Chapter 8 — Shadows and Sights
The training yard at Castle Black rang with the clash of wood on wood, curses, and the sharp bark of Ser Alliser Thorne's commands. Snow still clung to the corners, packed hard under boot and blade. I stood at the edge of the circle, watching a boy flinch beneath a hail of blows.
He was large, not in strength, but in... size—his pink face flushed and streaked with tears, breath wheezing in great, ragged gulps. The other men jeered as he fell again, struggling to rise, only to be knocked down by a smug, sharp-faced lad I didn't recognize.
"Get up, piggy!" someone shouted.
"Come on, Tarly, try hitting back!" another jeered.
Tarly.
I stepped forward.
"That's enough," I said, voice low but firm.
The boys stopped. Not because of my tone, but because of Ghost, silent as snowfall, appearing at my side, eyes red as ember coals, lips curled slightly. The sharp-faced boy backed away fast.
Ser Alliser turned toward me, sneering. "You coddling him, Stark? Think this is Winterfell's nursery?"
"I think if you want swordsmen, breaking their ribs the first day isn't the way to get them," I said coolly. "Let him breathe."
Thorne didn't argue. Not aloud. He walked off, muttering under his breath about "stark softness."
I knelt beside the boy. He looked up at me through watery eyes, blinking behind a mess of sweat-damp hair.
"You all right?" I asked.
He nodded, then shook his head, then tried to nod again. "Y-yes. No. I—I suppose so. I'm Sam. Samwell Tarly."
"Jon Snow," I said out of habit, then paused. "Jon Stark now, actually. Long story."
His eyes widened. "You're the Jon Stark. Lord Eddard's… I mean… I heard the men talking. That you brought wagons. Food. Oil. Stone. Steel. Even books!"
"Some of them," I said, smiling faintly. "You're a Tarly, you said?"
He nodded, gulping. "Yes. Of Horn Hill. But my father... he sent me here. Said I was a disgrace. That I—" His mouth clamped shut, pain blooming in his face like a bruise
Samwell Tarly, you have too much potential to be wasted here playing at being a warrior.
"Come with me, Samwell."
I took Sam to the library, if the name still fit. The room had once been larger, but rot and frostbite had collapsed a corner wall years ago. Shelves leaned like drunks, scrolls crumbled at the touch. We were already clearing space for stone repair, and I'd promised Maester Aemon more wood from the shipments coming from the Wolfswood. Still, Sam looked at it like it was a sept.
"I didn't know the Watch had so many books," he murmured, reverently tracing a broken binding. "So many old names."
"They'll be dust if we don't organize them," I said. "And copied. Preserved." I took a book from the shelf, probably one of Aemons seeing as it was in High Valyrian.
He blinked at me. "You read Valyrian?"
"Yes, it just comes easily to me," I said, then grinned. "But I've got a project for you."
He followed me through the winding corridors, down to the rebuilt quartermaster's hall. The room still smelled of new pine and ink. On the table were ledgers, some freshly bound, others salvaged and rebound. Pages of numbers, marks, shipments, and notes lay in neat rows beside my own annotations.
"I had them start this when we reached Mole's Town," I explained, laying one open. "Every bolt of cloth, every stone block, every iron nail from White Harbor or Barrowton. I'd like to think even Braavosi bankers would be impressed."
Sam stared, brows furrowed. "You… you've been recording this by weight? And volume? Oh! You're even using different symbols for local versus southern grain!"
I raised a brow. "You recognize that?"
"Of course! It's the old Oldtown system. Archmaester Thryn used it in his treatise on harvests. But I thought no one outside the Reach still used that!"
He is well read. He could be the man I need to help me in the Moat, he hasn't given his vows yet…
I leaned against the table, watching him light up as he flipped pages, muttering to himself. He caught himself after a moment, flushing. "I'm sorry. I just—it's remarkable. Most lords would've just tallied by the cart."
"I'm not most lords," I said. "And neither are you."
He turned pink again but said nothing.
I showed him around the castle after that, past the scaffolding on the collapsed wall, the rebuilt kitchens with their repaired ovens, the forges that now burned night and day. "I want the Watch to be able to house and feed a thousands of men again." I said. "Then grow past that."
He looked at me wide-eyed, the weight of those words settling in. "But there aren't even six hundred of us, are there?" Sam said, voice hesitant.
"No," I admitted. "Not yet. But there will be. The Lord Commander is planning big changes. And supplies are flowing in, men will follow. And I mean for the Watch to be ready for them."
Sam nodded, slowly. "It's ambitious…"
I gave a short laugh. Then I stopped us before the new storerooms, thick stone walls and iron-banded doors, filled with barrels, sacks, tools, iron, even some smoked meat and cheese. "This is what your mind will help protect. Numbers, plans, rotas, inventories. If one of those goes wrong, men die. And I think you understand that better than most."
He blinked at me, a bit stunned. "Me?"
I nodded. "You. I've seen the way you notice things. You have a keen mind, Sam. The Lord Commander has given me leave to put his men to work where I want them, and you would be wasted in the yard or moving stone and wood. I want you to help me organize the rebuilding of Castle Black."
Sam looked as if he might faint. "I'm no builder, Jon. I'm not even a fighter. I'm... I'm a coward."
I stopped and looked him dead in the eyes. "You're not a coward. You made it here, didn't you? You stayed, when you could've run. That's more than most. You don't need to swing a sword to serve the Watch. Just your mind."
He didn't answer, but he didn't deny it either. Instead, he glanced up at the rafters, then down at the half-repaired stone flooring. "The east hall needs sealing before the snows come," he said quietly. "And the eastern granary roof will leak in two weeks unless the pitch is reapplied. I told that to Ser Ottyn last night, but he grunted and walked off."
I smiled. "Then don't tell Ottyn. Tell me. And tomorrow, you start rewriting the ledger. From scratch. We'll go through every name, every bunk, every hammer and sack of oats."
Sam looked at me, then at the bustle of Castle Black beyond the half-open gates, men clanking with tools and shouting orders in the yard. Then back to me.
"Alright," he said. "I'll do my best, Lord Stark"
"Just Jon, Sam, and that's all I ask," I replied. "But I think your best might surprise even you."
He blushed furiously, and for a moment we stood in companionable silence. The wind moaned low through the high towers, carrying with it the scent of smoke, pine, and cold stone. The Watch was still broken in many places, but it was no longer crumbling, in the next fortnight most of the rebuilding would be done and I could go back south. Hopefully with a new steward with me.
The Wall was a mountain made by men.
Climbing it wasn't as hard as I expected, not now that the new winch system had been set up, the pulleys oiled, and new ropes and steel chains wound tight by the smiths. The cage groaned its complaints, but it bore me steadily skyward, past white-crusted stone and gleaming patches of ancient ice, until the whole world seemed to fall away beneath me.
When I stepped out onto the top, I almost staggered.
The top of the Wall was no longer a desolate strip of wind-blasted ice. Crews of black-clad men had labored day and night, restoring what had once been left to rot. Stone and timber walkways now ran along the length of the Wall's crown, replacing the crumbling, frost-slicked paths with solid footing. Trenches had been carved for drainage and defense, and small watchposts with thick wooden siding and shuttered windows had been raised at intervals, each equipped with a coal brazier and iron chimneys to hold in warmth during the worst of the cold. It wasn't comfort, not exactly, but it was a far cry from the bone-deep misery the Watch had once endured aloft. For the first time in generations, men could live atop the Wall, not just survive it.
The wind struck me like a blade, sharp and whistling, and the cold clawed at every exposed inch of my face. But the view, gods, the view. The North spread before me like a map drawn by giants. Endless forests of dark pine rolled out toward the horizon like waves frozen mid-crash. Here and there, black mountain peaks jutted up like the jagged teeth of some buried god. Everything was so vast, so open, that it felt almost unreal, like the land beyond the Wall had slipped into another age entirely, where no time passed and no men had ever walked.
Behind me, footsteps crunched on hoarfrost.
"Breathtaking, isn't it?" came Tyrion's voice, cheerful and tinny in the thin air. "Though I admit, the chill does terrible things to my poor southern parts."
I turned, grinning. He was bundled up in so many furs he looked more bear than man. He waddled past me, waddled right up to the edge of the Wall, unlatched his breeches with some difficulty, and relieved himself into the wind with theatrical flair.
"Gods," I laughed, "you really did it."
"Of course I did it," he said, shaking himself and buttoning back up. "How many men can say they've pissed off the edge of the world?" He looked over at me, his expression suddenly more serious. "But you didn't come up here for that, did you?"
"No," I said, voice quiet. "I just needed to see it."
"It's quite the sight." He murmured.
"It's breathtaking. This place... it feels ancient."
"It is ancient," Tyrion said. "Thousands of years old. Built by a hero-king with magic and giants, or so the stories say. But I suspect he had better engineers than anyone admits."
I smiled faintly. I'd often wondered that myself. In my other life, something like this would have been a marvel even modern machines would struggle to match, the ice would melt at the bottom because of the pressure. Ten thousand men, ice fused with stone, some say weirwood used in the foundations, how had they done it? Did the First Men and the Children truly summon sorcery to shape this frozen monolith? Or had they simply built and built, generation after generation, bound by fear of what lay beyond? The wall was higher and wider in some places, like people over millennia had just dripped water and waited for it to freeze.
I leaned over the edge, staring out into the white beyond. The Haunted Forest stretched out, cloaked in mists and snowfall, the land falling away and then rising again into foothills and jagged peaks. And farther still, so far my eyes couldn't reach, was the land of the true north. Where the dead stirred and the cold had a mind of its own.
The wind shifted, and something in it whispered.
Not a sound. Not quite. A feeling. A pressure behind the ears, a chill in the bones. A call that wasn't in any tongue I knew, but that still sent the hairs on my neck standing on end.
In Castle Black, Ghost gave a low, uncertain growl.
He hadn't followed me onto the lift, but I'd caught glimpses of him below, pacing along the base of the Wall. He hated this place, more than I understood. The direwolf wasn't just uneasy, he was afraid. That more than anything told me I was right to be uneasy too.
"Jon?" Tyrion said softly. "Are you well?"
I blinked. I hadn't realized I'd gone still, hadn't realized my fingers had curled around the hilt of my longsword. The wind howled again, this time lower, stranger, like the breath of something massive and ancient exhaling just over the edge of the world.
"I'm fine," I said, though my voice lacked conviction. "Just listening."
"Not to that wind, I hope. That way lies madness."
I gave a humorless chuckle. "Shut up and give me that wineskin you always carry around."
"Not wine, Northern fire!" He exclaimed and passed it over; I took a big gulp. What the fuck was that? It felt like something was calling me.
"Whiskey." I corrected half-heartedly.
Tyrion's eyes studied me, weighing something. "You look like someone who's seen ghosts."
"I feel like it at least," I said, before I could stop myself.
That quieted him. For a long moment we both stood there, staring northward, the cold seeping through even the thickest of furs.
The wind moaned again, closer now. The sky above was clear, but the light was wrong, too pale, as if the sun itself feared to shine in full.
I turned away, finally. Whatever called from beyond the Wall, it wasn't meant to be heard by Tyrion, it was just for me. I had heard it. And worse, I'd understood it just enough to know that it knew me in turn.
When I descended, Ghost met me at the base, his fur bristled, his eyes locked onto mine. He pressed close, as if to say, Don't go out there. Not alone.
I crouched and ran my fingers through his fur. "Not alone Ghost," I whispered. "I always have you."
The forest beyond the Wall was a different world.
I moved quietly, my steps muffled by the snow that blanketed the earth like ash. Ghost padded beside me, his red eyes wary and glowing. The air smelled older out here, older than men, older than castles, older than even memory. Wind moved through the branches like the breath of something ancient.
It had taken a week of persistent arguments, midnight conversations, and more than one shouting match to convince Lord Commander Mormont to let me go.
He wasn't convinced. Not that day. Nor the next. Mormont had grown fond of me, I knew, in his own gruff, reluctant way. But more than that, he feared what would happen if the new Lord Stark, now half a myth among the Watch, vanished beyond the trees. "You're a symbol, Stark. What happens if the new Lord of Moat Cailin freezes to death pissing under a pine tree north of the Wall? The realm doesn't need another dead hero."
It was Maester Aemon who finally swayed him.
"He sees more than you think," the old man said quietly one evening, after hearing me out in the rookery. "Let him go, Jeor. Not as a ranger. As a Stark. As something more."
The next morning, Mormont signed the writ with trembling fingers and a scowl that could have cracked stone. "You get a day, boy. No more. You don't come back by then, I'll send a search party."
He handed me the letter with the seal. "And for the love of the gods, don't make me regret this."
I already had a cloak packed. Ghost was waiting at the gate.
The pull had grown stronger with each step I took, like a thread of ice winding around my spine, drawing me deeper into the forest. Ghost padded silently at my side, ears pinned back, uneasy but unwilling to leave me. I followed the call without needing to question it—not instinct, not reason, but something deeper, older. I knew where I was going, even if I had never been there before.
When I stepped into the grove, the world changed.
It was a place of stillness, so complete it felt unnatural, no bird call, no wind through the branches, only the hush of snow settling. The grove opened like a wound in the forest, and in its heart stood the tree, a great weirwood, its bark pale as dead flesh, its leaves a deep crimson that shimmered in the dim light like old blood. Its carved face stared from the trunk in agony and solemnity both, sap weeping from their eyes in thick red tears. The air felt thick with memory, with grief, with judgment. The kind of silence that demanded reverence.
The call in my chest became a roar, louder than thought, louder than breath. It wasn't sound, not really. It was a knowing. A command carved into my bones. I staggered forward, heart pounding, and fell to my knees before the largest tree. Its face was twisted in an expression I couldn't name, part mourning, part expectation.
This was the place. The godswood where the Night's Watch swore their vows. The place I should have knelt as a boy. But I was no longer that Jon Snow. I had changed fate. And I knew now—I had always known, somewhere, that this moment had been waiting for me.
I had come to listen. I had come to see.
I stepped into the ring of trees. Ghost stopped at the edge. He whined low in his throat, ears flat, but he didn't follow.
I turned back, just once, and nodded to him.
"I have to do this," I whispered.
Then I knelt before the central tree. Its carved face wept tears of red.
My fingers touched the bark, and the world vanished.
It wasn't like sleep. It wasn't like dreaming. It was like drowning in memory. I was dragged beneath an ocean of time and blood and shadow. I fell through centuries, and I landed in the hollow of a dead tree, staring at a man who had no right to be alive.
He was part of the tree, or the tree was part of him. A crown of bone and roots had grown through his skull. His skin was gray and stretched thin across his face, his lips sunken, his eye milky with blindness, yet deeper than void. He was cloaked in black feathers, and the memory of his sword still clung to his side, even though he no longer wore it.
Bloodraven.
Brynden Rivers. The last greenseer. My great-great uncle. Antlers of blackened root curled through his skull, tangled with ravens that watched with knowing eyes. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The truth poured from him like blood from a wound.
First came fire, cold fire, remembered fire.
A blade lay resting in darkness, cradled by the bones of the world. Not buried, not lost, only waiting. Dark Sister. The sword of Visenya Targaryen. It pulsed with history and rage beneath a mountain of roots, moonlight sliding across its edge like a whisper of murder. I saw bloody handprints scorched into stone near its resting place. One was mine.
Then a city, a manse cloaked in fog and velvet decay. Cobwebs thick as gauze veiled the corners. Beneath a floorboard, in a chest lined with red velvet and sealed in dust, it slept. It was a crown made a weapon. Blackfyre. No fire danced on its blade, but the steel remembered kings. The air around it stank of old oaths and spilled blood. In the distance, I heard laughter, bitter, regal, doomed.
Flames consumed the world next. Crimson skies cracked open like broken eggs. Beneath a bleeding moon, three dragon eggs split, sinew and shell and fire. Screeches filled the sky. Wings erupted, dark as ash, wide as storms. Dragons rose. Not from stone, but from sacrifice. From pain. Fire kissed the womb of the world, and the world screamed.
In a broken hall of black stone, Daenerys Targaryen knelt. Her silver hair matted with ash. Her hands trembling. In her arms lay a child, small and still, wrapped in blood-red silk. She held him as if to warm him, as if to breathe life back into him. But there was no life. Only tears.
Then my face, reflected not in still water, but in the blade of a sword I had never touched. Steel bright as morning. My eyes were the color of summer storms over Valyria: deep violet, rimmed with flame. The face was mine, but the man was not. A crownless king in exile.
The vision twisted.
Steel rang like a bell in the dark. Men shouted. Northern cries. "Winterfell!" "Stark!" "For the North!" "The Dragonwolf!" Blades clashed in the snow. A lion's roar was silenced by a sword through the throat. Red cloaks burned. Smoke curled over a torn banner, gold on crimson, rent by axe and frost. Wolves hunted among the dead. I stood on a lake of blood surrounded by corpses that whispered insults to me.
The sky bled fire. Ash fell like snow, coating broken shields and shattered helms. Men died with my name on their lips, some in praise, some in terror. The Dragonwolf, they called me. Crowned in black steel and rubies, a cloak of fire and soot trailing behind, I strode across the battlefield like a ghost made flesh. My sword was red to the hilt, steaming in the cold air. Around me lay the ruins of houses, falcon, stag, lion, kraken, all fallen, all burning. Their dead stared with empty eyes, mouths open in eternal screams. Ravens circled overhead, crying out truths I could not bear to hear. Northmen knelt in the mud, bloodied and hollow-eyed, swearing fealty not with words but with sacrifice.
Then came the throne.
Not the Iron Throne of stories, but something older, crueler. A mountain of swords driven into the flesh of a dead god. Blades twisted like roots, fused by heat and hatred. Blood dripped from its heights, running in rivulets down the steps, fresh, endless, red as the weirwood's tears, it looked like a river of blood. I stood before it, drenched in gore, the crown heavy upon my brow. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of it all. The weight of prophecy, of vengeance, of the countless dead who brought me to this moment. Behind me, the corpses stirred. They called to me, not with voices, but with expectation. Called me a king. A savior. A monster. I could no longer tell which.
And then came the silence.
The forest lay in ruin, blanketed in endless snow. No birds. No wind. Only the sound of ice cracking as they came. Pale riders atop gaunt horses, their eyes burning like ghost-fire. The White Walkers moved like whispers, soundless and cold. I saw flesh turn black at their passing. The weirwoods wept frozen tears.
And then came the spiral.
A field of bodies, twisted and arranged with terrible purpose, arms, legs, skulls forming a symbol too old to name. A spiral of death. The wind howled around it, but the corpses did not move. They were part of something larger, something watching. I felt it watching me.
The vision surged, the weight of it crushing, until I fell back into my body like a man thrown from a cliff. My breath was ragged. My fingers dug into the snow. Ghost was howling.
And the tree in front of me bled.
I tried to look away, but I couldn't. The images burned into me. They filled my lungs like fire. My skin cracked beneath them. My blood boiled.
Too much.
I tried to cry out, but my voice was gone. All that remained was the sound of wind through dead leaves, and the taste of blood in my mouth.
The tree released me like it had exhaled.
I fell back into the snow like a broken branch. My limbs refused to move. My mouth was open, but no breath came.
The cold was a living thing. It crept into my bones and coiled around my heart.
Above me, the weirwood wept in silence.
Then something warm brushed against my face. A wet nose. Hot breath.
Ghost.
He whined, low and desperate, and nudged me with his snout. I couldn't respond. My fingers wouldn't obey me. I had no strength left. The visions had emptied me. I had gone too far.
I thought of Sam, still pouring over ledgers. Of Robb, somewhere to the south. Of Arya's wild grin. Of Daenerys, cradling a child she could not save.
And I thought of the swords, Dark Sister, Blackfyre. Waiting.
The world faded.
Ghost curled around me, his thick white fur pressing into my side. He growled softly at the trees, at the sky, at the cold.
I slipped into darkness, wrapped in warmth and silence and the steady pulse of something that would not let me go.
Not yet.
-END-