Chapter 9 – Shadows in the Snow
The world was white and still.
Snow drifted gently over me, clinging to the fur of my cloak, dusting Ghost's back like powdered ash. He lay half-curled around me, his breath a faint plume in the cold morning air. I couldn't feel my fingers. My eyes ached. When I moved, something cracked, ice had crusted over the blood beneath my nose, frozen where it had bled in the night.
I sat up slowly, groaning. The weirwood stood behind me, ancient and still, its red eyes watching me in silence. Its mouth bled red sap like blood. The grove was untouched by wind or storm, the snow falling gently through the air as if time itself hesitated here.
The vision… the dream… the truth. It was all slipping from me like water through my hands. Images came in flashes, jagged as broken glass: A woman with silver hair kneeling in ash. A sword of night and flame, black as sorrow. A cave in the bones of the world where something old waited, hungry and aware. My own face, too—older, crowned, shadowed in blood.
I clenched my jaw. My fingers throbbed, white at the tips, the flesh stiff. Frostbite, or close to it. I forced them into a fist. I wouldn't forget. I couldn't forget. The cost of ignorance was too great now. I had seen too much.
The location of Valyrian steel, the way to hatch dragons, the future, so much useful information…
Ghost nudged me, whining softly. His red eyes searched mine, worried. He had felt it too, something. A presence vast and strange. Not just Brynden, but something older and bigger still. I brushed the snow from my cloak and staggered to my feet.
Each step away from the tree was harder than I expected, like walking through wet sand. My legs were trembling. My lungs burned. But I made myself move, one foot in front of the other, back toward the Watch. Back toward warmth and brothers and war.
The wind howled through the pines as I walked. The snow whispered of death and memory. And still, fragments echoed in my head like a song I couldn't forget.
"A blade in the dark. A face with purple eyes. A spiral of corpses. A child crying in a hall of ruin."
The Wall loomed somewhere ahead, beyond the trees. But I no longer felt its safety the way I once had. There were things in this world that no stone or ice could stop.
The snow crunched beneath my boots as I walked, my legs stiff, my cloak heavy with frost. My breath came in slow, steady clouds. Each step away from the weirwood felt like leaving behind a truth too great to carry.
And yet, my mind raced, fevered and full. Not just with the images I had seen, but with the truth I had kept buried.
I wasn't only building roads and draining swamps to feed the North. I wasn't forging steel in new ways or commissioning kilns to blow glass for lanterns and lenses simply for the Watch's benefit. I told myself it was all for survival, for the war to come. The Others would not care for crowns or thrones or gold, only fire and blood and death. And yet…
That wasn't the whole truth, was it?
I wanted the throne.
Not just to wield it as a weapon against the Long Night, but for myself. I wanted to stand atop a world and remake it with my own hands. I wanted to see the engines of war I designed sweep across battlefields. I wanted to see the granaries full in every holdfast because I had put them there. I wanted my seal on letters that reshaped the world. I wanted power, not only for the good it could bring, but because power itself drew me like a blade to the hand.
Even now I could see it, the Iron Throne, not just in fire and blood, but solid and real. Bleeding swords, yes… but also the seat from which the world could be saved. Or destroyed.
The vision had shaken me. I had seen what it would take to get there. The screams. The fire. The broken bodies. A lake of blood. My own face drenched in it.
It had made me feel… wrong. Unclean. I was meant to stop that war, not cause it.
But the war is coming either way.
The North is not enough. The Wall cannot stand alone. The South is fractured. The realm is weak. If I do not rise, if someone else takes the reins of power, they will fail, and the dead will sweep us all away.
I am the best candidate. Not because I'm Rhaegar's son. Not because of dragons or bloodlines. Because I remember the world that was. Because I know how to win. I understand the shape of what must be done, even if it's cruel, even if it breaks me.
Let it.
Let the songs call me a tyrant. Let history scorn me.
I will hold the realm together through the Long Night. I will bear the crown. I will bear the guilt.
No matter the cost.
The entrance to Castle Black loomed in the distance, I could see plums of smoke for the top of the wall, the new towers on top like a jagged crown of soot and stone, its wooden walkways gleaming with fresh ice. The wind had teeth again. Snow whipped past my face, stinging skin already cracked and bruised. Ghost padded ahead of me, silent as the grave, his white fur ruffled and stiff with frost.
The gate guards spotted us as we neared. Their shouts broke the morning hush.
"Seven hells, is that Lord Stark?"
"Fetch the Lord Commander!"
Steel boots clattered across the ice-packed yard. I saw shapes moving atop the Wall, and the clang of the lift's chains echoed down like bells of alarm. Two men ran forward, grabbing my arms like I was made of glass.
"You've been gone a full day," one said. "We thought you'd fallen through the ice or worse."
I didn't answer. My tongue felt slow. My hands were numb. I let them lead me like a wraith into the courtyard, Ghost stalking at my heel, eyes burning red in the morning gloom.
Inside the rookery tower, warmth wrapped around me like a second skin. Maester Aemon was already waiting, a cup of steaming broth in one hand. He did not ask what had happened. He touched my wrist, gently, found the chill in my fingers, and nodded to Clydas to fetch blankets.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Were my eyes more purple?
He cleaned the blood from my nose in silence. Rubbed a salve of bear fat and pine resin on my fingertips. I did not speak. I couldn't.
But Aemon's blind eyes turned toward me as if he saw straight through flesh and bone.
"You looked beyond the Wall," he said softly, not as a question but a truth. "And something ancient looked back."
I didn't reply. He didn't expect me to.
"The Wall remembers," he said. "It stands, not only with stone and ice, but with memory. When you touch what lies beyond, it touches you back."
His words settled in the air like falling snow—light, but heavy when they landed. I didn't know what I'd touched. But it still clung to my skin like frostbite.
Did Bloodraven show me all that, why now and not in all these years?
By the time I was warm enough to walk again, the summons came.
Lord Commander Mormont stood in his solar, arms crossed, bear cloak slung over one shoulder. A kettle of mead steamed near the fire.
"You were gone a day and a night," he said, his tone gruff but measured. "I had half a mind to send a dozen men after you."
I met his eyes. "I went to think."
"You went beyond the Wall. Alone." He grunted. "Not wise."
"No," I admitted.
He stared at me for a long moment, waiting for more, for an explanation of my injuries. I gave him none. Whatever I had seen, whatever had seen me, was not something I could explain, not yet. It was mine, not his.
Mormont sighed and poured a cup of mead. "Don't vanish again without telling someone. I need you breathing."
He handed me the cup. "Drink. Then sleep. Whatever you went looking for, don't let it hollow you out."
I nodded, though the cold inside me was deeper than hot drink or blankets could banish. Still, I drank, and I said nothing more.
I have much thinking to do. How do I recover Dark Sister? That cave must be in Bloodravens weirwood.
Sleep would not come.
I lay still for a long time, staring at the wooden beams above me, my breath frosting in the air with each slow exhale. The ache in my limbs was deep and familiar, like the aftermath of fever, but colder, as if something inside me had been touched by winter itself. I could still feel the ghost of the vision clawing at the edges of my thoughts. Images flared and faded: purple eyes weeping flame, snow buried in screams, a hand holding a sword of night, a cave, a woman, a crown.
I turned my face to the wall. My fingertips still throbbed, raw where frostbite had kissed them. Ghost lay curled beside the hearth, watching me with quiet patience. I always knew where he was these days, I could even see though his eyes almost voluntarily. I envied him. There was a kind of serenity in a direwolf's silence, no doubt, no regret, no memory. Only instinct. And yet… he had howled at the tree, as if he too had seen something beyond bark and bone too.
I sat up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
The keep was quiet at this hour. One of the brothers snored in the hallway, a sound as steady as tide on rock. I wrapped my cloak around me, tucked a strip of leather into my belt to hold it close, and slipped out of the dormitory. The Wall loomed above, a white shadow lit by moonlight, and Castle Black slept beneath it like a frozen beast.
But the library was always open.
It had once been a grand hall, or so the carvings over the lintel suggested, two swords crossed beneath a direwolf and a crow, half-worn away by time. The braziers were nearly out, and the flames sputtered as if reluctant to keep watch over so much forgotten knowledge.
I lit a taper and wandered the shelves.
I told myself I came to understand what had happened to me beyond the Wall, to find context, or answers. But the truth is, I was looking for purpose. I needed to believe the visions meant something, that I had not been touched by old gods and ancient magics only to return empty-handed.
The books were brittle and half-rotted. Scribes had copied over some again and again, erasing the older words. Others were in High Valyrian, barely legible. I found ledgers, names of men long dead, their patrols recorded in blocky, efficient script: "Dispatched beyond the Gorge, Ser Maerwyn commanding. Four rangers lost in a blizzard. One returned raving, speech rendered incoherent."
I read that one twice.
Another scroll mentioned red eyes in the snow and "a shadow walking beside a great elk." A different ranger report, three hundred years old, referred cryptically to "the Watcher in the Trees. It did not move, but the snow turned red where it stood." No one had followed up. No one had returned. It had been written, noted, then filed away. And forgotten. More reports of trees walking and killing men.
The Watch had forgotten what it was.
I found a bundle of maps tucked in the back of a warped shelf, most of them too decayed to read. But one held together, old, cracked parchment covered in fading ink and careful lines. A map made after the Targaryen conquest, I guessed. There were patrol routes etched in, arcing well beyond the Wall, into the white void that passed for the far north. One trail extended almost to the top of the page. Near the edge, a circle drawn in red ink bore a name in Valyrian: The Ghost Hill. A great weirwood drawn on top of it.
I knew where that was. Not exactly, but enough. Bloodraven. Brynden Rivers. The last greenseer, half-dead and rooted beneath the trees. Now I knew where to find him.
This must have been a map from his time in the watch.
I didn't realize I wasn't alone until I heard the thud of a dropped book and a muttered curse.
I snuffed my candle and crouched. If Armon catches me out of bed he will be mad, I am supposed to be resting from the frostbite.
But the figure that entered wasn't one of the old hands or Lord Mormont. He was round, nervous, and burdened with too many books, which he promptly tripped over.
"Gods," he whispered. "Stupid, stupid…"
"Careful," I said softly as I stepped from the shelves.
Samwell Tarly nearly jumped out of his skin.
"J-Jon!" he stammered. "I—I'm sorry, I didn't think anyone would be— I just—!"
"It's fine," I said laughing, kneeling to help him gather the spilled tomes. "You're not the only one who couldn't sleep."
He blinked at me, red-faced. "I thought… maybe I could read. I don't sleep well with the others. There's too much noise."
"I know the feeling." I glanced at the titles he carried. A History of the Reign of Aenys I, an herbal compendium, a treatise on castle foundations.
"You're reading about herbs?" I asked.
"I thought…" He looked down. "I need to know more about medicine, I don't recognize a few of the thing you brought."
"Good job, Sam. You could have asked me though. You are doing an incredible job with the supplies; my schedule has been moved forward a sennight thanks to your help." I said.
He looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head.
"It has?"
"Absolutely," I said. "I need more men like you. Smart ones."
He hesitated. "You don't mind… talking with me?"
"I'd like that," I said. "You're not what the others think you are."
"I'm not?"
"No. And I think you could be something more."
I saw it now, clearer than before. In another life, Samwell Tarly had stabbed a White Walker through the heart, unearthed lost truths buried under centuries, and become one of the few men in the world who could read the truth beneath legends. He had been vital. And I would not let this timeline forget that.
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I'm not brave," he said at last. "But I want to help. I want to… learn."
I smiled. "That's more than most here will ever say."
He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something spark behind his eyes, not just fear or longing, but determination.
"Then teach me," he whispered.
"I will."
We sat there, side by side, paging through the yellowed texts. We talked most of the night and I taught him about my inventions, I talked to him about what I hoped to accomplish in the wall and in my lands, we discussed many things, from administration to history. Sam was easy to talk to, and his mind was as sharp as a sword. By the time we were done the fire had gone out in the brazier, and the cold crept in again, the morning light came from the windows. But it didn't seem to matter.
I waited until noon. No one watched me as I slipped into the spare storeroom beneath the rookery, where Ghost stood guard. The direwolf rose silently and padded behind me as I knelt and opened the old chest, hidden beneath tarps and discarded cloaks. Inside, swaddled in black wool, lay the egg.
White and red. Veins like blood curled beneath its surface, and when I touched it, it was warm, not like a stone warmed by sunlight, but like the skin of something sleeping. Or something dreaming.
I held it in my hands for a long time, weighing not just the stone, but the meaning behind it.
I'd read the histories. Daenerys's tale was still fresh in my mind: the pyre, the screams, the ash, the miracle. She had walked through flame and brought forth death and wings. I'd studied everything I could get my hands on about Valyria, dragon-lore, fire-binding. But none of it told me how, or why, this one had come to me. Or what it wanted.
It pulsed faintly against my skin.
I'd seen it before, in the vision. Nestled in snow, resting on a burning anvil. Blood dripping across it, smoke rising. The cry of something being born echoed in my skull.
Fire. Blood. Sacrifice.
Those weren't metaphors, were they?
I set the egg down gently. Part of me wanted to lock it away again, bury it, forget it existed. A dragon was power. A dragon was fire given form. In the wrong hands, it would raze cities, turn armies to ash. In mine… would I be better? It would be too small for war, for many years. But after that, it could be a weapon to centralize power.
I wanted to believe I would only use it to stop the Long Night. To burn the White Walkers, to break the frozen tide that was coming.
But I had already admitted the truth to myself, hadn't I?
I wanted power. Not only for the good I could do, but for what it was. The ability to shape the world, not merely survive it. A dragon would make me more than just a king with strange dreams. It would make me a symbol.
Or a monster.
Ghost nudged my arm. I exhaled and placed the egg back in its wrappings.
Not yet, I told myself.
But soon.
I found the Old Bear on the west wall, overlooking the rebuilt barracks. Smoke rose from new chimneys and shouts echoed in the distance, men hammering timber, hauling stone, shouting curses as they raised beams under the morning frost.
"You're up early," Mormont said, not turning.
"I never slept."
"Hmph. That's a curse more of us share these days."
We stood in silence for a while, watching two new recruits fumble through a stack of shields. A raven landed nearby, feathers slick with dew, and cawed once before flapping off toward the rookery.
"I wanted to ask you something," I said.
"Go on."
"Do you ever think… about the weight of it? Lordship. Rule. Power."
Mormont turned his eyes on me. They were sharp, tired, but not unkind.
"I gave up Bear Island when I took the black," he said. "Left it to my son. You know how that turned out."
I nodded. Ser Jorah. The exile. The shame.
"Aemon was offered a crown once," Mormont went on. "He refused. Said he knew too well what power would make of him."
I swallowed. "Did he ever regret it?"
"I don't think so. He feared what he'd become if he said yes, he wanted Aegon to be king. I didn't understand that when I was young. I do now."
"And if the kingdom needed him? If the world needed him?"
He gave a tired grunt. "I've had three ravens from the Shadow Tower. Strange lights. Wildlings found frozen with swords still in their hands, and no wounds. Tracks that vanish halfway through the snow. I've lived long enough to trust rumors, if enough men repeat them."
I let out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.
"What have you decided?" I asked.
"We prepare. Slowly. Quietly. I can't move too fast or half the Watch will think I've gone mad. But once Eastwatch, the Shadow Tower, and Castle Black are rebuilt… I'll begin. The Gift is coming back to life. Northern lords are sending timber, grain, even volunteers. Some men want to stay after I talked to them about your ideas. Start farms. Raise children. Can you believe it?"
I could. I had hoped for it.
He looked out at the snowy fields stretching south, then north again.
"You keep speaking of duty," he said. "But I've served long enough to see what men really follow. Not duty. Not honor. They follow conviction. Will. If you've got that… men will follow you. Whether you want them to or not."
I turned my face to the Wall.
"They'll need someone to follow," I said. "When winter comes."
"Then be ready to pay the price," Mormont said. "Because lordship, boy… it doesn't ask what you want. It only asks what you'll give."
I am not speaking of lordship Jeor Mormont, I am speaking of kingship, but thank you for your words anyway.
Three days passed in bitter wind and hard work. The Wall loomed silent, a cold sentinel watching over our every breath, as hammers echoed against stone and timber. The black brothers moved with purpose, more than I remembered from my other life, more than when I first arrived. There was an urgency to them now, a quiet belief that things might change. And perhaps they would. I'd made sure of it. Tyrion had left yesterday, back south, not before telling me he would write from time to time.
Castle Black, that ancient, rotting ruin of a fortress, was slowly taking on new life. The slope-roofed towers I had designed were rising quickly on either side of the old central hall, built with sharply angled pine beams and black slate shingles quarried from the Frostfangs. The timber came from the Gift and the new forges; the labor from the Watch and the willing smallfolk Mormont had allowed to settle within the lands. The new smithy was already active, the chimneys coughing smoke into the pale sky, and I'd seen the glimmer of raw steel cooled in new molds I had helped design, better alloys, new methods.
I'd commissioned a kiln, too, in the lower yard. A primitive one, but it would do. For glass. For pottery. Concrete would come next, if the lime proved strong enough.
Castle Black was no longer a decaying outpost at the edge of the world. It was becoming a fortress again, a symbol of what the Night's Watch had once been, and what it needed to be.
And still the cold crept closer.
I had taken to walking the yard at night. Ghost followed me silently, his pale fur like snowlight, his eyes ever-watchful. The dreams hadn't stopped since the vision beneath the weirwood. I still saw flames and frost, heard screaming crows and the echo of ice shattering like glass. I saw a great hall of fire turned black with soot, and a sword that burned cold in my hand.
Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I saw a throne of ash and snow. And myself upon it.
I hated that the visions had implanted themselves so deep in my psyche.
It was just past midday on the fourth day when the horn blew once. Not wildlings. Not enemies. Just rangers returning. I was reviewing the ledgers with Sam near the forgehouse, marking supplies and lumber deliveries. I looked up at once, though. Something was wrong.
The wind shifted. Ghost growled.
The party rode into the yard half an hour later, slow and grim-faced. Five of them. One slumped in his saddle, arms slack, reins wrapped around his wrists. He barely moved. The others dismounted quickly and whispered with Bowen Marsh, who went pale as salt.
I walked over before anyone called me. I felt it in my chest—like a chill behind the breastbone.
The slumped man was young. Dylen, I remembered. He was from the Flint Cliffs. Just a boy, really. His skin was wrong. Pale like milk left out in winter. His lips were blue and cracked. His eyes fluttered beneath lids that didn't close properly.
Maester Aemon arrived within minutes, carried on a litter. "Lay him flat," he said. "Carefully."
I knelt beside Dylen as they laid him on a bed of furs in the great hall. Mormont was already there, standing behind the firepit. The flames crackled dimly; someone had just stoked them with peat and pine.
"He was fine when we left," muttered one of the rangers. "Two days out, he started shivering. We thought it was just the cold, but then he started… saying things."
"Saying what?" I asked.
The ranger hesitated. "Whispers, milord. Things about trees. About eyes watching. About snow that sang."
That chill behind my ribs deepened.
Dylen's lips moved. Faintly. I leaned in.
"...blood in the bark… he watches… red eyes… all the bones… all the cold…"
I looked at Aemon. His blind eyes were focused nowhere, and yet I felt him see more than most. His hands were on Dylen's temples, gentle and still.
"He is dying," the old maester said softly.
The room was silent save for the snapping fire.
I touched Dylen's brow. It was hard. Frozen hard, like stone pulled from the snow. His breath was shallow. His pulse—if it still existed, was fluttering like a leaf caught in a storm.
Then it stopped.
A long breath out. His chest fell.
And did not rise.
No one spoke.
Dylen was dead.
I looked to Aemon, who gave a slow nod.
"I will prepare the rites," he whispered.
But I didn't move. My hand hovered over Dylen's face, about to close his eyelids.
And then he moved.
It wasn't a twitch. It wasn't a death spasm.
It was a jolt, as if something unseen pulled his spine straight with invisible wires.
Most of the fires close to the body went out suddenly.
His eyes snapped open.
And they were blue. So blue they seared.
Ghost snarled beside me.
Dylen's hands spasmed. His mouth gaped wide, too wide, as if the jaw had forgotten its hinges, and a low hiss escaped his throat. His limbs began to thrash.
The ranger beside me screamed. One of the stewards dropped the basin he held.
I didn't hesitate.
I drew my sword and stood over the thing.
"Back!" I shouted, voice firm. "Everyone back!"
The… thing on the furs sat up. It was Dylen's body, but the soul behind the eyes was gone. Or worse, replaced.
Holy shit!
Mormont had drawn his own blade, old and broad-bladed, not made for finesse but for cleaving meat from bone. "Jon!" he said, "what in the name of the Gods is this?!"
"Not the Gods," I said. "The Others."
The wight lunged for us.
-END-