The air was cold when Aether woke. Not the the cool breath of an autumn morning, but the biting, salt-smeared chill that stung the skin and made his lungs ache. He coughed once, then twice, sitting upright on the damp earth. His fingers clawed at the moss beneath him, the taste of iron sharp in his mouth, though he remembered no wound.
Above, gulls wheeled in grey skies. To his left, the crash of waves against rock. To his right, endless forest stretched, dark and unwelcoming.
He had spawned.
The word slid into his mind naturally, though the thought was absurd. This was no world of pixels and neat squares. The soil clung wet between his fingers, real and heavy. The sea smelled of brine and rot. Yet when his eyes shifted, he could almost see faint edges around things—the shape of trees, the lines of stone, the glimmer of hidden ore beneath the ground. It was not sight as he had known it, but something overlaid, whispering of possibilities.
Aether stood slowly, brushing dirt from his tunic. It was plain, rough-spun—clothes he did not remember owning. His heart beat fast. The last thing he recalled was… nothing clear. Shadows, a sensation of falling, a blur. Then this place.
He turned in a slow circle. The land was wild. The rocky coast curved around a shallow bay, black stone rising like broken teeth. The forest loomed close, thick with pine and oak, their branches dripping from last night's rain. It was quiet save for gulls and surf. Too quiet.
He was alone.
For a long while he did nothing, only listened. But hunger stirred, a low growl in his stomach. Instinct moved him to the treeline, where he found a fallen branch and gripped it like a staff. The bark dug into his hand—real enough. He swung it experimentally. Clumsy. Useless against a wolf, should one come.
Still, the strange overlay in his vision whispered. He could break the branch further. He could shape it.
When he focused, his hands moved with a precision not wholly his own. The stick splintered neatly, pared down to a crude point. He blinked. The thing in his grip was no longer a branch but a spear—awkward, short, yet sharp. He had crafted it.
Aether's breath came fast. His pulse thundered. He looked down at his hands, flexing them. "What in the gods' name…" he muttered, though he knew no gods here.
The next hours passed in a blur. He experimented cautiously: gathering stones from the shore, lashing them with bark and splintered wood. The world obeyed strange rules. Where his intent was clear, matter yielded. Stones aligned neatly into a hatchet's edge. Wood stripped clean became boards. Vines twisted into cord.
By mid-day, he had a crude camp: a lean-to of branches against the cliff, a circle of stones for fire, a handful of sharpened stakes planted in the soil. It looked pitiful, but it was something.
The fire was hardest. Sparks came only after many tries, his palms raw. When at last it caught, smoke coiled upwards, acrid and thin. He crouched near it, teeth chattering.
Food came with more risk. Aether ventured into the forest, the spear in hand. The trees were thick, their shadows deep. He heard rustles, the snap of twigs, the distant howl of wolves. At one point he stumbled on a deer's track but lost it quickly. His stomach gnawed at him.
Then, fortune. A rabbit, quick and twitching, caught in a snare of roots. Aether struck before doubt could stay him. The kill was messy, his hands trembling as he finished it. He cleaned it clumsily with a stone blade, roasted it over the fire until the smell was almost bearable.
The meat was tough, bitter, but he devoured it all.
As night fell, he felt stronger. The overlay in his vision hummed faintly, as if his work had fed it. A window opened in his mind—not words, not numbers, but a sense of progress. Tools would come easier now. Structures, too.
And so they did.
---
The days turned into weeks. Aether learned quickly. He had no choice.
The forest around Sea Dragon Point was unforgiving. Wolves prowled in packs, their howls carrying at night. Bears left claw-marks in the bark of trees wider than a man. Once, Aether woke to the sound of something massive crashing through the undergrowth—he never saw it, but the stench of musk and blood lingered long after it passed.
The crude spear and stone hatchet would not be enough.
So he worked.
The tunnel became a hall.
By day he scavenged wood, stone, and ore. The strange overlay of his vision whispered when veins of iron hid beneath the cliff. He dug greedily, smelting ore in stone furnaces until the heat of them made his chamber swelter. Iron bent to his will, shaped into blades, hinges, nails. The stone of his walls hardened into smooth blocks, fitted with a precision no mason could match.
By night he built.
The first true door was iron-bound oak, thick and heavy, set with a bar across its back. His fire chamber became a proper hearth, venting smoke through carefully carved shafts. He built water channels from a nearby stream, the redstone hum in his veins guiding the flow, until fresh water trickled into a carved cistern in his second chamber.
The third chamber—empty, waiting—grew vast. Aether carved it deeper, supporting the ceiling with pillars of black stone, until it resembled a hall fit for men, not one man's hiding place. The walls glowed faintly from torches he fashioned with coal and resin. The sound of his pick echoed like distant thunder.
But stone alone was not enough.
The forest fed him, but poorly. Rabbits, deer when he was lucky, berries bitter on his tongue. It was dangerous to hunt far. Once, he saw men at a distance—fisherfolk dragging nets along the shore. He ducked low, heart racing. He was not ready. Not yet.
So he turned inward.
Farming was simple, once he recalled how. He dug channels in his growing hall, let water trickle through them. He tilled soil with iron hoe, scattered seeds scavenged from wild grass. Wheat sprouted pale green, slow but steady. Carrots and potatoes followed, rare finds from overgrown plots abandoned by the shore. Within a fortnight, the hall's damp earth was alive with crops.
He built fences of oak, pens within another chamber, and hunted carefully until he captured livestock. Chickens came first—caught at night, hissing and flapping in his arms until he dumped them into their enclosure. Pigs next, lured with scraps. By sheer stubbornness, a pair of cows. Their lowing echoed in the cavern like temple bells.
It was strange, standing there in firelight, the smell of animals and crops around him, stone walls towering overhead. Like a world inside the world. A kingdom in seed.
Weeks passed. His tools grew sharper, stronger. Iron blades gleamed, iron armor clinked as he moved. When he laid the iron on a stone table—the crafting altar, as he thought of it—something stirred.
Light traced across the surface. Runes, faint and shifting. His breath caught as he laid the blade there, his hand over it. Heat surged through his palm, not burning but electric. Words not of this world pressed into his mind.
Sharpness. Smite. Unbreaking.
Aether chose, half in wonder, half in fear. The blade drank the light, and when he lifted it, the steel shimmered faintly blue. He swung once at the wall. The stone cracked.
An enchanted weapon.
He laughed then, breathless, the sound echoing through the halls. In this world of iron and oak, he held magic.
The castle took shape.
At first it was only chambers linked by tunnels. But the more he built, the more his vision whispered. Arches rose where he had carved only crude passages. Stairways curled upward, cut with perfect geometry, until shafts of daylight pierced down like lances. He built towers that rose from the cliff face, stone stacked clean and strong, watching the sea.
It was not a lord's keep, not yet. But it was more than a cave. Walls thick as any holdfast. Gates of oak bound with iron. Courtyards carved into the earth, lit by torches and fed by water channels.
He built a forge that roared hotter than any blacksmith's, bellows driven by a redstone contraption that hissed and thumped with a heartbeat of its own. He built storage halls with rows of chests, each one locking with iron teeth. He built secret passages and murder-holes, redstone traps that would drop stone blocks like hammers if ever an intruder came.
Every night, when he collapsed on his bed of furs, he thought the same thought: I am becoming a lord of stone. A hidden lord.
Months passed.
Winter threatened. The forest grew quiet, animals scarce. But Aether had his farms now, his livestock, his deep stores of wheat and meat. Where others would starve, he would endure.
And still he built.
The great hall expanded into a cathedral of stone, its roof lost in shadows, pillars carved with rough designs—wolves, dragons, stags, the shapes of beasts he remembered only from glimpses in books. He forged chandeliers of iron and hung them with torches, their flames glittering across the chamber.
He built a throne, though he laughed at it when it was done—oak and stone, plain compared to the seats of kings. Yet when he sat upon it, the hall felt less empty.
The castle was alive now. Alive with the bleating of sheep, the cluck of hens, the roar of forges, the whisper of water in its channels. Alive with Aether's footsteps echoing through corridors no other man had walked.
But always, he wondered how long it would remain his alone.
Because sometimes, in the stillness, he heard voices on the wind. Not close, not yet. But near enough to remind him: Sea Dragon Point was no wasteland. Fisherfolk, hunters, raiders—sooner or later, someone would come.
And when they did, they would find a castle where no castle had stood.
---
It happened on a cold morning, the sea grey and restless beneath a sky of iron clouds.
Aether had risen early, walking the upper passages of his cliffside towers. He liked to stand where the stone met the wind, looking out over the bay. The salt stung his face, his cloak snapping around him. Below, the waves crashed endlessly.
That was when he saw them.
Three small boats, little more than fishing coracles, nosing toward the rocky shore. Each carried two men, cloaked against the cold, hauling nets heavy with the day's catch. Fisherfolk, by the look. Not raiders, not warriors. Common men of the North.
Aether's chest tightened. Until now, the castle had been his secret. His alone. He had kept fires low, smoke hidden, noise muffled. He had hunted only by night, ranged only far inland. But the towers… perhaps they had seen them, jutting from the cliff like black teeth.
He ducked back into the stairwell, heart pounding. He could stay hidden. Seal the gates. Let them pass.
But curiosity burned. And another thought, unbidden: All lords begin with subjects.
He met them at the shore.
It was risky, walking openly from the treeline, iron blade at his side, cloak pulled close. The men stiffened when they saw him, hands going to knives at their belts. They were lean, weather-worn, bearded, with the look of those who had lived hard by the sea.
"Ho there," one called, his accent thick with the North. "Who goes in these parts?"
Aether raised his empty hands slowly. "A traveler," he said. His voice sounded strange in the open air, as though he had not spoken it in weeks. "I've taken shelter in the cliffs."
The men glanced at one another. "No shelter in those cliffs," another muttered. "Only stone and wolves."
Aether allowed himself a faint smile. "Stone can be shaped. Wolves can be kept out."
They frowned, puzzled. One stepped forward warily. "We've seen smoke some nights. Thought it wildfires." His eyes flicked toward the cliff towers. "And those. Gods, what are they?"
The moment of choice came.
He could lie. Pretend to be a hermit, a wanderer with a cave. But the stone towers were plain as day. So instead, he reached into the satchel at his belt and drew out a loaf of bread. Fresh, golden-crusted, baked from his own wheat. He broke it in half and held it out.
The men stared. Bread was rare this far north, fresh bread rarer still. One of them took it hesitantly, sniffed, then tore a piece and chewed. His eyes widened.
"By the gods," he whispered. "This is fine work."
Aether inclined his head. "There is more where that came from. Food, tools, shelter. If you wish to trade."
The leader of the fishermen narrowed his eyes. "And what are you, then? A lord? A smith?"
For a long moment, the wind carried only the sound of the sea.
At last, Aether answered quietly: "A builder."
---
They left wary but not hostile, their boats heavy with fish and the taste of strange bread on their tongues. Aether watched them go from the cliff, cloak drawn tight, the waves battering the rocks below.
They would speak of him, he knew. Of the man in the cliffs, the builder with bread finer than Winterfell's kitchens. Of towers where no towers had stood.
Rumors would spread.
And for the first time since he had awakened in this harsh new world, Aether smiled. His castle was no longer a secret tomb of stone. It was the beginning of something greater.
A hidden kingdom.