Jon moved north after dealing with the dead hanging about the sight were his uncle made his stand.

  Ghost padded ahead, silent as falling snow, a pale blur against shadow. The direwolf had grown leaner, harder, his movements sharp with a predator’s certainty. Weeks beyond the Wall had stripped away softness from them both. Jon’s cheeks were hollow now, his new beard growing in thick with frost. His cloak was patched, his gloves mended twice with sinew and thread pulled from his own shirt.

  Months passed.

  Time broke apart beyond the Wall. Days blurred into white marches and nights into black vigilance. The sun became a pale rumor behind constant cloud. Snow fell, melted, refroze, fell again. Jon learned to read the world by subtler signs: the way wind curled around trunks, the silence that meant predators, the wrong silence that meant the dead.

  He followed his uncle’s trail not as a man might but as a wolf would.

  Broken branches snapped low to the ground. Old blood darkened snow beneath overhangs. Campsites abandoned in haste. Once, he found a scrap of black cloth caught on thorns, the weave unmistakably Night’s Watch. Another time, a scorched patch of earth, fire used not for warmth but desperation.

  “He’s alive,” Jon told Ghost more than once. He had to believe it. And belief, out here, mattered.

  The first wildlings attacked at dusk.

  They came howling from the trees; six of them, fur-cloaked and half-mad with hunger. Cannibals. Jon knew the signs now: filed teeth, bone charms, eyes too bright. One hurled a spear. Ghost took him down in a flash of white and red, tearing out his throat before the man could scream.

  Jon drew Longclaw. Valyrian steel sang.

  The fight was brutal and fast. One wildling rushed him with an axe; Jon stepped inside the swing and drove Longclaw through the man’s ribs. Another tried to flank him, Ghost slammed into his legs, dragging him down, snapping bone.

  When it was done, Jon stood panting, blood steaming in the snow. He wiped his blade clean on a corpse and did not look back. That was the first of many attacks he had to deal with. There were others, many of them.

  A shadowcat stalked them for three days it was silent, patient, clever. Jon only realized something was wrong when Ghost refused to sleep, pacing endlessly. On the fourth night, it struck.

  The thing dropped from a tree like living darkness, claws raking Jon’s shoulder. Pain exploded. Jon rolled, slashing blindly. Longclaw bit deep. The cat screamed, a horrible, almost human sound and Ghost finished it, jaws clamping around its neck.

  Jon burned the body after he feasted on what he could with Ghost. He burned everything out here.

  The farther north he went, the more the world changed. Unicorns not the gentle creatures of song that Sansa used to read about, but great beasts with blood-matted horns that charged without warning. Jon killed one only by leaping aside at the last second and driving Longclaw up beneath its jaw as it thundered past.

  Aurochs stampeded through frozen valleys, massive and furious, their hooves shaking ice loose from cliffs. Jon learned to hide, to become small.

  Polar bears hunted them once, two of them, enormous, scarred, half-starved. Jon climbed a tree as Ghost distracted them. He dropped from above, blade flashing, and nearly died for it. His left arm never fully stopped aching after that.

  But it was the dead that came most often. Wights rose from drifts, from old battlefields, from shallow graves marked only by cairns. Sometimes they came alone. Sometimes in hordes, their blue eyes burning like cold stars.

  Jon killed any he ran into. Fire when he could. Steel when he must. Valyrian steel worked wonders. Longclaw cut through frozen flesh as if it were meat. Heads fell. Limbs shattered. Ghost tore and tore and tore until his muzzle was always red.

  Still, the dead kept coming. There were nights Jon did not sleep, only sat with his back to a tree, sword across his knees, whispering his uncle’s name into the dark. “Benjen Stark,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  +4 Prowess(forgot last turn increase)

  -

  It was during the fourth month that Jon realized he was being guided. Not by tracks. Not by Ghost. By the absence of danger.

  Paths opened where none should exist. Wights failed to rise where he camped. Storms broke around him, leaving him untouched. Once, he woke to find fresh snow swept clean in a perfect circle around his fire.

  “You’re being watched,” Jon murmured.

  Ghost did not disagree. Then came the night of the trees. They were dead trees, white and twisted, growing in a ring. The air there was so cold it burned. Jon felt it thinking, probing at him, testing his memories. His blood. His name.

  Something moved among the trunks. A man—no. A figure.

  He rode an elk pale as bone. His hands were black with rot, fingers long and corpse-thin. His eyes burned red, not blue. The dead recoiled from him.

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  Ghost bristled but did not attack. “Who are you?” Jon demanded, Longclaw raised.

  The rider did not answer at once. When he spoke, his voice was dry as leaves. “You should not be here, Jon Snow.”

  Jon’s blood went cold. “You know my name.”

  “I know many names,” the figure said. “I knew your uncle.”

  Jon took a step forward. “Benjen Stark. Is he alive?”

  A pause. “Alive,” the man said slowly, “is a word with many meanings.”

  Jon’s grip tightened. “Take me to him.”

  The rider studied him for a long moment. Then he turned his elk. “Follow,” he said. “If you can.”

  They rode or walked in Jon’s case, for many days and nights.

  Time ceased to have meaning. Sleep came in snatches. Hunger dulled. The world narrowed to the steady crunch of boots, the soft pad of Ghost’s paws, and the slow, tireless gait of the pale elk beneath the rider. The forest grew stranger with every mile. Trees leaned at impossible angles. Shadows lingered too long after the light passed. Once, Jon thought he heard singing carried on the wind, thin and distant, like memory rather than sound.

  At night, when they rested, Coldhands never slept. He stood watch, unmoving, a black silhouette against the stars, eyes fixed on the dark as if daring it to move. Wights never approached. Jon felt them sometimes, felt something lurking beyond the trees but it would not cross whatever line the rider drew simply by being there.

  It was during one such night, with the fire burning low and Ghost curled at his side, that Jon finally asked. He looked up at the rider, who sat astride the elk like a figure carved from old wood and bone. Frost rimed his cloak. His breath did not fog the air.

  “Who are you?” Jon said.

  The eyes shifted to him. For a moment, Jon thought the man would ignore the question as he had ignored so many others. Then something in that dead face… softened. Only a fraction. “They call me Coldhands.”

  That was all. Jon waited for more, for a name, a story, a reason but Coldhands turned his gaze back to the forest, and the night closed around them again. No more words came.

  After that, the world began to change.

  At first it was subtle. Snow no longer lay as deep. Ice cracked beneath Jon’s boots to reveal dark, wet soil below. The cold eased not truly, but the absence of biting cold was gone. Ghost lifted his head, ears pricked, tail swaying slowly, as if he smelled something he had not smelled since he was a pup.

  Life. Moss crept along stones. Ferns unfurled beside half-frozen streams. Jon breathed in and nearly staggered at the scent damp earth, green growth, the rich smell of water that moved instead of slept. Warmth brushed his skin, light as a remembered touch. For a heartbeat, he was a boy again, running through the godswood at Winterfell, the sound of water and leaves and laughter around him.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They passed between two ancient weirwoods. Their trunks were vast, bark pale as old bone, their faces worn down by centuries of wind and weather until only the suggestion of eyes and mouths remained. Yet Jon felt them watching him. Not judging. Remembering.

  And then he saw it. The grove. Jon stopped so abruptly that Ghost bumped into his leg.

  It lay before him like a dream that refused to fade, a wide, sheltered hollow untouched by winter. Grass covered the ground, green and thick. Trees arched overhead, their leaves heavy and alive. A stream wound through the clearing, its waters flowing freely, catching the light like silver thread. Fireflies drifted in slow, lazy spirals, their glow soft and golden.

  And there were voices. High, lilting, full of laughter. They emerged from the trees one by one.

  Small figures. Slender. Graceful in a way that made human movement seem clumsy by comparison. Their skin was the color of bark and leaf and stone; browns, greens, and pale greys blending like living wood. Their eyes gleamed like molten gold and deep amber, catching the firefly light. Delicate horns curved from their brows, ridged and beautiful.

  A dozen at least. Children of the Forest. Not ghosts. Not stories. Not remnants scraped from the margins of men’s histories. Alive.

  They watched Jon Snow with ancient, unblinking curiosity. Some tilted their heads, studying him as one might study a curious animal. Others whispered among themselves in a language that sounded like wind through leaves and water over stone.

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  Coldhands dismounted at the edge of the grove and finally spoke. “This place is hidden,” he said. “Warm. Safe. As safe as anything can be now.”

  Jon fell to one knee, overwhelmed. “This can’t be possible. I thought they were gone,” he whispered.

  One of the Children stepped forward.

  She was the tallest, her skin pale as birch bark, her eyes bright as dawn through leaves. When she smiled, it was gentle, sad, and impossibly old. “Gone?” she said softly, in the Common Tongue, though her accent bent the words like branches in wind. “No, wolf-blood. We are not gone.”

  Another joined her, taller, antler-horned, his gaze sharp as flint. “We endure,” he said. “As roots endure beneath stone. As memory endures beneath time.”

  A third’s eyes lingered on Jon’s sword. On Longclaw. On the wolf pommel. Recognition flickered there. Interest. Caution.

  “You walk where few of your kind have walked and lived,” the first said.

  Jon swallowed. His heart hammered in his chest. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he said hoarsely. “Benjen Stark.”

  The Children’s gazes shifted not to Jon, but to Coldhands.

  At last one of the Children spoke.

  She was small even for her kind, slight as a sapling, with short antlers curved from her brow, wrapped with thin strands of vine and bone beads that clicked softly as she moved. She smiled gently, and there was kindness there, but also exhaustion so deep it felt like the end of an age.

  She gestured with one delicate hand, palm open, toward the rider who had brought him here. “Why don’t you introduce yourself, Ben… to your nephew.”

  Jon turned. Coldhands was already moving. Slowly almost reverently he reached up and drew back his hood. The face beneath was grey and pale, the skin drawn tight by death, eyes glowing faint red in the firefly light. Ice rimed his lashes. His breath did not mist. And yet—

  Jon knew that face. He had known it since childhood. Had seen it smiling across the hearth at Winterfell, stern and amused all at once. Had heard it laugh. Had felt its hand clap his shoulder. “Uncle…” Jon whispered.

  Benjen Stark inclined his head. The motion was stiff, wrong in small ways, but unmistakably him. A sad smile touched his lips, cracked but sincere. “Jon,” he said. His voice was rough, as if scraped across frost. “You’ve grown.”

  The world tilted. Jon staggered forward, stopping only a few paces away, afraid, absurdly that if he touched him, Benjen would shatter into rime and bone. “You’re…” He swallowed hard. “You’re dead.”

  Benjen chuckled softly. “Mostly.”

  Anger flared then, sharp and sudden, cutting through the shock. “What happened?” Jon demanded. “What did they do to you?”

  Benjen’s smile faded. “I got done in by them,” he said simply.

  The grove seemed to darken at the words, the fireflies dimming as if in mourning. The Children listened in silence.

  “We were tracking signs,” Benjen went on. “Dead villages. Vanished clans. Too clean. Too quiet.” His red eyes drifted northward, toward unseen horrors. “They were watching us long before we ever knew.”

  He touched his chest, where the black fabric of his cloak was stiff with old frost. “They came in the night. White shadows. Cold that burned worse than fire. I fought. We all did. It wasn’t enough.”

  Jon clenched his fists. “Why aren’t you like them?” he asked. “Why aren’t you… controlled?”

  Benjen looked at the child. “She intervened,” he said. “The Children did. Bound me before the Others could finish their work. Anchored what was left of me to the old magics. To memory.”

  The Child spoke quietly. “He carried King Blood. We could not let him fall into their hands. He now walks in death, but his will is his own. A rare thing. A costly thing.”

  Benjen nodded. “I can’t cross the Wall anymore. Can’t rest. Can’t truly live.” He met Jon’s gaze. “But I am not theirs.”

  Jon’s eyes burned. “I looked for you,” he said. “In another life. I never found anything. Just bones and rumors.”

  Benjen’s expression looked confused but he smiled. “I saw you. From afar. You were brave. And stubborn. Stark to the bone. I decided to stay away.”

  The small Child with the antlers stepped forward again. Leaves crunched softly beneath her bare feet. She looked at Jon Snow not as a boy, nor as a man, but as something unfinished.

  “You have walked far,” she said. “Farther than you were meant to.”

  A faint smile touched her lips. “We never expected to find you here…maybe your little brother and his friends but you were to be Lord Commander.”

  Jon knew she must be talking about his first life. How things played out before. However he was surprised that they knew how things played out. The children of the forest were truly very alien creatures with many powers.

  Benjen shifted beside him. Jon could feel the cold radiating off his uncle now, not painful, but ever-present, like standing too close to a glacier. Benjen said nothing, but his eyes watched the Children carefully. He knew this moment mattered.

  “There is someone who wishes to see you,” the Child continued. Her golden eyes flicked northward, far beyond the trees, beyond even the sense of distance. “One who watches. One who remembers. One who waits.”

  Jon’s brow furrowed. “Who?”

  “The Three-Eyed Crow.”

  The name meant nothing to him. “What does he want with me?” Jon asked.

  “To teach,” said another Child, taller, bark-scarred, with eyes like amber lit from within. “To bind. To prepare. To pass on what cannot be carried much longer.”

  Jon’s pulse quickened. “Prepare me for what?”

  The grove darkened for a heartbeat. Somewhere far away, ice cracked like thunder. “For the Long Night,” the Children said together.

  Jon exhaled slowly. He had known this answer would come. Had felt it coiled around every step of his journey north, in every corpse he burned, every wight he cut down, every beast he fought just to keep moving.

  “I’ve already fought the dead,” Jon said. “I know they’re coming.”

  “You know the surface of a storm,” the antlered Child replied gently. “Not the heart of it.”

  “If I go to this… watcher,” Jon said at last, “will he know things about me?”

  The Children exchanged glances. “He will see what is shown,” Leaf said carefully. “And much that is not.”

  Benjen snorted softly. “Cryptic as ever.” His looked at Jon. “I have felt him,” he said. “A presence deeper than the snows. Older than the Wall. He is not one of the Others.”

  Jon felt a chill crawl up his spine. In his first life, he had never met such a being. He knew nothing of crows with three eyes, of trees that spoke, of those who watched through bark and bone. Whatever this was, it was new. Untested. Dangerous.

  “If I go to this… crow,” Jon said slowly, “what happens to me?”

  The Children did not answer at once. At last, the antlered Child said, “You will change.”

  Jon let out a humorless breath. “That’s hardly new.”

  She smiled sadly. “You will see through roots and ravens. You will carry memories that are not yours. You will feel the weight of every choice ever made in this land.” Her voice softened. “And some part of you may never return.”

  Silence stretched. “And if I refuse?” Jon asked.

  Leaf spread her small hands. “Then you may remain here. Hidden. Safe, for a while. This grove is warded. The dead do not enter. The Others do not see it.”

  Safe. The word rang hollow.

  Jon looked at Benjen. His uncle studied him in a way that made Jon uneasy not as a man studies a boy, but as a ranger studies a storm he cannot predict. “You’ve changed,” Benjen said slowly.

  Jon said nothing. Because how could he explain it?

  How could he tell them that this was not his first time standing at the edge of the world? That he had already lived, already failed, already died with betrayal on his lips and steel in his gut? That this was not courage driving him forward but refusal?

  They did not know. None of them knew. To them, Jon Snow was simply a young man who had come too far beyond the Wall and survived.

  Not a revenant of time. Not someone who had a second chance. Not a soul dragging an entire future behind his eyes.

  Jon thought of Winterfell. Of Bran, broken and fallen, his fate already twisting away from the path Jon remembered. Of Arya, wild and sharp and alone. Of Sansa, still unscarred, for now. Of a world that kept ending no matter how many times he tried to hold it together.

  He thought of Robb, dying beneath a fallen horse, and of knives in the dark at Castle Black, and of waking gasping for breath with snow in his mouth.

  He thought of Ghost. The direwolf sat at the edge of the grove, red eyes fixed on Jon, tail still, posture alert. Waiting. Always waiting. He would follow Jon anywhere. He always had.

  “If I stay,” Jon said, “the world still burns.”

  “Yes,” said the Children.

  “If I go,” Jon said, “it might burn anyway.”

  “Yes,” they said again.

  Jon closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, his voice was steady.

  “I didn’t come this far to hide.”

  The antlered Child bowed her head, just a fraction. Respect. Not approval. Not sorrow. Simply acknowledgement.

  “The path to the Three-Eyed Crow is long,” she said. “Longer than the one you have already walked. You will not return as you are.”

  Benjen stepped forward then. He placed a cold, dead hand on Jon’s shoulder. The touch should have been unbearable. It wasn’t. “Whatever you become,” he said quietly, “remember this, you are a Stark. And you are my nephew. That still matters.”

  Jon nodded, throat tight. “I won’t forget.”

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