A/N: Hope I make Hardhome epic for ya'll! Hope you enjoyed this chapter and please leave a comment if you did! :)
If you want to read 5 to 10 chapters ahead,patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FullHorizon
----------------------------------------------------
Year 300 AC
Hardhome, Beyond the Wall
The wind carved through Jon's scales like ice-forged steel, each gust carrying the salt-sharp scent of the northern sea. Below, the endless white expanse stretched toward Hardhome, broken only by the dark ribbons of frozen streams and the occasional shadow of a hunting wolf. Val's grip tightened against his hand felt strangely warm as another powerful wingbeat lifted them higher, her fingers finding purchase between the obsidian scales.
"There," Toregg called out, his voice nearly lost in the howling air. He pointed with his free hand toward the horizon where six dark shapes cut through the grey waters. "Yer ships, Jon Snow. Still a ways from shore."
Jon's enhanced vision picked out the details Toregg's human eyes could not—the ice-crusted rigging, the frost-bearded faces of the sailors, the way they struggled against the northern currents. An hour, perhaps less, before they reached Hardhome's treacherous harbor. His massive head turned toward the settlement itself, and what he saw there sent a chill through his dragon's heart that had nothing to do with the bitter wind.
Smoke rose from Hardhome's ramshackle collection of huts and lean-tos, but not the grey-white smoke of cook fires. This smoke was black, acrid, carrying the stench of burning flesh and something else—something that made his nostrils flare with recognition. Death. The sweet-sick smell of corruption that clung to servants of the Others.
"Hold tight," he rumbled, the words vibrating through his chest. "We're going down."
The descent was swift, controlled, his wings cutting through the air like scythes. As they drew closer, the sounds reached them—screams, the clash of steel on bone, the wet sounds of tearing flesh. But underneath it all, a silence that was worse than any noise. The silence of the grave walking.
Jon's eyes swept the shoreline and his blood turned to ice water. Wights. Hundreds and hundreds of them, their pale forms emerging from the dark waters like some nightmare tide. Their movements were wrong, jerky and unnatural, but relentless. They climbed over the ice-slick rocks with fingers that should have been too frozen to grip, their dead eyes fixed on the living warmth that waited beyond the shore.
The Free Folk fought desperately, forming ragged lines with whatever weapons they could find—rusted swords, sharpened sticks, even chunks of driftwood. But for every wight they cut down, two more seemed to take its place. Jon could see children among the defenders, some no older than Bran had been, swinging axes nearly as tall as themselves.
"Seven hells," Val breathed, her voice tight with horror. "They're thick as crows on a corpse."
A massive shadow fell across the battlefield as Jon's wings blotted out the pale sun. The effect was immediate and catastrophic. Free Folk scattered in all directions, abandoning their defensive lines as they fled from what they took to be another enemy. Some threw themselves flat against the frozen ground, others ran screaming toward the settlement's interior. A few of the bolder warriors stood their ground, but Jon could see the terror in their faces as they craned their necks to look up at him.
"They're running from us," Toregg said, his voice grim. "They reckon we come t' kill 'em"
"Can't blame them for that," Jon replied, banking low over the shoreline. The wights had paused their advance, their dead heads turning in unison to track his flight. That was wrong too—they should have continued their assault, instead, they remained motionless in the surf, as if waiting for something.
Jon's claws scraped against the rocky shore as he landed, sending up sprays of ice and stone. The impact shook the ground, and several Free Folk who had been creeping back toward the battle line threw themselves down again. He could smell their fear, sharp and acrid, mixing with the metallic scent of blood and the nauseating stench of the wights.
"Stay close," he told Val and Toregg as he lowered his hand to let them dismount. "And be ready to climb back on quickly."
His tail swept across the shoreline like a massive club, crushing dozens of wights in a single motion. Bone cracked and ancient flesh pulped, but the destroyed creatures showed no pain, no fear. They simply ceased to move, their animating force snuffed out like candle flames. His free claw raked through another cluster of the dead, sending severed limbs and torsos flying into the dark water.
The remaining wights retreated into the water, but they did not flee. They float there, deep in the freezing water, their pale eyes fixed on him with an intelligence that made his scales crawl. Waiting. Watching.
Jon felt it. The wrongness of it. The sense that this was not how wights behaved. They should have thrown themselves at him mindlessly, caring nothing for their own destruction. Instead, they simply retreat like soldiers awaiting orders.
A chill that had nothing to do with the northern wind ran down his spine. Something was coming. Something worse than the shambling dead.
Jon moved closer to the outskirts of the settlement, his massive form casting long shadows across the huddled Free Folk. The frozen ground cracked beneath his weight, each step sending tremors through the makeshift shelters—driftwood lean-tos covered in seal hides, snow caves carved into the cliff face, and crude stone windbreaks that offered little protection against the killing cold. The people pressed back against these pathetic barriers, their terror so thick he could taste it on the air, metallic and sour like old copper.
Some wept openly, tears freezing on weathered cheeks before they could fall. Others muttered prayers to gods whose names Jon had never heard—old gods older than the weirwoods, sea gods who demanded blood, gods of stone and ice and darkness. A woman clutched a bone charm to her breast, her lips moving in silent supplication. A few of the children peeked out from behind their parents' legs, their curiosity overcoming their fear, small faces pinched with hunger beneath matted hair.
"Easy," Val called out, her voice carrying clearly in the sudden quiet. She stood tall beside his massive foreleg, one hand resting against his scales as if to show these people he could be touched without dying. "We ain't your enemy. This beast hates the dead things, same as you."
"How d'ye tame that beast?" a grizzled man shouted back, clutching a rusted axe with hands that shook—whether from cold or fear, Jon couldn't tell. The man's beard was more ice than hair, his lips cracked and bleeding. "Wh-why ain't it eatin' us?"
"Because I choose not to." Jon rumbled, his voice like distant thunder rolling across the frozen shore. Steam rose from between his teeth, carrying the scent of sulfur and ash.
The gathered Free Folk stumbled backward in a wave of bodies, some dropping their makeshift weapons—sharpened bones, stone knives, a few precious steel blades pitted with rust. The weapons clattered against the frozen stones with sounds like breaking bells. A child's wail pierced the air, high and thin, before his mother clamped a hand over his mouth, her eyes wide as dinner plates. The acrid smell of piss mixed with the stench of death as several lost control of their bladders, dark stains spreading across fur breeches.
"It speaks," someone whispered, the words spreading through the crowd like wildfire through dry grass. "The beast speaks!"
"I am no beast." Jon lowered his massive skull until his crimson gaze was level with the grizzled warrior's weathered face. This close, he could see the man's pupils dilate, could smell the seal meat on his breath and the infection festering in a wound beneath his furs. Heat rolled from Jon's maw in waves, turning the man's frozen beard to dripping water that steamed in the frigid air. "I am Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and I'm your last chance at survival."
The warrior's knees buckled, but he held his ground, jaw clenched so tight Jon could hear his teeth grinding.
A bark of bitter laughter erupted from deeper in the crowd. A one-eyed woman pushed forward, clutching a bone-handled knife carved with runes. Her empty socket was a mass of scar tissue, poorly healed. "Crows wanna help us now? After shunnin' us for years? After killin' us at yer gates when we came beggin' for shelter?"
"Would you rather stay here?" Jon's tail swept toward the shoreline where the wights had just attacked from, the movement stirring up clouds of ash and snow. "How many have you lost already? How many more will you lose when your food runs out?"
"We got food!" a younger man spat, though his hollow cheeks and the way his furs hung loose on his frame told a different story. His gums were bleeding—the first sign of scurvy.
"Aye, you do." Jon's voice dropped to a rumble that vibrated through the ground, making pebbles dance. "I can smell it on your breath. Human meat. Your own dead, cooked over driftwood fires."
Several faces turned away, shame mixing with defiance. A woman near the back retched, though her stomach had nothing left to give. The smell was there, beneath the stench of unwashed bodies and rotting seaweed—that particular sweetness of long pig, as the sailors called it.
"How long before you're gnawing on your children's bones?" Jon continued, each word deliberate as a hammer blow. "How long before there's nothing left but the weakest among you, and then nothing at all? How long before the Others come for you, and you join those things in the water?"
"Rather spill me blood runnin' free than wear chains for crows.," the one-eyed woman snarled, but her voice cracked on the last word.
"Free?" Jon's laugh was a sound no human throat could make, deep and terrible. "Free to starve? Free to eat your dead? Free to watch your children's eyes go glassy with hunger before you put them out of their misery?"
A man near the front—barely younger than him—fell to his knees and began to sob. The sound broke something in the crowd, and Jon heard other voices joining in, a chorus of despair that had been held back by pride and fear.
Then, from the back of the group, movement. The crowd parted like water before a ship's prow, people scrambling aside with expressions of awe and terror. An old woman stepped forward, moving with the careful precision of someone whose bones ached with every step. She was small and bent with age, her spine curved like a fishhook, forcing her to crane her neck to look ahead. Her grey hair hung in greasy tangles around a face carved by decades of hardship—deep lines etched by wind and worry, cheeks hollow as empty bowls.
But her eyes. Her eyes were bright and sharp as fresh-broken ice, and she looked up at Jon without flinching, without fear. She wore a patchwork cloak made from a hundred different furs—wolf and seal, bear and fox, and other things Jon couldn't identify. Bones and teeth rattled against each other where they hung from the hem, making soft music with each shuffling step.
"Mother Mole," someone whispered, and the name rippled through the crowd. People pressed fingers to their foreheads or hearts, making signs against evil or for blessing—Jon couldn't tell which.
The old woman stopped just beyond the reach of Jon's breath, close enough that the heat made her squint but not so close as to be foolish. She studied him with those sharp eyes, taking in every scale, every tooth, the smoke that curled from his nostrils.
"We've been waitin' fer ye," Mother Mole said at last, her voice carrying the weight of wisdom and absolute certainty. It was a voice that had seen the turning of too many seasons, that had spoken words over too many corpses. "The dead spoke to me ye was comin'. Told me in dreams of ice and shadow. A wolf that flies, they said. A crow with dragon wings."
----------------------------------------------------
Gates of the Moon, The Vale
Sansa Stark moved through the Gates of the Moon's crowded hall like water through stones, her dark-dyed hair catching torchlight as she navigated the press of bodies. The scent of roasted meat and spilled wine hung thick in the air, mingling with the sharp tang of sweat from knights still cooling from the day's tilts. She'd waited three days for this moment—three days of careful observation, of noting which servants Lord Royce trusted, which corridors he favored for his evening walks.
The serving girl she'd bribed with a silver stag had whispered that Bronze Yohn took his wine in the godswood most evenings, away from prying eyes and eager ears. Perfect.
Sansa slipped through the kitchen entrance, past scullery maids elbow-deep in greasy water, and out into the crisp mountain air. The godswood here was nothing like Winterfell's—smaller, younger, with a carved weirwood instead of a living heart tree—but it served. She found him seated on a stone bench, his bronze armor set aside for a simple woolen tunic, a cup of red wine in his weathered hands.
"My lord." She dropped a curtsey, keeping her voice pitched low, sweet. Alayne Stone's voice, not Sansa Stark's.
Bronze Yohn's grey eyes lifted to hers, and something shifted in his craggy face. "Lady Alayne. Or shall I dispense with the mummer's farce?"
The words hit her like cold water, but Sansa held her curtsey, mind racing. "I'm afraid I don't understand, my lord."
"Sit." He patted the bench beside him. When she hesitated, he sighed. "Girl, I held you on my knee when you were barely walking. You think a bit of dye and Littlefinger's lies can fool these old eyes? I knew you the moment you walked into the hall."
Sansa's legs carried her to the bench before her mind caught up. The stone was cold through her gown. "How long—"
"Since the first day." He took a long pull of wine. "Your lady mother had that same way of tilting her head when she was thinking hard on something. You're more Tully than Stark in looks, but there's wolf in you yet."
"Then why haven't you—"
"Exposed you? Dragged you before the Lords Declarant?" His laugh was dry as old leather. "What purpose would that serve? Littlefinger's got his claws in deep, but he's not the only player in this game. I've been waiting, watching. Seeing what kind of woman Ned Stark's daughter would become."
Sansa's fingers twisted in her lap. "And what have you seen?"
"A girl learning to swim with sharks." He studied her with those sharp eyes. "You didn't seek me out tonight just for the pleasure of my company."
"No." The word came out steadier than she felt. "I need your help."
"To take back Winterfell."
She blinked. "You know about—"
"About the Bolton bastard wedding your sister? Aye. Though I'd wager my best destrier that whatever poor girl Roose Bolton's parading around isn't Arya Stark." He set down his cup. "The North remembers, Lady Sansa. And so do I."
"Cersei Lannister is weak." The words tumbled out, the speech she'd rehearsed for days. "The Faith has her dancing to their tune, the Tyrells circle like vultures, and this boy claiming to be Aegon Targaryen has taken Storm's End. The crown can't help the Boltons hold the North. Not anymore."
"True enough." Bronze Yohn leaned back, armor creaking. "But what makes you think the Vale lords will bleed for Winterfell? We've our own troubles."
"Because do you want a man who breaks sacred guest rights guarding your northern flank?" She met his gaze squarely. "Or would you rather have a Stark in Winterfell again?"
His weathered face cracked into something that might have been approval. "You sound like your father."
"My father trusted the wrong people." The words tasted bitter and shame ran through her blood. "I won't make that mistake."
"No? You're trusting me."
"You could have betrayed me already. You didn't."
"Perhaps I was waiting for a better price."
Sansa stood, smoothing her skirts. "Then name it."
Bronze Yohn rose as well, towering over her. "Littlefinger. You will tell me everything that flesh peddler has ever told you and any suspicions you have of him. All of them."
"Agreed." The word came without hesitation. Petyr had taught her well—too well.
"There's something else." His voice dropped. "The boy. Harry. Littlefinger means to wed you to him once Robert Arryn dies."
"If Robert Arryn dies." Sansa kept her tone carefully neutral.
"When." Bronze Yohn's face was granite. "We both know that boy won't see his next nameday. Too much sweetsleep in his milk, if I had to guess."
Sansa said nothing. Silence was safer than lies.
"Harry's a fool, but he's a useful fool. Proud, vain, thinks with his cock more than his head." The old lord's assessment was brutally frank. "But he's also one of the best lances in the Vale, and the lords will follow him if he calls. Can you manage him?"
"I've managed worse." Joffery's face flashed behind her eyes, and she pushed it down, down, deep where it couldn't touch her.
"Then we understand each other." Bronze Yohn picked up his wine cup. "The tourney's final day is tomorrow. Harry will compete, of course. He'll want to crown you Queen of Love and Beauty when he wins—and he will win. The boy's too good with a lance for his own good."
"You want me to reveal myself then?"
"Gods, no. Too public, too many unknowns." He drained his cup. "But afterward, when he's drunk on victory and strongwine, when he comes sniffing around your skirts like the dog he is—that's when you tell him. In private. Let him think he's been let in on a grand secret. Appeal to his vanity. Tell him how a trueborn Stark needs a strong knight to help her reclaim her birthright."
"And if he refuses?"
"He won't." Bronze Yohn's smile was sharp. "Harry Hardyng's dreamed of glory since he could hold a sword. The chance to be the hero who helps the lost princess reclaim her castle? He'll be halfway to Winterfell before you finish the telling."
Sansa nodded slowly. It was a good plan. Simple, clean, playing to Harry's weaknesses. Petyr would be proud. The thought made her stomach turn.
"There's one more thing," she said. "Lord Baelish can't know. Not until it's too late to stop."
"Agreed. Though keeping secrets from that man is like trying to hold smoke." Bronze Yohn stood. "Best you return before you're missed. Take the servants' stair by the buttery—fewer eyes."
Sansa curtsied again, properly this time. "Thank you, my lord."
"Don't thank me yet, girl. We've a long road ahead, and it's paved with bones." He paused. "Your father would be proud of you."
"I wish that were true." The words came out quieter than she'd intended.
Sansa left him there with his wine and his memories, slipping back through the shadows toward the keep. Tomorrow she would watch Harry Hardyng break lances and strut like a peacock. Tomorrow she would smile and blush and play the maiden fair.
Tonight, she had work to do.
The feast hall roared with celebration when she returned, Harry Hardyng already deep in his cups, surrounded by admirers hanging on his every boastful word about tomorrow's tilts. Sansa caught his eye as she passed, offered a small smile that made him straighten in his seat. Men were so easy, really. Show them what they wanted to see, and they'd hand you the keys to their castle.
She'd almost reached the stairs when a hand caught her elbow. Myranda Royce, round-faced and sharp-eyed, wine flush on her cheeks.
"Alayne! There you are. Harry's been asking after you."
"Has he?" Sansa let herself sound pleased, shy.
"Oh yes. He's quite taken with you." Myranda's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Though I wonder what he'd think if he knew who you really were."
The hall seemed to tilt. Sansa kept her expression placid through sheer will. "I don't—"
"Oh, come now." Myranda leaned closer, wine-sweet breath warm on Sansa's cheek. "Did you think you were the only one with eyes? The only one who remembers what Sansa Stark looked like?"
"You're drunk, Myranda."
"In wine, there is truth." The other woman's giggle had edges. "Don't worry, sweetling. Your secret's safe with me. For now."
"What do you want?"
"Want? Nothing. Yet." Myranda patted her cheek. "But isn't it nice to have friends? Friends who keep quiet about interesting things they might know?"
Sansa's mind raced. Another player, another threat. How many others suspected? How many were waiting, watching, ready to sell her secret to the highest bidder?
"We should talk," she said finally. "Privately."
"Tomorrow," Myranda agreed. "After the tourney. After Harry crowns you his queen." Her smile turned sly. "Won't that be something? The lost wolf, crowned in flowers by her gallant knight. Like something out of a song."
She drifted away into the crowd before Sansa could respond, leaving her standing alone among the revelers. The smart thing would be to run, to tell Petyr they'd been discovered, to flee before the trap closed.
But Winterfell was calling. And Sansa Stark was done running.
She climbed the stairs to her chamber, already planning. Myranda would need to be handled carefully—brought into the conspiracy or silenced. Harry would need managing after tomorrow's revelation. And Petyr... Petyr would need to be kept ignorant until the very last moment.
----------------------------------------------------
The Citadel, Oldtown
The musty air of the forbidden vaults pressed against Samwell's lungs like wet wool. His candle flame guttered in the draft that whispered through cracks older than the Andal invasion, casting dancing shadows across leather-bound spines that hadn't been touched in decades—perhaps centuries.
"Here." Alleras held his own candle higher, illuminating a section of shelves that sagged beneath the weight of crumbling tomes. Dust motes swirled in the weak light. "Marwyn said the texts on the Long Night would be in the third alcove."
Sam's fingers trembled as he reached for a volume bound in what looked disturbingly like human skin. The leather felt cold, almost damp, despite the vault's dry air. "We shouldn't linger. If Archmaester Norren discovers we're down here..."
"He won't." Alleras's voice carried that easy confidence that made Sam both envious and suspicious. "Marwyn made certain of that. Besides, with half the Shield Islands burning and ironborn raiders pushing up the Mander, the Seneschal has more pressing concerns than two acolytes studying dusty books."
The mention of the raids made Sam's stomach clench. Ravens had been arriving hourly with increasingly dire reports. Lord Hewett dead, his castle taken. The Arbor threatened. And somewhere out there, Euron Greyjoy's black sails prowled the waters like sharks scenting blood.
Sam opened the tome carefully, wincing as the binding cracked. The pages were vellum, covered in High Valyrian script so archaic he could barely parse it. "This mentions dragons," he murmured, squinting at the faded ink. "But not the kind we know. Listen to this: 'When the ice dragons wake, their breath shall still the hearts of flame-born kin.'"
"Ice dragons?" Alleras moved closer, his shoulder brushing Sam's. The Dornishman smelled of oranges and something sharper—perhaps the poisons they'd been studying in Archmaester Marwyn's chambers. "I thought those were just legends. Stories to frighten children north of the Neck."
"So were the Others." Sam turned the page with painstaking care. "And giants. Yet I've seen them all." His throat tightened at the thought of the White Walker he destroyed. With luck.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere above, and both acolytes froze. The sound passed, fading into the labyrinthine depths of the Citadel's lower levels.
"Keep reading," Alleras whispered.
Sam's eyes tracked across the ancient text. "'In the first Long Night, before the Wall's raising, the servants of the Great Other rode upon wings of frost and darkness. Not dead things, but never-living. Born of winter's womb, shaped from storm and starlight.'" He paused, frowning. "This doesn't match any account I've read before. The stories always say the Others raised the dead to fight for them, but this suggests..."
"That they had dragons of their own." Alleras's dark eyes glittered in the candlelight. "Dragons made of ice instead of fire."
A chill ran down Sam's spine that had nothing to do with the vault's temperature. He thought of the glass candles Marwyn had shown them, how they'd burned with cold light when the red comet had passed. Magic was returning to the world—but what if it wasn't just the magic men wanted?
"There's more." Sam's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "'The children of the forest knew the secret of binding, ice to fire, death to life. In the heart of winter, they sang the song that—'" The next words were obliterated by what looked like burn marks. Deliberate ones.
"Someone didn't want that knowledge preserved." Alleras traced the scorch marks with one slender finger. "Or perhaps they wanted to ensure only certain people could access it."
"The Citadel has always hoarded knowledge." The new voice made them both jump. Archmaester Marwyn stood at the entrance to their alcove, his candle casting harsh shadows across his brutal features. "Deciding what the world should know and what should remain buried. Fools."
"Archmaester." Sam clutched the book to his chest. "We were just—"
"Finding exactly what I hoped you would." Marwyn's thick fingers plucked the tome from Sam's grasp with surprising gentleness. "Ice dragons. Yes. The maesters of old tried very hard to erase all mention of them. Almost succeeded, too." His smile was sharp as broken glass. "But you can't kill knowledge, only hide it. And now, with dragons dancing again in the east and dead things stirring in the north, those old secrets claw their way back to light."
"You knew about this?" Alleras's tone held an edge of accusation.
"I suspected. The Valyrians weren't the only ones who mastered the art of dragon-binding. They merely refined what older peoples discovered through blood and necessity." Marwyn turned the book's pages with practiced ease, finding passages Sam had missed. "Here. 'The Horn of Winter, which wakes the sleepers.' Not giants beneath the earth, as the stories claim. Something far older. Far more dangerous."
Sam's mouth went dry. "Dragons. Ice dragons sleeping somewhere in the far north."
"How are we sure all of them are asleep?" Marwyn's eyes bored into his. "We know nothing of what lurks in the Lands of Always Winter."
"But ice dragons..." Sam's voice cracked. "How could we have survi—"
"I think the Wall was built to keep out more than just the Others." Marwyn closed the book with a snap that echoed through the vault. He tucked the tome under his arm. "Come. We have ravens to send and preparations to make. War's coming, Slayer."
As they climbed back toward the light, Sam couldn't shake the image the text had painted: dragons of ice soaring on wings of frozen starlight, breathing death instead of fire.
The ironborn might be ravaging the Reach, but Sam feared they were all looking in the wrong direction. The true threat had always been to the north, waiting in the ice for winter to come again.
And winter, Sam knew with cold certainty, was no longer coming.
It was here.