Jon VIII
The castle had grown quieter in the days since the betrothal. The fevered whispers about the Sand Princess and the Young Wolf had faded into the stone walls like dying echoes.
Servants no longer lingered in corridors with wide eyes and hushed giggles. Even the wind seemed to carry less gossip. Winterfell had accepted the truth and moved on.
But Jon could not.
'Show us the path!'
The scream tore through his skull like a rusted blade.
'Oh Old Gods take me!'
His hands flew to his ears, pressing hard enough that his nails bit into his scalp. It did nothing.
The voices were not outside him. They lived beneath his skin now, crawling through his blood like frostbite.
'My son… have you seen him?'
Jon squeezed his eyes shut until stars burst behind his eyelids.
The crypts had once been his sanctuary—the one place in Winterfell where silence felt sacred. Now they were the loudest place in the world.
He stood on the battlements of the old tower, the one that overlooked the godswood and the entrance to the crypts.
The spring wind tugged at his cloak, carrying the faint scent of pine and wet earth, but it could not drown out the dead.
'Lead us away!'
A woman's voice, raw and pleading.
'I see the Wall…'
'Father! Father!'
'Promise me, Ned!'
Jon's breath came in shallow, visible puffs. His heart hammered against his ribs as though trying to break free.
Every time he blinked, fragments of them appeared at the edge of his vision—pale figures drifting between the trees, their forms half-formed and wrong.
He had stopped going near the crypts after dark. He had stopped sleeping well.
Tonight, sleep was impossible.
He opened his eyes.
They were everywhere.
Near the heart tree, a man with a crooked, broken neck stood swaying. His black cloak hung in tatters, stained with old blood that never dried. His arms reached out, fingers curled like claws, and his mouth opened impossibly wide as he wailed for his father. White eyes. Ash-pale skin.
Closer to the crypt entrance, a woman in a gown once fine now clung to her rotting frame in dark, crusted patches of red. A blue rose rested behind her ear, somehow fresh against the decay. Her long auburn hair fell in limp strands over her face. She looked like Arya, only older, taller, but with the same sharp features, she stood unnervingly still, head slightly tilted, as if listening for something only she could hear.
Jon's throat tightened. He wanted to look away, but her gaze suddenly snapped toward him.
For one horrible heartbeat, their eyes met.
Hers were hollow. Bottomless. Filled with grief and rage and something worse, something that recognized him.
Jon jerked back, heart slamming against his ribs. When he looked again, she had turned and was drifting back into the crypts, her bare feet leaving no prints in the snow.
They could never see him. He had tried shouting. He had tried waving. He had even thrown a stone once, only for it to pass straight through a spectral form and clatter uselessly against the wall. They existed in a layer just beside his world, screaming and searching and suffering, and he was forced to watch.
A heavy hand settled on his shoulder.
Jon jolted violently, a strangled whimper escaping his throat as he spun around, nearly losing his balance on the battlement.
Robb stood there.
His brother's face was half-shadowed by torchlight, but Jon could see the exhaustion carved into it.
The faint grey beneath his eyes, the tightness at the corners of his mouth. Robb's hand remained on his shoulder, steadying him.
"I see you are getting to know our relatives," Robb said quietly.
Jon stepped back until his spine hit the stone parapet. His hands trembled as he lowered them from his ears. The voices had quieted, but not vanished. They hovered at the edge of hearing like distant thunder.
"This feels wrong," Jon whispered. His voice cracked. He could still see the man with the broken neck reaching out, mouth open in silent agony.
"Because it is." Robb exhaled, a long, frustrated sound that fogged the air. He moved to lean against the window of the old tower, arms crossed tightly over his chest as if trying to hold himself together. His fingers drummed restlessly against his sleeve.
"It goes against everything, the dead should have peace, you would believe they had it but not anymore." His voice dropped. "It makes you wonder if any of us will ever truly rest."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the wind rustling the branches of the godswood below.
Robb's shoulders sagged.
"Why did you accept the offer?" he asked.
His hands fidgeted with the cuff of his glove, twisting the leather. He wouldn't meet Jon's eyes.
Jon swallowed. His throat felt raw. "Why did you present it to me?"
The spring wind gusted harder, whipping their hair across their faces. Robb finally looked up. His grey eyes glistened, not quite with tears, but with something heavier, guilt, perhaps.
"Because you were the only one I trusted." Robb's voice thickened, as though the words were stones he had to force out. "I needed someone to protect me. Someone to share this… burden with. Secrets eat you from the inside, Jon. You can only carry so much before they start breaking your bones."
He let out a watery, broken chuckle that sounded more like a sob. "Gods, Jon. I never even asked what you wanted before I dragged you into this."
Robb turned away from the window, staring down at the courtyard where spectral figures still drifted. His jaw worked silently. Jon could see the tension in every line of his body, the way his hands clenched and unclenched, the slight tremor in his shoulders.
"I don't know what ends these bargains are going to lead us into," Robb admitted, barely above a whisper.
Jon stepped forward. Without thinking, he reached out and clasped Robb's hands in his own. His brother's fingers were cold, almost unnaturally so. Jon squeezed them tightly, grounding them both.
"I do not need to know," Jon said, his voice steady despite the fear still crawling under his skin. "If it is you leading me, I do not fear what waits at the end. Let them fear us."
He moved his hands to Robb's shoulders and gripped them firmly, feeling the tension there, the weight his brother carried alone for too long. "I accepted it because it was you who offered it. You are my brother."
Robb slowly nodded and turned back, Jon following him as they both stared into the night in quiet as if reading the stars.
"Could you always see them?" Jon asked, doubt heavy in his voice.
Robb shook his head. "I saw them once before… but no. I only started seeing them clearly after I knighted you." He paused, brows furrowed. "It felt as if…"
"As if what?"
"As if knighting you gave me vision over the ghosts," Robb said, clearly unsettled by the thought.
A heavy silence settled between them as they watched the dead slowly drift back toward the crypts. They always returned when the hour of the wolf arrived.
"I really hope Old Nan never sees this," Robb said with a faint smile. "It would send her to an early grave if she knew all her ghost stories were true."
"At least the ghosts would finally have someone to listen to their stories," Jon replied, smiling back.
For a moment, Robb simply stared at him.
Then his lips twitched. The smile grew slowly, cracking the mask of exhaustion, until it became a genuine, if weary, chuckle.
"Look at us," Robb said, shaking his head. "Boys of two and ten, talking about bargains, magic, and ghosts, the world has gone mad."
"Four and ten," Jon corrected, a small smile tugging at his own mouth.
Robb blinked. "What?"
"Daeron was four and ten when he conquered Dorne," Jon said, nodding toward the south. "I don't think we've done anything that would dwarf his achievements… yet."
A smirk crept across Robb's face—slow, mischievous, and far too familiar. The kind of grin that usually meant trouble.
"Well, speak for yourself," Robb said, his voice dropping into something smug. "I believe I conquered Dorne a few days ago."
Jon's mind caught up a second too late.
His face flushed crimson, burning hot enough to chase away the crypt-chill. His mouth fell open in pure mortification.
"Wha— Robb!"
Robb fought valiantly to hold back his laughter, but it spilled out anyway as he backed toward the stairs, eyes sparkling with rare mischief.
"I would leave you to it then," he called over his shoulder. "I still have some conquering left to do tonight."
He disappeared down the spiral stairs before Jon could respond.
Jon stood frozen for a beat, then screamed into the night, "Gods! Is that why he was walking weird all day?!"
A muffled shout echoed from the floor below. "That has nothing to do with it!"
Jon leaned against the parapet, pressing his forehead to the cold stone as embarrassed laughter shook his shoulders.