He left Hollow under the excuse of scouting. No one questioned it, because a boy who did not bring something back was a boy who got beaten or starved, and Edrin had learned long ago how to make his absences look like necessity.
He traced the path mentally.
Then physically.
He found landmarks the wolf had known: a split pine like a forked finger, a boulder shaped like a crouching man, a patch of ground where the snow always lay thinner because warmth rose from stone beneath.
When he found the stream, he stopped.
It was real.
Steam rose faintly from water that refused to freeze.
No footprints.
No sign anyone in Hollow had ever been here.
Untouched.
Edrin crouched beside it and stared.
This was not power.
This was advantage.
And advantage mattered more.
He dipped his hands into the water.
It was warm enough to sting, like washing in bathwater that had cooled but not died. He scrubbed his hands hard, rubbing until his knuckles went raw. He washed blood off. He washed smell.
He washed again.
And again.
Until his skin went numb.
Still he felt like the scent was there.
Not on him.
In him.
Something stuck beneath skin.
He lifted water to his mouth and drank.
It tasted clean. Mineral. Iron-edged.
He stared at his reflection.
Distorted.
Rippling.
Not clear.
A boy's face with hollow cheeks and too-old eyes.
He studied it anyway.
Is this still me?
No answer.
Only water.
He sat there for a long time, listening to the stream's soft stubborn sound, and thinking.
Back in Hollow, it became clearer.
There was nothing here that could push him further.
No stronger beasts nearby, not close enough to be worth chasing, not without risking attention.
No real threats beyond what he had already faced.
No knowledge.
No structure.
No growth.
Hollow was a dead end.
A place people came to disappear.
A place that kept you alive until it didn't.
He walked back through the village with the stream's warmth still on his hands, and this time he looked at Hollow with different eyes.
Not "home."
A trap.
A holding pen.
A small, ugly answer to the question of survival.
He thought of people.
Not as faceless villagers.
As individuals.
Hobb, who could swing an axe and make men step back.
Old Rusk, who remembered things and could tell stories that might be useful if Edrin learned how to ask.
Mara, who watched and counted and would be dangerous if she decided Edrin was hiding something worth taking.
Then there were the ones closer. The ones his mind kept circling like a tongue worrying a sore tooth.
The girl he liked; Lysa, the name fit the North well enough and did not sound like a song. Lysa with hair the color of wet straw, cheeks always raw from cold, eyes too sharp for her age. She smiled rarely, but when she did it was like sunlight on ice; brief and somehow insulting in how quickly it vanished.
The scout girl too, Rowan, he decided. Dark hair, quick feet, a habit of moving like she was always listening. Someone who knew paths in the woods and did not talk much about what she saw. The kind of girl who survived because she didn't waste breath.
And the old woman; the "grandma" in his head, though she wasn't his blood. Called Nan by some, but there were too many Nans in Westeros. Here, she could be called Old Wena. Wena with fingers stained by herbs, with eyes pale and milky at the edges but still sharp when she looked at you. The village's closest thing to a healer, and therefore one of its most dangerous people, because folk listened to healers when they said this one is cursed.
If Edrin moved, he could not move alone.
Not if he wanted to remain human.
He had no interest in being some lone wolf protagonist strutting through suffering like it was a stage.
He wanted… people.
People were leverage. People were responsibility. People were a way to keep him from turning into something cold and solitary and devouring.
But where could he take them?
The Gift was harsh. The woods were teeth. The Watch roamed. Wildlings sometimes slipped south. Wolves hunted close.
Still, he had the wolf's memories now.
Hidden places.
Warm water.
Iron ridges.
Sheltered hollows where the snow drifted shallow.
If Hollow was a dead end, maybe the answer was not the south yet.
Maybe the answer was a new Hollow. A better one. A place chosen, not stumbled into. A place with warmth and water and distance from the village's hungry eyes.
A safe place.
He hated that the word "safe" still felt like a lie.
Nothing here was safe.
Only safer.
He sat in his hut that night with fire low and thoughts grinding like stone.
A stupid idea kept returning.
Die a lot.
Get strong.
Become powerful fast.
He could see the logic like a straight road.
Death as resource.
A lever.
But the memory of dying was still fresh, as vivid as smell.
Teeth crushing throat.
Wet choking.
Dark.
The pain was not something he could shrug off like a bruise. It followed him back.
It took a piece of him each time.
Sanity was not infinite. It was a pile of sticks. Every death took one.
And if he reached the point where there were none left, he would not become strong.
He would become something else.
A thing that could die without flinching.
A thing that could eat without disgust.
A thing that might look like Edrin and speak like Edrin and still not be him.
He clenched his jaw until it hurt.
"No," he whispered.
Not now.
Not like that.
But he could not stay here.
He needed to confirm the time frame.
If that dragon memory meant something, it could change everything.
If this was truly the era of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, then Robert's Rebellion dreams were not future memories. They were routes. Possibilities. The system showing him lives across time like a cruel jest.
Or the dragon memory could be older. A memory from the wolf's birth passed down by instinct and scent and fear.
Or it could be nothing but the wolf's animal mind misreading a shadow.
But Edrin did not believe in coincidences anymore.
He had to venture south, at least to a place where names were spoken, where years were counted, where a man could ask who sat the Iron Throne without being stared at like he'd asked what color the sky was.
But going south meant leaving Hollow.
Leaving the few people he cared about behind.
Or dragging them with him into a road full of dangers he could not yet see.
He stared at the low fire.
A bastard boy. Two lives in one skull. A system that rewarded devouring.
And now he had to make a decision that wasn't about killing wolves.
It was about building a life.
He lay down and slept, and the sleep felt like a checkpoint whether he wanted it or not.
In the morning, he rose and did not feel like he was waking into the same day.
He felt like he was waking into a chapter he would write with his own hands.
He went to the cookfire and watched the village negotiate itself into another day.
He watched Hobb take a slightly larger portion because no one wanted to argue with him.
He watched Mara watch everyone, eyes flicking like a ledger.
He watched Old Wena sit near the heat, hands out, staring into the fire like she was reading it.
He watched Lysa pass a bowl to a child and receive nothing but a grunt in return.
He watched Rowan slip out toward the woods with a small pack and no farewell, because scouts did not do farewells in Hollow. Farewells invited bad luck.
Edrin stood and felt a cold certainty settle into him.
Hollow was a dead end.
But he had found something beyond it.
Not yet a home.
Not yet a kingdom.
A foothold.
A warm stream in winter.
A map of hidden places.
A system that would let him steal survival from death itself.
He looked toward the tree line.
Then south, in his mind, beyond the Gift, beyond the forests and ridges, toward the lands where maesters counted years and lords played their games.
He did not speak his plan aloud.
Plans spoken aloud in Hollow became gossip, and gossip became knives.
But inside, he began to form it.
First: secure a safer place close enough to Hollow to move people quietly.
Second: test Claim properly; witnesses, oaths, names, whatever the system wanted.
Third: find a road south without being swallowed by it.
And above all.....
Do not lose control.
Because the Cycle of Devouring did not just offer strength.
It offered a way to become the kind of man who stopped caring what it cost.
Edrin tightened his grip on the wooden bowl in his hands until it creaked.
"I'm still me," he told himself, quietly, firmly.
The wind outside the huts moaned like something hungry.
And somewhere, in the woods, old things watched and waited, patient as winter.