My legs ached. My hands were stiff with cold, knuckles bruised from stone and frost. The blood on my cloak had dried into stiff patches, some mine, most not.
The wolf had not gone easy. But with me, a few Companions and two experienced guards, it was quick work.
Old, half-blind in one eye, ribs showing, yet it fought like the wild still lived in its bones. It'd tried to circle back on me after the first strike. I'd taken a deep gouge across the forearm for that mistake. I learned quickly.
I carried its heart wrapped in cloth, tied tight to my belt. My prize, my offering.
I passed under the gate and trudged across the yard, my breath fogging in thick bursts. Snow crunched underfoot. The guards on the walls barely looked down.
The light of the keep windows seemed warm, but distant. That's when I saw them, standing together near the doors.
Maester Walys and Ser Rodrick.
Both stiff-backed, faces pale, eyes fixed on me like I was something between a ghost and a wound. Rodrick's jaw worked slowly. His eyes flicked to the bundle at my hip, then quickly away.
"I'll see to the men," he muttered. His voice cracked like dry bark. "We'll… ride at first light."
He didn't wait for my question. Just turned and marched off, the weight of his sword thumping against his side.
I looked to the maester, confused. "Ride where? What's happened?"
Walys didn't answer right away. Instead, he stepped forward slowly, like his bones hurt him more than the cold. He motioned toward a bench just inside the great hall. "Come. Sit a moment, Wulfric."
I followed, boots heavy, breath ragged. My heart had started to pound, not from the hunt, but from something I couldn't name yet.
He lowered himself beside me with a sigh and stared at the hearth fire for a long while before speaking.
Then, softly, he said, "It's your father. And your grandfather."
I said nothing.
Not because I didn't understand, but because I did.
He swallowed hard, voice thick with something that didn't suit him. "Ravens came before sunset. From King's Landing."
His hands were folded tight in his lap. "Your father stormed into King's Landing demanding your aunt's return… and when your grandfather, Lord Rickard asked for a trial by combat to set your father free… The king gave him fire."
"What does that mean?" I asked, though part of me already knew. My voice sounded too small.
"He was bound," Walys said, "hung above a brazier. Roasted alive while your father was forced to watch."
My throat burned as my mind conjured the horrific image.
"Your father… Brandon… he tried to save him. The king placed a cord around his neck and made him struggle forward, toward a sword just out of reach."
I saw it, all within my mind of how they must've reacted, and my gut twisted. My father, gasping for air as the rope dug into his neck. My grandfather, choking on smoke and fire.
"Aerys let him strangle himself," Walys whispered. "Trying to save his father, your grandfather. The king named fire as"
I sat in silence. The only sound was the crack of firewood.
My hands clenched, and knuckles whitened as my eyes glistened with tears that wouldn't fall in the cold winds that brushed my cheeks. My sniffling and trembling figure probably made Walys frown even deeper.
I nodded slowly. "Thank you for telling me."
He turned to look at me, face lined with sorrow. "I had to Wulfric, you deserved to know.."
"maybe," I said quietly. "Thank you anyways.."
He looked to me and attempted a weak mustered smile before getting up and walking away. My still trembling form sitting as the snow began to fall. It's been a while since the snows fell so heavily and for so long but in that moment. It felt like the North itself was crying for my father and grandfather.
-
The godswood was too quiet.
Not peaceful. Not holy. Just... quiet. Like something had died and the world hadn't decided whether to mourn it or bury it.
Snow was already falling when I trudged through the castle gates. Light at first, like ash from a far-off fire. But it thickened with every step I took. The flurries turned to sheets, the air heavy with a silence only winter could command. By the time I passed beneath the heart tree's limbs, snow had begun to coat my shoulders, my boots crunching beneath a crust of ice.
The weirwood loomed tall and pale, its red leaves stark against the swirling white. Its carved face watched without mercy or warmth, sap bleeding like fresh tears down its ridged bark.
I knelt at its roots.
I hadn't taken the time to clean myself, not after the hunt, not after Walys's words. My hands were still stained with blood. The wolf's heart hung heavy from my belt, wrapped in cloth that now crusted with frost. My body ached, not just from the kill, but from the weight in my chest.
Brandon was gone. Burned from the inside out with rage and pain and with a rope tight around his neck. My father, proud, hot-tempered, too bold for his own good.
Rickard too, roasted alive at the whim of a mad king. My grandfather, the cold patriarch who had begun, only barely, to soften toward me.
I hadn't wept too openly but I couldn't hold back the tears all together. I'd walked away, silent and with tears freezing along my cheeks. Gathered what I needed. Came to the only place in the world that still felt older than grief.
But the pain hadn't left. It settled inside my ribs like a frozen stone.
I laid out the tools, the jar of weirwood sap, thick and white like milk turned heavy. Powdered stone from the oldest crypt, colder than the grave it came from. My blood, dark and syrup-thick in a horn cup. The wolf's heart that seemed to pulse the closer I came to the weirwood. The bone needle, carved from the wolf's leg, long and honed to a hunter's point.
Snow swirled harder now, flurrying like the gods themselves were watching with held breath. Wind crept in through the branches, and the first bite of sleet snapped against my cheek like tiny nails.
I stripped down to my waist. My skin bristled, arms tight with shiver. Breath turned to mist with every exhale. The cold wrapped around me like a second skin.
I mixed the ink, sap, stone, blood, until it thickened to something dark and alive. It clung to the sides of the horn like tar, and smelled of grave-dust and old forests.
I dipped the needle and drove it into my chest.
The pain was white-hot, lightning across my ribs. My breath caught in my throat, and I nearly dropped the needle.
But I didn't, the first rune, ᛟ, Othala, Blood, Lineage, Home. Carved over my heart in deep, deliberate lines.
Then, ᛃ, Jera, Harvest. Etched into my left shoulder. ᛝ, Inguz, Seed, Right shoulder. ᛚ, Laguz, Flow, Rivers, Carved down both arms in twisting vines that wrapped and crawled like living things.
And the hardest, ᛞ, Dagaz, The cost.
I twisted my body, using a shard of bronze for a mirror. I reached the small of my back, carving with my hand behind me, slow and hissing through clenched teeth. It was messy, and with the snowfall, it was hard to see anything so I felt instead.
Each stroke bled. My breath fogged. Sleet pelted the ground around me now, clicking like hailstones. My skin was slick with cold sweat and snowmelt.
I drew the final rune, ᚺ, Hagalaz, The storm, The wolfblood. Crossed beneath my collarbones like fangs waiting to snap shut.
Then I knelt back, shaking. Skin raw, blood mixing with sleet, steaming where it fell.
And the runes... changed.
It wasn't me. I didn't move, but the sap in the ink had taken hold.
From the runes I carved, thin roots of smaller symbols spread. They crawled outward, etching beneath the skin in tiny red veins of pain. These were not my doing. These were older. The weirwood's memory, branding me as its own.
Tiny runes curled between the larger ones, unfamiliar shapes burning into my flesh. They linked the major symbols together like vines twining around a tree, a network of pain, power, and pact.
I gasped and fell forward, forehead to snow.
The marks stitched me together. A living scar-map. A body of memory carved in flesh.
And I screamed hoarse and raw.
A storm was rising. Wind whipped through the trees now. The snow turned heavy, wet and stinging. It lashed my skin and carried my breath away in bursts.
And I wept, Not just tears, but of pain given a way of release.
Ragged, ugly, A boy broken open under the sky.
I cried for my father, for the way he laughed, the way he tried to be a father, the way I'd never see him ride through the gates again.
I cried for my grandfather, cold but proud, and the pain he never let anyone see. Of the man that slowly, opened up to me and began to accept me.
I cried for the boy I was yesterday, the one who still believed things could go back to how they were.
And I cried because no one else would cry for them.
The storm howled above me. Snow drove sideways through the godswood. The heart tree's eyes stared, unblinking.
I crawled to the fire pit, dragging the heart from my belt. I laid it in the center. Struck flint hard, and on the third spark, flame took.
The fat hissed. The smoke rose. Black, thick, curling toward the heart tree's face. The heart turned black and pulsed.
I whispered the old words, not in Common, not even fully in the Old Tongue. The sounds came like a growl in my throat, guttural, ancient, raw with power.
"Norr tharn iks. Bar harn vod. Skanth idrun. Gael isk vartha."
The fire flared and I dug my teeth into its beating flesh with tears that looked like blood coating my cheeks in the firelight that shined like a beacon in the storm.
The earth groaned, and the runes blazed. The scars glowed under my skin, every line alive. Every symbol thrumming like a heartbeat. My body locked. My breath caught. Then the world vanished.
-
I fell through darkness.
Saw fields of gold rising from frozen earth. Rivers thawing. Children laughing. Weirwoods grew from seed I spat onto the soil. Red eyes blinked open in white bark. Wolves ran beside me. Not hunting. Guarding. The land knew my name.
"You are the bond," said a voice like stone and storm. "You are the lifeblood. The root made flesh."
-
I woke to silence.
Snow coated my arms. My back.
The fire had gone out.
The runes were still there, raw, red, raised and pulsing faintly like pained angry flesh.
They marked me. Not as a boy. Not as a bastard. As something else.
The storm still raged. And I cried again. Not loud, not long. Just enough to remember I still could.
I pressed my palm to the soil. And it pulsed back. They were gone, but I was still here. And the North would endure through me.
I made that promise as I looked up at the clearing sky. My fading eyesight finally set on the stars as they stared at the bright night sky.