The return to Harrenhal was quieter than it should've been.
No cheers. No drums. No riders waiting at the gate.
Just the sound of wind scraping against the black towers a sound that didn't belong to the living.
Althea dismounted slowly, her cloak heavy with the cold. "Where are the guards?" she asked.
Nelly frowned. "The gates should be manned at all hours."
"They were." Petyr's tone was soft, calculating. "Which means something made them disappear."
The Empty Halls
The great hall stood silent. The torches had burned out, leaving only the faint, copper smell of old blood.
Althea's boots echoed as she crossed the flagstones.
"Someone's been here," Nelly whispered.
"Someone still is," Althea murmured.
She turned toward the staircases and froze.
A trail of crimson drops, barely visible in the moonlight, led upward.
Her hand went instinctively to her dagger. "Stay behind me."
They followed the trail to the solar. The door was ajar, moving slightly, as if breathing.
Inside lay the body of Ser Aemon one of her most loyal men. His throat was slit clean, his eyes wide, as though he'd died mid-word.
Pinned to his chest was a scrap of parchment.
In smeared ink, it read
"The river bleeds for the crown you seek."
Nelly backed away, pale. "The same phrase the boy assassin whispered before he died."
Althea's pulse thundered. "No," she said. "This one is different. The message isn't from him."
"Then from who?"
Althea's gaze lifted toward the weirwood carving above the hearth a new mark cut into it overnight.
The antlered sigil again, but this time carved through the eyes of the Old Gods.
The Whispering Walls
That night, sleep didn't come. The air itself seemed alive the stones of Harrenhal whispering secrets too old to be sane.
When Althea closed her eyes, the vision returned: rivers turning red, a throne of roots and bone.
She woke to find her fingers bleeding though she hadn't moved.
The blood spelled one word on the sheet: "Below."
At dawn, she called her captains. "Search every tunnel beneath the castle," she ordered.
Peter watched her carefully. "You think the threat hides underground?"
"No," she said coldly. "I think it grew there."
The Dungeon of Echoes
The tunnels beneath Harrenhal were older than memory damp, endless, filled with the ghosts of those who'd been burned alive when the castle fell centuries ago.
Torches hissed as Althea descended, her soldiers uneasy behind her.
One muttered a prayer. Another whispered, "They say the stones still remember."
She silenced them with a look.
They found it after an hour a hidden door behind a fallen statue. Inside a chamber lined with runes, all glowing faintly red.
At its center, a bowl of still water and within it, a reflection not their own.
It showed the council at Riverrun Eddy Tully, the Freys, even the Lannister envoys gathered again.
Nelly gasped. "It's a mirror spell."
Althea knelt beside the bowl. "No it's a message."
The image shifted. Eddy's face turned toward her his eyes bleeding black.
"The pact is broken," he whispered through the water. "You've woken what sleeps beneath."
Then the reflection shattered into blood.
The Betrayer
When Althea emerged, the castle was in chaos.
Two more of her guards had vanished. The stables were burned.
And at the center courtyard a banner had been raised in her own colors, but altered.
The sigil of the mockingbird twisted into a stag's shadow.
Peter stood watching, his face unreadable.
"Who ordered that banner?" she demanded.
He didn't answer.
Nelly stepped between them. "Althea, maybe this isn't"
But Althea had already drawn her blade. "Tell me what you've done."
Peter sighed softly, the sound almost tender. "You wanted a throne, my darling girl. Thrones are built from betrayals. I simply gave you your first one."
Before she could strike, horns blared in the distance.
A second army was approaching bearing the banner of the Black Stag reborn.
The Siege of Shadows
Night fell fast, swallowing the world in smoke.
From the towers, fires burned on the horizon. A thousand torches, moving closer.
Nelly gripped the ramparts. "How did they find us so quickly?"
"Because someone told them," Althea said.
Peter's voice drifted from the shadows. "I warned you every alliance breeds a traitor."
She turned toward him, fury cold as steel. "And every traitor forgets who taught them the game."
The air grew colder unnaturally so.
The Old Gods' whispers returned, rising from the wind, the walls, the very ground beneath them.
"Blood for blood. River for river. Shadow for crown."
And then the gates exploded inward.
Men in blackened armor stormed the courtyard, their faces painted like stags.
At their head rode a figure in obsidian mail antlers forged from ash and iron.
His voice echoed across the field "Kneel, Lady of Shadows. The river belongs to the stag."
Althea raised her sword, the wind howling through her hair.
"Then let the river drown you."
The Prophecy Fulfilled (Half)
The first arrow struck her guard. The second grazed her arm.
Nelly screamed, "Althea, fall back!"
But Althea didn't move. Her eyes glowed again that same crimson fire from the godswood.
The ground trembled. The river surged.
And from its depths rose something ancient shadow given form, water shaped like hands.
The attackers froze as the shadows dragged them into the Trident, screaming.
The water turned red.
And when silence fell, Althea stood alone, her crown glinting darkly under the moonlight formed not of gold, but of black riverstone and blood.
The prophecy whispered again
"The river bleeds for the crown you seek."
Her face paled. She looked down and saw her reflection smiling back at her, though she herself was not smiling.
The Final Twist
When dawn broke, the castle was eerily still.
Bodies lay scattered, half-drowned, half-burned.
Nelly searched for Althea and found her standing in the godswood, barefoot, eyes distant.
"The battle's over," Nelly said softly. "We survived."
Althea turned, voice strange and hollow. "Did we?"
She lifted her hand and the faint shimmer of blood rippled across her palm.
"The river chose," she whispered. "And I think it chose wrong."
Behind her, the weirwood bled a new thicker, darker, alive.
Then, from deep below Harrenhal, came a single, echoing sound.
A heartbeat.
And a voice that wasn't human whispered her name.
"Althea"