The snow still clung to his cloak when Elias slipped from the stables, fresh back from the ranging with Benjen. Servants bustled about, unloading packs and rubbing down the horses, their breath steaming in the cold air. He barely spared them a glance. His mind was already at the ridge.
The hollow was unchanged in form, yet different in feel. The air was tense, as though the rocks themselves were holding their breath. The male hare-hawk stood at the entrance, gold eyes sharp and wings half-spread until recognition softened his posture. Behind him, the female shifted slowly, feathers puffed into a perfect insulating sphere.
She was heavier now, her underside rounded in a way that spoke of more than simple feeding. Eggs were coming.
"You don't have long," Elias murmured, scanning the hollow. Too cold. Too exposed. If she lay here, the frost could steal them in a single night. He needed something warmer, hidden—alive.
That night, he walked the godswood in silence. Snow muffled his steps, the red leaves of the heart tree still clinging stubbornly despite winter's grip. Its carved face watched as he knelt, palms pressed to the roots.
"I need shelter," he whispered. "Something that keeps them alive without drawing eyes. Something that guards, unseen."
The cold deepened, seeping into his bones. His vision narrowed until the world was nothing but white bark and bleeding sap. Then came the shift—the moment when the Old Gods took notice.
Images flowed into his mind: burrows carved into the slope, lined with stones that glowed faintly with stored warmth. Air moving in slow, deliberate currents. And among them, a creature unlike any he had seen—pale fur patterned like scales, claws wide for digging, a flat tail tamping earth smooth. It carried frostmoss in its jaws, weaving it into the hare-hawk nest. The hawks guarded it; it tended them in return.
The name came unbidden—Frostmolt.
But along with the vision came a whisper, cold as ice through his mind: Balance is not kept by one thread alone.
The next morning, Elias gathered his materials. From a hunter's refuse, the hide and bones of a snow vole. From the rookery, a single iridescent raven feather. From the quarry, thin sheets of mica, cold and sharp in his hands. And from a shadowed grove in the Wolfswood, a clump of frostmoss still clinging to soil that smelled faintly of the Old Gods' power.
By moonrise, he sat before the heart tree, the materials laid out in a ring on the snow.
The shaping was harder than he'd expected.
The first attempt dissolved into formless heat as the vole's bones refused the widening of the claws. The second twisted the tail into a curl instead of a tamp. The third shattered the mica before the warmth could bind it into the creature's core.
Sweat dripped down his face despite the cold. His hands trembled. The power from the Old Gods flowed slowly but insistently, as if testing his resolve.
The fourth attempt nearly held—until the frostmoss rotted in his mind's eye, the link severed.
It took six tries before he felt the pulse of life beneath his hands. Heat spread up his arms as the form solidified. A small creature blinked up at him, fur shimmering with faint iridescence. Its broad front claws were perfect for digging; its flat tail ended in a firm, spade-like edge. From deep in its chest came a low, thrumming hum that seemed to settle into Elias's bones.
He carried the Frostmolt to the hollow the next morning.
The male hare-hawk was instantly on alert—wings wide, lips parting in a hiss.
Elias set the Frostmolt down. It blinked once, then began to dig along the outer wall, curving its tunnel beneath the main chamber.
The male stepped forward, feathers bristling.
It's no threat. It's for her. Let it work. Elias pushed the thought outward, not as words but as certainty.
The response came faintly—guarded suspicion, tinged with reluctant trust. The male stepped back half a pace.
Minutes later, the Frostmolt emerged with a sun-warmed stone in its teeth. It rolled it into the burrow beneath the female, then vanished again to fetch another.
Elias stayed for hours, watching the dynamic evolve. The male no longer postured when the Frostmolt approached, though his eyes never left it. The female adjusted her position over the warmed hollow, feathers fluffed, body relaxed.
Testing the bond, Elias sent an image: Rise to the ledge. The male obeyed.
Back to guard. Instant compliance.
He tried more—circle once and land, spread wings, hold, fold. Some commands hesitated; others were immediate. The link was there, growing stronger with every shared intent.
By dusk, the nesting ground was transformed. The Frostmolt's tunnels spread beneath the main hollow, each lined with warmed stones. Strands of frostmoss grew along the burrow walls, ready to feed insects when spring came, which in turn would feed the chicks.
The female now sat deep in her chamber, feathers insulating the clutch she had not yet laid. The Frostmolt curled nearby in its side burrow, its hum vibrating through the stone. The male kept his post at the entrance, gold eyes bright in the fading light.
Before Elias turned to leave, a pulse brushed his thoughts—wordless, but clear. Safe.
He walked back to Winterfell beneath a hard, starlit sky. His mind turned over what he had built—not just a shelter, but a bond of survival. The Frostmolt would live because the hare-hawks protected it. The hare-hawks would thrive because the Frostmolt sustained their nest.
The Old Gods had given him the shape, but it was his will that bound them together. Each connection like this was another stone in the fortress he was building—not of walls, but of life itself.