Earlier that day. Late afternoon. Spring wind stirred through the upper corridors of Winterfell.
The boy was already waiting when Walys arrived, quill in hand, ink smudged on his sleeve, posture stiff with focus. He sat by the narrow window of the library annex, where the last threads of daylight filtered through the stone. A single candle burned on the table beside him, too short, too dim, but he hadn't noticed.
His head was bowed over a half-finished draft: scrawled numbers, measurements, notations about salt weight and marshland evaporation rates. There were little notes in the margins, some nonsense, some brilliant. All in that same hard-pressed script that leaned too far right.
Walys paused at the threshold and watched him for a moment, silent, steady, remembering. Then he cleared his throat and stepped inside.
"If the ink's dried, lad, it won't matter how clever your sums are. You'll just be scribbling in silence."
Wulfric glanced up. His face was half in shadow, but his eyes caught the candlelight: unmistakable, now. Pale grey, but threaded subtly with green and red filaments that seemed to shimmer just under the surface, like veins beneath ice. And the pupils… slightly slitted, like a cat's, but not enough to alarm. Just enough to unsettle.
Walys had seen old magic in his years. In strange places. In the Reed bogs. In quiet words whispered beneath weirwoods. And now, it stared calmly back at him from a boy's face.
"I was still working," Wulfric replied, quiet but blunt.
"That so? Looks more like you're wrestling the parchment."
The boy didn't rise to the jab. He only dipped the quill again and sat straighter as the old man approached.
Walys eased himself into the chair across from him, wincing a little as his joints settled. The table was cluttered, maps, scraps of hide, open ledgers, a clay-stoppered jar of black moss ink.
"You said the salt stores were too exposed for long-term use," Wulfric said, brushing ink from the page. "But what if we built deep cellars beneath the marsh level, then used a series of siphons to push cold brine through clay channels lined with peat? The insulation might preserve meat for weeks without fire."
Walys blinked. That was new.
"And who's building these brine vaults?"
"Peat-cutters from the western swamps. Hire them before the Crannogmen do. Give them salt instead of coin. They'll take it."
Walys grunted, part amused, part wary.
"You're thinking like a lord."
Wulfric's eyes narrowed, not with offense, but thought. He leaned forward, setting the quill down slowly. When he spoke, his voice was still quiet, but the words carried weight.
"No, I'm thinking like a man who won't waste another generation letting the South bleed us dry. Moat Cailin won't just guard the Neck. It'll be the North's spine. A forge, a haven, a vault. I'll hire Reeds to teach garrison scouts how to disappear in daylight. I'll dam the smaller streams for marsh-harvesting pools, grow food, preserve it, trade it further North than anyone ever thought worth reaching. The North might be poor but it has much in terms of resources. I'll trade for those."
He paused. Looked down at his ink-streaked hands.
"And it'll all be mine. A place that no one gave me. Something I built myself out of ruins and mud."
Walys watched him closely. The way he sat still when he spoke, how he chose every word like it might be chiseled into stone. The boy wasn't hungry for power in the loud, brash way so many were. His hunger was quiet, calculated, dangerous in ways that even he couldn't fathom.
"You're not wrong," Walys said at last, voice softer. "But if you think like this too often, you'll forget to sleep. And if you forget to sleep, you'll miss the details. And those, my boy, will kill you faster than any blade."
"That's why I have you," Wulfric replied without missing a beat.
That pulled a quiet breath from the old maester. Not quite a chuckle, but close.
They worked for a time after that. Walys offered corrections, suggested scribes for certain ciphered letters. He walked Wulfric through a trade delay from Barrowton and explained how to negotiate freight rights when dealing with salt-route bottlenecks. Wulfric listened and took notes. Interrupted only to ask sharper questions.
Outside, the sun had lowered to the edges of the trees, casting long shadows through the window. The room grew cooler. Neither noticed.
Eventually, Walys rolled up the last scroll and tapped it twice on the desk before tucking it under his arm.
"That's enough for today."
Wulfric didn't argue. He only nodded and began tidying his notes. As Walys stood and turned, the boy's voice stopped him in the doorway.
"Don't work too hard tonight."
Walys looked back.
"You always say that when you think I look tired."
"You always do," Wulfric said, eyes locking with his. "Even when you hide it."
The old man studied him. There was no mockery in the boy's face. Just concern, oddly restrained, but real. It was the kind of thing a son might say. Or a student. Or something in between.
"Get some rest," Wulfric added, a little quieter now. "There's still more I need you for."
And for the first time that day, Walys felt his chest tighten, not with pain, but with something gentler. Sadder in a way.
"Aye," he said, offering a small nod. "We'll talk more tomorrow."
He stepped into the corridor, cane clicking softly against the stone.
And as he walked, he found himself thinking not of salt or moss or ledgers, but of what might've been, if he'd had just a few more years. Enough to see the boy become the man he was meant to be.
Enough to see what Wulfric would make of the world.
There came a time, Walys had once read, when even stone forgets what it was carved to be. He was beginning to understand that. His hands, once fine and quick as a scribe's, now trembled when he poured tea. His eyes needed more light than any candle could offer, and the names in the margins of old ledgers began to swim if he read too long.
Still, he worked.
The small solar granted to him in the east tower was cramped but familiar, lined with weathered scrolls, jars of crushed herbs, and records stretching back to Rickard Stark's father. The fire was down to coals. The shutters rattled softly in the wind.
A fresh sheaf of parchment lay across his desk, pinned by a dull dagger and stained in one corner with dried ink. His fingers curled around the quill like they always had, deliberately, stiffly, but tonight the grip felt… heavier.
He blinked at the top of the page:
Moat Cailin – Provisional Supply Estimates.
Not yet approved. Nothing was approved yet. But the boy had asked, earnestly, obsessively, for everything. Maps. Harvest ledgers. Salt curing diagrams. Even the Ravenry's archives on failed keeps and forgotten outposts.
Wulfric had ideas. Gods, did he have ideas. Bold ones, strange ones, some half-baked and others full of clever potential. But he had no instinct yet for logistics. That came with time.
Too often, he'd scrawl a request for thirty crates of salt with no mention of source, price, or handling. He'd ask for herbal routes through swampland without considering transport weight or labor costs. If left alone, Walys feared the boy might try to build a citadel from frost and bark just because the thought pleased him.
And yet…
He reached for one of the scrolls Wulfric had annotated. The ink was jagged and pressed too hard into the vellum, but the idea, hidden there beneath youthful haste, was sound. Smarter than most grown men Walys had worked under.
"There's a mind in there," Walys muttered, half to the fire, half to the gods. "A damn troublesome one, but a sharp one. He just doesn't know how to wield it yet."
He dipped his quill in ink and began to write:
Projected timber usage, iron reinforcements for gate supports. Clay storage for salt preserves. Harvest redirection from Barrowton, possible pushback expected. Need to barter with Manderly porters again. Terms unchanged.
He paused. Not from thought, but breath. His ribs ached lately. Every few days, he felt a cold inside him that no fire could lift.
From the far desk, something caught his eye. A scrap of hide parchment, torn, sloppy, scrawled in that hard-pressed script. Wulfric's writing again.
"Salt will keep longer than grain. Need to test that root from Reed again. Could work as insect-repellent in marshes?"
Nine years old. Nine. And already talking like a fledgling business owner with a taste of brilliant entrepreneurship in the same breath, clumsily, yes, but sincerely.
Most boys his age played sword games and cried about bruised knees.
Walys gave a thin, wheezing chuckle and leaned back, fingers resting on the old ring of keys tied to his belt. The work never stopped, but that was how it should be. Wulfric needed someone to bridge what he dreamed with what must be done in reality. And though he rarely said it, Walys saw the way the boy looked at the world, as if every shadow hid a secret worth uncovering.
"You're your father's mind," Walys murmured. "And your mother's stone-blood spine. Maker help us all."
He coughed, sharp and dry. Not the first tonight.
From the hearth, only embers answered him now. The fire needed feeding, but his bones weren't ready to rise just yet. So he reached again, not for the ledger this time, but for the small bundle kept in the left drawer. Wrapped in wool and smelling faintly of dried pine, it contained letters he'd begun writing weeks ago.
Instructions and warnings. One labeled Lupin in fine, crisp lettering.
"Don't speak unless he asks. But watch what he doesn't say."
"Never dismiss his silences as hesitation. They're calculations."
Another scroll was unlabeled, unwritten. Just blank parchment. He stared at it for a long while, the quill hovering above, the ink drying to black crust at the tip.
"One more," he whispered.
But the words never came. He wasn't even sure what they would've been. Advice? Warning? Goodbye? He only knew that something was left unfinished. And that he wouldn't be the one to finish it.
His hand fell limp to the table. The quill rolled away and dropped off the edge with a soft clatter. He didn't move.
The fire in the brazier was near out. The coals glowed faintly, but the warmth had fled the room. His bones no longer hurt. His breath didn't hitch the way it used to. That frightened him, in a dull, distant way.
He turned his gaze, slowly, with effort, toward the shelf across the room. Ledgers and scrolls, stacked and sealed. His life's work tucked into neat lines of ink and wax.
At the center of it all were three thick volumes:
Reed & Moss Supply Routes
Moat Cailin – Unofficial Logbook
Wulfric – Private Observations
Seeing the volumes, he knew one would not survive the night. That was his instruction and wish. One would burn so no one ever read what he saw. It was scary but for his lord, he would do so for he knew.
So much promise. So much still unwritten.
He had served Rickard Stark in his prime. Advised him through two harvest famines, five border disputes, and one near-war with Karhold. And still... Still he believed that Wulfric could be so much better than any of the struggles that defined his grandfather..
"The boy's the North," he murmured, voice dry and faint. "Hard, quiet... full of things people forget to look for. The old blood stirs in him."
A silence followed, thick and final.
He blinked, and the beams of the ceiling blurred. It felt as if he were sinking backward through time.
"If I had a few more years," he rasped to no one, "just a few… maybe I could've shown him more. Helped him with the harder pieces. Taught him how to speak with the Vale. How to twist a deal out of a Frey. How to make men follow without raising a voice…"
His hand twitched weakly at his side.
"Would've liked to see what he turns that ruin into. Moat Cailin… he'll make it something. Something new. Not just stone and tower, something stronger than anything in the south and north."
His thoughts drifted further now, floating loose.
"Maybe he'd have a wife. Strong girl, sharp-tongued, probably to rein him in. Maybe children with his eyes. Gods, I'd have taught them letters. Let them fumble the inkwell and ruin half a ledger before I scolded them. Would've had a desk carved small enough for them too…"
He smiled faintly. His mouth barely moved, but the feeling was there.
"Would've liked that. Just… a few more years."
His eyes fluttered. He tried to lift a breath, but it came thin and broken. The world around him dimmed, not into blackness, but into something soft, distant and peaceful.
He wasn't afraid. But he wasn't ready either.
"Forgive me, lad," he whispered, as the cold settled fully in his chest. "I won't be there to see it through."
The candle beside him flickered low. It swayed once. Then went out.
And with it, so did he.