Chapter 2:
The first snow of deep winter came the night after Lord Royce died.
It fell heavy and fast, muffling the sounds of the castle, turning the world to white silence. Outside the walls, the forest groaned with wind. Inside, Winterfell held its breath.
Arya stood in the old armory, lit only by the glow of a single brazier. Her fingers hovered over a blade she didn't recognize, one of the newer-forged ones meant for the guards. It was too heavy, too polished. Too impersonal.
She set it down and turned back to Needle, laying across the table like it had been waiting for her.
The steel gleamed dull in the firelight, familiar and narrow, worn where her grip always fell. A child's sword. A girl's sword. But it had drawn blood like any other, and it still remembered how to kill.
Arya wrapped it carefully and strapped it to her hip.
There would be more snow. There would be more blood.
---
They found Lord Royce in the morning, just as she knew they would.
He was slumped across his writing desk, eyes wide, face slack, fingers still clutched around the base of an overturned goblet. The maester declared it a failure of the heart. No visible wounds. No blood. No questions.
But there were questions.
Arya could see them etched into the lines of Sansa's mouth as she stood in the great hall, receiving condolences with a queen's grace and a daughter's solemnity.
The lords bowed low. The ladies clutched at handkerchiefs they didn't truly need. And through it all, Sansa stood tall, her crown woven into her braids, her voice even and clear.
"He was an ally," she said. "A loyal friend to the North. He will be missed."
Arya watched her from the shadows behind the stone pillars. Close enough to see the flicker in her sister's eyes. Not grief. Not even relief.
Something colder.
Something calculating.
Later, in the quiet of a side corridor, Sansa caught her.
"You were there," she said simply. No anger. No accusation. Just truth, spoken like a blade pressed lightly to the skin.
Arya didn't bother denying it.
"I left no mark," she said. "No trace."
"People talk. Servants talk."
Arya shrugged. "Let them."
Sansa stepped closer. "You want to start a war in my halls?"
"I want to finish one," Arya said. "The one they started. The one we pretended was over."
Sansa searched her face for something—remorse, maybe. Or fear. Arya offered neither.
Instead, she leaned in and whispered, "He was feeding information to the Crown. He was selling out the North for gold. You know it."
"I suspected," Sansa admitted. "But suspicions don't hang lords."
"Then maybe we need new laws."
"No," Sansa said, voice hardening. "What we need is order. What we need is peace."
Arya shook her head. "There's no peace. Not really. There's just quiet. And quiet is when they plan the next betrayal."
"You're not a god, Arya. You don't get to decide who lives and dies."
"I'm not a god," Arya said, stepping past her. "I'm a Stark."
---
Brienne found her again that evening, by the stables. The sky was dark with storm clouds, and the snow had started to fall again, thicker now, the kind that buried things.
"You can't keep doing this," Brienne said, arms crossed beneath her cloak. "This isn't justice. It's revenge."
"Sometimes," Arya replied, "they're the same thing."
Brienne frowned. "And when they're not?"
Arya looked out across the courtyard. A young stable boy was struggling with a spooked horse. Another servant was hauling firewood, cheeks red from cold. These people had lived through too much—burnings, starvation, war. They'd bowed and bent and broken for lords who saw them as nothing more than meat to tax.
"They call it peace," Arya said quietly. "But peace bought with silence and compromise isn't peace. It's surrender."
Brienne's voice softened. "You've been through so much. We all have. But this path you're on… it doesn't lead home."
Arya turned to her. "I'm not looking for home. I'm looking for truth. The kind people bleed for."
Brienne didn't answer right away. Then she said, "If you fall too far into the dark, Arya, you won't be able to find your way back."
Arya met her gaze. "Maybe I'm not supposed to."
---
That night, she walked the old servant tunnels beneath the great hall. The stone was damp with age, and the air smelled of earth and ash. She could hear footsteps above—boots scraping, laughter, the clink of cups.
She stopped beneath the great hearth, where the warmth didn't reach.
She took out her list.
Most of the names were gone now. Dead by her hand or someone else's. A few she'd crossed off, not because they'd earned forgiveness, but because there were worse names to pursue.
She added a new one.
Tarly.
And another.
Samwell.
Not out of hate. Not yet. But because his words held power now. Because peace could be as dangerous as war when it was wielded like a whip.
---
The next day brought word of another death. This one far away.
Bronn of the Blackwater—assassinated outside his manor near Highgarden. Slain by a blade in the dark.
Sansa received the raven in silence. When she passed Arya in the corridor, she didn't speak.
Arya waited until they were alone in the godswood, snow clinging to the roots of the dead tree like frostbitten veins.
"You're spreading fear," Sansa said, not turning around.
Arya stood behind her, arms crossed.
"Good."
Sansa turned then. "You think that makes us strong?"
"I think it makes us remembered."
Sansa studied her, truly studied her. "You came back different. Colder."
"So did you."
"But I built something," Sansa said. "I rebuilt this. A place where people don't have to fear the knock at the door. A place where children can sleep."
Arya looked around. The godswood was quiet, the snow untouched.
"Then why do you keep waking in the night?"
Sansa flinched. Just slightly.
"You were always good at seeing people," she murmured.
"And you were always good at hiding from yourself."
---
Later that evening, Arya visited her father's statue in the crypt. She brought no candle, no offering. Just herself, and the name she hadn't said in years.
"Father."
Her voice echoed in the cold air.
"I don't know if you'd be proud of me."
She traced the stone edge of his sword. "I'm not proud of me. But I'm doing what needs to be done. You once told me that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."
She smiled bitterly.
"Well. I've swung it."
Footsteps behind her.
Not Brienne this time. Not Sansa.
Jon.
He looked older. The south had aged him—lines carved into his face like hewn stone, hair streaked with grey. He stood in silence for a long moment, then said, "I got Sansa's raven."
Arya didn't move. "You came fast."
"I always come home fast. When there's trouble."
Arya turned to face him. "Then you'll be staying awhile."
Jon's eyes were tired. "Tell me what's going on, Arya. No riddles."
She held his gaze. "The war didn't end. It just changed clothes."
Jon sighed. "I came because I hoped… I hoped you'd found peace."
Arya shook her head. "There's no peace in pretending."
---
They stood there, the last children of Eddard Stark, surrounded by the dead.
Winter hadn't ended. Not truly.
It had just taken new forms—softer, subtler, colder.
And Arya would face it as she always had: with steel, shadow, and silence.