The first body had barely struck the snow before the hunger tore the rest of Jinx apart.
It did not feel like losing control so much as being peeled open from the inside. Every restraint he had built over years of quiet feeding, every habit that let him live among ordinary people without seeing them as walking vessels of warmth and life, snapped at once beneath the pressure rushing through him. The cold air filled with the scent of fresh blood, and something inside Jinx answered with such violent relief that his knees nearly buckled.
The dragon egg slipped from his arms.
He caught it before it touched the ground, lowering it beside a half-buried stone with a gentleness completely at odds with the corpse collapsing at his feet. His gloved fingers lingered against the moss-covered shell for half a heartbeat before his head turned toward the surrounding men.
The brothers of the Night's Watch saw the last trace of Jinx Stark disappear.
Harlon Flint stumbled backward, water still streaming from his beard as he raised both hands. "Nobody move," he warned, though his voice trembled hard enough to rob the command of its authority. His gaze moved from the severed head to Jinx's glowing eyes, then to Dark Sister hanging loosely in the boy's hand. "Give him room. Do not reach for your weapons."
One of the men behind him had already drawn steel.
The scrape of the blade leaving its sheath sounded impossibly loud.
Jinx's head snapped toward him.
A low growl rolled from his throat.
It was not the sound of a frightened animal or an angry man. It came from somewhere deeper, rough enough to vibrate through the still air and make the horses begin screaming behind the camp.
The brother froze with his sword half-raised.
Jinx vanished.
He crossed the distance before anyone could follow the movement, Dark Sister flashing once beneath the grey sky. The man's sword arm spun away from his body, fingers still clenched around the hilt. His scream lasted only until Jinx's free hand closed around his face and drove him backward into a tree with enough force to split bark.
Jinx buried his teeth in the man's throat.
Panic exploded across the riverbank.
Men ran in every direction. Some reached for swords and axes while others abandoned their weapons entirely, slipping across frozen mud in their desperation to escape. Harlon shouted for them to form ranks, but his command vanished beneath screams, stamping horses, and the wet sound of Jinx tearing flesh free.
He lifted his head slowly.
Blood covered his mouth and chin, shockingly bright against his pale skin. The red rings around his yellow eyes burned like heated metal, and the faint magenta haze gathering around him pulsed with every frantic heartbeat surrounding him.
Then Jinx howled.
The sound ripped across the Milkwater and rolled through the trees, high and broken at first before sinking into something monstrous. Birds burst from distant branches. The horses tore at their restraints until leather snapped and sent them fleeing blindly into the forest.
Men who had faced wildling raids without breaking dropped their weapons and ran.
Jinx went after them on all fours.
Dark Sister remained gripped in one hand, its point scoring a thin line through the snow as he launched himself forward. He caught the nearest brother behind the knee and pulled him down with enough force to crack bone. The man twisted, sobbing as he tried to crawl away, but Jinx climbed over him, seized the back of his skull, and drove his face into the frozen earth again and again until the struggling stopped.
A spear struck Jinx beneath the shoulder.
The blade tore through fur and cloth but barely entered his flesh before his free hand snapped around the shaft. His head turned sharply toward the man holding it, lips peeling back from blood-covered teeth.
The brother released the spear and ran.
Jinx ripped it from his body, spun once, and hurled it.
The weapon entered between the man's shoulder blades and burst from his chest. He was lifted from his feet before being pinned against one of the ancient trees, his boots twitching several inches above the ground.
The others finally began fighting together.
Four men surrounded Jinx while Harlon gathered the remaining brothers nearer the river. They approached carefully, swords held outward, terror showing in the tremors of their hands.
"Take his legs," one gasped, circling through the bloodied snow. "He is still only one man."
Jinx crouched over a corpse and growled.
The first swordsman lunged.
Dark Sister met his blade and passed through it.
The ordinary steel broke with a sharp crack, the upper half spinning away as Jinx continued the strike through the man's neck and shoulder. Before the body fell, Jinx used it as cover against the second attacker, shoving the dying brother forward and driving them both into the snow.
The third man managed to slash Jinx across the back.
Jinx arched beneath the cut, but no human cry left him. His mouth opened in a furious snarl, and a wave of magenta energy tore outward from his body. Grass withered beneath the snow. Nearby branches blackened. The attacker staggered as colour drained from his face, his skin sinking around his eyes while thin streams of energy were ripped from his flesh and pulled into Jinx.
The man aged years in seconds.
Jinx grabbed him by the throat, lifted him clear of the ground, and bit into his cheek.
By then, there was no battle left.
Only slaughter.
Brothers tried to reach the horses and found the animals already gone. Others threw themselves into the Milkwater, preferring the current and cold to the thing hunting along its banks. Jinx followed some into the shallows, dark robes dragging through the red-streaked water while he pulled them beneath the surface one by one.
The river carried their screams away.
Harlon Flint remained until nearly the end.
He stood between Jinx and three surviving brothers, shield raised despite his shaking arm. Blood from another man covered one side of his face, though none of it belonged to him.
"Run!" Harlon roared, bracing his boots in the snow as Jinx crawled toward him through the bodies. "Do not look back. Reach the Wall and tell them what happened here."
One of those behind him was the youngest member of the ranging party—the boy who had found Dark Sister.
His name was Torrhen Woods.
He had been born to a forester's daughter near the Wolfswood and sent to the Wall after putting a knife through a tax collector's hand when the man struck his mother. He was sixteen, thin beneath his borrowed black cloak, and still weak from his dives into the Milkwater.
Torrhen stared at Jinx as though unable to understand how the beautiful, lazy prince who had given them weed beside the fire had become the blood-covered creature crouched among their dead.
"Harlon," he whispered, his voice cracking as he took a step backward. "Come with us."
Harlon did not look at him. "Run, boy."
Jinx's head tilted at the sound of Torrhen's voice.
Recognition flickered somewhere behind the hunger.
His nostrils flared.
Then Harlon slammed his sword against his shield and shouted, dragging Jinx's attention back toward him.
Jinx launched forward.
Harlon's shield survived the first impact. It splintered beneath the second. Dark Sister cut through oak, iron, mail, and ribs in one descending stroke, opening Harlon from shoulder to hip.
The northern man remained upright for several impossible seconds, blood pouring over the broken shield still strapped to his arm. His eyes found Torrhen one last time.
The boy ran.
Behind him, the final two brothers died before they had crossed twenty paces.
Torrhen heard everything.
One screamed for his mother. The other made no sound beyond a wet choking gasp. Then came the heavy rhythm of something running through the snow behind him.
Torrhen did not look back.
Branches clawed at his face as he fled into the forest. His half-frozen legs threatened to collapse beneath him, and every breath burned his lungs, but terror kept him moving. He abandoned his sword after it tangled between two roots. His cloak followed when Jinx caught the edge of it and nearly dragged him backward.
Torrhen twisted free, but Dark Sister flashed past his side.
The blade opened a shallow line across his ribs.
Pain tore a cry from him, yet the cut was not deep. He fell down a slope, rolled through snow and broken branches, then crawled upright before Jinx reached the bottom.
Jinx stood above him between the trees.
His robes were soaked red. Blood ran from his hair and dripped from his fingertips. His yellow eyes burned brighter in the growing gloom, fixed entirely upon the warm life struggling below him.
Torrhen backed away with one hand pressed against his wounded side.
"Jinx," he breathed, tears freezing against his cheeks. "Please."
Jinx answered with a low, trembling growl.
He descended the slope slowly, Dark Sister hanging from his hand. The hunger had consumed almost everything, yet some small part of him hesitated when he looked at Torrhen. Perhaps he remembered the boy raising the sword from the Milkwater. Perhaps he remembered the fire, the quiet pride in Torrhen's face, or the simple fact that the boy was younger than the others.
The hesitation lasted long enough.
Voices broke through the forest.
A wildling arrow struck the tree beside Jinx's head.
He turned instantly.
A scouting party of free folk stood among the trees behind him, six men and three women wrapped in mismatched furs and boiled leather. Short bows were raised, while two larger warriors carried stone-headed axes. They had been following the smoke from the Night's Watch camp and expected to find black brothers weakened by cold.
Instead, they found a blood-covered boy standing amid the scent of death.
One of the women stared past Jinx toward the slaughtered riverbank. "What in the gods' names happened here?" she whispered, her bow lowering slightly despite the older man beside her hissing for her to keep it raised.
Jinx's gaze moved across them.
Nine living bodies.
Nine beating hearts.
The magenta haze around him thickened.
His lips drew back.
The growl that followed was so deep the free folk felt it beneath their feet.
Torrhen did not wait to see more.
He turned and ran south through the trees, one hand pressed against his bleeding side, forcing his failing body toward the Wall while the first wildling screamed behind him.
Then Jinx howled again, and the Haunted Forest answered with the sound of fresh slaughter.
Three days later, Torrhen Woods no longer knew whether he was still running toward the Wall or merely dreaming that he was.
The Haunted Forest had swallowed everything except the cold.
It followed him beneath the trees, slid through the tears in his black clothing, and settled so deeply into his bones that even pain had begun to feel distant. The shallow wound Dark Sister had carved across his ribs had stopped bleeding sometime during the second night, though not because it had healed. The blood had simply frozen against his skin, sealing torn cloth and flesh together beneath a stiff black crust.
He had eaten nothing since leaving the Milkwater.
A handful of snow had been his only water, gathered whenever his legs gave out and left him crawling beneath the trees. Even that had become difficult. His fingers were swollen and nearly useless, their tips darkened by frostbite, and his boots had filled with enough frozen blood that every step felt as though broken glass had been packed around his feet.
Still, he kept moving south.
Whenever his body tried to surrender, he heard the screams again.
Harlon Flint shouting for him to run.
The thin whistle of Dark Sister passing through the air beside him.
Jinx's growl from the top of the slope.
And behind all of it, that terrible howl rolling through the forest after the free folk stumbled upon him.
Torrhen did not know how many of them Jinx had killed. He had not looked back. He had only heard enough to know that none of their deaths had been quick.
Sometimes, when the wind moved strangely through the trees, he imagined that same howl following him.
Each time, panic forced another few steps from his ruined body.
By the morning of the third day, even fear could no longer sustain him.
Torrhen emerged from between two frost-covered pines with one hand pressed to his side and the other reaching blindly before him. His eyes were swollen nearly shut. Ice clung to his lashes and coated the uneven beginnings of a beard along his jaw. He had lost his cloak, his sword, one glove, and any understanding of where he was.
The world ahead of him was little more than whiteness and shadow.
He stumbled over a root buried beneath the snow and struck the ground hard enough to drive what little breath remained from his lungs. For several moments, he lay motionless, cheek pressed against the frozen earth while his body shuddered.
He knew he needed to stand.
He also knew he could not.
Torrhen dragged one knee beneath himself, then the other, his breath escaping in weak, broken sounds. His arms folded beneath him before he managed to rise halfway, and he collapsed again.
"Wall," he whispered, though his lips barely moved. "Need… the Wall."
The words disappeared into the trees.
No raven heard him. No brother waited nearby with a warm fire or a flask of water. There was only the forest, old and silent, watching as another dying man sank into its snow.
Torrhen closed his eyes.
For the first time since fleeing the Milkwater, he stopped fighting.
Far to the south, a horn sounded.
The noise was so distant that Torrhen mistook it for another memory. His eyes remained closed as the call echoed once through the trees, followed by the muffled rhythm of horses pushing through deep snow.
Voices followed.
"Tracks here!"
Torrhen's eyes opened.
He tried to call out, but only a rasp escaped him. His throat felt split from the inside, and his tongue had swollen until it barely fit behind his teeth.
The horses drew closer.
A party of twelve black-cloaked riders emerged between the trees, spreading carefully through the forest with bows strung and swords hanging loose in their sheaths. They had left Castle Black before dawn to search for the missing ranging party, following the route Harlon Flint had provided before departing with Prince Jinx Stark.
They expected to find signs of wildling activity.
They did not expect to find a half-dead boy crawling alone through the snow.
The first rider nearly passed him.
A dark shape beneath a fallen branch caught his attention, and he pulled sharply on the reins. His horse reared with a startled cry as the ranger leaned forward, staring through the snowfall.
"Man down!" he shouted, already swinging from the saddle. "There is someone here!"
The entire party turned.
The largest rider among them drove his horse through the others before dismounting with enough force to scatter snow beneath his boots. He stood well over six feet, broad through the chest and shoulders even beneath the heavy layers of black wool, leather, and fur. A coarse brown beard covered most of his face, streaked with grey near the chin, while an old axe wound ran from his temple to the corner of one eye.
Lord Commander Rodrik Umber had never been a gentle man.
He had been born the third son of a Greatjon's cousin, raised among shouting men, hard winters, and the understanding that an Umber who could not withstand pain had no business carrying the name. He had taken the black more than twenty years earlier after killing a southern knight during what had been intended as a friendly wrestling match.
Years at the Wall had not softened him.
Yet the moment he recognized the boy in the snow, every trace of hardness left his face.
"Torrhen."
Rodrik reached him just as Torrhen attempted to rise again.
The boy's legs folded. Rodrik lunged forward and caught him beneath the arms before his face struck the frozen ground, lowering him carefully against one bent knee.
"Easy, lad. Easy." Rodrik pulled off one thick glove and pressed two fingers against Torrhen's throat, finding a pulse so faint that his jaw tightened. "Gods, you are frozen through."
The other rangers surrounded them, their earlier caution forgotten as blankets, waterskins, and supplies were dragged from saddlebags. One man began building a small fire beneath the shelter of the trees, while another knelt to examine the wound across Torrhen's side.
"This was made by a sword," the ranger muttered, carefully pulling the frozen cloth away from the cut. His eyes moved over the boy's missing cloak, torn clothing, and blood-stiffened boots. "A fine blade. Cleaner than anything the free folk carry."
Rodrik heard him, but his attention never left Torrhen's face.
The boy's eyes shifted beneath swollen lids, struggling to focus upon the massive man holding him. Recognition surfaced slowly.
"Lord…" Torrhen tried to speak, but his throat seized around the word.
"I am here," Rodrik said, pulling his own fur cloak from his shoulders and wrapping it around the boy. His voice remained low, though the urgency beneath it made the nearest rangers glance toward him. "You are safe now. Do you hear me? You are with your brothers."
Torrhen's mouth trembled.
The relief that passed across his face was so raw that Rodrik felt something tighten behind his ribs. He had seen dying men smile upon recognizing the black cloaks of the Watch before. Usually they were old men or rangers dragged from wildling arrows.
Torrhen was sixteen.
He should never have looked that grateful merely to be allowed to collapse.
"Water," Rodrik ordered without looking up.
A ranger offered him a skin. Rodrik uncorked it and held it carefully against Torrhen's lips, allowing only a few drops to enter his mouth before pulling it back when the boy began to cough.
"Slowly," Rodrik murmured, supporting Torrhen's head with one hand. "Do not fight it."
Torrhen swallowed with visible effort. His fingers emerged from beneath the cloak and closed weakly around Rodrik's wrist, the darkened tips barely able to bend.
"Dead," he breathed.
Rodrik went still.
The surrounding rangers quieted as the word passed between them.
"Who is dead?" Rodrik asked, leaning closer. Snow gathered across his bare hair and beard, but he seemed not to feel it. "Harlon? The other brothers?"
Torrhen's grip tightened as much as his strength allowed.
"All." His eyes widened despite the swelling, and terror returned to his face with such force that his breathing became ragged. "All of them."
One of the rangers looked toward the trees. Another drew his sword halfway from its sheath, suddenly expecting wildlings to emerge from every shadow.
Rodrik tightened his hold around the boy. "Was it free folk?" he demanded, though he kept his voice steady. "Torrhen, listen to me. Did the wildlings attack the party?"
The boy shook his head.
It was the smallest movement, barely more than a tremor.
Rodrik's brow furrowed. "Others, then? Giants? A shadowcat? Tell me what happened."
Torrhen's gaze moved past him, fixing upon something only he could see.
The riverbank returned in his eyes.
Bodies scattered through red snow.
Harlon split beneath a single stroke.
Jinx Stark crawling after fleeing men with blood covering his mouth.
Yellow eyes surrounded in burning red.
Torrhen's lips parted.
"Prince," he whispered.
Rodrik's expression hardened with confusion. "Prince Jinx?"
The name made Torrhen convulse.
He clawed weakly at Rodrik's arm, trying to pull himself closer even as his body began shutting down. "He—he killed…" Torrhen's voice broke into a dry sob, his eyes rolling toward the dark trees behind the ranging party. "Hungry. His eyes… gods, his eyes…"
Rodrik seized the side of his face, forcing the boy to look at him. "Torrhen, stay with me." His voice sharpened, carrying enough command to silence every man around them. "Where is Jinx Stark? What happened to the others?"
Torrhen's breath caught.
For one terrible instant, his face emptied in the same way Jinx's had before Dark Sister moved.
Then fear returned.
"He ate them."
No one spoke.
Even the horses seemed to quiet.
Rodrik stared down at the boy, uncertain whether he had heard correctly or whether exhaustion had twisted the words into something impossible.
"What did you say?"
Torrhen's hand slipped from his wrist.
His eyes closed.
"Torrhen." Rodrik shook him once, gently at first. "Boy, open your eyes."
The boy's head rolled against his arm.
Rodrik pressed his fingers against Torrhen's throat again. The pulse remained, weak and irregular but present.
"He has only fainted," the ranger examining the wound said, though his own face had gone pale. "If we do not get him behind the Wall soon, that may not matter."
Rodrik looked north through the trees.
Somewhere beyond them, an entire ranging party had vanished. Prince Jinx Stark remained missing, and the only survivor had emerged half-frozen, wounded by Valyrian steel, and speaking of slaughter and hunger.
Rodrik's jaw tightened.
"Turn the party around," he ordered as he lifted Torrhen into his arms. The boy weighed almost nothing beneath the cloak. "Two riders ahead at full speed. Tell Maester aemon to prepare the infirmary and every warming stone he has. No one speaks of what the boy said until I have heard the whole account from his own mouth."
A ranger hesitated beside his horse. "And the missing party, Lord Commander?"
Rodrik looked north once more, his scarred face settling into something grim.
"We are no longer searching for a missing party," he said as he carried Torrhen toward the horses. "We are carrying a warning back to the Wall."
By the time Castle Black appeared through the blowing snow, Torrhen Woods had stopped shivering.
That frightened Rodrik Umber more than the blood frozen across the boy's clothing or the bluish cast spreading beneath his lips.
Shivering meant the body was still fighting. Rodrik had spent enough years ranging beyond the Wall to know what came after the trembling stopped. Torrhen lay limp against his chest beneath two layers of fur, his head tucked into the crook of Rodrik's arm while the Lord Commander held him in front of the saddle. Every few moments Rodrik lowered his ear toward the boy's mouth, listening for the faint scrape of breath.
Each time he heard it, he urged his horse faster.
The Wall rose ahead of them like the end of the world, a pale immensity disappearing into the clouds. Castle Black crouched beneath it, all timber, smoke, and frozen stone. Men moving along the battlements noticed the riders first, dark shapes emerging from the Haunted Forest at a pace no ranging party maintained unless something had gone terribly wrong.
The horn sounded once.
Brothers began appearing throughout the yard before the gates had fully opened. Stewards abandoned baskets and barrels. Builders stepped away from scaffolds. Rangers came out of the armory fastening sword belts over half-laced clothing, their expressions tightening when they counted the returning horses.
Twelve men had ridden north that morning.
Twelve returned.
But one of them carried a thirteenth brother who should have been many miles deeper beyond the Wall.
"Clear the bloody gate!" Rodrik roared before his horse had fully crossed beneath it, the force of his voice sending men scrambling from the path. Snow and mud sprayed beneath the animal's hooves as he rode directly into the yard. "Get Maester Aemon! Now!"
A young steward froze near the steps of the armory, staring at Torrhen's pale face.
Rodrik turned his head and fixed him with such a murderous glare that the boy nearly fell over himself. "Did your ears freeze shut, lad?" he thundered, tightening one arm around Torrhen as the horse shifted beneath them. "Run!"
The steward ran.
Rodrik swung from the saddle without waiting for assistance. His boots struck the ground hard, and one of the rangers moved to take Torrhen from him, only for Rodrik to turn his shoulder away and carry the boy himself.
"Where are the others?" a voice called from the gathering crowd.
Rodrik ignored it.
Another brother pushed closer, his eyes searching the riders as though the missing men might somehow have been hidden among the horses. "Where is Harlon Flint? Where is the prince?"
"Back away," Rodrik snarled, forcing his way toward the King's Tower. "Every one of you, back away unless you have suddenly learned the maester's arts."
The crowd parted reluctantly, though their questions followed him across the yard.
Rodrik heard Jinx Stark's name more than once.
He heard Harlon's.
He heard someone whisper that Torrhen looked half-eaten.
That nearly made him stop and strike the man, but Torrhen released a weak, broken breath against his chest, and nothing else mattered.
The doors to the infirmary opened before Rodrik reached them. Two stewards rushed outside carrying folded blankets, followed by a thin, grey-haired man in black robes whose steps were careful but unhurried. Maester Aemon's pale, sightless eyes remained fixed ahead of him, one hand resting lightly upon the arm of the brother guiding him.
Age had bent him, but it had not made him frail in spirit. Even with the entire yard filling with frightened voices, Aemon's face remained composed.
"Bring him inside, Lord Commander," Maester Aemon said as he turned his head toward the sound of Rodrik's boots. His voice was soft, yet it cut through the noise more effectively than any shout. "The cold has already had too much time with him."
Rodrik carried Torrhen past him.
The infirmary smelled of boiled cloth, old herbs, tallow, and smoke. A brazier had been pulled close to the central bed, though Maester Aemon immediately lifted one hand when a steward moved to add more coal.
"Not too quickly," Aemon warned, allowing the guide to lead him toward the bedside. "A frozen body may be harmed by sudden heat as easily as helped. Warm the room, not the boy. Remove the wet clothing carefully, and do not rub his skin."
Rodrik laid Torrhen upon the bed.
The boy looked even younger beneath the infirmary's light. Ice had melted through his hair and left it plastered across his brow. His cheeks were hollow from three days without food, and the skin around his eyes had darkened into bruised shadows.
One steward reached for the stiff cloth along Torrhen's ribs, but it had frozen into the wound.
"Cut around it," Aemon instructed as his fingers moved across Torrhen's face, first touching the forehead and then the jaw. "If the fabric has joined itself to the blood, pulling it free will open the injury again."
Rodrik stood beside the bed, his great hands opening and closing uselessly. He had led charges against wildlings, survived a shadowcat tearing through his shoulder, and once held a gate alone while six men dragged a wounded ranger to safety.
There was nothing he could strike here.
Nothing he could threaten into releasing the boy.
Aemon's fingers settled against Torrhen's neck. His expression remained calm, though his brows drew together slightly as he counted the pulse.
"He lives," the old maester murmured, more to reassure the men surrounding him than because there had been any doubt. "His heart is weak, but stubborn. That is often enough."
"It had better be," Rodrik said, his voice dropping into a rough whisper as he stared at the boy. "He did not crawl through three days of that forest to die under our roof."
Aemon angled his face toward him. "Then we shall try not to insult his efforts."
The smallest trace of dry humor in the maester's voice loosened something in Rodrik's chest, though it vanished again when the stewards cut away Torrhen's black clothing.
The wound across his ribs emerged beneath layers of frozen blood.
One of the stewards inhaled sharply.
It was not a savage tear like those made by a wildling's stone axe, nor the uneven cut of cheap steel. The blade had passed cleanly across the flesh, sharp enough to leave the edges smooth despite the three days of abuse that followed.
Maester Aemon reached toward it. His fingers moved carefully along the skin without pressing into the wound.
"A sword," he said.
"One of the rangers thought the same," Rodrik replied, watching Aemon's hands. "He said the cut was too clean for most weapons carried beyond the Wall."
Aemon's head tilted slightly. "Most weapons anywhere."
Rodrik's gaze hardened.
The words Torrhen had whispered in the forest returned to him.
Prince.
Hungry.
He ate them.
Rodrik looked toward the stewards. "Leave us."
The nearest young man paused with a bowl of warmed water in his hands. "Lord Commander, Maester Aemon may need—"
"He will call for you," Rodrik interrupted, though he kept his voice low out of respect for the unconscious boy. "Until then, you heard nothing in this room because you were never inside it."
The stewards exchanged uncertain looks before retreating. The door closed behind them, muffling the restless voices gathering outside.
Aemon continued examining Torrhen in silence.
"You have frightened them," he observed as he drew a blanket over the boy's legs.
"They should be frightened."
That caused the maester's hands to stop.
Aemon slowly turned his face toward Rodrik. Though his eyes could no longer see, Rodrik had never once felt hidden from the old man's attention.
"Tell me."
Rodrik's jaw flexed. He stepped away from the bed and removed his gloves, though he found himself unable to remain still. "We found him three days south of the Milkwater, alone and near dead. No horse, no cloak, no sword. He had that cut across his side and enough blood on his clothing to belong to several men."
Aemon folded his hands over the head of his cane. "Yet much of it was not his."
"No."
"Did he tell you where the others were?"
Rodrik looked down at Torrhen.
"Dead," he said finally. "He claimed they were all dead."
Aemon's lined face grew heavier. "The free folk?"
"He said no."
The brazier cracked softly between them.
Rodrik dragged one hand through his damp beard, then lowered his voice further despite the closed door. "He said Prince Jinx killed them."
For the first time, Maester Aemon's composure visibly shifted.
It was little more than a tightening around his mouth, but Rodrik saw it.
"Torrhen spoke the prince's name clearly?"
"Clearly enough to panic when I repeated it." Rodrik moved closer to the bed, looking at the boy as though an answer might be written across his sleeping face. "He spoke of yellow eyes. Hunger. Said Jinx ate the men."
Aemon stood without movement for several breaths.
Outside, more brothers had gathered in the yard. Their voices rose and fell beyond the walls, rumor moving faster than truth ever could.
"Extreme cold, exhaustion, blood loss, and fear can do strange things to memory," Aemon said at last, though there was no certainty in his tone. "A dying man's words should not be dismissed, but neither should they be treated as a complete account."
Rodrik gave him a hard look. "I know what a frightened boy sounds like when his mind invents monsters. Torrhen was not inventing one."
"No," Aemon murmured, reaching out until his hand found the edge of the bed. His pale eyes remained unfocused, yet his attention settled upon Torrhen with renewed gravity. "Perhaps he was not."
Rodrik glanced toward the door. "The men already know something happened. Half of them watched me carry him through the gate. By nightfall, someone will claim Jinx transformed into a giant and swallowed Harlon whole."
"Then by morning the giant will have three heads, and by midday it will have married a wildling queen," Aemon said quietly as he reached for a small jar of salve. "Rumor can wait. Torrhen cannot."
He spread the medicine gently around the wound before covering it with clean linen. Rodrik watched the old maester work, though his mind remained somewhere beyond the Wall, beside a bloodied river and a missing prince whose mother possessed a royal title in Yi Ti and whose father ruled the North.
"If the boy survives," Rodrik said, the words weighted with everything that would follow, "Winterfell must be told."
"When the boy survives," Aemon corrected, binding the linen in place, "we will first allow him to wake. Then we will ask him what happened without placing answers in his mouth."
Rodrik grunted, accepting the correction despite himself.
Aemon lowered his hand to Torrhen's wrist again.
The boy's fingers twitched.
Both men went still.
Torrhen's breath sharpened, his head turning weakly across the pillow as whatever dreams held him began to tighten. A small sound escaped his throat, scarcely louder than air moving between his teeth.
"No," he whispered.
Rodrik leaned closer. "Torrhen?"
The boy's face twisted.
His hands clenched into the blanket as though he were once again crawling through the Haunted Forest. "Don't touch him," he rasped, tears leaking from beneath his closed eyelids. "Don't—his eyes—"
Aemon placed one steady hand against his chest. "You are at Castle Black, child," he said, his voice low and even while Torrhen trembled beneath it. "The Wall is above you. Your brothers are nearby. No one is touching him."
Torrhen did not appear to hear.
A broken whimper escaped him.
Then his lips parted around one final word.
"Dark Sister."
Rodrik Umber straightened so suddenly that the stool behind him toppled over.
Maester Aemon's hand remained upon Torrhen's chest, but every trace of gentleness drained from his expression.
The old Targaryen stood beside the unconscious boy in complete silence, his sightless eyes fixed upon nothing as a name buried beneath generations of blood and history settled over the infirmary.
Outside, the wind struck the Wall hard enough to make the ancient ice groan.
A full sennight passed, and Torrhen Woods still did not wake.
His body had survived the cold, though Maester Aemon refused to call that survival complete. The fever came on the second night, burning through the boy so violently that two stewards had been needed to keep him from tearing open the wound along his ribs. He muttered in his sleep, sometimes begging Harlon Flint to run, sometimes warning unseen men not to touch Jinx, and sometimes making no words at all—only broken, terrified sounds as his hands clawed at the blankets.
By the fifth day, the fever had weakened.
Torrhen's breathing steadied, colour returned faintly to his face, and Maester Aemon assured anyone who asked that the boy's body was repairing itself. Yet his eyes remained closed. He swallowed water when coaxed and occasionally reacted to the old maester's voice, but whatever part of Torrhen had crawled through three days of frozen forest seemed unwilling to return.
At first, Rodrik Umber had waited for him.
The Lord Commander visited the infirmary every morning before dawn and every night after the evening meal, standing beside the narrow bed with his arms folded while Aemon changed the bandages or pressed a damp cloth against Torrhen's brow. Rodrik rarely spoke during those visits. He merely watched the boy's chest rise and fall, his broad face growing harder each time Torrhen failed to open his eyes.
He had wanted a complete account before sending word south.
He no longer needed one.
The first search party had left Castle Black the morning after Torrhen's return.
Eight experienced rangers rode north under Ser Kyle Cerwyn, following Torrhen's trail toward the Milkwater and the last known position of Harlon Flint's company. They carried enough provisions for six days and three ravens in wicker cages so they could report the moment they found anything.
No raven returned.
On the third day, Rodrik sent a second party of twelve men along a western route, ordering them to avoid the Milkwater and search instead for signs of the missing rangers' horses.
They disappeared as well.
The third party did not make it beyond the Haunted Forest.
At least, Rodrik did not believe they had. One of the sentries on the Wall reported seeing smoke rising through the trees shortly after midnight, too thick to come from an ordinary campfire and too brief to be a signal. By sunrise, the smoke had vanished.
The six men sent to investigate never returned.
No bodies were found.
No horses wandered back to Castle Black.
There were no ravens, no horns, no tracks approaching the Wall, and no wounded men crawling from between the trees. Every group Rodrik sent north seemed to vanish the moment the forest closed around them.
By the seventh morning, forty-two men were missing.
That alone would have been enough to force Rodrik to act, but stories had begun reaching the Wall from other directions.
A trader who occasionally exchanged steel and grain with Craster arrived before dawn with his face grey beneath his frost-burn. He had not reached the old wildling's keep. He had not even come within two miles of it.
The bodies had stopped him.
Hundreds of free folk lay scattered through the snow.
They belonged to different clans, judging from their clothing and weapons, and some appeared to have been travelling together in groups large enough to raid a poorly defended castle. Others were women, old men, and children, their possessions strewn across the ground as though they had abandoned everything and tried to flee.
Most had been killed by a blade.
The wounds were impossibly clean. Limbs had been taken off through furs, bone, and boiled leather in single strokes. Spears had been cut through as though they were reeds. Stone axes and bronze knives had shattered against something sharper than any weapon the trader had ever seen.
Yet those had not been the wounds that sent him running south.
Many of the bodies had been eaten.
Not torn apart by wolves or shadowcats. The marks were wrong for that. Flesh had been stripped from arms and thighs in long, deliberate bites. Chests had been opened. Some corpses had been left hollow beneath the ribs, while others had been gnawed down to bone in places where no ordinary animal would begin feeding.
The trader insisted that whatever had killed them possessed the teeth of a man.
Rodrik had nearly struck him for saying it.
Then the man emptied a leather sack onto the table inside the Lord Commander's solar.
Three broken pieces of blackened steel struck the wood.
Rodrik recognized one as part of a Night's Watch sword.
The metal had been cut cleanly through.
Another piece still carried dried blood and shreds of black wool caught beneath the guard.
The trader left Castle Black with fresh provisions, a new horse, and strict orders to speak of nothing he had seen. Rodrik knew the order would accomplish little. Fear travelled more quickly than ravens, and men found relief in passing it to someone else.
Worse than the bodies were the trees.
The Haunted Forest was dying.
It began as a darkened patch far to the north, barely visible from the highest points of the Wall. The sentries assumed it was shadow cast by gathering clouds until the darkness continued spreading beneath clear skies.
Pines lost their needles in the space of a day. Ancient trunks turned grey and split open. Moss shrivelled across stones, streams clouded with dead fish, and every patch of grass within the affected region collapsed into pale rot.
The decay spread southward.
Every day it came closer.
By the seventh morning, Rodrik could see it clearly from the top of the Wall.
He stood beside the winch cage with one hand resting upon the pommel of his sword, the wind pulling at his black cloak as he stared across the endless forest. The Wall offered a view no hill or tower could match, and what he saw from its summit left even an Umber's stomach cold.
A broad path of death cut through the Haunted Forest.
It twisted between the trees rather than moving in a straight line, almost as though something living wandered without direction beneath the canopy. Wherever that path passed, the forest withered behind it. Grey branches reached toward the sky like skeletal hands, and blackened earth showed through places that had been buried beneath snow only days earlier.
Closer now.
Far closer.
One of the sentries stood several paces behind him, gripping his spear with both hands. The young man had not spoken since Rodrik arrived, though his eyes repeatedly moved between the Lord Commander and the dead forest.
Rodrik's jaw tightened as another gust carried a smell over the Wall.
Decay.
It should not have been possible at that distance. The wind came from the north, certainly, but the nearest dead trees still stood miles away.
Yet he smelled damp earth, spoiled meat, and old leaves crushed beneath something heavy.
"Lord Commander," the sentry began, his voice thin beneath the wind, "last night, Ben Coldwater said he heard howling."
Rodrik did not look at him. "There are wolves beyond the Wall."
"He said it did not sound like a wolf."
The sentry immediately regretted speaking when Rodrik turned his scarred face toward him. He lowered his gaze and shifted his grip upon the spear.
Rodrik might have dismissed the story a week earlier.
He had dismissed too much already.
"Did anyone else hear it?"
"Three men on the eastern watch." The sentry swallowed and stared north again. "They said it came from where the trees were dying. It lasted long enough that the horses below started kicking their stalls."
Rodrik looked back toward the forest.
Nothing moved among the grey trees.
That almost made it worse.
"Double the watch along the northern face," he ordered, his voice carrying no trace of the unease pressing beneath his ribs. "No man stands alone, even during daylight. Keep pitch, dragonglass, and full quivers on every platform. If anything approaches the forest's edge, sound the horn before you decide whether it looks human."
The sentry hesitated. "One blast or three?"
Rodrik's eyes remained fixed upon the spreading decay.
"If you have enough time to debate it, sound one. If you do not, sound all three and let the gods complain afterward."
He descended in the cage alone.
The chains groaned as the platform lowered along the Wall's icy face, Castle Black slowly rising beneath him. From that height, men looked like dark insects moving between towers and courtyards. Brothers hauled timber toward the lifts, stable hands calmed restless horses, and builders checked the gate mechanisms for the third time that morning.
They could feel it too.
No one laughed in the yard anymore.
Conversations stopped whenever a horn sounded. Men woke with hands already reaching for swords, and brothers who once complained bitterly about guard duty now volunteered for shifts atop the Wall because the open yard left them feeling exposed.
The Watch had guarded against the free folk for thousands of years.
It knew how to prepare for men.
Rodrik was no longer certain that a man was approaching them.
By the time the cage reached the ground, his decision had been made.
He crossed the yard without removing his cloak, ignoring every question and respectful greeting thrown in his direction. Snow cracked beneath his heavy boots as he entered the King's Tower and climbed toward Maester Aemon's chambers.
He found the old man in the infirmary.
Torrhen remained in the same narrow bed, his breathing slow beneath layers of wool. Aemon sat beside him with one hand resting around the boy's wrist, his pale eyes lowered while he silently counted the pulse.
The maester heard Rodrik enter and turned his head slightly. "You have come earlier than usual."
"He still has not woken."
It was not a question, and Aemon did not treat it as one. His thumb shifted gently over Torrhen's wrist before he released it.
"No," Aemon said as he folded his hands in his lap. "His body is stronger than it was, and the fever has nearly broken. Whatever keeps him asleep may no longer be an injury I can treat with herbs."
Rodrik stood at the foot of the bed, staring at Torrhen's face. "Fear."
"Perhaps." Aemon's expression softened as the boy made a small movement beneath the blankets. "The mind sometimes retreats when waking promises only pain. We cannot drag him back before he is ready."
"We cannot wait for him either."
Aemon lifted his face.
Rodrik told him everything.
He spoke of the missing parties first, naming each commander and how many men had followed them north. He described the trader's account from Craster's Keep, the hundreds of mutilated free folk, and the pieces of Night's Watch steel cut apart as cleanly as Torrhen's wound.
Then he described the forest.
Aemon listened without interruption, though his fingers slowly tightened around the head of his cane when Rodrik explained that the withering could now be seen from atop the Wall.
"The decay is moving south," Rodrik finished, pacing once toward the shuttered window before forcing himself to stop. "Not quickly, but every morning it is closer. The sentries heard howling last night, and before you remind me that wolves live in the forest, they have all heard wolves before. Whatever made that sound frightened the horses half to death."
Aemon sat very still.
"And there has been no sign of Prince Jinx?"
"Nothing living." Rodrik's mouth hardened around the words. "No tracks I trust, no messenger, no scrap of his clothing. Only dead men, eaten bodies, and a forest rotting its way toward my Wall."
The old maester's gaze lowered toward Torrhen.
In sleep, the boy's face tightened slightly.
"Dark Sister," Aemon murmured.
Rodrik heard the weight beneath those two words. "He spoke the name clearly."
"Yes."
"You know the sword."
"I knew the man who carried it last, though only from histories and blood." Aemon's fingers shifted against his cane, an old grief moving briefly across his face. "Brynden Rivers took Dark Sister to the Wall when he joined the Watch. He vanished beyond it many years ago."
"Then perhaps Jinx found what remained of him."
"Perhaps."
Rodrik grunted, frustration deepening the lines around his eyes. "I am tired of perhaps. The boy said Jinx killed them. Men are disappearing. Wildlings are being eaten, and the land itself is dying. I do not care whether the prince is cursed, possessed, starving, or simply mad. Something bearing his face is coming closer to Castle Black."
Aemon accepted the anger without flinching.
"What would you have me do?"
Rodrik stared at him for a moment, almost irritated by the calm question, before he understood that Aemon already knew.
"Write to Lord Rickard Stark."
Silence settled between them.
Aemon turned his face fully toward the Lord Commander. "What would you have the letter say?"
"The truth."
"That his son may have slaughtered a ranging party and consumed their flesh?" Aemon's voice remained gentle, but the consequence behind the words filled the room. "That a prince of Yi Ti carrying a lost Targaryen sword is possibly responsible for hundreds of deaths beyond the Wall? Once written, such words cannot be taken back."
Rodrik stepped closer, lowering his voice as Torrhen stirred again. "Forty-two of my men are gone. Harlon Flint and his entire party are dead unless the gods have played some joke too cruel even for them. I can see the path of this thing from the top of the Wall, Aemon. I will not wait until it reaches the gate merely because the truth might wound a father's pride."
"Rickard Stark's pride is not what concerns me."
"His grief, then. His anger. Yi Ti's outrage. Let all of them come." Rodrik planted both hands against the edge of Torrhen's bed, his broad frame looming over the sleeping boy though his eyes remained on Aemon. "Jinx Stark is his son. Whatever that boy has become, Winterfell must know before rumor reaches it from a merchant or frightened whore. Rickard must also send men, supplies, and every scrap of knowledge his wife may possess about her son's condition."
Aemon's lined face tightened at the word condition.
Rodrik noticed.
"You think she knows something."
"I think mothers often know pieces of their children that fathers and maesters never see." Aemon rose slowly, one hand finding his cane while the other remained against the chair for support. "Whether Lady Stark understands what is happening beyond the Wall is another matter."
"Then ask her."
Aemon stood beside Torrhen's bed, listening to the boy breathe.
After a long moment, he nodded.
"I will write the letter."
Rodrik's shoulders loosened by a fraction. "Send two ravens. One directly to Winterfell and another to the Last Hearth. My kin are to prepare men and provisions, but they are not to ride north until I command it."
"You expect the Wall to be attacked."
Rodrik looked toward the infirmary window. Beyond its shutters, the ancient ice groaned in the wind.
"I expect something," he muttered, his hand settling upon his sword. "That is more than enough."
Aemon moved to his writing table with careful, measured steps. He lowered himself into the chair and called for a steward to bring parchment, ink, and one of the trained ravens. His blindness meant another hand would shape the letters, but every word would be his.
Rodrik remained near Torrhen while the steward arrived and began preparing the ink.
Aemon dictated without embellishment.
He named the missing men. He described Torrhen's condition and the accusation he had made before losing consciousness. He included Dark Sister, the reports from near Craster's Keep, the consumed bodies, and the expanding region of decay visible from the Wall.
When the steward's quill hesitated over the account of Jinx's eyes, Rodrik's gaze hardened.
"Write it," he ordered.
The young man swallowed and continued.
At the end, Aemon asked Lord Rickard to send men capable of identifying or restraining his son, along with any knowledge Lady Stark possessed concerning Jinx's unusual hunger, altered eyes, or powers that could drain life from the surrounding land.
The completed letter was sealed beneath black wax and carried to the rookery.
Rodrik and Aemon followed.
The raven fought the steward's hands as it was brought to the narrow window, its black wings beating hard enough to scatter loose feathers across the floor. The message was secured to its leg, the shutters opened, and a burst of northern wind swept into the chamber.
For a moment, the raven remained perched upon the sill, staring out toward the Wall.
Then something howled far beyond the ice.
The bird launched itself south so violently that it nearly struck the stone frame.
Rodrik watched it disappear into the grey sky, his hand tightening around the pommel of his sword as another low, distant howl drifted from the Haunted Forest.
This time, every raven in the rookery began screaming.