142 AC, Skagos
"I need to speak with my father," Rickon said, his voice low but firm. "It's urgent."
The guard hesitated only a moment before nodding. "He's awake, my lord. Been poring over maps since before midnight."
Rickon ducked through the tent flap, Canis following close behind. Inside, oil lamps cast a warm glow over a large table strewn with maps and reports. Cregan Stark stood hunched over them, his face lined with exhaustion and concentration. He looked up as they entered, surprise flickering briefly across his features.
"Rickon? What are you doing awake at this hour?"
"Father," Rickon began, suddenly uncertain how to explain what he'd experienced. How did one describe visions of ancient gods and forgotten magic to a man who valued practicality above all else? "I... I've learned something about the island. About what we're facing here."
Cregan straightened, his grey eyes sharpening with interest. "Sit. Tell me."
Rickon lowered himself onto a camp stool, gathering his thoughts. Canis settled at his feet, a reassuring presence as he prepared to reveal his secrets.
The Skagosi rebellion isn't what we thought," he started, meeting his father's steady gaze. "It's not about taxes or independence or even their traditional wildness. They're trying to wake something, Father. Something ancient and terrible that sleeps beneath the island."
He expected skepticism, perhaps even dismissal. Instead, Cregan's expression grew grave, the lines around his mouth deepening.
"Tell me everything," his father commanded. "Leave nothing out."
So Rickon did. He spoke of going to weirwood tree unlike any other, the visions of a past so ancient it predated written history. He described the Stonefather, a titan of stone and darkness bound beneath Skagos by the Children of the Forest and the First Men. He explained how the stone priests believed they could control this power, use it to conquer the mainland.
Throughout his account, Cregan remained silent, his face betraying nothing. Only when Rickon mentioned the voice calling him "Greenseer" did his father's eyes widen slightly.
"You're certain of this?" Cregan asked when Rickon finally fell silent. "These weren't simply dreams or imaginings?"
"I'm certain," Rickon confirmed, his hand falling to Canis's fur for reassurance. "What I saw was real, Father. And the danger is real too. If the Stonefather wakes fully, it won't just be the North that suffers. Everything could be lost."
Cregan leaned back in his chair, his weathered face grave in the lamplight. He stared at Rickon for what felt like an eternity, his gray eyes searching his son's face as if seeing him truly for the first time.
"I've known you were a warg since you tamed that snow eagle of yours, boy. A greenseer is something else entirely."
He fixed Rickon with a piercing stare. "It's not something I can dismiss so casually."
"Father, I—" Rickon began, but Cregan cut him off with a raised hand.
"Show me, boy. Show me what you have been practicing with your wolf in secret. Show me why we should listen to this muddle that is magic, instead of going on ahead as we were. Prove to me that you went a giant weirwood tree when the scouts haven't made any such mention of any weirwood tree within ten miles."
"Make me listen."
Rickon's eyes widened at his father's tone and the faint flickers of uncontrolled mana that his father's words were accompanied by.
Looking at Cregan's Stark's eyes as he commanded him, Rickon could understand why men whispered than Cregan Stark could make a dragon bow before his gaze.
"Very well, Father," Rickon said, his voice steadier than he expected.
Rickon rose from his seat, heart hammering against his ribs. He had never revealed the full extent of his abilities to anyone, not even to Sara or Maester Kennet. The shadows and what they could do together, he and Canis, had been their secret alone.
"Where are we going?" his father asked, already buckling on his sword belt.
"Somewhere private," Rickon replied, his mouth suddenly dry. "Away from prying eyes."
The camp was quiet as they slipped between the tents, most men collapsed in exhausted sleep after the long sea journey. The few sentries they passed straightened at the sight of Cregan and Rickon but asked no questions. Canis led the way, his massive form melting into the darkness ahead, reappearing only as a pair of glowing crimson eyes when he paused to ensure they followed.
They reached the edge of the forest, far enough from camp that no torchlight reached them. The darkness was nearly complete, the moon having set hours ago, leaving only starlight to illuminate their surroundings.
"This should be far enough," Rickon said, turning to face his father. In the darkness, he could barely make out Cregan's features, and he didn't even try to enhance his vision. He didn't want to see the doubt, or worse, the fear, that might cross his father's face.
"What I'm about to show you..." Rickon hesitated, searching for words. "It's not like warging. It's something else. Something I don't fully understand myself."
His father's silhouette shifted slightly. "I'm listening."
Rickon took a deep breath and reached for the familiar connection with Canis. The direwolf padded to his side, crimson eyes fixed on Cregan with an unsettling intensity.
He closed his eyes, centering himself. He extended his hand, palm down, fingers splayed as if grasping something invisible.
Shadows began to pool beneath his fingertips, darkening and thickening until they seemed more substantial than mere absence of light. They coiled around his wrist like living smoke, responding to his will with eager fluidity. Beside him, Canis's form seemed to blur at the edges, darkness bleeding from his midnight fur to join the gathering shadows.
"This is what we can do together," Rickon said softly as the shadows condensed into his palm, forming a blade of pure darkness. It gleamed with an impossible light, absorbing the lantern's glow rather than reflecting it. "Canis is no ordinary direwolf, Father. He never was."
The shadow blade lengthened, solidified until it resembled a longsword forged from a slice of midnight. Rickon held it up, the weapon weightless in his grip yet radiating power that made the air around it seem to waver.
"This is what Canis and I can create together," he said quietly. "A weapon that can cut through almost anything."
To demonstrate, he sliced through the air toward one of the trees. And a blade of shadow shot from the edge of the sword to sliced through a tree with no sound. There was silence, until the tree's upper half slid down and fell to the ground with a shake, cut apart by a line so fine fine it was almost invisible until the two halves of the tree fell apart.
Cregan's face remained impassive, though his eyes tracked the shadow blade with intense focus and had widened at the cut tree. His hand hadn't moved toward his own sword, a good sign, Rickon thought.
"There's more," Rickon continued, letting the blade dissolve back into formless shadow. He gestured, and the darkness flowed across the floor, climbing up the tent wall to form moving images, the weirwood tree, the stone priests with their eyeless faces, the massive presence slumbering beneath the island.
"I can show you where I went tonight," he said, concentrating as the shadows formed a rough map of the island. A small dark spot pulsed near the mountain's base. "The weirwood tree stands here, in a clearing that doesn't appear on any of our maps. And beneath it..." The shadow deepened, spreading outward like ink in water. "The Stonefather sleeps, though not as deeply as before."
Cregan rose from his chair, circling the shadow map with measured steps. His face betrayed nothing, but his eyes, Rickon had never seen his father's eyes so intent, so... hungry for understanding.
"How long?" Cregan finally asked, his voice low and controlled. "How long have you been able to do this?"
Rickon let the shadows recede, flowing back toward Canis like water returning to its source. "Since I was a child. Since my fever broke and Canis came to me." He met his father's gaze steadily. "I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know if I should."
"And the direwolf?" Cregan's eyes shifted to Canis, who stared back unflinchingly. "What exactly is he?"
"Something ancient," Rickon answered truthfully. "A protector bound to my soul. He... speaks to me, Father. Not in words, but I understand him nonetheless."
As if on cue, Canis padded forward, stopping before Cregan. The direwolf's crimson eyes locked with the Lord of Winterfell's gray ones in silent challenge. A shadow katana materialised in his mouth and he held it by his teeth.
His father nodded slowly, digesting this information. "And the warging? The greensight?"
"The warging came naturally. I've been practicing with Zenith for years. The greensight... that's newer. It started with dreams, then visions. Tonight was the first time I've experienced anything so vivid, so real."
For a long moment, Cregan said nothing. He then turned away and walked to the fallen tree, tracing the trunk. His shoulders rigid with tension. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low Rickon had to strain to hear it.
"Your mother had the dreams."
Rickon's breath caught. "What?"
"Your mother," Cregan repeated, still not looking at him. "She had the dreams. Green dreams, she called them. Visions of things to come, sometimes of the past. I thought it nonsense at first, northern superstition. Until they started coming true."
He turned back to face Rickon, his expression unreadable. "She dreamed of you, before you were born. Said you would be different. Special. That you would see things others couldn't."
The revelation left Rickon speechless. In all his years, his father had rarely spoken of his mother, the wound of her loss still too raw.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked when he finally found his voice.
"What would I have said?" Cregan's laugh was bitter, empty of humor. "'By the way, boy, your mother thought you might be touched by the old gods'? The North remembers what happens to those who are different, Rickon. They get burned, or worse."
You were afraid for me."
Cregan's jaw tightened. "I've lost enough, I won't lose you too."
The admission hung between them, raw and honest in a way his father rarely was. Rickon felt something shift in their relationship, old barriers crumbling like ancient stone.
"I don't think you have a choice," he said softly. "Whatever's happening on this island, whatever the Stonefather is, I'm connected to it somehow. The visions, the weirwood, they led me here for a reason."
His father's expression darkened. "I didn't bring you to Skagos to sacrifice you to some ancient monster, boy."
No," Rickon agreed. "But you brought me to fight. This is just a different kind of battle than we expected."
Cregan paced the length of the clearing, his footfalls heavy on the packed earth. The mantle of the Warden of the North seemed to settle more visibly on his shoulders, the weight of responsibility for thousands of lives.
"If what you've seen is true," he said finally, "we need to change our approach. The Skagosi aren't the real enemy here."
"No," Rickon confirmed. "They're pawns, manipulated by the stone priests. And those priests are being manipulated in turn by something far older and more dangerous."
Canis growled softly, as if affirming Rickon's assessment. The direwolf's crimson eyes tracked Cregan's movements, watchful but no longer wary. Something had changed in the atmosphere between them all.
"Can you find this weirwood again?" Cregan asked, turning to face them. "Take me there?"
Rickon nodded. "Through shadow-walking, yes. It's how we traveled there in the first place."
"Shadow-walking." His father's mouth twisted around the unfamiliar term. "Gods, I sound like one of those woods witches, talking of such things."
Despite the gravity of their situation, Rickon found himself smiling. "It takes some getting used to."
Cregan approached the table again, studying the maps with new purpose. "We need more information. If there's an ancient power stirring beneath Skagos, we need to know exactly what we're facing and how to stop it."
"The stone priests might know," Rickon suggested. "If we could capture one..."
"First we need to find them." Cregan traced a finger over the map, stopping at the volcanic mountain Rickon had described from his aerial reconnaissance. "This volcano—could it be where they're conducting their rituals?"
Rickon leaned over the map, memories of his vision overlaying the parchment representation of Skagos. "Yes, I think so. In the vision, I saw thousands gathered at its base. And when Zenith was flying over it earlier today, I thought I glimpsed something there."
His father nodded decisively. "Then that's where we start. At first light, we'll send scouts—
A commotion from the camp interrupted them, voices raised in alarm. Cregan and Rickon exhanged a glance and ran towards the camp.
Rickon sprinted through the camp, his heart hammering in his chest as he followed his father toward the commotion. Canis loped alongside him, a black shadow in the pre-dawn darkness.
The disturbance came from the eastern perimeter. Soldiers clustered around something, or someone, their faces taut with tension in the flickering torchlight. They parted quickly at Cregan's approach, murmuring "Lord Stark" as they made way.
In the center of the gathering lay a man, or what remained of one. His skin had turned a mottled gray, like stone weathered by centuries of rain. His limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, joints swollen and misshapen. But it was his face that made Rickon's stomach lurch, where eyes should have been were only empty, blackened sockets, weeping a viscous fluid that resembled melted stone more than blood.
"Seven hells," Cregan muttered, kneeling beside the body. "What happened to him?"
A soldier stepped forward, his face pale beneath his helm. "Found him crawling toward camp, my lord. Tried to speak, but..." The man swallowed hard. "His tongue was stone."
Rickon crouched opposite his father, studying the corpse with growing horror. The man's clothes marked him as Skagosi—rough-spun wool and furs typical of the islanders. But something had transformed him, turned living flesh to half-formed rock.
"It's beginning," Rickon said softly, the words meant only for his father's ears. "The Stonefather's influence spreading."
His father's eyes met his across the body, a silent understanding passing between them. Whatever doubts Cregan might have harbored about Rickon's visions were rapidly dissolving in the face of this grotesque evidence.
"This man came to warn us," Cregan said, rising to his feet. "The question is: warn us of what?"
x_______________________________________________________x
A tiny whisker twitched as the mouse peered from beneath the underbrush, its heart hammering like a tiny drum. The creature's dark eyes tracked the strange procession moving through the forest—hundreds of men, though they hardly resembled men anymore. Their skin had turned the mottled gray of weathered stone, joints swollen and misshapen. They moved with unnatural synchronicity, feet striking the ground in perfect rhythm that sent vibrations through the earth beneath the mouse's paws.
The mouse trembled, instincts screaming danger. These things smelled wrong—not of sweat and leather and metal like normal men, but of dust and ash and something ancient that made its whiskers curl. When the nearest stone-man turned his eyeless face toward the underbrush, the mouse bolted, scurrying through dead leaves and roots until—
Alyn gasped, thrown back into his own body with jarring suddenness. The connection severed, leaving him disoriented as his human senses reasserted themselves. His head pounded, a dull throb behind his eyes that always came when he stayed too long in an animal's mind.
"What did you see?" His mother's voice was barely above a whisper, her face pale in the dim light of their hiding place. The small cave barely accommodated the three of them, himself, his mother, and his little sister Lyra, who huddled against their mother's side, eyes wide with fear.
"They're coming," Alyn managed, his throat dry. "Hundreds of them. The stone-sickness has taken them completely."
His mother's face tightened. She pulled Lyra closer, one hand absently stroking the girl's tangled brown hair. "How far?"
"Less than an hour's march." Alyn crawled to the mouth of the cave, carefully peering out at the forest beyond. Dawn was breaking, pale light filtering through the canopy. "They're headed straight for the mainlander camp."
"The Stark camp?" His mother's voice held a note of desperate hope. "Perhaps they can help us."
Alyn shook his head. "They don't know what they're facing. The stone men will overwhelm them before they understand what's happening."
He thought of the Stark force that had landed two days ago, disciplined soldiers with steel weapons and armor, completely unprepared for the horror marching toward them. Normal weapons wouldn't stop the stone men once the transformation had progressed this far. Alyn had seen a stone man continue walking with three arrows embedded in its chest, the shafts snapping off as the flesh hardened around them.
"We should warn them," he said suddenly, turning back to his mother.
Fear flashed across her face. "No! The stone priests are hunting for you specifically, Alyn. If they catch you—"
"If they complete the ritual, everyone dies," Alyn countered. "The mainlanders, us, everyone on Skagos. You know what the priests are trying to do."
His mother fell silent. She did know. As one of the few remaining followers of the old ways, the true old ways, not the perverted worship the stone priests practiced, she understood better than most what awakening the Stonefather would mean.
"The Stark lord has a son," Alyn pressed on. "I've heard the soldiers talk about him. They say he has a giant black direwolf that never leaves his side. Maybe he's like me." He didn't need to explain what he meant. His mother knew all too well how different he was, how the animals responded to him, letting him slip into their skins as easily as changing clothes.
"And if he's not?" she asked, her voice breaking. "If he's just a boy with a pet wolf?"
Alyn had no answer for that. He turned back to the cave entrance, listening to the forest sounds. Birds had gone quiet in the direction the stone men marched, a ripple of silence spreading before them like a wave.
"We can't stay here anyway," he said finally. "They're too close. We need to move."
His mother nodded, the resignation in her eyes breaking his heart. At twelve, Alyn shouldn't have had to make these decisions, shouldn't have had to be the one looking out for what remained of their family. But his father was gone, transformed by the stone-sickness in the early days before they understood what was happening. Most of their village was either dead or converted, marching in that terrible procession toward the ritual site.
"Where will we go?" Lyra asked, her small voice trembling. At seven, she understood enough to be terrified, not enough to comprehend the full horror of their situation.
Alyn looked at his sister, forcing a confidence into his voice he didn't feel. "To the Stark camp. We'll warn them about what's coming."
"And then?" his mother asked quietly.
Alyn met her gaze, seeing the knowledge there that neither of them spoke aloud—, that there might not be an "and then" for them. "One step at a time," he said. "First, we warn them. Then we see if this Stark boy with the direwolf can help us stop what's coming."
He reached for his small pack, containing the few possessions he had managed to grab when they fled their village, a knife, a water skin, a small pouch of dried meat. His most valuable tool was something no one could see or take from him, his ability to slip into the skins of animals, to see through their eyes, to borrow their strength and speed when needed.
"We'll need to move quickly," he told his mother as she gathered their meager belongings. "The stone men are slow, but they don't stop. Not for anything."
His mother nodded, helping Lyra to her feet. "We'll go south, through the marshes. The stone men avoid water, it speeds the transformation in ways they can't control."
Alyn shouldered his pack, trying to ignore the gnawing fear in his gut. He was just a boy, he knew that. A boy with powerful warging, but still just a boy. Yet somehow he had to get his family to safety and warn the mainlanders about the nightmare marching toward them.
As they slipped out of the cave into the misty dawn, Alyn reached out with his mind, searching for nearby animals. A crow responded, its consciousness brushing against his like a curious finger. He didn't enter its skin, not yet, but established a connection that would allow him to slip into its eyes when needed.
"This way," he whispered, leading his mother and sister deeper into the forest, away from the advancing stone men. Above them, the crow took flight, following their progress through the trees.
Alyn's thoughts turned to the Stark boy and his direwolf. He had never met another person who could do what he did, had begun to believe he was alone in his strangeness. If this boy was truly like him, perhaps together they might stand a chance against what was coming.
It was a fragile hope, but it was all they had.
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