immediately.” The Others weren't supposed to be able to raise the dead on this side. But we clearly saw that. Was it because he was killed by a wight? Some kind of zombie method? "And everyone that falls on this side, too. They can clearly bypass the wall..."

The Lord Commander gave a slow nod. “I’ll send word to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. No more burials. Only ashes. I will call back Benjen, I need him here more than out there.”

Uncle Benjen had left a few days after I had arrived, we didn’t talk much. I think when he saw me, he saw his sister, and that killed him a little bit inside.

I wasn’t finished.

“That won’t be enough,” I said. “We need proof. And this shows the necessity of the reforms; if the enemy is coming, the Wall must be protected. I will do what I can south.”

“Yes, I will start immediately.” He raised an eyebrow. “What sort of proof?”

I met his gaze.

“You have to capture one.”

If it would even work, in the books the severed hand of the wight just decomposed and stopped moving when it was brought to Kings Landing, the Others were smart enough to know that humanity didn't belive in them anymore and to keep it that way.

His expression darkened.

“Have you gone mad?”

“No one will believe us, Lord Commander. Not the South. Not even the rest of the Watch. They’ll say we’ve drunk too much whiskey. Seen shadows in the wind.”

“So we bring a monster to their doorstep?”

“We bring truth,” I said. “If the Wall really stands to guard the realms of men, then men need to know what we guard against.”

"...We will do what we can."

Hopefully, they will be able to capture a live one, and find a way to keep it alive. Mormont didn’t speak for a long time. He grabbed his sword and it looked like he was thinking of giving it to me, but in the end he didn’t say anything.

Good, as much as I want Valyrian steel in my hands, it is needed here more.

Then he turned away, poured two cups of whiskey, and handed me one.

He raised his to the fire and muttered, “To truth, then. And to fire.”

We drank.

It was bitter and cold. Like blood in snow.

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The rookery was quiet in the hours before dawn. Snow whispered against the stone, and the wind clawed at the windows like an old, hungry thing. The ravens had gone still—perhaps out of respect. Or perhaps they simply knew.

I found him hunched beside the brazier, hands outstretched toward a flame that gave more light than heat. The fire painted his skin in soft gold, but it did nothing to drive the cold from his bones.

“You always come when the wind is worst,” Aemon rasped without turning. “Or when your thoughts are loud.”

I didn’t answer at first. I just sat beside him on the worn bench, letting the silence sit between us like an old friend neither of us trusted fully. The fire crackled. Somewhere far below, a horn called a single, distant note.

“I’m leaving,” I said at last.

“I know,” he murmured. “Your step has grown sharp. Restless. You walk like a man whose path is pulling him forward faster than his heart can follow.”

I looked at him. The pale cloud of his eyes, the tremble in his fingers. The deep, brittle weariness of a man who had outlived not only his kin but the purpose he once swore to.

“You don’t have to die here,” I said quietly. “You’re Aemon Targaryen. I have land, ships. Men. Gold. A place for you, at Moat Cailin, at Winterfell, wherever you want. Let me take you away from this place.”

A shadow of a smile touched his lips. “My place is here. Among crows and ghosts and old stones, Daemon.”

“You deserve more than this frozen tomb.”

“So do you,” he said, turning his face toward me, “but that hasn’t stopped you, has it? You have felt it too child, the magic of this place, it feeds us…”

I wanted to argue. To plead. But I could see it, feel it, in the way his shoulders sagged and his breath fluttered against the cold. He was already half a memory. The Wall was the last thing tethering him to this world. If he left it, the fire in him would go out.

“I won’t let them forget you,” I said.

“They already have,” Aemon replied, gently. “That’s the way of things. But if you remember me... that is enough.”

He reached out then, blind fingers fumbling until they found my wrist.

“You have the blood of the dragon and the heart of the wolf. You were always meant to walk the knife’s edge between ice and fire. Be careful, child. One will always want to devour the other.”

I stared at the fire.

“My grandfather killed my other grandfather.”

Aemon said nothing.

“My father, Rhaegar, his choices sparked a war that broke the realm. Thousands died for it. My grandfather was a madman who deserved death. I… I don’t think much of my own ancestors. What kind of a man does that make me?”

I turned to him. “You’re the only one I can ask. You’re a Targaryen. Do you feel it too? That… tangle inside. That sense that your ancestors are always watching, urging you toward fire, toward glory… toward madness?”

Aemon folded his hands slowly, thoughtfully.
“I know that tangle well,” he said. “My brothers bathed in fire. My cousins sang of dragons and danced through blood. I chose to lay down the crown before it could choose me. But the fire never leaves us, Daemon—”

He said the name softly.

“—What matters is how we contain it.” He said slowly. Looking at my soul. “You are not the sum of your father’s crimes. It doesn't matter what you think of them. You must choose, every day, to be better than they were. That is the weight of our blood. Not power. Not prophecy. Choice. They will call you a bastard, they will call you rapespawn. It does not matter, what matters is that you know who you are.”

I held his hand a little longer than I should have. And then embraced him. This might be the last time I see him. I may not agree with all that he thought or said, but Aemon Targaryen was undeniably a wise man, and it was a shame that he had to rot here.

Then I rose.

“When the ravens bring word, it’ll be from me.”

“I’ll wait for your wings, nephew.” he said, and then turned back to the fire. His fingers opened slightly, as if reaching for something only he could see.

I left him there, as the snow fell harder, and the Wall groaned under the weight of eternal winter.

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A sennight had passed since fire took the dead man, and Castle Black no longer felt like a half-buried ruin clinging to survival.

It breathed again.

The scent of fresh-cut pine and tarred beams still lingered in the air, stronger than the stink of sweat or the soot of the kitchens. The crooked, half-collapsed buildings that once littered the courtyard were gone, torn down and burned or rebuilt with new timber, cut in the foothills below the Wall and dragged up by sleds and horse teams from the Gift. The yard itself had been leveled and packed hard with gravel, stone, and concrete, bordered now by a waist-high stone wall laid by Old Stonesmen from Karhold who had come north with the last supply trains.

The great hall had changed most of all. It had a proper roof now, sloped steep and sharp to shed snow and ice, tiled with black slate. Two chimneys puffed faint trails of smoke into the air, one from the hearth inside the hall and one from the new kitchens that had been built adjoining the mess.

The old cracked timbers had been replaced by stout beams of heartwood, dark and red, polished and sealed against the cold. Above the entrance, someone, likely Pyp or Toad, had carved a rough image of a direwolf’s head into the lintel, its eyes fierce, its snout turned toward the gate.

The lift was finally finished.

The old cage, held together with rust and frozen rope, had been discarded. In its place stood a reinforced platform of ironwood planks bolted to a heavy oak frame. It moved with a system of pulleys, gear winches, and iron weights, sturdy enough to carry forty men at once, and faster than the old winch by half.

The counterweight system allowed just one man or a mule to move me mechanism. Sam had overseen its final construction phase, watching it rise now, smooth, deliberate, like a ship’s sail hoisting skyward, made me feel something close to pride.

The armory had been doubled in size. No longer a damp lean-to full of rusted blades and bent mail, it had been cleaned out, re-roofed, and fitted with racks of spears, swords, shields, bows, and quivers of fresh-fletched arrows, all steel. It had blacksmiths now who worked in shifts, mending links and shaping steel. A row of new mail hauberks gleamed like dull water in the firelight when the forge’s door opened.

Inside the new storerooms, cool, dry, and roofed with sod, were kept barrels of salt pork, dried fish, beans, oats, hard bread, pickled onions, and even small casks of spiced wine. The place was warmer now, and the black brother wouldn’t freeze at night. The watch couldn’t stop singing my praises.

The castle felt a bit empty now that the laborers were leaving slowly, it could hold many times more men than it had, but with time and the reforms the Lord Commander had started implementing it would start growing.

By the time the wilding horde came, the castle might hold three times as many men as it did now. And the war to come south would see many men being sent here. I would love to see the wildings meeting the new steel doors of the wall, the scorpions and towers on top of the wall, the steel-tipped arrows and crossbow bolts, and twenty-five hundred men manning the castle.

At least if Mance Rayder decides to attack and not heed my word of diplomacy.

Reports from the Shadow Tower were promising, if slow. Ser Denys Mallister had sent word that they’d repaired the south-facing walls and roofed over the old rookery. They’d uncovered a ruined forge buried under ice near the outer yard, usable, with time. More importantly, settlers from nearby villages had begun drifting closer to the Gift again. A dozen families had accepted Mallister’s offer of land and protection, building homes and small herds just beyond the old watchposts.

Eastwatch was in worse shape, weather-wracked, sea-scoured, but Cotter Pyke had written that the docks had been reinforced with stone and tarred pine. Fishing boats now made regular trips down the coast toward Last Hearth and Skagos, trading salt fish and crab for lumber and sheep. The outer curtain wall had partially collapsed during the last storm, but Pyke had drafted the smugglers in his garrison into helping with reconstruction—“They’re used to working in the dark,” he’d written, “and they know how to hold a line, if you give them a whip.”

Some of the men I’d brought north with the caravan had chosen not to return. They’d listened closely when Lord Commander Mormont made his offer, land in the Gift, a cottage and a share of the fields for those willing to help rebuild the Watch’s holdings. Not all were sellswords or vagabonds; a few were farmers’ sons with nothing left to return to, men weary of war and ready for soil and stone over sword and shield.

Now they were raising fences along the tree line and helping restore the holdfasts east of Queenscrown. Encouraged by their choice, Mormont had begun drafting letters, some bound for White Harbor, others for Barrowton and even Torrhen’s Square, offering opportunity to any man with strong arms and honest hunger.

He meant to repopulate the Gift not just with brothers, but with free men. It was a vision both bold and fragile, and for the first time in a century, the land around Castle Black had begun to breathe again.

The drills were done for the morning. Most of the brothers were dragging their aching limbs to the kitchens or limping off to sharpen blades dulled by the frozen ground. I sat on a stacked barrel near the edge of the yard, watching them go.

Sam was still standing there. Alone.

Sweat soaked through the back of his tunic, dark against the grey wool. His helm was too large for him, slightly tilted to one side. He held a wooden practice sword like it might bite him at any moment, blade dipped, stance crooked.

The training yard was quiet in the afternoon light. Most of the men had gone to the hall for stew and black bread, but Sam was still there, red-faced and panting, fumbling with a wooden sword far too heavy for him. He’d barely managed to lift it, let alone swing it, and now he stood hunched over in the cold, sweat steaming off his brow.

I crossed the yard slowly, Ghost padding at my side.

“Your stance has improved,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear. “You didn’t trip over your own feet this time.”

Sam gave me a weak smile and slumped onto a bench with a groan. “That’s only because Grenn stood behind me and shoved me forward.”

I sat beside him, unstrapping my gloves. “You’ve had worse days.”

“I’ve had nothing but worse days,” he muttered. “I still can’t swing the damned thing without wanting to vomit. I’m not a fighter, Jon.”

“No,” I said. “You’re not. And thank the gods for that.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

I turned to face him fully, elbows on my knees. “Sam. You’ve done more in the last few weeks than half the Watch has in the last five years. Those builders would still be arguing over rafters if you hadn’t sorted the supply ledgers. The Eastwatch grain shipments were mislabeled until you rewrote the inventory. The lift’s counterweights? Your idea. You saved us weeks.”

Sam fidgeted, looking down at his boots. “I just… it’s what I know. Books. Numbers. Writing things down.”

“And it matters,” I said. “It’s mattered more than blades or brute strength. You accelerated the entire thing by weeks. Maybe months.”

He looked up at me slowly, eyes uncertain.

“You’re wasted here,” I said. “On the Wall. In the Watch.”

He swallowed hard. “That’s not a small thing to say.”

“I know it isn’t. And I’ve thought long about it.”

The words came more easily now. I’d rehearsed them in my mind a dozen times over the last two days. “I want you to come south with me, Sam, to Moat Cailin. I’ll need men I trust, men with sharp minds who know how to plan and build. I’ve got land, walls to finish, and people to feed. I have many plans I want to implement, and I need men like you to do it.”

“You want me to… what? Leave the Watch? Serve you?”

“Yes,” I said plainly. “As my steward. My advisor. My friend.”

He stared at me, stunned. “But I—the vows. Even if I haven’t said them yet, I’m bound by them in spirit. And Lord Mormont—”

“I’ve already spoken to Mormont,” I said. “He understands. You’ve done your part for the Watch, and more. The vows are sacred, but you have yet to say them. You were never meant to die in black. You were meant to do something.”

Sam hesitated. “And my father…?”

I gave him a hard look. “Your father sent you here to break you. He’ll never see what I see. But I do. I see the man who kept this place from freezing to death. Who solved five dozen problems with ink and logic by my side. I don’t care what Randyll fucking Tarly thinks. He wasted his best man by sending him here; he could have had the greatest future Lord Tarly by his side, and he squandered it. I care what you decide to become.”

He looked away, face twisting. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough.”

“You’re more than brave, Sam. Bravery isn’t always in the blade. Sometimes it’s in staying when you want to run. Sometimes it’s in choosing the path no one else dares. You’ve already done that.”

The wind whistled through the yard. A raven cawed overhead. Sam sat silent for a long moment, then finally nodded.

“I’ll go,” he whispered. “If you’ll have me.”

And now I have my Seren number two.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Then we leave at first light. Pack light,” I said. “We ride soon.”

"err— Yes!, I don't have many things anyway..." He ran off to collect his things, tripping all the way.

That man is hopeless...

For the first time in days, I felt a weight lift.

Not all battles would be won with swords.

Some would be won with books.

Some with friends.

And some with both.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 12: Interlude 2 – Wolves of the North

Interlude 2 – Wolves of the North

POV: Eddard Stark

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We had been riding for a moon’s turn, and still the Neck lay behind us like the dragging tail of some old, slow beast. The king’s party was large, too large for speed. Litter-bearers and wine wagons, whores and squires, dogs and cooks, the whole disorderly court winding its way through the realm like a snake too fat on indulgence to move swiftly. I watched them with quiet irritation as we crossed the Green Fork. Robert did not notice. Or rather, he did not care.

I was glad for the pace, slow though it was. It gave me time to think, and the North had never left my thoughts.

Much had changed. Gods, so much.

In my mind, I could still see the first time Jon had come to me, not the boy he had once been, silent and stiff-lipped, but a young man burning with purpose. There had been something frightening in the clarity of his gaze, something that did not belong in a boy of eight. He came with Maester Luwin at his side, bearing rolls of parchment filled with sketches I could scarcely make sense of. At first, I dismissed it, concrete mixes, crop rotations, foreign crops that could grow in the North, some device for making steel by the ton, but Jon had not relented. He made me see it. The truth behind the ink and charcoal. The promise of what might come.

“You always taught me to prepare for winter, Father,” he had said. “This is how we do it now. With plans. With inovation.”

Winterfell had changed because of him. Because of them, Luwin’s curiosity and Jon’s relentless mind, even Robb, always there to help Jon with his wildest ideas. The Snowmelt bank near Winterfell had been reshaped to house the forges they called the Blackworks; deep-chambered hearths, a glasshouse kiln, and some roaring behemoth of steel and valves Jon said could smelt even riverstone to purity. I still wasn’t sure what to make of it. But the castle was stronger for it, and so was the North.

Then there were the lands in the Neck.

Rice and cotton in the bogs. It sounded mad when I first heard it. Those swamps had never grown anything but reeds and wariness. But Jon sent soil samples, and Maester Caleott from Oldtown confirmed it. He built dykes, dug channels, shifted the waters like some young Brandon the Builder in black. And the marsh folk, Old Gods save me, listened. Not just Howland, but the Crannogmen themselves. I saw them once, bent over little green paddies of sprouting rice, backs slick with sweat under the sun. It felt like sorcery.

Even on the road, even so far from hearth and hall, the weight of change traveled with me like a second shadow.

I thought of White Harbor, of the smell of brine and fish oil, and the clatter of rope on dock posts. Last time I’d been there, the tide had brought more than cargo. It brought questions. There had been new docks, wider, stronger, built of hard pine and black stone quarried from Jon’s lands in the Neck. Great cranes rose above the water like skeletal giants, lifting hulls and anchors with chains thick as a man’s arm. And behind them, in the yards, ships half-built stood silent and waiting, sleek designs I barely recognized. Fewer oars, deeper bellies, hulls shaped not for river slips but for deep water. One of them was thin but long and had angled sails. “It’s a clipper, won’t be a finished design for years, but once the Mandely experts figure it out, it will change trade forever.” Jon had said once, like I should’ve known what that meant.

I didn’t. But the shipwrights seemed to, and that was enough.

Then there were the rivers in the west. The hills between the Rills and the Fever had always been quiet country, misty and green. Not anymore. Now men built towers along the banks, earthworks with cross-shaped slits and boiling cauldrons set into stone. Stone forts backed by steel chains and good men who watched the western coast. 

And everywhere, like weeds, but good weeds, grew the bones of new roads. Stone bridges with steel bones. Stone causeways across marsh and moor. And granaries, by the gods, so many granaries. Small ones, domed and dry, packed with barley and oats and dried roots, sealed in clay like the old Valyrian jars I once saw in Sunspear. There were villages near them too, sometimes no more than five homes and a smithy, sometimes a hundred strong, all with new well-houses and windmills turning lazily in the northern sky.

They looked… hopeful. That was the word for it. Hopeful, sturdy, and strange.

Strange because they were not born of tradition, not sung into being by old stories or noble oaths. These were Jon’s doing, or Jon’s idea whispered into another man’s hands. Quiet work, steady work, not the sort to win songs, but the sort that would outlast kings. The people praise him; the lords praise him. And they praise me too, even if all I did was help oversee the projects and put my signature under some parchment.

Sometimes I wondered what my father would have made of it. I could barely recognize my own land now.

And then came the legitimization, how could it not with the prestige he had accumulated almost on accident, Robb's argument had been solid.

That had been the hardest part. It was Robert. Watching Robert’s face twist when he named the boy Jon Stark. That moment still lived behind my eyes like a nightmare. I could not look away from Robert’s hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and for a breath, I thought I might die there in the hall, or worse, watch Jon die.

Rhaegar’s son. Lyanna’s boy. Mine by oath, if not by blood.

It had been the most dishonorable moment of my life, lying to my King's face to legitimize his most hated enemy’s son.

And I would do it again. A thousand times.

The king did nothing that day. He didn’t realize the truth even when it was in front of him, even when only looking at his too sharp and pretty face, at his purple eyes would be enough. No, they thought of Ashara Dayne when they saw him, of the rumor I had spread. Jon had stood tall that day, eyes level, not a tremor in his jaw. I couldn’t be prouder of him.

 

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The Kingsroad wound through the green heart of the realm like an old scar, cracked and faded, but still unhealed. For days, we had traveled in uneasy quiet, banners fluttering above us, Baratheon, Stark, Lannister, three houses bound together in name, if not in peace.

Summer was thick on the air, and the pace was slow. Robert drank deep and laughed loud, but not even his merriment could wash away the undercurrent of tension. The queen rode with a spine of glass and steel. Joffrey sneered at everything. Sansa and Arya drifted further apart with every league. And Bran… Bran had grown quieter since Winterfell. More watchful. Older, though he was only eight.

Then Arya vanished.

One moment she was at Septa Mordane’s side; the next, she was gone. The panic hit like a blow to the chest. I had just returned to my tent when the shouting started, no words, just the chaos of guards barking orders.

We were looking for her through the forest when word came that the Lannister party had found her.

I was out before my sword belt was fastened. The royal tents loomed ahead, and even before I reached them, I saw the crowd forming, the red cloaks drawing a perimeter, their faces taut with confusion and caution.

Arya stood at the center of it, wild and fierce, her cheeks flushed and hair tangled. There was blood on her sleeve, not hers. Her fists were clenched, and she was breathing like she’d run a league. Next to her, Sansa was crumpled in Septa Mordane’s arms, pale as milk, sobbing into her sleeves.

But it was Bran who stopped me short.

My boy stood between Arya and the red cloaks, feet planted in the dirt like roots. No sword in hand, no shield at the ready, but he might as well have been clad in steel. His jaw was set. There was a glint in his eyes I had never seen before.

I had seen that look on a man’s face before battle.

“Bran,” I called. “Stand down.”

He didn’t move. He looked at me, but not as a frightened child might look to his father. There was shame in his face, but not for himself. His eyes slid toward Joffrey.

That was when I saw him, Ser Meryn Trant guiding the boy-prince forward like a crutch. Joffrey’s fine doublet was torn open, stained red, and muddied. His right hand was wrapped in linen, thick and hasty, and his lower lip trembled as he walked. His eyes found Arya at once and burned.

“She set her beast on me,” he spat before anyone could speak. “That animal bit me!”

Arya surged forward. “You drew steel on Micah! He didn’t even have a stick!”

Bran caught her wrist before she could cross the line to Joffrey. “Arya—don’t.” His voice didn’t rise, but she froze anyway, her fury held in check only by his steady grip. She looked at him, startled. He didn’t let go.

“What happened?” I asked, turning to the guards, then to Sansa. “Tell me.”

Sansa choked on her words. “It—it all happened so fast. Joffrey only meant to scare him, but—but the wolf came.”

“She didn’t!” Arya shouted. “Nymeria was protecting me. He was hurting Micah—cutting his face! He was laughing!”

I turned to Bran. “You saw it?”

Bran nodded once. “He drew his sword,” he said. “The butcher’s boy ran. Joffrey chased him. Arya knocked the sword out of his hand. Then Nymeria bit him.”

Joffrey’s face was red now, not from pain but rage. “Lies! She’s lying! They all are! I’m the prince! That boy dared touch me!”

“Micah touched a stick,” Arya said. “You called it a sword fight. He didn’t know what you meant.”

Before I could speak again, a cold wind seemed to pass through the clearing, though the air was still.

Cersei Lannister spoke as if conjured by fury.

She stepped forward, flanked by Lannister guards. Her gown was silk, green and gold, clinging like armor. Her expression was fixed in ice.

“Where is the wolf?” she asked, loud enough for all to hear.

Arya stared her down. “Gone. I made her run. She’s free now.”

Joffrey sneered. “Coward.”

“That’s enough,” Robert’s voice boomed at last, red-faced, wine-heavy. “Gods, what’s this mess now?”

“They set that wolf on my son,” Cersei said. “Justice demands blood.”

Robert sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Cersei—”

“She let that thing maul him!” Cersei barked. “She admitted it!”

“The wolf’s gone,” I said.

“Then the others will do.”

Sansa’s gasp was loud as a bell. “No—please—Father, not Lady! She’s mine! She’s never even growled at anyone, I swear it!”

Cersei stepped forward. “The girl lied. Her pet attacked the prince. A wolf bit royalty. You know what happens next.”

Bran raised his voice. “Lady and Summer did nothing. Nymeria’s gone. It isn’t right!”

Robert looked between us, then at Joffrey, clutching his hand like a war wound. Then, at Cersei, her eyes were like coals.

He didn’t want this. That much was plain.

But the line between politics and wants blurred too easily.

“Damn it all,” Robert muttered. “Do it. Get it over with.”

I stepped forward. “Is this your command, Your Grace?”

He stared at me, already turning away. “It is.”

The clearing broke apart, like a wave smashing against a rock. Guards led Joffrey back to his tent. Cersei glided after him, triumphant. Sansa sobbed into her septa’s arms, begging. Arya stood unmoving, her mouth tight, fists clenched. Bran turned to me slowly. It was decided that I would do it, the wolves were of the North.

“I won’t let them use a stranger’s axe,” I said. “This is our burden.”

“I tried,” Bran said.

“I know,” I replied, voice like gravel.

“Is this what justice is, Father?”

“No,” I said. “This is politics.”

 

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The night was still, the camp subdued beneath a sky heavy with stars.The revels had died early. Even Robert had gone quiet after Cersei’s gloating and Joffrey’s sulking wore out his patience. But I could not sleep.

I walked without torchlight, guided by memory and moonlight, until I reached the small pen where the direwolves were held.

Two shapes stirred as I approached. Lady rose slowly, padding toward the gate with ears low and tail tucked. She sensed something was wrong. I knelt and placed a hand against the rough wood. She pressed her head to it.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She whined once, softly.

In the corner, Summer lay curled tight, his golden eyes glowing faintly. He growled low when I moved. His distrust had deepened since the day Bran stood before the queen. Even at eight, my son had stepped into a role I hadn’t expected for years: a protector of the blood, of his kin, of truth.

Summer had felt that same calling.

And Lady… Lady had done nothing but remain loyal.

Yet she would die come morning.

I closed my eyes, resting my brow against the wood. My breath steamed in the air.

In Winterfell, my father had always said that duty is the marrow of a Stark. Duty. Cold as the wind that sweeps the Wall, strong as stone carved by winter itself. He taught us with words and with silence, with his eyes when they fixed on us too long at supper, with the weight of the greatsword Ice resting across his knees.

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword, he used to say. And I had lived by those words. When I took a man’s head, I looked him in the eyes and let him see mine. I let the weight of the blade bear down on my conscience, because that was the only honest way. No masked executioners, no whispered orders in secret chambers. If you could not take the life yourself, then you had no right to give the command.

But what if the sentence itself was unjust?

What if the crime was not a crime at all, but the fragile lie of a spoiled prince and the naked fury of a wounded queen? What if honor, true honor, meant defiance, not obedience?

My boots were soaked through with the muck of this camp, thick as tar in the dark. Southern politics left more than mud on the skin; it left rot in the soul. Their honor was parchment and paint, measured in favors, weighed against who you could betray quietly. And I had brought my children into that mire, thinking I could shield them with northern steel and stubborn silence.

I thought of Bran again. Just eight, still soft in the face, but when he had stood between Arya and those gold-cloaked men, I saw something older rise up in him. Something not of me, nor Catelyn, but of the blood, of the North itself. He hadn't drawn a sword, but he stood like one. A boy who had not yet seen battle had stood against a prince and a queen, and done so for his sister.

Arya, wild and reckless, had faced down Joffrey like a wolf baring her teeth. I’d seen her fists tighten, her jaw set, her eyes dark with a fury that was frightening in someone so small. She would not yield.

And Sansa… gods help me, she was breaking under it. Softened by court life, enamored with stories spun by southerners who had never knelt before a heart tree. Her tears were real, but so was the confusion, the shame of wanting to believe in a fairy tale that would never love her back. She mourned Lady already, even before the sentence was spoken.

And the wolves. Their wolves. No… not just wolves.

Totems. Guardians. Bound by blood and fate to the children who found them. Spirits of the old North, reborn from another age. I had watched them grow from pups, awkward, stumbling, eyes too large for their heads, into sleek, silent shadows that moved with purpose and patience the size of fully grown normal wolves. Summer, ever vigilant. Lady, poised and graceful. Nymeria, fierce and cunning. They were more than pets. They were the children, in a way I had no words to explain.

Even Maester Luwin had sensed it, I think, though he would never speak of magic. The direwolves belonged to them. To the Starks. Perhaps to the gods.

The old gods do not speak in the South, I thought. Their groves are gone, their trees cut and carved, their eyes gouged out or left to rot in forgotten godswoods like moss-covered tombs. But the wolves do. They speak with howls and glances and silent loyalty. They feel when something is wrong.

And now the South wanted their silence.

Lady had never harmed a soul. Summer had done nothing but protect his pack. Yet both were condemned, not for what they did, but for what they were. For whom they belonged to. Their very existence was an insult to the court. A reminder that not all things bowed. That not all power wore silk. I am sounding like Jon more and more lately…

I clenched my jaw, feeling the old pain in my leg where a spear once nicked me at the Trident. The ache never left when it rained. The rain was coming again.

I had followed the rules. I had bent the knee. I had kept my silence through slights and whispers and plots half-glimpsed in torchlight.

I am already a traitor, I made Robert look into Rhaegar’s son's eyes, legitimize and raise him to lordship in the next breath.

But I would not kill my children's wolves. I would not offer that final surrender to the altar of royal favor. Let them call it treason. Let them question my honor.

I know what it is. And I know what it is not.

I stood slowly, my knees stiff from the cold ground, but the decision had hardened inside me like steel left in the forge too long.

No one else would swing the blade. Because no one else would know there was no death at all.

 

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Night held its breath as I summoned the only men I could trust.

Jory Cassel. Hallis Mollen. Desmond. Men of the North, with old eyes and long memories.

They met me at the edge of the camp, by the godswood stumps and the path to the stream.

“Bring cloaks,” I had told them. “And blades, but no banners.”

We walked under the cover of darkness to the pen.

Jory raised an eyebrow. “The wolves?”

I nodded. “They don’t die tonight.”

They exchanged glances. Not one of them smiled. But I saw the understanding settle in like a winter frost.

“What’s the plan?” Hallis asked, already untying the rope.

“There’s a pair of half-wild hounds the butcher kept tied to the wagons,” I said. “Gray and pale as snow. Near enough in size. We dress them in blood, say the wolves went mad in the night. We did what had to be done.”

“It’ll pass… if no one looks closely,” Desmond said.

“No one will,” I replied. “The queen wants a corpse, not the truth. She won’t get either.”

The gate creaked open.

Summer darted out like a shadow, brushing past me and into the trees. I did not stop him. That one had tasted too much of Bran’s soul to be caged again.

Lady lingered.

She came to me one last time. I knelt, pressed my face into her fur, and whispered, “Guard them. All of them.”

She licked my cheek once. Then she turned and vanished after Summer into the black wood.

We worked quickly after that. The hounds struggled, but Northmen had leashes stronger than silk and nerves stronger than guilt. When we were done, the false corpses lay wrapped in cloaks, damp with blood and cut to pieces.

As dawn approached, I spoke to them one last time.

“No one breathes a word of this. To lie to the crown is treason. But I would rather be judged by the gods than the court of lions and peacocks.”

Jory nodded. “The wolves live. That’s justice.”

I gave them each a nod and turned away.

It was done.

The North had not bowed that night.

 

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Sansa was quiet that morning.
Too quiet.

She wore a pale blue gown that did nothing to brighten her pallor. The hem was speckled with dust, and her hands rested still in her lap, folded like she’d forgotten they could move. She sat on a small stool beside her tent, under the thin morning light that filtered weakly through the gray sky. The air still smelled of woodsmoke and wet canvas. Around us, the camp stirred slowly to life, boots thudding against the mud, the low murmur of voices, the snort of a restless horse, but none of it touched her.

Septa Mordane stood nearby, her spine rigid and expression unreadable, like a statue waiting to be dismissed. Her hands were clasped so tightly in front of her that they trembled faintly, though she tried to keep her composure. She was a creature of ceremony and rules, trained in hymns and postures, not in the stillness of real grief. She had no comfort to give, and she knew it.

I approached my daughter slowly, as one might approach a wounded animal. Sansa did not lift her eyes. Her fingers twitched once, then stilled again.

“I heard,” she said, before I could speak. Her voice was dry, like leaves after the frost. “About Lady.”

I knelt before her. There were no guards here, no banners, no court. Just a father before his child.

“I did what I had to,” I said.

Sansa looked down at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the hours that had followed them. The kind of crying that left you hollow.

“She didn’t deserve it,” she whispered. “But she’s gone now. So it doesn’t matter.”

The words stung more than any accusation. They weren’t angry—they were empty. She wasn’t looking to blame me. She had simply accepted the loss, the way one accepts the cold. I could see the edges of her dreams crumbling behind her gaze.

I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to say she’s alive. She’s safe. You’ll hear her one day in the trees, and she’ll come to you when you’re ready. I wanted to kneel beside her and tell her that the world hadn’t taken everything from her.

But Sansa… she believed in stories. In the songs about knights and noble queens and pretty endings where the princess smiles through her tears. That belief was fragile now, cracked and patched with pain, but if I gave her the truth too soon, I feared it might break her entirely. She needed something to hold on to. Something simple. Something final.

“She’s with the gods,” I said instead, my voice low. “And she knew you loved her.”

Sansa closed her eyes, and for a moment, I saw her mouth tighten as though she were holding something back. A scream. A sob. A plea. But it passed, and she nodded once, faintly, like she wasn’t sure what else to do.

I rose slowly, placing a hand on her shoulder as I stood.

I left her there, beneath the pale sky, with the silent Septa and the shattered edges of a girl’s belief.

Later, I found Arya and Bran near the edge of camp, under the stripped remains of a pine that had been scorched by lightning seasons ago. Arya clung to him, her arms wrapped around his small frame, her face buried in his chest. Her shoulders shook with the quiet sobs of someone who did not want to be seen crying, not even by the brother who held her.

Bran stroked her hair gently, like a boy too young to know how to comfort, but trying anyway. He held her with the solemn patience that came to those who had already looked grief in the eye. When he saw me, his gaze met mine, calm, steady, older than it should have been.

“It will be okay…” he said quietly.

Arya fell asleep like that then, her face streaked with tears and streaks of mud, her eyes red.

“It wasn’t Summer, was it?” he asked.

I said nothing. I didn’t have to.

He stared at me for a long moment, and then his voice broke. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

I held them both then, Bran pressed to one side, Arya on the other, my cloak wrapping around their small bodies like a shield against the world. I didn’t speak. There were no words large enough to explain what I had done, or why I had done it. There was only the quiet strength of a father’s arms and the echo of what might yet be salvaged.

“No one can know Bran, no one.” I said, but Bran already understood that.

That night, after the camp had gone still and the fires had burned low, I stood alone at the edge of the wood. The stars above were scattered and pale, like they too were unsure of their place in this sky. The trees swayed gently in the wind, whispering in the old tongue, the one no man had ever truly mastered, not even the First Men.

I listened.

At first, there was only the wind.

Then, far off, barely more than a ripple of sound, came a single howl. Long and low. It rolled over the hills like mist. Then another joined it. And another.

Lady. Summer. Nymeria.

Good, I thought. Run far. Run fast. Run free.

The gods had not spoken that night.

But the wolves had.

And for now, that was enough.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 13: Chapter 11 — Foundations of the Future

Chapter 11 — Foundations of the Future

The ride south was quieter than I expected. Aside from Sam, only twelve men rode with me, veterans, mostly, We lingered in Winterfell for only two days. Just long enough to breathe the cold air, to walk the godswood, and to feel the old stones beneath my boots again. Enough to talk to Robb and to delegate my duties in the Blackworks to Garrick, who was now its Chief Steward.

Robb met me in the yard with a tired smile and a soldier’s hug. He looked older even if little bit more than a moon had passed, sharper around the eyes, harder around the mouth. The weight of command had settled on his shoulders like a snowdrift, subtle and constant. But there was pride there too, and something that looked a little like hope.

He showed me the broken tower first, scaffolding already wound around its base like ivy, masons mixing concrete and stone, the first of many of his projects being done. “She won’t crumble again,” Robb told me. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” Then he spoke of land divisions, plots measured and parceled in the wolfswood for freeholders and veterans, the beginnings of a modest Northern commons. I listened, surprised and strangely moved. The work we had dreamed of in whispers was taking root, inch by inch.

Later, he took me to the training yard, where boys of sixteen moved through drills not unlike the ones I’d developed at Castle Black. “You called it spear-wall rotation,” he said. “We’re trying to adapt it for our militia.” I watched them practice under the eye of Ser Rodrik’s nephew, sweat and discipline in equal measure. The rhythm was rough, but the seed was planted.

That night, over bread and thick venison stew, we spoke of supply routes, of tax shares, of the slow shifts in river trade since the granaries in the Neck had come to life. “The old families grumble,” Robb admitted. “But they eat more than they did five years ago.” I saw it then, how the North was changing, not with me at its head, the ball had already left the top of the mountain and was growing without my input. The future wasn’t waiting for me. It had already begun. And I was proud of him.

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The wind off the marshes bit sharper the farther south we rode. The Neck had a chill all its own, wet and creeping, seeping into cloak and bone like a ghost’s breath. Summer was only just fading, but already the road felt like a herald of what was to come.

Winter is coming, I thought. But first… King’s Landing.

Moat Cailin rose from the fog like the bones of an old, buried god. Black stone towers loomed out of the pastures, some broken and jagged, but no longer abandoned, eight of them whole and full of life. There were men here now, many men. Fires burned along the causeway. Timber had been hauled in from the Wolfswood and Bear Island, lashed together for scaffolding and ramparts. The crumbling causeway gate had been reinforced with cut stone and steel, the green-black mud packed down under concrete and fresh gravel. The walls were coming together and soon would be finished, the first step of the rebuilding process done.

The first thing I noticed was the sound: hammers and saws, the clatter of carts and shouted orders. It reminded me, faintly, of the Castle Black, when I’d begun to rebuild it, just many, many times bigger. Here too, life was clawing its way back into old bones.

A watchtower had been raised from what had once been a pile of rubble, rough timber, ringed by torch sconces, with a pair of hornmen stationed at the top. I nodded to them as we passed beneath. They gave a shout to the camp, and within moments, men began moving to intercept us.

One of my men rode ahead to announce us. I took the moment to study the place more carefully.

Moat Cailin had once been the key to the North, a fortress raised in the Age of Heroes to keep out southern kings. It had withstood a thousand years and a dozen invasions, until time and swamp swallowed it whole. But now… now it looked like something was waking. The central tower had scaffolds wrapped around it like ivy, and the skeleton of a new gatehouse rose beside it. I saw tents, smithy fires, even a small sept being framed out in stone, many men from the south came here searching opportunity and land and a sept was needed to keep them happy. Supply wagons lined the north end, and soldiers drilled in muddy yards, not many, but enough to matter.

My banner still flew, white direwolf on black. When I dismounted, I stood tall. The men saluted. I offered nods in return. This was no grand castle, no glittering seat. But it was ours. A border, a symbol, and a promise.

When finished, Moat Cailin would be more than a fortress, it would be a statement. A black-stone leviathan rising from the neck, its rebuilt towers crowned with steel and granite, ringed by curtain walls thick enough to shrug off siege engines. Gatehouses would bristle with murder holes, portcullises, and boiling oil vents; a causeway rigged with collapsible bridges and floodgates would ensure that no southern army could pass without my leave.

But beyond its defenses, it would house a great hall with vaulted ceilings, archives carved into stone, chambers for northern lords, and a vast central courtyard where trade caravans and assemblies could gather under the banners of the wolf.

More than a shield, it would be a second heart for the North, a throne of stone and swamp that watched both South and North with open eyes. It would be the heart of the most prosperous lands of the North and its administrative center.

“Lord Stark,” one of the foremen said, approaching with a respectful incline of the head. “You’ve arrived just in time. Storm coming in tonight.”

I nodded. Storms above, and storms below.

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The offices were alive with a quiet urgency when I arrived, the steady murmur of men mingling, pages turning, and the occasional sharp clang of hammer on metal. The command center lay at the heart of the growing settlement outside of the Moat, a patchwork of organized sturdy new timber and stone buildings rising amid the weathered tents that had sheltered the first arrivals. Smoke from cooking fires curled into the pale sky, and banners snapped briskly in the chill wind.

“Lord Stark,” came a voice as familiar as the North wind itself. Seren stepped forward with a grin that didn’t quite hide the weight behind it. Arren followed closely, eyes sharp and steady as ever. Both greeted me with warmth and respect, their pride unmistakable as they looked me over, seeing not just the man who’d returned, but the man whose vision had taken root here.

“You look well,” Seren said, clasping my forearm firmly. “And just in time. The storm’s pushing in fast.”

Arren’s nod was curt but approving. “It’s good to have you back, Jon.”

We moved together through the command center. The tents, once makeshift shelters for weary men and supplies, now stood alongside timber-framed offices and storage rooms, all carefully arranged around a central courtyard where messengers came and went, their faces set with determination.

Arren led the way to a large table strewn with maps and ledgers, the evidence of their tireless work. “We’ve made much progress with the fields around Moat Cailin,” he began. “Our farmers have reclaimed more of the marshland’s edges. The peat’s been drained in sections, and we’re seeing crops rise where before there was only bog.”

I studied the maps, noting the green patches creeping closer to the fortress walls. “Trade routes?”

“Slowly opening,” Arren said. “We’ve cleared and repaired several key bridges along the Fever River. Caravans are moving again between the Neck and the Northern settlements. It’s not bustling, but it’s steady.”

Seren added from the side, “Local lords are starting to rebuild their holdings. We’ve been working with them to set up rudimentary courts and tax collections. It’s far from perfect, but the governance is stabilizing.”

I felt the familiar stir of hope, that slow, grinding work that was the true foundation of power. “And the border?”

Seren’s smile tightened. “Skirmishes are rare but not unheard of. The Ironborn still come up to the mouth of the Fever River. We caught a raiding party last moon, but it was small, more nuisance than threat. Some brigands too, Cort dealt with them swiftly.”

“Good,” I said, eyes narrowing. “We’ll keep the watch sharp. No slips.”

Just then, Sam approached, a thick ledger tucked under one arm. He moved with more confidence than I remembered, still soft-spoken, still awkward, but no longer unsure of his place.

“Lord Stark,” he greeted with a slight bow. “I’ve compiled the latest tallies, supply manifests, settlement logs, and the updated correspondence index.”

I smiled. “Samwell Tarly, meet Seren and Arren. You’ll be working closely, I imagine.”

Seren offered a hand. “We’ve heard of your work in Castle Black. The new ledgers are a godsend. We’ve had less confusion with grain shipments since we set them up in your way, we started tracking weights and recipients.”

Sam flushed with pride and murmured his thanks.

We walked as we spoke, crossing a timber walkway that overlooked the lower fields. A stream of carts moved slowly through the mud, carrying lumber, bricks, and sacks of grain. The scale of the enterprise was larger than I'd dared to hope.

“We’re getting more settlers by the week,” Seren said. “The incentives, land grants, tax breaks, tools, are working. People from the South, the western coast, even the southern marches are coming.”

“Not just peasants either,” Arren added. “We’ve seen merchants, former soldiers, even a few septons and hedge knights.”

“Half a million in a decade,” Seren said, his eyes scanning the horizon. “If the roads hold and the harvests keep, I think that’s what we’re looking at.”

I looked out over the muddy sprawl, over the tents and rising walls and broken towers. Half a million souls will live in my lands, of course that would still leave them underpopulated by twenty-first century standard, my lands where bigger than Austria.

I turned back to Seren and Arren, letting the silence settle for a breath before I spoke. “You’ve both done more than I hoped. I can see it in the walls, the fields, the order of it all. This is good work—thank you.”

They exchanged a glance, modest but clearly pleased. I moved to the command table and reached for the bundle of reports Sam had brought. The paper was thick, ink crisp, and each document neatly tagged with colored cords, supply inventories, construction progress, new settlement registries, and troop rotations.

I began reading, falling into the rhythm of ink and figures, the careful language of infrastructure and expansion. Each page told a part of the story: the growing reach of our roads, the rise in livestock births, the decline in disease among new settlers. Schools starting to teach. The numbers were dry, but the implications were alive and immense.

Progress. Real, tangible progress.

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The storm came and went, and the new drainage of the Moat allowed it to not be flooded for the first time in millennia. The farmlands handled it well. The canals and water gates held, and the crops survived. It would be a good harvest that would bring much gold to everyone’s pockets, me most of all.

Sam had changed.

It wasn’t something I noticed all at once. But as I watched him move between scribes and supply officers with quiet authority, I realized how far he’d come. He was still the same Samwell Tarly, his shoulders rounded a bit too much, his steps uncertain on muddy roads, but the fear had gone from his eyes. Or rather, it had learned how to hide behind purpose.

He was no longer hiding in books. He was building with them.

When I stepped into the timber-paneled hall that served as our temporary records office, I found Sam at a long bench crowded with parchments, ledgers, and ink pots. A small brazier kept the chill away, and a row of junior scribes waited on his nod to begin their copying. Sam glanced up as I entered and waved them off for a moment.

“Jon,” he said, rising with a tired but genuine smile. “Or—Lord Stark, I suppose.”

“Jon is fine, Sam.” I clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “This place suits you.”

He blushed, but only slightly, his fingers brushing instinctively over the edge of a parchment. “It’s… a lot. But good. The scribes actually listen now. And when I pointed out that the leaseholder near Pine Hollow had accidentally claimed ten more acres than his title allowed, they amended it without complaint.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re correcting land grants now?”

“Only when they need correcting,” he said, with mock sternness. “Besides, we’d have a dozen feuds by winter if we didn’t sort the boundaries properly.”

I chuckled. “You’re not hiding in books anymore.”

Sam hesitated, then looked at me in a way that made the air still for a moment. “I think I was just waiting to find a story worth being inside of.”

There was silence, broken only by the scratching of quills across parchment and the soft murmurs outside the open shutters. He meant it, not just as a clever line, but as something real. This place, this project, was the story he’d always wanted to be part of.

He gestured to the reports laid out in neat stacks. “Here, updates from the western marshes. The Mollen family has settled in proper, finally put a roof over the great hall they’ve been building. The Casswells are working with Arren’s teams on canal dredging to keep the floods from washing out the new grain plots.”

He passed me a second scroll. “Grain stores are at sixty percent capacity, but we’ll need another shipment of salt pork and oats from the White Knife valley before the next moon. And…” he smiled faintly, “the first two casks of your new whiskey, Fermented Winter Whiskey, that is, were sold in White Harbor.”

The first person to ever call it whiskey to my face, I might cry…

“Oh?”

He nodded. “At a good price too. The bottle labels we had copied by the scribes turned out well, your idea about embossing the direwolf sigil was a smart one. A merchant’s already sent a letter asking for a regular supply by the turn of the season.”

I hadn’t expected it to catch on so quickly. The whiskey had started as a novelty, part experiment, part cultural gambit. A drink from the North, bottled with pride, something new for the North to offer that was neither steel nor fur. That it had sold was less important than what it signaled: that the North was exporting more than hardship.

“We’re tracking the income from that separately,” Sam continued. “It’s not much yet, but once the distilleries are fully built and running, it could fund the military program on its own.”

I looked at him again, really looked. This wasn’t the boy from Castle Black who had once cried during archery drills. This was a man who managed scrolls like siege engineers managed trebuchets. Quiet, tireless, underestimated, and vital.

“Well done, Sam,” I said softly.

He ducked his head. “Thank you.”

I reached for one of the scrolls and settled into the seat beside him. “Let’s read through them together. I want to know everything before the next meeting with Arren and Seren.”

And for a while, we sat like that, shoulder to shoulder, scribes working in silence, the heart of the North slowly beating stronger with each word written and plan laid.

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I walked beside Seren along the western causeway, our boots thudding softly against newly laid timber and packed gravel. The path had once been a muddy trail barely fit for wagons. Now it was on its way to becoming a proper road.

Above us rose the bones of Moat Cailin.

The keep had been the first priority. Once nothing more than a moss-choked ruin, it now stood proud, its gray stone walls refitted and reinforced. Tall by southern standards, it was sturdy, defensible, and dry within, a luxury in the Neck. Engineers had layered the outer walls with timber scaffolds, but their work had already pushed higher: stone battlements had returned to the north-facing side, and arrow slits dotted the keep’s flank like watchful eyes.

“The masons say it’ll hold through a siege,” Seren said, nodding toward the walls. “We’ve got a proper rain cistern beneath now. Enough to last six months, maybe more, depending on the garrison size.”

“And if the causeways are broken?” I asked.

“Then no army gets within ten leagues. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

I nodded. It was. This place wasn’t meant to just house men, it was meant to stop armies.

We passed between two newly erected palisades, logs driven deep into the wet earth and bound with iron bands. The causeways were being fortified with draw-gates and spike traps. I watched as a group of black-clad engineers worked with the laborers on the last details of the walls,

“We’ve got eight towers operational,” Seren said. “If there’s an army on the causeway, they wont last long with the artillery and crossbows.”

We came to a clearing where the new barracks had been built: long timber halls with stone hearths and dry roofs. Men trained in the yard, halberds, spears, bows. Soldiers.

Storehouses were going up just beyond, each built on raised platforms to keep them dry above the bog floods. Carts rolled in from the western settlements, some bringing timber, others food. Grain, barley, smoked fish, and the first sacks of salt were being tucked away for winter.

“Tax intake’s growing,” Seren noted, gesturing toward a small structure flying the direwolf banner, a temporary administrative hall. “Mostly barter from the new arrivals still. Tools, grain, cloth. But it’s coming in regular. Some families are paying ahead of time just to hold their plots.”

“They’re not just paying taxes,” I said, scanning the rising buildings, the repaired towers, the causeways bustling with wagons and oxen. “They’re building something. A place. A future.”

Seren gave a tired smile. He knew me well enough to see I wanted to be dramatic. “A stronghold, you mean.”

“No. A community, Seren, we must build a sense of purpose.”

We came to the edge of the southern causeway where a group of stonecutters were marking the foundations of what would one day be a great gatehouse. Behind them, a cluster of tents and shanties had already become a village in truth, cobbled together but growing. Children chased dogs through the mud while their parents worked the fields or hauled bricks.

“I want construction focused on the outer wall,” I said at last. “The moat must be finished, cut deep and lined with stakes. The causeways must be protected. If an army comes from the south or north, I want them to bleed every step. The twenty towers can wait. We finish the wall first.”

Seren nodded. “And the keep?”

“It’s done. It serves its purpose. This place isn’t about grandeur. It’s about endurance. Grandeur can come when this place is a proper fortress.”

We stood for a moment in silence, looking over the sprawl of work, of effort, of intent made stone and timber. Moat Cailin was no longer a ruin. It was rising again, layer by layer, field by field, soul by soul.

When I had first arrived, I saw only broken towers and empty marshes.

Now, I saw something else. A bastion for the North.

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The training grounds had once been little more than marshland, soft ground scattered with reeds and bog-water a few miles north of the Moat. Now it was a wide, tamped-earth field, bordered by a low stone wall and watched over by raised platforms for drillmasters. The smell of sweat, steel, and oiled leather hung in the air.

I stood atop a newly built review platform beside Ser Cort, watching two companies move in concert across the field. Arren is taking notes of the inventory. Halberds gleamed in the early light, long shafts thrusting in smooth rhythm as shieldmen locked formations, covering their flanks. Behind them came the crossbowmen, modular bows already loaded, moving in practiced tandem with the front line.

Cort’s voice was calm, almost dispassionate. “Flanking maneuver, scenario four. Simulated retreat and counter-pincer. Second company’s baiting a collapse, first company’s hammering the overextension.”

The movement was precise, more than I had expected. A year ago, none of these men had ever marched in step. Now they advanced in tidy formations, spreading out, signaling with raised fists and bird whistles.

I turned to Cort. “You’ve done well.”

He gave a nod, gruff and understated. “They’ve come far. But they’ve a ways yet to go.”

Ser Cort had once been a hedge knight, lean and quiet, with the scars of hard-earned survival. I’d elevated him not for his lineage, but for his discipline and his utter refusal to tolerate foolishness. The men respected him. More importantly, they feared disappointing him.

“How many under arms now?” I asked.

“Two thousand five hundred in active training,” he replied. “Another four hundred assigned to logistics, kitchen, or support duties. Every one of them rotates through physical drills and weapons work, no exceptions. Even the cooks run.”

He handed me a bound folder of parchment, one of the many documents he kept obsessively detailed. The emblem of the standing force, a red direwolf set behind a crossed halberd and bolt, was stamped in wax.

One day it will be a dragon on that sigil.

“Standard issue is holding steady,” he continued. “Armor’s steel plate, nothing fancy, but forged in Blackworks and proofed in the field. We prioritize function over flourish. The helms seal clean. No gold, no plumes.”

I nodded, flipping through the pages.

“Each man carries a halberd with a northern oak haft and a socketed steel head. Blade, hook, and spike. Reach and formation control. They also carry a modular crossbow, steel prod limbs, wooden stocks. Reload is fast and the stopping powers there. It can penetrate plate if close enough.”

“Shields?” I asked.

“Only for a handful of spear units,” Cort said. “We’re not training free-form melee here. We’re building a wall of pikes, armor and bolts. Shield lines would slow down redeployment.”

“And fieldwork?”

“Every soldier carries a spade. One of your ideas, I believe. We’ve been drilling them in rapid entrenchment, barricades, ditches, palisades. Give me an hour, I’ll give you a fortress.”

That much was true. In the marshes, position mattered more than flashy swordplay. Whoever held the ground held the fight.

The rest of the Seven Kingdoms though…

Cort motioned, and a whistle cut the air. The companies froze, then rotated, forming a defensive circle around a central command point.

“Drill manuals were a good start,” Cort went on. “We’ve adapted and expanded them. Each rank has its own expectations, training routines, behavioral standards, disciplinary measures. They wear their rank openly, stitched into their collars. Nothing ambiguous.”

“And the command structure?”

“Solidifying.” He tapped his temple. “I’ve been training commanders separately. Theory, tactics, command voice. I’ve got five dozen promising candidates. In time, they’ll lead their own formations. With loyalty.”

We descended the platform. A runner darted past, saluting as he handed Cort a message before sprinting toward the logistics tent.

I asked, “How’s support coming along?”

“Well enough. The logistics corps is operational, quartermasters, cooks, medics, stablehands, smiths. We keep rosters of supply movement, wagon rotations, storage levels. Nothing gets lost. We’ve got medics now, too. Three dozen field surgeons and twice that in apprentices. Training’s crude, but better than what we had at the Trident.”

I thought of men screaming on snow-covered battlefields, dying not from wounds but from rot and fever. No more.

“And the engineers?”

“Coming along slower,” Cort admitted. “Siege work takes time. But we’ve a corps forming, stonemasons, cartwrights, carpenters. They’re building test walls now, learning angles, tensions, and loads. We’ll be able to field catapults and trenches in a few moons. If we push, even ballistae.”

I looked out over the men again, now reorganizing, breaking into smaller drill units. Some shifted to range practice, raising their crossbows in calm unison before unleashing volleys on command. The bolts thudded into rows of straw men armored in old leathers and scavenged steel. A few misfires, one bolt skittered wide, drawing a barked rebuke from the instructor, but most found their mark.

The sun glinted off the line of assembled crossbowmen as they reloaded in near-perfect unison. I watched the repetition of motion, the click of cams turning, the thrum of string returning to rest, as thirty bolts were loosed in a heartbeat and thirty more were not far behind.

“These aren’t the clumsy beasts the South knows,” Cort said, watching with a curious frown.

“Looks the same to me. Wood and steel.” Arren finally spoke from the side.

“Aye, on the outside. But the devil’s in the details.” I stepped forward and tapped one of the archer’s bows. “These were built with layered horn and spring-steel, tensioned by design.” I said, pointing to the two off-centered round discs at the limb ends, “The limbs store more energy without breaking the man holding it. All that force, but with half the effort. You can cock it with a built-in windlass crank in under thirty seconds.”

Arren grunted. “Two bolts a minute. That’s not as fast as a shortbow.”

“But shortbows won’t punch through plate.” I nodded to a test dummy down the line, wrapped in iron scales and riveted mail. One of the bolts had hit square in the chest and gone clean through the back. “Four hundred pounds of draw weight. Enough to ruin any Lannister in gilded armor.” I smirked “How’s morale?”

“Good,” said Cort. “We run them hard, but feed them well. The pay is good, and men are starting to flock here. They know this isn’t castle-guard duty. They’re building something. Fighting for something.”

“How long until they’re ready?” I asked.

Cort folded his arms, thoughtful. “For these ones, four months. Five, if we want everything airtight. I won’t send them into war until they move like water and kill like a storm. But when that day comes… The next batches should be faster after we have a core of trained men.”

He let the sentence hang, unfinished but understood.

When that day comes, I thought, they won’t be a rabble. They’ll be a wall. A shield. A hammer.

My very own Royal Army…

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A sennight passed in steady work, supply trains rolled in from the east, fresh timber floated downriver, Men arrived and were organized, and each morning the walls of Moat Cailin rose another foot higher. The rhythm was almost comforting: drills in the morning, inspections by noon, council reports in the evening.

But with growth came cost.

I sat in the solar that doubled as a war room, maps and ledgers spread across the oak table. Ser Cort stood at attention beside the hearth, a frown tugging at his mouth.

“The stores are holding,” the commander began, “but expansion means strain. More men require more steel, more bread, more everything. We’ll need to double our armory by snowmelt if we’re to house the next levy rotation. And the standing force expects pay, even if they’re loyal.”

He wasn’t wrong. Feeding three thousand men and equipping them with full plate and weapons would bankrupt most castles.

But I didn’t flinch.

“The northern fire sales are ramping up,” Seren said evenly. “Last shipment reached White Harbor in three days. It sold out in two.”

Sam, seated nearby with ink-stained fingers and a meticulous record book open before him, nodded eagerly. “The first barrels fetched double what we projected. The profit margin growth from the last shipment after transport and taxation was—” Seren flipped to the page, adjusting his spectacles "—twenty percent. Clean. And that’s before scaling.”

They are working well together.

Ser Cort raised an eyebrow. “You’re banking on drink to fund an army?”

I gave a half-smile. “I’m banking on Northerners knowing how to make damn good whiskey. And on southern and Essosi merchants with deep purses and a taste for quality. We are already making tens of thousands a moon.”

“Hundreds of thousands, the Essosi have deep pockets and love northern fire” Seren corrected.

“Whiskey…” I whispered

“The Arbor is next,” Sam added. “We’ve discreetly approached their brokers through White Harbor. They’re curious. If we secure trade lanes along the western coast, we’ll have access to Oldtown and even the Summer Isles in time.”

I leaned back looking at Cort, fingers steepled. “I don’t intend to build an army and let it rot in a keep. This won’t be like the Vale, where knights polish their armor and never ride. We’re building a nation fortified, fed, and funded.”

I rose and stepped to the window, looking out at the marshland transformed into a hub of roads, farms, states.

“Beyond whiskey,” I said, “we’ve earmarked sites for a western river port smaller than White Harbor but vital for inland trade. We’ve begun stockpiling grain and salting meats for long-term stores. Sam’s been working on agricultural subsidies tools, seed, and tax breaks for farmers willing to settle here.”

“And the foundries?” Cort asked.

“Blackworks has its hands full now,” I admitted. “But we’re scouting locations for two satellite forges here one inland, one coastal. Both will feed the armory and construction.”

“And the profits?” Cort pressed.

Jon turned back to him. “Ten percent of every whiskey shipment goes directly into a military treasury, earmarked, guarded, and unspent unless for arms or pay. If the treasury fills beyond what we need, it will feed our future campaigns.”

The commander gave a grunt of approval. “Then we’ll hold.”

I nodded, this was half the battle won, with money flowing to hundreds of projects all over my lands, and the bureaucracy to oversee them shaping up I could get a lot of things done. When the war started, we would be ready. With a professional army and a secure land behind us.

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That night, I climbed one of the newest of the finished towers, the easternmost, where the wind came sharp off the swamps. The stones beneath my boots were newly laid, still damp with cement. But they were strong.

I looked south.

The Neck spread below me like a living map: rivers braided through reeds and farmland, new canals glittering in the moonlight like threads of silver. Fires flickered from wooden towers in the distance, orange points of discipline and vigilance. Even now, ox-drawn carts moved along the causeways, hauling stone, timber, grain.

Progress. Order.

But my eyes weren’t on the swamps. They were on the southern horizon, where the land curved down away from my sight. To King’s Landing.

To danger.

I didn’t know what day it would come, or from which dagger, but he knew. Ned would not last. Not with Varys whispering and Cersei watching. Not in the court of lions.

He had months. Maybe less.

I whispered it aloud, a vow carried only by the wind: “I’ll go the moment this place can hold itself.”

My hands gripped the stonework of the parapet, the cold seeping into my knuckles. Moat Cailin was becoming what it was always meant to be, the productive center of the North.

But I would need to leave it soon. The North had been my hearth, my shield, and my cradle. But I had outgrown it, or it had outgrown me. The plans I had set in motion here were taking root, factories, farms, alliances built with grain and lumber rather than oaths and swords. Moat Cailin was my hammer. Wintertown my anvil. The North was waking, but it would not be enough.

I thought of what lay ahead: the King’s court, filled with liars in gold. The Iron Throne, with its blade-bound promise of power and ruin. And beyond them all, far beyond even the games of thrones, lay the night. The true night.

I will delay the war. I will find allies to support a coup. And then I will take the throne.

It sounded absurd, even in my own mind. But there it was, the best plan I had. Cold, sharp, unrelenting. A truth wrapped in blood and steel. I could not stop the war entirely. But perhaps I could use it. Guide it. Exploit the chaos as others once had. If the realm was going to tear itself apart, then I needed to make certain it tore in my direction.

I had no power base of my own.

The North, yes, Winterfell, Moat Cailin, the green hills of the Barrowlands and the spears of the Rills, I could count on those now. The lords respected me, some even loved me, and the smallfolk believed. That was more than most could claim. But it still wasn’t enough.

The North was vast, but not endless. We had men, steel, and food, but we didn’t have the fleets, the coin, the merchant guilds, or the thousands of knights the South could muster. If I marched south now, even with every house from the Dreadfort to the Stony Shore sworn behind me, they’d still call me pretender. A wolf cub in dragon’s skin. Nothing more.

And maybe they’d be right.

I’d done nothing yet to make the South kneel. I’d never held court in King’s Landing. Never defeated a Tyrell host. Never raised a single southern lord to glory or gold. What was my power? Moat Cailin’s grain silos? My vision of roads and clean water? I might as well try to win their loyalty with parchment and good intentions.

I stared into the little lights in the distance, the forges and the houses. I’d delayed as long as I could, constructing my crops, stockpiling coin, making quiet allies, but the realm was ready to be on fire, and my fingers were already blackened with soot. I’d have to step into the flames, whether I liked it or not.

Still... there was a path. Thin as hair, sharp as ice, but it was there.

I couldn’t take the Seven Kingdoms by storm, not yet. But I could strangle them with trade. With grain and salt pork and barrels of strong drink. With iron tools and northern discipline. With whispered promises of security when everything else fell apart. Let the lords see the chaos coming, let them look to me as the only man standing on stone while the rest of the realm sinks in sand.

But to make that real, I’d need more than Northmen.

I needed the ports of the Narrow Sea. The coin of Oldtown. The fleets of the Arbor. The Riverlands. The Reach, if I could pry it from Renly’s charm and golden roses.

I needed more. Because the truth was simple and brutal:

You don’t win the game of thrones with one kingdom.

You win it when the rest come begging for a crown in your head.

Allies. That was the key.

The North could not stand alone, not against Tywin Lannister and the Reach. But coin flowed now through the marshes of Moat Cailin, and the ports of White Harbor. Our saltfish fed half the Vale; our spirits reached the Narrow Sea. That was power, not glory, not banners, but ships moving grain and steel and rare black marsh rice, bags of silver changing hands under quiet lanterns. With enough trade, even the proudest lords bowed. Coin was a crown of its own.

The Reach would be tempting. The Tyrells were second only to the Lannisters in gold, and twice as vain. Renly had his eye on them, I was certain, but Mace Tyrell cared more for position than loyalty. Give him what he wanted and he would support my claim. Perhaps a marriage pact down the line. If I could split the Reach from the Baratheons, I could keep half the South from marching at all.

The Stormlands were trickier. Too proud, too warlike. But the Narrow Sea was dotted with ambitious little lords: Celtigars, Velaryons, Masseys, even the Bar Emmons of Sharp Point. Their coffers were shallow, their dreams loud. A few well-placed loans, a trade fleet under their flag, and they’d sing any tune I played. And of course their ingrained loyalty to house Targaryen.

And Dorne... I wasn’t ready for Dorne. Not until I had more power of my own, or something close.

But if I played this right, if I could hold the center and slow the burning long enough, I could assemble a network of gold and loyalty strong enough to withstand the tide. And when the storm passed, I’d have more than banners and blades.

I’d have the kingdom, bleeding and blind, ready to kneel. Ready for a coup.

For now, I had a fortress. A plan. And men who believed.

But soon, I’d need more.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 14: Chapter 12 — Roots and Rumors

Chapter 12 — Roots and Rumors



The morning mist clung low over the Neck as I rode beyond the northern gates of Moat Cailin, my black cloak drawn tight against the damp wind. Dawn burned orange along the villages that had sprung next to the gates of the Moat, and the sound of hooves squelching through wet concrete roads mixed with birdsong and the low murmur of carts groaning.

It was the first proper ride I’d taken in weeks.

Around me, the world was changing.

Farmsteads that had once been abandoned now sent thin columns of smoke into the air. Thatched roofs glistened with dew, and small fields of barley and flax were greening. Along the stone road, wagons passed him, traders from White Harbor, brewers from Barrowton, even tinkers from the far south, their carts piled high and hopeful.

A grizzled woman driving an ox-cart raised her hand in salute. “Lord Stark!” she called. Her accent was thick, her face weathered, but her eyes were warm. Behind her, a boy clutched a wooden sword with its pommel carved in the rough shape of a direwolf.

He inclined his head in return. Others waved too, smallfolk with baskets on their backs, builders riding mules, even wild-haired boys running barefoot through the wet grass.

The villages are growing, I will have to accelerate the construction of sewers; there is nothing more dangerous than a population center growing without planning. King's Landing is the best example.

They knew me now. The banner snapped in the wind behind me, stitched on black wool. It flew from towers, wagons, barns. I'd seen it scratched into doorposts, even daubed with mud on a child’s wooden shield.

The people had taken it for their own.

The colors were a compromise, a symbol and a mask: red and black for the truth of my blood; white and grey for the starks, the white wolf with red eyes glaring as we passed along houses and fields.

As I passed a half-built tavern rising at the edge of a newly settled hamlet, I slowed my horse and looked out across the land, now laced with raised roads, irrigation ditches, and patrol towers. Smoke curled from new smithies. Fisheries along the rivers had begun supplying dried eel and smoked carp in bulk. The flow of silver was no longer a trickle.

I’m building a kingdom, I thought, not for the first time.

But kingdoms needed more than stone and swords.

They needed systems. Laws. Trust.

As the mist burned away and the sun climbed higher, I let my mind wander to what still needed to be done, the layers of reform that had to follow strength. The Seven Kingdoms bled silver to the capital, but most of it disappeared into the pockets of middlemen and crown debt collectors. Even honest lords bent under the weight of feudal inefficiencies.

Taxation must be centralized, local, predictable, and productive. I would begin with records, full land surveys and yields. Then fairer levies. Scaled exemptions for new settlers. Rewards for grain output.

And policing, gods, that would be a war in itself. The realm had no unified judicial system, only corrupt sheriffs, brutal knights, and distant lords. But I would lay the foundation here, in the Neck. Locals trained by Northern men, rotated to prevent corruption, armed to protect.

I could see it forming: a centralized model of governance, tight-knit, efficient, loyal. One day, it would be adopted by more than just the marshfolk. All across the realm.

But for now, it was still just taking shape.

I spurred his horse onward. There was more land to see. More seeds to plant. More of my people to talk to.

And always, more work ahead.

 

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The keep at Moat Cailin wasn’t grand, not like Winterfell, but it was ours. Built with haste and held with resolve. The old walls no longer dripped mildew; the new slate held fast. And the council chamber, for all its modesty, now held the North’s strange new soul.

They came at my call, more than a hundred of them. Lords, merchants, freeholders, stewards, maesters, even a bastard knight who’d once served Roose Bolton but now turned his sword to peace. I watched them file in through the heavy oak doors, each step echoing too loudly, boots and shoes and spurs tapping like hammers against stone.

The chosen leaders of my lands.

There were sharp glances and tighter silences. The old blood sat stiffly, wrapped in pride and age like armor that had never been removed. House Slate, House Reed, remnants of old cadet lines. Men who felt closer to the time when the lords still knelt to Winterfell, not King’s Landing, and feared no southern blade. Minor Lords that were now under my aegis.

Opposite them were the new men. Harwin of Talltree, a miller’s son who now served as steward of the causeway. Marla Grain, once a brewer’s daughter, now keeper of the ledgers. Fishermen from the Green Fork who'd become carpenters and roadmen. Merchants and freedmen, bold-eyed and wary, looking to me as if I held some secret light. Leaders of local councils and my growing bureaucracy.

I sat at the head of the long table, no throne behind me, just a simple chair. No dais. No elevation. I needed my own presence to instill authority.

Sam stood beside me, visibly sweating under the layers of wool. His quill hovered. Maester Vaeron, thin as a crow and twice as sharp, adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat.

I didn’t open with words.

Let them sit with their discomfort. Let them see the plain stone walls and the simple fire and the light streaming through thick, northern windows. Let them look around and wonder if this was where the North was headed.

And then, finally, I rose.

“We are gathered not to preserve the past,” I said, “but to build something that hasn’t existed in the North for a thousand years.”

That got their attention.

“This land has bled too long. We’ve had kings and usurpers, wardens and rebels, wolves and dragons. But no one, not once, has ever tried to build it up.”

I took a breath. The room was listening now, even Slate.

“I won’t govern by sword and fire alone. We will govern by stone, by seed, by law, and by fairness.”

“Fairness,” muttered Lord Slate. “From a bastard turned lord.”

I met his gaze and didn’t blink. “From a man who feeds your children, who arms the men that protect you, who has allowed you to stop surviving and start living, Lord Slate.”

The man had always been difficult; thankfully, his family was much more useful, they had joined the Army and the growing bureaucracy.

That silenced him. No one liked Lord Slate.

Sam stepped forward and unrolled a scroll. His voice trembled at first, but the words were strong.

“These are the regional charters, drafted under Lord Jon’s oversight. They restructure land tenure, and taxation will now be made by officials appointed by Lord Stark. Each family that settles a parcel of cleared land receives a year's tax-exempt, with extensions based on yield.”

Power should move and shape the world in motion.

That’s why I built the ministries.

The Office of Northern Administration was born at Moat Cailin, among stone dust and sawdust and sweat. From there, Seren shaped the bureaucracy around function. Infrastructure. Agriculture. Trade. Law.

Each ministry is directed by officials trained for the task, not rewarded for name or knighthood. The roads that bind us, the aqueducts that run from the Fever River, the granaries stocked in lean years.

Men of ink and clay seals built them. And I trust those men far more than the ones who wave banners and drink oaths like wine. Slowly, the minor Lords in my lands would lose power and the bureaucracy would grow more and more, an institution that would outlast me.

There were mutters. And the discussions of the future of these lands started next.

Marla Grain rose and spoke of measures and tariffs. Fixed toll rates for ferry crossings. Standardized weights. Trade routes cleared of bandits by my patrols.

“Merchants are coming to the Neck,” she said. “We can’t afford to fleece them. Not now.”

Old Reed remained silent. Watching me, always watching.

I raised my hand.

“The old ways gave us squabbling bannermen, dying children, and frozen fields. We need new roots. Deep ones. That bend and grow.”

More silence.

And then, I turned to Sam. “Sanitation protocols.”

Sam stepped forward, enthusiastic now. “Each settlement must dig refuse pits outside the living perimeter, shared latrines at designated spacing, and well maintenance overseen by local carpenters. Disease spreads faster than war.”

Slate grunted. “You want to legislate shit!”

“I want to avoid digging mass graves. And I am not asking.” I said.

The murmurs stopped.

Vaeron spoke of cisterns and underground drainage. Engineering plans. Civil maps marked with red ink. I saw the old men glance at one another, confused by the detail. But the new ones understood.

This wasn’t theory. It was happening. It wouldn’t be long before the old blood was replaced by the new. And the new wanted change, and were loyal to me. I was centralizing power with a bureaucracy in my lands, and these men weren’t smart enough to understand that. These minor lords would loose their power, and when I had the Iron Throne, I would repeat the prosses slowly in the whole realm.

It may take decades...

The debate wore on, hours passing like the flow of a slow river. Voices rose. Arguments kindled.

The freemen argued with the lords. The merchants sided with me. When they had said their fill and the fire burned low, I stood once more. My words had waited long enough. The decisions had been made far from this chamber, long ago. It was just a way to announce the changes in a controlled manner.

I looked at them all, a hundred strangers bound by mud and memory.

“I know what some of you think when you look at me,” I said quietly, letting my eyes scan the long timber hall, from the highborn in their cloaks to the stewards in plain wool. “A boy too young. A bastard too bold. A dreamer building castles in a swamp.”

A few eyes turned away. A few held my gaze.

“You’re not wrong.”

I stepped forward, feeling the floor groan beneath my boots. The air smelled of firewood, ink, and a faint note of damp earth, like everything here, unfinished.

“I’ve failed before. I’ve made choices that cost lives. I’ve trusted men I shouldn’t have and held back when I should have acted. I know what it is to fall short of the mark. I know what it is to lose.”

I let that hang for a beat.

“But I also know this, failure is not the end.”

I looked down at my hands, scarred from swordwork and frostbite and rebuilding stone with strangers.

“You get back up. You try again. You try again. And every time you rise, you rise stronger.”

Someone shifted near the hearth. No one interrupted.

“This place, this hall, these roads, these fields, they weren’t here five years ago. They exist because men and women like you stood in the muck, lifted stone with bleeding hands, and chose to try.”

I looked to the older lords seated at the end of the table. “Some of you come from lines that stretch back before the Conquest. You know tradition. You know weight.”

Then I turned to the newer faces, freemen, craftsmen, the children of farmers. “And some of you have no names carved in history, no banners in old halls, but you built this. You earned your place because you dared to try.”

I felt my chest tighten. The words weren’t just for them.

“They’ll mock us in Oldtown, maybe in King’s Landing too. Say the Neck is a place for frogs and fools. Let them.”

I pointed toward the shutters where the wind pressed in.

“The East builds with gold. The South with titles. But here in the North, we build with failure. And stone. And stubborn hope.”

I looked them all in the eye. “If we fall, we get back up. That is the price of rebirth. That is the promise we make to the dead who laid these foundations before us.”

I drew breath. Slow. Steady.

“This is your home. Not mine alone. Yours. If you wait for it to be perfect, you’ll die waiting. But if you rise, and try, and fail, and try again… you may just live to see it rise with you. Let’s make this place the envy of the whole realm! The whole world! Let innovation take root! Let the future be now! We are the men and women of the Moat and we will see it rise!”

There was silence for a long breath.

Then Harwin stood, fist thumping his chest. Marla nodded sharply. Ser Cort drew his blade and tapped the stone floor once, the sound cracked like thunder.

Others rose. Some slow, some fast. Then someone cheered. And another. And another.

The cheer rose like a wave in the dark.

Hope, loud and stubborn.

I will drag these people into the future.

 

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The first time I heard it, it was a child’s voice shouting after me from a cottage door.

“The White Wolf!”

I turned, half expecting to see Ghost at my heels. But it was me they meant. A boy, no older than six, grinning in awe as his mother pulled him back inside. His cheeks were smudged with flour and ash. He wore a cloak three sizes too big, dyed pale gray and fraying at the edges.

By week’s end, the name had spread.

“The White Wolf of the Neck,” some called me. Others shortened it to Snow Wolf or the Pale Lord. The swamp-folk painted sigils on their wagons, a white wolf’s head with red eyes.

It only grew worse when the bard arrived.

He was a lean man from White Harbor with long fingers and a sharper tongue. Claimed his name was Tom o’ the Tides, but I doubted he’d seen a real tide in his life. He set up in the main barracks hall with a lute and a cup and sang every evening for food and coin.

The stories started simple enough: tales of me at the Wall, the long ride from Winterfell, the cold. Then they turned. I was slaying giants with a single stroke. Melting steel with nothing but my stare. Pissing northern fire. Outwitting knights three times my age in the tourney ring.

In one song, I apparently tamed a direwolf and a mammoth in the same day.

I tried to correct him once. He only grinned. “Truth is a seed,” he said, “but myth is what grows tall in the wind.”

That night, I sat with Seren on the east tower, watching watchfires flicker like orange stars in the dark. He was eating an apple imported from the Reach, legs dangling over the parapet.

“You hate it,” He said simply.

“I didn’t earn any of it,” I muttered. “I have done many things, yes. But I didn’t tame the wildlings. I didn’t fight a fucking giant. I just built. That bard turned me into a... knight from a child’s tale.”

He shrugged, tossing the apple core down into the dark. “Men follow steel,” He said. “But they die for stories.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. Because I already understood.

If the North was to rise again, maybe that myth was the mortar we had to use, until the stone set hard enough to stand on its own.

Still, when the bard sang, I stayed outside the hall.

Let the myth grow around me.

Let them build their own legend, I had work to do.

 

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It started with a knock at dawn.

Arren stood in my chamber, wind-chapped and armored, his brow furrowed beneath the weight of whatever news he carried.

“Lord Jon,” he said, voice grim, “there’s trouble in Withyford. A border village east of the Rush. Our border with the Dustin lands. Men bearing House Mollen’s colors arrived two nights past, demanding the freemen yield the lands you granted them. There’s talk of threats. Steel drawn, though no blood yet.”

Mollen. An old house, once loyal bannermen to the Dustin’s, long faded in wealth but not in pride. I remembered the name from Luwin’s lesson, stubborn, honorable, easily slighted.

I dressed quickly and summoned Ser Cort. We rode out with a small escort of twelve.

A few hours later, we were there.

Withyford sat on dry, high ground where reeds gave way to tilled fields and low cottages. The men had built well and at the new Moat standard, new roofs of timber and sod, fresh-planted barley and cabbage in neat rows. Livelihood carved from land and silence.

And now, ruined by fear.

A cluster of villagers stood near the well as we approached. Beyond them, six mounted riders waited in Mollen green and brown, flanking a man no older than twenty. Blonde, broad-shouldered, with a hawk’s nose and the kind of sneer only inherited privilege can afford.

He didn't dismount.

“You ride heavy for a dispute of peasants,” he called. “Or are you here to dig ditches with them, Lord Snow?”

The emphasis on Snow wasn’t subtle.

I stopped ten paces away and studied him. His gloves were oiled leather, but the creases were stiff. A ceremonial sword hung at his hip, unused. His posture was too proud, his chin too high.

“My name is Jon of House Stark,” I said, calmly. “And I came because you drew steel on farmers under my protection.”

He laughed. “Your protection? These lands were held by my grandsire before the war. You hand them to mud-folk and think a bastard can hold them with words?”

His men chuckled. The villagers watched in tight-lipped silence.

I dismounted.

“If it is violence you speak,” I said, unbuckling my sword and handing the scabbard to Ser Cort, “then I will speak in a way you understand.”

I stepped into the dust and nodded. “Draw.”

The young lord blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

The pause lasted too long. His pride couldn’t refuse. He swung down, drawing a knight’s blade, long, polished, untested.

He came at me fast, eager to make a show of it. I saw his shoulders tense before the lunge. A textbook thrust, practiced, but stiff.

I sidestepped, caught his blade with my own in one smooth parry. I circled him, tapped his ribs with the flat of my sword. Then again behind the knee. He turned, red-faced, swinging harder now.

Another tap. His shoulder.

Then his sword flew from his hand as I twisted it from his grip, quick as turning a key.

He stumbled back, panting. I didn’t press him. I simply stepped forward, placed the tip of my sword gently against the hollow of his throat, and held it there until his breath caught.

Then I lowered it and turned my back on him.

“I came here to settle land,” I said to the gathered crowd. “But if you threaten my people again, if you let your name speak louder than your honor, then next time, I won’t speak with restraint.” I turned to the downed man. “These lands were given to me by Lord Stark of Winterfell and if you are not blind you can see the marking poles I set up a few miles west. Keep your stinky hands out of what is mine or I will take this matter to Winterfell.”

There was silence, then, a murmur. Then cheers.

The freemen raised their fists. One started to cheer and the rest followed.

The boy was quiet when he rode off.

He would not forget the lesson, nor would anyone else watching.

Word would spread.

 

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I found Samwell standing before a cluster of scribes and young stewards in the east tower, chalk in hand, face flushed but voice steady. He had drawn a rough diagram on a slate wall, circles, arrows, and neat Common Tongue marking grain stores, levy quotas, and distribution cycles. The audience was rapt.

“…and if you do not count the livestock correctly before winter,” Sam was saying, “you may as well dig the graves early. Cold and hunger will take more than swords ever could.”

A few scribes scribbled hurriedly. One lad raised a hand. “What if there’s a second harvest, ser? Say, from the river plots?”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Then you record it as surplus. It must be taxed differently, only lightly, so men are not punished for success. Fair laws breed honest records.”

They murmured approval. Sam didn’t stammer. He didn’t shrink.

I stepped back into the shadows and smiled. It was like watching a sapling straighten under the sun.

 

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Later that evening, I called him to my solar. The fire had burned low, and the wind howled faintly through the shutters, but I didn’t want warmth for this moment; I wanted truth.

Sam entered nervously, dust on his tunic, ink on his fingers.

“You sent for me, Jon?”

I nodded. Reached into a chest by the hearth and drew out the bundle I’d kept hidden for weeks. A cloak, black, with silver trim at the edges, stitched in the shape of a quill crossing a sword.

When I laid it across his arms, he froze.

“You’ve earned this, Sam,” I said. “I name you Chief Steward of the Moat and Archivist of the Neck. You will head the bureaucracy. Your word on matters of record, taxation, and logistics is mine.”

He looked down at the cloak like it might vanish if he blinked. “Jon… I don’t… but Seren…”

“You do. And Seren approves. He said he doesn't have a name behind him like you do; he will be our right hand.”

His voice cracked. “I... I don't know what to say, Jon... I have felt so lost since...”

I stepped forward and gripped his shoulder. “And now you help build a land high. You stand taller than many who’ve swung a sword. You have done more with your life than most ever will…”

Tears glistened in his eyes. “My father said I’d never be anything.”

“Then let history show,” I said, smiling faintly, “he was wrong.”

He took the pin and placed it in his chest. I could see his chest puff outwards and his back straighten as he did.

That night, the council chamber echoed with a new chant. Not of battle or glory, but of parchment, policy, and the power of pen and purpose. And at its heart stood Samwell Tarly, no longer just my friend.

But my steward.

 

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The grove lay half a mile north of the Moat’s walls, in a clearing once choked with brambles and rot. We had planted the weirwood sapling there in the first weeks of construction, not for show, but as a promise.

It was still young. The bark pale, the leaves blood-red, small and delicate like a child’s hands. But it grew fast, roots digging deep into the black water-logged soil.

I knelt before it as dusk fell, the world quiet save for the croak of frogs and the hum of wind through reeds.

The old gods did not speak in words. But sometimes, silence holds answers louder than voices.

I am being watched.

The thought came unbidden.

Bloodraven.

I could feel him, or the memory of him, like a shadow cast across the back of my thoughts.

A thread pulling at the fabric of things.

Leaves rustled, though no wind touched them. A single drop of water slid down the sapling’s trunk, like a tear of sap.

I placed my hand on the bark. It was cold. Alive.

“Help me, see into my mind, see what I plan to do…” I whispered.

The tree did not answer.

That night, I dreamed.

The weirwood had grown tall, so tall it split the clouds, its branches tangled in stars. But its bark was no longer white. It had turned black as ash, and from it dripped fire, burning, twisting, reshaping the land below.

I saw the Wall crack like glass. I saw a crown of bones upon a brow. I saw my own hands glowing with silver flames, and behind me, shadows moved with many eyes.

When I woke, the scent of weirwood lingered in the air.

 

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The wind shifted as it always did before rain, dragging in the scent of moss, wet stone, and distant fires. From the ramparts of the central tower, I watched the horizon where sky met marsh, gray and swollen. Storms were coming, not just of rain and wind.

It had been nearly two moons since I last left the Moat. Two and a half since I first knelt beside the young weirwood. The Neck had changed. Order had taken root. Fields were furrowed, roads cut and raised, tower beacons lit in regular intervals.

But peace was always a temporary condition. Like summer. Like safety.

By now, Ned would be in King’s Landing. He would have uncovered the mess Jon Arryn left behind, the rot in Robert’s court, the debts, the secrets. The Game would have begun, whether he wished it or not.

And so would the danger.

Varys and Baelish.

Two names that slithered through the halls of power like twin vipers, always coiled around someone else’s neck.

Varys spoke of peace, of the realm, of some child he claimed to protect. Sadly there was no chapter from his perspective in the books. George had once said he knew too much to have a chapter of his own, much like Baelish. But I knew better. I had read enough history to know that men like him, men who served no house but secrets, were never loyal to anything but the game itself.

He would play both sides of a fire and sell the ashes to the highest bidder. A Targaryen here, a Lannister there, whatever kept the blood flowing just enough to justify his whispers. He wouldn’t care how many towns burned, how many children starved. Not if the right prince ended up on the throne.

Aegon Targaryen... real or fake?

And Baelish? Petyr Baelish was worse. He didn’t even pretend to serve the realm. He served himself, utterly, joyfully. A man who had risen from nothing and wanted to see the world reflect that same nothingness.

He would not rest until every great house tore itself apart, until every golden lion and silver trout lay gutted on the floor of his counting house.  Until House Stark was completely extinct, and he had his Catelyn. He sowed chaos like a farmer sowed barley, and watched it grow fat with rot.

And yet…

I could use that.

I wasn’t blind to the opportunity in their destruction. If they tore the realm apart, if Tywin, Renly and Stannis all bled each other dry, then the old order might collapse under its own weight. The kingdoms would cry for a savior. Someone to end the bleeding. Someone to build again.

If a kingdom was steel, then war heated it up. Made it malleable for me to work.

I didn’t need to win the game. I only needed to survive the storm. And emerge from it holding the last unburnt banner.

I would build a spine of power through trade and loyalty, golden grain, marsh rice and cold steel forged in northern fire. I would make allies.

That was the real truth, the one they never told you in stories: peace wasn’t won by knights on white steeds or kings in shining mail. It came from grit, from iron and grain and quiet hands doing hard things in the dark.

I had done what I could here. Sown what seeds might bloom in the North. They could grow on their own now under the watch of Sam and Seren. There was much work to be done yet, but the bare bones of it were set up.

The bureaucracy was expanding, and a university was being set up, civil exams were taken, the construction projects were being overseen. The military was well supplied and ever expanding, its training sites full of men shouting. But war would not wait.

It had taken a moon to get the stewards to understand it. Years, perhaps, to teach them to trust it. But now every estate, every mill, every trade out of Moat Cailin and Winterfell was tracked with two entries, one for what left, and one for what returned. One for credit and one for debit, any movement always affects at least two accounts.

Double-entry bookkeeping. A simple thing. Obvious, even. And yet it changed everything. Fraud withered in the light of it. Coin no longer vanished into pockets unseen. I knew, to the copper, what my land earned and what it wasted. No more guesswork. No more lies from merchant lords or idle castellans. Numbers didn’t flinch.

With order in the ledgers came freedom to invest. I had men working around the clock now, real scholars, not just scribes with ink-stained fingers and empty heads. I had so much knowledge that was outside of my areas of expertise, but I didn’t need to do everything myself. Many smart people on this continent only needed direction to realize my vision.

Some tested presses, modeled after the wine stamps used in Lys. Some worked on a seed drill, meant to triple the yield of barley by planting evenly and deeply.

Others toiled on indoor plumbing systems, not just for castles like what was being installed in the Moat but for towns, cheap clay piping fed by rooftop cisterns, with channels warmed by the same stoves that baked our bread.

Soap made from lye and tallow now hung from the rafters of Wintertown like garlic braids, and the stench of half the village had lifted like a bad spell. Water-powered… well, everything, the blackworks had opened pandoras box and men wanted to do everything with the power of the flow, mills, sawmills, forges.

And still the maesters asked, “What next?”

What next, indeed.

Sadly, I haven’t managed to snatch Qyburn.

Behind me, boots scraped softly. Ser Cort, ever silent, stepped to my side and followed my gaze without a word. He knew. He always did.

After a long moment, he gave a small nod and turned away, already barking low orders to his lieutenants below. Drills. Muster counts. Saddle inspections. Quiet readiness.

A quill scratched behind me. Sam sat near the wall, his cloak of black and silver neatly pinned, his ledger open on his lap, but he wasn’t writing.

He was watching me.

“You’re leaving soon,” he said. Not a question.

I nodded once. “The work here was finished faster than I thought. Hold the fort, Sam”

He closed the book softly, his fingers resting on the cover as if reluctant to let go. “We’ll keep it steady, Jon.”

I looked down at the marshes. The roads gleamed, slick from recent rain, but firm, a sign of what we had built, and what might endure if we fought hard enough.

“I trust you will,” I said. He has come a long way in such a short time, Randyll Tarly is a moron.

Thunder rumbled to the west. The trees in the swamp bent under invisible pressure, as if even they sensed the current turning.

I turned from the wall, voice steady.

“Ready the road,” I said. “We move to White Harbor by the Ocean Bridge Road.”

Then we go to King’s Landing.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 15: Interlude 3 — We the People

Interlude 3 — We the People

 

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Turf-Cutter’s Bargain

 

The bog steamed in the morning light. Mist clung low and sluggish over the rows of cut peat, each brick stacked neat in threes like grave markers. Gannet squatted beside his cart, his knees crackling like the frost that still hid in the furrows. His hands, gnarled and blackened from years of digging turf and boiling it dry, cradled a scale he didn’t trust.

The steward from the ministry was late, again.

“Bloody clocks,” Gannet muttered, scratching the corner of his eye with a peat-smeared knuckle. “Always tickin’”

The steward finally arrived: a lean, long-legged man with a red fox’s hair and soft leather boots already stained from marsh water. His doublet bore the mark of House Stark of the Moat stitched in white thread.

He nodded politely. “Master Gannet.”

“I’m no master,” Gannet grunted. “You’ll not dress me in silk with words, boy. You come to weigh the bricks or sniff ’em?”

The steward smiled with lips only, already unfolding his balance scale and weights. “Weigh, of course. Smell costs extra.”

The first barrowload came in shy. Damp. Not by much, but enough.

Gannet scowled. “Bog runs deep this time of year. Hard to dry it fast. ’Sides, your drain trenches ain’t holding like they used to.”

“They’ve held well enough for others,” the steward replied evenly, not looking up. “Weight is weight. And the Lord’s orders are to pay by the dry brick, not by what might’ve been.”

From behind a half-stacked wall of turf, Merra appeared, sleeves rolled and hair tied back in a knot of leather cord. She was young, no more than seventeen, with the sharp chin of Gannet’s dead sister and the same stubborn fold to her arms. She’d been listening.

“Uncle,” she said gently. “He’s not wrong. The peat’s holding too much rain.”

Gannet rounded on her. “You’ve been standing in numbers too long, girl. Can’t eat silver scripts.”

“No,” she said, walking forward, “but I’ve learned to count. And I know this cart's two stone light.”

Gannet stared at her, more tired than angry. “I taught you turf-cutting, not sums.”

“And so, Lord Stark school taught me what you didn’t,” she said, opening her palm to reveal a silver half-stag, its face worn smooth. “This is what they paid me for a week’s tally. For numbers. And reading.”

The steward raised an eyebrow. “She’s one of the registry girls?”

“Started last moon,” Merra nodded with pride. “The charter says every family can send one. I chose myself.”

“Smart girl,” the steward murmured.

Gannet spat in the dirt. “Smart girl’s too clever for her own bones. A year ago, we’d have given this turf to Lord Flint’s men for nothing but crust-ends and salt scraps. Now it’s coin or nothing, and all of a sudden there’s rules for dirt?”

The steward folded his hands, patient. “And your stack wouldn’t be worth anything if the Lord hadn’t dug those levees and cleared the marsh roads. You’re not taxed. You’re paid. You’re here because you chose to be, not because anyone pressed you.”

“And yet I still have to kneel to you,” Gannet muttered.

“Not kneel,” Merra said. “Just weigh fair.”

They walked the canal levee after that, Merra between them, speaking of ditch-water depth and where the herons had moved upstream. The old marsh was different now, tidier, tamed. Furrows ran in lines, and the Lord’s drainage stones, stamped with the direwolf sigils, kept the water running straight even after heavy rains. New reeds grew thinner. Even the biting midges were fewer.

“The land’s drying,” Gannet said, uneasy. “Marshland ain’t meant to dry.”

“It’s meant to feed us,” Merra answered. “This canal drains to the crop beds now. There’s turnips, barley and rice growing in soil we never dared touch before.”

“Rice,” Gannet grunted. “Marsh don’t remember rice. It remembers blood and roots.”

“You are just a grumpy old man.” Merra laughed.

The steward said nothing as he weighed the peat, but he glanced toward the horizon, where smoke rose thin and steady from the kilns near Wolfhub. Behind that, a ribbon of brick road gleamed in the sun, leading south. The clouds were heavy with summer. Something hung in the air that didn’t feel quite like warmth.

“You’re old enough to remember what came before,” the steward said softly. “Bandits, famine, no coin, no grain worth hauling. Towns starving while men took what they pleased. Now we have brick to sell, peat to burn, laws to follow.”

Gannet grunted. “And no lord to curse when it goes wrong.”

“No,” the steward admitted. “Only yourselves.”

They came to the next stack. Gannet climbed stiffly from the canal bank, spat on his palm, and hoisted a brick with practiced ease. He cracked it open. Dry inside. Brown as walnut. He sniffed it.

“Well,” he muttered. “At least it smells honest.”

“Three carts’ worth?” the steward asked, bringing his ledger forth again.

Gannet nodded once. “I will dry it right next time. Tell your men to fix the north trench.”

The steward marked the sale and handed Merra the coins. She pressed them into her uncle’s hand. “Don’t spend it on northern fire.”

“I’ll buy rice,” he said, voice dry. “Keep it nice and dry for winter.”

They parted at the canal fork. Gannet turned back once and looked out at the ridged brick road stretching like a scar across the green. Ox-carts moved slow across it. A pair of banners fluttered beside a watchtower.

Gannet turned away. “The land ain’t happy,” he said to no one. “But maybe we will be.”

And he trudged off, sack of coin clinking soft in his coat, back toward the turf beds that smelled of old gods, mud, and slow-earned silver.

 

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Stone Beneath, Sky Above

 

The first thing Hallen noticed wasn’t the gate or the paved road or the watchtower. It was the sound.

Or rather, the lack of one.

No sucking mud. No squelch of cartwheels fighting through wet ruts. No constant slop of slush underfoot. Just the even clop of hooves on fitted stone, the occasional creak of wagon axles, and the gentle rush of water down side gutters.

The road beneath his feet was solid, laid with flat limestone quarried from the banks of the White Knife. No sand between the blocks, concrete, clean and tight, sealed with a dark resin that shone faintly in the sun. He'd seen worse streets in Gulltown, and this was a road that deviated from the King’s Road past the reconstructed Moat Cailin.

Stonehaven. That was the name they’d told him. A new town, built by the order of Jon Stark years ago. Hallen hadn’t believed half the stories: that they were laying cities in the Neck, paving swamp and forest into grainfields, building roads wide enough for three carts side by side, tens of thousands moving by the moon.

And yet here he was, standing before a newborn town of real stone.

The gate had no portcullis. No murder holes. Just a heavy ironwood crossbeam and a stone arch flanked by statues, wolves, snarling and proud. No keep loomed behind the gate, but the wall was thick, manned, and dry. Dry in the Neck.

A local guard greeted him. “Here for stonework?”

“Aye. Name’s Hallen Tarse. Gulltown guild. Heard word at Driftmark there was work here.”

“You’ll want Councilor Salvia. Office just past the grain square.”

The main street ran straight, shockingly straight, for a quarter mile, then split in a careful fork that diverted gently down slope. Every dozen paces, storm drains flanked the curb: small arches of shaped brick descending into culverts. Sewers, he realized. Real ones. No stink, either. A little town in the middle of the neck near the Kings road had better sewers than King’s Landing.

The buildings rose no more than three stories, but every one of them stood square, solid, and set on foundations of cut stone and gravel. No timber sinking into wet muck. No makeshift sheds propped on boulders. The foundations had depth, and each home had gutters of tin or copper feeding into runoff chutes.

He passed a row of shops, blacksmith, tailor, toolwright. The smith’s forge was set back behind a stone channel that ran steaming water from a capped boiler. A small boy in a wool apron was pouring it out over tongs.

“You’ve plumbed it all?” Hallen asked, surprised.

The smith looked up. “Course. Pipe feeds the smithy and the public bathhouse. Runs off the aqueduct line from Crook Lake. Lord Stark made the engineers draw the whole map before they laid a brick.”

Hallen tilted his head. “Engineers?”

“Aye. From Moat Cailin. Came with books and a chalkboard. Drew sewers like you’d draw siege ladders.”

The town square was wide, paved with gray stone arranged in a spiral pattern that marked the cardinal directions. A tall stone column stood at its heart, topped with a carving of a stalk of wheat and a sunburst above a wolf’s head. Around it, carts of vegetables and cloth gave way to a broad-walled grain hall with slotted vents and a stone-lined cellar.

The whole town had a slight tilt, hardly noticeable unless one looked for it. Elevation, Hallen realized. The central square sat highest, with every road sloping outward like spokes on a wheel. No water would pool here. No winter melt would drown the roots.

“Who planned it?” Hallen asked, still stunned.

The man grinned, missing two teeth. “Lord Eddard of course. All follow his sons’ designs, though. Stone haven isn’t like those shanty towns that are spouting everywhere, we were built before Lord Jon was legitimized! Said we don’t build for now. We build for the hundred years.”

Further down, houses of arrival stood, spare homes built of fitted stone and thick pine for settlers from the Vale and the Neck. Each had a fenced plot, a stone well, and a shared toolshed with locks and ledgers. One home had laundry flapping out front and a pair of children playing with reed dolls.

He caught sight of a new family arriving: two carts, a pair of oxen, and a woman holding a swaddled babe. A town official greeted them at a small stone hall.

“Name?”
“Yrenna of the Green Valley. With husband and brother.”

“Oxen, tools, and grain in the ledger. Lot fourteen. You'll be tax-free for one year, then reviewed by yield.”

“You’re giving land?”

“Not giving,” the clerk replied. “Granting. Work it and it’s yours.”

Gods, Hallen thought. They are going to poach the smallfolk from the Wall to Oldtown…

Behind him, across a low rise, the new granite sept was going up, shaped stone, slotted arch windows, and a proper bell tower under construction.

He didn’t need to see Councilor Salvia just yet.

Hallen Tarse walked to the end of the north road, seeing the sing denoting it Brando’s Road from 400th to 500th, stood on a low stone retaining wall, and looked out over the buildings of Stonehaven, over the silos and culverts, the iron-capped sewer grates, the wide roads and tiled rooftops.

A new town. Built to last. Built like it mattered.

He’d spent thirty years cutting stone for highborn lords, always patching what they rushed. This place didn’t rush.

He sat down, pulled out his slate, and made the first measurements for an offer. Whether they needed him or not, he was staying.

 

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Steel in Rows

 

They stood in rows beneath the hard eye of morning. Fifty men in new-forged steel, shoulders squared, pikes upright like a forest of silver thorns.

Ardric’s armor creaked when he shifted. Honest steel, dull-gray breastplate, fitted gorget, steel-banded vambraces, and heavy greaves buckled over his trousers. His shield bore the Direwolf of the Moat. Every man here wore steel now. Even the ones who’d never seen blood.

The drill yard smelled of sweat, oil, and churned clay. It was bordered on three sides by palisade walls, their sharpened tops bristling like the jaws of a dead beast. Flags hung slack overhead, black direwolves on green, flanked by the new Moat banners: sunburst over stilts.

“Halberds up!” bellowed Sargent Renlor, whose voice could curdle milk.

The rows obeyed as one.

Ardric struggled with the weight of the shaft, it stood taller than two men, steel-bladed at the tip, wood wrapped in rawhide grip. The drillmaster, an old armsman from House Ryswell, walked between ranks like a crow stalking furrows, his limp clicking with every step.

“You’re standing like pigs at a trough!” Renlor barked, rapping a pike-butt with his baton. “Last moon, one of your kind, green, soft-bellied, stood like that in a brush skirmish by the canal forks. Five outlaws cut through him like wet sapling. Found him with his halberd jammed backwards under his own ribs. You want to piss yourselves and die cowards!?”

The recruit in question swallowed hard.

“Then mind your legs, keep your balance. You’re not farmers anymore, you’re the Lord’s Swords!”

“SIR, YES SIR!”

Not bannermen. His Swords. That’s what they said of the standing battalions.

Ardric had been a reed-cutter’s son two moons ago. Now he bore a halberd at his side, a crossbow slung over his back, and wore heavy steel armor. He'd never seen Lord Jon Stark up close, but he’d heard the stories, the banners, the speeches, the punishments.

“Form close-rank!” Renlor barked. “Shields forward! Knees down! First row low, second row brace!”

The formation clicked into shape. Shoulders locked. Halberds angled forward in a brutal glinting nest. Ardric heard his own heartbeat beneath his cuirass.

“Third row: swap ends. You're crossing water!”

The back rank flipped their halberd and jabbed the blunt ends downward, miming canal-bottom footing. This was new drill, river crossing maneuvers, meant for holding lines while half-submerged. Last month, a southern lord had said it was madness to build stone canals in a swamp. Ardric thought it was cleverer than any siege tower.

A signal horn sounded from the scaffolding. One long note, then two short bursts.

Simulated skirmish.

The formation broke. Units fanned out into muddy lanes flanked by wooden markers. Ardric ran with his cohort, steel boots slapping stone, shield on his back, sweat already prickling his brow. Ahead, straw-stuffed targets stood upright in the yard, dressed in old cloaks and bits of mail.

“Contact in two!” shouted their sergeant. “Hold formation!”

They slowed. Formed line. Halberd lowered.

Ardric stood in second row, staring over the shoulder of the man before him. The sun caught on the bright edges of their helms, a rippling wall of armored men, not knights, but no longer smallfolk.

“Charge!”

The first rank surged forward. Halberd thrust. Targets toppled. Ardric braced, stepped, jabbed, withdrew. The rhythm came naturally now, brace, drive, clear, reset. The world shrank to motion and metal and breath.

A straw head burst under a pikehead. Another flipped backward into the ditch. The skirmish field churned with shouts and orders, boots and barked corrections.

Then came the whistle shriek, new maneuver.

“Left flank drops!”

Their unit pivoted in unison. A makeshift trench lined with planks represented the canal’s edge. Ardric and three others dropped shields, grabbed poles, and hauled the pontoon bridge forward, two timber beams, nailed together with rope lashings.

“Drop!” someone cried.

The bridge slapped down over the gap. The rest of the cohort thundered across. Shields came up. Spears bristled again. A second target wave loomed across the field, painted with mock banners of House Greystark, like in the stories.

“Volley!”

Those at the back of the unit took their crossbows and shot across the field.

By the time the second horn blew, end of exercise, Ardric’s arms trembled, and his throat burned from dry breath. His helmet was smeared with mud, and a gash on his sleeve showed where a halberd haft had skidded past.

He fell to one knee, grinning.

“You fight like your legs aren’t wood,” muttered the veteran beside him, passing a skin of water. “Better than I was, your age.”

Ardric took a swig. “You really see battle?”

The man nodded once. “Last ironborn raid. Outlaws hit a barge line near Saltstream. We held the fork five hours. Shields tight. Sun in our eyes.”

He glanced toward the towering walls of Moat Cailin, rising in the distance beyond the yard, dark stone bastions patched with new scaffolds, signal mirrors, and timber cranes.

Ardric swallowed. His limbs ached. His shoulder throbbed from drill strain. But his grip on the halberd had steadied. The steel felt like it belonged.

“We’re not just guards,” he whispered.

“No,” said the veteran, eyes gleaming under his helm. “We’re a wall of men, built higher than the stone of the Moat.”

 

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Ink and Fire

 

Rain ticked against the narrow arched windows like a thousand quills scratching parchment. In the newly built Hall of Invention outside of the growing Northern University outside Moat Cailin, the scent of wet stone mingled with wax and oil. Long benches, planed smooth by carpenters from White Harbor, creaked as students shifted. The walls were lined with scroll racks, lecture slates, and two maps, one of Westeros, the other of the Neck, marked in neat charcoal with every canal, grain yard, and levy tower.

Maester Thomys stood before them all, shoulders stooped in his heavy gray robes, the link of gold around his neck catching the flicker of torchlight. His hair was silver chalk dust. He had spent the morning in the foundry tower, arguing about gear tolerances and wood warping. But now, now he stood with something real behind him.

The machine loomed like a carpenter’s altar: thick oaken arms joined by iron bolts, its central bed lined with a copper plate etched in reversed script. Beside it sat a rack of ink-paddles, rollers, and drying strings.

“This,” Thomys said, placing one hand reverently on the platen, “is a press. A true press, designed by Lord Jon.”

He turned to the gathered apprentices, scribes-in-training, and learned farmers who had gathered for the evening lecture, some still smelling faintly of rice-water and wet wool. A few wore charcoal on their hands from earlier lessons on mechanical drawing. Others bore the sky-blue pins of administrative apprentices, clerks in training for the growing governance of the Neck.

 “A device made here, in the reclaimed marshland, where the brick roads meet the river gates. You are looking at the first printing press. And perhaps, in time, the most important in the realm.” he continued, voice low but sure.

There was a pause, then a snort. Willam Jiset, second son of a lord from the Rills, raised his hand. “Begging pardon, maester, but books have been copied for ages. Scribblers do it fine. What’s a machine for?”

Laughter rippled. Thomys did not smile.

“A scribe can copy perhaps twenty pages in a day,” he said. “If he is trained, diligent, and properly lit. A press can create twenty complete books in that same day, and each page near identical.”

He reached for the copper plate and held it up for the class to see. “This bears the charter of the Water Table Commission. A law made only last month, concerning levee taxes, irrigation grants, and grain transport through the third canal. Tell me, Willam, how many stewards, grain counters, taxmen, and farmers must read this to enforce it?”

“Hundreds,” Willam muttered.

Thomys nodded. “And how many copies of this exist?”

“Four,” piped a girl in the front row. “One here. One at the steward’s gatehouse. One sent south to White Harbor. And one at the grain keep.”

Thomys smiled faintly. “Correct. Now, imagine instead: one hundred copies. Distributed across every hall and holdfast between the Fever River and the Saltspears. Posted on lawboards. Taught to children. Known. That is what this press offers. Law that even a lowborn plowman may read. A million books in Westeros.”

A murmur spread. Some looked impressed. Others, uncertain.

“But it’s still ink and wood,” Willam pressed. “It doesn’t fight wars or dig ditches.”

“No,” said Thomys. “But it builds something longer-lasting. Let me ask you this: when Lord Jon first ordered the grain reforms, how did the word spread?”

“By letter,” said one of the steward apprentices.

“And now?” Thomys gestured behind him. “The next policy set by the Lord, who will see it?”

A boy with ink-stained fingers whispered, “Everyone.”

A smile tugged at Thomys’s lips. “Aye. That is what terrifies some… and empowers others.”

From the corner, another voice broke in. It was Maester Edwyn, the younger steward-scribe from the southern canal. “Will the lords allow it?” he asked, tone cautious. “If knowledge spreads too fast, too wide, what becomes of gatekeeping?”

Thomys turned toward him, expression unreadable. “Some will resist. Others will ride the wave. But ask yourself this, Edwyn: when winter comes, who survives? The man who hoards, or the man who prepares?”

Another silence. This one longer.

The rain outside thickened. A canal bell chimed in the distance, marking the fifth hour past sunset. Thomys turned back to the press.

“We begin with tools,” he said quietly. “The seven-pointed-star. A calendar. A tax code. A grain ledger. A healer’s guide for rot and fever. But one day, poetry, maps, histories, contracts, every book in our hands copied a hundred times… things the Citadel hoarded like gold, things the South used to keep its grasp firm on the North.”

 

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New Soil

 

The wagon groaned as it crossed the last rise, wheels biting into the soft clay of a new road that hadn’t existed six moons ago. Beyond the ridge, the land opened wide like a waiting hand, green and furrowed, ribboned with drainage ditches and marked in clean straight rows. In the far distance, black flags flew from the watchtower, distant but watchful.

Erra Dreten leaned forward, her fingers gripping the edge of the wagon. She wasn’t dressed like an Dreten anymore, her small merchant house had gone bankrupt a few moons ago. Her blue cloak had been traded for a brown homespun shawl, and her boots were caked in Neck mud.

But her eyes still carried the sky in them, pale and sharp, trained to watch clouds and weather. She watched now as the oxen slowed at the turn, snorting as they smelled fresh straw and tilled earth.

“There,” her father said from beside her. “That’s it.”

The house stood slightly apart from the others, new stone, pale and square, set with thick beams of marsh-hardened oak. A flagged porch ringed it, and a short stone wall marked the yard. A wooden barn stood nearby, and a small tower of rough-cut blocks guarded the well.

It was more than they had hoped for.

Land for ten acres had been granted under the charter writ, sealed with the direwolf in black wax. A tax exemption for the first year. Two oxen, one gifted, one loaned. Steel ploughs, stamped with the sun-and-wolf sigil of Moat Cailin.

Seeds already sacked and labeled, tools ready in a covered shed. It was not a lord’s holding, but it was a future. And after years of poor harvests and Vale politics, that was more than Erra had dared to dream.

A small group waited near the steps, a steward in a dark leather jerkin, a pair of local marshwardens in cloaks dyed swampgreen, and a gray-haired woman with ink stains on her hands.

“Ser Rodrick Dreten?” the steward asked.

Her father nodded, dismounting stiffly. “Aye. Of Glenbrook.”

“You’re expected,” the steward said. “Your writ was confirmed by the Land Ministry at Moat Cailin. You’ll sign the final ledger, then take possession. The ox is in the barn already, and your steel ploughs arrived last week.”

The gray-haired woman offered a bundle of folded cloth. “Blankets. Wool’s from Karhold. The guilds sent extra stock to welcome newcomers. They say your second daughter’s a weaver?”

“That would be me,” Erra said.

“You’ll be wanted at the weaving house of the nearby village, Winterwool. They’re hiring, there are new machines that weave for you apparently and they want people to work them.”

Erra nodded, her throat tight.

Behind her, her mother helped the younger children down from the wagon. Roban, her little brother, ran toward the barn, laughing as the ox lifted its massive head to snort at him. The air smelled of damp clay and bark mulch, strange and rich.

The steward turned and gestured toward the horizon. “The canal’s two furlongs east, just past the stand of cypress. You’re marked for dry-grain and rootcrop rotation. There’s a drainage map in your ledger book. Be mindful not to dam the shared ditches.”

“Have there been bandits?” her father asked quietly.

“Not since moons ago,” the steward said. “The Lord’s Swords patrol every third day, and there’s a horn tower on the east ridge, you can see it from here. Closest threat’s weasels getting into the feed bags.”

They moved into the house slowly, unsure if they were allowed to. The hearth was already stacked with peat bricks and split ashwood. A kettle sat clean on its hook. Everything smelled of stone dust and oil.

Her mother touched the windowsill, tracing the new-mortared joints with reverence. “We can live here,” she said quietly. “We can grow here.”

Out back, a small kitchen garden had been marked with stakes. A trench had been dug for vegetables, and a small pile of stone dust sat ready for spreading. Fertile ground. Ready hands.

Erra stepped out into the yard, letting the wind hit her face. The fields stretched to the tree line, where strange birds called and insects buzzed low to the soil. Across the way, another house smoked from its chimney, newcomers, like them. A woman waved from the porch, apron flapping in the breeze.

Erra waved back.

“We’ll need a name,” her father murmured. “For the land. Something that lasts.”

She thought of frostbitten fingers and steep stone paths in the Vale, of empty cellars and sour oats.

“Not high like the Vale anymore,” she said, voice quiet. “But deep. And steady.”

“Steady,” her father echoed. “That’ll do.”

A raven soared overhead, coasting along the wind from Moat Cailin. Its shadow passed over their new roof, then vanished into the light.

 

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Ink and Headaches

 

The great administrative hall of Moat Cailin was full that day. The bastion’s bones were ancient stone, green-black and thick with the damp memory of centuries. But now, its once-crumbling galleries hummed with voices, with quills scratching parchment, with the soft rustle of paper made by machine.

Edric Slate stood by the central clerks’ station, rubbing the heel of one hand into the small of his back. He was old now, balding, stiff in the mornings, with ink-stained fingers and a slight tremor in his left wrist, but he was steady. Reliable. And the ledgers of Moat Cailin ran as smooth as canal water under his watch. If only that dumb nephew of him could stop making a fool of himself.

“Column B should carry from the salt excise total, not the district median,” he murmured, peering over a junior’s shoulder.

“But—” the boy began.

“No buts. Look.” He flipped back four pages in the bound volume, brand-new paper that hissed and flexed like pressed silk. Mass-pressed, from the new pulpworks outside Driftway. “That’s the millage from Winterwool timber, yes? But the salt levy from Eastmarch was recalibrated two moons past. You’d have seen it printed in Schedule Seven – Rotational Freight Assessments.”

The boy blinked. “I—yes, Master Slate.”

Edric sighed, but without anger. “You’ll learn. Just don’t carry error forward. Mistakes multiply like rats.”

Behind them, clerks moved between benches and shallow desks. Most wore simple livery, gray with black cuffs, the laced pin of the direwolf on their chest, but the hall was divided by function. Land grants to the west alcove. Agricultural tallies in the east. Naval procurement on the upper gallery. Trade audits flanked the great hearth, where fires still burned to drive off the damp. And rising above it all, on the stone dais where lords once held court, stood the Master Table, where the chief stewards and ministers gathered once per week to balance the land.

Today was such a day.

Through the pillared arches at the back of the hall, Edric spotted a figure stepping out of a covered stairwell, flanked by two guards in night-black cloaks. The man walked with care, shoulders heavy but eyes clear, a leather folio tucked under one arm.

Samwell Tarly.

Chief Steward of Moat Cailin. Lord Jon Stark’s right hand in ink and grain, in tax and tally, in every quiet necessity that made a holdfast run beneath the sound of banners. Next to him stood Minister Seren of Agriculture.

Edric allowed himself a private smile.

He remembered that boy, soft-cheeked and anxious, tripping over names, cheeks red as fire when confronted. Lord Jon had sent him to learn “true books,” as he’d said. Ledgers. Sam had shown him double-entry on a slate board with wax pencil.

“I don’t think I’m clever enough,” Edric had said once, hunched over a draft tally of sheep fleece yields from Flint’s Finger.

“You don’t need to be clever,” Sam had told him. “You need to be careful. Honest. Steady.”

Now he was Chief Steward. Gods.

A clerk passed Edric a wrapped sheaf. Fresh-printed pages, bound in blue-thread twine, edges machine-cut and exact. Quarterly Harvest Estimates – Central Marches. The lettering was block-perfect, inked by cylinder press on thick, lightly waxed stock. The paper held no water stain, no smudge.

“What do you think of the new pulp blend?” asked a voice behind him.

Edric turned to see Ellyn Wood, head of Administrative Paper Supply, holding a sample roll.

“Better than last batch,” he said. “Less flake. Doesn’t tear at the fold.”

“They mixed in barley husk with pine cellulose. The vat boys say it presses faster. The presswrights love it.” She offered him a sheet.

He rubbed it between thumb and finger. Strong. Good for binding. Good for record.

“Soon we’ll be up to one hundred sheets an hour,” Ellyn said, voice low. “We’re shipping south next moon. The Lord wants Oldtown to see northern paper.”

“And northern print,” Edric added. He held up the bound packet. “Even our mistakes are legible now.”

A horn blew in the gallery, a short, low note. On the dais, stewards began to gather, moving toward the Master Table.

Edric stepped aside to let them pass. He saw Sam again, now conferring with the Minister of Infrastructure and the chief grain register from Saltstream. They spoke quickly, clearly, pointing at a rolled parchment that was likely already outdated. Sam kept glancing toward a leather folio filled with loose printed ledgers with stamped seals and cross-referenced lists.

At least a dozen ministries now worked beneath Moat Cailin’s roof: Land Grants, Grain Disbursement, Military, Agriculture, Infrastructure, Industry, Education, Commerce, Housing, Medicine, and others still forming.

No one man could hold it all in his head, but the paper could.

“Master Slate?” the junior clerk called, holding a form.

Edric turned. “Yes?”

“Trade markers just arrived from the rice sea. We don’t know which tally to assign.”

“Show me.”

He walked slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the new ledger. Clean lines. No rot. No worm. No lies. Just ink and iron, on northern paper.

Behind him, the dais filled with motion, Samwell’s voice steady as he opened the session:

“By the will of the realm, we begin.”

 

 

Notes:

AO3: Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 16: Chapter 13 – Waves of Change

Chapter 13 – Waves of Change


The sun had barely crested the horizon when we assembled at the north gate.

Fifty men stood at quiet attention, helms tucked beneath their arms, steel plate glinting in the rising light. Not the gleaming excess of southern knights, but something leaner, sterner. Blackworks-forged steel, shaped with uniform cuts. Modular crossbows rested against their shoulders, bolts fletched in grey and red. Each man bore a long halberd and a curved sideblade sheathed at the hip. Every step, every motion, had the clean precision of relentless drill.

No banners flapped. No horns blew. But discipline carried its own music. They moved like a single body, trained, sharpened, ready.

Ser Cort stood beside them, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes scanning the line with the measured calm of a commander who knew what he’d built. He’d asked to ride with us, but I’d refused. He was the spine of the standing force. The North still needed his iron hand.

“You've done well,” I said quietly as I stepped up beside him.

Cort gave a single nod, his jaw tightening with something that might have been pride. “They’ll hold,” he said. “Or die trying.”

“They’ll hold,” I echoed, then turned to mount my horse, Ghost next to it, more than half its size.

Arren was already saddled and waiting, his cloak trimmed with the new white-and-red direwolf sigil. He caught my eye and gave a brisk nod. “White Harbor in six days if the roads hold.”

“They’ll hold,” I repeated, more to myself now.

As the gate creaked open behind us, I cast one last look at Moat Cailin, the towers rising like jagged teeth, the swamp waters glimmering silver beneath the sun. I’d carved order from chaos here, for a time. That would have to be enough.

“I leave one war behind,” I murmured under my breath. “And ride toward another.”

The battle of administration and innovation is one I know how to play, the battle in court though…

The men began their march. No shouts. No fanfare. Just the steady rhythm of boots on stone, halberds tapping shoulders in perfect intervals. Silent signals passed hand to hand as we filed northward onto the causeway road.

Above us, a hawk circled wide.

Behind us, the North watched in silence.

Ahead of us lay the South, and the game that could kill us all.

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White Harbor rose from the mist like a promise carved in marble and salt.

The smell hit first, brine and fish, yes, but layered now with spice and smoke, leather and oil, sweat and sea breeze. The scent of life, of motion. Barrels of whiskey lined the quays in neat stacks, their burnished oak darkened by spray. One bore my mark burned into its side: the direwolf of the Neck, red-eyed and pale against a black background.

White Harbor was the only place in the North that truly felt like it breathed in tides and exhaled kingdoms. Standing atop a low ridge overlooking the bustling lower city, I watched as people moved like blood through arteries, fisherfolk hauling nets, merchant trains rumbling through stone-paved streets, children darting between carts and steaming food stalls.

It was the North’s beating heart, whether Winterfell wanted to admit it or not. No holdfast, no hillfort, no frozen keep rivaled its numbers or wealth. Even in the shadow of the Wall, even in the heart of Winterfell’s godswood, nowhere did the land feel so full of life.

It should’ve been ours.

I thought of the old kings, the Stark kings of winter, cold and grim, who held the North for thousands of years. They'd crushed rebellion, broken Andal incursions, stared down the sea kings of the Iron Islands. Yet somehow, in their proud stillness, they’d let this city slip from their grasp.

The mouth of the White Knife, the only deepwater port worth the name, the gateway to the South and to Essos, gifted to House Manderly, not held as crownland by the Starks. A mercy, a bribe, a political compromise long forgotten. Foolishness. Or perhaps arrogance, believing the sword in the snow would always outweigh gold on the waves. Now, centuries later, the Stark name echoed less in these docks than the Manderly, whispered by sailors and traders with the scent of spice on their breath.

The old wolves had given away the only place in the North where coin flowed like water. I wondered if they had any idea what they'd lost.

Beyond them, the port teemed with ships. Galleys from Braavos with curved hulls and bright sails. Cogs from Pentos with wide, fat bellies. Even one sleek vessel flying the silver seal of Myr, its deck glinting with brass fixtures. Laughter and shouting rang across the wharves, tongues from three continents overlapping in a symphony of trade. New docks stretched outward like fingers, timber scaffolds crawling over the bay, workers hammering in rhythm to shouted commands.

It felt alive. It felt like a different world.

Our column moved through the city in tight formation, the soldiers’ armor polished to a mirror shine. Halberds upright, crossbows shouldered, their boots struck stone with the steady beat of a war drum.

People turned to watch, dockworkers pausing mid-haul, merchants silencing their haggling. A boy dropped a bundle of twine. A Braavosi trader muttered something reverent in his own tongue.

A murmured ripple passed through the crowd: “The White Wolf.” “Stark’s ghost.” “Steel Stark.” “The boy who rules the Neck.”
My men heard it. But their faces never moved.

Discipline finally enters Westeros.

Ghost padded at my side, his white fur catching the sunlight, eyes like molten garnets. That did more than any banner.

We passed into the city proper. The streets had changed, cleaner, busier, even brighter. There were new tiles in some alleys, painted signs in both the Common Tongue and Valyrian script. I spotted a cart selling fried eel beside a Braavosi spice merchant. A cloaked Myrman with ink-stained fingers bartered for northern parchment.

The city was growing. Trade shaped it. Gold shaped it. But the whispers followed like wind through grass: his men, his steel, his northern fire, his mark.

A few townsfolk bowed. Others just stared. Reverence, fear, curiosity, it all mingled in their faces.

Arren rode closer to me. “They’re talking like you’re half legend already,” he said under his breath.

As we passed under the stone arch of the merchant quarter, a group of dockworkers lifted mugs of sour red and shouted in unison: “To the White Wolf!”

One of my men, Tormyn, flinched, unused to people cheering for him.

The sargent glared at the poor soldier.

Let them cheer. Let the name travel on wind and wave.

There was work to be done in this city, and further still across the sea.

And the city welcomed me.

 

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The New Keep of White Harbor rose like a marble wave above the bustle of the docks, its banners fluttering in the salt-heavy wind. I dismounted slowly as the gates opened, revealing a receiving party: guards in seafoam cloaks, Wylis Manderly tall and broad at their head, and behind him, the unmistakable shape of Lord Wyman.

He was every bit the sea-lion the rumors claimed, massive, white-bearded, eyes deep-set but quick. But when he stepped forward and raised both hands in greeting, his voice was warm and clear.

“Jon Stark, Lord of the Moat,” he said with a slight bow. “White Harbor welcomes the prodigal wolf.”

I returned the bow, though shallower. “My thanks, Lord Wyman. It’s good to see the North thriving in your city.”

He smiled. “Thrive we try. Come, there is roast duck, spiced wine, and a thousand things to speak of.”

The council chamber was wide and rounded, paneled with pale wood and inlaid silver. A fire crackled at one end, and charts of ports and sea-lanes lined the walls. I recognized Myr, Pentos, even the long routes down to Tyrosh. This was a lord who thought not in armies but in oceans.

Wylis poured wine while his father lowered himself with surprising ease for his size into a carved seat.

“You’ve caused quite a stir in Braavos, you know,” Wyman said, swirling a cup of fortified wine in his broad hand. “Some merchant prince named Otharo sent a raven last week requesting exclusive contracts for ten casks of northern fire a month, at three times the going rate.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Only three? The man wants exclusivity and thinks he can get it at only three?”

Wyman barked a laugh. “He thinks he’s being clever. That we’re still some backwater lords who’d sell off our best casks for cheap. But the truth is, and I say this with great pleasure, your whiskey is now the talk of the Narrow Sea. The Braavosi love the bite. The Myrish say it sharpens the mind. The Pentoshi drink it before bedding their wives.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “There’s even a rumor it was served at a feast for the Sealord himself.”

Ah Wyman, one of the few that calls it whiskey.

I tipped my glass to Lord Wyman, he was always my biggest supporter, and why wouldn’t he be, he was making silver by the tone with all the trade my products brought.

He reached for a folded parchment and slid it across the table to me. “This came from Tyrosh.”

I unrolled it. It was a trade manifest: ten barrels of whiskey, five crates of Northern forged steel tools, and, what caught my eye, three hundreds full sets of Northern plate armor.

“They want our armor,” I murmured.

“Aye. They used to just buy ingots, but they have finally realized that our shaping of the metal is much better than theirs. They’re starting to see that Northern steel, properly forged, tempered slow, hammered with riverstone weight, holds an edge longer. They want tools that don’t break. Armor that bends but doesn’t shatter. The Blackworks is strained to its limit.”

“Don’t worry, the new forges in my lands will start production soon, in a moon Moat Cailin should be producing as much steel as Winterfell is and the strain will disappear.”

“Just so,” Wyman said, nodding thoughtfully, the motion making the rings on his fingers clink faintly against one another. “The Free Cities pay in gold, but they also demand consistency. One missed shipment, one spoiled crate of grain or warped barrel of Snowfire, and they’ll take their coin elsewhere. That is why I want to expand the port once again. More docks, more cranes, more shipwrights. And more ships. But with expansion comes exposure. I need protection at sea.”

“We’ll have it,” I replied without hesitation. “But not just warships. That’s only half the answer. What we need is a merchant navy, standardized, bonded, and loyal to the North. Ships designed to carry our authority. With regulated tariffs, defined routes, bonded captains, and shared naval protection. Not just from pirates. From corruption.”

Wyman raised a snowy white brow at that, amused. “Corruption? In the North?”

“Everywhere,” I answered, voice flat and even. “The more we prosper, the more men will seek to cut corners, watered wine, hoarded grain, bribes at the customs hall, smuggling barrels past tolls. If we don't build a structure now, if we don’t establish law, standards, and oversight from the beginning, we’ll choke on our own success.”

I unrolled the map across the wide table, pushing aside goblets and a silver dish of candied chestnuts. My fingers traced the jagged coastline south of White Harbor, pausing on a wide stretch of bay near the mouth of the White Knife.

“This is where I propose we build it,” I said, voice low but sure. “The arsenal. A permanent maritime complex, docks, shipyards, and warehouses. Not a clutter of temporary scaffolds and half-rotted wharves, but a purpose-built installation designed to launch dozens of ships at once. Galleys, galleons, caravels, and, if our builders prove equal to the challenge, clippers.”

“The clippers are proving a challenge, but if they work as you said they will give us an incredible edge.” Wyman echoed.

“Lighter hulls, narrow and deep, rigged for speed. They can outrun corsairs, scout coasts, or ferry urgent messages across seas faster than any cog. If we master their construction, they’ll grant us unmatched agility. Both for war and trade.” I explained

“The first one is nearly completed,” He added. “We’ll know soon if the design holds water, quite literally.”

Wyman leaned closer as I pointed again to the map. “Here,” I said, tapping a crescent-shaped bay. “The river meets the sea. Deep water, calm current, and the woods no more than a day’s haul inland. The land is ours already. We'll build modular docks, dry docks for maintenance, and workshops for every part of the process, carpenters, sailmakers, blacksmiths, riggers. This will be a city of ships.”

“An industrial heart for the North’s fleet,” Wyman murmured, eyes distant but burning with thought.

“Aye,” I said. “And it must be vast. Think of it: twenty ships laid down and launched within three moons. Fitted with weapons, stocked for voyages, crewed with men trained in port. We’ll divide the work. Hull construction in one sector, outfitting in another. Specialized quays for arms, grain, lumber, and stone ballast. A system. A machine.”

Lord Manderly looked entranced with the idea of the north having a navy, of him having a navy. I stood at the edge of the table, the map still spread before us, but my gaze drifted beyond parchment and ink, beyond the walls of Wyman’s hall. My mind turned inward, backward, and forward all at once.

“Here,” I said quietly, almost to myself, “we will divide labor. To make each man a master of a single task, not the whole. It sounds simple, crude, even. But that idea can reshape the world, the bravossi use it in their arsenal. Ships built in days. Just like Braavos.”

Wyman blinked at that, but said nothing.

“It’s not the skill of a single craftsman that makes a navy,” I went on. “It’s the rhythm of an entire system. The flow. The repetition. One hull laid down while the next is sealed and the third is being rigged. Crews trained in tandem with construction. Supplies packed as blueprints are finalized. We don’t build a ship. We build a process that builds ships.”

My fingers hovered over the space on the map I’d marked for the arsenal. “We’ll assign tasks to crews. One group to frame the keel, another to raise ribs, another to set planks. Every man knows his job, and once one ship moves down the line, the next begins. A great northern chain of industry, beating like a heart of timber and steel.”

I could see it already, in flashes, in dreams. This would be the future of my navy.

Rows of drydocks echoing with hammer blows and saws. Furnaces roaring day and night to forge bolts and anchors. Sailyards spinning out canvas from linen and wool, wind catching on cloth fresh from the loom. Iron nails in barrels by the thousand, ironwood timbers hewn and seasoned in massive curing yards.

And above it all, banners of the dragon flying over the water.

One ship a week. Then two. Then four.

Not fishing cogs or petty trade boats, but ironwood giants. Ships of the line, massive, bristling with artillery and scorpions, oars for maneuvering and sleek northern hulls for speed. Their sides clad in thick, treated timber drawn from the oldest woods of the North. Unyielding. Relentless.

And cannons... once I can figure out why gunpowder isn’t working as it should.

Crewed by the Royal Marines, the finest sons of the Seven Kingdoms. Trained, disciplined, drilled in the new codes of conduct, gunnery, boarding tactics, navigation, and loyalty. Men of honor, not just battle.

I could see their uniforms. Deep Black and red cloaks. The three headed dragon on the shoulder. Flint in the eye.

These ships would carry my voice across the Narrow Sea, down the coast to Dorne, up past Eastwatch to the Shivering Sea. The world would learn what it meant for the North to rise, not as raiders, not as rebels, but as builders. As sailors. As masters of steel, fire, and wind.

And it would begin here. With this arsenal. With this first step.

“And what of the cost?” Wyman asked finally, arching one thick brow again. “Vision is easy when the ink is cheap. Timber and iron are not.”

I met his gaze without flinching. “Consider it an investment. I will put forward one hundred thousand gold dragons up front, my own coin, and more to come after the project starts. For that, I want a fifty-one percent stake in the arsenal and priority on shipbuilding. Every ship built here won’t just defend our shores. It will project power, across the Narrow Sea, into Braavos, Lys, even down to King’s Landing if ever needed.”

Wyman inhaled slowly, chest rising like a drawn sail. His eyes lingered on the map, on the wide expanse of sea beyond the inked lines of trade routes.

“This arsenal will be the spine of the new North,” I continued, my voice soft but firm. “A future where our strength isn’t only hammered in swordsteel, but shaped in keels and canvas. In holds filled with grain and whiskey and steel.”

For a long moment, Lord Wyman said nothing. Then he smiled. It was not a courtly smile, nor one of false politeness, but something older, more dangerous. A smile born of ambition.

“If this dream of yours comes to pass, Jon Stark,” he said, “we may yet rule the sea as we now rule the lands.”

We discussed logistics, the timbers needed from the wolfswood, sailors’ wages, the price of Essosi contracts. I let Arren take notes. He’d been quick with figures since the Wall.

At last, as the fire burned low, Wyman leaned back and studied me.

“Lord Stark,” he said, voice quieter now, “the North has not seen a Stark like you in a hundred years. Not since Thoren the Reader, maybe not since Brandon the Builder himself. You are doing what no sword ever could... Have dinner with my family tonight, I wish to present you to my family.”

He probably wishes to present me to his granddaughters the most…

I said nothing for a moment, only let the words settle like silt.

When I rode from the Keep the next morning, a deal had been stuck. I left White Harbor with a charter for joint naval investment, a network of bonded traders… and a quiet promise in Wyman’s gaze that when the time came, he would not sit idle.

White Harbor was behind me now.

Firmly.

With it I had leverage on the whole of the North.

It was almost time to face the South.

 

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The Boreal Star rocked gently in its berth, the ropes creaking as wind tugged at her masts. She was a sleek, narrow-bellied ship, longer than most river-runners, broader than a Braavosi skiff.

Her hull was lined with reinforced pine and pale ash, layered in pitch, and studded at the prow with a carved direwolf’s head, teeth bared into the eastern sea. She was the first of her kind, a trade-and-war vessel both, retrofitted under my watch with reinforced decking, copper plating, collapsible ballistae mounts, and collapsible sails cut to ride the wind sharp and low. Fast, deadly, and beautiful.

I stood at the rail and watched White Harbor recede into the gray light of morning. The sun cast silver on the waves, and the city gleamed behind us, white walls, smoke curling from new kilns, the scent of salt and distant lumberfires trailing across the air. Cranes swung high over the half-built naval yards, and the sound of hammers still echoed faintly over the water.

Arren barked an order, and the crew leapt into motion, men and women in gray cloaks with black trim, moving with precision across the deck.

The riggers unfurled sails treated in oiled cloth. Crossbows were latched in storage along the rails, and signal flags were coiled and marked. The protocols were ones I had adapted from Earth navies: clear chains of command, sanitation drills, ration rotations, emergency response plans. The air smelled of brine and beeswax, and the decks gleamed from polish. This was one of the ships I owned personally, and it showed.

The flag of House Stark of the Moat whipped from the mast above us. Men saluted it without question now. A new banner, for a new power rising in the North.

 

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I stood at the bow of the Boreal Star, one hand resting lightly on the carved railing, eyes fixed on the narrowing stretch of sea ahead. The cliffs rose like fangs, tall, gray, and unforgiving. The Gullet. The entrance to Kings Landing.

The waters here had seen blood before. A hundred battles in as many wars.

The men behind me stood ready, though not openly so. Discipline held. Their faces were set like the cliffs. No fear, no chatter. Every man had drilled for this. They knew their roles. Their lives.

On the deck, the thrum of work never ceased. Sailors moved with practiced urgency, scrubbing the salt-crusted deck, tightening ropes that groaned under the shifting wind, hauling crates into the hold with calloused hands and grunted curses. Above them, Captain Trell stood like a carved figurehead near the helm, his voice cutting through the sea-salt air like a whip.

“Ease the main! Mind that line, damn you! Trim those sails or I’ll have you polishing chamber pots with your tongue!” His words were harsh, but the men obeyed without hesitation. This wasn’t some ragged northern fishing boat anymore. The Boreal Star was a blade, and every man aboard knew he was part of its edge.

Arren came to stand beside me, his expression tense. “We will be there in a few days,” he muttered. “I have never seen Kings Landing.”

“From what I heard about it you won’t want to be there for long,” I replied. “We should be able to smell the city a day before we see it.”

Arren chuckled under his breath, brushing a strand of windblown hair from his face. “Well, I’ve survived the stench of pig pens and battlefield latrines. How much worse can a capital be?”

I smirked. “You ever smelled a thousand chamber pots roasting under the southern sun while a butcher throws fish guts on the street for the rats?”

He blinked. “That specific, is it?”

“Winterton sucked before the reforms, but it was a feast compared to Flea Bottom according to the merchants.”

He snorted, and we stood in a moment of shared silence, the sea wind tugging at our cloaks. I was grateful for the moment, too few came like this. A quiet before storm. I turned to look back at the ship. Trell was still barking orders, but the crew had settled into a rhythm. Sails trimmed, ballast checked, the ship gliding over the waves with grace I wouldn’t have thought possible for a northern vessel.

Then came the shout from the crow’s nest.

“Sails to the east!”

Every man aboard stilled for a heartbeat. I turned my gaze toward the open sea. A dark sliver on the horizon, barely a smudge. But growing. Fast.

Trell’s tone shifted. “All hands to alert stations! Archers, to your posts!”

Arren’s eyes narrowed. “Merchant?”

“No,” I said quietly. “Look at the sails.”

Black as midnight. And there, upon the tallest mast, the unmistakable sigil of a red heart crowned with flame. A stag leaping in its center.

The sigil of House Baratheon… twisted and reborn in fire.

Stannis.

Why is he using that banner? It is too soon. The board isn’t set, the pieces not in place.

“Captain,” I called, keeping my voice steady. “Bring us to half sail, let them close. That’s a ship of the Royal Navy under the command of the Master of Ships. Hold our course. Prepare the crossbowmen but keep them hidden. Better safe than sorry. Arren, with me.”

We stepped toward the starboard rail. The enemy galley cut the waves like a shark, sleek and purposeful. Its oars rose and fell in perfect rhythm. No merchant vessel moved like that. War-born. Built for speed. And it was coming straight for us.

Arren’s hand drifted toward his sword. “They mean to board us?”

I nodded, slow and cold. “They have no right; this isn’t some merchant vessel. They should see my banner.”

Moments passed like drumbeats. Then the voice rang out across the water, loud, clear, and soaked in fire.

“By the command of King Stannis Baratheon, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, surrender your vessel and deliver the head of the Targaryen bastard onboard!”

The deck behind me was utterly still. My name hadn’t been spoken, but I knew who they meant. The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I felt every eye on the ship turn toward me.

Arren’s voice was low. “What?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I stared at the galley, its pitch-dark sails, its wicked prow, and felt the weight of something vast shifting. My hands gripped the rail like a drowning man might clutch driftwood. Inside, I was reeling.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet. Robert still lived, he had to. The tourney of the Hand hadn’t even begun. Ned should only just be settling into the Red Keep, perhaps sniffing the first hints of the rot within. Littlefinger hadn’t sprung his traps, Cersei hadn’t moved her pieces. Everything was still in place. The war wasn’t supposed to begin for moons, not until the wine and the boar, not until Lannister pride and Baratheon indulgence set fire to the whole damned board.

And yet…

There were no answers. Only questions. Had something changed? Had Ned stumbled into a trap early? Had Cersei acted faster, more desperately? Or had Stannis grown tired of waiting, of watching the vultures pick apart his brother’s court? Had he declared prematurely, without Renly, without the Stormlands, without the people?

What is going on? Is father even alive?

A knot twisted deep in my gut. Could they know who I truly was? Not just a bastard of Winterfell, not just a northern lordling with ambitions and steel, but the son of Rhaegar Targaryen? Had the truth leaked already? Had Varys whispered into the wrong ear, or had some shadow crossed from the crypts of the Tower of Joy to this very moment?

It is too soon. The fire hadn’t even been lit, and yet the smoke was rising all the same.

My jaw clenched. No. I couldn’t panic. Not here, not now. Let the storm rage, but I would not bend. If fate had moved the pieces faster, then I would meet it with steel drawn and eyes open. But inside me, buried under layers of calm, a tremor ran through the foundation I had built.

Then I raised my voice, clear and sharp over the waves.

“Battle stations.”

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 17: Chapter 14 — Fire in the Narrow Sea

Chapter 14 — Fire in the Narrow Sea

 

The wind had almost died.

It wasn’t gone, not entirely, but it had shifted from ally to stranger. It hung heavy, pressing the sails like a reluctant breath. The Gullet narrowed before us, steep cliffs rising like jagged fangs on either side. I could hear the gulls crying above the waves. Below, the sea lapped against the hull of the Boreal Star like a predator licking its lips.

The galley that flew the burning heart and crowned stag was now fully in view, her black sails taut with menace, her hull low in the water from the weight of soldiers and scorpions. From her deck came the shout again:

“By command of King Stannis Baratheon, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, you are ordered to surrender your vessel and deliver the head of the Targaryen bastard onboard!”

Every man on deck turned to me.

Even with the sun glaring off steel helms and the sea breeze brushing my face, I felt the heat rising under my collar. The Targaryen bastard. So that’s how they wanted to play this. The name I had never claimed now made me a target. They shouldn’t even know, what the fuck happened?!

Ser Myles, the commander of the soldier detachment, turned to me, jaw tight beneath his well-trimmed beard. “My lord…?”

I didn’t answer immediately. My eyes scanned the horizon.

“Captain Trell,” I called. “Options?”

The grizzled old seaman stepped forward from the quarterdeck. His hands were calloused from a lifetime of rope and salt, but they gripped the railing with tension now.

“They’ve what little wind there is,” he said. “And the draft. That galley’s oar-driven, she’ll outpace us in a straight chase, even with our new hull. If we turn tail now, we won’t make it an hour. And—”

“More sails!” came the sharp cry from the lookout in the crow’s nest. “Starboard! Two more, closing fast!”

Silence settled across the deck like snowfall.

Fuck.

I turned slowly. Two more black-sailed ships emerging from the haze, like sharks circling in from the depths. Their formation was clean, practiced. They had waited, coordinated. This was no rogue engagement. This was a trap.

How could they know we would be here?

“They were waiting for us,” Arren muttered at my side, voice low.

“Aye,” I said. “And someone told them who to wait for.”

He glanced at me. “Is it true? Who you really are?”

“Not now Arren, if—when we survive this, we will speak.”

Myles approached again. “We still have a chance, my lord. If we strike quickly, take the flagship before the two others close—”

“No.” I shook my head. “If we commit everything to the first, the other two will hammer our flanks. This is not a brawl. It’s a dance.”

I looked to the sky, wind weak, but it could still be useful.

“Ser Myles, I want the ballista crews in position. Tell them to aim low, we want to cripple, not warn. Captain Trell, maneuver as close to the cliff walls as you dare. We’ll use the terrain to break sightlines with the other ships. If they try to encircle, we strike fast and slip past.”

“And if we’re boarded?” Trell asked.

I met his eyes. “Then we kill them. Fast. As fast as we can.”

Myles nodded grimly. “And if the others close before we can escape?”

I looked at the approaching black sails, growing larger with every heartbeat.

“Then we die on our feet.”

Arren gave me a sidelong look. “Dramatic.”

“Truthful,” I replied, drawing my sword with a soft hiss. The steel glinted with pale fire in the morning light. “They came for our heads. They’ll get steel first.”

I stepped forward, raising my voice to the full ship.

“Men of the Boreal Star! You know who I am. You know what this ship is. If we run, we die. If we surrender, we die.”

I let the silence hang for a beat.

“But if we fight, we might live. And more than that, we send a message. The North bows to no pretender. We are Northmen! We are the fire that burns back the dark!”

The men shouted, sharp, controlled.

I turned to the helm.

“Battle stations,” I said. “Load the scorpions. Run out the ballistae. Myles prepare the men for crossbow volleys, we need to kill as many as we can as fast as we can if we want to escape the other two galleys.”

I looked down as the men went to do their jobs.

My hand didn’t stop shaking no matter how much I tried.

The deck was alive with motion, though no one shouted. Every man knew where he had to be. Ser Myles strode down the line of soldiers with quiet precision, tapping shoulders, checking grips, offering nods instead of words. Shields were raised and locked along the port rail, a bristling wall of Northern iron and oak. Crossbowmen crouched behind them, bolts already notched, sweat running down their brows despite the sea wind.

Some knelt with quivers at the ready, passing fresh ammunition between ranks. The crew, less armored but no less steady, moved like sinew through the bones of the ship, tying down canvas, wetting the deck to keep fire from catching, securing barrels and ropes that might roll free when the fight began. The Boreal Star was no dedicated warship, but she’d been hardened for this, and so had her men.

I paced behind the formation, boots thudding on the deck’s planks. No one looked at me directly, but I could feel them tracking my steps. The quiet before the clash was always the same , thick with breath and heartbeat.

I passed Arren, who stood near the mast with a crate of bolts and a ledger in hand, pale but composed. He met my gaze and gave a small, tight nod. At the prow, two sailors readied the tar pots and iron tongs for the first volley of flame. From the crow’s nest above came the shrill cry: “Two hundred yards!” The enemy galley loomed now, her oars rising and falling like wings. I could make out the glint of helms and drawn bows. “Hold,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. “Hold until they see the whites of our eyes.”

And the Boreal Star surged forward into the narrowing Gullet, cutting the sight of the other two galleys coming for us, toward blood, fire, and the black-sailed ships waiting to break us.

My blood roared in my ears.

The enemy galley was closing fast, cutting through the waves with cruel precision. She rode lower than us, sleek, deadly, her oars a blur of motion. The sea churned with her coming, white spray fountaining from her prow as she closed the last few dozen yards.

“Brace the rails!” I shouted.

My men were ready. Fifty shields up along the port side, crested like a line of steel teeth. Some bore wolfheads, some sunbursts, others plain northern steel, but all were locked together tight. The sailors crouched behind, crossbows drawn, bolts already notched.

The galley shifted in the waves, lining up the angle of impact. The stag-and-flame banner fluttered above its stern like a curse.

“Hold,” I growled, watching the narrowing gap.

The first cry came from the forward scorpion, a deep twang like a bowstring stretched past breaking. A heartbeat later, a thick iron bolt screamed across the water, trailing a spiral of salt spray behind it.

It struck the enemy galley amidships with a crunch of wood and splinters, driving through planking and armor like a spear through cloth. Then came the ballista from the aft tower, its bolt arcing high before plunging down into the galley’s deck with a hollow thud, punching a jagged hole through the upper planks and sending a pair of figures sprawling. Cheers erupted from our crew, but only briefly. There wasn’t time to savor the hits, the enemy was still coming. Moments later, the first wave of arrows darkened the sky.

Then, whistles overhead. I flinched as the first volley struck.

From the galley’s deck, a flaming bolt hissed across the waves. It struck just short of us, skimming water before exploding in a plume of steam and foam. The next flew higher and struck our aft quarter, trailing fire like the tail of a comet. It cracked into the planking and sent sailors scrambling with buckets and soaked cloth. Smoke wafted across the deck , acrid, sharp, as crewmen cursed and stomped and smothered.

Arrows rained down like hail. They thudded into shields, pinged off the mast, slammed into the deck with a sound like meat slapping butcher’s stone. A sailor beside me screamed and dropped, an arrow through his throat.

Gods…

“Shields up!” someone shouted. Maybe me. Maybe Myles. Maybe no one.

The groan of the Boreal Star’s ballistae sounded again, a deep, snapping crack as the thick cords released their coiled fury. Massive bolts arced through the salty air, glinting briefly in the sun before slamming into the enemy galley’s hull with dull, splintering thuds. One struck high and punched through the forward rail, sending a spray of shattered wood and blood as it impaled a sailor mid-shout. Another embedded itself in the galley’s bow, but still she came on.

We returned fire. Crossbow bolts hissed back at them, low and angry, and men reloaded as fast as their hands would move. We’d drilled this. Three rows, front kneel and fire, second load, third wait. Rotate. Again.

It worked. For a time.

The enemy archers ducked low behind wicker shields lashed to the rail. But I saw one stagger back, bolt through his chest. Another lost his footing and toppled into the sea.

“Focus fire!” I shouted. “Kill the climbers! The climbers!”

Below their rail, I saw the shape of boarding hooks being prepped, thick iron, chains coiled like serpents ready to strike.

Arrows buzzed past like hornets. Men beside me loosed crossbow quarrels in measured bursts, reloading with speed born of practice, shouting warnings, ducking instinctively when return fire tore into the mast or thudded into a shield. One of our scorpions fired again, the bolt trailing rope behind it. It slammed into the galley’s prow, and the rope snapped taut, dragging awkwardly at their advance, but only for a breath.

“She’s almost on us!” someone shouted.

The distance was closing fast. Less than thirty yards now. I could see the white of their eyes, the glint of steel armor beneath storm-painted surcoats. A drum began to beat aboard their deck — deep, rhythmic, fast. A boarding rhythm.

The last of our heavy bolts flew, this one striking home dead center — a blessed shot that tore through two rows of oars and left the galley listing slightly to port. But the drumbeat did not stop. Nor did the ship.

I felt the ship shift under me, the captain trying to angle our hull to glance the ram.

Too slow.

CRACK.

The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard, a great, shuddering crack, wood screaming against wood, iron groaning as the enemy galley slammed broadside into the Boreal Star. The jolt staggered us all. Barrels tipped, men stumbled, and the deck lurched beneath my boots as though the ship had buckled in pain. The grappling hooks came next, wicked, rust-stained claws flung through the air on thick ropes. One struck the railing a foot from me and dug in deep with a thunk, the rope snapping taut. Another whirled past my face, close enough to feel the wind of its passing. I shouted over the chaos, “Cut the lines! Shoot the bastards if you have to!”

But it was too late for most of them. Figures were already clambering up, dark shapes in patched leathers and mismatched mail, faces smeared with ash and oil to ward off fear. The first to crest the rail caught a bolt in the chest and pitched backward with a gurgling cry.

Another scrambled up behind him, only to meet Ser Myles’s sword with a wet crunch of bone and steel. The rail became a battlefield in miniature, blades flashing, boots stomping on fingers as men kicked climbers back into the sea. I swung my sword into one who made it over, a short man with a curved blade and murder in his eyes. My cut bit through his collarbone, and he fell wordlessly, blood spraying hot across my arm. All around me, the clash had begun.

“Here they come!” Myles bellowed, drawing his longsword.

The enemy poured over like a black tide. Their armor was mixed, light mail, boiled leather, some with tabards of red and gold. A few wore no sigil at all, just murder in their eyes.

The first man up was tall, scarred, and fast. He cleared the rail before I could speak and swung at me with a short axe. I caught the blow on my sword, sparks flying. He was strong, stronger than I’d expected, and I nearly lost my footing on the blood-slick deck.

I twisted, drove my shoulder into his chest, and thrust. The blade punched through his gut, hot and wet.

He gasped, and I shoved him off with my boot. I didn’t have time to think, just act.

Another came behind, smaller, dagger in each hand, but Myles intercepted, shield raised, and crushed the man’s skull with a brutal overhead strike.

The air was full of screams, steel, and fire.

A fire arrow embedded itself in a crate beside me. I kicked it away. The flames licked hungrily at the wood.

There came a lull, brief, ragged, like the eye of a storm, and in that moment I saw it clearly. The Boreal Star rode higher in the water than the enemy galley, her deck a wall of sharpened angles and hardened men.

Every time one of their bastards tried to climb, they were met with a sword thrust or a spear from above. Arrows rained down at close range, bolts from scorpions hissed into the enemy deck, and men screamed as they fell back into the churning sea. It was like holding a castle wall, the rail was our battlement, the grapples their siege ladders. And we had the height. We had the discipline. For once, the ship’s design was working exactly as I’d imagined, and for the first time in the madness, I allowed myself to hope.

Arren was behind the mast, hauling a wounded sailor by the armpits toward cover. His face was pale, smeared with blood, but he didn’t falter. A bolt hissed past his head. He flinched but didn’t stop.

“Arren!” I barked. “Get below! Coordinate the bolts! We’re running low!”

He nodded and vanished like a ghost into the smoke.

To my left, a pair of sailors with spears skewered a boarder trying to swing over the rail. Another leapt from the enemy ship and landed hard, only to take a mace to the face from one of Trells’ men.

The fighting was everywhere, and nowhere. I saw flashes, of flame, of blade, of pain. A man screamed behind me. I spun, just in time to parry a sword aimed for my ribs.

I recognized the sigil, the burning heart. One of Stannis’s knights. He fought like a trained man, not a levy. I ducked his slash, hooked his leg, and we both went down hard. We rolled. I got on top. He clawed for his knife.

I took my own dagger and drove it into his throat.

Warm blood sprayed my face.

I rose, gasping.

“Push them back!” I roared.

But I didn’t know how many there were. I couldn’t see the farther side of the ship; there were too many men in the way. I couldn’t hear the quarterdeck over the battle.

All I knew was the fight right in front of me, blood on the wood, my arms shaking from every parried blow, the stink of burning pitch and death in my nostrils.

And still they came.

They came like a wave of meat and steel, pouring over the rail with grappling hooks and screams. Men crashed together, no distance now, no archery, just blades and fists and blood. For every one man we killed another two tried to climb aboard.

I was already moving.

A man in boiled leather vaulted the rail to my right. I buried my sword in his shoulder before he landed, yanked it free with a grunt, and shoved the body back into the sea. Another came swinging an axe. I ducked low, drove my sword into his gut, and he screamed as he dropped. The sound was wet, human, ugly.

All around me the fight surged like a wildfire in dry brush. The deck was chaos, boots slipping in blood, steel ringing, men screaming curses and prayers. My men held the line. Barely. We fought shoulder to shoulder, blades flashing in tight arcs. Every inch we gave was one more they climbed, one more who could overrun us.

“Push forward!” I roared, voice hoarse. “Keep the rail! Rotate left!”

I wanted to cry. I wanted to panic. But I couldn’t, that would mean death.

The formation shifted like clockwork, two rows moving back, fresh spears stepping forward. We'd drilled it a hundred times in the yard of the Moat. Now it saved our lives. A man lunged toward me with a knife; I caught his wrist, slammed my pommel into his face, and shoved him down into the press. Someone else finished him before he hit the deck.

Captain Trell was by the helm, bellowing orders with a sword in one hand and a boarding axe in the other. “Keep the prow clear! Crossbows, stagger your fire! You! Man the scorpion again, load it now!”

To my left, I saw Arren go down, cut across the thigh, but he rolled, stabbed his attacker in the belly, and staggered upright again. His face was pale, blood soaking his boot, but he didn’t retreat. Gods, he didn’t even flinch. He just rejoined the line, sword slick and shaking in his grip.

A brute in chainmail tried to scramble up one of the grapples. I hacked the rope loose and watched him fall, flailing, arms wide like wings that wouldn’t catch the air. He fell into the water and didn’t appear again. A crossbow bolt flew past my ear. Another hit a man beside me in the neck. He gurgled, clawing at the shaft, then dropped.

More screams. More blood. One of my men, Willem, a boy from Barrowton no older than nineteen, went down, his arm hacked to the bone. Ser Myles was there a heartbeat later, dragging him back behind the mast, binding the wound with steady hands. His face was white as salt.

“They’re breaking!” Trell shouted. “Look at them!”

He was right. The enemy was faltering. Their third wave never came. The men on the galley were fewer now, many dead, others hesitating. Some tried to run back to their ship, they found crossbow bolts waiting for them. Others looked to their captain, but the man was already dead, face split by a hammer blow that had caved half his skull in.

I pressed forward. My sword was heavy now, not from its weight, but from the weight of killing. Each step I took left red behind me. But I couldn't stop. I wouldn’t stop.

I reached the rail and looked down into the enemy galley.

They were in disarray. Half the deck was empty. Corpses littered the boards. The remaining crew huddled behind the mast, trying to fire up at us, too late, too disorganized.

This is it!

I turned and shouted:

“First and second squads, with me!”

And two dozen men vaulted over the rail and landed in the galley with hard thuds. I followed. My boots struck wood slick with blood and almost slipped. The enemy raised blades, but they had no line, no formation. We cut through them like threshers through wheat.

One turned to flee, I took his leg out from under him, then slammed the flat of my blade against his helm. He dropped. Another came at me, screaming, wild-eyed. I ducked under his swing and drove my elbow into his nose. Bone crunched. He fell. I kept moving.

Soon it was over.

We stood panting amid the wreckage, our boots soaked in blood, our armor dented, our arms trembling. One man vomited over the rail. Another wept silently, gripping the edge of his shield.

I pulled off my helm and drew in a breath of salt-heavy air. My throat burned. My face was wet, sweat, blood, I didn’t know. My heart hammered in my chest, and my sword hung heavy in my hand. I couldn’t feel anything. My hand couldn’t stop shaking.

But we were alive.

We had won.

“Secure the ship,” I rasped. “Chain the rudder. Check beneath.”

“Aye, Lord Stark,” came a dozen tired voices.

Behind me, two soldiers dragged a prisoner forward, a lean man in stained brigandine with a torn surcoat bearing the crowned stag and red heart. His lip was bleeding. One eye was already swelling shut. He met my gaze and spat on the deck.

“You’ll burn for this,” he hissed.

“Maybe,” I said quietly, too tired to care. “But not today.”

The stench hit me first. Not salt or pitch or seaweed, but blood, thick, coppery, and ripe. And smoke. Gods, the smoke still clung to the sails like ghosts. My boots thudded softly as I stepped across the galley’s deck, and I realized they weren’t striking wood.

They were stepping on flesh.

Bodies lay tangled like broken dolls, their limbs caught in cruel angles, faces twisted mid-scream or slack with peace. Some had been cleaved clean through, necks opened to the spine, arms missing, skulls caved in. Others were only scratched, but lifeless all the same. Blood pooled between the boards in puddles that shimmered like oil in the morning sun.

I turned and looked back toward the Boreal Star. Her hull was flecked red now on this side, and the deck was no better. Corpses hung half-over the rail, caught on broken grapples or sprawled where they fell. Northern soldiers, Free Cities sailors, enemy men in Baratheon colors, all one and the same now in death. A man groaned somewhere behind me, but I couldn’t find him through the carnage.

It was… too much.

I hadn’t killed before. This was madness, not war. Too many dead for a single ship. Too many to name. My hands opened and closed around my swords hilt. I looked down and saw the gore still clinging to its fuller, bits of cloth and skin in the crossguard. My stomach turned, but I didn’t let it show. The men can’t see me be weak.

I just stood there, eyes burning, breathing slow.

A boy was slumped by the main mast, no older than me, fifteen, a smooth-cheeked squire with pale hair and a bolt through the chest. His sword had fallen near his fingertips. I didn’t know his name. He was just a child and now he was dead. He is your age. Something on the back of my mind whispered, but I didn’t hear it.

So many in the deck of the galley had crossbow bolts in their bodies, it had saved us, that and our ship being higher, they outnumbered us three to one and we negated their advantage. Then came the fury.

The prisoner sat slumped against the mast, wrists bound in coarse rope, his mouth bloodied from the fight and from the fists that followed. He was a lean man with a sun-scorched face, dark beard, and a sailor’s rough hands. His breastplate bore the crowned stag in fiery red, the mark of Stannis Baratheon. Not a knight, but not some green deckhand either. A professional killer, and loyal.

Ser Myles stood beside me, one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other holding a waterskin. He offered it to the prisoner, who drank with slow defiance, his eyes locked on mine the whole time.

“Tell me why,” I said coldly.

The man spat blood to the deck. “You bear the dragon’s banner. That’s reason enough.”

I crouched, letting my word rest point-down beside me. “You attacked without warning. Why? What orders were you given?”

His lip curled. “King Stannis declared the Targaryen spawn an enemy of the realm. Said there'd be no peace while dragon blood festered in Westeros. Your banner showed a white wolf like we were told. We knew what that meant. Lady Melisandre was right!”

Melisandre? Did she see me in the flames? Did she know we were coming?

“Who told you we were coming? How did you know where to wait for us?!”

The man just laughed. My blood ran hot.

“Stannis... is king?” I asked, voice low. “What happened to Robert? To the capital? Answer me dammit!”

He didn’t answer at first. Just looked at me, then laughed, dry and bitter.

It was too soon. It wasn't supposed to happen yet. Dammit… DAMMIT!

I opened my mouth to demand answers, about Ned, about Stannis, about my siblings, about how the fuck did they know I was a Targaryen, maybe threaten to cut a few extremities if he didn't open his mouth, but I never got the chance.

The prisoner surged forward with sudden strength, a glint of silver flashing in his hand, a stiletto, thin and jagged, pulled from a seam in his boot. Myles was fast, but not faster than instinct. I twisted aside,  rising too late, but the blade didn’t reach me.

It buried itself on a soldiers shoulder instead.

The big man cried out and fell back, and in that instant, Myles struck. His sword pierced through the prisoner’s neck clean, and blood sprayed across the deck like red rain. The man twitched once, then fell still over the man he had stabbed.

We dragged his corpse over the rail and let the sea take him.

The soldier winced as the medic bound his shoulder tight with linen and cobweb paste. He was pale under the blood, but breathing steadily. “I’m fine, milord” he muttered, jaw clenched. “Just nicked the muscle.”

I nodded once, but my hand lingered on his arm a moment longer than needed. “You saved me.”

He gave a faint smile. “That’s what the Lord’s Swords do, isn’t it?”

These men were loyal to me, so loyal. What did I do to deserve this?

Trell came to my side, his face grim, jaw tight with sweat and salt. “They’ll be on us within the hour. The wind as picked up northeast.”

Myles approached next, helm under his arm, eyes still burning from the fight. “We can't take two more galleys in open battle.”

“No,” I said quietly. “We can’t.”

I looked again toward the east, where the Gullet gave way to the deeper waters of Blackwater Bay, and beyond that, the stormy horizon of the Narrow Sea. The Boreal Star could still run, if the wind had picked. But only if we moved now.

“We sail,” I said, voice sharp and final. “We cut the lines, burn the galley, and make for deeper water. I want every sail full within five minutes. We won this fight, let’s live to win the next.”

And with that, we ran again, blood in our wake, wind at our backs, and fire on the sea.

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Night fell heavy, cloaked in mist and silence, the sea stretching dark and endless around us. The Boreal Star groaned as it cut through the waves, battered and bloodstained, but alive. Just barely. I stood alone on the quarterdeck, fingers wrapped around the cold rail, watching the foam slip past the hull. Behind us, the horizon still held fire. Two enemy warships, faster, lighter, drawing ever closer. They were still moving faster, their oars out. By dawn, they'd be on us.

We would fight again.

My hands ached. Not from the swordwork, that pain I understood, but from the weight of command. Decisions made in blood. Lives gambled and lost. We had killed to live, and tomorrow we’d have to do it again. I could see the cost in every set of tired shoulders, in every wounded man sleeping with blade in hand, in the ghosts that lingered beneath the deck.

The captain found me first. Trell limped on a twisted knee, still stiff from the battle, but he bore himself like iron. He said nothing at first, only leaned beside me, watching the sea with that weary, sailor’s patience. Then came Arren, his leg bound tight with linen, face pale, eyes sharper than before. Ser Myles behind him. We sat beneath the lanterns at the aft bench, wrapped in wool cloaks, the stars dim behind the clouds.

“We’ll have to fight again soon,” Trell said softly, not a question.

I nodded. “Aye. By morning, unless the wind turns or the gods strike blind.”

“Gods don’t strike blind,” Arren murmured. “They send kings.”

There was a pause. The captain’s voice was quieter this time, slower. “You heard what the prisoner said. About Stannis, about the dragons.” He looked at me now, not just as a man, but as something else. “You bear that banner. With black and red. Subtle, but I am not an idiot, my lord.”

These men weren’t stupid; they could connect the dots. They were owed the truth.

I looked at them both. I trusted them. They were my men. One of the sea, one of the sword, one of the pen. Men who had bled for me, stood beside me on a deck slick with blood and ash. Men who would likely die for me if I led them wrong.

“My mother named me Daemon Targaryen,” I said quietly. “I am the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Heir of the Iron Throne... if everything didn't go to shit.” For the first time in my life I could say the word out loud, if only it were in other circumstances.

They didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. The wind hummed through the rigging like a funeral dirge.

Arren broke the silence first. “I knew there was more to you. No bastard thinks like you. No bastard commands like you.”

I snorted; the bastard stigma was deep.

Trell gave a slow exhale, eyes narrowed. “The realm will want you dead.”

“I know. It already does, apparently.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said firmly, eyes locked on mine. “Stark, Snow, Targaryen, whatever blood you carry, I don’t give a damn. I swore myself to you. And I’m your man to this day… until the day I die.”

His voice wasn’t loud, but there was steel in it. The kind you can only forge in fire. Trell gave a grunt of agreement, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

“You fought with us,” the captain said. “Led us when most lords would’ve hid behind their names. You killed with us. That’s what matters. The rest is winds and whispers.”

“You are our commander, my prince,” Myles said. “I joined the Lord’s Swords because I wanted to serve the man who had changed my family’s lives. Your name doesn’t change that.”

I looked at them. None owed me anything more than duty. But in that moment, I felt something deeper than allegiance. Something older. They believed in me, not because of my name, but because of what I had done.

The men in the deck looked at me differently after that. Not with fear. Not with awe. But with gravity, the sort that follows only those who’ve earned it. They didn’t see a lord anymore. They saw a commander. One who bled beside them. One who’d carry them through fire if he had to.

The stars turned above us, indifferent and distant. And I watched the black line of the sea, waiting for the morning, and the battle yet to come.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 18: Chapter 15 — The Deep Below

Chapter 15 — The Deep Below

The sun broke over the Narrow Sea like a wound torn across the sky. Red light spilled over the waves, staining the morning with a quiet omen. The sea breathed slow and heavy, rolling beneath the battered, arrow-filled hull of the Boreal Star, and the deck creaked in rhythm with the water’s sighs.

I stood alone at the prow, gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles ached. The salt wind lashed against my face, stinging the half-healed scratches on my jaw, cracking the dried blood at the corner of my mouth. I hadn’t slept. Not since the boarding. Not since the shouting and the smoke.

The ship still smelled of blood and burnt pitch. Bits of torn sail fluttered from the rigging like wounded wings. One mast bore a splintered scar where a bolt had struck true. I could still hear the screams in my head, the clash of steel, the guttural cries, the sound a man makes when he's stabbed through the belly.

PTSD… No such thing as a psychologist in Westeros.

Behind me, the crew moved like shades. No shouting now. No orders were barked. Just the rustle of worn boots on wood, the rattle of chains and pulleys, the murmur of prayers half-whispered. Most of them hadn't slept either. Some hadn’t even sat down. They’d spent the night clearing bodies, washing blood from the planks, patching what they could by lanternlight. Now they leaned against barrels, or slumped over coils of rope, eyes ringed in black. The younger ones looked like boys again. The older ones looked like they’d already died and hadn’t noticed yet.

They watched the horizon more than they watched their work.

They are closing in.

Two black dots lingered there now. They'd been dots an hour ago. Now they were sharper, rising like teeth from the water.

Galleys. Sleek, lean, fast.

Stannis men. Red God fanatics. Melisandre must be the most charismatic woman of history to get them to do this so fast.

The ships chasing us now were coming for me.

Not for gold. Not for cargo. For me. Their oars gave them a thin advantage even if their men must be exhausted.

The wind tugged at my cloak. It smelled of brine and blood and ash.

Footsteps behind me.

Arren’s voice was low, unusually careful. “Captains asking for you, milord.”

I turned. His leg was still wrapped in bandages, but he stood straight, eyes clear. He looked older than he had a week ago.

So did I.

Captain Trell’s cabin was thick with sweat and salt, the heavy stink of fear that men tried to hide with clenched jaws and straight backs. A single window cast light over the map table, throwing flickering gold across the charts.

Trell was at the window, his hands locked behind his back. His beard had gone silver at the edges, and his face was hollowed by more than just sleeplessness.

Myles stood nearby. Small cuts all over his body. He hadn’t let the healer stitch it. Said it would slow him down.

Arren lingered by the door. He had the look of a man bracing for bad news.

Trell didn’t turn when he spoke. “They’ll be on us before midday.”

“How many leagues?” I asked.

“Seven. Maybe six now. Wind’s wrong for us. And we’re half a sail down.” He finally turned, voice hardening. “We’ve cut every spare line to lighten weight. Thrown crates overboard. Still won’t be enough.”

“We can’t outrun them,” Myles said bluntly. “And we can’t fight them.”

“How many of our men still able to stand?” I asked.

“Twenty-six unhurt enough to swing a blade,” he replied. “Twelve more who’ll fight if they have to—half blind, half bleeding. They fought like wolfs yesterday but wolfs die just the same when the odds are wrong, my prince.”

Prince… he had taken to calling me that since yesterday.

“And the crew?”

“Exhausted,” Trell said. “And not trained for this. They’ll fight again. But they’re spent. We all are.”

I leaned over the table, letting my eyes trace the chart. The sea stretched wide around us. No rocks. No coves. No hiding place.

Arren spoke next, voice hesitant. “We could strike a flag. Pretend to surrender. Buy a few minutes. Maybe enough to close distance and strike first. We could sink one with some good shots from the scorpions.”

I shook my head.

“They’d never buy it,” I said. “They saw what we did yesterday. We lit their ship like a funeral pyre. Killed more than a hundred men. They’ll come hungry now.”

Myles grunted. “You are right, my prince. There’s no mercy left in this sea.”

Getting used to that will take a while.

Trell rubbed a hand across his face. “If we stand and fight, we die. If we run, we die tired. So what’s left, Lord Stark? You’ve always had one more trick. One more card hidden up your sleeve, every man in the north calls you smart and cunning. Do you have one now?”

I stared at him. At all of them.

I was their lord, now. Their leader, their prince. It was my banner that had brought fire to this voyage, and it was my blood their enemies chased across the waves.

And I did have one last card.

But it was one I didn’t want to use unless there was no other choice. It might stain people’s perception of me.

“Maybe we can use the armor.” Arren said already knowing what I would try to do, he was one of the few people in this world that knew.

Wearing armor at sea was madness, everyone knew that. A man in full steel was a stone with a heartbeat the moment he hit the water. No sailor worth his salt wore plate on a ship, not unless he wanted to drown like an anvil. The men’s breastplates, gauntlets, and greaves were stowed deep in the cargo hold, lashed tight beneath tarpaulin and hemp, far from spray and salt. Only the Ironborn marched around on deck clad in iron, proud and stupid in equal measure, daring the sea to take them, as if drowning was some badge of honor. Let them rot in their heavy coffins. We were no drowned fools. We had a war to survive.

“No armor,” I said. “We have a few hours before they are in arrow distance. I do have one last weapon.”

Trell raised a brow. “What kind of weapon?”

I hesitated. And shared a look with Arren.

Trell stepped forward. “If you have anything that gives us a chance—any chance—you’d best use it. Because we’re out of wind, out of tricks, and out of time. We are outnumbered five to one.”

I nodded.

“I’ll make ready,” I said.

And I left the cabin before they could ask anything else.

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The lower decks were cold and quiet. Down here, time moved differently. Wood groaned under every step like the ship remembered every weight it had carried. The wounded lay in shadowed corners, some fevered, some muttering to ghosts. I passed them like a shadow myself, cloaked and silent.

Past the mess, past the stores.

To my quarters.

I took the key from my neck.

The lock turned with a click like a sword leaving its sheath.

The quarters were dark and close, thick with salt and the smell of old wood and lamp oil. I bolted the door behind me and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My gloves came off first, fingers trembling slightly as the sweat cooled on my palms. I dropped to the floor cross-legged, the boards creaking under my weight.

Ghost padded silently to my side. He didn’t need calling. He never did. His fur was coarse under my hand, dense and warm as snow layered on pine. I let my palm rest there, breathing in through my nose. The ache in my limbs was a dull background hum, but I focused past it, toward the slow rise and fall of Ghost’s chest.

We had done this before. At the Wall, in the dark of night, when silence stretched for hours and wind moaned over stone. I’d felt him dream, the flick of an ear in some remembered forest, the scent of hare and blood and frost. It had been easy then. Simple. Like slipping a hand into cool water.

But other times, I had reached too far.

In the Wolfswood, I tried birds first, sparrows, crows, and even an owl. Their minds were alien, fast and cold, full of sharp instincts and colors that weren’t colors. I’d nearly lost myself once inside a hawk, forgetting what it meant to breathe. Another time, with a stray hound at Mole’s Town, I had broken the link so abruptly I’d woken vomiting, blood leaking from my nose.

The deeper I went, the more the line blurred. The more I felt something watching back.

But here, now, the sea itself felt alive beneath us, as if something vast and slumbering rolled in its depths.

I closed my eyes.

Darkness. Breath. The slow beat of my own heart.

And then, like a thread drawn tight, a pull.

It was faint at first. Distant. A pressure at the edge of my senses, as if something massive had stirred in the water miles below. It was not a shape or a thought, not yet, but an awareness. Alien. Immense.

I leaned into it.

Salt. Cold. Pressure.

Then, a sound. A pulse.

It was not made for ears. It echoed through bone and blood and thought, resonant and slow. A song without words. A mind without borders. Somewhere far beneath the Boreal Star, beyond the reach of oars or sun, it moved.

The bull whale.

I couldn’t see it, not with eyes. But I felt it, a titan gliding through blackness, longer than our ship, heavier than any animal. Its thoughts were simple and vast: hunger, migration, mating calls that carried across leagues and leagues. The memory of currents. The grief of solitude.

I reached for it.

And it noticed me.

The whale recoiled. Its mind slammed against mine like a storm against a cliff. I gasped aloud, body jerking. Blood dripped from my left nostril, warm on my upper lip. My skull burned.

The whale pushed, confused, defensive, angry.

I was not part of its world. I was a parasite. A fleck of ice trying to root itself in a volcano. I saw flashes through its thoughts: sunrays broken on the waves, calves swimming beside their mothers, the rip of a harpoon and the scream of another dying giant. Blood in the blue. Screams in the deep.

Pain bloomed behind my eyes.

But I didn’t let go.

The whale’s mind was not made for mine.

It was not like Ghost, sharp and familiar, wild but close. This was something older, slower, broader than thought. A continent of instinct and memory. It did not think in words, not truly. Its awareness was a long, continuous presence, shaped by pressure, darkness, and deepwater echoes. It remembered ice covering the world when it swam in the far north, and the warmth of blood beneath it. It dreamed in pulses, sonar rhythms and ocean tides, each beat a sentence, each current a question.

And it resisted.

Even after I had slipped through its defenses like a needle into flesh, it coiled and flexed around me, uncertain, probing. Its confusion grew sharp, sour. It knew I was not real. Not right. I was an echo in its skull, an intruder stitched from bone and heat and surface-light. I didn’t belong in the sea. I didn’t belong in it.

The whale surged sideways, not in body, but in will. It tried to cast me out, not with anger, but the way a body rejects a splinter. I felt its power then, the slow tectonic force of a being that had never known fear. It bore down on me like an avalanche made of memory, submerging my thoughts in an ancient weight.

My name flickered. My sense of self thinned. Jon Stark, Daemon Targaryen… who was that, to the deep?

It tried to smother me in its rhythm. To drown me. Not malicious, just instinct. A defense.

I clung to myself with teeth and blood and memory.

The smile of a woman whose name I didn’t remember anymore.
Sitting in class.
Winterfell.
Ned.
Robb.
Ghost.

My mind rang like a cracked bell. Pain pulsed behind my eyes. A fresh trickle of blood slid from my left nostril to my chin. My limbs were numb, my spine cold. Somewhere, my body was seizing on the floor, lungs pulling shallow gulps of breath. But down here, I was still in the dark, drifting at the edge of being.

The whale’s heart was a drumbeat.
Its brain a song in low thunder.

It tried again to push me away, showing me images not as symbols, but as truths: a stillborn calf; great sharks circling; a net lined with jagged hooks; the scream of a motherless song. Its pain was not rage. It was elemental. Deepwater grief.

And the whale did not understand. But it recognized something in me, not kinship, but desperation. That we both moved with purpose not fully our own.

And so, groaning from the deep of its bones, it let me stay.

I could feel Ghost still, solid beside me, anchoring me, a tether to my own self. Jon Stark. No, not just Jon Stark. I was something else now. Warg King.

I reached again, not with force, but with knowing.

I offered not mastery, but purpose. Not hunger, but understanding. A shared enemy.

And slowly… the whale yielded.

The pressure relented. The mind opened — not wide, but enough. Enough for a thread of thought to slip through. Enough for me to wear its shape like a second skin.

I was in.

I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t. The cabin, the ship, the world of men fell away.

I was beneath it all now.

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Water pressed against me from every side, impossibly cold but no longer painful. It was like wearing the sea. I was long, so long, my body swaying with ancient rhythm. My skin was thick, scarred, gray-blue. My mouth was a cavern, my lungs twin halls.

I dove.

Above, the Boreal Star passed like a child’s toy, bobbing atop the currents. Below, I moved with weight and grace no man could ever know. My heart beat slow. My blood sang with age.

I turned.

There, the enemy ships.

Twin shadows etched against the seafloor. Their oars carved trails of white into the deep. I saw them not as threats but as disturbances, alien shapes pushing against my world.

I could feel the hum of their keels. The scurry of men above, their little movements, like ants on driftwood.

I surged upward, just enough to rise toward them.

No sound marked my path. No roar, no warning.

Only the song, still in me, my song now, echoing through the water. A note of sorrow and vengeance. A call that no man could hear.

Back in my quarters, my body trembled.

Sweat soaked my shirt. Blood smeared my upper lip and chin. My breath came in shallow pulls.

Ghost whined softly and licked my hand.

I did not move.

I was still with it, still part of the giant below.

And it waited for me.

I gave it a single command.

Rise.

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The shouts reached me first — muffled, panicked, tearing through the boards like claws raking wood.

My eyes snapped open.

My body convulsed as I pulled free of the whale’s mind, as if I’d fallen from a mountain back into flesh. I gasped, hands flailing, blood hot down my face. The wooden floor of my quarters felt wrong, too small, too dry, too real. My skull throbbed like it had split down the middle.

I pushed myself upright. The lanterns swung wildly above me. My palms were slick with sweat. Ghost whined low and urgent beside me, hackles raised, eyes staring toward the stairwell.

On deck, someone screamed: “There’s something in the water!”

My legs barely remembered how to work. I staggered up the narrow stairwell, each step a battle. The door burst open to light, too bright, searing after the deep below. Men ran, shouted, pointed.

And then the sea exploded in the distance.

It rose with the sound of thunder made flesh, a massive swell surging upward like a mountain erupting from beneath. Salt spray burst high into the sky, shimmering in the blood-red dawn. And at the center of it, a shadow. Vast. Black. Writhing.

The nearest galley, sleek and armored, had no time to turn. The thing rose beneath it and shattered it like a child breaking a toy.

The ship snapped in two with a splintering crack, hurling men into the air. One half lifted into the sky, then was pulled down with unnatural speed. Oars snapped like twigs. The sea swallowed it whole. The second half spun in place, its mast broken, its deck a ruin.

Men screamed. Some tried to swim. Others vanished, yanked beneath the waves by nothing visible at all.

For a moment, the sea boiled with debris and blood. And then, stillness.

I dropped to my knees on the deck of the Boreal Star, chest heaving, arms shaking. My nose still bled freely. It dripped onto the deck like ink from a ruined quill.

Ghost’s howl echoed in my mind, distant but steady — a thread anchoring me to myself. I clung to it.

Around me, silence fell.

Captain Trell stood frozen by the wheel, his mouth slack. Ser Myles had drawn his sword, but he lowered it slowly now, as if waking from a dream. Sailors clutched ropes and rigging, wide-eyed and pale. Salt clung to their faces like tears.

And the second galley, the survivor, had already veered off. I watched it turn hard to port, sails flaring, retreating like a whipped dog. It fled back toward the horizon, smoke trailing from its stern, men clambering frantically to gain speed.

Arren dropped to my side, catching my shoulder. His good hand gripped me tightly.

“Jon! Seven hells, you look—” He stopped. Swallowed. “What was that? Are you fine?”

I blinked up at him. His face was smudged with soot and salt, eyes bloodshot. He looked like every man here: exhausted, uncomprehending, afraid to speak the question aloud.

“I’m fine,” I rasped. My voice didn’t sound like mine. “Just… tired.”

I pushed his hand off gently. He lingered, but didn’t argue.

The others hadn’t moved.

They stared at the sea like it might erupt again.

“The sea god’s wrath,” someone whispered.

“No god,” another muttered, trembling. “It was the prince...”

“It came for them,” said Trell. His voice shook. “Not us. It knew.”

“Warg.” The whisper echoed.

All eyes, slowly, turned to me.

I felt the weight of their stares. The men who had seen me bleed in battle, who had taken orders without question, now looked as if seeing a stranger. Awe in their eyes.

A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

I rose slowly. My limbs felt wrong still, heavier than they should be, like part of me hadn’t fully returned from the deep. The air on my skin was too thin. The deck moved beneath my feet, though the sea was calm again.

I stepped toward the rail and puked my stomach out.

The water below had settled, though debris still floated in wide circles, broken wood, shards of hull, torn canvas, and here and there… bodies.

Some whole. Some not.

A severed arm drifted past the Boreal Star, fingers still curled around the haft of a spear.

The whale was gone now, sunk back into the deep. I could no longer feel it. But something inside me still resonated faintly, like a tuning fork struck hard and set aside. Its song lingered. A chord in the marrow.

I lowered my head toward the sea.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

The breeze caught the word and carried it away.

Behind me, the sailors began to move again — slowly, carefully, like men waking from a dream. They looked away from the sea. But not from me.

Arren was still at my side, silent now.

“Well… you can use it in battle in the end, like the legends.” he said at last, so soft only I could hear.

I didn’t answer. Arren, Seren, Cort and Sam were the only people alive that knew of my experimentation with warging. I wanted to make sure it was safe before I told Robb, when I did he would stay more time a wolf than a man I was sure.

What could I say to them? That I’d stolen the mind of a beast? That I’d forced it to kill? That I had danced in its skin, worn its flesh, tasted the current on a tongue that wasn’t mine?

That part of me missed the weight of the water already?

Instead, I said, “We’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

He nodded slowly.

They didn’t understand. But they’d seen.

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Night fell soft as ash.

The Boreal Star rode steady through calm water, her sails full and bellied, catching a wind that had not been there before. It was quiet, not the heavy, fearful quiet of men expecting another attack, but a deeper calm. Like the sea itself was holding its breath.

No sails chased us. No sign of the enemy ship remained, save for splinters in the wake and the memory of screaming.

I stood on deck for a time, watching the moon ripple across the water like silver scratched on slate. The sea stretched out in all directions, wide and still. Only Ghost kept beside me, silent, warm. He never looked away from the waves.

When I finally returned below, I found Trell and Arren waiting in the captain’s quarters, lanterns burning low. The table between them held a bottle of dark Myrish wine, uncorked and half empty, and three mismatched cups.

I didn’t speak at first. I just sat, slowly, like my body remembered it was made of meat again. Trell poured for me without asking. I took the cup, though I didn’t drink.

Arren leaned forward, elbows on knees. His face was drawn, but steady.

“We’ve seen no ships for hours,” he said. “Sea’s empty. Wind favors us now.”

Trell nodded. “We’re four days from the Bite at this pace.”

“We go back to White Harbor.”

I sipped the wine. It burned. That was good. I needed to feel something real again.

“And what then?” Trell asked, eyes on me.

“We find out what happened,” I said quietly. “To Lord Stark. To the King. To the realm.”

Neither man spoke for a moment.

Outside, the hull creaked gently in the shifting water. Somewhere above, a sailor coughed and was shushed.

When Trell finally answered, his voice was low. “They’re speaking of you. The men.”

I looked up. That sounded bad. My face must have shown something because he explained further.

“Not with fear,” he added. “With reverence.”

Arren snorted, but it wasn’t mockery. “Some think you summoned a kraken like they didn’t see the focking’ whale. Others say you prayed and the gods answered. One swears he saw your eyes go white just before the beast rose.”

One of them was right.

Trell watched me carefully. “I served under your uncle once. Brandon Stark. He’d laugh at such talk, ghosts and giants and skinchangers. But not now. Not after today.”

“I didn’t ask for this gift, but I will use it to its full advantage. Even if they call me a sorcerer.” I said.

“Use it as much as you want if it will save our asses,” Trell agreed. “Shame the other galley scaped, there will be stories about what happened here.”

“We killed three hundred men of the Royal Navy; we are so fucked...” Arren murmured.

I turned my eyes to the porthole. The sea beyond was black now, pure and deep and unknowable. A thin sliver of moon painted the surface in silver, but it reached only so far.

“I don’t know what waits in White Harbor,” I said. “But we’ll not face it blind. We dock quietly. And try to find out as much as we can.”

Trell gave a solemn nod. “Aye, my prince.”

Another one calling me that, gods…

Arren poured more wine into his own cup, then gestured toward me. “And you, Jon? What if they try to seize us?

I met his gaze.

“I am a Stark,” I said, the name still strange on my tongue, “by blood and by law. That hasn’t changed. Even if my name has, no northman would dare stop us.”

We sat in silence after that. No more talk of whales or battles, no grand oaths. Just three men in a room lit by oil and shadows, sailing through the night toward a land that might no longer know them.

Note to self, take more Whiskey in the next trip.

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The candle guttered low, casting long shadows over the map of Westeros sprawled before me. Its edges curled with salt and damp, the ink of the rivers faded from long nights of study. But the lines were still there, every mountain, every coast, every keep I had once read about in dusty tomes was now a place I would have to reckon with.

I sat alone in my quarters, hunched over the parchment with aching hands. My gloves lay discarded beside me, and Ghost’s fur pressed against my thigh, steady, warm, grounding. I needed that. I needed him.

Outside, the sea whispered of old things, but my thoughts were tethered to the land ahead. There was no time to drift.

I dipped my quill again and began the second of the letters. Coded, of course. We had prepared for this, a cipher drawn from old tongues and obscured patterns, a tangle of runes and glyphs that only a handful of men in the North could read.

To Ser Cort, acting Commander in Chief of the forces of Moat Cailin:

Raise the land to War readiness. Code Red.

You are to quadruple recruitment efforts immediately. Pull from all sources, landed knights, hedge knights, free riders, second sons. Offer land where needed. More coin and incentives and spread word all over the north. Do not turn away the desperate. Desperation makes men hungry, and hunger can be honed into discipline.

Expand training. Wake the yard at dawn, run drills until night. I want every recruit able to march twenty leagues in full kit and form spear walls in wind and rain. Use veterans to instruct them, and pay them well. War is coming.

My hand ached. I rubbed my fingers, cracked my neck, then turned to the second letter.

To Seren and Chief Steward and Samwell Tarly:

Continue fortification of the Moat. The outer wall must be finished before the moon ends. Dig ditches and lay sharpened stakes in the skirts of the gate towns. Expand the storage vaults. Begin stockpiling salted meats, grain, rice, clean water. Double the granary space. Expect an influx of refugees from the Riverlands and the Neck.

You will receive men-at-arms from Houses Cerwyn, Tallhart, Manderly, Dustin, and perhaps others. Prepare for them. They must arrive to order, not chaos. Build tents, dig latrines, make organized camps for them.

You will hear things about me. I only ask you to trust me.

I pressed the signet stamp into the wax seal — not Three Headed Dragon, not yet.

I leaned back, closing my eyes.

Robert is dead, I was sure of that, Stannis was a dutiful man he would never declare himself if he were alive. The king whose drunken laughter once filled the Great Hall in Winterfell now lay cold beneath red cloth. I could still remember how his hand crushed my shoulder that day in the courtyard, rough and heavy, reeking of wine. I wonder how he died.

And if Stannis Baratheon was already chasing dragons across the sea, then the realm had begun to fracture. Melisandre must have told him somehow. Did word of me reach the capital? What the fuck was going on?

The candle on the desk burned low, a stub now, guttering faintly each time the ship rocked. I sat in silence, elbows on the wood, fingers clasped in front of my lips, staring at the map of Westeros that refused to answer the questions screaming in my skull.

What happened in King’s Landing? I’d replayed the feast a hundred times in my head. Robert’s drunken blessing, the wine, the crack of the stag’s horn goblet hitting the stone floor when the king had declared me Stark. I’d thought I was buying time. I’d thought a legitimized name would shield me.

Is Ned alive?

Gods, if I’d been faster…

I leaned back in the chair, rubbing my temples. I could still hear Father’s voice, Ned’s voice, steady, quiet, honorable to the end. He’d looked at me that last morning with a weight behind his eyes. If he moved against Cersei without Robert’s protection, the city would have swallowed him whole. If he had disregarded my warnings and trusted Baelish from the start he would be dead.

And the girls. Sansa, too close to the Queen, too soft for the vipers of court. Arya, sharp and fierce, but still a child. Bran, just a boy but so brave. Were they safe? Were they even alive?

I didn’t know. And it gnawed at me.

I reached for the sealed letters again, running a finger along the wax, Moat Cailin, Winterfell. Orders for war, for caution, for silence. I’d given no name, only instructions. Recruit. Fortify. Be ready. Do not what you hear.

A bastard becomes a prince. The son of Rhaegar Targaryen, alive. One crushed in the Red Keep as an infant. Another alive, raised by the North, cloaked in a wolf’s skin, hiding fire under ice.

Would Robb understand? Would he stand beside me, or stare across a battlefield, uncertain? Why had I waited so much to tell him, my reasons seemed so stupid now…

What of the lords of the North, the Vale, the Riverlands? Would they see a rightful heir? Or the second coming of the Mad King?

My blood was not just truth, it was a weapon. And once drawn, it could not be sheathed again.

I stood slowly, the wood groaning beneath my boots. The candle gave a final flicker, then went out.

In the darkness, I walked to the small porthole and gazed out at the stars. Calm seas. A quiet wind. Outside, the deck creaked beneath my boots as I stepped into the moonlight. Ghost followed, his white coat nearly glowing under the stars.

The Boreal Star moved like a dream now, wind at her back, sails full, keel slicing through a placid sea that seemed almost grateful for the blood it had taken. Not a ripple broke the dark. The waters held their breath.

Men slept below deck, but not easily. Some prayed. Some sharpened their blades, eyes haunted. I could hear them murmuring about sea gods and whales, about the thing that had risen from the deep. When they looked at me, they no longer saw just a lordling in borrowed armor. Word had spread of who I was and now they saw a prince, a commander.

And when I turned to the bed, Ghost at my side, I caught my reflection in the glass of the lantern.

My eyes shimmered violet in the moonlight.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 19: Chapter 16 — Snow and Salt

Chapter 16 — Snow and Salt

 

We sailed into White Harbor beneath a sky the color of old iron. The wind was steady, cold, and unfriendly, there was rain coming. Salt clung to everything, my lips, my cloak, the wood beneath my boots. But beneath that familiar scent, I could smell smoke.

I stood at the prow as we passed beneath the Merman’s Beacon. Its flame still burned, a flicker of gold in the gray, but even it felt subdued. Fewer ships than usual in the harbor, and more soldiers on the docks than I liked. Not Manderly knights, either, these were raw levies, lads and old men in mismatched armor, standing straight to hide their fear.

Mobilization. The banners have been called.

I pulled my hood lower and rested a hand on Ghost’s back. He growled low in his throat but stayed close. He could smell it too, the tension in the air, the wariness. The city was bracing for something. They didn’t know what yet. Neither did I.

Arren stepped up beside me. “We’ll be recognized soon enough,” he said. “Whether you wear the sigil or not. A direwolf is hard to ignore.”

“I’m not here to hide,” I told him, though my voice felt hollow even to my own ears. “Get the men to open their ears and find out what the word on the streets is.”

The gangplank was lowered with a dull creak, and I stepped off the ship, my boots landing hard on the wet planks of the dock. Ghost followed me, and our guard fell in behind us. The soldiers waiting didn’t move, not right away. One made the sign of the seven. Another stared at the direwolf on my cloak like it might leap off and bite him.

“By order of Ser Marlon Manderly,” said a gray-bearded sergeant, “you’re to be escorted to New Castle. Weapons stay sheathed.” His eyes flicked to Ghost. “No promises on that one, I suppose.”

“He only bites Lannisters,” I said. The joke didn’t land. It hadn’t been meant to. I could see the way their eyes narrowed, whatever happened had to do with the Lannister’s.

Like that was ever in question…

They led us up through the harbor and into the city. White Harbor felt alive, but not in the way of a bustling port. It was the life of something stirring underground. Smithies roared with fire. I saw wagons laden with fish and barley rolling inland. Boys were drilling in the square with wooden spears, shouting chants in rhythm. And every third doorway had a new banner hanging: some with the silver wolf of House Stark.

People watched us pass. They didn’t cheer. They didn’t spit either. Most just looked, long and hard, at the wolf by my side. One woman, older than the hills, knelt beside her bakery to sweep up ash. When she saw me, she froze. I saw her eyes flick to Ghost, then to my face. She nodded once, slow and solemn, like she was remembering someone long dead.

And then we crossed the Wolf’s Bridge.

The river below looked black in the light. The water was fast, strong, melting snow from the hills up north feeding its surge. I paused at the crest and looked out over the city. From here, White Harbor sprawled like a tired giant. Docks full, towers alert, streets too quiet.

Arren came up beside me, waiting.

I looked down at the direwolf stitched into my cloak. I’d worn it all my life. Even when I wasn’t allowed to. The mark of a name I hadn’t been born with, but had earned. Or stolen. Or both.

What will they do, I thought, when they find out what else I wear beneath it?

We passed beneath the gate of New Castle, flanked by towers of pale stone. Guards in Manderly green watched us with wary eyes. The gatehouse swallowed us whole, cold and close and smelling of damp stone. My footsteps echoed as we climbed the stair to the main hall.

At a narrow window slit, I paused again. Below, the city continued its quiet preparation. Wagons. Smoke. Banners.

This is what war looks like before the horns blow.

I rested a hand on the window’s edge, feeling the cold seep through the stone.

I turned my hand over and looked at my fingers, steady, gloved, calloused. They’d held steel, carved bone, signed orders. They’d broken and bled and burned. But the blood in them wasn’t the same anymore, was it?

Not just Stark. Not just Snow.

Would they follow a Targaryen in wolf’s clothing? Would they kneel to a name that once burned their castles and rode dragons over their fields? That burned their previous lord?

One truth at a time.

I let my hand fall and turned toward the hall. There were still allies to win. Questions to ask. Letters to write. Secrets to keep, for now. I had nothing to fear from Wyman.

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The hall of New Castle smelled of salt, old wood, and wax. It was quieter than I expected. No musicians, no courtiers gossiping in alcoves, no armored retainers clattering about. Just the long echo of our boots as we were led forward beneath vaulted beams and the faded banners of House Manderly. A lone fire crackled in the hearth. Everything else was stone and silence.

Lord Wyman Manderly was waiting for me.

He sat like a carved boulder in his high seat: immense, pale, his white beard spilling down his front like seafoam. His court had been dismissed save for one knight by the wall and a thin man in maester’s chains who kept glancing at me like I might draw a blade at any moment.

“Jon Stark,” Manderly said, his voice slow but solid, like a tide grinding down stone. “Or should I say… Jon Targaryen?”

I bowed low. “Stark will do, Lord Wyman.”

He studied me in silence. I could see the mind behind those eyes, sharp, weighing, measuring. Not fooled by titles or cloaks.

“You’ve come on dark wings,” he said at last. “And the ravens have brought darker words.”

He waved the knight and maester out, and only when the door had clicked shut did he speak again.

“Three days past, a raven reached us from King’s Landing. Black wing, red wax. The seal bore a golden lion, and the boy’s name scratched beneath it.”

“Joffrey Baratheon.”

“King Joffrey Baratheon.” He corrected me.

He nodded, lips pressing into a grim line. “It declared your father a traitor to the crown. Eddard Stark is accused of conspiring to place a Targaryen pretender on the Iron Throne. The raven calls it treason most foul, naming him oathbreaker, usurper, conspirator.”

He let the words hang, like ropes waiting to drop from gallows.

My breath caught in my throat.

“And my father?” I asked. My voice came out wrong. Rough. “Is he…?”

Manderly looked away for the first time. “There’s no clear word. Some say he confessed. Others claim he resisted. Whisper says he was cut down in the street like a common thief. No name signed that tale, but…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

I clenched my fists beneath the table. I wanted to shout, to rise, to curse the boy-king, to burn every castle in the south to ash. But I didn’t. I swallowed the fire. Rage would serve nothing now. Not until I knew more. Not until I had the pieces laid bare.

“What we do know is that blood flowed in Kings Landing, the letter spoke of Renly Baratheon attempting to coup the boy-king and failing miserably, fires could be seen all over the city.”

“And the rest?” I asked. “My siblings? Arya? Bran? Sansa?”

Manderly shook his head, slow and solemn. “No mention of them. The letter speaks only of Lord Eddard’s treachery. And of you.”

His eyes locked on mine. “It says the North must prove its loyalty. That Robb Stark must ride south, bend the knee, and deliver Jon Water’s head as proof of fealty.”

The silence that followed was not silence at all, it was thunder, drawn thin. I felt it in my ribs, in my teeth.

So that was their play.

They knew. Somehow, they knew who I was, or thought they did. A whisper had reached the court, slithered through Varys’ little birds or Littlefinger’s greasy fingers. Or perhaps Robert’s death had forced them to move before they meant to. Whatever the truth, it didn’t matter. The trap had been sprung.

“Any word on how King Robert died?”

“None, rumor I he was poisoned.”

I wondered how it had unfolded in King’s Landing. Renly had picked his moment well, too well. With the tourney still in motion and half the South’s young blood drunk or dreaming of glory, he’d had men in the city, bannermen and would-be champions with blades close to the Red Keep.

I imagined them swarming the gates in silks and gilded mail, convinced their cause would shine brighter than steel. But a coup is not won by pageantry. It is won by timing, ruthlessness, and the will to finish it before anyone knows it’s begun. If Renly hesitated, if his allies blinked then the Reachmen and Stormlanders would have found the halls of the Red Keep much colder than they expected. And if it failed... then Gods save them.

“They mean to use my name to break the North,” I said.

“Aye,” said Manderly. “A ghost they can blame. A dragon they can hunt.”

I stood slowly and walked toward the high window behind his seat. The sea beyond was gray, endless. Ghost stirred at my side but did not growl. Even he seemed subdued. I pressed my fingers to the cold glass.

“If I go south,” I said quietly, “they’ll kill me.”

“Aye.”

“If I stay here, they’ll march.”

“They already are, lad.”

I turned back toward him. “Do you believe what they say? That I am some pretender? Some false prince wrapped in dragon’s blood?”

Manderly’s great brow creased. “I believe this, you are Eddard Stark’s son in all but name. You speak like him. You carry the weight he did. But I also know the signs. The whispers. The beauty of Valyria in your face. The lean body. The violet glow in your eyes when the firelight catches it just so.”

He leaned forward, hands resting on the carved arms of his seat. “So speak the truth, Jon Stark. Are you what they fear?”

I didn’t answer for a long while.

Then I drew breath, and let the veil fall.

“My name is Daemon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar and Lyanna.” I said. “I was born in the shadow of Robert’s Rebellion, hidden in the North by Lord Eddard to protect my life. I carry the blood of the dragon, yes. But I am also of the wolf. And I swear to you, by both names, I will avenge my father, Eddard Stark and I will get back my siblings. With Fire and Blood, I will bring winter to them if they dared touch them.”

He closed his eyes for a beat. Then opened them again.

I met his gaze, firm and unflinching. “You want to know if I am a bastard born of rape. If I am the shame of two great houses tied together in sin.”

His jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

“I’m not,” I said. “That’s the truth. Or at least, the truth I was given.”

Manderly’s eyes narrowed, watching me, weighing every syllable.

“Lord Eddard told me,” I continued, voice even, “that Rhaegar and Lyanna were wed in secret. There were witnesses all dead now. Whether it was legal in the eyes of the Faith, I can’t say. But they were bound, not by force, but by choice. She loved him. What I do not know is why the realm never knew why they didn’t tell anyone.”

I had a guess.

It wasn’t the tale I would tell the world, not even to Manderly. It wasn’t clean enough. Not sharp like a sword, not holy like prophecy. But it felt true in my bones.

It had started when they ran. Lyanna, wild and fierce and young, fleeing a marriage to the man she saw as a drunken brute she could never stomach. And Rhaegar, Rhaegar who sang of destiny and doom, chasing ghosts in books, convinced he was born to save the world, idiot. Maybe he loved her. Maybe he just needed her. A wolf to breed with his dragon blood, to craft the child the stars had promised.

They married, I think. But then Aerys lost what little sanity he had left. He burned the Starks and summoned the storm. My uncle died screaming, and war fell like fire. And in the ashes, Lyanna must have seen what she had lost, her brother, her father.

She wanted to go back. Of that I was sure. It didn’t make sense any other way.

But Rhaegar… Rhaegar wouldn’t let her. Because she was part of the prophecy now. A piece of his grand pattern. That’s what I believe. The only other way it works is if they did send ravens of their marriage, of her safety, of the truth. But why didn’t even one reach its destination?

But it’s not the truth I speak aloud. Because no one follows a bastard born of tragedy and failure. No one kneels to a broken love story.

“Truth. At last.” He did not smile. “You’ve placed me in a hard place, Prince Daemon. Or Jon. Or both. The Manderlys have long memories, and longer ledgers. We bent the knee to Aegon once. We lost sons under his banners and under yours. Now the lions ask for your head.”

“I will not force you to choose, my lord,” I said. “But when you do, know this, I will never kneel to Joffrey Baratheon. And I will not let the North bleed for lies. My uncle hid my identity for fear of my life and rightly so apparently.”

Wyman Manderly sighed, a sound like the sea grinding over rock.

Manderly did not speak for a time. He watched me the way an old mariner watches the sea before a storm, silently, heavily, as if waiting for something ancient to stir in the depths. Then he leaned back into his seat, the old wood creaking beneath the weight of him, and asked the question I knew would come. I let the silence breathe a little longer, and then gave the rest.

“If what you say is true then the war…” he murmured. “The war was built on a lie, at least that part of it…”

I nodded. “Yes, Aerys was a monster that needed to be deposed, but my father wasn’t. Tens of thousands dead. Houses burned. Oaths broken. All because of a tale spun by those who hated dragons.”

He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer under his breath.

Then, with a slow, almost ceremonial gesture, he reached for the silver bell on the side table and rang once. A servant entered, a silent girl with downcast eyes. Manderly simply said: “Northern Fire.”

She returned a moment later with a dark bottle of northern whiskey and two thick glasses. Manderly poured for us both and passed one across the table.

“To gods and ghosts,” he said, raising his. “And to truth, late though it comes.”

We drank.

The fire ran down my throat like molten gold, but I didn’t cough. Neither did he.

“If the South knew…” he said hoarsely, staring into the flames. “If the North knew…”

“They will,” I said. “But not yet. I’ll speak the truth in full before the Northern lords, and none before. The tale is too dangerous in half-truths. It must be whole, and it must be mine to tell, Lord Manderly.”

He looked at me, long and searching. Then he gave a slow, deliberate nod.

“My House remembers,” he said, voice roughened with something old. “We remember oaths. We remember Aegon the Conqueror and Torrhen Stark on his knees. We remember the dragons who spared us, and the wolves who kept us strong. And we remember Eddard Stark, we remenmber everything you have done for our house and for the North.”

He reached into the folds of his robes and withdrew a small iron blade. I stiffened, until I saw what he was doing. He pricked his thumb, let three drops fall into the fire, and murmured something in the old tongue of White Harbor.

“I swear by salt and smoke, by sea and stone,” he said, “that your truth is safe in me. I believe your words, Jon Stark… Daemon Targaryen, if you prefer. But I see Stark in you. That’s all I need, My Prince.”

I nodded. “Thank you, my lord.”

One down, a whole realm to go…

Manderly wiped his thumb on a cloth and grunted. “No need for thanks. Only for caution. The game now moves faster than any of us like. The ravens will fly and so will the lies. But you… you must fly truer still.”

“I am in need of your rookery to send a few letters.”

He stood slowly, massive and deliberate, and crossed to the table where a carved map of the North was laid out. His finger traced the White Knife.

“You can use them as you will, My Prince. You’ll need to head upriver soon,” he said. “Robb’s called the banners. Winterfell fills with spears. He’s raised his standard.”

A quiet thrill surged through my chest. Robb. Marching. The direwolf rides.

“Will you ride with him?” I asked.

He smiled grimly. “I am no warrior. I will see to White Harbor. But I will go to Winterfell with you.”

He turned back toward me and raised his glass once more.

“In the eyes of guests, you are under my protection. And in the eyes of gods, you now have safe passage under my roof and from my harbor. You’ll leave when you must, and not a moment before.”

I stood, heart heavier than when I’d entered, but steadier, too. I had spoken the truth at last, and the world hadn’t shattered. Not yet.

"Thank you, Lord Manderly. I’ll not forget this.”

“I am just repaying what you have already given.” he said, with a wry look. “But before you go chasing dragons or thrones… have a second glass. The night is long, and the storm hasn’t yet broken.”

I sat back down.

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White Harbor’s winds carried a chill that clung even beneath my cloak. I stood at the quay before dawn, watching the longboat bob in the tide. Sleek, narrow, and fast, she had been fitted with both sail and oars, and Manderly had outfitted her with a dozen picked men, loyal to House Stark, and silent as snow.

I had considered riding for Winterfell. The wolf in me ached for the sight of her towers, the scent of her godswood, the sound of the wind through her battlements. But the roads were treacherous and slow. The White Knife, at least, was swift and clean, its icy waters carry me north under the veil of trees and mist.

I had letters to send before I left. Manderly’s master helped me prepare the ravens. Not Theomore Lannister anymore, the poor man had fallen of the stairs apparently. And big cities and holds like White Harbor had more than one maester as replacement.

The first was for Robb.

Brother,
Ride no farther south. The game is not yet set, and the pieces are still moving. I swear to you, by ice and fire both, that I will come to Winterfell with truth in my mouth and a sword in my hand. Wait for me.
—Jon

I didn’t write anything else. I would meet Robb as his brother first. As the man I had always been, before I revealed anything else. Keeping the truth to myself all this years seemed so dumb right now. I should have confronted father, or told Robb directly, now I had to live with the consequences of my actions.

The second raven I penned with slower hand. The ink nearly froze on the quill as I paused again and again.

Lord Reed,
I do not know what you remember, nor what you fear. But I need you now. The truth you witnessed long ago must stand beside me once more. Bring your strength to Moat Cailin and come to Winterfell yourself. If ever you owed Eddard Stark a debt, I ask it now, not for myself, but for the North.
—Lyanna’s Son.

He would know who wrote it. He had been there when I was born. He had fought beside my father—uncle—and had kept secrets longer than I had lived. If anyone in this world could bridge the past to the present, it was Howland Reed.

I also sent the letters I’d written days before, orders to Ser Cort at Moat Cailin to increase recruitment, and to Samwell, asking him and Seren to continue strengthening the defenses for the war that was now unavoidable and preparing logistics.

When the ravens had flown, I left the castle and climbed the narrow stair to New Castle’s godswood. Manderly had it kept well even if he didn’t worship it: a high stone wall, ivy-clad; a pool fed by the river; and at the heart of it, a gnarled weirwood with bleeding eyes.

I stood before it for a long time.

I didn’t know if Ned was dead. I didn’t know what had become of Arya, or Sansa, or little Bran. But if they needed Robb to come south, then he may well be beneath the ground, or… not beneath it at all.

The old gods take their dead in strange ways. I didn’t worship them, not truly, but I recognized their powers.

Maybe they had taken him into the trees.

Maybe he watched me now through these eyes.

Maybe he always had.

I knelt before the heart tree, and the cold of the ground seeped through my boots and into my bones.

“I don’t know if you’re in there,” I whispered, “but I hope you are.”

My voice caught.

“You raised me as a wolf. You never told me what I was… and I don’t hate you for it. I understand now. You kept your oath to my mother. You kept me safe. You gave me your name, your home, your trust. I would have died without it.”

A wind stirred the leaves above. They rustled like old paper. My breath clouded before me. The river lapped softly behind the wall. All sound stopped.

“I know you didn’t want this, but I will do what I must do. I will return to Winterfell… but not as the boy you raised.”

I bowed my head and let the words come from a place deeper than thought.

“You raised me as a wolf,” I whispered. “But I will return as both wolf and dragon. I will return as Daemon Targaryen.”

The tree watched me, silent and still. I waited for something, a flicker of vision, a word in the wind, a sign.

There was nothing. Just unnatural silence.

The pulse of my own heart, and the long breath of winter coming through the leaves.

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The White Knife cut a silver path through the heart of the North, cold and winding, hemmed in by pine and snow. Our longship, lean and quiet, moved upstream with the current fighting us at every bend. Behind us followed two Manderly boats, slower, heavier, but well-armed and loyal.

We left White Harbor just after sunrise. The docks had been near silent, save for the gulls and the creaking of timbers. Lord Wyman was coming in one of the other boats, his heir and granddaughters with him, wrapped in furs and shadowed by his guards, a giant ghost of a man fading in the morning mist.

Now, as the sun dipped low behind the forested hills, our ship drifted into a valley of pale trees and black water. Smoke rose from distant chimneys in tight, silent villages nestled against the riverbank. No one came to greet us. No flags waved. Only wary eyes glinted from behind shutters, watching the black sails trimmed with white.

They saw the direwolf on our cloaks and wondered, is it true?

I stood at the prow beneath the stars, my hands gloved but still cold against the damp wood. The burden sat heavier than the steel at my hip. Rhaegar Targaryen’s blood pulsed in my veins, so they said. So the truth claimed. And yet it was not his face I saw when I closed my eyes. Not his voice I remembered teaching me how to ride, how to sit a horse, how to kneel in the godswood and whisper my fears.

That was Ned Stark.

The man who raised me. The only father I still remember.

Rhaegar may have given me life, but Eddard gave me purpose.

And now I bore the weight of both.

That night, Arren joined me near the stern, wrapped in a dark wool cloak. Ghost stirred at my side as he approached, ears twitching, but made no sound.

I leaned against the railing, hood down, cheeks stung pink by cold. Arren came up beside me with two tin cups, one already steaming.

“Mulled wine,” he said, handing one over. “Or what passes for it when your cook is a one-eyed Myrman with no tongue.”

I took a sip, then grimaced. “Tastes like someone boiled piss in vinegar and lied about it.”

Arren raised his cup. “To lies, then. May ours be cleverer than most.”

We drank in silence for a while, the river murmuring beneath us.

Then he glanced at me sidelong. “Do you remember that week in Long Lake? The one where we nearly starved because you insisted on counting every bushel of grain by hand?”

I gave him a dry look. “We were missing thirty-five sacks, Arren.”

“You were missing thirty-five sacks. I was missing the feeling in my fingers and a week’s sleep.”

“You were also missing how the headman’s cousin kept sneaking into the granary at night.”

“Oh, I remember. You had me stake out the damn barn like a crow on a chimney.”

“You got your first kiss that week, didn’t you?”

Arren groaned. “Don’t remind me. Seren tasted like turnip stew.”

I laughed, a short, genuine sound that startled even me.

“We were so fucking drunk,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. “Seren said you had kind eyes. Like a tired goat’s.”

“Oh, Gods save me,” he muttered. “You still have that drawing he made?”

“Of you? With the big shoulders and the smaller-than-life nose?”

“That’s the one.”

“I burned it. Out of mercy.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Do you ever miss it? The road? The lists? The endless letters? All those old keeps falling apart while we tried to hold them together with parchment and stubbornness? Just the three of us against the world…”

I sipped the wine again and let the warmth sit in my chest.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I do.”

Arren looked surprised. “Truly?”

“I miss the work. The clarity. One problem at a time, feed this village, reinforce that holdfast, put out this fire, rebuild that roof, make three tons of steel for White Harbor. No thrones, no kings. Just honest tasks.”

He nodded. “And I miss Blacksmith Arren.”

I snorted. “You were terrible.”

“I was dedicated,” he corrected. “I swung that hammer like a knight swings a sword. Even made my own belt buckle.” He made a pose, like a knight defeating a dragon.

“That snapped in half the first time you sneezed.”

“It was symbolic.”

“Of what? Poor metallurgy?”

We chuckled, both leaning against the railing now, watching the banks drift by like memories.

“Those days,” Arren said after a pause, “I didn’t usderstand half of what you did. I just thought you were some brooding bastard with a taste for ledgers and steel.”

“And now?”

“Now I know you’re a brooding prince with a taste for ledgers and steel. But still the same stubborn mule underneath.” He smiled. “You never stopped being a draming engineer, Jon. You just learned to wear more armor.”

I glanced down at the cup in my hands, then out toward the horizon where the stars met the pines.

“Arren… Thank you…”

“You were brooding too much, m’lord. You needed a good shake.”

I smiled at him, one of my truest friends.

“I’ll need you again,” I said softly. “Sooner than I like. Robb will have war on his hands, and Winterfell will need order. Records. Plans. Gods help me, even more grain.”

Arren raised his mug. “Then you’ll have me, the Logistics Corp will see no man like me. Secretary, hammerman, goat-eyed diplomat, whatever you need.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Just don’t make another belt buckle.”

“No promises.”

The river kept moving.

So did we.

Later, I sat alone in the cabin, writing again by candlelight. Not letters now, but thoughts. Reflections. There were too many for one page.

A part of me feared the truth I carried would shatter everything. That the Northern lords would not follow a Targaryen, no matter how many wolves raised him. That Robb would see betrayal, not brotherhood. That men like the Boltons and Karstarks would turn like leaves in the wind if they scented fire in my blood.

But another part knew the North remembers. And the North watches. It would see not just what I was, but what I’d done. What I meant to do.

Outside, the trees whispered with the wind, and the moonlight rippled on the water.

Winterfell awaited.

And so the river bore us north, toward a home now crowned with banners and war. Beneath my feet, the water flowed red in the moonlight, as if it already knew what was coming.


AN: Next chapter - Interlude 4 Jaime Lannister. 

Notes:

If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 20: Interlude 4 — The Lion’s Reflection

Interlude 4 — The Lion’s Reflection

 

 

POV: Jaime Lannister

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The bastard…

Jaime leaned against a marble pillar, one boot crossed over the other, watching the sparring yard below through half-lidded eyes. He circled his opponent, some green boys in northern colors, with lazy, coiled grace. Not northern brute strength, not the dull caution of a castle-born squire. No. This was… poised. Measured. Dangerous.

“Too good for a Snow,” Jaime muttered to himself.

The boy parried a low strike, then pivoted, catching the knight on the shoulder with the flat of his blade. A clean, efficient hit. Final. The other man yielded, red-faced and panting.

Jon gave a shallow nod, then stepped back, sword still in hand, posture as straight as a tower’s spine. No triumph. No grin. Just calm. Controlled.

Jaime sipped his watered wine. It tasted like dust.

He had seen the bastard before, of course, at feasts, passing in the training yard. The bastard of Winterfell. Ned Stark’s cold afterthought. Now legitimized by some twist of Baratheon folly, standing tall in a world that should have spat him out like gristle. And yet… he thrived. No, commanded. Quietly. Always quietly.

There were no boasts, no bawdy tales, none of the howling wolf pride he expected from a Stark boy. Just observation. Strategy. Thought.

And those eyes. Gods, those eyes. Purple, unlike the dull gray of the North. These were deeper, older. Like still water over a long memory. Like someone who had lived too many lives already.

He’d seen them once before.

Jaime shook the thought away. Foolishness. Ghosts.

Still, the boy haunted him.

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Later that day, in the Queen’s chamber, Cersei had asked a passing question about the Northmen. Jaime had offered a shrug and a joke about wolves. She laughed, brittle and beautiful, then went back to her book. But he kept thinking of Jon.

He remembered a feast not long past. The boy had stood beside Ned Stark, dressed simply, yet carrying himself like he wore rubies on his chest. He’d spoken little, but when he did, the room listened from curiosity. And when Jaime had offered a barbed comment, the boy hadn’t flinched or fumbled or puffed up like most boys his age.

He had simply looked at him with quiet, unbothered assessment. Like a man measuring stone for a castle wall.

Just like Rhaegar used to.

Jaime scowled at the memory. Damn it. He hadn’t thought of Rhaegar in years.

But now he couldn’t stop.

This cold is fucking with my mind…

The way Jon moved, centered, elegant, sparing in motion but devastating in effect. The way he stood, weight evenly spread, chin tilted but never bowed. The way he spoke, always choosing his words carefully, always poetic, when the words came, they cut clean as Valyrian steel.

“Who is this boy?” Jaime asked aloud, though no one answered. “Why do I feel like I’ve seen a ghost?”

But now there was Jon Snow, no longer Snow, cutting down knights with a borrowed blade and speaking like a king in exile.

And for the first time in years, Jaime Lannister felt the sharp edge of something he hated.

Uncertainty.

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King’s Landing stank worse after absence.

The air was thick with rot and roses, piss and perfume, and beneath it all, the rot of lies left too long in the sun. Jaime dismounted at the gates of the Red Keep two days prior and had felt that familiar sense of things being just a little worse than before. The new Hand had been installed and the court had swallowed him like soup. The king was still a puppet. The strings were only knotted differently now.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was that he was home. Back in the only place he hated less than anywhere else.

Back where Cersei was. They couldn’t do anything while on the road. And it had taken them moons to reach the capital.

He’d spent too many nights on hard cots dreaming of her skin, Jaime wasn’t used to being denied. Especially not by her.

So he walked the gardens alone that evening, letting his boots crunch gravel and his thoughts twist like ivy. The shadows were long. The courtiers had retreated. The only sound was the gentle hiss of wind through lemon trees and the sigh of stone remembering the sun.

And then, soft as a whisper between silks: “Ser Jaime.”

Gods save me.

He turned, and there stood Varys, robed in lavender, hands folded like a prayer, his bald head gleaming faintly in the last light. Always appearing when least wanted, like guilt or rats.

“Spider,” Jaime said flatly. “Out for a spin?”

Varys smiled with that maddening calm. “Merely enjoying the evening air. I find twilight the most honest hour, don’t you?”

“No,” Jaime replied. “I prefer daylight. You can see who’s stabbing you.”

The eunuch chuckled. “Ah, but you’ve always preferred steel to silk, haven’t you?”

Jaime didn’t answer. He didn’t like it when Varys started with flattery. It meant something worse was coming.

They walked a few paces in silence. Lemon trees stirred above. Varys plucked a leaf and examined it like a maester reading a raven’s wing.

“I heard your journey north was fruitful,” he said.

Jaime shrugged. “A parade of treaties and petty squabbles. Half the lords wanted gold, the other half wanted to murder each other. The usual.”

“And the new Hand?”

Jaime’s lip curled. “He’ll do. He listens, at least. Too many in this city think they’re kings just because they sit near one.”

“Ah.” Varys made a gentle noise of amusement. “Power attracts flatterers the way corpses draw flies. One must be careful not to let either rot too long.”

Jaime turned toward him, expression unreadable. “Speaking of rot... how’s the Small Council these days?”

Varys smiled like a man stepping over a pit. “No worse than under the last king we served.”

For a moment, they stood still, only the faint chirp of crickets and the hush of the breeze between them.

Jaime’s hand flexed. “That king,” he said, “was mad.”

“He was,” Varys agreed. “But not always.”

Jaime gave a short, humorless laugh. “A man defending a pyromancer’s cookbook.”

“Only a man who remembers. You were close to him, after all.”

“Close enough to shove a sword through his back.”

“And yet you stayed beside him for a year.”

Jaime’s eyes narrowed. He had lost that exchange, the spider was always tricky.

Varys didn’t press, he simply turned, and began walking again, hands folded into one another. “I’ve always wondered,” he said lightly, “what Aerys saw when he looked at you. Did he see a knight? A threat? A mirror?”

“I don’t care what he saw.” Jaime’s voice was sharp. “He was a monster.”

“Some say monsters come from grief,” Varys mused. “Others say they’re born screaming.”

“You trying to flatter me or bait me, Spider?”

“Neither.” Varys looked at him, calm as a still pool. “I only wonder. If Aerys had been stopped sooner… perhaps the realm would be different.”

“He was stopped.”

“Yes,” Varys said. “But not before the realm burned died. Not before the princes’ children died.”

A slower breath passed through Jaime’s lips. He looked away.

Varys’s tone softened. “You were close to him too, weren’t you?”

“I was sworn to him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Jaime didn’t answer right away. He remembered the prince he met at Harrenhal. The man he had admired since he was a boy.

Rhaegar had been many things. Strange, solemn, thoughtful. Sometimes cold. But he had never been cruel. And when he looked at people, he saw them, even Jaime, even then.

“He was… kind,” Jaime said. The word felt strange on his tongue. “He made you feel like you mattered. Like your life meant something.”

“Rare in a prince,” Varys said. “Rarer still in a king.”

“He died,” Jaime said bluntly. “Whatever he believed, it didn’t save him.”

“No,” Varys murmured. “Ghosts linger longer than we expect. Especially when the realm forgets to bury them properly.”

With that, the Spider bowed, just a slight incline of the head, and began gliding away, silent as fog. Just one more strange talk, prodding each other until they got tired.

Jaime remained rooted.

Ghost. Forget to bury.

Something inside him shifted, a tension long dormant, flaring with each piece that clicked into place.

Jon Snow. The eyes. The poise. The silence around his birth.

Rhaegar.

It fits. Gods, it all fits.

His pulse quickened. The gravel at his feet seemed to crack louder beneath his heel.

Jon Snow. Or not Snow at all.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, but when he finally moved, it was without swagger. Without smirk. His jaw clenched. His thoughts sharp and scattered like broken steel.

If it was true… then everything had changed.

And the realm didn’t even know it..

No.

The Trident.

Rhaegar dying.

Lyanna screaming.

And Ned Stark’s silence for fifteen long years.

Jaime’s eyes widened.

“No,” he whispered.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jaime stood before the mirror in his chambers, shirt unlaced. The city lay asleep beyond the windows, but his thoughts churned like storm-tossed waters.

Jon Snow. Jon Stark. Rhaegar’s son.

If it’s true.

He’d turned the words over a hundred times since Varys spoke them, or rather, didn’t.

But why does it fit? That was the part that gnawed at him.

The boy’s stance, the precision with a blade, the haunted eyes. The way people looked at him and didn’t quite know why they stepped aside. Rhaegar had had that too, the calm before fire.

And Jon Snow…, if that was his name… he was no Stark bastard. Not truly. No bastard at all, if Rhaegar had wed Lyanna.

Which meant… he had a claim. A strong one.

Seven hells.

Jaime dragged a hand down his face and sank onto the bed. Did he tell the king? Did he tell Cersei? Was it even his to tell? If the truth got out—

No. Not yet. Not without proof. Not when everything could burn.

Still, the unease remained, like a sword half-drawn.

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He didn’t expect to find her awake.

Days had passed since his talk with Varys. Jaime had busied himself with patrols and training, avoiding court, avoiding questions. But on this evening, long after the torches had been lit and the nobles’ laughter faded into their wine, he climbed the steps to her solar on instinct.

Cersei’s voice reached him before he reached the door. Low. Clipped. Cold.

“—he’s digging where he shouldn’t, his bastards are best left forgotten.”

Another voice replied. Smooth. Too smooth. Baelish.

“I merely offer advice, my Queen. The Lord of Winterfell plays the game, whether he admits it or not.”

Jaime halted just beyond the archway, cloaked in shadow. The door was cracked just wide enough.

“Advice or veiled threats?” Cersei asked.

Littlefinger chuckled. “Merely observations. Lord Stark has taken a curious interest in the king’s bastards. One might wonder… is it paternity that concerns him? Or succession?”

There was a silence so long it made Jaime’s skin crawl.

Jaime stepped in.

Baelish turned with the calm poise of a man who always expected to be caught. “Ser Jaime.”

“Lord Baelish.” Jaime’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Is there a reason you’re speaking to the Queen in the dark like a thief?”

“Only ensuring the peace of the realm,” Baelish said, with an exaggerated bow. “Though I’ll leave you to your peace now.”

He left with a rustle of fine cloth and that same smirk, the one that made Jaime want to plant a gauntlet in his teeth.

Cersei waited until the door clicked shut. Then: “How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” Jaime said.

She turned back to the fire, arms folded. “Ned Stark’s grown too bold. I warned Robert, but he listens with his cock and thinks with northern fire.”

Jaime leaned on the table. “And what exactly are you planning?”

“Nothing… yet.” Her tone was wary. “But if Stark uncovers—” She stopped, lips pursed. “We need leverage, Jaime. Something that cuts deeper than whispers.”

His jaw tightened. She was watching him now, with those green eyes that had once held everything he wanted, power, love, possession. They didn’t comfort him now. They cornered him.

“Tell me,” She said. “You have something in our mind.” She always knew.

He shouldn’t tell her.

Gods, he knows he shouldn’t.

It isn’t his secret to share. It isn't even a secret he asked to carry. He hadn’t sought out truth, hadn’t dug through old ghosts or followed whispers. But now it sat in his mind like a splinter of glass, glinting every time he closed his eyes, and every time he looked at her.

And she was looking now.

That look. That damnable look that made his pulse slow and his reason scatter. The one that had always undone him, ever since they were children playing at royalty in the shadows of Casterly Rock. She wielded it now like a knife, and he could already feel it carving through the resolve he barely had.

He tried. Truly, he did. He paced the floor of his chambers for days. He held the truth in his chest like a drawn breath, refusing to exhale. He told himself it didn’t matter. Let the bastard be what he is. Let Ned Stark play his games and Robert drink himself into a grave. What difference did a name make?

But the question kept rising: what if it mattered more than anything?

And now Cersei wanted leverage. She always wanted leverage. She asked with velvet words and hard eyes. She pressed him, gently at first, then with the quiet, cruel precision she knew how to use so well. Her voice wrapped around his thoughts like silk and wire.

He could lie.

He should lie.

But he’d never lied to her. Not really. Not when it counted.

Every time she leaned close, every time she needed him, he broke. Every fucking time. Because some part of him, however rusted and bent, still wanted her to look at him like he was her sword and shield. Still wanted to be worthy in her eyes, even knowing how often she made him feel unworthy.

So when she asked again, voice low and expectant, Jaime Lannister, oathbreaker, kingslayer, brother, lover, fool, finally opened his mouth.

He hesitated. Don’t say it. Don’t give her this.

But the pressure boiled over. The fear. The implications. The weight of it all, the threads tightening around his neck. He needed someone else to carry it, even if just for a moment.

So he said it.

“Jon Snow isn’t Ned Stark’s bastard.”

Her brow arched. “What?”

Jaime’s throat felt dry. “He’s… Rhaegar’s. Rhaegar and Lyanna’s. I don’t know how, but… it fits. Gods help me, it fits.”

Cersei’s face didn’t change. Not at first.

Then she went utterly still. Like a viper between breaths.

“You’re sure?” she asked, softly.

“No.” Jaime’s voice was barely a whisper. “But I can feel it. In my bones. And if it’s true… then he’s not just a threat to Stark. All those rumors about Ashara Dayne must be false.”

She stared into the fire.

“A Targaryen boy,” she murmured. “Hidden in the North all these years. Right under our noses. A bastard Targaryen?”

He nodded once.

And then she laughed. Cold and short.

“Oh, Jaime,” she said, rising.

“I—”

“This is our dagger!” she hissed. “One sharper than any sword. If Robert finds out—”

“He’ll kill the boy.”

She smiled, slow and vicious. “Of course he will. And Stark will be done for in court.”

Jaime stepped back, stomach twisting. “I didn’t tell you so you could kill him—”

“You think he’ll let a Targaryen heir live?” she snapped. “He hunted down Viserys and Daenerys for less. The boy has power in the North.”

“I told you because it matters. Because it’s dangerous—”

“Exactly,” she said, voice like frost. “And now we know where to aim.”

Jaime felt it then, the regret, thick and rising. Like bile.

He turned away, fist clenched. What have I done?

And behind him, Cersei poured herself a goblet of wine, already thinking ahead, already plotting.

The Game was moving again.

And Jaime had just pushed the next piece across the board.

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The court was quieter than usual.

No trumpets, no crier. Just a low murmur, spreading through the Red Keep like smoke, until even the gilded fools of the small council wore drawn expressions and clutched their cups a little tighter.

King Robert was dead.

A heart attack, they said. Sudden. Tragic. A man of excess, cut down by his appetites. He died eating, they said, grunting his last over a boar and a wineskin.

Jaime didn’t believe it for a second, not after she had told him about her conversation with Stark. The idiot Northman had warned her he knew about the children and told her to leave the city. How he had managed to follow the crumbs Arryn had left behind Jaime didn’t know.

He knows, and he just told her… idiot.

Now Stark was running around the city with Baelish looking for proof Robert’s children weren’t his, Jaime didn’t doubt Cersei would have him arrested any minute now. The bells hadn’t tolled, it had been half a day and the city didn’t know the king was dead.

He watched Cersei glide through the throne room in a gown black as pitch, her shoulders bare, her chin lifted high, her children flanking her like golden ornaments. The room bowed. Some wept. Jaime only stared.

She was not mourning. She was waiting.

She took her seat beside the Iron Throne with such fluid confidence that the hush turned to awe. The queen regent. Widow. Mother. Ruler.

And killer.

Of course she hadn’t wielded the blade herself. That wasn’t her style. No, she’d whispered in someone’s ear, perhaps the steward who filled Robert’s cup. Perhaps Varys himself, that spider with silk for veins. It didn’t matter. The king was dead, and Cersei’s fingers were already closing around the crown.

Jaime said nothing.

He never did.

But he could see it.

The false grief. The too-perfect silence around her lips when the lords of court offered their condolences. The flicker of calculation in her green eyes every time someone looked away. She had planned this. Maybe not down to the hour, but close enough to taste it. And he—he—had helped set the stage.

Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Because he still couldn’t say no to her.

The bells rung telling the world about the Kings death and the ascension of another.

And then came the word that there were battles all over the city. And Lancel came running with word that men were batting down the Red Keep’s gates.

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The Red Keep was burning with the fury of battle. Steel rang through the winding stone halls, and blood pooled between the ancient flagstones. Jaime Lannister moved like a specter through the chaos, his golden armor dulled by grime and splashed crimson. The Stormlander’s were storming the Red Keep.

“Lannister!” someone shouted. “Kingslayer!”

Jaime turned just in time to parry the descending blade. A Stormlander knight, his green surcoat slashed with the sigil of House Penrose, drove forward with a ferocity born of fear. Jaime sidestepped, twisted the man’s sword arm, and drove a mailed fist into his jaw. The knight crumpled. Another came, and another after that. Jaime’s blade moved with grim purpose. He’d stopped naming the men he cut down. This wasn’t a duel. It was butchery.

These were loyalists to Renly’s dream, or perhaps just men who hated Lannisters. Regardless, they were fools. No one stormed the Red Keep without paying the price.

He caught sight of the man he sought just ahead, near the queen’s solar, Ser Loras Tyrell, helm off, curls matted with sweat, sword in hand and murder in his eyes.

“Kingslayer,” Loras spat, voice hoarse. “Let down our sword, knell to King Renly.”

“Like you kneel before him? No thank you,” Jaime said flatly, eyes locked with his. “How do you plan to explain to the kingdom of your little coup?”

“Joffrey is unfit,” Loras snarled, stepping forward. “Renly will bring a golden reign.”

Jaime didn’t answer. There was no room for words anymore.

They are fucking delusional.

The Rose Knight struck first. A flurry of fast, elegant blows that rang against Jaime’s guard. The boy was fast, faster than Jaime had expected, and stronger too. His blade danced like sunlight off water, and Jaime could see why half the court had once swooned at the sight of him. But war was no tourney, and Jaime had learned long ago that speed and style didn’t matter when your opponent fought to kill.

Jaime caught Loras’s sword on the flat of his own and shoved forward, using his full weight to push the younger man off-balance. Loras staggered but recovered, circling left, trying to find an opening.

Their swords flashed and clashed with each other. It was a duel worthy of song, it was sad few saw it.

More shouts echoed down the corridor, Stormlander men flooding in behind Loras, while Lannister guards fought to hold them off. Steel clashed, screams rose. Jaime blocked it out. The world had narrowed to one thing: the knight in front of him, he didn’t even notice Ser Preston Greenfield being stabbed to death a few paces from him.

He twisted, feinted low, then came high, but Jaime had seen it before. He stepped inside the arc, caught Loras’s arm, and slammed his pommel into the side of the younger knight’s head. Loras grunted, staggered back, bleeding from the temple.

But he didn’t yield.

He screamed and charged.

Jaime met him head-on, and this time he didn’t hold back. Their blades sang in fury, slicing air and biting steel. Loras struck at his shoulder, Jaime turned it. Jaime slashed low, Loras parried. The clash continued, brutal and breathless, until finally Jaime caught the boy’s blade in a bind and twisted. Loras faltered, just a step, just a heartbeat, but it was enough.

Jaime’s blade slid beneath the younger man’s guard and drove deep through mail and flesh, into the gut.

Loras gasped, eyes wide. He looked down, saw the black blade slick with red, and tried to speak. Only blood came out.

Jaime held him as he fell, easing him to the stone. He knelt there a moment, breath coming in shallow gasps. Loras’s hand scrabbled at Jaime’s wrist, weak, trembling, and then went still.

“Dumb boy…”

Behind him, the last of the Stormlanders were falling back or dying. The Lannister guards surged forward, finishing the fight. The hallway stank of sweat, steel, and fresh death.

“Tyrell is down!” one of the guards called.

Jaime rose slowly, blood dripping from his sword, and looked down at the boy’s body. A lion killing a rose. Was there ever any other ending?

His arm ached. His heart ached more.

He turned from the body and walked away.

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The fire crackled in the hearth, casting long shadows across the stone walls of the White Sword Tower. Jaime sat alone, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, still bloodied from the fight. The armor on his chest felt heavier than it ever had in war.

He hadn’t taken it off. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since the screaming stopped.

The blood was still drying on the steps outside Maegor’s Holdfast. Young knights from the Reach, boys with fine-braided hair and polished steel, now lay in pieces across the tiled floors. The white cloaks of his brothers had been stained red in the chaos. So had his own.

Loras Tyrell had died quickly, which was more than most of them got. The boy had been brave, foolishly brave, headstrong and mad with love for a man who thought charisma could bend the world to his will.

Jaime had almost admired him, right until the boy had tried to put a sword through his ribs. It had ended with a sword buried in Loras’ gut. Jaime remembered the look in his eyes when it happened, shock, more than pain. As if he’d never imagined it could happen to him. As if his beautiful story could only end in triumph.

He stood, crossing to the window. From there, he could see the still burning fires all over the city, it was chaos even if it was over now.

The coup had failed before it began. Renly hadn’t had the numbers. He hadn’t had the patience. It was a shame he had escaped with his life from the city after hearing of the failed assault on the Red Keep.

He must have learnt Robert was dead and carried the assault. But how?

The following day, the city was full of corpses.

By nightfall, the truth came out.

Some said Stark had tried to flee Kings Landing, doubtful given his daughters were still in the castle, some said that he was just walking the streets of the city. He had a few gold cloaks with him, and Northmen. Some said he made it as far as the Street of Steel before they caught him. Others said it was a trap from the start and the Gold Cloaks stabbed his back.

What was known, what Jaime saw, was the trail of blood left in the gutters the next morning. Jaime had hated him for that once. For giving him is moniker.  Now he just felt tired.

It ran from a cobbled alley down into a storm drain. A long smear, drying at the edges, still tacky in the center. There were three broken spears left in a pile and a sword blade snapped in half, still stained red. A child was poking it with a stick. Jaime had hated him for that once. For giving him is moniker.  Now he just felt tired.

They'd put the Tower of the Hand to the torch after Stark's death. No trial, no mourners. Just ash and blood and silence. The guards found only two girls alive, the younger screaming and half-feral, the elder stone-faced and silent. Everyone else had been butchered in the purge. Stark's men. His scribes. The squire who’d brought him his armor.

All dead.

And yet a wolf had slipped through the net. The boy, Bran, had vanished. The old knight, Barristan Selmy, gone too. No body. No trail. Just an empty white cloak on the streets and a hole in the line of kingsguard.

And now I am Lord Commander.

Jaime stood there for a long time, silent, cloak pulled tight against the wind.

All for this, a Lord Paramount murdered in the street, the son of another dead by his hand, a crown on the head of his secret son, and a secret that had only ever led to more death.

He leaned forward, staring into the fire.

He could have stayed quiet.

He could have said nothing. Let Cersei keep playing her little games. Let Stark march to his fate without ever speaking a word. Let Jon Stark—Targaryen—remain a mystery wrapped in bastardy, far beyond the capital’s reach.

But no. He’d opened his dumb mouth. He’d told her. Just a few cursed words, spilled in the dark like blood on the cobblestones. And now the boy’s uncle was dead. Murdered in the streets like a common criminal.

He took a breath and let it out slowly, jaw clenched.

Jon had Rhaegar’s eyes. Jaime saw it clearly now. That calm, focused presence. That strange stillness in a fight. That knowing. Gods, even the way he stood. The boy had looked right through him in the training yard, as if Jaime were the one being measured. As if he were the one with something to prove.

Even Stannis wanted to claim the head of the boy now, how he knew Jaime had no idea, Stannis had declared himself king too damn fast, even before news from the capital could have reached him. A day after Robert was dead and word had arrived of Stannis calling his banners and closing the gullet, like he had known it would happen.

He rose, slow and stiff, and crossed the room to where his sword leaned against the wall. He drew it free of the scabbard and held it in the firelight.

The Kingslayer.

The villain in every tale. The man who broke oaths, who killed kings, who served his sister’s schemes like a faithful hound. The man who'd helped bury the last good Stark.

A thousand ravens flew from the Red Keep.

Jaime didn’t need to read the letters to know what they carried. He’d seen the letters sealed with the lion and the black stag. They’d flown north, demanding the surrender of Winterfell, the head of Jon Snow, and the kneeling of the North.

A child’s head, to end a war before it began.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 21: Chapter 17 — The River Between

Chapter 17 — The River Between

 

The sky screamed with fire.

I soared above a broken world, the wind roaring past my ears, my fingers clenched in black scales slick with blood and heat. Beneath me, the land writhed, a tapestry of flame and shadow. Villages burned like kindling. Forests became seas of smoke. A thousand voices cried out at once, swallowed by the roar of wings and ash.

I flew alone on a dragon as dark as midnight, massive, ancient, furious. Its breath was flame, its heart beat with mine.

Winterfell smoldered in the distance, its towers crumbling, its godswood ablaze. The White Knife ran red through White Harbor, which cracked and sank beneath a rising tide, its domes shattering like eggshells under the weight of drowning. I turned north, but found no solace, Moat Cailin burned too, banners torn, corpses strung like broken dolls from the ramparts.

Then I was not alone.

To my left, a great beast of emerald, gleaming, regal, eyes aflame with pride. To my right, a pale silver dragon with streaks of crimson down its neck. They circled me in silence… then they screamed.

They came at me, fangs wide, talons extended. My own mount roared in defiance and met them in the sky. Flame collided with flame. I was thrown from the saddle, spiraling through smoke and blood. The earth rushed up to meet me.

And in the smoke, I saw it—
The weirwood.
White bark, red leaves. A face carved in sorrow.
Watching. Always watching.

I struck the ground—

And gasped awake, breath ragged in my throat.

Snow-frosted air slapped against my skin, cold and damp. Ghost’s tongue was rough against my cheek. His eyes, red, knowing, were the first thing I saw. I pressed a hand to his thick fur and tried to remember where I was.

The longboat rocked gently beneath me, gliding upriver through morning mist. Pine trees lined the banks like sentries, their branches crusted with frost. The water whispered alongside us, endless and calm.

Just the slow thrum of oars and the quiet breath of men sleeping or murmuring low.

I sat up. My tunic clung with cold sweat. My pulse still raced.

It was only a dream, I told myself.
But the scent of smoke had been too real.
The sorrow in the weirwood’s face too familiar.

Was it a warning? Balerion never burned Winterfell… An alternate history? Why would Bloodraven show me that? The emerald one was Vhagar so the other must have been Meraxes… Dragons attacking dragons?

Ghost whined low in his throat, nudging my side. I scratched behind his ear, my eyes fixed on the distant bend of the river. The banks narrowed there, cloaked in fog. Somewhere beyond lay Winterfell, Robb, truth, war.

War was coming. No, that isn’t right. It has already begun.

I leaned against the desk and let the wind coming from the window bite at my cheeks. I should have done more. Should have moved faster, spoken louder, struck harder. How many days had I hesitated, playing the game of lords and heirs, while Eddard Stark rode to King's Landing and planted the match on the powder barrel?

I’d known the truth. Gods help me, I had known everything. Jaime and Cersei. Their incest. Bran’s fall. The rot in the crown. I could’ve unmasked them, stripped their lies bare before the court, forced Ned’s hand before it was too late. Or... I could’ve had a knife put in Joffrey’s throat one dark night. Slipped poison into Cersei’s wine and blamed the gods for justice. Sent assassins after Varys and Baelish. I had the knowledge. I had the means.

But I’d done nothing. Or worse, I'd done just enough to change the future, not prevent it.

Perhaps I had even quickened the spiral. That is what made the most sense, they were calling for a Targaryen head after all. The crown was marching. And I was here, floating upriver toward Winterfell.

A part of me had believed, naively, stupidly, that with enough planning, enough foresight, I could outmaneuver the storm. That I could be a dam against the flood. Now I knew better. The tide was rising with or without me, and for all my visions and memories, I was still just a boy with a sword and a name that wasn’t mine.

A butterflies wing can change the course of a tornado… or start it, in this case.

Ghost whined softly beside me, sensing the dark turn of my thoughts. I didn’t move. I let the weight of it sit heavy in my chest.

The war had started. Maybe even because of me.

And all I could do now was ride the current and pray I still had time to shape the ending.

Stop whining idiot! And keep as many as you can alive.

The barge groaned beneath me. I had planned for something else.

I had dreamed of quiet years. A slow rot spreading through the southern court while I built my own strength. I would have whispered poison in ears when it served, fed coin to spies and grain to starving towns. I would have bled the Reach of its merchants and tied the Vale with trade. I would have waited, slow, cold, deliberate, until the game was mine to finish.

That path was gone now.

I had hoped to keep Robert alive, warn him of the Lannisters, of the rot inside his bed and small council. A letter here. A loyal whisper there. Delay the clash. Push the war years down the road, when I had armies, when I had ports and fleets and food and allies to push the realm into kneeling.

But Robert was dead. Ned was probably dead.

Now, I had no time. No quiet. No patience left to spend.

Plans made in silence had to be rewritten in the thunder of hooves and steel.

This wasn’t the game I wanted to play. But it was the game on the board.

So I would win it.

Not with coins and parchments and clever lies. No, this would be won with burning fields and shattered hosts. With discipline and blood. With victory so complete that no maester could deny it, no lord could resist it, and no pretender could hope to outshine it.

I had to make them believe.

Make the lords see me not as Rhaegar’s shame, not as Ned Stark’s bastard, but as the man who crossed rivers with his armies, who broke Tywin Lannister’s power, who brought the North to the doors of King's Landing.

There would be no coup now. Only conquest.

And if I could not stop the war, then I would win it.

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The cold had teeth that morning, sharp and clean. I rose from my bedroll and stepped carefully over sleeping bodies and coiled rope, Ghost trailing me in silence, as always, the only times I heard him was in my mind. The wind off the river carried the smell of pine, mud, and distant smoke. I made my way to the bow of the longboat, where the prow cut the water like a knife through silk.

The White Knife glittered in the early light, pale and sinuous as it wound its way north. Snow still clung to the banks in patches, white against the dark earth. Behind us, the sea was only a memory. Ahead, the heart of the North waited.

We passed a cluster of farms tucked between low hills, smoke rising from thatch roofs. Past that, a timber camp buzzed with quiet movement, men hauling logs, oxen trudging through slush. Farther upriver, children stood on a wooden dock, pointing at our ship, their laughter chasing us until we rounded a bend.

Arren joined me after a while, his cloak drawn tight. He offered a waterskin, which I took with a grateful nod. “You looked troubled in sleep,” he said. “Restless.”

“Bad dream,” I muttered, not quite ready to explain dragons in the sky or the godswood watching as the world burned.

We stood quietly for a time, listening to the oars creak and the river whisper around us.

“This river feeds the North,” I said at last, gesturing to the water winding beside us. “Without it, there’s no White Harbor. No trade. No bread.”

Arren followed my gaze. “Aye. And no coin, either. Every barge of saltfish or grain that leaves this water buys another winter’s worth of firewood.”

I pointed ahead, where the Snowmelt forked westward from the White Knife, carving a gentle V into the land. The soil there looked dark, rich. A low rise hugged the far bank, but the land beyond was flat, stretching to the treeline.

“There,” I said quietly. “That’s the place.”

Arren raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For a future.” I traced the air with a gloved finger. “Shallow slopes, stable ground. A place for canals, locks. Granaries. Irrigation. We could build mills to harness the flow—grind grain, press flax, spin wool.”

He followed my eyes for a while, thoughtful. “You’d build it yourself, wouldn’t you? Brick by brick.”

“If I must.” I drew in a breath. “For the people. The ones who will never ride to war, kneel at a lord’s feet, they still need to eat. Still need warmth. This place…” I shook my head. “This place could be an industrial center many times the size of the Blackworks, the power of the river harvested to make steel, clothes, glass.”

Arren let out a long breath, mist curling from his mouth. “Do you think they’ll let you?”

“The lords?” I shrugged. “Some might. Some won’t. But they’ll see the value soon enough.”

We stood there a little longer, watching the land drift by, quietly imagining futures in the form of hills and the curve of a river. Behind us were secrets and ashes. Ahead of us, banners and war.

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It was near dusk when the longboat slid to the muddy bank, and the smell hit me before my boots touched solid ground. Coal smoke and burnt iron, the sharp tang of forge oil, familiar, bitter, and oddly comforting. The Blackworks. The great chimney stacks looked like giants breathing smoke into the sky. Busy. Alive with the sounds of hammering steel and roaring fires.

Ghost leapt ashore ahead of me, sniffing the riverbank and the wind. The rest of the men followed, some stretching their legs, others loading gear onto waiting carts. Arren rode up beside me, squinting at the horizon.

“Ah, home sweet home.” he muttered.

“It smells like war.” I said.

“Always did, Jon.”

We mounted our horses and began the slow ride north, toward the shadow of Winterfell. The Blackworks faded behind us, but its rhythm echoed on, steel on steel, the anvil’s song, tireless and grim.

The land around us had changed.

What once were empty pastures and scattered crofts were now tent cities. Banners snapped in the cold wind, Hornwood’s moose, Cerwyn’s battle-axe, Tallhart’s tree, Flint’s mountain. I even saw the lizard lion of the Reeds among them, green on green, impossibly far from their swamps.

So they’d come. He came, I thought. Howland Reed had answered the call.

How did he get here so fast? The raven must have arrived only a few days past.

The men moved like ants in the cold light, fetching water, mending armor, drilling in muddy yards. Pigs squealed from pens, fires burned low under iron kettles. It was the smell of a host preparing for war. Woodsmoke and shit, leather and stew.

But also, silver. There was coin flowing, even here. Merchants from White Harbor, Stonehaven, and even Barrowton had set up trade along the old roads into Winter Town. Wagons groaned under sacks of salt beef and grain. Furriers haggled with warriors over cloaks. A boy offered me hot wine from a clay jug as we passed, for a copper.

War breeds hunger, and hunger breeds profit.

Arren turned in his saddle, frowning at the bustle. “That’s a lot of men here, does Winterfell have to feed them all?”

“Yes,” I murmured. “But we’re still feeding off summer’s bounty. The real test will come with snow.”

He nodded, and we pressed on.

Beyond the camps, Winter Town had grown. The streets were packed with people, some shouting, some singing, some simply watching us pass. I saw old men with wooden swords play-fighting in the frost, children with ash-smeared cheeks selling dried apples. A smith’s hammer rang in a corner shop, a priest of the Seven cried omens on the steps of an abandoned hall.

I saw a girl, maybe ten, sitting atop a cart, eyes wide as our horses passed. Her fingers clutched a rag doll with a wolf’s face stitched in.

They’re already building songs, I thought. Songs for a war that hasn’t even begun.

It chilled me.

I flexed my fingers around the hilt of my sword. The leather grip felt worn, familiar. And yet strange. Everything felt that way now, known, yet different. Like coming home to find your home changed shape.

Arren must’ve seen something in my eyes. “You’ve been thinking ever since we landed,” he said.

“I never stopped,” I admitted.

“About the war?”

“Yes, and about what comes after.”

He smiled at that, tired and sharp. “You were always like that. Even in the mountains, when we were rationing turnips and cleaning snow-mud off ruined grain stores, you’d talk about roads. Aqueducts. Stone ovens for baking bread.”

“The war is important, but someone need to think about the next steps. What matters is the harvest after.”

“Jon, the farmer Prince, a good song!”

And just like that, Arren took me out of my own mind; he had a talent for that.

The path ahead rose into a ridge, and beyond it I glimpsed Winterfell’s towers, grey against the evening sky, crowned with banners. Robb was there. Catelyn, perhaps. Maybe Theon, still. And little Rickon…

I felt Ghost tense beside me, then let out a low growl.

“What is it?” Arren asked, reaching for his axe.

I followed the direwolf’s gaze.

Riders, fast, coming down the road from the gates. Not armed for battle, but their pace was quick.

A horn sounded once from the nearest camp, and figures began to stir in earnest. My presence was no longer rumor. No longer a shadow.

I had returned.

“Jon Stark,” someone said behind me, a whisper, but loud enough to reach my ears.

I swallowed hard.

Jon Snow.

Jon Stark.

Daemon Targaryen.

Or just a corpse.

Who I would be... depended on what came next.

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Winterfell rose before me like a memory carved in stone. Grey towers, smoke curling from the chimneys, the scent of pinewood and hot spring steam wafting on the air. The walls were the same, but they felt higher, colder. Less like shelter, more like judgment.

Ghost padded beside me as we rode through the gates. No laughter in the yard, no boys at practice with wooden swords, no Septa Mordane scolding Arya for her muddy hem. Just silence and the weight of eyes. And ghosts. So many ghosts.

I will never see him again, will I?

The hot springs hissed faintly beneath the keep, the warmth misting in the cold. I had dreamed of that steam when we were freezing on the Wall. Now it curled like breath from the past.

I dismounted slowly, my limbs stiff from the road. A steward bowed and said nothing, only gestured toward the inner stairs. “The Lord Stark is waiting,” was all he offered.

Robb, I thought. Not just my brother now. Lord Stark. And more than that.

I climbed the steps with my cloak heavy on my shoulders, each footfall a drumbeat. The solar door loomed, dark oak, iron-banded. I paused a moment, then knocked once and stepped in.

He was standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back. Dressed in Stark black and grey, a cloak of wolf fur on his shoulders. His red-brown hair was longer, his jaw harder. His eyes, blue, sharp, and shadowed, met mine, unreadable.

“Robb.”

“Jon.” He said, like a question.

We stood there for a long time. Neither of us moved.

He broke the silence first. “They want your head.”

He didn’t say welcome home.

He turned and reached for a scroll on the table. The wax seal was broken, the handwriting on the outside was unmistakable.

“I read it,” he said. “Three times.”

He handed it to me.

I unrolled the letter and read.

By the command of His Grace King Joffrey Baratheon, Protector of the Realm…
High treason…
Execution...
Targaryen bastard…
Conspirator with Eddard Stark…
Coup attempt…
Kneel before His Grace...

The words were brittle things. Dead things.

Execution? That is not what the rumor says...

When I looked up, Robb’s gaze was already on me.

“So?” he asked. “Is it true?”

I held the letter for a moment longer. Then I folded it, slowly, and set it down on the table.

“Yes.”

His jaw clenched. I could see it, the fury, the hurt, the disbelief. He looked like he wanted to strike something. Maybe me.

“I’m not Ned’s son,” I said. “Not by blood. My mother was Lyanna Stark. My father was Rhaegar Targaryen.”

He didn’t speak.

“She loved him,” I said. “She went with him willingly. They were wed in secret as far as I know. When she died… she gave me to Ned. To protect me. From Robert. From the world.”

Robb’s fists curled. “And you knew this. How long?”

“Long enough.”

“And you kept it from me?”

I met his eyes. “Would you have wanted the truth if it would’ve gotten you killed? If it made you a traitor by knowing it?”

“That’s not—”

“I am Daemon Targaryen. But I have never worn that name. I have bled and fought and worked beside the North. I took the Stark banner higher than ever before, for Winterfell, for you. I am your brother, Robb. In every way that counts.”

He looked away then, his breath ragged.

“We’ve lost too much,” he said quietly. “Father. Sansa. Arya. Bran. Mother barely speaks. And now, now this.”

“I haven’t betrayed you,” I said. “But I am sorry I lied.”

“You didn’t lie. You stayed silent. And I get it, I do. But gods, Jon…”

His voice cracked. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. Father is dead. I am Lord Stark now, I speak in courts, I issue orders, and everyone calls me ‘My Lord.’ But I feel like a boy in a borrowed cloak.”

“You’re not.”

He looked at me.

“You are Robb Stark of Winterfell, and the North is with you. I’m here to help you hold it.”

For a long moment, there was only the sound of the fire crackling behind us. Then Robb stepped forward, slowly.

“I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do, Jon. We are just boys!”

“Daeron was younger than us when he took Dorne. We gather the lords,” I said. “We tell them the truth, as much as they need. We march south. We take back our sibilings. We avenge Father.”

“We’re truly doing this,” Robb said quietly, eyes on the flames. “War. It’s not a game anymore. Not some dream in the yard.”

I didn’t answer right away. The wind tugged at my cloak. Ghost lay beside me, ears twitching.

“I never thought it was a game,” I said. “But I did think we’d have more time.”

Robb gave a short, bitter laugh. “Time. I used to think that meant a father’s advice. A lord’s hall. Maybe a good match.”

He looked up at me sharply. “What does time mean to you now? No more lies Jon. What do you want.”

I met his gaze. My brother. My best friend. A Stark of Stark blood, born to this land. And I— I couldn’t stop my words.

“I thought I would take years building it,” I said quietly, almost ashamed. “Influence. Trade. Quiet power. I would’ve worked behind curtains, whispered truths and plotted carefully. When the realm was tired, when it was hungry and broken… I would offer it something better.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t have that luxury. Now I’ll take the throne with war. I’ll win battles so bloody they’ll echo for generations. Make the realm see me as the one who ended chaos.”

Robb stared, frowning. “You want the throne. You truly do.”

“I have to,” I said. “I… hunger for it, Robb.” No more lies. “Gods know I do. But I know what I can do with it, you know what I can do with it. The lies in courts, the cowardice of kings, and the treachery that festers like a wound in the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. I can end it Robb, I can—” Robb raised is hand, calling for my silence.

“So you’ll rule,” he said flatly, “because you believe only you can make a better realm.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

My thoughts raced, but my voice was trapped somewhere deep inside. I watched the sparks rise, twirling into the dark sky like fragile ghosts, each one a reminder of how fragile trust could be.

I couldn’t read Robb’s expression, his jaw clenched, his eyes steady but unreadable. The space between us felt heavier with every passing second. I wondered what he was thinking, anger? Betrayal? Disappointment? Or perhaps something else, something deeper, harder to name.

The silence dragged on. My hands itched to speak, to explain, to justify, but the words would only sound hollow. I was waiting, waiting for the verdict, for the fracture or the acceptance.

“You could’ve told me earlier,” he said at last. I couldn’t describe the amount of relief that I felt with those words.

“I didn’t know if I could trust myself,” I said. “And I wasn’t sure if you’d understand. Losing you scared me...”

“I understand now.”

Robb’s gaze softened, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction. He let out a breath, half a chuckle, half a sigh.

“You’re a stubborn, dramatic idiot sometimes,” he said, shaking his head with a faint smile. “But you’re my brother. And I’ll always stand by you. Always.”

The weight in my chest lightened, just a little. His words, simple as they were, carried more strength than any promise forged in gold.

“No matter what comes,” Robb continued, “you won’t face it alone, you moron.” He laughed, a dry, broken thing, and pulled me into an embrace. “You looked on the verge of crying!”

“Shut up! I don’t cry!” I laughed. Gods what a relief, this was it? I didn't tell him for years, and this was it? I truly am an idiot.

We stood like that for a moment, two boys raised in the snow, wrapped in wolfskins and an uncertain future.

“We were raised as brothers,” He said, “and that’s what we are. Whatever the blood says.”

Robb pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes.

“Always, Jon. Always.”

Robb poured the wine with a heavy hand. His fingers trembled slightly, though he tried to hide it. The fire in the hearth crackled, but it did little to warm the cold that hung between us.

“I had a dream,” he said at last. “A stupid boy’s hope. That Father would come back from King’s Landing. That we’d ride south, find him in some cell, beat down the gates if we had to.”

He passed me the cup. I took it, but didn’t drink.

“But the ravens came. First one. Then another. All of them lies, or half-truths. ‘Treason.’ ‘Execution.’ I still don’t know what’s real. Blood in King’s Landing streets, a coup, some tell me Renly is King, some tell me Joffrey is. Some say Stannis is.”

I stared into the fire. “He's dead, Robb. Even if they haven’t sent his head yet, they are lying to confuse the realm.”

He nodded. “Aye. That’s what I believe too. But it doesn’t feel real, not here. Not with the snow outside and his chair in the hall.”

We both fell silent. The weight of that name, Eddard Stark, settled like a mountain on the air.

He laughed, bitter. “When I called the banners, I thought it’d be like the songs. Men cheering, swords shining, the North riding proud.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“No.” He looked away. “Cerwyn sent a hundred fucking idiots and two carts of grain. Glover didn’t answer at all yet. The Flints nearly came to blows with the Tallharts over a sheep. And everyone wanted to know who I was to command anything. And not even half the banners are here yet.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told them I was Robb Stark of Winterfell. And that we ride to bring justice for our father. That I don’t give a damn what they think of me only that they stand with me. That we stand together, or we fall apart. I was trying to sound like you, really…”

I laughed. Drama is contagious.

“I keep waiting for someone to tell me what to do half the time.”

“That’s the truth no one says,” I told him. “The ones in charge are just the ones who kept standing when everyone else fell. The ones who were too stubborn to run.”

Robb leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Jon?”

I met his gaze. “There’s no right thing left. Only necessity.”

He nodded slowly. “We have to march. Cross the Twins, cross into the riverlands. If we’re fast, we can meet the Lannisters before they burn Riverrun to the ground. There is already talk of skirmishes. Maybe… maybe even save Arya, Bran and Sansa.” His voice cracked on Sansa’s name. I reached out and set my cup down beside his.

Gods please let them be alive… they weren’t even mentioned in the letters…

Robb sat down by the hearth, rubbing his hands together though the fire blazed high. I joined him on the bench across, Ghost settling by my feet. For a while, we just stared into the flames.

“Remember when I stole that honeycake Arya had hidden under the loose stone near the kitchen?” I added. “Father just said, ‘If you're going to steal from your sister, at least don’t be caught with crumbs on your tunic, Jon.’”

We both laughed at the impression, quietly, and it hurt, in the chest, in the throat, but it felt right too.

“Do you remember Bran always climbing where he wasn’t supposed to?” Robb asked.

“I remember you daring him to do it,” I said with a smirk.

“He was so small. I thought he’d bounce.”

“You nearly fainted when he slipped on the roof.”

“That’s because I thought he’d tell Father it was my fault.”

“He did,” I laughed.

Robb grinned. “And Arya, gods, she used to punch like a mule. Do you remember the day she bloodied my lips?”

“She came back to the stables with that little wooden practice sword like it was Ice itself. Said she’d knighted herself.”

“She said she was going to be Arya the Brave, Defender of the North.”

“She always was,” I murmured. “Still is, wherever she is.”

We both fell quiet at that. The warmth faded. The world outside these walls rushed back in, the war, the South, the weight of crowns and names and dead fathers.

But even in the silence, the echoes of our childhood lingered, laughter in the halls, the crack of wooden swords in the yard, Rickon’s shrieks, Sansa singing in the sept, Arya racing through the corridors, Bran’s delighted yells from the tower tops.

He stood, walked to the window again. Snow was falling outside, soft and slow.

“I want them back, Jon. All of them.”

“We will take them back.”

“And if they are gone…”

“Then woe to the lions for they won’t survive our fury”

And in that moment, I knew we would march south for the family we had lost. For the family we still hoped to find.

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Sleep did not come after a letter was quietly given to me by a courier from the Moat.

The moment I closed my eyes, I saw fire. Dragons twisting in the sky... The dream clung to my skin like sweat. That is what it meant... So I rose, dressed in silence, and stepped out into the cold.

The wind bit through the cloak, sharp and clean. It tasted like pine and snow and memory. Ghost padded beside me, his white fur dusted with frost, red eyes glinting in the dark. Together we climbed the tower steps, and I found myself once more atop the walls of Winterfell.

Below, the North slumbered, but not in peace. Hundreds of campfires blinked across the fields like fallen stars. Hornwood, Cerwyn, Tallhart, Flint… and there, tucked near the western wall, green reeds on grey. The Reeds had come. That surprised me more than it should have.

They’d all come, for Robb. For Winterfell. For war.

I leaned on the cold stone and looked south. Past the white forests and hills, past the Neck and the green lands beyond. I imagined King’s Landing, cloaked in gold and rot. I imagined Dragonstone, cold and ancient, its stones steeped in fire and salt.

Word spread slowly across the sea and information came too late.

I thought of the men I had quietly sent to Pentos, loyal souls who carried my words across the Narrow Sea. It had been moons since they left with those letters for Daenerys and Viserys. Words urging patience, caution, waiting for the right moment. I had hoped they would reach them safely, that they would understand the slow, careful path I planned.

But now, the truth settled like a weight in my gut. The Dothraki had found them first. The men never made it. Their fate was sealed in blood and fire, lost in the wilds beyond the sea. The letters never arrived. No message came back. Silence was their only answer.

A bitter taste filled my mouth. How many lives lost in the shadow of plans half-formed? How many chances wasted before the war even truly began? I clenched my fists, the ache of failure sharper than any wound. Another plan in tatters before it had even begun, was I destined to fail in everything?

Viserys must be dead by now.

I drew my cloak tighter. The wind was loud tonight, or maybe it was only my thoughts.

“I never asked for this,” I said softly. Ghost flicked his ears but didn’t move.

“I am Stark,” I whispered. “I am Snow. And I am Targaryen, whether I want it or not.”

The words felt heavy in my mouth. Strange. Not quite mine. But I said them anyway.

“What I choose to be… that’s still mine.” I said it like a prayer. Like a promise.

Choice… Aemon was right.

I turned my gaze back to the fires.

They would march soon, these men of the North. Some for Robb. Some for revenge. Some for glory.

Anxiety was eating me up.

Northmen would never give me up; I am one of them.

Ghost pressed his head lightly to my hand. Solid. Present. Loyal.

I looked up at the stars. Cold and distant. So unlike the warmth I once thought the gods could offer.

“This wasn’t how it was meant to be Ghost,” I said. “But it’s what we have.”

And what we have must be enough.

 

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 22: Chapter 18 — The River Between, Part II

Chapter 18 — The River Between, Part II

 

The fire in my chambers had burned low when the knock came, soft, insistent. I was still wearing my riding leathers, the smell of forge-smoke and pine clinging to them. Ghost stirred by the hearth but didn’t rise. I slipped out into the hall, where a young girl waited, one of the kitchen hands.

"Lady Catelyn awaits you in the Godswood, Lor—errr Prince Jon!"

That was cute.

I thanked her and went on my way. The wind had sharpened since sunset. Winterfell’s halls were quiet at this hour, the stones whispering with old memory. I passed through the outer door and crossed the yard in silence, boots crunching over frost-crusted grass. Beyond the broken walls and scaffolds of restoration, the godswood still stood, untouched and ancient.

I walked past the ancient trees.

She was waiting there.

Catelyn Stark.

Draped in mourning black, her hair bound in a tight braid, she stood beneath the red leaves of the weirwood as if carved from the same old sorrow. The moonlight painted her skin pale, her eyes darker still. The wind stirred her cloak, but she didn’t move.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

Finally, her voice came, brittle and bare.

“I always hated you, you know.”

I didn’t flinch.

“Not for what you did. You never did anything. But for what I thought you were. The reminder. The insult.”

I said nothing. I had nothing to say.

So, it is this conversation, uh?

She turned slightly, her eyes tracking the carved face in the weirwood, the red tears running down its pale bark like the blood of memory.

“Ned… even Maester Luwin, I think, suspected. But no one told me. Not once. Not a word.” Her voice cracked, the quiet rage behind it threatening to give way. “I hated a ghost. And they let me.”

Still I didn’t answer. Let the silence speak. She looked like she needed to get this out of her chest.

She finally turned fully to face me. Her eyes, once sharp as broken glass, were dull with grief, and something older. Regret.

“I never understood how he could bear it,” she whispered. “Bringing a bastard into our home. Letting you grow up among our children. I resented him for that almost as much as I resented you.”

I didn’t shift. Didn’t breathe too loud.

“But now…” She shook her head. “Now I see. He wasn’t choosing dishonor. He was choosing you. Protecting you.”

“I didn’t know,” I said softly. “Not truly. Not until I left for the Wall.” A little lie. The only way to explain my knowledge of my birth. “But even if I had… would it have made a difference between us?”

She closed her eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell.

“Maybe. Or maybe I would’ve hated you more, for being Rhaegar Targaryen’s blood. For making Ned lie. For making him keep you when he should’ve sent you away.”

Though I didn’t let it show, the words cut.

“I was just a boy,” I said. “I made no choice in it.”

Her lips twisted. “None of us did.”

A breeze rustled the branches overhead, sending a whisper through the leaves, like the trees were remembering too.

“I said cruel things to you,” she said. “Or worse, said nothing at all. And when I did, I made sure you felt unwelcome. Less. Always less.”

“You loved your family,” I said. “Fiercely. I never faulted you for that. You thought I would take Winterfell from your son, especially after I started accumulating coin, prestige and duties.”

Her eyes flicked to mine, surprised by the gentleness in my voice.

“You sound like him,” she murmured. “Like Ned.”

I shrugged. “He raised me.”

She stepped closer, only a pace between us now. “You’re not my son, Jon. I won’t pretend otherwise. But you were his. And that means something, even now.”

I nodded. “It means everything.”

We stood in silence beneath the weirwood. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and old leaves.

Before she turned to go, she hesitated.

“Be careful with the truth, Jon.”

I stiffened.

She gave me a long, tired look. “Not all the lords are ready for it. Some never will be. You can wear Stark colors, ride with your brother, win the love of the people. But once they hear your name, your true name, it may all come apart.”

I let out a slow breath. “I know.”

“Then remember this: leadership is not just strength. It’s knowing which truths to tell, and when.”

I nodded. “And which lies to bury.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Ned said something like that once. Right after the war.”

She gave a bitter little laugh. “Maybe you really are his son.”

Then she turned and walked away, her black cloak vanishing between the trees.

I stood there long after she left.

Staring at the carved face of the old gods, red tears running like blood down the pale wood.

Ghost padded out from behind a bush, brushing his muzzle against my hand. I crouched beside him, fingers deep in his fur.

I had not expected peace with Catelyn Stark, had not dared hope for it. Her hatred had been one of the constants of my boyhood, cold and sharp as the winds off the Wall. Her words had not been warm, but they had been honest, and that honesty felt like a bridge built of ash and sorrow.

I found myself wondering if peace was possible. A truce between two ghosts of Winterfell, bound by loss. Perhaps we would never be family in the way Ned had wanted. But if she could look at me and no longer see only the wound her husband had hidden, then maybe there was hope for something better than bitterness.

 

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The godswood was empty again, or so I thought.

Catelyn Stark’s footsteps had long since faded between the trees, swallowed by frost and pine. Only the weirwood remained, silent and solemn, its carved face weeping slow red tears beneath the branches.

I stood still. Listening. Breathing.

Any visions today? You old fuck…

The cold had deepened, the air tingling with frost. Ghost was at my side, silent as always, but alert now. His ears pricked forward. He stared past the tree, into the shadows beyond the roots.

Then I felt it too.

A rustle in the undergrowth. A figure stepped out from the moss-laden trunks, cloaked in greens and browns that seemed part of the forest itself. Small, wiry, and weathered. A reed-bound spear rested against his shoulder.

Ghost didn’t growl in my mind. That was enough.

He is quiet.

The man bowed his head. “My Prince.”

I took a slow breath. “I wondered if you’d come.”

Howland Reed.

The Crannogman. The last living man who had stood beside my father, Ned Stark, at the Tower of Joy.

“I sent my letter only a sennight ago,” I said. “You couldn’t have had time to cross the Neck and ride north so soon.”

“I didn’t wait for your letter.” His voice was soft, barely louder than the wind in the trees, a murmur, like reeds brushing against a still lake. “My son had a dream. Of wolves and fire. And blood in the snow.”

“A greendream?”

He nodded. “Jojen is never wrong.”

I have a feeling he will be a difficult man to talk to…

I stared at him. He looked unassuming, older than I expected, with a thin beard, a lined face, eyes green as lichen. But something in him was solid. Grounded. Ancient.

“You knew I would be here?”

“Beneath the weirwood. Cloaked in shadow. Crowned in flame.” He looked past me, to the tree. “He saw you with fire in your eyes. And a storm behind your back.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Jojen and Meera,” I said instead. “Your children are gifted, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Howland answered. “Jojen most of all, even if he doesn’t understand all he sees.”

Silence stretched between us.

Then I asked, because I had to: “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

Howland stepped closer, resting his hand lightly against the weirwood bark. The red sap stained his fingers.

“Because your father asked it of me. Not the dragon. The wolf.”

He looked at me, and there was sorrow in his eyes.

“Ned Stark lived a lie. But he did so with honor. Because of the promise he made at your mother’s deathbed.”

My throat tightened. “Lyanna.”

“Aye.” He turned his gaze skyward. “She was young, but not foolish. Fierce. Proud. They never understood her, not Brandon, not Robert. They wanted her to be a lady, or a prize. But she was neither.”

“And Rhaegar did?” I scoffed.

Howland smiled faintly. “Perhaps he understood her a little. Perhaps she understood him. He crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty before half the realm, and still they called it kidnapping. They made a story of it. One they could live with.”

“They were married?”

“Aye. In secret. By a septon before a Wierwood. Not that it mattered in the end…”

The Doctrine of Exceptionalism should have allowed Rhaegar to take more than one wife. House Targaryen had never given up it’s right, just set it aside to fit in more easily. Incest was enough to make the faith queasy.

Not that it mattered. I would be called a bastard even if Lyanna were his first wife.

I shook my head. “And I’m the child of that marriage... A Reed's heir greendreams are not enough evidence, sadly.”

“You are. And no, but it is a start.”

“What do you mean that it did not matter in the end?” I asked.

“Lyanna may have gone with him willingly, foolishly perhaps, but she didn’t stay of her own will. Not after what Aerys did.”

I closed my eyes. And so my fears come true…

So simple. And yet it changed everything. My whole life had turned on that. Ned Stark’s silence. Lyanna’s death. Rhaegar’s doom. The war. The rebellion. It may not have been kidnapping at the start, but it sure was at the end, according to Howland…

I couldn’t let anyone know of that, a big chunk of whatever legitimacy I had rested on it.

Glasses half full, Jon. At least you were not born of rape.

I waited until the wind stilled and the flakes settled like ash on the earth. Then I asked the question that had lingered in my mind since I first heard the name whispered in old stories.

“The Tourney at Harrenhal,” I said. “What happened there?”

Howland turned his face slightly, his green eyes narrowing. “Ah. That old ghost.”

“I’ve heard the songs. The knight of the laughing tree. Rhaegar crowning Lyanna. But I do not understand how the events are connected. How Rhaegar and Lyanna fell in love.”

He gave a small, dry chuckle. “Because the truth was never sung.”

He moved toward a gnarled root and sat, folding his limbs like a man more comfortable in swamps and silence than in any hall. I lowered myself beside him.

“I was young,” he began. “Barely of age. Small, as you can see and even smaller then. I’d ridden south to attend the great tourney with nothing but a spear and a few old prayers. It was the first time I had ever been south of the Neck. And I was laughed at for it.”

I said nothing. Howland appears to have delved deeply into his memories.

“There were squires from the Vale, knights from the Reach, lords from the Westerlands. They mocked my leathers, my accent, my size. One day, three squires caught me outside the lists. They beat me half to death.”

I felt my hand tighten.

“I might’ve died there. But she found me. Lyanna Stark.”

He smiled again with the bittersweet pain of remembering someone long buried.

“She was wild as the wind. She took me to her tent, wiped my face, gave me water. They laughed at her too. So that night, someone else came.”

He leaned forward, voice low.

“The Knight of the Laughing Tree.”

I looked at him sideways. “You know who it was.”

He didn’t answer. Just looked back at me with knowing eyes.

“The knight appeared only once, clad in mismatched armor, with a heart tree painted on their shield. They challenged the three knights whose squires had tormented me. Defeated each one in turn. Demanded that the squires learn courtesy, and give me apologies.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And then vanished?”

He nodded. “The king sent men to find the knight. Rhaegar was among them. But the knight’s tent was empty. All they found was a painted shield and a woman’s laughter on the wind.”

“So it was my mother? She must have been a great fighter to accomplish that.”

He gave a shrug so small it barely moved his shoulders. “It was her, and she was great. She admitted it.”

I shook my head. The thought of her, bold enough to ride against knights...

“Rhaegar must have found her.” Howland said. “Something changed that day. He crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty, not Elia Martell. Before all the realm. And the whispers began. She was no southern lady. She belonged to the wolf blood, fierce, loyal, free.”

He looked up at the snow falling through the red leaves.

“They ran. Or they rode together. Maybe she followed him. Maybe they both fled something they couldn’t live with. But she loved him at the start.”

“And then came the war… And the Tower of Joy.”

“Yes, I was wounded. Arthur Dayne would have killed us all, he nearly did. He was a monster in the battlefield; had he been at the Trident… You would hav been raised in the Red Keep. I stabbed him in the back, and your father cut his throat.”

His voice was reverent. A quiet memory.

I looked up at the tree. At the carved face, older than the First Men. The wind stirred the leaves above.

“And so you kept the secret,” I murmured.

“For years,” he said. “For your father. For your mother. And now… for you, if you ask it.”

I looked at him, long and hard. “And if I don’t, Lord Howland Reed?”

Howland smiled, thin, sad, full of understanding. “Then I will still stand behind you.”

Then, without a word more, he knelt.

“To the son of Lyanna Stark. To the boy raised by Ned Stark. The Crannogmen will stand behind you, when the time comes. You will not face the lords alone.”

“They can’t know the whole truth, my lord.” I said.

“No… they can’t.”

I didn’t move for a long moment. My hands were cold, clenched at my sides. My mouth was dry.

And then I stepped forward. Reached down. Lifted him to his feet.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. “For my mother. For my father, the one who raised me. And for me.”

He met my eyes. “More things are waking in the world than just dragons and kings. Winter is not done with us yet.”

I nodded.

Jojen sees far...

A gust of wind stirred the trees. The leaves whispered, blood-red against the black sky.

“Will your people fight?” I asked.

“They will,” he said quietly. “Though they are not warriors in the way the bogless houses understand it.”

“I’m not asking for knights in shining mail. I have those. I need shadows. I need men who can move unseen and strike from behind.”

“You need Crannogmen,” he said with a faint smile.

“Bring as many wargs as you can,” I added. “The real ones.”

His brow arched. Looking at Ghost as he moved like a shadow through the trees. “Few would know to ask for such.”

He hesitated, studying me, then nodded again.

“There are still green-blooded lines in the Neck. The bond is thinner now than it was in the Dawn Age, but it still runs through the Reed veins, and a few others. If they come, they will come as part of the land itself. Quiet. Deadly. Loyal.”

Most in the North spoke of wargs in hushed tones, old wives’ tales and fearful mutterings, the kind that made children glance over their shoulders and septons clutch their seven-pointed stars.

Even among the Free Folk, where the skinchangers walked openly, they were treated with wary distance, half-revered and half-feared. In the halls of northern lords, a man who dreamed through the eyes of a beast was a danger, a wild card, an omen of something older than laws and lineages. Wargs were pariahs, because they reminded the world that not all power could be tamed, and not all bloodlines bent to steel and banners.

I’d seen what a single warg could do, one man who could slip behind another’s eyes, ride a hawk through stormy skies, or stalk unseen in the skin of a wolf. But what if there were more? Not one, not a few scattered wildlings or hedge-born freaks, but an entire company trained for war? A division of the royal army that moved like mist ahead of the host, unseen and everywhere. Eyes in the sky, ears in the trees. Saboteurs, scouts, killers. Our own ghosts in the green.

I imagined a line of knights, proud and shining, galloping in a perfect wedge. One warg could disrupt a patrol. A dozen could shatter a charge. If we knew where they camped before the sun set, if we could strike before they ever knew we marched, that was power. That was control.

It would take time. Gods, years maybe. Discipline, training, trust. Wargs were pariahs even in the North, too close to the old powers, too wild for most lords to stomach. In the south, they'd be called monsters. I see a future. I see an army the old kings never dreamed of. Let the south cling to their knights and castles. I’ll build something else, something that sees in the dark, runs with the wolves, and fights like no one else ever dared.

“Can you teach me?”

“I am no Warg, but I will tell you all I know, my prince.” He replied.

Snow began to fall. The first flake landed on the back of Ghost’s neck, then another on my glove.

It was quiet. Cold.

And so I have my first bannerman… and a host of crafty poisonous Crannogmen.

 

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The forges breathed like dragons in slumber, low, hot, alive with purpose. Smoke drifted from chimneys like gray banners. The ring of steel on steel echoed across the yard as the hammers sang their morning songs. The Blackworks were a heart, burning, beating, building.

I rode in with Arren, and two scribes behind me, their saddlebags full of ledgers and ink. The cold bit deep, but the fires within were hotter than ever. Snow dusted the rooftops, melting to steam on the slate tiles of the forge halls. Ash clung to everything. Even Ghost, padding beside me, had a faint black streak down his white shoulder.

Inside, the space was thick with noise. Hammers struck anvils like war drums. Water wheels turned in steady rhythm, grinding gears and drawing bellows. The air stank of soot, sweat, and molten iron. A boy no older than Bran pumped a forge with one hand while shaping hot steel with the other. His brow was soaked, his eyes focused like a soldier’s.

Child labor… something to tackle in the future.

I watched him work, just a moment longer than I meant to.

Then I turned toward the central hall, once a granary, now repurposed as a war office. Garrick and the master smiths were already there, standing around a broad table marked with soot-stained maps and sheets of design parchment. They looked up as I entered.

“Lord Stark,” Garrick said with a respectful nod. The others murmured greetings, rough men with calloused hands and burn-scarred arms. They’d once served lords in the south or been bonded to noble workshops in the Free Cities. Now they forged steel for the North.

I didn’t waste time.

“Let’s begin.”

Arren read out the current output from his notes, his voice clear despite the background roar of the forges.

“Per day: twenty swords, twenty full plate sets, ten reinforced shields, and fifty halberd spears.”

I nodded. “That’s enough to fully arm between three hundred and five hundred men every fortnight.”

Garrick folded his arms. “With more steel and labor, we can double it.”

“You’ll get both,” I said. “I’m pulling men and resources from all non-critical projects. We don’t need luxury goods until the war is done, we will do enough to complete the contracts but no more.”

There were some grunts of approval.

I tapped the map. “We focus on modular armor, brigandine and half-plate. It’s faster to make, easier to repair in the field, and cheaper to distribute. Full plate’s for knights and vanguard captains only. My men in Moat Cailin are fully armored and we can supply ourselves, but the same can’t be said for the levies of some Lords. The rank and file need to live.”

The scribes scribbled. Garrick’s brow furrowed.

“And what of the cavalry?”

“We’ll outfit them as medium-heavy shock units,” I said. “Steel half-helms, reinforced gambesons, knee-length mail, northern saddles.”

I unfurled the sketches I’d prepared the night before, lines and arcs scratched over parchment by candlelight. Some weren’t elegant. But they were real.

“Crossbow carts,” I said, pointing to the largest sketch. “Crank-winch powered. Two men can operate, four bolts per minute. Mobile. Wheeled. Steel-framed.”

A smith raised an eyebrow. “Too heavy.”

“I’ve compensated with wheel leverage. I used to work with timber frames in—” I stopped, catching myself. “—with timber works at the Wall. Use pine, reinforce the frame with iron collars. It’ll move.”

Another sketch. “Reinforced mobile rams. Steel tips. Hinged awnings with boiled leather to block arrows. Each ram crewed by four. Field use only. Perfect for gates and palisades.”

They were listening now, heads turning toward the drawings.

“Watchtowers,” I said next. “Collapsible. Three men can assemble in two hours. Spot fires at night. Horn relays. We’ll post them along the King’s Road and key river crossings. Observation is half the battle. Catapults and trebuchets too, the new versions.”

Garrick gave a low, approving grunt.

I turned to Arren. “I want you in charge of tracking steel distribution. I want to know how many arrowheads we have at the end of each day. How much wool we’ve stored for gambesons. How many strips of boiled leather are coming from the tanners.”

“Yes, my prince,” he said immediately, already scribbling.

“You’ll report to me at dusk. Daily. No excuses. And… how are my own reserves Garrick?”

“Full, my lord. Enough to outfit three thousand men.”

“Great! A well-spent coin, Arren, gift it to the Lords for their levies. Umber, Karstark, and Mormont.”

He nodded. “That’s a lot of gifted coin…”

I leaned over the table again. “Our enemy has numbers. Gold. But they don’t have our steel. And they don’t have our logistics. Every sword we make here swings twice.”

And the gift will go a long way during the upcoming council.

The meeting broke with nods and rough salutes. I left them to their steel and schedules, stepping back out into the open forge yard. The snow had begun again, light and lazy, drifting down like ash. The men whispered in my wake.

The Battle of the Whale, they were calling it now. I had only heard the name twice, once from a pair of Cerwyn riders exchanging rumors over a fire, and again from a Tallhart archer grinning through chapped lips and bloodied knuckles. It hadn’t even been a full moon since the clash in the gullet but already the tales were spinning faster than the ravens could fly.

They said Jon Stark broke the enemy lines with a sea beast breaching through the water, that Stannis’s men had scattered like krill before a leviathan’s charge.  Some called me a Targaryen. Westeros had a way of naming things, branding every death with poetry.

I stood in the Blackworks, watching smoke curl into the pale sky, and wondered how many more names would come before the war was done. They were already etched into the tongues of soldiers and scribes, stories woven over hard bread and boiled oats. Westerosi memory worked like old bards: it could not abide the absence of myth. Every skirmish needed a title, every death a cadence. It was how the realm endured horrors, by naming them, shaping them into fable.

And perhaps, he thought bitterly, that was why the people needed kings and crowns and coats of arms, too. Because truth was too raw. A butchery at sea became the Battle of the Whale. A massacre became a tale of valor. A bastard became a prince, or a traitor, depending on who was telling.

The boy from earlier was still at the anvil, a half-formed blade glowing orange in his grip. His hands were black with soot, his hair damp. But his strokes were steady. Sharp.

I stopped beside him and watched.

He noticed me but didn’t speak.

I murmured, more to myself than to him, this is where I win the war. With sweat and fire and grit.

Still, the blade in his hand caught the light.

I turned, drawing my cloak tighter, and stepped out into the yard as the snow kissed my shoulders. Above, the sky was white and low. Beyond the walls, war stirred like a beast waking in its den.

And on the distant horizon, under the shadow of bare trees, I saw Karstark and Umber banners moving through the snow, arriving at Winterfell.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 23: Chapter 19 — The Feast and the Flame

Chapter 19 — The Feast and the Flame

 

 

The battlements of Winterfell groaned under the weight of watchers. I stood among them, silent beneath a weeping sky. The sun was dying in the west, bleeding its last light across a sea of canvas and steel. Banners flapped in the breeze, countless and proud: the black bear of House Mormont, the trees of the Tallharts, the lizard-lion of Greywater, the Glover iron fist, the Bolton flayed man, and others too numerous to name. Each one a blade waiting for my word and Robb's commands.

A fortnight had gone by, and the camp stretched past the horizon. Tens of thousands of men, women, and beasts clustered outside the walls, the full might of the North, summoned by horn and raven, ready for war. The fires of their cookpots and hearths curled smoke into the cold air, and beneath it all was the low murmur of a kingdom holding its breath. Some spoke my name with hope. Others, with dread. None knew the truth yet.

But they would.

I felt it rising, the storm that had simmered since my return now built to a boil. Whispers had grown like ivy along the stone. Looks followed me wherever I went: cautious, reverent, suspicious. There would be no silence after tonight.

No more hiding.

I turned from the battlements and walked to my chambers. The noise of Winterfell faded behind the heavy oak door. I stood before the tall mirror, where the firelight caught the edge of my tunic and shimmered against the steel embroidery. Black wool, cut finely in the northern style. Blood-red stitching details everywhere and on the right side of my chest in the form of a three-headed dragon, unmistakable. And over my heart, the direwolf of Stark, white, a beast howling at the wind. I wore both, as I must.

My hair was pulled back, save for a few strands that fell across my face.. The eyes staring back were violet. There was too much Targaryen in them, in the lines of my face. Too sharp for a Stark. Too lean. Too foreign. I did not wear the north like my brothers had, not like Robb, whose blood roared with Catelyn’s fire and Ned’s iron.

“I was born for this,” I whispered. “You can do it.”

If I repeated it enough, it might become true.

Anxiety was always my companion in stressful situations. The weight of it pressed down on me.

The North would know. They would look at me not as Jon Snow, but as Daemon of House Targaryen, son of Rhaegar, blood of dragons. Some would curse me. Some would kneel…

I squared my shoulders and turned to the door. Whatever came next, I would meet it head-on.

They would not crown me yet. I knew that. The idea of a Targaryen hiding in Winterfell all this time would be too fresh. I would not beg for a crown. I would earn it. I would win this war with blood and fire and discipline.

This first demand, relief for the Riverlands, the crossing of the Trident, the fall of Tywin’s host, it was nothing but the opening move. A message, sharp and cold: there is another player on the board, and he does not play your games.

Today I would remind them of everything I had done for the North and later, after they’ve seen what my armies can do, after they’ve felt the weight of northern steel, after they’ve watched the Lannisters crumble, I will not ask. I will take. I will take the throne that murdered my father, both of them, that killed my uncle and my two grandfathers…

What a fucking mess of a family I have.

A breath.

“You are Daemon of House Targaryen,” I told myself aloud. “And Jon of House Stark. There is no choosing. Make your destiny or die like a bitch.”

Ghost locked at me like I had gone crazy.

The wind howled as I stepped into the corridor, and the torches sputtered along the stone. Somewhere far below, the horns of the watch blew twice, signaling nightfall.
And beyond the gates of Winterfell, the feast fires roared, waiting.

 

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The Great Hall of Winterfell blazed with light and life. Above the dais, the grey direwolf of House Stark hung against pale white linen, edges darkened by time and soot.

The hall had never looked more majestic. Boars crackled on iron spits within massive hearths. Trenchers overflowed with meat swimming in thick gravies. Heaping bowls of rice in every fashion, herbed and salted in the Northern way, rich and spiced in the Dornish, saffron-colored and studded with pine nuts from Essos, lined the tables. Jugs of strong mead, whiskey, and dark Arbor red made their rounds, and the warmth of food and fire blurred with the sharp edge of anticipation in the air.

Lords and ladies filled the benches, some boisterous, some quiet, all uncertain. Rumors had soured the meat for many. They whispered behind beards and cups, behind laughter that didn’t quite reach the eyes. A storm sat just beyond the walls, not of snow, but of truth.

I sat at the high table, the weight of eyes pressing on him even when they pretended to look elsewhere. My goblet remained full, untouched, its surface trembling slightly with the beat of the hall.

To my left, Robb Stark sat in a doublet of dark grey and wolf-fur. He looked older than he had just months ago. Grief lived behind his calm. When he glanced down the table at the empty seats, one left for Sansa, her fate still tangled in the south, and one for Arya, who might be dead or something worse and one for Bran, too brave for his age.

Next to me, Howland Reed sipped slowly, saying little, his face unreadable beneath his mossy green cowl. The seating was enough to draw whispers. Scribes and maesters flanked the table, their ink-stained fingers scribbling down every name, every speech, every pause.

I glanced out across the sea of lords. The Greatjon towered near the center, red-faced and already deep into his fifth cup. He laughed like thunder, slapping Lord Tallhart so hard the man nearly fell off his bench. Bits of boar clung to his beard. Beside him, Lord Hornwood drank in silence, his eyes sharp, ever measuring. The Glover brothers leaned together, whispering low. Manderly’s men watched everything with green-eyed caution, and near the back of the hall, Maege Mormont sat flanked by her daughters, upright and fierce, her eyes locked on me from the moment she entered.

I leaned closer to Robb, voice low. “They’re waiting for something.”

“Yes,” Robb murmured, not looking away. “For someone to talk about the war. They are uneasy.”

My eyes scanned the room again. “So it is time...”

Robb gave me a hard look, then a small smile, like steel catching light. “I believe in you. Even if the rest of them haven’t yet decided whether to kneel or run. You notice how many came,” he said quietly. “Not just the usual allies, but men that haven’t seen this hall since the rebellion. Barbrey Dustin, the Ryswells.”

I nodded, keeping my voice low. “Umber, Karstark, Hornwood, the Mormonts… the mountain clans,” I said, watching a table full of huge men laughing and punching each other. “All here, and ready to fight.”

He glanced at me sharply. “The Greatjon looks like he could bring the walls down with his laughter, but you know him better. He’s a storm waiting to break.”

“I do.” I said. “And Tallhart and the Glovers, too. Quiet men, but solid. They didn’t come for a feast.”

Robb’s hand found my arm, a rare gesture. “You’re not alone in this. We face it together. Let one of them ask the question. I will back you.”

I returned the smile, if only faintly. He looked down at his hands. The firelight caught the red thread of my tunic, I wore the sigils of both legacies: my white direwolf of the North, the embroidered three-headed dragon stitched into my breast. They clashed and danced in the firelight like omens.

A serving girl placed another joint of lamb before me. I thanked her softly. The moment stretched, between meat and memory, between the fire’s roar and the silence that gathered in the corners.

And then it came.

A lull, unnatural, sudden. The kind that fell before a storm or a sword’s swing.

A chair scraped. Jon turned his head just as a minor lord stood, thin, balding, a man better known for holding the White Knife’s ford than for boldness. Lord Wells, a bannerman of the Ryswells, a sacrificial lamb really. His face was pale, his voice uncertain. But the hush gave him power.

He did not look at Robb. He did not look at Howland Reed.

He looked at me.

“Beg pardon, my lords…” he began, clearing his throat, and the air shifted again. Eyes turned. Conversations halted mid-word. The hearthfire crackled like it too held its breath. “We have convened here on the call of Lord Robb, we all know what has happened south, that our Lord is dead and his children may be too. But still remains the question…”

“… who is he, truly?” Wells asked. “Jon Stark… or someone else entirely?”

And with that, the feast became a trial.

The only sound left in the hall was the distant pop of fat in the fire. Lords sat frozen, goblets half-lifted, fingers tight around knives and bread. Even the Greatjon said nothing.

All eyes turned to me.

And I stood.

The silence settled over the hall like a stone dropped into still water. I rose slowly, each movement deliberate, conscious of every eye fixed on me, some wide with curiosity, some narrowed with suspicion, others glinting with fear or hope. The flickering firelight cast shifting shadows across their faces, twisting familiar features into masks of disbelief and awe. My heart hammered, but my voice remained steady, clear, unwavering.

I stepped forward from the high table, the embroidery on my tunic catching the firelight. I swallowed hard, drawing on every ounce of strength, every lesson from the past, and spoke.

“My name is Jon Stark,” I began, meeting the gaze of every lord and lady present. “But that is not the name my mother gave me. I am Daemon Targaryen, son of Lady Lyanna Stark… and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen.”

The words hung in the air like a blade poised to fall. The hall was still, as if the very walls themselves held their breath. I could feel the weight of centuries pressing down, the whispered legends, the bitter wars, the tangled histories all converging in that one truth.

“I was not born a Snow,” I said, voice stronger now. “Lord Eddard Stark hid me here in Winterfell for fear of what might happen to me if discovered. I was born of shame or dishonor. Lyanna Stark was never a captive. They were wed in secret, by the old gods and the new, away from the prying eyes of a kingdom on the brink of destruction.”

And so I told my first few lies, in the end I wasn’t much different from the Lannisters, wasn’t I? The truth is what you make it… Faces shifted, some in shock, others as if awakening from a long, cold dream. I pressed on.

“At the Tower of Joy, as the war raged across the land, she gave me life… As she gave up hers.”

I could feel a tremor ripple through the crowd, a collective intake of breath. Old loyalties wrestled with new realities, and the past clashed with the present in every gaze.

“Lord Eddard Stark,” I continued, “my uncle, the only father I ever knew, bore the weight of a terrible lie. He told the world I was his bastard, a Snow, so that I might live. To protect me, from Robert Baratheon’s fury, from assassins sent to silence the last true Targaryen heir in his name or from anyone who would want to gain favor with the new King. He took the shame so that I might be free.”

I paused, searching their faces for signs of mercy or wrath. The hall was a sea of frozen expressions, some staring, some turning away, others whispering to their neighbors.

“I carry that burden now,” I said softly. “I carry the blood of dragons and wolves alike. That is the truth, Lord Wells. If you don't believe it, then hear it from someone who was there. A man whose honor none of us can question.”

A low murmur stirred. It was the sound of history unraveling, of chains loosening and old wounds reopening. Whispers slipped like shadows between the benches. Robb looked at me and nodded, as if to say, "Good job."

Then, Howland Reed rose.

Quiet as a shadow, steady as the ancient stones beneath us, his voice cut through the rising noise.

“I was at Harrenhal,” he said simply, eyes unwavering. “I saw Rhaegar and Lyanna together. I saw him save her from the mad king’s killers.”

He looked around the hall, his gaze steady and unyielding.

The silence thickened with anticipation. Every eye now turned to Howland Reed. He hadn’t sat back down. His shoulders, though slight, bore a stillness I had seen only in men who knew how to wait decades for the right moment to speak. His gaze swept the hall, not commanding, but unwavering. Then he began.

“You ask how I know the truth. Let me tell you another story.”

He stepped forward, closer to the fire. His voice was quiet, but in that hush, every word rang clear.

“It began at the great tourney at Harrenhal. Many of you have heard tales or were there yourselves, how the great lords gathered, how the Mad King came, how his son Prince Rhaegar won every tilt. But few remember the shadows beneath the splendor. Fewer still remember the day the squires of three powerful knights cornered a small northern man and beat him bloody behind the tents.”

He paused.

“I was young, even smaller than I am now, and alone in a place where the highborn played their cruel games unchecked. But Lyanna Stark found me. She wiped the blood from my face, cleaned my wounds, and spoke with fire in her voice. ‘Honor,’ she told me, ‘is not just about swordplay. It is about defending those who cannot defend themselves.’”

There was a murmur in the back of the hall, Lady Mormont, perhaps, muttering “sounds like Rickard,” but no one interrupted.

“That night, a mystery knight rode into the lists,” Howland continued. “A small figure in armor far too large, the helm painted with a laughing weirwood. They called her the Knight of the Laughing Tree.”

He let the words hang for a beat. I could feel the weight of them settling on the hall.

“She challenged those same knights whose squires had beaten me. And one by one, she beat them. Demanded, not gold, but that their squires learn respect. Then she vanished before she could be unmasked. But I knew. I saw the way she moved, the fire in her eyes. It was Lyanna.”

Gasps flared in the dark corners of the hall. Lords shifted. Some whispered, others simply stared.

“The Mad King sent men after her, Prince Rhaegar was one of them, there they met. And there they fell in love.” Howland said softly.

He looked to me then, not as a vassal to a lord, but as a man passing on the last secrets of a buried truth.

Someone near the Glover brothers muttered a curse, and I saw a lord slam a fist into his own thigh.

Howland pressed on.

“When the war came, they hid in the Tower of Joy. She gave birth to her son there, as Rhaegar died on the Trident.” He said.

“I stood beside Lord Stark as Lyanna died in that tower… naming her son, begging her brother to keep him safe. There, she named him trueborn in her last breath. Rhaegar and Lyanna had married before the Gods. Her last words begged Lord Eddard to keep her child safe.”

The lords shouted, some cursed him, they asked questions and didn’t let him speak until Robb raised his hand and silence fell once more. My breath caught as he turned back to the hall.

He turned his eyes to me again. “That child stands before you now. He is the song of ice and fire. He is Rhaegar’s heir, and Lyanna’s legacy.”

I swallowed. My mouth was dry, my chest tight.

A hush deeper than any before descended. No song, no clatter, only the crackling fire and the weight of silence. The truth was no longer a whisper. It was a roar.

The silence after Howland’s words was the deepest of all.

And into that stillness, I rose.

My legs moved before I could think. Every eye turned toward me again.

I let the silence stretch a moment longer. I needed them to feel the truth settling in their bones. Then I spoke.

“I am Daemon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. That truth has been hidden all my life, and now it stands in the open for all to see. I did not ask for it. I did not seek it. But I will not deny it anymore.”

My gaze swept the room, catching the faces of men I had ridden beside, broken bread with, bled with. And I let my voice rise, not in rage, not in plea, but in quiet fire.

“I only ask that you don’t judge me only by my name,” I took one step forward. “Judge me by what I have done. The roads, the trade, the coin, the food and the warmth and the steel”

A shout came from the back. “Steel Stark!” And a few of the lord banged their glasses against the table.

I let the words ring.

I could feel it now, the quiet shifting in the room. No longer just doubt or awe. Now, recognition. Memory. Men nodding, however faintly. Whispers of “Aye, he did,” barely above the fire’s crackle.

“My blood might be that of the dragon, but I was raised by direwolves. I speak with the snow in my throat. I bleed northern steel. I trained on the yard here in Winterfell. I froze my fingers half to frostbite in the Wolfswood. I learned to track elk from Eddard Stark, and how to hold a sword from Rodrik Cassel. I was a boy of the North before I knew what the world even was.”

I looked to Robb then. He met my eyes, pain and pride warring behind them. He rose and spoke.

“He may not have the name Stark,” He said. “But he is my father's son. His real son. By heart.”

His voice dipped to something lower, something harder.

“But if you see what he has built with his own hands, if you sleep warm and eat full because of it, if you ride roads that once broke your carts, then you already know the truth.”

He raised his voice now, just enough to carry to every table.

“He is of the North. And no name will ever change that. So ask you, Lords and Ladies of the North, what say you?”

The silence after my words held like ice over a deep lake. Thin. Waiting to crack.

And then it did.

A cup slammed down on the table. Hard enough to splash wine across the wood. Hard enough to break the spell.

“You’d have us bow to dragonspawn?”

The voice came from the lower tables, rough, worn thin by age and fury. Lord Woolfield. A gnarled old man with a hawk’s nose and a mouth twisted by too many grudges.

Of course it would be you… still mad that the grain trade moved from your lands to the Moat.

He stood slowly, his knees popping audibly. “We remember the Targaryens. You think we forget that easily? We remember the pyres. The screams. What was burned can’t be unburnt.”

He swept a trembling hand toward me.

“You say you’re of the North? That you’re one of us? Fire and blood don’t mix with snow and stone. It’s poison. Always has been.”

Murmurs surged like rising wind. No cheers. No laughter. Only the crackling of fire and the faint scrape of cutlery stilled in trembling fingers.

I opened my mouth to answer, but didn’t have to.

Because a shadow moved behind Woolfield.

Smalljon Umber stepped into the space like a charging bull, eyes blazing, fists clenched. “That’s a Stark you’re talking to.”

Before Woolfield could blink, the Smalljon’s fist smashed into his jaw with the weight of a falling tree.

The old man crumpled, his goblet spinning across the flagstones. A few gasps rang out. Some lords half-rose from their benches. But no one moved to help him.

Smalljon didn’t even look down at the man he’d just leveled.

“Speak again and I’ll break your teeth and feed them to the dogs,” he growled. “We’re done with this gods-be-damned sniveling.”

He turned to face the hall, his massive frame lit by firelight, his chest heaving.

“I don’t care if he’s a dragon, a kraken, or a fockin’ sheep,” Smalljon roared. Pointing at me. “He’s a Stark. I watched him ride through blizzards with broken ribs to save grain from freezing. I saw him bury men with his own hands after a flood took their homes. He’s saved more northern lives than half the cowards in this hall.”

His voice carried like a warhorn.

“He’s bled for us.”

A beat passed. And then another voice spoke, calm, sure.

Lord Tallhart stood. Younger than most, his beard only just thick, but his words carried weight.

“Thanks to him, my granaries are bursting,” he said. “He sent seed when we were starving. Sent plows when the fields froze.”

Lord Galvart Glover followed, standing beside him.

“My men wield better steel than I’ve ever seen. Even my old master-at-arms said so, and he never praised anything that wasn’t made in Moat Cailin.”

Wyman Manderly rose next. Fierce and grim, his voice like a sharpened knife.

“The Night’s Watch hasn’t been this strong in living memory. It was near death before he set foot on the Wall. Now they’ve numbers, weapons, and purpose.”

There were nods. Hesitant at first. Then stronger.

And from the back, half-drunk and red-faced, Lord Karstark bellowed, “And the gods-damned northern fire his doing too!”

He sloshed his mug with a grin. “North’s never been warmer!”

That broke the tension. Laughter rippled across the room, uneasy but real. Not enough to wash the weight away, but enough to loosen the chains around the moment.

I remained standing, hands flat on the table, breath coming hard. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding since Woolfield rose.

They were defending me. Not with banners. Not with songs. But with truth.

And I, Daemon, Jon, whatever name they wanted, stood silent among them, the flames dancing over their faces, and I realized something deep in my marrow.

Northmen are not won with oaths or speeches. They are not like southerners with their silken words and jeweled promises. The North is old and cold and hard. Its people are harder still. They listen with their eyes. They remember with their hands. They don’t care what you call yourself, only what you’ve done.

I’d earned this room, not in a night, but over years. One fire at a time. One road. One field. One child fed when there was nothing in the cellar. That was the ledger they kept. And tonight, they were reading it aloud.

It wasn't unanimous. It never would be. There would always be old men clinging to older hates. But hate dies faster when it's surrounded by full bellies and warm halls. I did not need all of them. Just the big ones, Marderly was mine, half his revenue came from my trade. Dustin was mine, her road and defenses were built by me. Umber and Karstark were mine, their steel came from my inventions.

The hall was still humming from the last outburst, the tension now a fire crackling behind every glance, every cup lifted with new purpose. I could feel it building again, like a storm rolling in over a frozen lake. The lords of the North were watching me, watching us.

And then Robb spoke again.

He walked, slow, deliberate, down the dais steps. His cloak dragged slightly on the stone, the direwolf silver pin at his shoulder catching the firelight. His boots echoed in the silence, the only sound in the room. And then he stopped at my side.

“Blood makes you kin,” Robb said softly, so only the front tables heard at first. “But we’re more than blood.”

His hand came to rest on my shoulder, firm and warm.

“We’re brothers.”

He embraced me then, pulling me close in front of them all, like he used to when we were small, after sparring matches or mischief caught by Old Nan. It wasn’t staged or solemn. It was real. It was us.

When we parted, he turned, his cloak sweeping wide as he faced the lords of the North.

“Enough silence,” he called out. “We have waited. Watched. Endured.”

His voice rose with every word, like steel striking steel. “We have sat idle while traitors stole our kin. While wolves were slaughtered and scorned. While the South feasted on lies and called it peace!”

A hush fell over the great hall.

He took another step forward. “It is time,” he said, eyes sharp and bright. “Time to remind them what wolves do when cornered. It is time to march!”

A low murmur began, growing, swelling.

“We ride to King’s Landing,” Robb declared. “To bring justice to the usurpers and butchers who sit fat on stolen thrones. To reclaim Sansa. To find Arya. To rescue Bran. To avenge my father, your Warden of the North. Our Lord!”

The lords stood and shouted, weapons were unsheated and horns of whiskey fell to the ground or were pounded on the tables. Robb turned to me. Gave a nod.

I stepped forward, drawing in a slow breath. The hall quieted again.

“I do not ask you to give me a crown,” I said, voice steady, clear. “I do not ask you to kneel, or to call me prince. I am no one’s king.”

Not yet.

I paused. Let the silence hold.

“I ask only for this: Help me and my brother avenge the man who raised me, Eddard Stark. Help me avenge the brother and sister I never knew, Aegon and Rhaenys, butchered by southern cunts. Help me save the ones who still suffer behind the Red Keep’s walls.”

I drew my sword slowly, letting the northern steel catch the firelight. Ghost stirred somewhere behind me, his red eyes burning.

“I will ride with my brother,” I said. “We will bring fire and frost to the halls of those who forget the price of their crimes.”

I lifted my sword high above my head.

“And I ask you, will you help us?!”

The pause that followed was only heartbeats long. But it felt like a lifetime.

Then a roar shook the rafters.

“The North remembers!”
“STARK!”
“For justice! For vengeance! The North remembers!”

Robb drew his blade alongside mine, the two of us standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the banners of House Stark. Direwolf and dragon, ice and fire.

Behind us, Howland Reed stood with his head bowed. Lord Glover slammed his cup down and rose. Lord Tallhart followed. Lady Mormont, her small fists clenched around the pommel of her short sword, was shouting louder than men three times her size.

One by one, they stood.

Karstark, still swaying, but with his blade out and lifted.

“For the north!”

Manderly, slow to rise, but grinning beneath his many chins.

Even some who had stayed silent until now, Woolfield’s sons, pale and grim, but not unmoved.

And the voices rose.

“TO KING’S LANDING!”

“THE NORTH REMEMBERS!”

“STARK!”

“WAR! WAR!”

“NORTHERN JUSTICE!”

Cups were raised, some dropped and shattered, wine and ale spilling across stone floors. Fists pounded on wood. Steel rang against shields.

It was the sound of rebellion.

It was the sound of justice long delayed.

Of wolves long caged.

And of a realm about to remember what happens when winter comes.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 24: Interlude 5 — A Boy in the City of Kings

Interlude 5 — A Boy in the City of Kings

 

 

 

POV: Bran

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The Red Keep was nothing like Winterfell.

It had no godswood to speak of, just a pale garden fenced with lemon trees and silken benches, its dirt too dry for moss, its air thick with perfume instead of pine. There was nowhere to climb, sadly. And yet, Bran could not stop staring at it all: the towers that glinted like swords under the morning sun, the painted walls, the tiled floors that mirrored candlelight like pools of glass. Even the guards looked different here, polished and proud in golden cloaks, like the heroes from Old Nan’s stories.

Bran was not afraid. He felt taller somehow, walking these endless hallways in his new clothes, the direwolf of House Stark stitched proudly on his chest. His boots squeaked softly as he followed Ser Barristan Selmy down the eastern corridor, heading toward the practice yard where the squires trained with wooden swords. He liked the way the old knight walked, straight-backed and steady, with a calmness that made everyone else seem like they were rushing.

I’m to carry his helm today, Bran thought, fingers curling around the leather straps of the bag slung over his shoulder. And see to his horse before the tilts begin. And polish his sword. A squire’s duties.

It made him proud. More proud than anything had ever made him feel before.

He imagined donning armor of his own one day, steel gleaming in the sun, a white cloak flapping behind him. Not a knight of the Kingsguard, maybe, but a knight like Ser Duncan the Tall! Who protected the weak and made even kings remember their vows. Or even better, Ser Barristan, who had once faced Maelys the Monstrous and lived to tell of it.

“You’re a quiet one,” Barristan had said a few days past, when Bran had followed him silently to the stables. “That’s no failing. Listen twice before speaking once, that’s a knight’s wisdom.”

Bran had nodded so fiercely his ears had gone red.

That night, he’d told his father what Ser Barristan had said.

Father had smiled, a sad sort of smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “A knight’s wisdom, perhaps. But don’t forget this, Bran, being a knight means keeping your word when it’s hard. It means knowing when not to draw your sword. And when to do so.”

Bran hadn’t understood that part, not really. But he’d nodded anyway and repeated it to himself now like a riddle.

He walked past a gallery of stained glass, where colored light painted his face with reds and blues. He saw his reflection in the polished stone of a pillar, short and thin, with windblown brown hair and a tunic just a little too big. “But I’m growing,” he reminded himself. “I’ll be tall like Robb soon. I’ll win tourneys. I’ll ride in the lists. I’ll be strong enough to protect them all.”

Them all.

He thought of Arya’s scowl, the way she had argued with Septa Mordane again that morning. Of little Rickon, still in Winterfell. Of Sansa, who laughed too much at Prince Joffrey’s jokes. And of Father, so tired lately, weighed down by the crown’s demands and the king’s endless hunts.

And Jon.

Bran missed Jon the most. He wished his brother could see him now, polishing Ser Barristan’s greaves till they shone like ice, or holding the man’s sword steady while he tested the balance. “You’d be proud of me,” he whispered once while working the whetstone. “I’ll make you proud.”

Jon would know what the dreams of Summer running in the riverlands with his sisters meant.

The bell in the Tower of the Hand rang softly, far above. It echoed through the Keep like a distant voice.

Bran turned toward the practice yard. The sun was climbing. It would be a busy day. Knights from every corner of the realm had come to honor Lord Stark’s appointment, and the lists would be crowded. There’d be banners and cheers and silver armor glinting like fire. He would watch from the shade of the pavilion, fetch water, help with saddles, lances and shields.

He would serve.

Because he was a squire of Ser Barristan the Bold. Because he was a Stark of Winterfell.

Because one day, he would be a knight.

And King’s Landing, for all its heat and strangeness, still seemed like a place where dreams might live.

 

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They walked the garden paths behind the Tower of the Hand, where sunlight pooled through the high, arched windows and scattered golden coins across the flagstones. The scent of lemon trees hung thick in the air, and a breeze from the bay teased Arya’s hair into wild tangles she didn’t bother to smooth down.

“Hold your elbows in,” Arya said, hopping from stone to stone. “Like this.” She struck a pose, one foot forward, arms raised like a dancer’s. “Syrio says footwork is everything. It’s not just about swinging a sword. Anyone can swing a sword. A water dancer moves like a shadow.” She spun on one foot, nearly colliding with a column.

Bran laughed. “You’re going to fall on your face.”

“Better to fall than to stand still like a tree,” Arya said, puffing out her chest. “That’s what Syrio says too.”

Sansa rolled her eyes and sipped from her little cup of lemonwater. “It’s unseemly for a lady to wave her arms about like a madwoman.”

Arya stuck out her tongue. “I’m not a lady.”

Bran snorted. “We noticed.”

They laughed together, loud and free, the sound echoing off the pale stone around them. For a moment, they weren’t in the capital. They were just children again, just a brother and two sisters with the warmth of the sun on their backs and nothing in the world to fear.

“Anyway,” Sansa said primly, brushing a fleck of lint from her sleeve, “Prince Joffrey says Syrio Forel was just a mummer’s man. He’s never even fought in a real war.”

Arya’s eyes narrowed. “Joffrey can eat sand.”

Sansa gasped. “You shouldn’t say things like that! He’s going to be king one day.”

Bran stayed quiet. He remembered the way Joffrey’s had lied, how he’d joked about putting a direwolf head on a pike that day “just to see the northern boy cry again.” He didn’t like Joffrey. But Sansa looked so happy when she talked about him, her face bright, her voice dreamy. Bran didn’t want to ruin that.

“He was very gallant when he helped Lady Royce down from her horse,” Sansa went on. “And he’s got a new doublet with the Lannister lion all embroidered in gold thread. Septa Mordane says he looks like a true prince of the realm.”

“He looks like a yellow-haired weasel,” Arya muttered.

“I heard that.”

Bran grinned and turned his attention to the tower above them. The windows were full of color today, catching the midday sun. He could hear music drifting faintly down from the upper halls, flutes and fiddles, the tune bright and quick. Somewhere, lords and ladies were feasting or practicing for the tourney. Banners flapped from every rooftop: lions, flowers, stags. And wolves. There was even one banner showing a flaming heart that he didn’t recognize, but it looked fierce and beautiful all the same.

“The city’s different,” Bran said aloud, half to himself. “Louder. Busier.”

“It’s the tourney,” Sansa said. “They say there’ll be a thousand knights. Maybe more. Even the Dornish are sending a party, and the Tyrells are arriving soon. Father says it’ll be the grandest tourney in twenty years.”

“I want to see the tilts,” Arya said. “And the melee.”

Bran nodded. “I want to see Ser Barristan ride.”

Sansa gave a polite smile. “He’s very old.”

“He’s the best knight in the realm,” Arya snapped.

“He is,” Bran agreed, firmly. “Even the Kingsguard says so.”

Sansa didn’t argue after that. She only sipped her lemonwater and looked off toward the tower, as if imagining Prince Joffrey winning the champion’s wreath and offering it to her.

Bran kicked at a pebble and watched it skip across the stones. The moment felt golden somehow, like the hour just before sunset in the godswood. The heat hadn’t yet turned heavy, the clouds hadn’t yet rolled in. They were here. They were safe. And for a few heartbeats, it felt like nothing could change that.

He looked at Arya, barefoot and grinning, and Sansa, composed and dreaming, and loved them both with a sudden fierceness that made his throat tighten. They were so different. But they were his sisters.

And the City of Kings, for all its strangeness, still seemed to hold room for all of them.

If only he had seen father’s face on the other side of the yard when Arya called Joffrey yellow-haired.

 

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Bran heard them arguing before he entered the solar. Arya’s voice, sharp and breathless, carried through the thick door. Sansa’s was quieter, but sharper in its own way, like the edge of a well-honed knife.

The air inside the room was heavy. Golden light seeped through the tall window, painting everything in cold silver. Father stood there, back straight, hands clasped behind him, the cloak of House Stark hanging heavy from his shoulders like a shadow that would not lift.

Bran could feel it, the weight in the air, like the hush before snow fell.

“You are leaving the city soon,” Father said.

Bran blinked.

Just like that.

No warning. No talk of preparations. No reason.

Arya gasped, stepping forward, still clutching her practice sword. Her cheeks were red, probably from running. “But I’ve only just started again with Syrio! He says I’m quicker than half the boys he trained in Braavos!”

“I don’t want to leave,” Sansa said, voice almost trembling. “I’m betrothed to the prince. We can’t just leave—can we?”

Bran’s heart beat faster. “But I have a squire’s place. Ser Barristan said I could help him with the tilts. I’ve been practicing every day.”

Father turned then. His face was calm, but not cold. Bran could tell the difference now. There was something old behind his eyes.

“Enough,” Father said.

The word stopped everything. Even Arya didn’t move.

He looked at each of them in turn. “I did not say you leave today. But if the time comes, you must be ready. If I say pack, you pack. If I say ride, you ride. No questions. No hesitation.”

Bran’s throat tightened. He could hear Arya fidgeting beside him, her fingers tapping against the wooden grip of her sword. She wanted to fight it. She always did.

Sansa folded her hands, lips trembling just slightly. “But… what about the prince? About me?”

Father’s expression didn’t change, but something in him flickered, like a candle guttering in wind. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I wish I did.”

Bran felt something sharp twist in his chest. He hadn’t heard Father speak like that since… the wolves.

“I’ve done everything I was supposed to,” Bran said. “Every lesson. Every drill. I’m ready.”

“I know,” Father said, stepping close. His hand came down on Bran’s shoulder. It was heavy and warm, but it didn’t make the fear go away. “This isn’t punishment. The world changes whether we’re ready or not.”

The words made sense, but didn’t feel real.

Bran looked around the room. It had become theirs in small ways, Sansa’s brush on the desk, Arya’s boots in the corner, his own carved game pieces tucked near the fire. It wasn’t home, but it was something.

And now it was being taken away.

Father turned toward the door, pulling on his gloves. “Tell Septa Mordane to help you gather your things. What you need. Only that.”

Arya’s voice was defiant again. “Can I bring my sword?”

“If it fits in your pack,” Father said, without turning. “Bran go tell Ser Barristan your squireship with him is over, be respectful. I will send someone for you later in the day.”

The door shut behind him, and the solar was silent.

Arya kicked the edge of a chair, but not hard. Sansa stood very still, lips thin and pale. No one said anything.

Bran sat for a long moment by the heart, staring at the crumbled remains of the fire. The air felt still now, as though Father’s words had pressed all sound into silence. Even Arya was quiet, slumped beside the window, tapping her heel against the stone ledge. Sansa had left in a huff, her steps quick and careful, no doubt on her way to find Septa Mordane.

He shifted to rise, meaning to go back to his room, prepare with his talk with Ser Barristan, but stopped halfway to the door. Voices echoed faintly down the corridor outside. One sharp, oiled like a knife; the other calm and cold as winter snow.

He knew them both.

Father. And Littlefinger.

Bran crept closer, keeping to the wall where shadows gathered beneath the hanging tapestries. He’d learned, these past moons, how to move quieter than expected. The limp helped, in a way, people never thought to look for him lingering near corners or behind pillars.

“…more of them, Lord Stark,” Baelish was saying, his voice almost pleasant. “Not just the one you saw. The Street of Steel has eyes and blood. The whore’s daughter was not the only stone thrown from Robert’s garden. If we have more then we have more evidence for the King.”

A pause.

Bran heard Father’s breath, heard it hitch slightly.

“How many?” Ned’s voice was low and careful.

Baelish chuckled, soft and false. “Enough. I have names. Faces. One’s apprenticed to an armorer in Copper Alley. Another runs messages between the forges. There’s a girl, too, they say she has Robert’s chin. These things... proliferate, when no one bothers to count.”

Bran frowned. Bastards? Why would that matter?

But something in Father’s voice made Bran’s spine stiffen.

“Send me what you have. Quietly, I will look for them.” Ned said.

Another chuckle. “Of course, my lord. Discretion is... well, let’s say it’s what I do best.”

Bran heard the brush of cloaks, the scuff of boots turning toward the stairwell. He stayed still, heart thudding in his chest, until their steps faded and only the soft flutter of banners remained.

“Jory… be wary of the Gold Cloaks, I want eyes on them when we are in the city.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He stood for a long while, staring out the arrow-slit window at the towers of King’s Landing. The city sprawled beyond, a beast made of stone and smoke and screaming voices. Somewhere down there were the Street of Steel and its smiths and its secrets. Somewhere down there were bastards with a king’s blood, why was father looking for Roberts’s bastards? What did he want to prove to the King?

And Father was gathering them.

Bran didn’t understand all of it, not yet, but he understood enough to know that whatever had been quiet was now stirring. That fire was being kindled in places no one could see.

He turned back from the window, his cane tapping softly on the stone.

The air in the solar still smelled faintly of ash.

And far below, the city burned with its thousand small flames, waiting.

 

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The streets of King’s Landing bustled with life as Bran tried to keep pace beside Ser Barristan Selmy. His white cloak flowed behind him like a banner of snow, unspotted and regal, even as mud splashed at their boots. The morning was warm, the sky pale with haze, and the smell of baking bread and horses drifted through the alleys. Bran kept close, eyes wide, trying to take it all in.

They were heading down toward Cobbler’s Square, where a famed armorer, a Tyroshi with green tattoos and hands like anvils, was completing Ser Barristan’s tourney armor. Bran didn’t know what to expect, but he was proud just to be asked along. Bran had to tell Ser Barristan he couldn’t keep his squireship as he was leaving the capital, but a few more questions couldn’t hurt.

“Ser?” Bran said after a stretch of silence. “Is it true you fought at the Trident?”

Ser Barristan didn’t stop walking, but his head inclined slightly. “Aye. Though not as you might think. I fought for the prince. Not the king.”

“Oh.” Bran blinked. “But… you were close to Prince Rhaegar, weren’t you?”

A pause. “He was a quiet man. Thoughtful. Learned. Too much so, perhaps, for the times he lived in.”

They passed a fruit vendor shouting about fresh oranges from the Arbor. A child darted between their legs with a stolen apple. Ser Barristan didn’t even flinch.

“I read about the tourney at Harrenhal,” Bran pressed. “Was it true that Prince Rhaegar crowned Aunt Lyanna instead of Princess Elia?”

Ser Barristan stopped then, turning his pale blue gaze on Bran. “You ask many questions for a squire.”

Bran flushed. “I’m sorry. I only meant—”

“No need to apologize. Curiosity is a knight’s companion, if he keeps it honest.” The old knight looked past Bran, toward the towers of the Red Keep in the distance. “I was there. At Harrenhal. The day Rhaegar crowned Lyanna Stark, a hush fell over the realm that has never lifted.”

He said no more.

They reached the shop, and the armorer welcomed Ser Barristan with a deep bow and a gap-toothed grin. Bran watched as they inspected a gleaming new suit of plate: pale silver with chased patterns of white wings across the breastplate. Barristan ran a gloved hand along the curve of the vambrace.

“It is fine work,” he said simply.

Bran let his eyes wander. On one wall, old blades and shattered helms hung like broken crowns. A knight’s shield painted with the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen leaned in the corner, cracked down the middle. He felt the weight of history in this place, thicker than dust.

Outside, the sun climbed higher, and the streets filled with noise.

As they stepped back into the daylight, Bran asked, “Did you fight in the War of the Ninepenny Kings too?”

“I was three and twenty,” Barristan said. “They called me the Bold by then. Foolish, perhaps, but bold.”

“And you killed Maelys the Monstrous?”

Barristan didn’t look proud when he nodded. “A prince of House Blackfyre. Tall as two men, and crueler than ten. I killed him, yes. But that was the day I learned that even victory feels like grief, if the blood on your blade is thick enough.”

Bran didn’t know what to say to that.

They turned down Fishmonger’s Way, where the city opened wide toward the harbor. Sailors called out from the docks, gulls wheeled in the sky, and the ships of a dozen lords flew their banners in the wind.

Barristan slowed, then knelt beside Bran. “Tell me what you see.”

Bran blinked. “I see… boats?”

“More.”

Bran looked again. “A lot of Tyrell green. Those are their ships, right? And some Royal sails. And… um… that’s a Stark banner on the galley over there. That must be a Manderly trade vessel.”

Barristan nodded. “Good. And the streets?”

“Busy. Mostly smallfolk. Some squires with lances, maybe practicing for the melee. That beggar’s pretending to limp when the goldcloaks look, but he walks fine when they pass.”

Barristan smiled. “A knight must know his blade, his shield, and the realm he serves. You may hold a sword for the king, but you walk among the people.”

This was the moment, Bran had to tell him he was leaving, it had been hours, and he was still here…

Then the bells began to toll.

At first, it was a single chime, then another, faster, then five, ten, twenty. They rang from the Sept of Baelor, from the Great Bell Tower, from the river towers above the mud gate. Loud. Harsh. Frantic.

People stopped. Heads turned. A dog began to howl.

Bran’s stomach clenched. “What’s happening?”

Ser Barristan stood very still, his face drawn as tight as a pulled bowstring. The wind caught his cloak and tugged it forward like a shroud.

“They toll like that only for three things,” he said. “A royal heir’s birth. An invading army… or the death of a king.”

Bran’s mouth went dry. “Which is it?”

But Ser Barristan didn’t answer. He was already moving, fast, pushing through the growing crowd, cloak streaming behind him.

And Bran ran to keep up, heart hammering in his chest, knowing, somehow, that the City of Kings was about to become something very different.

They were halfway up the Street of Steel when the whispers caught up to them.

“Did you hear? The king—”

“Poison, they say—”

“Robert Baratheon is dead—!”

A ripple ran through the street like wind over tall grass. The cheerful market songs faltered; horses stamped nervously. A man dropped a crate of oranges, and they rolled underfoot, squashed by the crowd beginning to stir. The clang of steel on steel could be heard in the distance.

Bran felt a chill rise in his chest, though the day was warm. “Ser Barristan?”

The old knight's face was grave. “Keep your eyes sharp, Bran.”

They turned a corner near the fishmongers' stalls when Bran heard it: metal on metal. The shriek of steel. Then another sound, a scream.

Barristan halted, gaze cutting toward the slope of the Street of Steel, and Bran followed his eyes.

Through a parting in the press of smallfolk, Bran saw them, his father, Lord Eddard Stark, sword drawn and grim as winter, flanked by the men of his household. Jory Cassel. Fat Tom. Desmond. Their cloaks were grey and white, wolves embroidered over mail. A few of the city guard stood with him, Baelish men.

Opposite them stood knights in red: Lannister men, armor shining like coins, their leader armored head-to-heel and mounted atop a snarling destrier.

And in between… only silence. Tension drawn taut.

“Father,” Bran breathed.

He moved to run. Barristan caught him with one arm.

“No,” he said. “Not now.”

“But—!”

Bran clenched his fists. He could see his father’s mouth moving, no, commanding. He was trying to hold peace. To stop something from happening.

A Glod Cloak raised his hand, a short sword in it, and stabbed one of his father’s men in the back.

The world exploded.

Steel rang out as the Lannister guards surged forward. One of Stark’s men fell almost immediately, pulled from his horse by three blades. Jory shouted something and pushed Lord Eddard behind him, then was lost in the fray. The crowd screamed and scattered. A woman was trampled trying to flee. Chickens burst from a fallen cage, feathers flying like snow.

Bran’s head whipped back. “We have to help them! We have to—!”

“Get down!” Barristan shoved him aside.

Three Lannister guards had spotted them. One pointed, and they came charging up the slope. “It’s the boy, seize him!”

“Run, Bran,” Barristan said.

But Bran couldn’t move. Not with his father fighting, not with blood flying in the street.

“Give up the boy, Ser Barristan, on order of the Queen.”

Barristan didn’t answer for a moment. Then he unsheathed his sword.

Then Barristan was no longer the old knight of stories. He became something else entirely.

The first man came with a spear. Ser Barristan didn’t dodge. He stepped inside the thrust and drove his sword through the man’s chest. It burst from his back in a spray of red. He turned. Slashed. The second man fell with his throat opened like a second mouth.

The last man tried to flank him, raising a short sword.

“Behind you!” Bran shouted.

Barristan twisted just in time, his blade flashing. The man crumpled with a grunt.

Then Bran’s ears caught it: a footstep, soft but too fast.

He turned, and saw a man.

Not a red knight, but a Gold Cloak, his armor dull and dented. He held a short sword and was creeping toward Ser Barristan’s back, quiet as a cat.

Barristan didn’t see him.

Bran didn’t think. He didn’t speak.

He just moved.

He took his sword, light northern steel gifted to him by Jon, and jumped on him.

He grabbed it with both hands and swung it up with a strangled cry.

It hit the man square in the temple. There was a sickening sound, and the man’s eyes went wide. He staggered. Fell. Blood on his face.

Bran stood over him, chest heaving, fingers still clenched around the bloodied sword.

Ser Barristan turned sharply, sword raised, then saw the body. Saw Bran.

For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke.

Panting, Barristan looked down at Bran. “Stay close to me.”

But Bran was looking back, down the street.

He saw Desmond crushed beneath a warhorse’s hooves. Fat Tom trying to shield Lord Stark. Jory cut a man down with a scream. His father, still standing, shouting, fending off three men at once, until a crossbow bolt struck his leg, and he stumbled.

“No—!” Bran surged forward.

Barristan grabbed him, arms like iron bands.

Bran watched, helplessly, as a gold cloak slammed his sword into his father’s back, and another drove a blade beneath his ribs. His father collapsed to one knee. A third strike came, then Ned Stark fell, swallowed by the chaos, his grey cloak torn and darkening with blood.

No! No, no, no—

Bran screamed, the sound tearing from his throat like a wounded animal. He kicked at Barristan, clawing, desperate to reach him.

“Father!”

Barristan’s face was pale with fury and grief. “Run, damn it!”

The knight seized Bran in both arms and threw them into motion. Down an alley, through a courtyard where an old woman screamed and slammed her shutters. Barristan moved like a man possessed, sword still bloody, white cloak trailing behind him like a streak of ash.

They darted through the baker’s quarter and into a hidden postern gate half-choked with weeds. Bran sobbed in his arms, flailing against the knight who carried him.

“We have to go back! We have to—he’s—!”

“He’s gone,” Barristan said, voice hoarse. “There’s no going back now.”

Bran felt like the world had tilted. His breath came in gasps. His chest felt too tight. Every time he blinked, he saw his father falling, again and again.

The knight did not stop, not even when Bran struck him with small fists. He carried him like a bundle of grief through shadows and broken stone, deeper into Kings Landing.

They hid in a stable for hours, hearing sounds of battle come from all over the city. Barristan’s his white cloak missing. He wrapped Bran in a rough spun cloak and whispered quiet words to keep him still.

Bran shook. The sobs wouldn’t stop. He curled in on himself, whispering, “No… no… no…” over and over again.

At last, when the bells had ceased and dusk painted the sky with ash and rose, Ser Barristan knelt beside him and took him somewhere else.

 

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The trees passed in a blur of green and gold and dust.

Bran did not feel the horse beneath him anymore. He barely felt the hard leather of the saddle or the ache in his thighs. He held on because his body remembered how, because his hands were clenched too tight to open. He didn’t think of loosening them. He didn’t think of anything.

His eyes stung. His face was wet. He hadn’t heard himself cry.

Somewhere behind them, the city still burned. In memory, in the glint of Lannister steel, in the high tolling of bells that would not stop, in the coppery smell of blood and dust. It had all blurred together. Screams. Smoke. The crunch of boot against bone. The sound of someone dying. He didn’t know if it had been his father’s voice.

The wind rushed past his ears now. It howled, empty and indifferent. The rhythm of hooves beat on, steady, relentless. It might’ve been his own heartbeat. He couldn’t tell the difference.

He did not remember how they got out. He did not remember the streets they took, or if the gate was guarded, or how the guards were made to look away.

The blood was still on him. Sticky on his hands. A streak across his sleeve where the man had fallen. A warm spray on his cheek where—

He gagged, but nothing came. His stomach was empty. Or maybe it wasn’t. He couldn’t feel it.

The horse turned down a slope. The reins tugged gently, guiding him. He had not touched them. He was only along for the ride now. A bundle of limbs and pain and silence.

The world narrowed to motion and breath. Trees passed. Rocks. A bird called once in the distance. His head swayed with the rhythm of the ride. His mind floated just above his body, somewhere unreachable, watching from a height.

He was Bran Stark, second son of Eddard Stark, squire to Ser Barristan Selmy, who had once dreamed of knighthood, of silver spurs and white cloaks. That boy had stood beside his father just that morning, smiling, talking of swords. That boy had been looking forward to the tourney.

He was gone now.

Bran did not know when he began crying again. He only realized it when he tasted salt in his mouth, and when the tears froze to his cheeks in the wind.

They rode for hours. Day became dusk. The light turned gold, then bruised purple. Shadows lengthened. The horses snorted, their breaths heavy, flanks steaming in the cool.

At some point, Ser Barristan halted. Bran did not know where. Trees surrounded them, tall oaks, thick trunks, the air heavy with leaves and the scent of damp earth. He dismounted because the knight lifted him down. He stood because his legs remembered how.

There was no campfire that night. No comfort of warm stew or stories. They did not speak. Ser Barristan bound the horses to a low branch and vanished into the brush. When he returned, he tossed a blanket to the ground and handed Bran a skin of water.

Bran drank because his throat hurt. It tasted of leather and iron.

He sat beneath a tree, wrapping the blanket around him. His limbs were shaking now. A cold had settled in his chest, lodged like a shard of ice between his ribs. He stared into the darkness and saw his father falling, again and again, like a dream on a loop. The sword raised. The men shouting. His father’s eyes, wide, surprised.

He’d screamed then. He remembered that.

He buried his face in his knees. The blanket did nothing. He felt naked beneath the sky. Ser Barristan held him.

The stars came out slowly. One by one.

No going back.

The words echoed inside him. He wasn’t sure who had said them.

He shut his eyes. And saw the man again, the one who had come at Ser Barristan from behind. The sword. The gleam of it. The way Bran’s hand had found his sword. The sound it had made when it went though the man.

His first kill.

He had not aimed. He had not thought. It had been instinct. Like Summer, lunging.

He didn’t feel proud. He didn’t feel anything. Just tired.

So very tired.

That night, Bran Stark did not sleep.

He was no longer a squire in King’s Landing.

He was a boy on the run. A boy without a father. A boy who had looked into the heart of the realm and seen its rot.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 25: Chapter 20 – The Weight of Names and War

Chapter 20 – The Weight of Names and War

 

 

 

The wind off the Neck is sharper than steel. It cuts through fur and cloak and pride alike, howling through the reeds and tangled branches like a ghost let loose from the barrowlands. I ride ahead of the van, just north of Moat Cailin.

So much gold invested in stone roads that won’t flood, just so thousands of muddy boots tarnish them…

Behind me, the North moves.

Infantry march in orderly blocks, thick-bodied men in boiled leather and heavy steel plate, helms slung at their sides, beards tangled with morning frost. Spears and axes clatter softly in rhythm to their steps. Cavalry columns ride to the flanks, black and grey and brown horses draped in banners that flap in the wind. The direwolf of Stark. The roaring bear of Mormont. The green pines of Tallhart. The first real army the North has fielded in a generation, and it rides to war under two names: Stark and Targaryen.

That second name still feels strange in my bones.

Daemon.
Prince Daemon.
Jon Stark.

I hear all three before the sun sets. Jon from Robb, always with a kind of exasperated affection. Daemon from the lords whispering, clipped and measured. My prince from the men.

The name Daemon felt like a weight on my shoulders, both a curse and a blessing. To many, it was a brand to spit on, a reminder of a bastard’s stain, a name twisted to shame and mock. I could already hear the whispers, the venomous tongues eager to use it against me.

But Daemon was more than that. It was the name of men who had wielded power with fierce hands, men who bent kingdoms to their will and left legends burning in their wake. Two great Daemons had walked before me, fierce and unyielding. If I could carry that legacy, maybe this name would become my greatest weapon, not my downfall.

Names are armor. And sometimes shackles.

There are days when I still expect to wake up in my bunk at university, papers spread across my chest, dreaming of armies instead of leading them. I remember the feel of graphite on my fingers, the calluses from turning bolts, the quiet click of a mechanical pencil. I once spent three weeks designing a storm drainage system for a mountain road that didn’t exist. Now I draft plans for trebuchets and grain stockpiles. My old world is as far from me now as the moon, and yet sometimes… I swear I can still feel the weight of an English wrench in my hand.

How strange, to go from tightening bolts to tightening battle lines.

In those first years at Winterfell, when the nights were long and the silence heavy, I wrote.

Page after page by candlelight, hidden beneath blankets or tucked away in the rookery when Maester Luwin wasn’t looking. Notebooks of everything I could remember: mathematics, calculus, physics, astronomy, the chemical tables, orbital mechanics, materials science. Thermodynamics, genetics, engineering equations, even scraps of literature and philosophy. Anything that might help. Anything I might lose if I let it fade. Hundreds of laws of the universe.

I feared it would all slip from me. That one day I’d wake up and forget how hydrogen bonds worked, or what E=mc² meant. That I’d forget Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, not their names, but their truths. That the knowledge of an entire world would vanish with me. So I wrote. Thousands of pages. Hundreds of thousands of lines. What I could remember, I etched into ink and paper as if carving it into the bones of time.

Most of it was useless here. There’s no infrastructure for satellites or particle accelerators in the North. No silicon chips. No computers. Not that I knew how most worked. But some things… some things have already proven their worth. Water purification. Crop rotation. The distillation process. Structural reinforcement using triangular tension principles. Measurements of torque. I taught carpenters how to shape beams for better load-bearing. Masons how to lay mortar to resist heat stress. I didn’t bring the modern world with me, but I carried enough fragments to start building a different one.

A better one, maybe. Or at least a less blind one.

Sometimes I wonder what Maester Luwin thought when he found my old sketches. The helix of DNA scrawled beside a Stark genealogy. A telescope lens diagram tucked inside a book of Old Nan’s tales. I was a child when I began writing it all down, but even then, I knew. I wasn’t just trying to remember. I was preparing.

I shift in the saddle, gloved hands resting lightly on the reins. My destrier snorted and tossed his head. War has a scent, and even the greenest lads in the column behind me can smell it. Some hide it behind songs and laughter. Others behind silence. But they all know. We’re marching toward blood.

Moat Cailin appears in front of us in the mist, a high black silhouette against the pale marsh. I left it strong. Reinforced. Garrisoned. Fed. Its wells run clean and its granaries are full. What we’ve built there, Robb, Seren, Sam and I, that is my legacy more than my name. Let the bards sing of dragon princes and Stark wolves. What matters is that our steel is northern-forged, our bellies are full, and our wagons are heavy with grain, pitch and salt meat.

“Prince Daemon.”

I glance to my right. Rodrik Cassel rides beside me, face unreadable beneath his hood. A grizzled man, steady as stone. He gestures toward the crest of the next hill. “You’ll want to see this.”

I nod, spurring my horse forward.

From the ridge, I see the full length of our host, Robb was waiting for me there, Theon right beside him. A dark line stretching down the causeway, wavering like a shadowed river. Siege engines creak in their carts, scorpions, ballistae, and the beginnings of a trebuchet we’ve yet to name. Supply wagons roll in tight convoys, guarded by pikemen. The baggage train is longer than it should be, we bring more grain than gold, and even more tools than swords. Behind us, the North follows not just for vengeance, but for survival.

I take a long breath and feel the cold settle into my lungs.

Robb nudges me with an elbow and grins. “So, Jon, with all these engines of war, when do we get to see a dragon?”

Theon, never one to miss a chance, chimes in from behind, “Maybe it’s a dragon that just blows hot air, like some of the council meetings back in Winterfell.”

I smirk despite myself. “If I’m the dragon, Theon, then I suppose you’re the smoke, always around, sometimes useful, mostly irritating.”

Robb laughs, shaking his head. “Careful, Theon. You might just get roasted before we even reach the battlefield.”

Theon throws up his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright! But remember, even smoke can choke a man.”

“Tens of thousands men… They won’t expect the steel.” Robb said.

I glance back at the host below us. “Let them underestimate us. It makes the surprise all the sweeter.”

Robb claps me on the shoulder. “Just don’t get too caught up in your plans, dragon. Remember, even the best strategy needs a bit of luck, and some fools to charge headlong into the fray.”

I meet his eyes, steady and certain. “Hopefully we won’t have to charge any Freys.”

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Moat Cailin opened its doors for us.

A scarred stone beast, black basalt and concrete, half-swallowed by mud and time. Its towers jutted like the ribs of some long-dead leviathan, shattered by ages of wind and war. But even from the saddle, I could see the change. New scaffolds clung to its flanks. Iron bracing supported old bones. Walls once crumbled now stood tall, coursed in granite. Watchfires burned in braziers atop fresh timber towers. A dozen new-built barracks ringed the central keep like a second shell.

The walls are finally done.

Moat Cailin wasn’t whole. But it was awake.

Around it, the war camp sprawled, organized chaos. Tents marked in colors of Karstark, Glover, Mormont, and Reed. Carts laden with quarrels and salted meat. Smiths clanged steel on steel under canvas roofs, and surveyors marked ground with string and pegs for the new tents, the latrines were far from the camp.

Seren and Sam have done a good job organizing the camp. Hopefully I will be able to convince the lords to repeat this set up every time.

The trenches that snaked along the southern face were deep, dry, sloped. The berms behind them built from packed clay, reinforced with pine logs and stone. Not a siege line in the style of King’s Landing or Oldtown, no. These were engineered, low, sloped, overlapping angles. Functional. Efficient.

My designs.

It belonged to the North. I’d stolen knowledge from a world of concrete and code and poured it into stone and blood. One day, this place would stand as the heart of the North. A citadel of war and survival. The administrative center of my lands in the North.

The first piece of my Crownlands…

But it wasn’t ready. Not yet.

The steel gates creaked open.

Robb met me at the foot of the causeway, mud to his knees and a grin on his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in two days. His cloak was rain-streaked and thick with soot. But his eyes were bright beneath his hood.

“My prince,” he said, mock-formal, and offered an exaggerated bow.

“Careful, Stark,” I replied. “You bend that back too far, and it’ll never straighten again.”

He laughed, and we embraced, brief, firm, real. It was the grip of brothers who had bled, lost, and led. There were few things in the world more honest than that.

We walked the walls together, boots crunching on gravel and half-laid stone. The rain had eased to a mist, and the camp below flickered with firelight. Soldiers moved like shadows, purposeful. Tired. Cold. But alive. Robb looked out across them, his hand resting lightly on his sword belt.

“Last time we sparred,” he said, “you still had baby fat. I could knock you flat with a wooden sword.”

I arched a brow. “And you still thought I would be kneeling to you.”

He snorted. “Aye. And I also thought I’d marry a princess and live happily ever after. The gods had other plans.”

“They always do.”

We paused near the southern turret. From there, we could see the road winding through the Neck, the low ridges beyond the swamps. The only path into the North. And we held it.

I glanced down to the trench lines. “How are the men?”

“Eager. Cold. Hungry for what comes next.” He shifted. “Some still whisper about your name.”

“My name doesn’t matter,” I said. “What we build here does.”

He gave me a sidelong look. “They’ll follow us, Jon. Even the old ones. They don’t say it aloud, but they’ve seen what you’ve done. These walls. The steel in their hands. The food in their bellies.”

For a long moment, we said nothing. The wind howled between the towers. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sound of silence, true silence, the kind you only find in a childhood room after the storm passes. I hadn’t heard it in years.

“I used to dream of towers,” I murmured. “Back when I was… before this. I’d build them in my mind. Concrete and steel. Calculations. Angles. Sometimes I think this place is a poor copy of that dream.”

Robb didn’t answer right away. “Maybe. But it’s ours. And it will do its job.”

He looked back toward the swamp, toward the south.

“You still dream?” he asked, suddenly.

“Too often.”

“And the ones with fire?”

I nodded. “More and more.”

He exhaled, slow. “When we ride south, it’s with the North behind us.”

“Some of us might not come back at all.”

He met my gaze, firm and clear. “Then let’s make it count, brother. We will get them back.”

“Upon a river of blood if necessary.”

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I stood at the edge of the long wooden table in the war room, fingers tracing the edges of the carved map laid out before us. The Neck, the Riverlands, the scattered houses of my domain, all laid bare beneath my gaze. Moat Cailin sat like a wound in the earth, a scarred stone beast surrounded by new earthworks and trenches.

Around me sat some of the lords and captains of the North for this informal meeting: Robb, of course, his tired eyes still bright despite the weight on his shoulders; Lord Cerwyn, with his stoic presence; Galbart Glover, sharp and watchful; Ser Cort, who had the patience of a teacher drilling green recruits; and Wylis Manderly, young but steady-eyed beneath his sea-green cloak.

Ser Cort cleared his throat and unfurled a parchment. “Eighteen thousand footmen,” he reported, his voice brisk. “Mostly heavy infantry, Karstark, Glover, Mormont, Cerwyn levies. Most wear steel now. The worst boiled leather’s been replaced, thanks to your foundries, my prince.”

I nodded slightly. The Blackworks had delivered. And my factories had churned out armor, spearheads, and shields faster than any Westerosi tradition could have dreamed. The look on Cort’s face showed he approved, though he’d never admit it.

“Eight thousand cavalry,” he continued, “from Umbers, Manderlys, Hornwoods… and two thousand from Barrowton.”

Glover raised a brow. “Lady Dustin?”

“Indeed,” Cort said, “but either way, they ride with House Targaryen and Stark now.”

Robb whistled low. “Didn’t think she’d ever forgive Father.”

“She hasn’t,” I said, voice low. “But she can’t not send men after all the projects we have funded in her lands.”

“Nasty cunt,” muttered Cerwyn.

I cleared my throat. “And of course the host of Moat Cailin. Two thousand infantry, five hundred cavalry, five hundred support personnel, medics, engineers. They bear the tree-headed dragon now, but they march for the North. They are trained to my standards, drilled in siege tactics, extended marches, logistics.”

That drew a quiet murmur around the table. The thought of a Targaryen host in the North might have raised eyebrows in another time. But these were Northerners who wanted to believe in something new, something better. And they trusted me to lead.

Ser Cort added, voice dropping slightly, “There’s also a training camp north of the Blackpine and a few more near Stonehaven and Driftway. Three thousand green men, mostly second sons, landless freemen, idealists. Volunteers. Incentives work, coin, land promises, steady meals. And growing fast.”

I let my fingers rest lightly on the map, eyes distant for a moment. I thought of all the numbers I’d studied back in my old life, equations, logistics, supply lines. Wars weren’t won with banners and valor alone. “You don’t win a war with honor,” I said quietly, “You win it with steel, food, and discipline.”

Glover grunted in agreement. “Aye. And enough patience to keep your lads from gutting each other when the hunger bites.”

Robb’s voice was quieter, almost vulnerable. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We march, we might not have the full might of the north here, but we have to defend the home front too.” I said, voice steady. “The Twins must be reached within two weeks. If we stall here, King’s Landing will have time to consolidate.”

“There are rumors of battles in the Riverlands, house Tully at the helm. If they fall, the Riverlands fall with them.” Robb said.

“There’s talk of a large Lannister host gathering near Harrenhal,” Cerwyn added. “Tywin hasn’t moved yet, but he’s gathering strength.”

“And Frey?” Wylis asked. “Will he grant us passage?”

Robb hesitated. “I’ll speak with him.”

“There are other crossings,” I offered. “Slower, more dangerous, but fewer tolls.”

“We can’t afford delays,” Robb said, his jaw tight. “If Riverrun breaks before we get there—”

“Then the Riverlands fall,” I finished. The weight of that truth settled in the room like a stone.

We sat in silence for a moment before Glover spoke. “We need a garrison here at Moat Cailin. It may be strong, but it’s not finished. If the Ironborn smell weakness, they’ll strike.”

“Especially the coastline, Saltstream is practically defenseless,” I nodded. “My men in training will hold the fortress. Another five hundred along the coast to watch for Ironborn raids. The western lords are already prepared.” Glover nodded.

Robb nodded slowly. “We can’t hold every road, but we’ll make them pay dearly if they try.”

“Are we sure we can feed twenty-six thousand men on the march?” Cerwyn asked.

I gestured to the supply logs stacked on a nearby table, Arren was taking lead of the Logistics Corp of the Army. “Six weeks’ rations packed. Wagons loaded. We’ll draw on farms around Seagard and Fairmarket.”

Cerwyn frowned. “And they’ll be loyal?”

I met his gaze steadily. “They will be. Or we’ll make them.”

Robb looked around the tent, meeting each man’s eyes in turn. “We ride in four days. We’ve to speak to the lords. If we gain the Twins peacefully, we go straight for Riverrun.”

Glover’s voice was low and grave. “And if we don’t?”

Robb looked to me. “Then we cross by force.”

I said nothing, but I laid one finger on the carved siege tower on the map. The unspoken truth was clear.

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The snow fell soft through the arrow slits of the east bastion, though none touched the stone. We’d built it too well for that. The warmth of the hearth pushed the chill back a few feet from our skin, but the cold was in my chest, and in Robb’s too, I could see. It hadn’t left since the raven came.

He sat across from me, his fingers clenched around his cup like it might keep him from unraveling. I said nothing at first. There were no words for the shape of what we’d read.

“We are finally getting the whole picture.” I said.

“They tried to seize the Red Keep,” Robb said eventually, voice low. “Renly’s own men. From his mansion.”

I nodded. “I’d wager Loras urged it. Bold as a lion and twice as vain.”

Robb’s jaw tightened. “The report says he led the charge himself. Died on the Red Keep. The Kingslayer slew him.”

“And the gates closed behind him,” I muttered. “The Queen’s men closed them. That wasn’t a coup. It was suicide by gold cloaks.”

The fire popped behind us, a coal breaking open like a skull. I didn’t flinch. Robb did.

I hated saying what came next. “Father never reached the keep.”

He stared at me.

I didn’t look away. “He was cut down in the street. The gold cloaks turned on him. No trial. No warning.”

A long silence followed. I watched the storm rise behind Robb’s eyes, same as it always had when he’d lost a bout or taken a wound. But this was different. This wasn’t something he could fix by standing taller or hitting harder. This was grief.

“Dishonored,” Robb said. “He was murdered.”

“And now they have Arya and Sansa,” I said. “No word of Bran, that’s all that matters now.”

He stood and paced to the window, looking out toward the marshland where the Rice Sea glittered faintly beyond the reclaimed fields. I knew what he saw. Progress. Order. A people rising. And now war.

“Renly escaped,” he said.

“I know.”

“Fled before they could reach him. He didn’t even raise his banners. Just ran.”

“Cowards make poor kings,” I muttered.

“He’s calling them now. In the Stormlands. Says he’s king. The youngest Baratheon… gods.”

I stood. My bones ached from sitting too long, too still. It wasn’t the cold. It was the rage under the skin, always simmering since the raven came.

“Three kings,” I said. “Four, if Balon gets ideas. And Stannis?”

“Five with you. Declared himself a few days after Roberts death. Crowned himself with a band of black iron. Sent ravens to White Harbor, Oldtown, even to us.”

“I am not King Robb—”

“—yet” Robb smirked.

“Keep the attitude and I will let you deal with a crown, idiot. Stannis signed with a flaming heart,” I said. “Not the stag. That’s gone now. He almost got me at The Gullet...”

Robb turned to face me. “Incest children… fucking Lannisters. What does the flaming hearth mean?”

“He has a witch with him. A Priestess of fire God of the east.” I didn’t want to speak of fires and shadows and dragons not yet born.

“We need to act,” he said. “Strike while they’re fractured.”

Outside, the wind picked up, whistling between towers and moss-stone walls. I felt the pull of it. Not just the cold, but the turning of the world. The realm had fractured as we marched and waited for our banners.

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I stepped from the tent, stretching my shoulders beneath my black cloak. Torches flickered in the distance, smiths still hammering.

“Jon.”

I turned to see Samwell Tarly approaching, clutching a ledger nearly too large for one hand. He looked thinner, sharper, his sleeves stained with ink.

“I finished the inventory for the eastern supply lines,” he said quietly. “And I fixed the miscount on the oat barrels. They didn’t account for mold loss.”

A rare warmth flickered in my chest. “Good work, Sam.”

I often think back to that first conversation with Sam and Ser Cort, soon after I arrived at Moat Cailin. The moment I revealed who I truly was, Targaryen, not just Jon Snow, I wasn’t sure how they’d react. But they didn’t hesitate or recoil. Sam looked at me like I was still the same man he’d met, the same Jon he’d come to trust. “It doesn’t matter who you were born as,” he said quietly. “You’re Jon to us.”

Seren, gruff and direct, showed no less loyalty.

That moment has stayed with me, reminding me that what I am to them matters more than the name I bear. They work tirelessly for this land and for me, shaping it with sweat and steel. I owe them more than words can say. Their loyalty steadies me, even now when doubt gnaws at my chest.

I carry their faith like armor, a shield against the weight of the war to come. And though I am Daemon Targaryen by blood, here and now I am Jon, the northern lord, the commander, and the man they follow into the fire.

I would make sure their trust in me was not wasted.

I’ve often thought about the work Sam and Seren have done here at Moat Cailin. When I look at the fortress rising from the swamp, I see their sweat in every stone laid and every trench dug. I told them once, and I mean it still, they’ve done more to secure the North’s future than most lords in their halls.

“I’m leaving this place in your hands,” I told them quietly, away from the maps and council. “You will hold the Moat. It’s the key to the North’s defense. But there’s more coming than soldiers, waves of refugees from the Riverlands will flood these roads. You’ll prepare the camps and settle as many as you can here, but don’t hesitate to send some to the Gift.”

Sam’s eyes grew steady with resolve. Seren grunted approval. They understand what this means, not just war, but the tide of broken lives that war brings.

This fortress will not only be a bulwark against our enemies but a refuge for the displaced. Holding the Moat isn’t just about walls and steel, it’s about holding the hope of the North.

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Night had settled hard over the camp. The low murmur of tired voices was fading, replaced by the occasional creak of leather tents and the faint rustle of canvas flapping in the sharp wind. Fires dotted the landscape like dying stars, their orange glow flickering weakly against the encroaching darkness.

I walked beside Robb, our boots muffled by the soft earth. The weight of the day’s council and the looming march pressed on us both, but for now, the world was quieter, except for the crackling of burning wood and the distant chorus of the night.

We talked of easier times, of the past when hunting near Winter Town was our greatest worry. I teased him about Theon’s clumsy attempts to track a stag, and Robb laughed softly, the sound fragile in the night. The memories were small islands of warmth in the cold uncertainty ahead.

“I miss Father,” Robb said suddenly, voice low.

“So do I,” I replied, keeping my gaze steady on the flickering flames. “He’d want us to be strong now. Stronger than ever.”

The shadow of war hung heavy between us. Neither of us dared speak it aloud at first, but it was always there, a silent, pressing weight. Finally, Robb’s voice broke the stillness again, quieter this time.

After a moment’s pause, Robb’s eyes flicked to me with a curious intensity. “There are rumors… you know, about the Battle of the Whale.”

I nodded. “I heard them.”

“They say you’re a warg. A sorcerer, even. That you… slipped into a sea monster and fought the pursuing galley from inside its mind.”

The shadow of war hung heavy between us, but this was something else, something quieter, more fragile. I gave a small, almost rueful smile.

“It’s true. I warged into the beast. Took control of it in the chaos.” My voice dropped a little. “You are a Warg too Robb, all of us are. You just need to learn.”

“I know, I’ve had too many dreams of hunting as Grey Wind to not notice.”

“It started like that for me too.” I mentioned. “And now I can use it to kill a hundred men with a whale. It is too useful to ignore.”

Robb’s brow furrowed. “What was it like? Fighting like that at the galley?”

I hesitated. How to explain something like that. “Killing was… too easy. Sword clashing on sword, blood spilling on the deck.” I paused, searching for the words. “It was brutal. Confusing. There were too many distractions, shouts, splintering wood, men falling everywhere. Sometimes I can’t remember what happened in those moments. Killing came too easily. Too fast. But it left a weight in my soul, heavier than any sword.”

Robb swallowed hard, the boy beneath the lord suddenly fragile. “I will have to do it soon. To kill like that, and live with it.” He paused. “You think we’ll win?”

I paused, searching his eyes. The boy beneath the lord was still there, wavering between hope and fear. “We will, Robb. We have to. For Father. For the North. For the Realm."

A brief pause, then Robb let out a laugh, sharp, youthful, full of disbelief. “Imagine that, us, two boys, five and ten namedays old, taking a kingdom.”

I smirked. “Legends in the making. They’ll sing songs about the Stark Lord and the Targaryen prince who changed the Word forever.”

Robb bumped my shoulder playfully. “Don’t get too full of yourself, ‘prince.’ They will talk more about Robb Stark than Daemon Targaryen, I will make sure of it.”

“Like you could ever be my equal.” I sniffed like Joffrey when he first arrived in Winterfell.

We laughed together, the weight on our shoulders momentarily lightened. For a moment, we were just brothers again, two boys with dreams bigger than the world they knew.

As we continued walking, I watched the fires die down, embers turning to ash. The camp would sleep soon, or pretend to. Tomorrow, the drums would sound, and thousands would march toward The Twins, toward the heart of the Riverlands, toward the unknown.

I thought of King’s Landing, the city that seemed to swallow entire kingdoms whole, and of the dragons whispered about in old tales. Could I hatch the egg? Would fire and blood decide this war as they had in centuries past?

No, it would be too small for years, but it would give me legitimacy.

I swallowed the knot of doubt in my throat. There was no turning back now. Tomorrow we marched towards the Twins.

Notes:

Author's Note: If you wish to check my sites go to jajasx222.carrd.co you may find up to 10 more chapters there!!

Chapter 26: Interlude 6 — The Lord of the Ford

Interlude 6  —  The Lord of the Ford 

 

POV: Edmure Tully

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The morning mist curled like smoke over the Tumblestone, veiling the waters in a hush as pale light filtered through the open shutters of Riverrun’s solar. The river whispered softly below, as if conspiring.

Edmure Tully stood at the high window, arms folded, jaw clenched, watching the fog roll across the fields. He did not turn when the heavy wooden door creaked open behind him.

“We’ve confirmed it thrice now,” said Maester Vyman, his voice low and steady. “The merchants from Lannisport say it openly. The ravens from Darry and Maidenpool both bear the same message, though no seal from the capital has yet arrived.”

Edmure still didn’t speak. He kept his eyes fixed on the slow-turning water. From this height, the rivers looked gentle. Peaceful.

“Lord Stark is dead,” Vyman continued. “Assassinated. In the streets, before half the city. By command of the boy-king Joffrey Baratheon some say.”

A wooden chair scraped against stone. Ser Desmond Grell, ever stiff-backed in his faded surcoat, stood near the fire, arms crossed. “No trial, I wouldn’t believe it if three men hadn’t sworn it by the Seven.”

“Then perhaps they lie,” Edmure said, his voice brittle with effort. “Perhaps it’s a trick. The games of the capital. Ned Stark is no traitor.”

Grell opened his mouth, then closed it again. The silence stretched.

Edmure turned from the window at last. His face was flushed beneath the auburn beard, and his eyes, though red-rimmed from a restless night, were sharp with growing fury. “They murdered him.”

“Your sister Lysa left the capital when Lord Arryn died,” Vyman offered gently. “Lady Catelyn may send word soon. Until we know more, it may be wise to—”

“Wise?” Edmure snapped. “They killed the Hand of the King. My father’s ally. My sister’s husband! And they’ll come for us next, unless we stop them.”

A cough echoed from the doorway.

“Bring me in,” came a dry, reedy voice from the shadows beyond.

The three men turned. The guard outside shifted aside, and two servants helped Lord Hoster Tully into the room, half-carrying him to a cushioned chair by the hearth. His once-proud frame was shrunken and pallid, cheeks sunken, eyes clouded. But there was a clarity in them now, an old fire kindling beneath the sickness.

“Leave us,” Hoster said, waving the others away. When they hesitated, he rasped, “I’ve not gone deaf yet.”

Vyman and Grell bowed and withdrew.

Edmure moved toward his father, slow and uncertain. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

Hoster gave a ghost of a smile. “If I stay in that bed, I’ll die in it. If I sit in this chair, I might live long enough to keep you from doing something foolish.”

Edmure bristled. “You heard?”

“I’ve heard enough,” Hoster said. “And I’ve seen enough. I buried your mother. I sent both my daughters away. Don’t make me watch my son throw himself to the lions.”

Edmure looked away. “They think we’ll lie down. That we’ll yield, while they declare war in all but name. If we let that pass, what’s to stop them from raiding their way through our fields?”

Hoster coughed, the sound rattling deep in his chest. “You speak like a boy who’s never fought a war.”

“I’m no boy,” Edmure said.

“Then act like it.” Hoster leaned forward, trembling. “A man guards his blood. A man waits. You think this is some tourney ground, where banners fly and honors are won with a tilt of the lance? This is war, Edmure.”

Silence again, save the crackle of the fire.

Edmure stared at his father, the man who had once seemed a giant, now hollowed by time and grief. Pity warred with resentment in his chest. He bowed his head stiffly. “All wars are fought in the Riverlands, Edmure… Don’t fight the Lannisters or you will be fighting in our hom—”

His father starter to cough then. Blood spouting from his mouth.

“Maester!” Edmure cried out.

The man waddled into the room and administered Milk of the Poppy to his father. Hoster sat back with a sigh, the moment of lucidity fading like breath in the mist.

“I’ll consider your words, father...”

Later, alone in the solar once more, Edmure watched the waters turn.

They killed Lord Stark. Ned. His sister’s husband.

He drew his dagger slowly and slashed the edge of the parchment the merchants had brought. A black smear of wax split under the blade.

If the Lannisters thought to march through the Riverlands as they pleased, they would soon find the waters deeper than they’d imagined. He wanted to follow his fathers command but he couldn't, he would be lord soon, who would respect him if he just laid down has the Lannister’s marched north.

“They’ll not pass unopposed,” he murmured to the river. “Not while I am Lord of Riverrun.”

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Dusk draped its shroud over Riverrun. The long windows of the Great Hall flickered with the dying light of day, and rows of guttering candles cast dancing shadows across stone walls. The banners of House Tully, red, blue, and silver, hung motionless, as if waiting.

Edmure sat beneath the trout, flanked by Ser Desmond Grell and Maester Vyman. Around him stood the lords and knights sworn to his house, those who had come quickly, and those who still remained undecided. Ser Karyl Vance lounged with his arms crossed, leaning against a carved pillar. Ser Marq Piper paced behind the benches, his steps too quick, his mouth tight with impatience.

My friends will follow me.

The raven had come at sunset, its wings fouled by dust and its cry harsh. Now the letter lay open on the table before Edmure, the seal broken, the parchment still smelling of wax and Lannister perfume.

Maester Vyman cleared his throat. “‘To the Lord of Riverrun,’” he read aloud, though most had already heard it. “‘By decree of His Grace, King Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister, it is the will of the Crown that a host under royal command be granted swift and peaceful passage through the Riverlands. This host proceeds to answer treason in the North and restore the King’s Peace to a fractured realm.’”

A murmuring ripple stirred in the hall, half whispers, half scoffs.

Vyman continued, voice growing tight: “‘Failure to comply with the will of the Crown shall be interpreted as willful sedition against the lawful authority of the realm and will be met with swift and decisive justice.’”

He set the letter down carefully, as if it might bite.

“It bears their seal,” said Vyman. “Lannister crimson. The king’s hand does not appear.”

“Because the boy didn’t write it,” said Marq Piper. “Cersei Lannister did. And why not? She’s got the crown, the coin, and the swords. They want us to kneel before they even march.”

“Or march while we kneel,” added Karyl Vance. “And piss on our bones after.”

Grell frowned. “They say it’s a royal host, not a Lannister one.”

“Aye, and I’m the bloody High Septon,” Piper snapped. “They’ve already marched on the River Road. A thousand knights in lion cloaks. If we let them pass, they’ll burn and butcher as they did in the Rebellion.”

Vyman looked toward Edmure. “It may be prudent to—”

“No,” Edmure said. His voice rang louder than he intended. The men stilled.

He rose slowly, holding the parchment before him. The candlelight made the red ink gleam like fresh blood.

“Rebellious Northern traitors,” he paraphrased. “That’s what they call Lord Eddard. What they call Robb. What they’ll call us, if we raise a voice in protest. Treason is a word they use like a whip.”

He turned to the room. “My sister’s husband was butchered like a dog in the streets of King’s Landing. Now they come to use our lands for their war, to march against our blood. And we are meant to open our gates? Bow our heads? Let the lions pass?”

The hall murmured again, some approving, some uncertain.

“Lord Walder Frey has not answered,” said Grell carefully. “And Lord Roote delays. Your command is strong, my lord, but—”

“I know what it is,” Edmure said. “And I know what it means.”

He held up the letter again. “If we yield to this, we surrender more than roads. We surrender honor. And House Tully will not be remembered as turncoats, or cowards.”

With that, he tore the parchment clean down the middle.

A sharp gasp. Then another rip, and another, until only red-tinted scraps drifted to the stone floor like dead leaves.

“If the lions want blood,” Edmure said, voice low and firm, “they may drown in the Red Fork.”

Piper grinned. Vance gave a short, savage nod.

The others rose one by one, some hesitantly, others with fierce resolve. A dozen knights placed fists to hearts. Still, a few exchanged uneasy glances. One of the Blackwood riders stepped away without speaking, and the Mallister man kept his arms crossed, saying nothing.

But Edmure had made his choice. And though doubt flickered behind his eyes, he held his chin high, the weight of his house pressing against his shoulders like his father's fading breath.

Outside, the last light’s bled across the Tumblestone. The mists would come again with nightfall, silent and gray, cloaking the land in the quiet before the march.

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The sun was barely cresting the hills when the first smoke columns were sighted. Thin, black streaks rising like accusations into the pale blue sky. They were distant, a good day’s ride eastward, but unmistakable.

A chill rolled through Riverrun despite the summer heat.

The first riders came hard and fast, refugees, mostly. Dirt-caked and wild-eyed, they stumbled through the castle gates screaming of fire and steel. One girl, no older than ten, clutched a doll blackened by soot, her hands raw from gripping the reins of a horse far too large for her.

“Acornton burns,” she said through cracked lips. “Men with lion banners. Red cloaks. They killed everyone.”

Edmure Tully stood at the gatehouse as her words fell like lead into the ears of his men. His own jaw tightened. His hands, once soft from courtly life, now bore the calluses of daily sword drills, more symbolic than practical, but it gave him a sense of steel.

“Send word to Vyman,” he said grimly. “And have the riders cared for. No questions, no delay.”

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By the time midday bells rang in Riverrun’s towers, dozens more had arrived, peasants, septons, even hedge knights dragging wounded companions behind them. The story was the same: smallfolk murdered, villages burned, fields trampled under iron-shod boots.

“We thought they were good men of the King at first,” one man said, cradling his arm. “Flying the royal banner. But they said we’d chosen the wrong dog to follow.”

The chamber was silent as Edmure listened, head bowed, his fingers steepled in front of his lips. Around him, his household knights stood with grim faces. Ser Desmond Grell had donned his old breastplate, though it sat awkwardly over his thicker frame. Ser Karyl Vance had already ridden in from Wayfarer’s Rest, bringing with him a dozen swift riders and a dark look.

“This was no mistake, my lord,” Vance said. “These are not scattered raiders. This was a message. They mean to provoke a war before you’ve drawn your sword.”

Edmure turned to his bannermen. “And what of House Frey?”

“They've replied... ambiguously,” muttered Ser Marq Piper, who stood with arms crossed, a sour frown on his face. “Lord Walder says he ‘regrets the violence visited upon our peaceful realm’ and recommends ‘caution and temperance.’ He’s sent twenty men, none of them his sons.”

“Twenty men?” Edmure’s voice cracked with disbelief. “They have over three thousand under arms at the Twins!”

“Three thousand cowards,” Ser Karyl muttered. “They’ll sit on the bridge until they know who’s winning.”

The maester arrived minutes later with scrolls from scattered ravens. Reports of burnt outposts along the Red Fork. A tithe barn razed on the border of Whent lands, whether by raiders or the Brackens themselves, no one could say. House Piper had sent word of movement in the west, columns of armored men in crimson and gold pushing toward the Riverlands.

“The raiding parties are coming through the Golden tooth, my lord.” Ser Desmond said. “They will not wait for us to give our answer.”

“I will not wait for them to burn Acorn Hall, or Maidenpool,” Edmure snapped. “Damn their games.”

He rose from his seat like a man possessed.

“Summon every knight within a day’s ride. Send riders to Lords Vance and Piper to raise their full levies. I want every man able to hold a spear mustered by week’s end. I’ll not be remembered as the Tully who watched the Riverlands burn from behind his father’s walls.”

Desmond Grell looked concerned. “Edmure, you are not yet Lord Paramount. Your father—”

“My father is dying and bedridden” Edmure said, softer now. “And the Riverlands are already bleeding.”

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That night, torches ringed the training yard. Edmure stood before a hastily assembled mass of knights, squires, hedge lords, and sworn swords. His voice rang against the stone walls of Riverrun, hoarse but resolute.

“I know what they say of me,” he began. “That I am no warrior. That I laugh too quickly, or brood too little. That I am too young to carry a realm on my back.”

A ripple of uneasy silence answered him.

“But I tell you this: I am a son of the Riverlands. And today, I stand as your shield and sword. The Lannisters believe we are divided, slow to rouse. They believe we will bend the knee to a little pressure.”

He drew his sword, unused and plain, northern steel.

“Well, they’ll learn. We may be fatherless, sickly, or afraid, but we are Riverfolk! and we will not kneel to lions!”

A cheer followed, ragged but building. The sound of boots stamping the flagstones, swords raised, voices united. He let it swell, feeding on their fury.

“We ride within the day,” he declared. “We make for the Mummer’s Ford. A column of raiders marches there now. We’ll meet them with steel and send a message of our own.”

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The fields of the lower Red Fork were golden with early grain and red with spilled blood.

By the time Edmure reached the borders with his vanguard, barely three hundred men in all, the scouts had already reported movement. A Lannister force was pushing across the ford: spearmen, mounted outriders, a few knights in heavy plate bearing crimson cloaks.

Edmure squinted at the opposite bank. “How many?”

“Four hundred. Maybe more,” Ser Karyl replied grimly. “But they’re strung out. Foragers, skirmishers. They don’t expect a fight.”

“Then they’ll get one.”

The battle came swift.

Riverland archers loosed volleys from the hedgerows while knights splashed across the shallows, shouting Tully’s name. The ford itself became a killing ground. Spears jabbed in the churned water. Men drowned under their own mail. Horses screamed and toppled into the current.

Edmure rode at the head, teeth clenched, sword wet with rain and blood. He struck down a lion knight on the ford’s crest, then rallied his men as the lines broke and reformed.

But they were too few.

More Lannister men poured in from the treeline, fresh, unbloodied. Their commander, a grim-faced knight in gilded armor, drove his men forward with ruthless precision. The Riverlanders, outnumbered and weary, began to give ground.

Edmure’s voice rang hoarse above the din. “Hold the line! Shields up! Fall back to the willows!”

But order frayed as panic spread. A Vance bannerman stumbled screaming into the shallows, half his face gone to a mace-blow. Behind him, a Tully spearman dropped to one knee, chest pierced by a crossbow bolt that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before. Horses reared, riderless mounts broke and galloped, trampling their own in terror.

“Seven save us,” Ser Karyl muttered beside Edmure, blood streaming from a gash in his brow. “We have to fall back or we’ll be swept into the river.”

“No,” Edmure growled. “We stand.”

He barely had time to finish the thought before the Lannister vanguard surged again. The gold and crimson line rolled down the bank like a tide. Edmure saw them coming, column after column, armored and eager, boots splashing and blades flashing red.

A horn sounded from the Riverland side, one of theirs, short and sharp.

“Too many,” Ser Marq Piper shouted, now mounted again with blood up to his boots. “They’ve doubled their numbers! Edmure—!”

The Lord of Riverrun hesitated, sword in hand, knuckles white. He saw his men faltering, pressed back step by step. Too many dead already. Too few left to carry word of this to the rest.

His pride rebelled. But he wasn’t blind.

“Signal the retreat!” he bellowed at last, voice ragged. “Fall back! Back to the oak ridge, rally on the banners!”

His herald’s horn wailed the call, three long blasts, and the Riverlanders began to disengage. Slowly, painfully. Some refused to run, buying time with blood and steel. A group of Piper men held the ford’s edge to the last, their captain dying with an arrow in his throat and a lion knight’s blade buried in his chest.

Edmure dismounted to help a wounded squire limp to the rear, then dragged another man from the river before he drowned beneath the weight of his armor. Arrows snapped past him, one grazing his arm. He didn’t flinch.

They made it back to the tree line, battered and bloodied. Archers covered the withdrawal with dwindling quivers. Smoke from a burning farmhouse curled on the horizon, eastward, toward the Piper lands. Already, the Lannisters were spreading.

This was no skirmish!

The sun had dipped behind the hills when Edmure finally dismounted atop the ridge. His borrowed helm was dented, his tabard torn and stained. Around him, fewer than half the riders he’d left Riverrun with still stood. Some knelt. Some wept. Others just stared back toward the ford, where lions drank from the river and the cries of the dying still echoed.

“They weren’t raiders,” Edmure said softly, too low for anyone but Ser Karyl to hear. “That was a vanguard.”

Karyl nodded grimly. “They’re coming in force, my lord. This was the opening blow.”

Edmure clenched his fists. His eyes burned from smoke and shame.

“I thought we’d catch them disorganized,” he muttered. “Blood them. Make them think twice.”

“They’re Lannisters,” Karyl said. “They don’t think twice.”

Edmure said nothing.

He turned his gaze westward, toward Riverrun, its towers hidden by the distant mist and woodlands.

He knew what he’d have to do next. The banners would need to be called in full. Lord Vance and Piper’s hosts raised in earnest. Letters to Blackwood, Mallister, Goodbrook. Even the Brackens, if they could be trusted to keep blade pointed outward and not at the Blackwoods.

War had come to the Riverlands.

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The mist rolled in thick as wool over the river flats.

It seeped through the trees like creeping breath, muffling hooves and heartbeat alike. Across the banks of the Mummer’s Ford, wet reeds swayed, and scattered ravens circled silently above. The Lannister raiding of his lands had ceased, but the vanguard of their army was now setting foot on the Riverlands.

Edmure Tully stood beneath a soaked banner bearing the leaping trout of his house. His armor gleamed dully beneath a coat of mud and dew. Beside him, the banners of Piper, Vance, Mallister, and Blackwood stirred in the morning chill, but far fewer than he had hoped.

What I wouldn’t give for you to be here now uncle…

The Freys had not come. Nor had the Darrys or Mootons The Brackens had sent two hundred, but their men eyed the Blackwoods more than the ford.

He watched the river ahead, gray and slow, the stones beneath it vanishing in the early fog. Beyond it waited death.

Ser Karyl Vance reined up beside him. “Word from the scouts, my lord. The host ahead...”

Edmure didn’t need the words. He could feel it. The birds had flown inland in panicked flocks. The ground trembled. Already, the sickly-sweet tang of smoke was on the wind, from the torched hamlets to the west.

“How many?” Edmure asked.

“Ten thousand at least. Maybe more. We think Tywin himself rides with them.”

His mouth went dry. He looked down at the ring on his hand, the silver trout of his house. His father's ring. No longer a boy. No longer a boy playing at war.

He looked behind him. Boys stood in the mud with rusty helms too large for their heads. Men-at-arms with old spears. Knights, some with banners and some without.

“Family, Duty, Honor,” he murmured.

Ser Marq Piper rode up from the lines. “The men are frightened,” he said. “They heard the numbers.”

“As am I,” Edmure replied.

“Then let us turn back. We regroup, fall behind the Red Fork—”

“No,” Edmure said, the word hard as steel. “We do not yield the ford.”

“My lord—”

“If we let them cross unchallenged, they’ll sweep the Riverlands before we can so much as cry warning. We may not stop them here, but we will slow them.” He drew his sword, the steel catching what little light filtered through the clouds. “If I fall, let me fall in my father’s land, not on my knees.”

He turned to Ser Desmond Grell, weathered and quiet in his mail. “Form the shield wall. Set the pikemen in the marsh along the flank. Tell Blackwood’s archers to aim low, there’s fog, but if they shoot blind, they may still find meat.”

“And the cavalry?” Grell asked.

Edmure hesitated. “Hold them back. If the ford breaks, they will be our hammer to strike them as they cross.”

Grell bowed and rode off barking orders.

Soon, horns blew low and long. Knights checked straps. Archers lit fire-pots behind the lines. Men muttered prayers to the Seven and the Old Gods alike. The fog thickened. A cold breeze swept through the willows.

And then, hooves. Drums. A golden lion banner rising through the mist.

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The Lannister host emerged like a red tide, columns of steel glinting dully in the gray. Trumpets shrilled. The earth shook with their approach. At their head rode knights in gilded armor, their tabards marked with the crimson lion of Casterly Rock.

At their center, astride a warhorse draped in red and gold, rode a knight the size of a stable. His helm bore no sigil, only dents and blood. His sword was taller than a man. Ser Gregor Clegane.

The Riverlander lines wavered.

“Steady!” Edmure bellowed, riding before the lines, his sword high. “They burn our homes and call it justice! They murder our kin and call it law! They march under lion banners, but lions can drown!”

Cheers rose, half-hearted and thin. But when the first Lannister knights charged the ford, it was with grim resolve that the Riverlanders answered.

The battle began in a clash of iron and water.

Riverland archers loosed volleys from the hedgerows, arrows hissing into the fog. Knights splashed into the shallows, shouting Tully’s name. The ford became a killing ground. Spears jabbed in the churned water. Men screamed and drowned beneath their own mail. Horses reared and toppled.

Edmure rode at the head, teeth clenched, sword wet with rain and blood. He struck down a lion knight on the ford’s crest, then rallied his men as the lines buckled and reformed.

But the Lannisters had numbers. And worse, discipline.

Fresh troops poured in waves, guided by officers with painted shields. Their pikes pushed the Riverlanders back inch by inch, and when the marshy banks turned to bloodied bog, the Riverfolk began to falter.

Ser Karyl fell, a spear through his thigh. Marq Piper lost his horse and vanished into the melee.

Still Edmure fought.

“Forward!” he roared. “Tully! Tully!”

He turned to lead the charge, but his horse staggered. Mud clutched its legs. He tumbled into the river. Water and blood filled his helm. He rose sputtering, just as a monstrous shadow loomed through the fog.

Gregor Clegane.

The Mountain swung a greatsword in a wide arc, cleaving through two men. Edmure stepped forward, sword raised.

He never reached him.

Some say he was struck down by the Mountain’s blade, split from shoulder to hip like meat. Others say a retreating Riverland horse trampled him, armor crushed in the panic.

By midday, the ford was red with blood. The trout banners were trampled. Ravens wheeled overhead. And the Riverlands burned.

The survivors fled north, scattered to hamlets and woods, bearing only word of what had happened. Some said Edmure had died a hero. Others said a fool. All agreed on one thing:

The lions had crossed the river.

And Riverrun would stand alone.

Notes:

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Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Upon a River of Blood [ASOIAF/GOT SI]