The Whispering Roots
Morning light spilled through the ruined windows of Winterfell like liquid silver. The snow had begun to thaw, and with it came the faint scent of new growth something alive beneath the frost.
Althea walked barefoot through the courtyard. Each step left a faint shimmer where her foot touched the stone.
The ground no longer felt cold. It pulsed.
At the center of the godswood, the Tree of Silver Veins towered a living monument of her sin and her salvation. Its trunk glowed softly, like veins of moonlight trapped in bark, and its branches reached far beyond the sky, merging with the aurora that had not faded since Job's awakening.
When she placed her hand upon it, whispers filled her mind.
Not voices memories.
"The gods are gone"
"You took their light"
"But light remembers its shape."
Her fingers trembled. "What are you?"
The tree answered in silence, showing her flashes of faces, flames, a thousand years condensed into a single breath.
She saw herself standing in darkness, holding Job's heart in her hands, surrounded by dying stars.
Then she saw a child her child running beneath silver leaves.
The Dreamseed
Job found her kneeling beneath the branches, eyes distant, breath trembling.
"You've been here since dawn," he said quietly.
Althea looked up. "It showed me something."
"The tree?"
She nodded. "A child with your eyes and my light."
He froze. For a long moment, only the sound of wind through the branches filled the air.
"That's impossible," he murmured. "We're not"
"Alive?" she finished softly. "We are more than that now. The gods burned our mortality away. But the world still craves balance."
Job's hand brushed the tree's roots. They pulsed faintly, and a ripple passed beneath their feet.
"Then what is this dreamseed?" he asked.
She turned to him, her voice barely a whisper.
"The beginning of something neither divine nor mortal. Something new."
The Blood of the Old
That night, Bran came to the godswood. He moved slower than before every vision seemed to cost him more now.
"You feel it too," he said, staring up at the glowing branches. "The tree isn't just alive. It's awake."
Job crossed his arms. "Alive, awake what difference does it make?"
"Everything," Bran replied. "It's remembering. And it's building."
"Building what?"
Bran's eyes turned distant, like seeing across centuries.
"A bridge. Between what was lost and what must come."
Althea frowned. "A bridge?"
Bran's voice dropped.
"The gods left echoes. They linger in memory. The tree is stitching those echoes into something that can survive but it's using you as the pattern."
Althea stiffened. "Me?"
"You're the vessel that destroyed the old order," Bran said softly. "So the new one grows in your shadow."
The Silver River
Days passed, and Winterfell changed with them.
Where snow once buried the fields, rivers of light now ran silver streams cutting through stone and soil, glowing faintly in the night.
People came from the far North, from the Vale, from even the shattered South, drawn by whispers of the living tree and the two who walked between gods and mortals.
They knelt when they saw Job and Althea though neither asked them to.
"Don't call us gods," Job warned one evening. "We've had enough of thrones."
"Then what are you?" one woman asked.
Althea smiled faintly. "The dream that lived."
But in her heart, she felt the tree's roots curling deeper, feeding on faith, memory, and emotion binding the land tighter with every prayer whispered in their name.
The Memory Flood
That night, Althea dreamed.
She stood beneath the tree again, only now its roots stretched across the world piercing cities, wrapping mountains, touching every sea.
From each root, memories flowed old wars, lost loves, dying stars.
And in the center of it all stood the child again, barefoot, holding a small glowing seed.
"Mother," the child said softly, "they're coming back."
Althea's chest tightened. "Who?"
"The ones who sleep in the roots."
She turned and saw shadows moving beneath the silver soil, shapes twisting like ancient ghosts. Faces she had seen before R'hllor, the Weirwood Gods, even the faceless void that had whispered to her in her darkest hour.
They were returning, but not as gods as memories wearing flesh.
The child held out the seed. "Only you can choose what grows."
The Choice of Creation
Althea woke with tears streaming down her face.
Job stirred beside her, half asleep. "Another dream?"
"A warning," she whispered. "The tree is rewriting the world using us as the ink."
He sat up, alarmed. "Then we stop it."
She shook her head. "No, Job. This is creation itself. You can't stop it only shape it."
He reached for her hand. "Then we shape it together."
Althea smiled faintly, though her heart trembled. "Together, always. Even if the dream forgets our names."
The Birth of the New Dawn
At sunrise, she returned once more to the godswood.
The tree's roots pulsed, and light began to gather in its heart forming a glowing cocoon of silver and gold.
Inside, faintly, a heartbeat echoed.
Althea closed her eyes, and tears fell freely now. "So this is what rebirth costs."
Job came beside her, silent, his hand resting over hers. "Is it him? The dreamseed?"
She nodded. "It's the world's way of remembering us."
The cocoon pulsed again and from within, a soft voice whispered, "Mother."
Job and Althea watched as the cocoon split open, revealing only light pure, endless light spreading through the roots, the rivers, the skies.
The world itself began to breathe again.
The Tree's Last Gift
When the light faded, a small silver sprout grew where the cocoon had been.
Althea knelt before it. "It's small," she whispered.
Job smiled softly. "Everything that matters starts small."
Bran approached quietly. "The gods are gone," he said. "The old world is ash. But this, this is the memory of love made living."
Althea touched the sprout gently. "Then let it grow not for worship, not for thrones, but for the dream we dared to live."
The tree shimmered in response its glow soft, peaceful.
And for the first time since the war of light and shadow, silence fell over the North not the silence of death, but of rest.
The Whisper of Tomorrow
That night, Althea and Job sat beneath the silver tree.
"Do you think it'll last?" he asked quietly.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Nothing lasts forever. But maybe that's the point. We don't need forever we just need now."
Job smiled faintly, his arm wrapping around her. "Then let's make now worth remembering."
Above them, the aurora shimmered a river of light flowing through the heavens, echoing the silver veins below.
And from the heart of the tree came a whisper, so faint it could have been the wind
"The dream continues."