For a month, life on Aegis returned to its unbroken rhythm. We repaired the minor wear on our armor, restocked the specialized materials used by the stone constructs, and analyzed the ship's recordings, turning our first real-world encounter into a hundred different training simulations. But beneath the surface of our routine, something had irrevocably shifted. The silence of our home now seemed deeper, the ocean vaster. We had tasted the world, and the memory lingered.
Meanwhile, a thousand leagues away, our ripple was becoming a wave.
In the Great Hall of Winterfell, Lord Rickard Stark leaned forward, his brow furrowed as he read the message for the third time. The wax seal of House Mormont was genuine, the maester's handwriting precise, yet the words were those of a fever dream. Ironborn reavers, repelled. Not by a relief force, not by a lucky sally, but by impossible means.
"Stone bears rising from the sea?" he said, his voice laced with the cold skepticism of a man who dealt in steel and politics, not sorcery. "Two warriors in armor like polished night, appearing from the waves and vanishing just as quickly?"
Maester Walys, his face pale, stood beside him. "Lord Mormont is not a man for fanciful tales, my lord. He swears by the Old Gods it is the truth. He has sent detailed sketches of the warriors' armor. It bears no known sigil. He also sent a sample of the salve they provided. It healed a wound that should have festered in half the time, with barely a scar."
Rickard Stark rose and walked to the hearth, staring into the flames. His sons were still young; Brandon was a wild boy of ten, Eddard a quieter child of eight, and Lyanna just a fierce toddler of five. The North was strong, but the Ironborn were a persistent threat, and the Targaryen king in the south was growing ever more erratic. The world was a precarious place. And now, this.
"He calls himself 'Rudr'," Rickard mused, the name unfamiliar. "Of the North, he claims." He looked at the maester. "Search the archives. Every scroll, every lineage. Find me any mention of this name tied to a noble house, fallen or otherwise."
The story, as it was prone to do, began to spread. First through the Mormont household, then to the fishermen who saw the aftermath, then carried by traders to the mainland. The tale grew with each telling. Some said the warriors were ten feet tall, their eyes glowing embers. Others claimed they commanded the waves themselves, sinking the longships with a gesture. They were called the Sentinels of the Sea, the Stone Guardians, the Sea Wolves of the North. They became a new myth, a whispered legend told in taverns and longhalls from the Wall to the Neck.
For Rickard Stark, it was not a myth. It was a strategic conundrum. An unknown power had manifested in his domain. It had acted in his interest, defending his bannermen, but it was an unknown, an uncontrolled piece on the board. Was it a blessing from the Old Gods, a sign of the North's returning magic? Or was it something far more dangerous?
He sent riders to the western coasts, ordering his lords to watch the seas, to report any strange sightings. He consulted with the oldest and wisest of his household, men who remembered their grandfathers' tales of an age of heroes.
In the solitude of his solar, late one night, Rickard unrolled the sketch from Bear Island again. The armor was sleek, seamless, unlike anything he had ever seen. But the stance of the figures, the way they held themselves, bespoke highborn training. And the name… Rudr. It echoed with a strange, ancient familiarity he could not quite place.
He did not know that the man in the drawing was his own blood, the forgotten son of his great-uncle's line. He only knew that the North had a new player in its great, grim game. A player who, for now, remained deep in the shadows. He folded the parchment, his expression hard as the winter stone of his castle. He would watch, and he would wait. The North remembered, and he would not forget the mystery of the sea.