The afternoon had started peacefully enough. I was in the practice yard with Robb and Theon, watching them train with the master-at-arms. Arya had been pestering Bran earlier, chasing him around the courtyard with a wooden sword, laughing that wild laugh of hers. I'd smiled at that—she was always so fierce, so full of life.
I didn't see exactly what happened. One moment I was watching Robb's footwork, and the next I heard screaming. Not playful screaming—real terror.
I ran toward the sound, my heart already pounding. A crowd had gathered near the archery butts. I pushed through, Ghost at my heels, and that's when I saw her.
Arya lay on the ground, impossibly still. An arrow—one of the practice arrows—protruded from her chest. Blood spread across her grey dress like a blooming flower. Her eyes were open but unfocused, staring at nothing.
"Someone was practicing," I heard Theon say behind me, his voice shaken. "The arrow went wide, she ran past at the wrong moment—"
I couldn't hear the rest. The world had narrowed to just her—my sister, my friend, the only one who'd kept my secret.
Maester Luwin was already kneeling beside her, his weathered hands checking her pulse at her neck. Father arrived, running from the keep, his face grey with fear. Robb stood frozen, his practice sword still in his hand. Sansa and Bran were being held back by Septa Mordane.
"Arya," I whispered, moving forward.
That's when Lady Catelyn arrived. She must have been in the keep. She ran to Arya's side, her skirts flying, and fell to her knees. Her hands hovered over the arrow, afraid to touch it, and she let out a sound I'd never heard from her—a mother's anguish.
Then she saw me approaching.
The world seemed to spin around me. I was dimly aware of the chaos—people shouting, crying, Maester Luwin calling for help to move her. All I could focus on was Arya's still form, the terrible fletching of the arrow in her chest. I pushed through the numbness and shock, moving toward her. My mind became desperately focused. I had to save her. I could save her.
But a hand—hard and unyielding—clamped down on my arm. Lady Catelyn, her face transformed by grief and fury. Her eyes, usually cold blue, now blazed with frantic, desperate hatred. She raised her free hand and slapped me hard across the face. The sting was sharp, jolting, snapping me out of my trance.
"Stay back, bastard!" she shrieked, her voice raw with pain that transcended all reason. "You have no place here! You'll only bring more ruin!"
Her words poured out—a torrent of fury, a lifetime of resentment finally unleashed. I stared at her, my cheek throbbing, but I didn't feel the sting. I only felt the urgency. Life was draining from my sister with every passing second.
"She's dying, Lady Catelyn!" I pleaded, my voice coming out as a hoarse whisper. "I can help her, I know I can!"
"You've done enough!" she screamed, her eyes fixed on me as if I were something poisonous. "You're a stain on this family, and now you want to befoul her last moments with your… your dark arts!"
She knew. Somehow, she knew about what I could do. Maybe she'd heard whispers from the servants about the stable boy. Maybe she'd always suspected there was something unnatural about me.
But then Maester Luwin's voice—grave and solemn—cut through her rage. "My Lady," he said, his hand still on Arya's neck, fingers pressed to where her pulse should be. "She's stopped breathing. She's gone."
The words hung In the air, heavy and final.
Father's face crumpled. A low, broken sound escaped his lips—I'd never heard him make a sound like that. Lady Catelyn's furious strength left her all at once, and she sagged, her hands falling limp. The world seemed to fade to a silent, desolate grey around us all.
But something fierce and burning ignited within me.
Gone? No.
I'd brought life back from death before. Not complex human life, but simple, quiet life—plants, dead branches, withered leaves. The same life force that animated the trees in the Godswood was flowing out of Arya's body right now. I could feel it, even from where I stood. I could feel it leaving her, dissipating like smoke.
I could bring it back. I knew it with a certainty as cold and sharp as the steel in her chest.
I moved again, pulling against Lady Catelyn's weakening grip. I ignored her limp form, ignored the shock and sorrow etched into Father's face. I took one purposeful step toward Arya's body.
Lady Catelyn saw my movement. She tried to rise, her hands still shaking with mingled grief and rage. "No," she said weakly. "No, you won't touch her—"
But before she could reach me, Maester Luwin stood and put a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder.
"My Lady," he said, his voice calm yet carrying an edge of steel, "let him go."
Catelyn stared at him, her eyes wide with bewildered fury. "Are you mad? He'll do some terrible thing, some… some sorcery! He'll damn her soul!"
"What is left for him to do, my Lady?" the maester asked, his gaze still fixed on me. There was something in his eyes—not hope exactly, but a desperate willingness to try anything. "She is already gone. What harm can he do to a soul that's already left this world?"
He gave me a small nod. Almost imperceptible. A wordless message: *I don't understand what you are, but I've seen what you can do. Do it now, or never.*
I took another step, my heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted to break free. I knelt beside Arya in the dirt and the blood, and gently placed my hands on her chest. One hand rested on the arrow shaft. The other lay flat against her skin, just beside the wound.
I closed my eyes and reached for her with everything I had.
This wasn't a bargain with life. This was a bargain with death itself.
I felt the cold first—the profound, terrible cold of her body. The stillness. The emptiness where warmth and breath and movement should be. There was no pain to heal anymore, no struggling life to guide and mend. There was nothing.
I had to create something from nothing.
I reached out with my mind, not to her body but to the space where her life had just been. I could still sense it, somehow—an echo, a shadow, a fading ember. I imagined her as she was: a tiny, fierce, defiant flame that refused to be put out.
I willed that flame to reignite.
I poured my own fire into the emptiness. A river of my own life force, flowing out of me and into her. A desperate, loving offering. Everything I had.
I felt the arrow first—a cold, foreign shard of wood and metal. I willed the muscles and tissues around it to release their death-grip. Then I focused deeper, on the punctured lung, on the torn arteries, on the stilled heart. I commanded the cells to multiply, to knit together, to mend.
The pain hit me like a hammer. Deep, profound, burning pain as my own life force drained away in a torrent. It felt like my very soul was being pulled out through my hands. I wanted to scream, to let go, to stop.
But I held on. I kept pouring myself into her, into my small, still sister who'd kept my secret, who'd looked at me with wonder instead of fear.
After what felt like an eternity—but was probably only moments—I felt something.
A flicker.
The faintest, most impossibly small flicker of warmth. Of life.
I focused on that tiny spark, fanning it like a candle flame in the wind, willing it to grow stronger. The heart that had been silent and still now beat once. Weak, uncertain.
Then again.
And again.
A slow, steady rhythm beginning to build. The lungs, which had been collapsed and still, now drew in breath—a painful, rattling, fragile sound, but breath nonetheless.
I pulled my hands away and collapsed onto the ground beside her. I was panting, my whole body weak and shivering uncontrollably. Every part of me felt hollow, scraped clean. But a profound, overwhelming relief washed through me.
I'd done it.
I looked up through blurred vision. The crowd stood frozen in silence, a circle of shocked faces. Lady Catelyn was still as stone, her eyes wide with something beyond horror—beyond understanding. Father stood behind her, his hand on his sword hilt as if he didn't know what else to do with it.
Maester Luwin knelt slowly beside Arya. His old, practiced hands moved to her chest, carefully, reverently. He reached out and gently—so gently—drew the arrow from her chest.
I held my breath, waiting for blood to gush forth, for the wound to open.
But there was nothing. No spurting blood. No tearing flesh. The skin was scarred, pink and new, but it was sealed shut.
Arya let out a soft groan.
Her eyes fluttered. Slowly, as if waking from deep sleep, they opened. The same grey eyes, bright and alive. She looked at the faces staring down at her—Father, Lady Catelyn, Maester Luwin, the gathered household.
Then her gaze found mine.
A small, weak smile touched her lips.
"Jon," she whispered, her voice hoarse and thin. "You came back."
I didn't have the strength to answer. I just nodded, and let the darkness at the edges of my vision finally pull me under.
When I woke, I was in the maester's tower. My head felt stuffed with wool, and my body ached like I'd been trampled by horses. Grey afternoon light filtered through the narrow window.
Arya was in a clean bed across the room, sleeping peacefully. Her breathing was deep and even. The wound on her chest was just a thin pink line now—barely visible above the neckline of her clean shift.
Father stood by the window, his back to the room, staring out at the courtyard. His posture was rigid, stunned. Lady Catelyn sat on a wooden stool, her face pale as milk, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white.
I was slumped in a chair, still weak, my head swimming. Maester Luwin was the only one who seemed composed, though even his hands trembled slightly as he prepared a cup of herbal tea and pressed it into my hands.
"Drink," he said quietly.
I drank. The tea was bitter and hot. It helped a little.
The silence stretched on, heavy as a shroud. Finally, Father spoke without turning around.
"Tell me," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Explain this. All of it."
Maester Luwin turned from his work table. He looked at Father, then at Lady Catelyn, then at me. His weathered face was grave.
"I cannot explain it in the manner of a healer, my Lord," he said slowly. "The girl was dead. Her heart had stopped. Her lungs had collapsed. The arrow… the damage was mortal by any measure known to medicine. Yet now she sleeps soundly. The wound is healed, sealed as if it happened weeks ago, not hours."
He looked at me. His gaze held fear and wonder in equal measure, mixed with an insatiable curiosity that I recognized from all his years of study and learning.
"The boy brought her back," he said simply. "He reversed the physical process of death itself."
Lady Catelyn let out a soft, choked gasp. "It's sorcery," she whispered. "Black magic. He's a demon. He's cursed."
"No, my Lady," Maester Luwin said, his voice firm despite the tremor in his hands. "I do not believe it is dark sorcery, or even blood magic."
He turned to me fully.
"Jon," he said gently. "Will you tell them how you came by this power?"
"I don't know how I got it," I said quietly. My voice sounded rough, unused. "I've always had it, I think. Or… it grew with me. I don't remember a time before I could feel living things around me."
Father finally turned from the window. His grey eyes—so like Arya's, so like Robb's—fixed on me with an intensity I'd never seen before.
"Go on," he said.
So I told them everything.
...