100AC.
The first light of dawn touched the eastern rim of the world as Hadrian crossed the straits from Skagos to Molksyr, not by ship but by spell, flying in his Animagus form. Behind him, Norhall's towers faded into morning mist, and before him rose the green-cloaked bulk of the forested isle—the untouched wild of Molksyr.
The land greeted him with silence. The trees stood thick and old, clustered like sentinels beneath pale sky, their roots gnarled into stone and soil as if refusing to release the past. But the past, Hadrian had learned, could not be erased—only shaped anew.
He chose a hill of layered granite where deer had once bedded down beneath the boughs of towering pines. There, with a whisper of incantation and a sharp line drawn in the earth, he began. No tools were raised, no men summoned. Hadrian built as he had built Norhall and Norhold before it: by will, by word, and by deep magic that stirred the bones of the land.
The ground trembled. Stone shaped itself in slow, elegant waves—walls rose from the hill like teeth from a buried beast, forming a ring of defense: high, thick, and jagged with parapets. Within that wall, a central keep grew upward, its towers flat-topped for archers and its uppermost ring set with a great bowl of obsidian to hold a signal fire that could be seen from the sea.
The castle of Greenspire was not beautiful by southern standards. It was stark, practical, and deeply wedded to the forest around it. It breathed the mountain's breath and wore the pine's shadow like a cloak. Additions took shape almost without thought:
A lumber yard, flanked by kilns carved into the hillside itself, where smoke rose in pale ribbons.
Granaries, wide and low, made from heavy timber walls supported by stone ribs.
Terraces, carved like steps into the slope, ready to hold siege engines or hoards of felled trees stacked for the winter.
Hadrian carved no sigils, no boasts into the walls. Only runes—old and knowing—wound along the thresholds and gates. Protection. Endurance. Harmony.
Across the island's ridges, he placed three watchtowers, each raised by magic from quarried stone and blackened wood, hardened by spells against lightning and time. They stood like the fingers of a slumbering god, ever watching, ever waiting.
Between them, Hadrian walked the isle and marked roads with his staff. Where he struck stone, runestones rose, smooth-faced and carved with the typical Skagosi beast: the Unicorns.
In the clearing behind Greenspire's northern wall, he knelt and pressed his palm to the earth. There he planted a weirwood seed, one of the last gifted to him long ago. He fed it with drops of his own blood and spoke to it as the old gods might have spoken to their saplings, back when the world was young. In three days, it rose.
The weirwood of Molksyr was not vast like the one at Norhall nor ancient like Winterfell's. It grew tall and pale with swift strength, its bark smooth, and its eyes—carved by Hadrian's hand—deep-set and solemn, as if shaped to endure great burden in silence. The godswood around it remained small and clean, a circle of quiet earth ringed with moss-covered stones.
To the south, where the forest broke into cliffs and the sea sighed against rock, Hadrian raised the port of Darkharbor—a modest but vital settlement. The docks were hewn from pine and oak, anchored by spell-bound stones. Longhouses rose beside them, their roofs steep and shingled against the coming snow, and in the heart of the village stood a trader's hall, ringed with braziers and heavy with smoke from seal oil and spruce.
He left the villagers to name the place as they pleased, but in his mind, it was always Darkharbor—a name both grim and sturdy, like the people who would live there.
From the castle to the coast, and beyond into the forest's heart, Hadrian walked again. He remembered the veins of iron he had seen in vision, and the gold capillaries hidden beneath old hills. At those places, he raised settlements, small but fortified, with slate-roofed homes and watchful wardens.
The mines themselves were not left open to the air. They were protected, sanctified. Hadrian whispered spells to ensure the rock would not collapse, that fire would not catch, that workers would be safe in their descent into the mountain's marrow.
And then, he bound it all together.
Roads, smooth and wide, were laid between every point—castle, port, mine, village. Each paved with flat stone, carefully set with slight drainage ditches and protective banks. Every two miles stood a waystone, marked with glowing runes that only shimmered by starlight. At each crossroads, statues of ancient Skagosi animals stood—silent guardians watching over the travelers.
In a year's time, five thousand souls would call Molksyr home. Some came from Norhold, others from eastern villages, and some were outcasts given land to tend and roofs to raise.
Under Hadrian's hand, Molksyr had been shaped not into a island of grandeur, but a realm of strength, silence, and rootedness.
And still, he was not done—for across the water, the bones of Skane waited.
And Skane did not welcome him.
Even now, weeks after its quiet purification, the island whispered with unease. Its cliffs were sharp as broken teeth, its trees pale and salt-bitten, and its wind carried not just the scent of the sea but the memory of something ancient and wrong.
But Hadrian was not afraid. He had walked its stones, spoken to its silence, and uncovered the buried veins of sapphire and copper gleaming like old secrets. Now, he would raise more than memory. He would build.
Atop the hill where the old village once stood—its stones worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain—Hadrian raised the bones of Stonewake. The name had not yet settled, and perhaps it never would, for the place carried too many truths to wear only one.
The castle grew from the land like a scar reborn as strength. Its walls were high and ringed with battlements that caught the rising sun like a blade. Three towers crowned the inner wall. Two were watchful and sharp, while the third rose higher still—a lighthouse, carved from ash-black stone veined with glimmering sapphire, its peak set with a crystal lens that burned with silver fire each night, guiding ships and warding spirits.
Stonewake's walls bore no banners, but the mosaics laid into its floors and halls told its story—blues and blacks arranged in runes and spirals, each line echoing Skane's grief and its new beginning. Every brick Hadrian shaped bore an old name, remembered. Every corner was aligned not just to defend, but to reflect the land's history—not with shame, but gravity.
Beyond the castle, Hadrian raised four watchtowers, placed on the high cliffs and narrow passes that overlooked Skane's broken coast. Each was hewn of island stone, narrow but unyielding, set with warding circles carved deep into the keystones of their arches.
They did more than see—they repelled. Spirits did not cross those lines, and wild beasts shied from their shadow. Fires burned in them every dusk, casting long lines of light across land and sea, a net of vigilance woven into Skane's spine.
Behind the castle, tucked into a sheltered grove where mist lingered even at midday, Hadrian made his most careful work.
Here, in a sunken hollow, the earth still remembered. He planted not a seed, but a sliver of his own staff, broken and buried with whispered rites beneath the moon. He spoke to it in three languages: one of men, one of trees, and one that only silence remembered.
In three nights, the weirwood rose.
Its bark was white as bone, its leaves crimson as old blood. Its face was carved not with sorrow, but with vigilance—eyes wide and watchful, as though it had witnessed the Feast of Skane and had never once blinked.
No one prayed aloud beneath its boughs. The grove was not a place for noise, but for presence. The villagers would come and sit in silence, sometimes for hours, and leave lighter than they had arrived.
To the south, where the cliffs bowed inwards like a cradle, Hadrian raised a new village by the sea. Skathold, some called it—New Skane, others. It mattered little. What mattered was that it lived.
Saltworks smoked by the shore, drying the sea's gift in long stone beds. Smokehouses preserved fish and game, while sapphire smiths worked in small, domed halls, carving the blue stone into charms, pendants, and runed medallions—beautiful and sharp, a symbol of the isle's second birth.
Longhouses hugged the cliffs, and winding stairs led from dock to dwelling, carved into the stone with spell and chisel. It was not a town built to dominate nature, but to dwell within it, shielded and proud.
Further inland, two more settlements emerged:
Near the sapphire quarry, where veins ran through the rock like frozen lightning.
Along the copper ridge, where forges were raised to melt ore into bars, tools, and weapons.
Each village was small, fortified, and shaped with a mind for Skane's wildness. No straight lines, no easy paths. Stone-paved roads curved along the isle's jagged edges, clinging to cliffs, diving through hollows, and rising again with the hills.
Runestones marked the miles, each inscribed with a Skagosi proverb: What is broken may yet be blade. Old bones hold strong roots. To be alone is not to be forgotten.
After the last roads were laid and the last godswood took root, Hadrian returned to Skagos aboard a long, dark ship with sails stitched in the pattern of stars. The wind carried him eastward, and he stood at the prow beneath a silver moon, his cloak billowing like smoke behind him, his thoughts not in the present but reaching toward what must come next.
The isles were ready.
Upon his return to Norhold, the city stirred like a great beast woken from slumber. The harbor was choked with smoke and sails, and the sea market buzzed with rumors of stone castles, forest roads, and weirwoods grown from spells.
Hadrian wasted no time. He called together the city guard, the market guilds, the stonecrafters, the sailwrights, and every voice that shaped the heart of Skagos. In the central square beneath the bone arch of the old shrine, he told them of Greenspire and Stonewake, of the settlements by the sea, of gold veins, copper ridges, and sapphire hearts beating in black stone.
He told them the old isles were not dead—only sleeping, and now awake once more.
The news spread like fire in pinewood.
Within three weeks, the entire island knew. Old Stane lands, now without a name or a banner, sent forth would-be settlers in droves, although they were more prosperous then ever and like hadrians rule more than the satnes there was still some pride left. Others came from Norhold's growing population—stonecutters, foresters, herdsmen, smiths, and dreamers. They saw in these new lands something rare in the North: opportunity.
On the final day of the third week, Hadrian sat beneath the weirwood in Norhold's godswood, robed in midnight, his staff across his lap. Two men arrived at dusk—Torrek, once chief of a mountain village, and Ragnar, who had ruled a cluster of coastal huts in the east. Both had bent the knee when Hadrian came to Skagos. Both had served loyally ever since.
They were not lords by blood. But they were leaders, trusted, and known by name from one end of Skagos to the other.
Hadrian welcomed them into the godswood, and when the moon touched the heart tree's face, he spoke.
"Skagos must be as it once was—three houses, not one. One to hold the highland, one the forest, one the sea."
Torrek said nothing at first. Ragnar frowned, uncertain.
Hadrian raised his hand. Two scrolls lay on the stone before him, bearing his seal, marked with the staff and flame.
"You will be Torrek of House Slytheryn. You will take Molksyr, its forests and hills, its watchtowers and godswood. You will rule from Greenspire."
"You will be Ragnar of House Ravenclaw. You will claim Skane, its quarries, cliffs, and sea-halls. Stonewake shall be your seat."
The two men stared at the seals as if they were blades. Slowly, they knelt. Not to a king—but to a future.
Hadrian smiled.
"Choose your people. Up to five thousand souls each. Bring with you stone and steel, grain and grainseed, goats and good timber. I have already prepared ships. And take this—"
He gestured, and from behind came chests—four in total, two for each man.
Four thousand gold dragons apiece. Enough to build, feed, trade, and pay warriors if need be.
"Raise your banners. Shape your houses. Make the isles live."
By midmonth, sails filled Norhold's horizon. Longships, traders, and freighters gathered beneath Hadrian's order. Over ten thousand settlers, their goods, kin, and dreams in tow, departed from Skagos—half to Molksyr, half to Skane.
Their banners flew new emblems:
Slytheryn's banner showed a silver serpent entwined around a pine, on a field of dark green and white.
Ravenclaw's bore a black bird with sapphire eyes, wings outstretched above broken stone.
When the ships vanished beyond the mists, Hadrian stood alone on the high cliffs above Norhold, the wind tugging at his robes.
He had carved a future into stone and soil. Now came the part most men forgot—the tending.
That evening, in his solar, Hadrian took quill to parchment and wrote a single letter in his calm, steady hand.
To Lord Ellard Stark, Warden of the North,
I write to inform you of the formation of two new vassal houses under my lordship.
House Slytheryn, seated at Greenspire on the isle of Molksyr, ruled by Lord Torrek Slytheryn.
House Ravenclaw, seated at Stonewake on the isle of Skane, ruled by Lord Ragnar Ravenclaw.
Both have sworn fealty to Norhold and to the High Lordship of Skagos. They have been granted land, coin, and charter, and will rule justly under the laws of the North.
These acts restore the ancient custom of three houses of Skagos, and strengthen our unity in these uncertain times.
You are welcome, as ever, to send a rider or raven to inspect or inquire further. My gates are open.
In fire and stone,
Hadrian of Norhold
High Lord of Skagos