I waited until I was sure he was stable.
Hours passed.
The fire crackled low beside us. The warmth had begun to return to his skin, the dangerous blue tint of frostbite retreating inch by inch. He still hadn't woken, but his breathing had deepened. Stronger now. Steady.
I had seen many things in my years as a maester. Fevered soldiers. Children ravaged by pox. Men too stubborn to die and boys too frail to live. But I had never seen anything like this.
I pulled the lantern closer and began the examination in earnest.
The carvings were real. Deep, deliberate. Not haphazard wounds or symbolic scratches. These were runes, patterned and ancient. Some I recognized, drawn from the old tongue, etched in books so old they were more dust than page. Others were beyond my learning. Symbols that felt more like memories than language.
Each large rune was interlinked by finer script, thousands of tiny veins of inscription, so fine I needed my lens to study them. They glowed faintly, pulsed subtly beneath the skin. The weirwood sap must have acted as a catalyst, bonding with the blood, sinking into the muscle.
I took a charcoal stick and parchment from my satchel and began to sketch the ones I could see. Not for answers, not yet. Just to record, a nervous habit I'd taken to.
But these were not just markings.
As I watched, I could swear the smaller runes shifted ever so slightly, tightening or relaxing with the boy's breathing. His pulse echoed through the shapes, as though they had fused into his very blood.
His skin was warmer than expected. Not feverish, but alive. There was energy there, like touching sun-warmed stone in the dead of winter. I pressed gently at his side, checking for bruising. There were none. The cuts were healing far faster than they should. Already the rawness of the carvings had begun to seal at the edges, leaving them raised like old scars, but still fresh. Not pink like normal wounds, no. These were dark, like weathered bark or scorched earth.
His fingers twitched again. I lifted his hand, turning it in mine.
The nails had darkened. No longer the soft pale of a child's, now they were a dull grey, almost black at the tips. Hardened, thicker, sharper, almost claw-like. I ran my finger across the edge of one and felt a faint, unnatural resistance, like the edge of a knife dulled but not blunt. The keratin had turned... mineral-like. Denser.
I moved to his feet. The same there. Toenails darkened and thickened. Almost talon-like.
Beneath the blankets, his body jerked suddenly. A spasm, brief, but strong. His teeth clicked together, jaw locking tight for a moment.
Then I heard it. A crack. Not loud but close, subtle. The bone I realized. I froze in sickening thought.
Another twitch, this time in his arm. His shoulder rolled, as if pulled by unseen strings. His spine arched slightly, like something within him was stretching, or testing its shape. I reached for his face.
His cheeks had lost the soft fullness of childhood. His jaw was sharper now. The bones beneath his skin more defined, as if his flesh had been carved to fit some older mold. Not aged, but refined. As though something in him had burned away the excess of youth and left only what was necessary.
That long face common in Starks honed into a sharper look, he looked almost regal in a way.
I gently pried open his mouth. The canines, gods. Slightly longer, sharper. Still human, but... more than what was natural. Like a hunter's, like a wolf's.
I took a step back. Fear clawed at my spine. What was this? What was he becoming? Was this still a boy? Or was I standing at the cradle of something darker?
I pried open one of his eyes again. The silver iris gleamed, faceted like tempered steel under moonlight. Veins of green and crimson pulsed vividly now through the silver, like vines overtaking a tree. And the pupil, It had narrowed. Not fully a beast's slit, but no longer a human. Something like a mix maybe?
And in that moment, I wasn't sure what was staring back. I stepped away. My hands trembled. The charcoal snapped in my grip. Was this sorcery? Demoncraft? A relic of the old gods, or something older still?
I stared at him, breath short. The flickering lamplight made the runes on his skin seem to move. He groaned, another twitch. His hand flexed again. The shadows across his face shifted, and for the barest moment, I saw something ancient in his expression. Something not born from this age.
I forced myself to breathe. Duty, loyalty, the boy was of the North. Of House Stark and he was my charge.
Even if his body bore the signs of something unspoken. Even if part of me wanted to flee the room and never look back. I took the quill and wrote with a trembling hand.
Unnatural modifications progressing during unconscious state. Physiological alterations extend to bone, keratin, ocular, dermal systems. Behavior remains unconscious, though reflexes active. Subject may be entering a post metamorphic state.
I hesitated then added, I do not know if he is becoming something more than human. Or something less. I closed the book. Set it aside and looked at the boy.
Still Wulfric I hoped but not as he was.
I sat back, hands clasped tightly together. My loyalty bound me here, but my fear.
What had he awakened? And more troubling… Could it be stopped, if it needed to be? I didn't have the answers.
So I kept watch. For Wulfric Snow. For what he had become.
When I awoke, the world was quiet.
The fire cracked low nearby. My body ached with a deep, buried heat, like I had been smothered in ash and dragged through frozen stone. Every breath hurt. Every blink stung, and I couldn't move.
My arms were bound. Not tightly, but enough to keep me still. Rope wrapped across my chest, lashed to the posts of the bed. My ankles, too. Padded, but firm. A restraint meant not for a prisoner, but something worse: a patient who might lose control.
Panic flickered in my chest.
"Easy, boy. Easy."
The voice came from the chair near the hearth.
Maester Walys rose slowly, his chain catching the firelight. He looked older than I remembered. Paler. As though he had not slept since the storm passed.
"You're awake. That's good. Gods, that's good."
"What... happened?" My voice cracked like ice.
He came closer, crouched beside the bed. A bowl of water in one hand, a cloth in the other.
"You passed out. In the godswood. Nearly frozen through. The guards found you lying beneath the heart tree, bare to the waist, soaked in sap and snow, and... altered. The scene was strange, unsettling. I brought you here. Tended you myself. You've been asleep nearly four days."
He didn't lie. I could see it in his eyes. But something else swirled behind them.
"The ropes..."
Walys hesitated.
"A precaution," he said softly. "I didn't know what you might become. What that thing might have changed."
I tried to lift my head, but even that left me dizzy. The aches in my limbs weren't just bruises I thought.
"You think I'm dangerous."
"I don't know what to think, Wulfric. I've watched over you since you could walk. Helped treat your wounds, quiet your fevers, correct your posture when you trained too hard and ate too little. But what happened to you out there…"
He paused. Drew a long breath.
"I've sent no ravens. No letters to the Citadel. No mention to Ser Rodrik or anyone for that matter. I burned the sketches I made of your runes. I removed the scraps you left behind. No soul beyond this room knows the real truth."
I stared at him, voice hollow. "Why?"
"Because if I told the world what I saw, they would hunt you, study you, fear you, and I... I was afraid too, gods forgive me. I still am."
He sat back down, the weariness of years folding over his shoulders. He hadn't run. He had stayed, watching, waiting, hoping his fears wouldn't come true.
I closed my eyes again. Not to sleep, but to breathe. To absorb the weight of what had changed. The pain, the carvings, the fire, the storm, all of it just rushing back to me like a tidal wave.
Something inside me shifted again. Not painfully this time, but like old bones learning to move in a new way.
I was still me, but I was not the same. And Walys, gods bless him, was still here.
That was enough. For now… that was enough.
Snow crunched beneath my boots, but it sounded different now, sharper. I could hear the way the ice shattered beneath each step, the way the snow gave before my weight and whispered back into place.
The world felt... louder.
I made my way slowly toward the godswood. No one followed. Walys had ensured that. He gave me a nod and a murmured warning about not straining myself, but we both knew I wasn't going to listen. I had to feel what had changed. I had to understand it.
The walk through the yard felt longer than I remembered, even though my stride had lengthened. My legs carried me differently, more fluid, more certain, but I still stumbled at times. My balance had shifted. My frame had shifted. My bones ached not with pain, but with the strange tension of having outgrown myself.
My hands were the first things I noticed, larger, my fingers longer, my grip steadier. The nails had lost their normal roundness, thicker now, the edges harder. When I rubbed them together, it felt like flint scraping against stone.
Then my skin, no longer the pale of Northern winterblood. It was... frostbitten alabaster. Almost luminous under morning light. Like snow hardened under moonlight. If I stared long enough at my arms, I could just make out the faint, faded blue of veins hiding beneath the surface, like rivers beneath ice. Maester Walys says I've been gaining color back to my skin slowly but who knows how much will return.
The scars, no, runes, etched into my chest, shoulders, and down my sides pulsed faintly when the wind touched them. Some lines had spread, like tree roots branching outward in thorns and spirals. They weren't painful. But they itched with life, as if they weren't meant to sit still.
I reached the godswood.
The red leaves shimmered with frost. The air here was still and silent. Sacred. Even the snow seemed to fall softer here, brushing against me like ash.
The heart tree stood as it always had. But it felt closer. Like it had been watching for me. Waiting.
I stepped into the clearing and fell to my knees.
The cold didn't bite like it used to. My breath didn't fog so heavily in front of me. The sting in my bones was dull now, like a memory of pain instead of pain itself.
I closed my eyes. Let the world sink in.
The wind whispered in my ear, and I heard it speak not just of chill but of distance, the high pine creak on the ridge, the soft cracking of river ice. The world was bigger now. And I could feel more of it.
I opened my eyes and looked at my hands again andI flexed them.
Moved through the old drills. Sword grip, axe swing, defensive brace. Turn, draw, strike. My body responded with grace I hadn't known before. Each motion followed the next like water flowing downhill. My reach was longer. My center of gravity surprisingly felt different. I was built different now.
I stepped toward the tree and laid my palm against the white bark. It welcomed me.
A shiver ran through my arm, not from the cold, but from something deeper. My heartbeat slowed to match something older. A rhythm not my own.
I could feel the land. Faint. Subtle. Like pressure against my skin where there should be none.
I looked up. The branches swayed in rhythm with my breath.
Then I saw it, no, sensed it. A dying patch of snow-choked earth just beyond the tree. Where the frost had bitten too deep. A place where nothing grew.
I stepped toward it.
Knelt and pressed my palm to the frozen ground. The runes on my chest pulsed. And slowly, beneath my fingers, the frost began to crack.
The earth softened. The scent changed, faintly. Not enough to bloom. But enough to remember growth. My hand trembled. Not from fear, but from awe.
I stood again, breath heavy. I was still Wulfric Snow. But the world knew me now, and I was learning it in return.