The air bit deeper than it had in days, the snow no longer soft but crusted into a hard sheen that crunched underfoot. The skies were clear, Winterfell's towers gleaming pale in the early light. Smoke trails rose from the kitchens and smithy, but the yard itself was still—until the gate creaked open and the first of the morning guard filed into the training square.
Ned Stark stood at the edge of the yard with Benjen beside him, both silent.
Twenty men. Young, mostly. Too lean in the shoulders, too casual in the eyes. Not undisciplined, just unshaped. Some shifted nervously under the weight of new expectations. Others looked cold, stiff, uncertain of why they were being forced to rise before the sun.
"Spear and shield," Ned said flatly.
The order had gone out two days ago. Swords were to be sheathed, daggers left in barracks. Rodrik's last instruction before departing had passed the order along, and the men had done as they were told. But already, Ned could see the hesitation.
They were Northern-born, and most had only ever fought with long blades or crude axes. A spear was a hunter's tool, not a warrior's weapon. At least, that's how they had been taught.
Now they were being told it would be the spine of their defense.
They formed a staggered double line, shields up, blunted spears leveled. Awkward, mismatched.
Ned walked in front of the lines, saying nothing at first. His boots crunched on the frost. He looked into the eyes of each man, and most struggled to meet his.
"You'll train every day until you don't need to think," he said. "And then you'll train again."
He stopped at the front. "These weapons are not foreign. They're not unmanly. They're not soft. The Free Folk fear them more than any blade, and the Dothraki broke against them at Qohor."
One of the younger men shifted slightly, his spear wobbling as he adjusted his grip.
Ned nodded to Benjen, who stepped forward.
"You'll form the shield wall. Then we'll teach you how not to fall on each other like goats."
The first hour was rough.
The Formations ned taught broke quickly. The spear points wavered under the staring of unused muscles, Shields overlapped unevenly leaving gaps that anyone could exploit, The rhythm was wrong, and the men stumbled often. One tripped backward and would have implailed the man behind if not for the blunted weapon. Ned stood by watching it all, he could not help make comparisons to his old life, the boys and men he trained with. The men here may not yet be Spartans but he would make them worthy of the title.
There was no shouting.
Just a cold wind, the dull slap of boots on packed snow, and the sharp bark of Benjen's corrections as he paced the rear.
When the men began to sweat despite the chill, and their arms drooped from the weight of unfamiliar stances, he gave no signal to halt,
"You're not here to be coddled like a child still at its mother's teats," he said. "You're here to learn to survive. If you can't hold formation in the yard, you'll die screaming in the field, every minute of pain and suffering that happens here is one you don't suffer out there, because out there there is only one rule, you either come back with your shield, or on it!"
He walked the line again, this time slower.
"The spear is reach. The shield is life. The sword is the finish. You'll earn that right when your back's straight and your steps match the man beside you." this will be your life until there is nothing else in your mind, you will eat sleep and breathe this exercise, it will be perfect before we move on to anything, I thought you were of the north, the north does not bend, it does not barred men of weak spines, is this the best you can do?"
They stood straighter.
Still not right. But straighter as if the very notion of weakness was a crime.
"Again! Shied wall, slow advance."
Benjen leaned in beside him as they stepped back from the line.
"You think they'll take to it?"
"They'll have to," Ned said.
"They're not unsullied" Benjen muttered.
Ned glanced at him. "No. They're Northmen. I'll break them into something harder."
Benjen gave a soft grunt. "At least they're listening."
Ned turned back toward the yard. "Yes they are, I want them ready by the gathering next year, we do this again tomorrow. An hour earlier. For now can you continue the training I have things I need to do"
One of the older men turned his head slightly at that. He hadn't meant to. But he had.
Ned met his eyes.
And didn't look away.
-----------------------------------------------
The wind shifted by midday, turning from dry chill to damp weight. A fine dusting of snow crept through cracked shutters and under stone lintels. Winterfell groaned in its bones. Not loudly, but enough for those who listened.
Ned walked alone through the Great Keep, one hand brushing the wall as he passed. The stone was cold and slightly damp beneath his glove, as though it remembered every winter storm or summer snow that had ever touched it. No guards followed. He hadn't told anyone where he was going. That was deliberate.
He passed empty chambers with shuttered windows and halls where only echoes lived. In one corner, a torch bracket leaned loose in its mount, iron rusted and crumbling. In another, an archway had a crack through its keystone—no threat to collapse, but a visible flaw. Ned paused to run his hand over the stone. The mortar was still firm, but the weakness would spread in time.
He climbed a narrow stairwell few used, the steps bowed in the center from centuries of passing boots. At the top, he ducked into a half-forgotten hall, its door swollen from damp and left ajar. The space beyond was lined with thick beams and latticed rafters, dust caked along the exposed joints. It had once been a council chamber, perhaps. Now only mice called it home.
He stood there a long while, letting the weight of stillness press against him. Then he left the door propped open and descended again.
He stopped next at the smithy. The forge was hot, and the bellows creaked as the apprentice worked the coals. Two journeymen hammered quietly beside him. Their work was solid. Measured. But slow.
Ned watched them for several minutes before speaking. "Where are the heavy wedges?"
The apprentice blinked. "We… haven't forged new ones since… Lord Rickard's time."
Ned nodded once. "We'll need a dozen by the next moon. For the wall bracings and gate hooks. Tell Lord Benjen if you need more ore or binding steel, tell your master to come see me come tomorrow's morn. There will be more orders that I will need completing"
The boy nodded, eyes wide, then went back to pumping the bellows.
From there, Ned crossed into the old library. A faint draft greeted him as he opened the heavy doors. Dust floated in the air like lazy ash. Some shelves had been cleared recently by order, but others still sagged under the weight of neglect.
He moved slowly, reading the spines. "The Reign of the Red Kings." "Treatises on Timber and Tanning." "Records of the Three Sisters Tithes." He traced his gloved hand across a particularly warped binding and pulled the book free.
Inside, faded ink spoke of border conflicts with the Skagosi—march formations, supply lines across frozen marsh. The margins held scribbled notes from a maester long dead, wondering aloud if cavalry could ever truly function in snowdrifts deeper than a man's chest.
He smiled faintly.
On a lower shelf, another volume lay half-wrapped in waxed linen. It bore no title. He opened it to find ship manifests from Bear Island, back when it had its own fleet. Tar costs. Sailcloth weight. Hull grain alignment. On the last page was a loose note about coastal winds around Skagos, and how sails might be shaped to better curve into the gusts.
Another ledger held notes on Night's Watch grain levies and there numbers in the years before the Conquest. And near the bottom shelf, beneath a fallen stack of devotional texts, he found a small book with no title at all—just the Stark sigil carved into the leather by hand. Inside were scribbled observations from a long-dead steward: his guesses on stone sourcing and mineral deposits, lists of builders lost to winter, and a diagram of tunnels running beneath the oldest part of the keep ways to escape during a siege and tunnel deep into the wolfs wood that could be used to ambush an attacking army.
He carried all of them back to the solar and laid them out beside the others.
Benjen sat there already, sharpening a small utility blade with methodical ease. He glanced up.
"Found anything that doesn't belong in a midden?"
"Three pages on the use of torchlight to blind raiders in a cave," Ned said. "And a Bear Island ledger that tracks sail drag against wind speed. If we ever build a navy, I'll want it. And this—"
He lifted the Stark-branded journal. "Notes from a steward named Harrin. Lived through two winters longer than ours. Half his men froze. The other half built anyway."
Benjen raised an eyebrow. "He write how to keep the stubborn bastards working?"
"He did. Feed them twice and let them sleep in shifts. Same rules as war."
Ned sat and opened one of the older Stark ledgers—personal, not official. It chronicled food consumption, but occasionally dipped into notes about laborers and idle hands. One line caught his eye:
Too many boys play at swords when lumber needs splitting.
He closed the book slowly.
"They remembered what mattered," he said.
Benjen leaned forward. "And what do we remember?"
"That everything breaks if you let it sit too long."
Benjen nodded, setting down the whetstone.
"I'm sending a rider to the quarry tomorrow," Ned said. "We'll need more stone cut before snow sets too deep. And get the masons to inspect the archways in the east corridor. There's a crack, the coin from the rebellion is in the vaults now, we need to begin the surveys regsridng moat cailin, see what can be salvaged and what needs to be torn down, that will be your seat Benjen, within the moon I want your ideas regarding the design and how you will live off the land surroudning, prove yourself worthy of being the Stark of Moat Cailin"
"Your giving it to me?" Benjen replied.
"I don't trust the south and I said previously the north's fractured right now, houses have grudges and the Bolton are just waiting for an opportunity to rebel, we need the Southern pass guarded and it must be by a Stark." Ned replied. "You are that Stark"
Neither man spoke for a moment.
Ned looked at the growing stack of books. "We'll need more than what's here."
"From where?"
"House Royce. They'll have military treatises older than the Vale itself. Oberyn Martell knows Essosi histories better than the Citadel. I'll write them tonight."
Benjen was quiet, but he nodded.
"And Braavos?"
Ned didn't look up from the parchment he was already preparing.
"They value efficiency and we have lumbar which they crave I want to rely less on Southern trade, if we can develop a relationship with the iron bank it boads well for us all."
He began the letter slowly, not as a lord begging favor, but as a man laying foundation. A man with time and stone and purpose.
When the ink dried, he sat back and stared out the window
------------------------------------------.
The snow had begun again. Steady. Soft. Relentless.
The fire in the solar had long since died, the stone chamber dim save for the flicker of two stubborn candles. Ned sat alone at the heavy desk, sleeves rolled past his elbows, his eyes steady as the quill in his hand scratched over parchment.
This wasn't war correspondence. No urgent raven to fly. But it felt heavier.
The first letter was to Lord Yohn Royce.
He kept it formal but not stiff—measured words from one Warden to another. Ned asked for any surviving records from the Royce vaults: treatises on highland sieges, winter campaigns, or tactics used in the old Vale border wars. He mentioned it was due to curiosity, that he wishes to connect further with his roots of the first men and House Royces lineage is without question,
He sealed it with black wax and the direwolf sigil.
The second letter, to Oberyn Martell, was longer. Carefully worded. Gracious, but not soft.
Ned acknowledged their earlier meeting at Sunspear, the shared understanding between grieving houses. Then he asked—not demanded—for records Dorne might have gathered on Essosi warfare: translated manuals, journals, notes on the Ghiscari formations or the mercenary structures of Volantis and Lys. Anything to help the North avoid the chaos that fire and crowns had once brought to their doors.
He ended the letter plainly: The North is not merely cold—it is watchful.
The final letter was to the Iron Bank of Braavos.
There was no honeyed words or flowery prose from himself, just a simple request for a meeting at a time of convenience, to discuss trade and furthering the business between the north and bravos as a whole, he added in a simple noet saying that if they had any records regarding the
supply and logistics during the wars of the Free Cities, and firsthand documentation of how formations like the Unsullied had been trained and maintained. Then he would be interested in buying them for the right price.
By the time he signed the last scroll, the candles were low, dripping into wax pools on the stone.
Ned stood and walked to the brazier, letting the heat soak into his fingers. He flexed his knuckles and watched the flame twist and spit.
His eyes were dry. His thoughts were not.
He pulled the leather-bound journal toward him, opened to a blank page, and began to write.
The North is waking. Not with song. With breath.
They rise earlier now. Stand straighter. The shield wall no longer splinters at the third command. They speak less. Look more. The spear no longer trembles in every hand.
There are flaws, but they're being burned out like rot beneath a winter frost.
We do not speak of glory here. We speak of holding. Of standing when others flee.
He paused, tapping the quill's feather end against the table.
I've begun to dream not of fire, but of rhythm.
The rhythm of steps on stone. The clash of shields. The unity of cold silence before impact. These are the weapons we forge now.
He signed it with just the date, then closed the journal and stared at the hearth.
Still no noise in the keep. No footsteps. Only wind brushing the shutters like a distant voice that refused to speak up.
He stood and left the solar.
The torch sconces down the stairwell flickered with weak orange glow. He moved silently, his boots brushing dust that had gathered near the unused archways.
Rather than return to his chambers, he walked out into the courtyard, then crossed beneath the wall into the godswood.
The trees were motionless. Only the snow moved—slowly falling, collecting across the roots of the great weirwood.
The heart tree was awake, as it always was.
Ned stood before it and bowed his head.
He did not pray. He thought.
Of Jon and Theron, sleeping now in the same keep the kings of the north from 8000 years ago had once laid there heads,
Of Lyanna, awake more often now, watching him with eyes that carried both gratitude and worry,
Of Rickard, who had dreamed of southern glory and never seen the result of his folly
He looked up at the heart tree and whispered, "I'm not him."
The tree bled red silently.
"I won't kneel again, and once the north has become strong enough to remove the chains the South has placed around us, we will kneel no longer, let them call me an oath breaker it matters not, the lives of my people matter more than the words of others."
He knelt for a long time beneath the boughs, letting the frost settle on his shoulders.
When he rose, snow clung to his cloak.
He walked the perimeter of the inner wall, stopping briefly by the barracks. Light spilled from the eastern window—Benjen.
Ned pushed the door open.
Benjen sat with a ledger, head bowed, reading by lantern-light.
"You ever sleep?" Ned asked.
Benjen looked up. "You ask with the tone of a man who doesn't."
Ned sat across from him without removing his cloak. The heat from the brazier in the corner did little to thaw his expression.
"I wrote the letters."
"I assumed."
"And the journal grows longer."
Benjen leaned back. "You ever consider speaking to a living person instead?"
Ned allowed himself a faint smile. "The paper doesn't argue."
Benjen studied him for a moment. "What's next?"
"Drills continue. I want full spear rotations before the month's end. We'll phase in mixed formations and the ability to strike and retreate, . Evaluate shield resilience in tandem."
"You'll need better shieldwood."
"I've already written to Forrester."
Benjen grunted. "Of course."
Ned tapped the edge of the table. "When the grey beards we asked Rodrick to find arrive they will take over the training. It will give me more time for the rebuilding process, let them train them I will check once a week for their progress, once a batch is done we take more and more until every man in Winterton can hold a spear and shield and march in formation" Ned said.
"They think you're building an army," Benjen added, tone neutral.
"I'm not," Ned said. "Not yet, that will come later, when the moat is rebuilt and secure I plan to make a standing army, loyal to the starks and the starks alone, I have plans Benjen of a free United north, but plans take time, slowly and steadily I will make us strong once more"
Benjen raised an eyebrow.
Ned didn't elaborate.
They sat in silence until the candle burned halfway down.
—
Before dawn, Ned made one final stop.
The crypts.
He moved quietly through the rows of Stark dead, their faces carved in likeness, their weapons laid at rest.
He paused before Brandon's statue.
"I never told you," he said aloud, "but you were never ready, not yet,
The stone stared ahead.
"You were brave. You were fast. But you never saw what was coming, I loved you brother, more than I can say, I'll make sure the family stays safe,
He stepped one alcove down, to Rickard.
"I won't rule like you, you were our father and you used us like cyvasse peices,the family will stay strong together united as a pack."
Snow fell steadily. Soft. Cold. Enduring. The north would become better, it would endure.