Jon Snow woke up choking on air. Not the cold, clean bite of Castle Black but the damp, pine-heavy scent of the Wolfswood. His heart hammered as if it were trying to escape his ribs, his body jerking upright on instinct alone. For a moment he expected pain. Steel. Blood. Snow filling his mouth.
There was nothing. No knife. No cold stones. No brothers' hands dragging him down. Just grass beneath his fingers and summer sunlight pressing warm against his face. Jon froze.
The sky above him was blue. Blue. Not the hard gray of the Wall, not the endless white of falling snow. Birds called from the trees, careless and alive. Somewhere nearby, steel rang against steel practice blades, not murder.
Slowly, carefully, he sat up.
Winterfell's outer yard stretched before him, banners snapping in the breeze. Direwolves flew proud above the walls. The sound of laughter drifted from the battlements. Familiar voices, too many of them.
"No," Jon whispered.
He staggered to his feet, dizzy, his hands shaking as he looked down at himself. His clothes were wrong. No black cloak. No Lord Commander's pin. Just simple leathers, well-worn boots, and a practice sword belted at his waist. Young. He was young.
A horn sounded. Once. Then again. The deep, rolling call echoed through Winterfell like a warning bell tolling backward through time. Men paused mid-step. Swords were sheathed. Heads turned toward the Kingsroad.
Jon's blood ran cold. That horn. He knew it.
Horses came into view beyond the gate, dozens of them. Banners caught the light: the crowned stag of Baratheon, gold on black. Crimson cloaks. Polished armor. The royal procession.
The king was coming. Robert Baratheon, fat with victory and wine, laughing at the world. Queen Cersei beside him, eyes sharp as drawn knives. The Lannisters. The wolves would bare their throats soon enough.
This is the beginning, Jon thought numbly. Not the Others. Not the Wall. Not his death. This.
Footsteps pounded behind him. "Jon! Where did you run off to?" Robb called, breathless and grinning, sword slung over his shoulder. He looked so alive it hurt to see him. Alive and unbroken.
"You missed it," Robb said. "The king himself, can you believe it? Father says—"
Jon grabbed his brother's arm.
Robb blinked. "Jon?"
For a heartbeat, Jon saw it all at once, the Red Wedding, Grey Wind's head sewn to Robb's corpse, blood soaking into the dirt. He tasted iron again, felt the cold creeping in.
"Let go," Robb said gently, confused.
Jon released him as if burned. "Sorry," he muttered. His voice sounded wrong to his own ears. Too steady. Too old.
The yard erupted into motion as the gates opened. Lords and ladies spilled out, eager and proud. Ned Stark strode forward, stern and honorable and doomed. Beside him, a small girl with tangled hair craned her neck, eyes wide with wonder.
Arya.
Jon's chest tightened. You all die, his mind screamed. If I do nothing, you all die.
The royal party rode in beneath the gate. King Robert laughed loud enough to drown out the horn, his voice booming with affection as he dismounted and clapped Ned Stark on the shoulder.
"Ned! You old frozen bastard!"
The crowd cheered. Jon stood frozen at the edge of it all, unseen, unheard, watching fate march in through Winterfell's gates with a smile and a sword hidden behind its back.
This was his first chance. The last time, he'd been blind. This time, he knew where the knives would fall. He knew who would betray whom. He knew which choices would poison the world and which might still save it.
The story had dragged him back. Not to glory. Not to honor. But to the moment where everything could still go wrong.
Jon Snow clenched his fists. "This time," he whispered to no one at all, "I'm not letting it end the same way." And somewhere deep beneath the stones of Winterfell, the world listened.
…
Jon Snow stared at the gray horizon beyond Winterfell's outer walls, the winds tugging at his dark hair like icy fingers. He could hear the distant calls of the guards, the clatter of steel as boys sparred in the yard, the muffled laughter of servants hurrying to tend to tasks that would never matter when the world burned. Somewhere in the heart of Winterfell, his father was gone. Or rather, he would be gone soon enough, bound for King's Landing, leaving Jon behind.
He clenched his fists so tightly that the knuckles whitened. "Father," Jon murmured under his breath, as if the cold stone around him might echo back a warning, a plea. "Why won't you stay."
He remembered the conversations he had with his father. Of him begging and pleading endlessly for him to stay in Winterfell. But Ned Stark's sense of duty was iron-bound, unyielding. He would ride south, just as the horn had sounded, as the banners had been hoisted, as the realm's fate itself called him to action.
"Jon," Ned said, turning from the training yard with that patient, hard-set expression Jon had known all his life. "I cannot stay. Winterfell will be left in good hands. You… you have your brother.."
Jon shook his head, the despair curling in his chest like smoke. "Father… please. Don't leave. I'll—"
"I will take into consideration everything you told me," Ned interrupted gently, though his eyes bore into Jon's like twin grey blades. "You will stay here for now in Winterfell. If your visions are true that the Old Gods have shown you then you must guide the family."
"But what about you father… you will die."
"We all must die, Jon. Winter is coming. I will need to bring proof to the King if what you said is true."
The words landed like hammers, and Jon knew they were final. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to bow his head in resignation, even as the bitterness of helplessness clawed at him. Ned Stark would leave. Jon Snow would remain. And in that choice, he felt the first true taste of the burden that would define him: watching while the world burned, powerless to prevent it.
-
The days that followed were relentless. Jon fell into the rhythm of Winterfell as if it were a drumbeat guiding him to a destiny he had yet to understand. He was younger now, inexperienced, but he had seen too much, remembered too much from the life that had ended before this one began.
He remembered the Red Wedding that had yet to occur, the faces of the fallen, the blood, the cries, and the grim reports. And he knew, with a certainty that cut him to the bone, that the North could not wait. Not for the king, not for the realm, not for the fragile politics of the south. Trouble was coming.
He had set aside any thoughts of going up North to join the Black Brothers. Those were no men of his who would stab him in his back. Let them face the wildlings they despise so much on their own.
Jon watched Robb Stark moved like a prince among his peers, head held high, but Jon noticed the hesitancy beneath the confidence. Robb was now in charge of Winterfell and all of the North with their Lord Father gone.
Jon couldn't care what his brother got up to, his old Lord Commander eyes turned to Winterfell's defenders. It was trained for ceremony, not for the ravages of war. The men were strong, yes, but untested; the banners bore the proud sigils of northern houses, yet the houses themselves had not yet tasted true fire in a long time. The kraken's fall was many years ago and it was no true war. Just a gang up from all the kingdoms on those seabrain fools. And Robert's Rebellion… that was a lifetime ago.
Jon's chest tightened at the thought. "Robb," he said one morning, as the wind cut across the training yard and the men struggled with wooden swords, "you must prepare. Winterfell must be safe. Uncle Ben mentioned the wildlings are gathering beyond the wall. They must have a King," he lied right to his teeth as his uncle when he was here made no mention of that even though what he was saying was true.
He learned sometimes people don't prefer the truth. So its best to give them what they want. "You must train the men as if the enemy is already at the gate."
Robb grinned, carefree, brushing his dark hair from his face. "Jon, you worry too much. Father will return. The royal family was here recently favouring us. What enemy? We are Stark. We hold Winterfell. That is enough."
Jon's eyes narrowed, the frustration clawing at his throat like a wolf trapped behind steel bars. "Enough? Enough is not enough! I've seen what comes, Robb! The world is already burning, and you pretend it is winter sunlight. You must train the men, you must marshal the bannermen, you must—"
Robb laughed, soft and unheeding, as if Jon's words were mere shadows drifting across the courtyard. "You've always been morbid, Jon. You'll live long enough to see the North safe. Trust me."
Jon slammed his practice sword against the ground, wood splintering under the force. Dust rose in the air, and the men froze, staring at him with wide eyes. He stepped closer, voice low and deadly. "No, Robb. I will not watch the North fall because you erred again at the wrong moment. Listen to me. You will prepare, or all of this"—he gestured at the walls, at the banners snapping proudly in the wind—"will burn. I swear it. I've seen it already, and I will not let it happen."
The first flicker of doubt crossed Robb's face. "What troubles you brother, truly? You have not been the same ever since the royal family had arrived."
Jon knew his brother had the right of it. He was so observed in everything he experienced or dreamed about he even forgot about Bran's fall. He wasn't there to prevent his little brother from dropping down from the tower. Still he pressed it further because he knew what was at stake.
"Brother, please. If you have ever trusted me in anything trust me in this. Our men must prepare."
Robb Stark's jaw tightened, his hands balled into fists. "Very well, Jon. We will train the men. We will prepare. If trouble comes… I trust your eyes."
It was a victory, yes, but Jon felt no joy. He had moved pieces into place, yet the game board felt already poisoned. The shadow of the past and future hovered above them. He did not know then how accurate his instincts were.
Winterfell's yard became a frenzy of activity. Jon drilled the men relentlessly, teaching tactics and discipline gleaned from memories of campaigns he had yet to fight. Robb moved among the banners, issuing orders with a measured calm, but Jon noted every hesitation, every misjudgment. They trained at dawn, sparred at midday, drilled until the evening bells tolled. Even the youngest boys carried wooden swords, learning stances that would save or end lives.
Yet the strain was palpable. Robb bore the weight of command poorly, and Jon's insistence, though necessary, grated at him. They were brothers, not generals, and Jon could feel the subtle tension growing like ice beneath the snow.
Then, one crisp autumn morning, it happened. The accident was quick, cruel, and utterly senseless.
Jon had ordered a mock cavalry exercise, with the bannermen practicing charges along the outer yard. The men had been instructed carefully; the ground was firm, the horses steady. Jon oversaw every detail. Robb was at the head of a squad, demonstrating technique to the younger warriors.
A horse stumbled, its hooves catching a loose stone. The momentum threw Robb into the path of another rider, and then he was gone, a tangle of limbs and steel. Jon ran, heart hammering, but it was too late. Robb's eyes were wide, staring at the sky he would never see again. The banners above the yard snapped in the wind, indifferent to the life lost beneath them.
Jon fell to his knees beside his brother, gripping the limp form as the world spun around him. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no…" He shook Robb, willing the impossible. "You promised! You promised you'd listen. You would prepare. You had to survive."
But Winterfell does not heed prayers, nor does it care for pleas. Robb Stark was gone.
Catelyn Stark's scream came moments later, sharp and accusing. Her eyes blazed as she rushed forward, grief and fury intertwining like twin serpents. Jon tried to explain, tried to speak through the chaos, but her voice cut him down at every turn. "You!" she spat, trembling with rage. "You were behind all this. All these training… for what? For death? So you can usurp my boy in an 'accident' that you made."
Jon knelt there, shaking, the weight of failure crushing him to the stone. He wanted to scream that it was not his fault, that he had tried, that he had seen the future and bent every effort to prevent it but Catelyn's gaze bore through him, unrelenting.
The men of Winterfell circled silently, the mock battle forgotten. Whispers spread like wildfire: "Robb Stark is dead." Jon could feel their eyes on him, some accusing, some mourning, all expecting answers he did not have.
"Soldiers arrest him," Catelyn shrieked. The woman was already in a poor state of mind with one son in a coma and now another dead…She was gone. "Arrest this criminal who killed your liege's son."
Then without further ado he was put in chains.
-
Turn 2 / Year 2 – Locked In(Night Watch)
Winterfell was a storm of grief and accusation, the wind carrying the bitter scent of iron and fear. Jon sat in the prisons, the weight of chains biting into his wrists, his knees scraped raw, and his face a mask of ice that no one dared read.
He could hear even from her Catelyn's fury, relentless and unyielding, each word a lash that threatened to unravel the fragile armor he had built around his heart. "Kill him!" she screamed, her voice echoing in the castle. "He is the cause of Robb's death! The usurper! The murderer!"
He could hear Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik Cassel trying to calm her down. They had sent word to his Lord Father of the unfortunate accident.
Jon said nothing. Words were useless here. Truth was meaningless. He had tried to prevent this. He had tried to bend fate to save Robb, to save the North, to save everything. And yet, here he was dirt on his knees, shackled, blamed for a death that had never been meant to happen in this life.
The clatter of hooves and the rush of wind drew Jon's attention to the gate. A rider approached, banners snapping violently in the wind. His stomach tightened as the rider dismounted and handed a sealed letter to the steward. The parchment bore the unmistakable mark of the Stark sigil, pressed deep into the wax.
"From the King's Hand?" someone whispered nearby.
Jon's pulse stuttered. He did not move, did not speak, merely stared as the steward broke the seal and read aloud.
"By order of Lord Eddard Stark, Hand of the King, Jon Snow is not to be harmed. He is to be delivered safely to the Night's Watch. Let no man disobey. Failure will be met with dire consequences."
Jon felt the cold press of steel and iron melt slightly inside him. Ned had intervened. He would not die here in the castle, in the hands of those who believed him guilty. Yet the relief was hollow, the frost in his chest deeper than any Winterfell winter.
Catelyn's face twisted with disbelief and fury as the steward repeated the words. "He is to be sent to the Wall? My son is dead, and you send this boy away?" she spat, trembling with rage. "Do you hear me, Ned? You let him escape! He should be executed!"
He watched her scream and wail, and said nothing more.
The ride north was silent. Jon Snow was not paraded through Winterfell's gates as a son of the house, nor escorted with honor as a boy going to take the black. He was taken out like a stain being scrubbed away. Chains on his wrists. Eyes on his back. No farewells. No last look at the towers where he had grown up.
By the time Castle Black rose out of the snow, Jon felt older than his years, hollowed out by grief and accusation. The Wall loomed above him, vast and merciless, its ice face catching the pale light of the northern sky. In his first life, it had been intimidating. In this one, it felt like judgment.
The gates opened. "Jon Snow," the escort announced, voice tight. "Ordered here by Lord Eddard Stark, Hand of the King."
The black brothers gathered as they always did when new meat arrived. Jon felt their eyes rake over him; his chains, his Stark features, the wolfish set of his jaw. Murmurs rippled through the yard, quick and sharp as knives.
That was when he heard it.
"…that's him."
"…the one from Winterfell."
"…killed his own brother, they say."
Jon's steps faltered for half a heartbeat.
Kinslayer.
The word was not spoken aloud at first. It didn't need to be. It hung in the air, heavy and poisonous, passed from mouth to ear, growing teeth as it went.
Ser Alliser Thorne's smile was thin and satisfied when he saw Jon. "Well," Thorne drawled, circling him like a crow eyeing carrion, "if it isn't the Lordling bastard. So I hear that you have done the darkest deed."
Laughter followed—uneasy, cruel. Jon felt it like a blade sliding between his ribs. In his first life, he had arrived angry, proud, naive. This time, he arrived already broken in ways the Watch did not care to understand.
The chains were struck off. No ceremony. No quiet word of welcome.
The year that followed was the hardest Jon Snow had ever endured. He was given no favors. If anything, he was watched more closely than the rest. Every mistake was seized upon. Every success questioned. When he struck down a man in the yard, the whispers followed.
"Too eager, that one."
"Of course he's good with a blade. Remember who he's killed already."
Even Grenn and Pyp, who might have been friends in another life, kept their distance. No one wanted to be close to a kinslayer. In the North, it was a curse worse than treason. Here, at the edge of the world, it was a bad omen. Poor Samwell Tarly meanwhile kicked the bucket without him here.
He knew the brother just saw him as a burden and most likely let him freeze.
Jon trained harder than anyone. Not out of pride. Out of necessity. He rose before the horn, ran the Wall until his lungs burned, practiced until his hands bled. He swallowed insults without reply, knowing any protest would only confirm what they already believed. He let the rage coil inside him, cold and patient.
At night, when the fires burned low, he dreamed of Robb. Not the boy laughing in the yard, sword slung careless over his shoulder but Robb lying broken beneath a fallen horse, eyes staring at a sky that did not care.
Jon woke from those dreams with his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.
Maester Aemon watched him. The old man said little at first, but his blind eyes seemed to see far more than others'. One night, as Jon lingered near the ravens, Aemon spoke quietly "Men fear what they do not understand," he said. "And they fear guilt they do not wish to face."
Jon said nothing. "Tell me," Aemon went on, "do you believe yourself guilty, Jon Snow?"
Jon's hands curled into fists. "No."
Aemon nodded slowly. "Good. Then endure. The Wall strips lies away, in time. All that remains is truth." If only that were so, Jon thought.
Ser Alliser never let up. Jon was given the worst watches, the coldest posts, sent ranging drills meant to break weaker men. When supplies ran thin, Jon's name was always first on the list to go without. And yet he survived.
By midyear in his second year back, even his enemies could not deny his skill. His sword work was sharp, precise, ruthless. He fought like a man who had already died once and was not afraid to do so again.
Still, the whispers never fully stopped.
When news reached the Wall of unrest in the south of tensions, of lords arguing, of banners being quietly called…Jon listened with a tightness in his chest. He knew what came next. He knew how fast it would all spiral.
But here, chained by oath and reputation, he could do nothing.
+2 Prowess
-
Turn 3 / Year 3 – Jon Snow's Actions
Search for Missing Uncle Benjen
Roll 1d100+3=40(average).
The Wall did not care that Jon Snow had once died. It loomed above him all the same vast, pale, merciless its frozen face catching the dull light of a sun that never quite warmed the world. Jon stood beneath it in the pre-dawn gloom, his breath fogging the air, Ghost's red eyes glowing softly at his side.
The direwolf was restless. Jon could feel it through the bond not words, not images, but a tautness, a low animal awareness stretched thin like a drawn bowstring. Ghost paced the snow, nose lifted, ears flicking toward the black line of the forest beyond the Wall.
Something was wrong out there. It always was. He knew what prowled beyond the walls.
Behind Jon, the gates of Castle Black groaned open just wide enough to admit him. The iron chains rattled like bones. No ceremony. No brothers gathered to see him off. No well-wishes. Only duty and suspicion.
Lord Commander Jeor Mormont waited just inside the gate, cloaked in black, his lined face carved from stone. He did not offer Jon a seat. Did not offer wine. He barely offered a glance. "You want to go ranging," Mormont said flatly.
Jon met his eyes. "Yes, my lord."
"To search for your uncle."
"Yes."
A long pause followed. The wind moaned through the gate, carrying with it the distant crack of ice shifting far above. Mormont studied Jon as one might study a blade judging balance, edge, and whether it might turn in the hand.
"You'll go alone," the Lord Commander said at last.
Jon did not blink. "I expected as much."
"You are not trusted," Mormont continued. No heat. No anger. Just fact. "Some here believe you cursed. Others believe you are dangerous. Many believe you are guilty."
Jon's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
Mormont's gaze flicked briefly to Ghost, then back to Jon. "Your uncle Benjen vanished on his ranging a couple days before you have arrived. Others have searched. Others have died. You think you'll fare better?"
Jon hesitated just long enough to choose his words. "I know things now," he said carefully. "Things I didn't before."
Mormont snorted. "So you claim. Here," the old bear said as he presented him with the valyrian blade once more, Longclaw. "You remind me of another who erred greatly."
Jon knew who he was talking about and took the sword since he was sure he was going to need it out there beyond the wall. "Thank you, my lord," he bowed deeply and this time meant it. At least someone in this cold world thought something good of him.
"Don't thank me," Mormont turned away. "You have a month. No more. You take no men, no horses, no supplies beyond what you can carry. If you do not return, we will not come after you."
Jon bowed his head. "Understood."
"And Snow," Mormont added, his voice hard as iron. "This is not redemption. Do not imagine it is."
Jon met his gaze again, something cold and ancient flickering behind his eyes. "I don't."
The gate creaked open further and the Wall released him into the wider world beyond.
Gained Longclaw: +5 to Prowess!
-
The forest swallowed sound.
Beyond the Wall, the world felt… thinner. Not quieter…no, the wind still whispered through the branches, snow still crunched beneath boot and paw but strained, like a skin stretched too tight over something vast and patient.
Jon moved carefully, every sense alive. He wore black, but had wrapped his cloak in a gray wool covering to break his outline against the snow. His sword hung easy at his side. Ghost ranged ahead, a pale shadow slipping between the trees without a sound.
No birds. Jon noted it almost at once. The forest was too still. He remembered this feeling. The way the world held its breath before the dead rose.
They followed old tracks first, half-buried lines in the snow, long since scoured by wind. Benjen's ranging party had passed this way once. Jon remembered the reports from his first life: broken signs, scattered remains, nothing conclusive.
This time, he looked deeper. He knelt, brushing aside snow with careful fingers. "Here," he murmured. Ghost returned at once, sniffing the ground. The wolf's hackles lifted. The tracks were wrong.
Men walking, not fleeing but with spacing too even, too deliberate. And beneath them, faintly impressed deeper into the ice… Boots that did not quite lift.
Jon swallowed. "They were followed," he whispered. "Or… escorted."
Ghost growled low in his chest. They moved on.
Hours passed and then days. The light never quite brightened. The trees grew thicker, their branches twisted and claw-like, heavy with snow that fell in sudden soft avalanches at the slightest disturbance.
Then Jon smelled it. Rot.
He froze, hand on his sword. Ghost stopped dead, nose lifted, body rigid.
They advanced slowly, breath held, until the trees opened into a shallow clearing. Bodies lay scattered across the snow. Not fresh. Not ancient. Preserved by cold, skin drawn tight, eyes glassy and pale. Black cloaks marked them as brothers of the Watch.
Jon recognized one of them. "Othor," he breathed. The man's throat was torn open, the flesh around it blackened with frostbite. His hands were clawed, fingers broken. Nearby lay another, Jafer Flowers his jaw frozen open in a silent scream.
In Jon's first life, these men had risen again. This time, they were still. For now.
Jon forced himself to kneel, ignoring the scream of instinct that told him to run. He examined the ground. There drag marks leading north. "They didn't die here," Jon said. "They were brought."
Ghost whined softly, pawing at the snow. Then his head snapped up, ears flattening. Jon felt it too. A presence. Not close. But aware. He rose slowly. "We don't linger."
They followed the drag marks until the forest thinned again—until the ground sloped downward into a shallow ravine choked with ice and dead brush. And there, half-buried beneath snow and leaves, Jon found it.
A broken sword. Blackened steel. Wolf pommel. Benjen Stark's blade.
He knelt, lifting the sword with reverent care. The edge was nicked, the hilt wrapped in cracked leather darkened with old blood. This was no casual loss. This was a last stand.
Ghost pressed close, his warmth solid against Jon's side. "He fought," Jon said hoarsely. "He lived long enough to fight."
Jon searched the ravine carefully. No body. That was… something. His uncle was out there somewhere… who knows where. He could head deep beyond the wall to look for him but who knew what dangers awaited.
Or he could turn back.
A sound echoed through the trees then. A crack. Not ice. Bone. Jon spun, sword half-drawn.
The forest shifted. Figures moved between the trunks too smooth, too silent. Pale shapes, half-glimpsed. Watching. Ghost snarled, baring his teeth. Jon backed away slowly, heart hammering.
He had to decide now. Should he continue pursuing for his uncle or turn back?
…
Turn 4 / Year 4!
We learnt that our uncle is still alive out there.
Should we purse
Or
Turn back!
Purse Uncle trail
1d100+3+5(sword)=78(Amazing)
Jon moved north after dealing with the dead hanging about the sight were his uncle made his stand.
Ghost padded ahead, silent as falling snow, a pale blur against shadow. The direwolf had grown leaner, harder, his movements sharp with a predator's certainty. Weeks beyond the Wall had stripped away softness from them both. Jon's cheeks were hollow now, his new beard growing in thick with frost. His cloak was patched, his gloves mended twice with sinew and thread pulled from his own shirt.
Months passed.
Time broke apart beyond the Wall. Days blurred into white marches and nights into black vigilance. The sun became a pale rumor behind constant cloud. Snow fell, melted, refroze, fell again. Jon learned to read the world by subtler signs: the way wind curled around trunks, the silence that meant predators, the wrong silence that meant the dead.
He followed his uncle's trail not as a man might but as a wolf would.
Broken branches snapped low to the ground. Old blood darkened snow beneath overhangs. Campsites abandoned in haste. Once, he found a scrap of black cloth caught on thorns, the weave unmistakably Night's Watch. Another time, a scorched patch of earth, fire used not for warmth but desperation.
"He's alive," Jon told Ghost more than once. He had to believe it. And belief, out here, mattered.
The first wildlings attacked at dusk.
They came howling from the trees; six of them, fur-cloaked and half-mad with hunger. Cannibals. Jon knew the signs now: filed teeth, bone charms, eyes too bright. One hurled a spear. Ghost took him down in a flash of white and red, tearing out his throat before the man could scream.
Jon drew Longclaw. Valyrian steel sang.
The fight was brutal and fast. One wildling rushed him with an axe; Jon stepped inside the swing and drove Longclaw through the man's ribs. Another tried to flank him, Ghost slammed into his legs, dragging him down, snapping bone.
When it was done, Jon stood panting, blood steaming in the snow. He wiped his blade clean on a corpse and did not look back. That was the first of many attacks he had to deal with. There were others, many of them.
A shadowcat stalked them for three days it was silent, patient, clever. Jon only realized something was wrong when Ghost refused to sleep, pacing endlessly. On the fourth night, it struck.
The thing dropped from a tree like living darkness, claws raking Jon's shoulder. Pain exploded. Jon rolled, slashing blindly. Longclaw bit deep. The cat screamed, a horrible, almost human sound and Ghost finished it, jaws clamping around its neck.
Jon burned the body after he feasted on what he could with Ghost. He burned everything out here.
The farther north he went, the more the world changed. Unicorns not the gentle creatures of song that Sansa used to read about, but great beasts with blood-matted horns that charged without warning. Jon killed one only by leaping aside at the last second and driving Longclaw up beneath its jaw as it thundered past.
Aurochs stampeded through frozen valleys, massive and furious, their hooves shaking ice loose from cliffs. Jon learned to hide, to become small.
Polar bears hunted them once, two of them, enormous, scarred, half-starved. Jon climbed a tree as Ghost distracted them. He dropped from above, blade flashing, and nearly died for it. His left arm never fully stopped aching after that.
But it was the dead that came most often. Wights rose from drifts, from old battlefields, from shallow graves marked only by cairns. Sometimes they came alone. Sometimes in hordes, their blue eyes burning like cold stars.
Jon killed any he ran into. Fire when he could. Steel when he must. Valyrian steel worked wonders. Longclaw cut through frozen flesh as if it were meat. Heads fell. Limbs shattered. Ghost tore and tore and tore until his muzzle was always red.
Still, the dead kept coming. There were nights Jon did not sleep, only sat with his back to a tree, sword across his knees, whispering his uncle's name into the dark. "Benjen Stark," he said. "I'm coming."
+4 Prowess(forgot last turn increase)
-
It was during the fourth month that Jon realized he was being guided. Not by tracks. Not by Ghost. By the absence of danger.
Paths opened where none should exist. Wights failed to rise where he camped. Storms broke around him, leaving him untouched. Once, he woke to find fresh snow swept clean in a perfect circle around his fire.
"You're being watched," Jon murmured.
Ghost did not disagree. Then came the night of the trees. They were dead trees, white and twisted, growing in a ring. The air there was so cold it burned. Jon felt it thinking, probing at him, testing his memories. His blood. His name.
Something moved among the trunks. A man—no. A figure.
He rode an elk pale as bone. His hands were black with rot, fingers long and corpse-thin. His eyes burned red, not blue. The dead recoiled from him.
Image:
Ghost bristled but did not attack. "Who are you?" Jon demanded, Longclaw raised.
The rider did not answer at once. When he spoke, his voice was dry as leaves. "You should not be here, Jon Snow."
Jon's blood went cold. "You know my name."
"I know many names," the figure said. "I knew your uncle."
Jon took a step forward. "Benjen Stark. Is he alive?"
A pause. "Alive," the man said slowly, "is a word with many meanings."
Jon's grip tightened. "Take me to him."
The rider studied him for a long moment. Then he turned his elk. "Follow," he said. "If you can."
They rode or walked in Jon's case, for many days and nights.
Time ceased to have meaning. Sleep came in snatches. Hunger dulled. The world narrowed to the steady crunch of boots, the soft pad of Ghost's paws, and the slow, tireless gait of the pale elk beneath the rider. The forest grew stranger with every mile. Trees leaned at impossible angles. Shadows lingered too long after the light passed. Once, Jon thought he heard singing carried on the wind, thin and distant, like memory rather than sound.
At night, when they rested, Coldhands never slept. He stood watch, unmoving, a black silhouette against the stars, eyes fixed on the dark as if daring it to move. Wights never approached. Jon felt them sometimes, felt something lurking beyond the trees but it would not cross whatever line the rider drew simply by being there.
It was during one such night, with the fire burning low and Ghost curled at his side, that Jon finally asked. He looked up at the rider, who sat astride the elk like a figure carved from old wood and bone. Frost rimed his cloak. His breath did not fog the air.
"Who are you?" Jon said.
The eyes shifted to him. For a moment, Jon thought the man would ignore the question as he had ignored so many others. Then something in that dead face… softened. Only a fraction. "They call me Coldhands."
That was all. Jon waited for more, for a name, a story, a reason but Coldhands turned his gaze back to the forest, and the night closed around them again. No more words came.
After that, the world began to change.
At first it was subtle. Snow no longer lay as deep. Ice cracked beneath Jon's boots to reveal dark, wet soil below. The cold eased not truly, but the absence of biting cold was gone. Ghost lifted his head, ears pricked, tail swaying slowly, as if he smelled something he had not smelled since he was a pup.
Life. Moss crept along stones. Ferns unfurled beside half-frozen streams. Jon breathed in and nearly staggered at the scent damp earth, green growth, the rich smell of water that moved instead of slept. Warmth brushed his skin, light as a remembered touch. For a heartbeat, he was a boy again, running through the godswood at Winterfell, the sound of water and leaves and laughter around him.
They passed between two ancient weirwoods. Their trunks were vast, bark pale as old bone, their faces worn down by centuries of wind and weather until only the suggestion of eyes and mouths remained. Yet Jon felt them watching him. Not judging. Remembering.
And then he saw it. The grove. Jon stopped so abruptly that Ghost bumped into his leg.
It lay before him like a dream that refused to fade, a wide, sheltered hollow untouched by winter. Grass covered the ground, green and thick. Trees arched overhead, their leaves heavy and alive. A stream wound through the clearing, its waters flowing freely, catching the light like silver thread. Fireflies drifted in slow, lazy spirals, their glow soft and golden.
And there were voices. High, lilting, full of laughter. They emerged from the trees one by one.
Small figures. Slender. Graceful in a way that made human movement seem clumsy by comparison. Their skin was the color of bark and leaf and stone; browns, greens, and pale greys blending like living wood. Their eyes gleamed like molten gold and deep amber, catching the firefly light. Delicate horns curved from their brows, ridged and beautiful.
A dozen at least. Children of the Forest. Not ghosts. Not stories. Not remnants scraped from the margins of men's histories. Alive.
They watched Jon Snow with ancient, unblinking curiosity. Some tilted their heads, studying him as one might study a curious animal. Others whispered among themselves in a language that sounded like wind through leaves and water over stone.
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Coldhands dismounted at the edge of the grove and finally spoke. "This place is hidden," he said. "Warm. Safe. As safe as anything can be now."
Jon fell to one knee, overwhelmed. "This can't be possible. I thought they were gone," he whispered.
One of the Children stepped forward.
She was the tallest, her skin pale as birch bark, her eyes bright as dawn through leaves. When she smiled, it was gentle, sad, and impossibly old. "Gone?" she said softly, in the Common Tongue, though her accent bent the words like branches in wind. "No, wolf-blood. We are not gone."
Another joined her, taller, antler-horned, his gaze sharp as flint. "We endure," he said. "As roots endure beneath stone. As memory endures beneath time."
A third's eyes lingered on Jon's sword. On Longclaw. On the wolf pommel. Recognition flickered there. Interest. Caution.
"You walk where few of your kind have walked and lived," the first said.
Jon swallowed. His heart hammered in his chest. "I'm looking for my uncle," he said hoarsely. "Benjen Stark."
The Children's gazes shifted not to Jon, but to Coldhands.
At last one of the Children spoke.
She was small even for her kind, slight as a sapling, with short antlers curved from her brow, wrapped with thin strands of vine and bone beads that clicked softly as she moved. She smiled gently, and there was kindness there, but also exhaustion so deep it felt like the end of an age.
She gestured with one delicate hand, palm open, toward the rider who had brought him here. "Why don't you introduce yourself, Ben… to your nephew."
Jon turned. Coldhands was already moving. Slowly almost reverently he reached up and drew back his hood. The face beneath was grey and pale, the skin drawn tight by death, eyes glowing faint red in the firefly light. Ice rimed his lashes. His breath did not mist. And yet—
Jon knew that face. He had known it since childhood. Had seen it smiling across the hearth at Winterfell, stern and amused all at once. Had heard it laugh. Had felt its hand clap his shoulder. "Uncle…" Jon whispered.
Benjen Stark inclined his head. The motion was stiff, wrong in small ways, but unmistakably him. A sad smile touched his lips, cracked but sincere. "Jon," he said. His voice was rough, as if scraped across frost. "You've grown."
The world tilted. Jon staggered forward, stopping only a few paces away, afraid, absurdly that if he touched him, Benjen would shatter into rime and bone. "You're…" He swallowed hard. "You're dead."
Benjen chuckled softly. "Mostly."
Anger flared then, sharp and sudden, cutting through the shock. "What happened?" Jon demanded. "What did they do to you?"
Benjen's smile faded. "I got done in by them," he said simply.
The grove seemed to darken at the words, the fireflies dimming as if in mourning. The Children listened in silence.
"We were tracking signs," Benjen went on. "Dead villages. Vanished clans. Too clean. Too quiet." His red eyes drifted northward, toward unseen horrors. "They were watching us long before we ever knew."
He touched his chest, where the black fabric of his cloak was stiff with old frost. "They came in the night. White shadows. Cold that burned worse than fire. I fought. We all did. It wasn't enough."
Jon clenched his fists. "Why aren't you like them?" he asked. "Why aren't you… controlled?"
Benjen looked at the child. "She intervened," he said. "The Children did. Bound me before the Others could finish their work. Anchored what was left of me to the old magics. To memory."
The Child spoke quietly. "He carried King Blood. We could not let him fall into their hands. He now walks in death, but his will is his own. A rare thing. A costly thing."
Benjen nodded. "I can't cross the Wall anymore. Can't rest. Can't truly live." He met Jon's gaze. "But I am not theirs."
Jon's eyes burned. "I looked for you," he said. "In another life. I never found anything. Just bones and rumors."
Benjen's expression looked confused but he smiled. "I saw you. From afar. You were brave. And stubborn. Stark to the bone. I decided to stay away."
The small Child with the antlers stepped forward again. Leaves crunched softly beneath her bare feet. She looked at Jon Snow not as a boy, nor as a man, but as something unfinished.
"You have walked far," she said. "Farther than you were meant to."
A faint smile touched her lips. "We never expected to find you here…maybe your little brother and his friends but you were to be Lord Commander."
Jon knew she must be talking about his first life. How things played out before. However he was surprised that they knew how things played out. The children of the forest were truly very alien creatures with many powers.
Benjen shifted beside him. Jon could feel the cold radiating off his uncle now, not painful, but ever-present, like standing too close to a glacier. Benjen said nothing, but his eyes watched the Children carefully. He knew this moment mattered.
"There is someone who wishes to see you," the Child continued. Her golden eyes flicked northward, far beyond the trees, beyond even the sense of distance. "One who watches. One who remembers. One who waits."
Jon's brow furrowed. "Who?"
"The Three-Eyed Crow."
The name meant nothing to him. "What does he want with me?" Jon asked.
"To teach," said another Child, taller, bark-scarred, with eyes like amber lit from within. "To bind. To prepare. To pass on what cannot be carried much longer."
Jon's pulse quickened. "Prepare me for what?"
The grove darkened for a heartbeat. Somewhere far away, ice cracked like thunder. "For the Long Night," the Children said together.
Jon exhaled slowly. He had known this answer would come. Had felt it coiled around every step of his journey north, in every corpse he burned, every wight he cut down, every beast he fought just to keep moving.
"I've already fought the dead," Jon said. "I know they're coming."
"You know the surface of a storm," the antlered Child replied gently. "Not the heart of it."
"If I go to this… watcher," Jon said at last, "will he know things about me?"
The Children exchanged glances. "He will see what is shown," Leaf said carefully. "And much that is not."
Benjen snorted softly. "Cryptic as ever." His looked at Jon. "I have felt him," he said. "A presence deeper than the snows. Older than the Wall. He is not one of the Others."
Jon felt a chill crawl up his spine. In his first life, he had never met such a being. He knew nothing of crows with three eyes, of trees that spoke, of those who watched through bark and bone. Whatever this was, it was new. Untested. Dangerous.
"If I go to this… crow," Jon said slowly, "what happens to me?"
The Children did not answer at once. At last, the antlered Child said, "You will change."
Jon let out a humorless breath. "That's hardly new."
She smiled sadly. "You will see through roots and ravens. You will carry memories that are not yours. You will feel the weight of every choice ever made in this land." Her voice softened. "And some part of you may never return."
Silence stretched. "And if I refuse?" Jon asked.
Leaf spread her small hands. "Then you may remain here. Hidden. Safe, for a while. This grove is warded. The dead do not enter. The Others do not see it."
Safe. The word rang hollow.
Jon looked at Benjen. His uncle studied him in a way that made Jon uneasy not as a man studies a boy, but as a ranger studies a storm he cannot predict. "You've changed," Benjen said slowly.
Jon said nothing. Because how could he explain it?
How could he tell them that this was not his first time standing at the edge of the world? That he had already lived, already failed, already died with betrayal on his lips and steel in his gut? That this was not courage driving him forward but refusal?
They did not know. None of them knew. To them, Jon Snow was simply a young man who had come too far beyond the Wall and survived.
Not a revenant of time. Not someone who had a second chance. Not a soul dragging an entire future behind his eyes.
Jon thought of Winterfell. Of Bran, broken and fallen, his fate already twisting away from the path Jon remembered. Of Arya, wild and sharp and alone. Of Sansa, still unscarred, for now. Of a world that kept ending no matter how many times he tried to hold it together.
He thought of Robb, dying beneath a fallen horse, and of knives in the dark at Castle Black, and of waking gasping for breath with snow in his mouth.
He thought of Ghost. The direwolf sat at the edge of the grove, red eyes fixed on Jon, tail still, posture alert. Waiting. Always waiting. He would follow Jon anywhere. He always had.
"If I stay," Jon said, "the world still burns."
"Yes," said the Children.
"If I go," Jon said, "it might burn anyway."
"Yes," they said again.
Jon closed his eyes.
When he opened them, his voice was steady.
"I didn't come this far to hide."
The antlered Child bowed her head, just a fraction. Respect. Not approval. Not sorrow. Simply acknowledgement.
"The path to the Three-Eyed Crow is long," she said. "Longer than the one you have already walked. You will not return as you are."
Benjen stepped forward then. He placed a cold, dead hand on Jon's shoulder. The touch should have been unbearable. It wasn't. "Whatever you become," he said quietly, "remember this, you are a Stark. And you are my nephew. That still matters."
Jon nodded, throat tight. "I won't forget."
-
Jon was led further up North by a child of the forest named Leaf.
They moved north and east, away from the hidden grove, into lands where even the trees grew thin and twisted, their roots clawing at frozen stone like fingers seeking warmth that no longer existed. Snow returned in force, deeper than before, crusted hard enough to cut skin when the wind drove it sideways.
Ghost padded silently at Jon's side, white fur nearly invisible against the drifts. The direwolf never strayed far from Leaf, though Jon could feel the tension in him, a low, constant wariness. Ghost did not trust this land. He did not trust what watched it.
Leaf walked barefoot. Her small feet never slipped, never hesitated. Frost gathered on bark and stone but parted for her like water around a rock. Where she stepped, the snow seemed thinner, less hostile, as though the earth remembered her.
"This is the old way," she said at last, her voice light but tired. "Before men. Before walls. Before the sky learned to freeze."
Jon pulled his cloak tighter. "How far?"
Leaf glanced back at him, golden eyes reflecting the pale light. "Far enough that turning back will no longer feel possible."
That, Jon thought grimly, had already happened.
Days and weeks blurred together.
Sometimes they walked beneath open sky, the aurora burning faintly green above them like the ghosts of dead stars. Other times they passed through forests so dense and ancient that daylight never touched the ground. In those places, Jon felt watched with the trees seeming to know him.
Once, they crossed a frozen river where the ice sang underfoot, deep and hollow. Leaf paused at its center and pressed her palm to the surface. For a moment, Jon swore he saw shapes moving beneath the ice; faces, reaching hands, frozen mid-scream.
"Do not look too long," Leaf warned.
They moved on.
They were not attacked by anything. The only thing that greeted him was old battlefields half-buried in snow: shattered spears of obsidian, rusted iron helms split cleanly in two, bones too large to be human tangled with those too small to be anything else.
"The First War," Leaf said when she saw him staring. "One of old battlesites. We stopped counting."
They were soon close as the cold changed. It grew sharper, cleaner, as if stripped of noise. Jon's breath felt thin in his lungs. The snow here did not crunch, it whispered. Even Ghost moved more cautiously, ears flat, tail low.
They climbed. Not a mountain, not exactly. A rise of stone and frozen earth that jutted up from the wilderness like a broken tooth. The ascent took hours, then a full day, then another. Jon's legs burned. His hands went numb. Several times he thought he saw movement in the storm, tall shapes pacing them from a distance but when he looked directly, there was nothing.
At night, Leaf kindled no fire. Instead, she hummed. The sound was low and strange, not quite a song, not quite a prayer. The wind bent around it. Snow fell more gently
They came upon the last obstacle, a great ravine. It split the land open like a wound sheer black stone plunging down into mist and darkness. A narrow stone bridge crossed it, no wider than a cart, slick with ice and age. No guardrails. No markings. Just old stone, cracked and uneven.
Jon stopped at the edge. Ghost growled softly. Leaf did not slow. She stepped onto the bridge without hesitation. "Wait," Jon said. "What's down there?"
Leaf looked back, eyes reflecting something older than fear. "Everything that falls and does not rise."
Jon swallowed and followed. Halfway across, the wind rose suddenly, howling up from the depths. Jon staggered, catching himself on a jagged outcrop. He glanced down and wished he hadn't.
The mist parted. He saw a forest upside-down, roots hanging like claws, faces half-formed in bark and stone, mouths open in silent screams. He saw shadows moving where no shadows should move. He saw something enormous shift, slow and patient, far below.
Leaf's voice cut through the wind. "Do not look."
Jon tore his gaze away and forced his feet to move. When they reached the far side, Jon collapsed to one knee, shaking. Leaf studied him. "You are still whole," she said, almost surprised. "That is… impressive."
Jon breathed in weakly. "You say that like it's rare."
"It is."
Beyond the ravine, the land changed again. The trees returned but wrong. Pale trunks twisted together, bark white as bone, branches interwoven so tightly that the forest formed walls instead of paths. Faces stared out from the wood, half-swallowed by growth. Some looked peaceful. Others screamed silently.
"This is his domain," Leaf said. Her voice was quieter now. "He watches from many places, but he dwells here."
"Who is he?" Jon asked.
Leaf paused. "Once, he was a boy," she said. "Once, he was many boys. Now… he is a window."
Jon frowned. "A window to what?"
Leaf met his eyes. "To everything that has been. And many things that should not be."
They walked for hours through the bone-white forest, until Jon's sense of direction failed entirely. Up felt like down. Time stretched. His thoughts felt… thinner, as if something were gently brushing against them, testing.
Then the trees parted. And Jon saw it.
A massive weirwood rose from the earth ahead, its roots spreading like a frozen crown, its trunk split and hollowed by time. Red leaves hung motionless despite the wind, each one carved with a thousand tiny faces, all watching.
At the base of the tree, a cave mouth yawned open, dark and deep. Leaf stopped. "This is where I leave you," she said.
Jon's heart began to pound. "You're not coming?"
Leaf shook her head. "He does not call to us."
Jon hesitated. "What does he want?"
Leaf's expression softened. "He will ask you to look."
"And if I don't like what I see?"
"Then you will understand why so few return unchanged."
Ghost pressed close, growling softly at the cave. Jon drew a slow breath. He had walked through death, through time, through lands no man was meant to see. He would not turn back now. "Thank you," Jon said.
Leaf inclined her head. "Remember," she said softly. "Whatever he shows you…no one else must know."
Jon inclined his head slowly. Then he stepped forward, into the dark, toward the Three-Eyed Raven and the roots of the world closed behind him.
+2 Prowess!
…
Jon stood alone. The air beyond the threshold was colder not with winter's cold, but the absence of warmth entirely. Like standing in the shadow of something vast enough to eclipse the world. He went on.
The cavern opened suddenly, vast and cathedral-like. A forest had grown inside stone. Enormous white roots burst from the walls and ceiling, intertwining, fusing, forming pillars thicker than great chains.
At the center stood the weirwood. Its face was immense, crude, asymmetrical, the eyes far too large for any living thing. Thick rivulets of dark red sap ran constantly from them, pooling at the roots like spilled blood that refused to freeze.
Beneath it sat a corpse. Or rather what remained of one.
The body of old man was no longer separate from the tree. Roots speared through his chest, wrapped his limbs, pierced his skull. His mouth hung open as if in a silent scream that had ended centuries ago. One eye was gone with a root growing through it. The other opened.
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Jon's vision collapsed inward. He felt it then a pressure, like a vast intellect pressing its face against the thin glass of his mind. "You are not the broken child I was promised."
The voice did not come from the corpse. It came from the roots. From the stone. From Jon's own memories. The red eye focused on Jon fully now. "You were not meant to be here. You should be languishing at the wall."
Jon froze. "You called me."
"No. I called him. The wolf with the broken legs. Those stupid children brought me the wrong vessel." The air distorted. Jon saw it then faintly, horrifyingly a gap in reality beside him. A version of events where Bran Stark wheeled forward by a young woman who looked to be a crannogmen. That future collapsed.
The Raven's voice sharpened. "I do not know how but you broke the line."
"Who are you?" Jon Snow asked, getting the suspicion that this alien thing did not have the best of attention.
The thing considered before saying, "This current vessel is known as Brynden Rivers."
Jon stared at the corpse-root-thing in the heart of the weirwood, breath shallow. "Brynden Rivers," he repeated slowly.
The name rang like a struck bell in his skull. He recalled his lessons with Maester Luwin. Bastard of Aegon the Unworthy. Hand of the King. Sorcerer. Kinslayer. Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Disappeared beyond the Wall over a century ago.
Jon's eyes widened despite himself. "That's not possible," he said. "You're… you'd be over a hundred years old."
The red eye did not blink. Roots tightened, creaking softly, as if the tree itself were adjusting its grip. "That is correct. That is why this vessel is now decrepit."
A chill ran down Jon's spine. "You're not Brynden Rivers anymore," Jon said quietly.
The roots shuddered. For the first time, something like irritation rippled through the presence filling the cave. "Names are handles," it replied. "They exist for the convenience of men."
Jon swallowed. His mouth felt dry as old bone. He was starting to connect the dots. And Jon felt the pressure increase becoming more insistent. Like fingers pressing against the inside of his skull, searching for seams.
"So you take them," he said. "Greenseers. Wargs. Children with the sight. You hollow them out and wear them."
Silence. Then a low vibration through the roots, through the stone, through Jon's bones. Laughter. Not sound. Recognition. "Crude phrasing," the Raven said. "But not inaccurate."
Jon's stomach clenched. "You planned to do that to my brother."
The pressure spiked in his mind. The cave dimmed. The weirwood's red leaves darkened, as if steeped in fresh blood. "Bran Stark was suitable," the Raven replied. "Young. Open. Unformed. Easy to grow into."
The Raven considered him. "You will serve as a suitable substitute." The word landed with weight.
Jon wanted to ask what it was, what it truly was but that was when it finally decided to stop playing with its food and went on the attack. The Raven fell into him and Jon's vision shattered.
The cave, the tree, the corpse-roots all peeled away like rotting bark, and something ancient uncoiled itself inside his mind. He felt the shape of it at last, and the understanding was worse than fear.
This thing was not a man. Not even a creature. He could not even find the words to properly describe it. All his mind could do was recoil in absolute horror and terror as this hunger, this thing that learnt to feed on minds the way fire fed on wood tried to take over him.
The roots tightened around the corpse behind him, anchoring the Raven as it reached not with hands but vast intellect. Jon screamed and the world ended.
…
He stood beneath a sky that had never known stars.
The sun was young and white-hot, harsh and enormous, burning through a thin, raw sky. The land was broken and unfinished, mountains like jagged teeth thrust up from steaming seas. Forests stretched for leagues; true forests, vast and endless, trees so large they dwarfed castles, their leaves broad and dark, their roots drinking from the bones of the world with continents drowned in green.
Jon staggered, clutching his head. 'This is not my memory.'
"No." The Raven's voice came from everywhere now from the sky, from the ground, from the space behind Jon's eyes. "This is mine."
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He saw them then. The Children.
Not the dwindling, careful survivors he had met, but legions thousands of them moving through the green twilight of the primeval forests. They sang as they walked, voices weaving magic into the land itself. The trees bent toward them. Rivers changed course at their passing.
Then he saw them, so massive they were hard to miss as they bloated out the sky. They were like pillars of reality that rose from the skin of the world, their trunks able to fit a city, their crowns vanishing into cloud and light. They spanned great landmass, their roots threading through oceans, mountains, and stone alike.
He knew them right away somehow, World Trees!
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Then he felt them, the Old Gods descending on the large city spanning trees which the Children gathered around and prostrating themselves, voices rising in reverent joy and devotion.
Jon felt them brush past his awareness; immense and alien consciousness. Some were distant things of stone and storm, some vast and slow as continental drift. Others were sharp, clever, and hungry.
That was when he spotted it, far away in some corner of the young world, a small and sickly twisted tree yet it made Jon's skin crawl more than all the rest.
Its trunk was twisted, warped, as if grown in pain. Pale as bone. Wet. Its roots writhed above ground like exposed veins, tangled with blood and entrails
The tree was taller than a mountain, yet it felt stunted, hunched inward, as though trying to make itself look larger than it truly was. Its carved face loomed from the trunk with eyes too deep, mouth too wide, features locked in an expression that was not rage but spite.
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"They would not feed me." The Raven's voice slithered through the vision, no longer pretending to be merely a guide. "They knelt to the others. They sang to them. However they called me cruel."
The memory sharpened. Jon saw the Children avoiding it as they were fearful, disgusted. He saw them refuse it and keep away from it.
The twisted tree's leaves darkened. And then the unspeakable.
Jon tried to look away. The Raven did not let him.
He saw the first bindings. The first thefts. The thing was small, jealous, weak compared to its kin reaching into the Children's magic and twisting it. Turning memory into chains. Turning sight into possession.
Greenseers screaming as roots pierced skulls. Not communion. Consumption.
Then he watched the Children of the Forest come for it, for its vessel upon the material plane. They were waving a song which Jon never heard before, not the gentle shaping of rivers and roots. This was older. Sharper. A judgment-song, discordant and heavy, sung only when something had gone so wrong that the world itself demanded correction.
The Children did not act alone. Jon felt them then, the other Old Gods. They were backing them and they had their permission. Their vast attentions isolated the twisted thing, cutting it off like a limb gone black with rot. The air around it grew thin. The sky dimmed. The land itself rejected it.
"You are unworthy," came no single voice, but a pressure, a law impressed upon reality.
The hungry tree thrashed. Its roots tore through stone, flinging gore and splinters into the air. Its carved face split wider, the mouth stretching into something that could no longer be mistaken for a smile. "I am a god," it shrieked, its voice raw and shrill now, stripped of its earlier certainty. "You cannot kill me."
However in the end it was killed. Then in punishment he watched as its kin trapped it forever more inside a bird's body, a raven which had been always perching on its tree branches. A long supplicant which worshiped it.
The bird fell to the smoldering earth and landed atop its ruined trunk, wings twitching.
Forever it would remain there, cursed and confined, a watcher over the world, hunger and spite trapped in feathers and bone. The song of judgment faded, leaving only the quiet weight of vigilance.
…
"That was my fate," the Raven hissed, its voice splintering across a thousand roots at once, "to be forevermore trapped in this wretched world. To watch it. To guard it. To be its protector and guide."
The red eye burned brighter. The cave shook. "And in that watching, I learned. I planned. I waited." Roots twitched. Tightened. "They will regret what they did to me. They will pay dearly."
Jon's teeth clenched as something lunged inside his mind. He felt the roots peirce his body, trying to make him part of it.
He felt hands that were not hands clawing through his memories; Winterfell's godswood, Ghost's first howl, Robb laughing, steel biting into his flesh at Castle Black. The Raven forced itself deeper, trying to hook into him the way it had into others.
Take. Bind. Wear.
The single red eye burned brighter. "You will not refuse me," the Three-Eyed Raven said, its voice no longer amused, no longer curious. "I have eaten kings. I have worn prophets. You are only flesh."
Jon screamed. But the scream did not break him. Something answered.
Heat flared in his chest; fire, sudden and defiant, like a dragon's breath igniting in his blood. At the same time, a cold deeper than the Wall surged up from his bones; ice, ancient and unyielding, iron and winter-born.
Fire and ice intertwined. The roots recoiled. "What—" the Raven snarled, its voice cracking for the first time. "No. No. No."
Jon dropped to one knee, gasping, but he was still himself. The thing could not get purchase. There was no hollow space to claim.
"This is why I had you languished at the Wall," the Raven shrieked, fury tearing through its false calm. "Child of prophecy. Chosen of the Gods. Hero of the Ages. You protagonists are annoying pests!"
Jon forced himself upright, Longclaw blazing faintly in his hand as if answering the fire in his blood. Ghost who could only helplessly watch this whole time snarled beside him, a sound that was more than animal; old, loyal, lethal. "I am not yours," Jon said, voice raw but unbroken.
The cave erupted. Roots burst from the walls like spears, stone splitting as pale tendrils lashed toward him. They scraped his armor, wrapped around his legs, clawed for his throat. Faces in the bark screamed silently as the Raven howled in rage.
Jon ran. There was no way honestly he could stand against it with all his false bravado. It was a god, yes one trapped on the mortal plane and that lost all its powers, but a god nonetheless. He did not know how it withstood its possession all he could do was counting his luck stars and get out.
He tore through the cave as roots chased him, snapping inches from his heels. The weirwood screamed. The red leaves fell like blood. The ground buckled, trying to drag him down into memory and bark and bone.
Ghost leapt ahead, leading him through collapsing tunnels, past grasping roots that burned where they touched Jon's skin. Fire scorched them black. Ice shattered them apart.
Behind him, the Raven raged, trapped in its old decrypt body of Brynden Rivers furious and starving. "You cannot escape the wheel!" it shrieked. "You are bound to it!"
Jon burst out into the blinding white of the world beyond, lungs burning, heart hammering. And for the first time since entering the roots of the world, the Three‑Eyed Raven did not follow.
Jon did not know if it could not leave this place and he couldn't help himself calling out to it in taunt, "You picked the wrong Stark."
-
Profile: Three-Eyed Raven(The Hungry Tree)
Type: Old God Remnant
Main Attributes: 75 Learning
Vessel: Brynden Rivers(Bloodraven)
Info: It used to be one of the Old Gods, cruel and weak, before it was struck down and made to languish on the mortal plane for its crimes. It preys on young boys with the gift of greensight, misguiding them, usurping their bodies, causing strife upon the world, and continuing its masterplan.
Powers & Abilities: Green Magic(Nature), Warging, Greensight
Weaknesses: ?
Personality: Manipulative, Jealous & Vindictive, Arrogance, Obsessive, Cruel.
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