Jon moved north after dealing with the dead hanging about the sight were his uncle made his stand.

Ghost padded ahead, silent as falling snow, a pale blur against shadow. The direwolf had grown leaner, harder, his movements sharp with a predator’s certainty. Weeks beyond the Wall had stripped away softness from them both. Jon’s cheeks were hollow now, his new beard growing in thick with frost. His cloak was patched, his gloves mended twice with sinew and thread pulled from his own shirt.

Months passed.

Time broke apart beyond the Wall. Days blurred into white marches and nights into black vigilance. The sun became a pale rumor behind constant cloud. Snow fell, melted, refroze, fell again. Jon learned to read the world by subtler signs: the way wind curled around trunks, the silence that meant predators, the wrong silence that meant the dead.

He followed his uncle’s trail not as a man might but as a wolf would.

Broken branches snapped low to the ground. Old blood darkened snow beneath overhangs. Campsites abandoned in haste. Once, he found a scrap of black cloth caught on thorns, the weave unmistakably Night’s Watch. Another time, a scorched patch of earth, fire used not for warmth but desperation.

“He’s alive,” Jon told Ghost more than once. He had to believe it. And belief, out here, mattered.

The first wildlings attacked at dusk.

They came howling from the trees; six of them, fur-cloaked and half-mad with hunger. Cannibals. Jon knew the signs now: filed teeth, bone charms, eyes too bright. One hurled a spear. Ghost took him down in a flash of white and red, tearing out his throat before the man could scream.

Jon drew Longclaw. Valyrian steel sang.

The fight was brutal and fast. One wildling rushed him with an axe; Jon stepped inside the swing and drove Longclaw through the man’s ribs. Another tried to flank him, Ghost slammed into his legs, dragging him down, snapping bone.

When it was done, Jon stood panting, blood steaming in the snow. He wiped his blade clean on a corpse and did not look back. That was the first of many attacks he had to deal with. There were others, many of them.

A shadowcat stalked them for three days it was silent, patient, clever. Jon only realized something was wrong when Ghost refused to sleep, pacing endlessly. On the fourth night, it struck.

The thing dropped from a tree like living darkness, claws raking Jon’s shoulder. Pain exploded. Jon rolled, slashing blindly. Longclaw bit deep. The cat screamed, a horrible, almost human sound and Ghost finished it, jaws clamping around its neck.

Jon burned the body after he feasted on what he could with Ghost. He burned everything out here.

The farther north he went, the more the world changed. Unicorns not the gentle creatures of song that Sansa used to read about, but great beasts with blood-matted horns that charged without warning. Jon killed one only by leaping aside at the last second and driving Longclaw up beneath its jaw as it thundered past.

Aurochs stampeded through frozen valleys, massive and furious, their hooves shaking ice loose from cliffs. Jon learned to hide, to become small.

Polar bears hunted them once, two of them, enormous, scarred, half-starved. Jon climbed a tree as Ghost distracted them. He dropped from above, blade flashing, and nearly died for it. His left arm never fully stopped aching after that.

But it was the dead that came most often. Wights rose from drifts, from old battlefields, from shallow graves marked only by cairns. Sometimes they came alone. Sometimes in hordes, their blue eyes burning like cold stars.

Jon killed any he ran into. Fire when he could. Steel when he must. Valyrian steel worked wonders. Longclaw cut through frozen flesh as if it were meat. Heads fell. Limbs shattered. Ghost tore and tore and tore until his muzzle was always red.

Still, the dead kept coming. There were nights Jon did not sleep, only sat with his back to a tree, sword across his knees, whispering his uncle’s name into the dark. “Benjen Stark,” he said. “I’m coming.”

+4 Prowess(forgot last turn increase)

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It was during the fourth month that Jon realized he was being guided. Not by tracks. Not by Ghost. By the absence of danger.

Paths opened where none should exist. Wights failed to rise where he camped. Storms broke around him, leaving him untouched. Once, he woke to find fresh snow swept clean in a perfect circle around his fire.

“You’re being watched,” Jon murmured.

Ghost did not disagree. Then came the night of the trees. They were dead trees, white and twisted, growing in a ring. The air there was so cold it burned. Jon felt it thinking, probing at him, testing his memories. His blood. His name.

Something moved among the trunks. A man—no. A figure.

He rode an elk pale as bone. His hands were black with rot, fingers long and corpse-thin. His eyes burned red, not blue. The dead recoiled from him.

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Ghost bristled but did not attack. “Who are you?” Jon demanded, Longclaw raised.

The rider did not answer at once. When he spoke, his voice was dry as leaves. “You should not be here, Jon Snow.”

Jon’s blood went cold. “You know my name.”

“I know many names,” the figure said. “I knew your uncle.”

Jon took a step forward. “Benjen Stark. Is he alive?”

A pause. “Alive,” the man said slowly, “is a word with many meanings.”

Jon’s grip tightened. “Take me to him.”

The rider studied him for a long moment. Then he turned his elk. “Follow,” he said. “If you can.”

They rode or walked in Jon’s case, for many days and nights.

Time ceased to have meaning. Sleep came in snatches. Hunger dulled. The world narrowed to the steady crunch of boots, the soft pad of Ghost’s paws, and the slow, tireless gait of the pale elk beneath the rider. The forest grew stranger with every mile. Trees leaned at impossible angles. Shadows lingered too long after the light passed. Once, Jon thought he heard singing carried on the wind, thin and distant, like memory rather than sound.

At night, when they rested, Coldhands never slept. He stood watch, unmoving, a black silhouette against the stars, eyes fixed on the dark as if daring it to move. Wights never approached. Jon felt them sometimes, felt something lurking beyond the trees but it would not cross whatever line the rider drew simply by being there.

It was during one such night, with the fire burning low and Ghost curled at his side, that Jon finally asked. He looked up at the rider, who sat astride the elk like a figure carved from old wood and bone. Frost rimed his cloak. His breath did not fog the air.

“Who are you?” Jon said.

The eyes shifted to him. For a moment, Jon thought the man would ignore the question as he had ignored so many others. Then something in that dead face… softened. Only a fraction. “They call me Coldhands.”

That was all. Jon waited for more, for a name, a story, a reason but Coldhands turned his gaze back to the forest, and the night closed around them again. No more words came.

After that, the world began to change.

At first it was subtle. Snow no longer lay as deep. Ice cracked beneath Jon’s boots to reveal dark, wet soil below. The cold eased not truly, but the absence of biting cold was gone. Ghost lifted his head, ears pricked, tail swaying slowly, as if he smelled something he had not smelled since he was a pup.

Life. Moss crept along stones. Ferns unfurled beside half-frozen streams. Jon breathed in and nearly staggered at the scent damp earth, green growth, the rich smell of water that moved instead of slept. Warmth brushed his skin, light as a remembered touch. For a heartbeat, he was a boy again, running through the godswood at Winterfell, the sound of water and leaves and laughter around him.

They passed between two ancient weirwoods. Their trunks were vast, bark pale as old bone, their faces worn down by centuries of wind and weather until only the suggestion of eyes and mouths remained. Yet Jon felt them watching him. Not judging. Remembering.

And then he saw it. The grove. Jon stopped so abruptly that Ghost bumped into his leg.

It lay before him like a dream that refused to fade, a wide, sheltered hollow untouched by winter. Grass covered the ground, green and thick. Trees arched overhead, their leaves heavy and alive. A stream wound through the clearing, its waters flowing freely, catching the light like silver thread. Fireflies drifted in slow, lazy spirals, their glow soft and golden.

And there were voices. High, lilting, full of laughter. They emerged from the trees one by one.

Small figures. Slender. Graceful in a way that made human movement seem clumsy by comparison. Their skin was the color of bark and leaf and stone; browns, greens, and pale greys blending like living wood. Their eyes gleamed like molten gold and deep amber, catching the firefly light. Delicate horns curved from their brows, ridged and beautiful.

A dozen at least. Children of the Forest. Not ghosts. Not stories. Not remnants scraped from the margins of men’s histories. Alive.

They watched Jon Snow with ancient, unblinking curiosity. Some tilted their heads, studying him as one might study a curious animal. Others whispered among themselves in a language that sounded like wind through leaves and water over stone.

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Coldhands dismounted at the edge of the grove and finally spoke. “This place is hidden,” he said. “Warm. Safe. As safe as anything can be now.”

Jon fell to one knee, overwhelmed. “This can’t be possible. I thought they were gone,” he whispered.

One of the Children stepped forward.

She was the tallest, her skin pale as birch bark, her eyes bright as dawn through leaves. When she smiled, it was gentle, sad, and impossibly old. “Gone?” she said softly, in the Common Tongue, though her accent bent the words like branches in wind. “No, wolf-blood. We are not gone.”

Another joined her, taller, antler-horned, his gaze sharp as flint. “We endure,” he said. “As roots endure beneath stone. As memory endures beneath time.”

A third’s eyes lingered on Jon’s sword. On Longclaw. On the wolf pommel. Recognition flickered there. Interest. Caution.

“You walk where few of your kind have walked and lived,” the first said.

Jon swallowed. His heart hammered in his chest. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he said hoarsely. “Benjen Stark.”

The Children’s gazes shifted not to Jon, but to Coldhands.

At last one of the Children spoke.

She was small even for her kind, slight as a sapling, with short antlers curved from her brow, wrapped with thin strands of vine and bone beads that clicked softly as she moved. She smiled gently, and there was kindness there, but also exhaustion so deep it felt like the end of an age.

She gestured with one delicate hand, palm open, toward the rider who had brought him here. “Why don’t you introduce yourself, Ben… to your nephew.”

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