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284 AC – Winterfell
pov Lyarra Snow
Winterfell had always felt like a fortress but today, it felt like a cage.
Lyarra moved through the dim corridors with measured steps, her fingers trailing along cold stone, past iron sconces that held guttering flames. Ghosts of wolf kings and queens whispered in the cracks of the walls, though none spoke as loud as the pull in her chest — eastward, always eastward, like the wind tugging at the corner of a map.
She reached Torrhen's chamber and knocked once. No guards posted. He didn't need them anymore — not since the stories had begun to spread. The bastard who lived. Some of the more devout Northerners whispering his name like a prayer. Even Ser Rodrik had started calling him Lord Torrhen when no one else was listening.
The door creaked open.
He was seated near the hearth, boots off, a half-read raven scroll in his hand, the flicker of firelight gilding his hair in golds and reds. He looked up and smiled faintly, eyes tired but alert. "You're late."
"I was arguing with our brother," Lyarra muttered, slipping inside and closing the door behind her.
"Ned or Benjen?"
"The one with a stick up his arse."
Torrhen snorted, setting the scroll aside. "So Ned, then."
Lyarra crossed her arms and stared into the fire. "He forbade it. He actually forbade us. Said we're not to set foot on a ship until he hears word from Skagos. As if that'll come. As if the Skagosi send ravens like civilized men."
"That is so like him." Torrhen leaned back in his chair, expression unreadable save for the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Lyarra scowled. "We're not children. You even went to war and came back having earned glory and a betrothal to a princess, as much as you don't want that. And now he tells us to stay because it's not safe?"
Torrhen reached for the mug beside him and sipped slowly. "Well it is probably not safe."
"That's not the point."
A beat of silence passed between them — familiar, comforting.
She dropped into the chair opposite him and exhaled. "I can't stay here much longer, Torrhen. The walls feel like they're closing in. Every time I try to concentrate — to read, to sew, even to spar — something… slips. Like I'm forgetting who I am."
"I know." His voice was quiet now, stripped of all pretense.
Lyarra looked at him then, really looked. "You too?"
He gave a slight nod. "I dream of it. The eastern shore. Past the Last River. I see a place… stone and soil, untouched by kings or maesters or gods. I see firelight glowing from a square tower that feels unnatural. I hear tools in my hand I've never held. I feel stronger there. Whole."
Lyarra swallowed. "It's not just a feeling anymore. It's a direction. It's like the pull of a sword toward battle. Or the cold before a storm."
Torrhen leaned forward now, his voice low. "Something is waking. Out there. And it's calling us."
They both fell into silence, listening to the fire crackle, the wind outside keening through Winterfell's towers.
After a long pause, Lyarra whispered, "What if we're wrong?"
Torrhen didn't answer at first. He stared into the flames like they might burn through the stone itself and reveal the truth underneath.
Then he said, "Then we stay here. And rot. And let Winterfell claim us like it claims all forgotten Starks."
A bitter laugh bubbled from her lips. "I was never a Stark."
Torrhen's gaze flicked to her, warm and certain. "Neither was I. And yet here we are — burning brighter than any of them. Well not quite yet but I am sure that if we apply ourselves enough our names will certainly be remembered more than Benjen and maybe even Ned. Though not Lyanna or Brandon. Single handedly stumbling yourself into a situation that not only leads to your death but also the end of the once so untouchable Targaryen dynasty is quite a feat."
That made her smile.
He stood and walked to the window, opening the heavy wooden shutters. Cold wind poured in, biting and clean, and in the distance, beyond the trees, beyond the rivers, beyond the white horizon — something shimmered.
A call.
Not of ice or fire.
But something else. Something new.
She turned to Torrhen. "Winter is coming. And we'll be ready."
**Scene Break**
The moon was high by the time they moved. Pale light spilled across the courtyard like a secret waiting to be broken, and Winterfell slept, blissfully unaware.
Lyarra tightened the straps on her satchel, fingers working fast despite the thundering of her heart. She had packed carefully — flint, dried meats, maps, rope, tools. A few of Maester Luwin's books, pilfered from the library in a moment of guiltless resolve. She would make it up to him once they were back.
A small image of her paying him back on her knees made it's way to her brain before she slapped that away.
What the hell was that you.. you disgusting slut she mentally scolded herself before refocusing. Puberty was a bitch and she despised the fact that she had to go through it again but that was something else.
Though I suppose I wouldn't mind doing that to Jory Cassel she thought before slapping herself mentally yet again.
A few minutes later she had gathered everything they might need for a journey no one had sanctioned.
Torrhen was already waiting by the stable, cloaked and still, a shadow within shadows. Their coin pouches — years of saved allowances — jingled softly at his belt. Not much in the way of a lord's ransom, but enough. Hopefully.
She glanced back at the towers. The godswood, the rookery, the chamber she'd grown in. All of it felt... smaller now. Even the sky above seemed too narrow.
"Are you ready?" Torrhen asked, voice low.
"As I'll ever be."
They hugged eachother before they made the final preparations.
They moved swiftly. Two of the more sure-footed horses — neither too fine nor too ragged to draw attention — were saddled with practiced care. Lyarra's stomach tightened when they walked them out past the gatehouse. No guards stopped them at the gates as they had been bribed the day before to look the other way. No ravens cried out.
At the treeline, she paused, watching Torrhen as he turned for one last look.
His eyes were far away, cast back toward stone and fire, and a girl with dark hair and a laugh like rain. "Rhaenys," he said softly, just once.
Lyarra didn't ask. She didn't need to.
They rode in silence for a long time after that.
**Scene Break**
Winterfell, 284 AC
general pov
The sun rose pale and cold over the battlements, its light falling weakly across the frost-laced stones of Winterfell. A raven wheeled overhead, cawing once before vanishing into the grey sky. Below, the courtyard buzzed with a subdued urgency.
"They're gone. Or atleast they are not in Winterfell anymore" Ser Rodrik's voice, low and grim, carried across the yard. "Gone in the night probably. They took basically all they had aswell."
Ned Stark stood at the base of the stairs to the Great Keep, his jaw clenched and hands clasped behind his back. He had barely spoken since Rodrik delivered the news earlier that the twins were not in their rooms or at the great hall. Two horses missing from the stables. A gap in the night's watch.
He didn't need confirmation, Torrhen and Lyarra were gone and there was only one destination they could have in mind. Ravens would have to be sent towards White Harbour and Eastwatch by the Sea.
In the solar, the fire crackled, but the warmth did not reach the corners. Ashara Dayne reclined in a high-backed chair, the shawl around her shoulders slipping down one arm. She was staring at the hearth, though her thoughts were far from it.
"She told me yesterday she felt trapped here," Elia murmured, seated beside her with Rhaenys on her lap. "Like there were chains around her ankles, only no one else could see them."
Ashara raised an eyebrow. "And Torrhen?"
Elia smiled faintly, eyes tracing the slow rhythm of her daughter's breathing. "Hot-headed. Restless. Sweet in the way a boy too clever for his own good can be. He's been trying to build secret tunnels under the Godswood for weeks, I'm told. And now he's vanished with his sister."
Ashara said nothing for a long while. Then: "I wonder if you're mourning the loss of your betrothed or the brother you never had."
Elia looked down at Rhaenys, who stirred and whispered, "Mama… where's Torrhen? I wanted to play dragons with him."
Elia kissed her daughter's curls. "He's gone on a small adventure, sweetling. He'll return with stories."
But even her voice lacked conviction.
Later, on the walls, Benjen Stark joined his brother, both cloaked in silence. The morning wind tugged at their furs and brought with it the distant sounds of men saddling horses and shouting orders. Search parties, at least three, had already ridden out.
"They'll cover their tracks," Benjen said finally. "Like they used to when they snuck into the crypts. Only this time… they don't intend to be caught."
"I know." Ned's eyes didn't leave the horizon. "But they're children."
"They're not." Benjen turned toward him, his tone not unkind. "You saw what they became after the wolf fever. After… the death and the return. They're not like the rest of us anymore."
"They're still our kin."
Benjen sighed. "We tried to cage Lyanna too, Ned. Told her what was proper and where her duty lay. We know how that ended."
Ned's voice was cold steel. "This is not the same."
"No? Lyanna fled south chasing a crown of love. These two are heading east chasing gods know what. The more we try to pull them back, the faster they'll run."
"They should have told me."
"Maybe they tried. Maybe you stopped listening."
That stung, and Ned turned away. Below them, the riders streamed from the gates in staggered groups—armed men on swift horses, tracking two ghosts in the snow.
**Scene Break**
284 AC – White Harbour
pov Lyarra Snow
The road south had been long, winding through snowswept forests and frost-bitten villages, over narrow streams and half-frozen trails. They had slept in barns, in hunter camps, under trees with their cloaks wrapped tight, taking turns on watch and making sure the villagers that took them in knew their gratitude. And though the miles gnawed at them, the weight in Lyarra's chest grew lighter with every hoofbeat.
By the time they reached White Harbour, the sun was dying, its last gold light caught in the snow-glazed spires of the city's walls.
They paid the modest entry fee without fuss. The guards at the gate gave them little more than a glance — two snow-dappled northern travelers with nothing but worn cloaks and quiet eyes.
Inside, the port teemed with evening life: sailors unloading wares, lanterns flickering on gangplanks, gulls crying overhead. The smell of fish, salt, and woodsmoke clung to everything.
Their horses fetched less than they were worth, but neither argued. They needed coin more than sentiment. And anonymity more than a fair price.
Torrhen led the search, moving with the ease of someone born to command.
In the end it proved to be harder to find a boat destined to travel towards Skagos than they first thought though maybe they should have expected that before coming here.
Skagos was almost completely isolated from the rest of the North and the Seven Kingdoms for a reason meaning that the Skagosi were quite xenophobic, violent, poor and barbaric.
They were regarded as little better than wildlings despite having their own three noble houses mainly the Magnar, the Stanes and the Crowls.
After two failed inquiries and a brief conversation with a dockside smuggler who tried to cheat them blind, they found a merchant vessel bound for Skagos — a squat, weathered cog flying neutral colors and crewed by men who asked no questions so long as they were paid enough not to.
The captain was a lean, sharp-eyed man with a thinning braid and teeth stained by sourleaf. "No names," he said, eyeing them both with some amusement. "No questions. And if someone asks about two dark-haired runaways boarding my ship, I'll tell them you were never here."
Torrhen handed over the coin without blinking. "Glad we understand each other."
Lyarra smiled faintly. "We'll keep out of sight."
The room they were shown was barely more than a converted storage space in the ship's hold — wood-planked walls, a single straw mattress, and crates packed with salt pork and barley lining the walls. It stank of fish and pitch, and the floor creaked with every movement.
But it was theirs.
The extra paid coin became very useful that night when the captain came to their cot and looked at them with amusement.
"So I take it I have the infamous bastard twins who lived on my ship?" he asked and laughed when their reactions told him he was right, "Hah, well I don't care why you are running away as you are old enough to do as you wish in my opinion. Though I should let you know that they are definetely searching for you".
Lyarra sat on the edge of the crate once the captain left, legs pulled up to her chest, listening to the distant shouts of sailors and the creaking of ropes above.
Torrhen lit a small lantern, his features cast in gold and shadow. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
The ship groaned as it began to move, slowly pulling away from the dock at dawn.
They were going north-east. At last.
Lyarra wondered if and how much those they left back in Winterfell would miss them.
**Scene Break**
The merchant's ship bobbed gently against the dock, ropes creaking as the twins stepped off. The wind was colder here — briny and sharp, laced with the scent of pine and snow. Skagos was a land of cliffs and shadows, of jagged coasts and brooding mountains. Even the sky seemed to loom lower than it did in the South.
"Thank you," Torrhen said, offering the old trader a curt nod and a few coins for his trouble. "For discretion, too."
The merchant snorted, though not unkindly. "I didn't see a thing," he said, tucking the coin away. "Best of luck to you, Lord… Snow."
"Not a lord yet," Torrhen muttered as he turned away, boots crunching on the gravelly shore.
Lyarra glanced back at the ship as they began their trek northward along the coast. The sails were already half-raised, the merchant eager to depart before the island swallowed him whole. "Think he'll tell anyone?"
"Only if they pay better than we did." Torrhen grinned, though it didn't reach his eyes. "And to be honest, I don't mind if he did once he is back in White Harbour. It will take a while before anyone manages to get here to escort us back to Winterfell and by that time we will have likely finished our business here and would need that escort anyway"
They walked for hours, cloaked in silence but for the caw of gulls and the hiss of the wind off the sea. The pull — that strange, constant tug in the back of their minds — guided them, subtle but unrelenting. At first, it led them smoothly along the rocky coast, past dead trees and ruined stone markers weathered by centuries. But by midafternoon, the path shifted.
Lyarra stopped. Her boots slid slightly in the gravel as she turned inland, frowning.
"… Well I guess it is clear whatever we're trying to find is not on Skagos. What lays beyond the northwestern coast?"
Torrhen had felt it too. He narrowed his eyes toward the distant lands beyond the wall.
"Hm. If we're being pulled in that direction," he said, voice thoughtful, "it either means whatever we're supposed to find is beyond the Wall—" He pointed northward. "—or it's on the cursed island of Skane."
Lyarra blinked. "Skane? Why would—"
But Torrhen had already turned back the way they came, expression tight. "Let's go back to the harbor. If we're going that far, we'll need better supplies. Let's see if the merchant is there still aswell."
When they returned to the small fishing village, it was empty. The docks were bare save for a few abandoned crab traps and drying nets fluttering in the wind. The merchant's boat was gone — not even a mast in sight on the horizon.
Lyarra cursed softly under her breath.
"Well," Torrhen said with a sigh, staring out at the endless grey sea, "looks like we're walking. What did the merchant say again? The next fishing village while smaller is only a day's travel from here?"
"I'd prefer waiting for another boat to take us to Skane at this point" said Lyarra with a sigh prompting a nod from Torrhen.
They shared a look — tired, cold, and more than a little wary — then turned their backs to the sea and looked for another ship to take them to the island of Skane.
The pull was stronger now.
It thrummed just beneath the skin.
Hours later, a larger fishing vessel was cutting toward the harbor below — more substantial than the small rowing boats at the docks already, with room enough for a full crew.
Torrhen and Lyarra exchanged a glance and descended.
The boat had barely docked when the twins approached, hoods drawn low. A wiry man with a salt-streaked beard and a scar down his cheek hopped onto the dock, barking orders to his crew. He noticed the pair quickly, especially the girl.
"You lot look lost," he said, leering as his gaze lingered too long on Lyarra. "Don't suppose you've got coin?"
"We'll pay well," Torrhen said evenly. "We need passage to Skane."
That made the man bark a laugh. "Skane? Yea, fat chance of that." He spat. "That island's cursed. Half the ships that try to land vanish, and the ones that return come back half-mad or bleeding from the eyes. Before we'd take a step on that wretched place, we'd likely be swallowed whole by whatever monster lives there…"
His grin twisted, eyes dropping again to Lyarra. "Anyway, lass, you're looking mighty fine. I'd love to take you to my room and show you the ropes. Who needs cursed treasure when I've got a treasure right here?"
Lyarra's expression soured. "You've got the charm of a dying goat and half its wit," she snapped. "Back off."
But the man just chuckled and reached for her, his calloused hand wrapping around her forearm.
Torrhen's sword was out before the man could blink. With one swift stroke, he sliced clean through the bastard's arm just below the elbow.
The shriek was high-pitched and gurgling.
Blood sprayed the dock as the man fell to his knees, wailing and clutching the stump.
The crew — a dozen men with stone-tipped spears and crude blades — roared in anger and charged.
"Leave none standing, we'll worry about how we get to Skane later, these bastards are going to pay." Torrhen growled.
The fight was brutal but swift. The twins moved like wolves among sheep. Torrhen's blade flashed through bone and muscle with precise brutality, while Lyarra ducked and weaved, her own sword dancing with deadly grace. Within a minute, over half of the men lay broken and bleeding, their bodies sinking into the surf or twitching on the boards.
The five survivors dropped their weapons, eyes wide and faces pale.
"Mercy!" one croaked. "We'll take you! We'll do it — gods save us, we'll take you to Skane!"
**Scene Break**
The boat ride was deathly quiet.
No songs, no chatter — just the moaning of wood and the splash of oars as the crew rowed for dear life.
When they finally reached the black beaches of Skane, the five men practically shoved the twins onto the shore and turned the boat around without so much as a backward glance.
Torrhen and Lyarra were alone.
Skane was silent.
No birds sang. The trees were twisted and gnarled, and the fog that clung to the forest floor pulsed faintly, as if breathing. The pull had intensified. It was no longer a subtle tug — it throbbed in their chests now, urging them inland.
They obeyed.
The path led them through dark woods and jagged glades. Strange creatures stalked them — bloated wolves with too many eyes, deer with bone plating instead of fur, spiders the size of carts.
"You'd think we were in Australia" said Torrhen at one point causing Lyarra to laugh.
Dozens of them fell to Torrhen's sword and Lyarra's swift hands.
Hours passed. Then, at the base of a moss-covered cliff, the pull drew them into a yawning cave. It was dark… until the glow began.
Golden and pale, pulsing softly, the light came from a rectangular frame built into the back wall. Glowstone glimmered in jagged bricks, surrounding a glass-like surface that shimmered with depthless color.
They stood before it, breath caught.
"Holy shit," Torrhen whispered. "If this is what I think it is, then we're just set for life."
Lyarra snorted, amused despite the awe. "Always thinking of money."
"Can you blame me?" he grinned.
She rolled her eyes and stepped forward. The portal hummed as she placed a hand on its surface. "This changes everything."
Together, they stepped into the light.
At the same time, a thousand eyes and one opened in shock as the world shifted.
**Scene Break**