Chapter Text
Author's Note
This work is my own except for the intellectual property for the mentioned . ASOIAF"and"StarGate"are the property of their respective creators, and all copyrights belong to them.
Hunter's Gate, Winterfell — The North, 296 AC
Jon Snow
My lord father, Eddard Stark, Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell, has set his mind to ride the breadth of his realm. A raven came from one of the mountain clans, bearing word of a boundary dispute, a lost herd of goats, or both—here in the North, a single goat gone astray can draw more steel than an insult. So Robb and I ride with him. Robb because he is the trueborn heir, rightful son of Winterfell. And I, because Lady Catelyn cannot bear my shadow darkening her halls.
My father swears it is not so, that I must know the men who bend the knee to the direwolf. He says it will serve me well, someday. Perhaps it will. Perhaps it won't. Nothing is ever carved in stone.
They say beyond the Wall the stones speak when the wind howls through the ruins. Here I hear only silence.
Not all is misery on the road. There is a chance I might cross paths with my uncle Benjen, for our way winds past the Watch's castles before we turn for Last Hearth.
"Jon!" roars Ser Jory Cassel, captain of the guard. "Will you stand there brooding like a crow or lend a hand with the horses?"
I am quicker to obey than to speak. I throw my cloak over Greywind's back—no, not the wolf, but the horse Robb named in jest—and check my tent, my knife, my coil of rope, each in its place.
"Ser Jory," I say as he comes near. "All is ready."
"Check twice, boy. A Stark without a blade is a wolf without teeth."
I nod. Better to seem useful than to seem unneeded. I turn to Robb, striding toward me with that easy swagger of his.
"Jon, Father calls for us. He would speak before we ride."
"Then let's go."
Robb walks ahead, all copper hair and river-blue eyes—Tully eyes. I follow behind, snow in his wake, my father's son too: dark hair, long face, iron-grey eyes. Winter stamped into the bone.
"Robb. Jon." Our father's voice is a low thunder, old as the godswood. "Listen well."
The words are the same as always: remember who you are, remember who you serve, remember that a Stark's shame runs like frost through every hall that flies the direwolf. For Robb, it is a promise of power. For me, a reminder of what I am not.
He bids us farewell. Robb presses his lips to his mother's brow. I stand apart. Lady Catelyn offers neither warmth nor cold—only absence. Perhaps she is right.
We mount. Leather creaks, horses snort. We pass beneath the Hunter's Gate, stone teeth gnawing at our backs, and leave behind warmth—and indifference.
The Wolf's Wood, King's Road.
The forest swallows us whole. Oaks like towers older than kingdoms. Pines whisper secrets to the North wind. Above, a sky so full of stars I half believe they watch me in return. I wonder if someone up there asks the same question I do. Perhaps in another life, I'll know.
We make camp by the side of the King's Road. Ser Jory says three days more and we shall cross Brandon's Gift; beyond the hills, the Norrey lands wait for us.
"Jon," says Robb, gesturing at a man who rides up, cloak dusted with pine needles. "Come meet Owen."
Owen Norrey. A clansman of no great standing, but no lesser man for it. My bastardy does not trouble him. Other lords might take offense that Robb treats me as brother. Owen only nods, as if I were any other son of Winterfell.
The Mountains of the North
They rise first like ghosts. Then they become iron spines against the dying sun. Some say giants walked here, herding mammoths across fields now buried in moss and snow. Bran would laugh to see me stand still, eyes shut, breathing air so clean it cuts like a blade.
Silence.
And then—a sound. Stone scraping stone. A whisper hidden in the cold.
"Jon?" Robb's voice catches me like a snare. "Where do you think you're going?""I heard something. I need to see what it is."
Robb sighs—he knows better than to chain my feet once my mind is set loose. He orders Owen to follow. A Stark never sends a bastard alone.
The sound grows. We slip down a game trail, deer and goat tracks winding between brush and stone. A clearing. The sound thickens, like a river trying to claw its way through rock.
Then the world cracks. Dust and rubble rain down. I drag Owen to the earth before the mountain's breath buries us alive.
When the dust clears, a wound yawns open where the slope once lay. A cave, round as a coin. Inside—water, or something like water, hanging in the air, a blue light framed by stone or metal. Beside it, half-buried, a pedestal crowned by a jewel bigger than a man's fist.
Owen's breath catches like a dying fire.
"Gods be good, Jon…" he whispers.
I only step forward. What else would a son of the North do?
"Jon!" Owen's hand clamps on my shoulder. "We must fetch your father. This—this is no work of man."
I hold him fast. Breathe in, out. Rodrik's old lesson. He steadies. We edge closer.
Inside the cave stand three figures—dark skin, broad noses, eyes like shadows, copper and silver gleaming at wrist and throat. Summer Islanders, here, beneath a mountain's skin. Impossible.
Owen curses under his breath. I say what any son of Ned Stark would say at the sight of the impossible.
"Seven hells."
Owen Norrey Pov
My father filled my head with tales of the North's old blood—giants walking the frozen fields, children of the forest whispering secrets to the weirwoods, shadows dancing where the flames die out. But this… this is beyond even the oldest stories the old gods ever dreamed.
I glance at the boy beside me—Ned Stark's bastard, yet more Stark than some who wear the name. He gives me a look that says plain as day, Why are you asking me? But then he does what he told me to do not a moment ago—he steadies himself.
"Well then," he says, pointing toward that thing—rift, gate, gods know what it is—where those three Summer Islanders stand as bewildered as we are. "First we try to speak. Maybe they hold truths we don't."
I follow his gesture. The three men stand half-shrouded in the dust that's settled over the clearing like flour over fresh tracks. Stones lie scattered in a fan where the mountain cracked open. Jon starts forward, slow and sure.
"Jon—wait," I hiss. "How do you know they're not dangerous? They could be armed. One wrong step and steel's at our throats."
"Owen," he says, calm as a winter pond. "Look at them. They're as lost as we are—more so, maybe."
He's right. The three talk among themselves in low voices, uneasy but not hostile. The strange blue veil, like water hung in mid-air, has faded from the cave's mouth, leaving only bare stone and that ring—stone or steel, I can't tell.
"Fine," I say at last. "But I go first. You stay at my back. If this goes to the Stranger's hall, I'll raise hell enough for you to run—run like you'd seen a white shadow stalking through the snows. Deal, Jon?"
"But, Owen—"
I grab him by the shoulders before he can protest further. He's trying to carry a weight he can't name—any fool can see it. It's there in the way he hangs back from Robb's side, the way he watches his father when he thinks no one's looking. But a bastard or no, he's of the same blood. And the North remembers.
"Listen to me, Jon Snow. If anything happens to you, Seven save me, I'll be for the Wall or the block. And don't start that 'I'm only a bastard' nonsense—horse shit and ashes. I've watched Lord Stark's eyes on you this whole ride north. He sees you. So do I. Stark or Snow, you're winter's blood. And the North remembers."
His head bows for a heartbeat—then he lifts it, and in his eyes I see iron. He nods once. That's enough.
We pick our way across the rubble, boots crunching on stone shards sharp as broken vows. I raise one hand high, the other wrapped round the hilt at my belt.
"HO! You there!" I call out, voice ringing against the cave walls. "Are you hale? We come to parley!"
Three dark heads turn at once. Their eyes flash surprise, words passing silent among them like a river under ice. Then the eldest, taller than the rest, steps forward, the other two at his flanks like shadows that breathe.
"Step back," I mutter to Jon. "Give them room to stand beneath the sun."
We shuffle four paces backward, careful not to lose footing on the loose rock. Daylight spills across them now—no bright silks or coral beads as sailors from the Summer Isles wear in Oldtown tales, but clothes like ours: wool tunics, leather breeches, boots worn thin by travel, copper and silver trinkets at wrist and ear. Broad noses, eyes dark as a new moon, hair cropped short and tight to the scalp. In height they match us near enough.
Face to face, I realize this could be the start of a song or the end of my days. No swords that I can see—but a blade can hide behind any cloak. I mouth a silent prayer to the old gods who watch through leaf and stone.
Then I breathe in the cold air, and step forward to meet them.