12.Blood in the Darkness

259 AC, Beyond the Wall

The Lost Bastard

Blood bloomed across the snow like a crimson flower as Jon cautiously inched closer, stretching his senses. But there was no danger, only silence amidst the trees and the snow. The singer was dead. It was alone, too. He felt nothing at the sight, as if he had killed just another hare, but his eyes studied the fallen creature regardless.

Dark brown skin, dappled with pale spots like a deer. It possessed a child’s stature, but its nose was too flat to be human, as were its big, cat-like, yellow eyes and leaf-pointed ears. With three fingers and a thumb, all with a curved black talon instead of a nail crowning those slender arms, it looked like someone had mashed together a beast and a human, and this was their twisted offspring, clothed in tree bark and leaves.

Fuck.

Jon wrenched the arrow from its chest with a wet squelch, cleaned it with a fistful of snow, and once it was dry, slipped it back in his quiver. Never had he wished to have a shield as much as now. The padded jack looted from the ranger offered a meagre protection, and the hauberk was set aside in the cave—too cumbersome and loud to wear on a proper hunt.

Was this a mishap, a Child gone rogue out of hatred… or something more deliberate?

The corpse gave him no answer. Bow slung over his shoulder, he rushed through the trees, boots ghosting over the snow, towards the camp-cave. Bloodraven would know what to do. He always did.

The haunted forest was silent. Too silent, as if someone had taken all the sound of the forest and locked it behind some chest. The flutter of wings and song of snowshrikes were absent, as was the humming of the trees as they swayed in the wind. It only made the hammering of his heart echo like thunder as blood rushed in his ears. He cast his mind far and wide, seeking a trace of life. Anything. He found nothing, but that did not calm him.

His right hand was tucked close to his side, hovering over Dark Sister’s hilt and ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.

The trees blurred around him as he went faster and faster. He would have gone faster still, but the great warbow on his back forced him to be mindful of each step. He sped through small valleys and hills, leaping over half-frozen streams and frozen icebushes. As he crested over another hill, whistles tore through the air. He spun, jerking his body away. A hiss escaped his throat as he threw himself behind a tree, clutching his cheek. Crimson seeped between his fingers, but his gaze fell over the five feathery shafts sticking out of the snow.  

Five foes this time. The previous attack had not been a mishap.

His heart hammered in his ears, but no new arrows came. The Children could not curve arrows—they never needed to with their sharp hearing, and with their faint presence and unnatural grace, they could approach any prey unnoticed.   

Creatures of magic they were, if fragile and easy to kill alone, but dealing with five at a distance? That was beyond his means, not where they had the advantage.

He caught the faint shuffling of branches in opposite directions. His breath hitched. They were fanning out, ready to encircle and take him down. They were treating him like prey.

Hot anger bubbled in his chest, threatening to erupt. Jon clenched his jaw.

He drew Dark Sister out, but it felt near useless against arrows. The dragonbone bow would be no better—one set of hands could not halt five any more than a single arrow could best five bows.

Breathe in deeply. Breathe out. 

If you can sense them and your mind is greater, you can slow them down, and even twist it all…

He cast his mind, his very awareness, out like a fisherman’s net, trying to sense the snow and the trees. Slowly, he felt it, the rhythm of the forest itself. He sensed them then, like a churning beacon of hatred. They… loathed him.

Just because… he existed?

His anger boiled over, and Jon saw red.

Even now, he could not see them. He could sense the faint echoes of leaves scattered across the canopy above, but Jon did not try to reach out; he did not try the soft, gentle thread a skinchanger did. He rammed his mind against one. A figure stumbled from a branch, falling into the snow, dazed. Jon was already charging in, Dark Sister drawn. After a moment of dizziness, it got back on its feet swiftly, nimble as most Children were. But in the snow, Jon was swifter, swifter than any Children or their arrows. Dark Sister fell, and a head rolled into the snow before it could even lift a spear.

He leapt away, for a heartbeat later, four arrows whistled by where his chest had been.

He slammed out again with his mind, at all four, but they only paused for a heartbeat. His head throbbed with pain, and he staggered. He tasted iron on his lips. 

All sorcery comes from the mind or the blood.

The pain only fed his fury. He ducked under the next volley, but one grazed his hip, and another his shoulder. Roaring, Jon tugged onto the cold itself and twisted the very forest around the Children—around their feet.

One slipped down its branch, and a second tumbled. Jon staggered towards the nearest one, hefting Dark Sister. The rippled steel swatted away the crude glass-tipped spear, and he hacked down, cleaving the Child’s head in twain.

The second fallen had already fled up the tree again, but then, he felt them come. A dark, angry flood of a hundred small minds, weighed by something bigger, something older and familiar. He saw them next, a storm of feathers, descending on the remaining Children.

Two of the creatures tried to fight against the flock of ravens, swinging their spears and letting their arrows loose—it was futile. The arrows were few, while the black birds felt like an endless flood. Yowls and shrieks of pain mingled with the cawing of crows through the woodland, tearing through the silence. The third Singer slipped away from the dark wave, leaping over another branch, green eyes burning with hatred as they glared down at Jon. Another arrow was placed on the string. This was one too close to avoid, and Jon was too worn. Groaning, he lifted the tapering end of Dark Sister with his left palm, placing the whole sword before his heart like some thin shield. Just in time as the impact rattled his wrists.

But that was the last arrow that came his way. Within seconds, the three children dropped from the branches, rolling into the snow like overripe fruits. The snow turned crimson as it eagerly drank in all the blood. Their bodies were a gory mess, chunks of flesh missing from their eyes, faces, and necks. 

He stared at the mutilated corpses for a long moment, and his anger drained away. Exhaustion and ache struck him like a battering ram. Even his mind felt swollen to the point of breaking, as if his skull would crack open.

Jon wiped the blood that had started dribbling down his nose and laughed hysterically. Even that sent jolts of pain across his temples, and he quickly stopped. 

Before long, hurried footsteps crunched through the snow, and a breathless Bloodraven came through the trees, face twisted in a grimace.

Relief swept over Jon like a wave, and he allowed himself to collapse into the snow. The pleasant cool embraced him like a mother would hug her long-lost child, and for once, he was grateful for it. Even the sting on his cheek lessened. 

“W-What is happening?” Jon wheezed out.

His mentor let out a long, tired groan as he leaned onto a weirwood staff he used as a walking stick. “My master,” he said, panting heavily, “has decided that he likes you better dead than he would like you alive.” 

Jon spat out red on the snow. “I’ve never done him or his any ill.”

“…You haven’t.” Bloodraven inclined his head. Two ravens landed on each of his shoulders, while the rest scattered across the trees, like a wave of black feathers. “But men raise arms for far more than perceived slights. They pick up the sword when they feel threatened, or when their blood boils for bloodshed and spoils.” 

“And I’m a great threat,” Jon said darkly, palming the weirwood beads on his neck. They were searing to the touch, and his own blood had dribbled over them. “Why not come to me, then? I could never win against a master skinchanger or a Green Seer of your strength. Why send these… singers instead?”

“He’s old,” was the tired reply. “A thousand years old, and his flesh and mind had long grown slow and feeble under the onslaught of age. He’s been wedded to the roots for too long, both body and mind, and has no other way to attack but to use the Singers as his sword.”

“A thousand years?” Jon echoed numbly. 

Bloodraven gave him a dark smile. “Weirwood never rots, and its wedding to the root can help a Greenseer linger on for far longer than he could otherwise last. But it’s only for a pale shadow of a life, no true immortality. My Master was born to House Towers, and has even less love for Starks than most—or their bastards.”

Jon felt a lump form in the back of his throat. He knew the history well enough—House Towers had been of the North, one of the many powerful kings that had bent their knee to the Kings of Winter, second only to Bolton and Dustin in strength amongst the Northern bannermen. They had been the lords of the Grey Cliffs… until Karlon Stark had squashed their rebellion and killed them all—the men, the women, and the children, and had been granted their seat as a reward by his royal brother. It was just old history, ink dried on old, yellowy parchment in Winterfell’s library, yet now… now that history was not yet dead, not when a Towers was calling for his head.

“What now?” he asked, voice cracking. 

“Now? Now… we go to kill my master,” Brynden said quietly, turning away. His back had never looked so desolate. “Even the once great Dreaming Eye has fallen. His wits must have finally twisted by age, and death will be a relief for him. He’s three days on foot northeast from here, hiding deep beneath the roots of a great heart tree.”

He had never heard of the Dreaming Eye, but the note of reverence in Brynden’s voice said he had been important once. Or perhaps famous.

“I…” Jon opened his mouth once, twice, but no words came out. In the end, his eyes settled over the bloody corpses in the snow. “What about them?”

As if waiting for their mention, several amber eyes appeared from behind the trees, and Jon hurried to draw his bow, only for Brynden to stop him.

“Some are under my command and will aid us,” was the quiet reply, and Jon sensed no anger or loathing. They came out of the trees, studying their fallen kin with sad eyes that made his heart clench. “As for the others…”

A heavy sigh rolled off his chest, and Brynden Rivers trudged through the snow. Body aching, Jon limped after him, their allied Singers loping ahead of them without saying a word.

It was better this way; Jon did not think he could handle their presence, knowing he had slain their brethren.

A part of Jon was grateful. Time had indeed dulled the mind and powers of Bloodraven’s teacher; otherwise, the ambush wouldn’t have been so sloppy. A little more, and it would have succeeded. If there had been ravens, or even wolves, bears, or boars attacking him alongside the Children…

Though there was no joy in his heart, just… numbness. Gods, he did not wish to die, and was willing to fight for his life as any other. But why… why did they have to attack him so?

Why did his existence have to be so cursed? The weirwood beads on his neck chafed on his skin. Or perhaps it was the new weight of the hauberk… though the twenty pounds on top still saw him move gracefully through the snow, and his boots did not sink even an inch. 

His back quickly grew sore with the new weight, especially as Jon carried it even at night when he slept. 

The first day, there were no enemy attacks, just trudging through the snowy forest in grim silence. His wounds scabbed over, his bruises grew paler and their ache receded, and the other aches across his bones weren’t as painful… as long as he did not move too sharply.

The next day was just as uneventful. But by late afternoon, they saw blood in the woodland, child-like corpses with arrows and spears sticking out of their leafy garments. His eyes paused on every corpse despite himself, and each face sank in his memory. Friend or foe, they had died for him, and the least he could do was remember. 

Bloodraven halted at each corpse, stiffly closing their eyes. “They never burn their dead,” he muttered. “Always let the forest take them, as is the way of stone and wood.”

And so, the fallen Children had been left behind. 

“How many are there?” Jon’s eyes darted across the trees as he stretched his mind, but he sensed no hostility. Even though the murders of ravens had flown ahead, the tension in his shoulders would not go away.

“Not many,” Brynden said in a low voice as they passed through a crescent-shaped weirwood grove. “Once, their kind swarmed across the land from the Rainwood to the Haunted Forest—a great primordial forest across the whole of Westeros. But First Men and the Andals put an end to their dominion, and the aeons saw to the slow coming of their end. Even now, their youngest is fifty of our man years, and they struggle to get more babes in. Only three score remained last year.”

Even less now, then. He tallied the numbers—three had died by his hand. Another three to Bloodraven, and they had seen fifteen more fallen. A third had perished here… just so he could die. Or so he could live. 

He shouldn’t have cared, but it weighed on his mind. Each corpse, each with wide cat-like eyes twisted in pain, and a surprisingly human expression plastered across their face in death. Some had been hostile to him… but not all. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have followed Bloodraven to fight against their kin, against that ancient greenseer Dreaming Eye.

Each death was so final… for there would be no other Children of the Forest. It felt as if Jon was witnessing the end of a long, sad song. And he was not the hero here. A bastard like him had never entertained the notion of heroism beyond his deepest dreams or childish desires, yet no man wished they would grow into some villain or fiend to be slain.

“Did you foresee this?” Jon asked, his voice coming sharper than he had intended.

“Foresee this?” Brynden let out a long, weary sigh. “No. I saw the possibility, but the rivers of time around you are… muddy. Twisted. That’s another reason for my mentor’s… distaste. A greenseer can peer into the river of time, but we can change it no more than you can. Shifting it in the direction they wish? That’s harder than reversing the waters of the Trident.”

Jon’s mouth turned dry. Was the Greensight a boon or a curse? Or perhaps a twisted mixture of both?

The third day came, and his aches had all mended. His body was healing faster than it should have been, but Jon would not complain. Like the previous two days, this one greeted them with a drab grey sky hanging above, not a shred of sunlight or blue sky in sight. By midday, they moved underground. The entrance was a cave at the cleft of a woodhill cliffside, surrounded by a grove of weirwood trees.

When he stepped in, the weirwood beads across his neck grew piping hot, and he hissed as they started stabbing into his skin, tightening around his neck like a noose. 

“It’s the protective magic of this place,” Brynden said, placing a hand over his shoulder. The beads grew cool, easing their hold. Jon wheezed, rubbing the base of his neck. “On your guard.”

Words said, he strung up his weirwood recurve and plucked three arrows with his left hand. 

Jon wanted to ask why, but the question died in his throat. The stench of death and rot struck him. The floor down was covered by bones big and small—rats, hares, foxes, boars, and birds. But they were old, unlike the corpses of leaf-strewn figures lining the caveway.

“What about the crows?” Jon asked hoarsely, glancing back at the ravens on the trees outside.

Bloodraven’s mouth twisted. “They can’t get in. Even if they could, it would do me no good. My master has enough wits left to weave protection against skinwalking. Leave your warbow here—its size will only drag you down inside.”

Reluctantly, he left the dragonbone bow wrap by the entrance, leaning on a twisted weirwood root that had cracked through the rock. His hand tugged on the beads on his neck, but they already hung loose. His master lit a tallow-soaked old cane that served as a torch and handed it to Jon.

He drew Dark Sister in his other hand, but the jewelled hilt of the smoky, rippled steel gave him no comfort as they descended deeper into the darkness. It was as silent as a crypt inside, the only sound was their footsteps crunching against the bone-riddled ground.

They passed through galleries and natural chambers carved into the rock, and each stalagmite and rock formation twisted under the ruddy light of his torch. In the niches along the wall, skulls were placed in some sort of ritual. Jon caught glimpses of chambers where man-sized bat skeletons hung from above in a macabre display. 

He tried to spread his mind, his awareness deeper as Bloodraven had taught him, but couldn’t, as if the very air here repelled him. Never had Jon felt so blind…

When he told Brynden, the old man let out a long sigh. “It’s part of the wards. Sensing the unnatural with your mind is merely another tool to your body, though not one that must be pursued at the neglect of the rest.”

The air grew warmer as they descended, though the corpses finally dwindled.

“At least a dozen singers remain,” the old bastard said as he came to an abrupt halt. “It will not be easy.”

A dozen singers against two of them.

“Do we have a choice?” Jon asked, the words burning on his tongue. Do I have a choice?

“Choice? Not one worth considering. Unless you wish to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. We might leave here, but they will never give up. Like all beings with long lives, the Singers can be patient hunters, waiting for months or even years. My body is getting feebler by the moon, and once I dwindle back into the earth, you will be alone, and they will ambush you. Now is our best chance to resolve this for good.”

Jon swallowed. It was easy to forget that Brynden Rivers was three and eighty. He looked old, yes, but he moved with a spryness well beyond his years. Though he had grown slower in the last moons, his movements had been stiffer, but Jon had thought it was the stiffness of the cold.

No further words were spoken as they delved into the darkness. There was no need to—Jon knew the stakes here. They were going in blind. His eyes flickered to every shadow, every rock, and bone. He glanced at the holes in the wall or the ground, shafts so deep that the torchlight showed no end. 

No attack came, and soon they reached a great cavern opening on a black abyss, and Jon heard another faint noise echoing off the stones in the distance. Water. An underground river, perhaps. Jon swapped the torch for a newer one. 

But Brynden was already nocking an arrow on his bow, and Jon’s lifted Dark Sister, ready to strike down at the shadows.

Then from the darkness came a sad, feminine voice. “Will you truly protect the ice-fiend?” 

“An ice fiend?” Bloodraven scoffed. “Jon’s still a man—warm and breathing—who has done nothing deserving of such attacks. And you know this, Leaf. I have told you all a thousand times that he poses no threat.” 

“His… existence… is… a… threat,” another voice came from the darkness. It was a slow, scratchy voice that sounded as if it belonged to an old man trying to remember how to speak. And it was indeed one—a thousand-year-old man. “The… cold… madness… has… touched… him… yet… magic… boils… hot… in… his… veins. Too… dangerous. His… presence… alone… can… break… the firmament. Fell… things… have… already… slipped… through… the… cracks… the… dragon… maiden… made.” 

Jon shuffled uneasily, swinging the torch about in hopes of seeing his foes. All he saw were twisted shadows along the indentations of the walls, and pale weirwood roots as thick as a giant’s thigh. Worse, the torch’s light was starting to gutter, even though he had changed it not ten minutes prior.

‘Great,’ Jon thought bitterly. They should have turned away. They still could.

Brynden took a step back, and the hair on Jon’s neck rose. “Ability is meaningless without intent, Aran. You know that—”

Twang! 

A chorus of bowstrings echoed across the walls, as if the sound came from each direction. Brynden twisted, shoving him away with a heavy hand. 

White hot pain bloomed across his shoulder. A feathery shaft was sticking out of his ringmail. Many more had grazed him, merely glancing off his hauberk, but this one had struck true… His fingers grew slack, and the torch clattered amidst the bone-covered ground. 

Bloodraven was unharmed, but Jon could feel waves of anger rolling from the old man, rippling through the darkness.

His own bow blurred, and the twanging of bowstrings and whistling of arrows echoed across the cavern. 

Teeth gritted, Jon stumbled into a gap amidst the twisted walls, trying to ignore the pain lancing through his shoulder and paralysing his entire left hand.

And then, he looked down and noticed. One of the weirwood beads was cracked. A jagged shard of obsidian cut through the rune carved in the Old Tongue.

His breath hitched. This was bad. He shivered as if a thousand beetles were crawling up his spine. The air grew heavier, and the flickering torch dimmed further. Even the bowstrings grew silent, as if everyone sensed it. 

It was here, Jon knew.

The voice whispered in his skull, feminine but laden with authority as if it were a queen commanding the royal household. “You will betray your friends.”

The words bounced across his skull like a hot ball, and Jon found himself rising from his hiding spot, Dark Sister brandished at Brynden’s back with his good hand. It felt right. Even the pain in his left shoulder dwindled. The old man was never truly his friend anyway. The whole world was out to get him—

Jon cursed, jerking away his sword hand. 

But he was not the only one affected. As if he had lost reason, Brynden had tossed aside his bow, charging in the darkness with an arrow.

“Stop!” Jon called desperately, trying to reach out with his mind. But he couldn’t. The air felt as solid as granite to his senses, casting him aside once again.

Roaring, he rushed after Bloodraven. But this was no snow, and his foot caught something in the dark, and Jon found himself stumbling face-first. The arrow shaft in his shoulder broke on the ground, sending waves of agony through his torso. Had they… put poison on it?

Stars appeared in his eyes as he tasted iron on his tongue again. ‘No, this was no poison,’ he decided. ‘Just glass sharper than any razor.’ Pained rasps slipped through his throat as all he could do was lie on the ground and listen as he tried to muster his body to move. It didn’t listen. 

Sounds of steel and stone and bone hitting flesh filled the cavern. Inhuman cries of pain joined in the unholy symphony, reminding Jon of the breaking of an old tree under a fierce autumn storm. 

Each scream, each grunt, each shriek that rose like a cacophony felt like a stab through his heart. He had done this. The voice in his head.

‘Twisted things roam amongst the stars,’ the voice whispered, tone as soft as velvet. ‘The void is your fate. Embrace it—”

“I am the sword in the darkness,” Jon choked out, words weak and hollow in his ears. The lie burned on his tongue. “I… I am the fire that burns against the cold…”

He was a black brother no longer, but it stifled the whisper, and that was enough. The heaviness in the air receded, and then he knew the presence was gone.

The sounds of fighting dwindled, now reduced to groans of pain and wet, gurgling sounds that would haunt his nights for a long time. 

The guttering light flickered back to life, and his good hand groped through the dark until his fingers found Dark Sister’s hilt. He stabbed the sword into the ground and used it as a crutch to rise, trying to ignore the numbness in his left hand. This time, he did not rush into the darkness but turned back to gather the torch. The light was hard to find, fallen in a crevice between two protruding roots. 

It was a miracle the weirwood roots didn’t catch fire.

His left hand hung loosely at his side, forcing Jon to choose—a weapon or light.

Grunting, he awkwardly slid Dark Sister back into her sheath, a feat far harder with one hand, and carefully gathered the torch, swinging it about like a sceptre before him. The flickering torchlight lit up the way, shadows twisting and wheeling with each motion. The ground was uneven before him, and the pathway swiftly fanned out wider and wider.

No attack ever came as he ventured deep into the cavern, weaving around the rippling spikes jutting from the ground. Some were thick and squat like castle towers, while others were thin and jagged, and all were towering higher above him with tips that looked no duller than a war lance.

Between them lay the corpses of the Children, eyes clawed out, throats ripped open. Some had chosen to smash their heads against the ground or leap onto the jutting spikes, as if death would give them relief. Perhaps it had. The sight made him queasy, even though he had seen the deaths of others like this. In the madness, bows and spears had been cast aside, but they had used their talons and their sharp, wolfish teeth to kill their own.

Some were still twitching, moaning as they stared at him with wide slitted eyes overflowing with fear, and their gazes pierced deeper than the arrow in his shoulder.

Deeper, he finally found Bloodraven by a great cliff leading down to the darkness. He was at the foot of a great tangle of roots, where a skeleton with wrinkled skin hanging loosely was enthroned between the bone-like roots, many of which skewered through his flesh and bones. One of Brynden’s arrows was sticking out of his eyes. 

Brynden was still alive… but barely, wheezing weakly—hands pressing to his blood-soaked side. Each breath was low and whistling, and the bastard had to look no further than the arrow sticking out of his chest for the reason. It had pierced through the lung. That alone could easily end a healthy man in his prime, let alone an old thing like Bloodraven.

Jon kneeled, cursing himself. The bones beneath prickled at his knees, but he did not care. He did not want this. He had never wanted this.

The torch fell to the bone-strewn floor as he awkwardly pulled the old man onto his lap with his good hand. He was light. Too light.

Blood dribbled from his mouth and down his wrinkled skin. A lone red eye fixed on him, half-clouded with pain.

“J—Jon,” the wheezing words tore out of his chest with great effort.

“Shhh,” Jon whispered, voice cracking. “You… you’re going to be fine.”

The lie felt hollow in his own ears, and even Brynden choked out a weak laugh. But he wanted the old man to be fine. 

Yet his wishes held no sway over the world. He knew Bloodraven was on the cusp of death, and the old man knew it, too.

“Live, b-b-boy.” The words came out with a wet gurgle and made his insides twist. But Brynden’s face grew tender as he reached out a shaky, gloved hand to touch his face. “Y-your m-m-other—”

His words choked as he started hacking out blood, his chest shaking as his face contorted with pain.

“Don’t,” Jon said, feeling something inside his heart break. “I… I don’t need it. I long for my mother’s name no longer.”

And to his great surprise, the words rang true. At this moment, he couldn’t care less about the woman who had birthed him. A woman who had yet to be conceived. No, his heart felt… dead and broken. Nothing in the world mattered anymore, aside from the dying old man in his lap.  

Brynden’s wheezing coughs grew weaker, and the old man weakly shook his head. Blood was dripping from his nose, too, now, and half his face was slick with red.

“L-L-Ly…” His head grew slack, and his limbs slumped lifelessly on the ground.

“O-old man?” Jon’s voice shook. “Brynden?”

Eerie silence was his answer. His mentor’s chest no longer rose and fell, though blood continued soaking his garments and running down his throat and nose.

An inhuman howl tore through the darkness, and it took Jon a long moment to realise… it was coming from his own throat. 

Grief and loss receded, as he just… felt empty. It felt like forever had passed as he kneeled with Brynden Rivers on his lap. He could not muster any desire to move. He could not muster any desire for anything. Perhaps it would be better if he remained here, in the darkness.

Jon’s shaky hand closed Brynden’s lone eye, and he wept. A numb part of him was glad he could still feel… something at death. But he would rather not have it be like this. Never like this. It cut as deeply as when word had arrived of his lord father’s demise. No, this cut deeper than any words from far away could. 

The torchlight guttered again—the tallow and wrap had been all burned off.

Life will be bitter, it will try to grind you to dust and twist your very soul, and by the gods, you will struggle. But you will not stop fighting. You will never give up.

His vision began to swim. Brynden had seen this coming, amongst the many possible futures. Perhaps not like this, but he had known of the possibility. He had known of his own demise.

And Jon had promised to keep struggling.

He wiped the dust off his face, and he stood up. Half of his body was numb, the other half was aching. He had to take out the arrow… and any fragments of the dragonglass stuck in his flesh. But not here. Jon scarcely remembered taking out his last torch and stumbling out of the cave, feeling weaker with each step.

His mother. Ly…

A maiden’s name? A woman named Lysara or Lythene? Or perhaps a House name?

Lydden?

Lynderly? 

Or perhaps one of the other Houses with such names.

But why would Eddard Stark remain silent for so many years if so? 

Why would Bloodraven say knowing would do him no good?

Or perhaps it was not the name of a woman. Lys. A whore from Lys, then, perhaps a pretty one with silver hair and a smile sultry enough to tempt the young Lord of Winterfell enough to break his vaunted honour. Too shameful to speak of to a boy of four and ten, lest he grew bitter of it. It made too much sense to wave away. Jon couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. Maybe his mother was some pretty whore… maybe not. It had stopped mattering long ago.

The moment he stepped outside, the last vestiges of his strength left him as he collapsed in the cool embrace of the snow.

Author’s Endnote. Whew. I had planned this for a long time. I hope my hints were subtle, and nobody saw it coming. The Children’s distrust, Brynden’s non-mention of his mentor, the dark voice in Jon’s head that the Greenseers dreaded. 

A heavy chapter to write from start to finish. It was short, but one of the hardest to write. It was painful to do this to my main character in this way. Peeling a character down to their very beliefs and poking where it hurts… let’s just say it was a novel thing to do it this way. But at the same time, I feel… strangely fulfilled. 

I pushed Jon Snow down a cliff, and he has hit rock bottom, metaphorically speaking. But once you’re at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up. After all, the snow and the cold are his domain in more ways than one. 

I want to write more… but it would ruin the mood and pacing of the chapter.