Time crawled in the darkness.
I had no way to measure it. No sun, no moon, no candle flickering its last breath. Only the slow, rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the corner and the distant, muffled sounds of a castle that didn't care whether I lived or died.
I used the silence to think.
The jailer bought the lie. Or at least, he bought enough of it to carry it to his lord. That buys me time. Time is currency. Time is survival.
I tested the chains again, pulling my wrists apart slowly, feeling the iron bite into my skin. The pain was sharp but grounding. It reminded me that this body was real, that this world was real. The cold seeping through the stone floor wasn't a simulation. The hunger gnawing at my stomach wasn't a game mechanic.
It was real. All of it.
If I'm in the North, the cold makes sense. If I'm in the North, the lords are either Stark bannermen or... worse. The North remembers, but it also flays.
A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran down my spine. House Bolton. The flayed man. If I was in the Dreadfort, I was in the belly of the beast. Roose Bolton wasn't a man you manipulated easily. He was a creature of cold calculation, a predator who had perfected the art of stillness.
If it's him, I need to be very, very careful.
The thump-drag of the jailer's footsteps returned, this time faster, more urgent. The lock screeched, and the door groaned open. Torchlight flooded the cell, blinding me. I squinted, keeping my head low, playing the part of the broken boy.
"Up, bastard." The jailer's gravelly voice was tight with something I hadn't heard before. Nervousness. "Milord wants to see yeh. Now."
I didn't respond. I let him grab me by the arm and haul me to my feet. My legs protested, numb from sitting on the cold stone for hours—or had it been days? The chains around my wrists clanked as he unlocked them from the wall, leaving them on my wrists but freeing me from the stone.
He dragged me out of the cell and into a narrow corridor lit by sputtering torches. The walls were rough-hewn stone, dark with age and soot. The air was cold, biting at my exposed skin through the rags I wore.
Definitely the North.
We walked—or rather, he walked, and I stumbled behind him—through a maze of corridors. The castle was a labyrinth of grim stone and shadow. I caught glimpses of banners hanging from the walls: a red flayed man on a pink field, his skin stretched out in an eternal scream.
The Dreadfort. House Bolton.
My blood ran cold, but my mind sharpened. Roose Bolton. The Leech Lord. A man who ruled through quiet terror rather than loud proclamations. A man who would watch you bleed without changing his expression.
Alright. This is bad. But it's also an opportunity. Bolton is pragmatic. He doesn't kill without reason. He kills when it benefits him. I just need to become a benefit.
As we turned a corner, I caught my reflection in a polished shield hanging on the wall—a decorative piece, probably taken from some fallen enemy. The torchlight was dim, but it was enough.
I saw myself for the first time.
A boy. No older than six and ten. A mess of dark, almost black hair that fell past his ears in tangled waves. A face that was all sharp angles—high cheekbones, a strong jaw, a nose that had been broken and poorly set at some point. But the eyes were what held me. They were grey. Not the warm grey of a summer storm, but the cold, flat grey of a winter sky. Eyes that looked like they had seen too much and felt too little.
Alann Snow. The name surfaced from somewhere deep in the fractured memories of this body. A bastard of the North. Snow. That was the surname given to all northern bastards.
Alann Snow. That's who I am now.
The jailer shoved me through a heavy oak door, and I stumbled into a chamber that was markedly different from the dungeons below. A fire crackled in a large hearth, casting dancing shadows across the room. A long table dominated the center, covered in maps and scrolls. Candles flickered, their wax dripping onto the dark wood.
And at the head of the table, seated in a high-backed chair that might as well have been a throne, sat Roose Bolton.
He was a pale man. Not sickly pale, but the pale of something that lived away from the sun. His hair was long and dark, streaked with grey, and his eyes... his eyes were the palest shade of grey I had ever seen. They were like chips of ice, utterly devoid of warmth. He wore a dark leather jerkin over a pink tunic, the flayed man of his house embroidered over his heart.
He didn't speak. He simply looked at me. Studied me. Weighed me.
I met his gaze. Not with defiance—that would be stupid. But with a calm stillness that mirrored his own. I let him look. I had nothing to hide. Not yet.
The jailer shoved me to my knees on the cold stone floor. "The bastard, milord. As yeh commanded."
Roose Bolton continued to stare at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, his voice cut through the silence. It was soft, almost a whisper, but it carried the weight of absolute authority.
"Alann Snow."
It wasn't a question. He knew my name. Of course he did.
"You told my man that I have a rat in my granary." He leaned forward slightly, his pale eyes never leaving mine. "Explain."
I had prepared for this. Lying to Roose Bolton was dangerous. He was a man who could smell deception like a hound smelled blood. But telling him the complete truth—that I knew the future from a television show—was a one-way ticket to being declared mad and executed.
So I gave him a version of the truth. A useful version.
"My mother," I said, my voice still rasping from disuse. "Before she died, she told me things. Things she shouldn't have known. She said that a man in your service carries whispers to King's Landing. Whispers about your... activities."
Roose Bolton's expression didn't change. "My activities."
"The hunting trips," I continued, choosing my words with surgical precision. "The ones where young women go missing. The ones that Lord Stark would not approve of, if he knew."
A flicker. So brief I almost missed it. Something moved behind those pale eyes. Not fear. Roose Bolton didn't fear Eddard Stark. But annoyance, perhaps. The irritation of a man whose private indulgences had been noticed.
"Your mother is dead," he said flatly. "Convenient."
"She is." I didn't flinch. "But she told me the name of the man who carries your secrets south. A name I will give you... in exchange for my life."
The silence stretched. The fire crackled. The jailer shifted uncomfortably behind me.
Roose Bolton raised a hand and gestured lazily. "Leave us."
The jailer hesitated, then bowed and scurried out of the room, closing the heavy door behind him. Now it was just the two of us. The Lord of the Dreadfort and the bastard with no name but Snow.
Roose Bolton rose from his chair. He moved with an unsettling grace, like a predator who had all the time in the world. He walked around the table until he stood directly in front of me, looking down at my kneeling form.
"You are either very brave or very stupid, Alann Snow." His voice was a cold caress. "Most men in your position beg. They weep. They offer anything—gold they don't have, loyalty they can't prove. You offer a name. A single name. As if it were a treasure."
"It is a treasure," I said quietly. "To a man who values his privacy."
He stared at me for another long moment. Then, something that might have been the ghost of a smile touched his thin lips. It didn't reach his eyes.
"I will consider your offer." He turned and walked back to his chair. "You will be given a room. A better one. You will be fed. And if the name you give me proves true, you may yet avoid the Wall."
He sat down and picked up a scroll, dismissing me from his attention as if I were a servant.
"And if it proves false?" I asked, rising slowly to my feet.
He didn't look up from his scroll. "Then you will wish I had sent you to the Wall."
A side door opened, and a different guard—this one younger, with a hard face and a Bolton sigil on his chest—entered and grabbed my arm. He led me out of the chamber and through another series of corridors, finally stopping at a small but clean room. A straw mattress, a thin blanket, a small window high on the wall showing a sliver of grey sky.
The guard shoved me inside and locked the door behind me.
I stood in the center of the room, listening to his footsteps fade away. Then, slowly, I allowed myself to breathe.
In my mind, the ancient page chimed.
[Daily Objective Completed: Survive Day One.]
[+10 XP]
[Current XP: 20/100]
[New Passive Skill Fragment Detected: Psychological Warfare.]
[Progress: 1/5 encounters with a major political figure.]
I walked to the small window and looked out at the grey, frozen landscape of the North. Snow covered the ground. The sky was a pale, washed-out white. Somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, was Winterfell. The Starks. Sansa.
One step at a time.
I touched the cold stone of the windowsill and let the chill ground me.
I'm in the Dreadfort. I'm a prisoner of Roose Bolton. I have no power, no allies, and no weapons.
And yet... I'm still alive.
A cold, genuine smile touched my lips. It was the smile of a man who had just been dealt a terrible hand and was already planning how to win the game anyway.
Let's see what Day Two brings.
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