---
The wind howled across the white wastes of the North, driving sleet against cloaks, armor, and exposed skin like shards of glass. The sky hung low and iron-gray over the world, and Winterfell loomed from the storm like a giant risen from the snow. Its towers stood black with frost, stone crusted in rime, its battlements lost to the slow fall of ice.
Ser Rodrik Cassel rode at the head of the small column. His cloak was soaked through, white whiskers stiff with cold. But his shoulders were squared, jaw set. Behind him followed a pair of guards from House Cassel, two silent squires, a raven-tied cart with an oilcloth-wrapped chest, and a boy.
Bundled in a thick bear-fur cloak stitched with silver thread, the child did not cry.
He sat astride the saddle in front of Rodrik like a wooden carving—still, cold, quiet. The wind tossed his dark hair in wild curls, but his face was expressionless. His eyes, green and bright beneath the hood, watched Winterfell as it emerged through the storm. Not with awe. Not with wonder.
With scrutiny.
He was three years old, and he did not reach for comfort.
The gates opened with a long groan of old iron and soaked timber. A pair of guards pushed them wide, boots crunching in the snow, spears at rest. The courtyard beyond was quiet. No banners flapped. No cheers greeted the new lord's arrival. Only snow.
Rodrik dismounted stiffly, legs creaking with age and chill, and turned to lift the boy down.
The child's feet touched the earth of Winterfell for the first time.
He did not flinch.
Rodrik took one step forward, holding the boy's small hand in his callused one, and raised his voice.
"This is Cregan, son of Brandon Stark and Ashara Stark, née Dayne," he said, loud enough for all to hear. "Trueborn. Heir no longer. Lord of Winterfell. Warden of the North."
A hush spread through the courtyard. The smith's hammer fell silent. Stablehands stilled. Kitchen girls held their breath. A few guards nodded stiffly.
But none knelt.
Not yet.
Cregan looked at them each in turn. Their faces were red from the cold, lined with war and time. These were not southern men with perfumed speech. These were Northmen—hardened and blunt. And they looked at him, small and silent, like one might look at a knife not yet drawn.
Rodrik's voice softened. "Welcome home, my lord."
Cregan didn't answer. He only looked past the courtyard, to the high towers rising into the storm. There was something about them—cold, yes, but more than that. Familiar. Not in memory. In marrow.
Winterfell.
He felt it. Like a heartbeat.
Rodrik led him up the steps, through the open doors, into the Great Hall. The warmth hit like a wall—heavy with smoke and stew and wet wool. The hearth blazed at the far end, casting long shadows across the stone floor. A few retainers stood near the benches, half-bowed, eyes flicking to the boy.
Then the crowd parted.
A woman stood there, draped in gray wool and years. Her back was bent, her hands gnarled, but her eyes were sharp as a hawk's. Her cane thudded once against the stone.
"Well, well," she rasped, voice like dry bark. "Bring him here, Rodrik. Let's have a look."
Rodrik nodded, nudging the boy gently forward. Cregan walked under his own power. The cane-tapping woman knelt slowly—one of the only people who ever would—and looked him full in the face.
"You've got your father's chin," she said, squinting. "But not his fire. No. There's something older in you. Something colder."
She tapped his chest lightly with one finger. "You're not a summer cub. Not with those eyes."
Rodrik murmured beside him, "This is Old Nan. She's told every lord a tale since Torrhen knelt."
Cregan nodded once. "Good."
Old Nan smiled. Just a little.
"Come," she said. "Sit with me by the fire. Let's see what kind of wolf you'll grow into"
Cregan sat at Old Nan's feet before the hearth, his hands folded in his lap, his face turned to the flames. The fire crackled and hissed, casting long shadows up the walls of the Great Hall. The warmth licked his cheeks, but the cold had already settled somewhere deeper.
Old Nan's voice wove through the smoke like thread through cloth. "Winterfell's older than the Wall," she said, voice rasping like a dry leaf. "Some say it was built not by Brandon the Builder, but by giants and gods, their blood bound to stone. The old kings knew the language of the earth, child. And the trees whispered back."
Cregan blinked slowly. "You believe that?"
"I remember when belief wasn't a choice," she replied. "Now hush. Listen."
She spoke of the First Men and the Red Mountains, of blood-oaths sworn beneath weirwoods, of wolves that sang in the dark. She spoke of the Long Night. Of a time when the sun did not rise for a generation, and cold things walked from the shadows of the north, not dead but not alive.
Cregan said nothing. But his hand drifted unconsciously to the bone-handled dagger at his side.
Later, a servant led him to his new chambers—Brandon Stark's old room. The furniture remained: heavy oak, iron-inlaid. The hearth was lit, but the air still felt cold. Dust clung to the corners like forgotten secrets. He sat on the edge of the bed, boots dangling. His eyes roved the room.
There was a softness to nothing.
It felt like a tomb.
---
At dusk, Maester Walys visited. His robes were pristine, his expression carved from politeness. He brought a wooden tray of bread, cheese, and boiled oats sweetened with honey.
"My lord," he said, bowing slightly. "A warm meal. I had the kitchens prepare something gentle for your stomach, given the journey."
Cregan didn't move.
"You must be tired," Walys went on, voice light as falling ash. "The road from Driftmark is long and unforgiving. I daresay your southern blood is better suited to sun than snow."
Cregan's eyes narrowed. "My blood is Stark."
Walys blinked. "Of course. Naturally."
He placed the tray on the side table and hesitated, hands folded. "When you're ready, we will begin your education. The histories of the North, the line of your house, reading and letters. You are very young, but the burden of rule—"
"I'll decide when I begin."
The words weren't loud, but they struck.
Walys offered a smile that didn't touch his eyes. "Very well. I am here to serve, my lord."
He bowed again and left, the door clicking softly behind him.
Cregan stared at the untouched tray. Then he stood, crossed to the desk, and pulled the map case from the wall.
Inside was a painted parchment of the North. The borders were yellowed, the ink smudged, but it showed all he needed: the long stretch of land from the Wall to the Neck, every holdfast and river, the coasts, the woods, the mountains.
He began to memorize it.
---
The next day, he walked the walls with Benjen.
The younger Stark wore a long black cloak, dusted with snow. His face still held some boyishness, but it was hardened now by grief and war.
"You remember me?" he asked, walking slow so Cregan's smaller legs could keep up.
"No."
Benjen smiled faintly. "You used to laugh when I tossed you in the air."
"I don't laugh much now."
"Yeah," Benjen said softly. "I noticed."
They reached the rampart. Below, the courtyard bustled with winter chores—logs hauled, cattle butchered, guards drilling. Cregan stared down.
"How did my father die?"
Benjen glanced at him. "He was executed. By fire. By the Mad King."
"And my mother?"
"She—" Benjen hesitated. "She walked into the sea. After."
Cregan looked out at the snow-covered roofs of Winterfell. "Why?"
Benjen exhaled through his nose. "Grief. Maybe shame. No one really knows."
Cregan didn't reply. He didn't cry. But something cold hardened deeper in his chest.
---
More training came the day after.
Rodrik met him in the yard, his old armor creaking. "A lord must know how to hold steel," he said.
"I need to learn everything, sword, axe, spear, hammer, everythung"
Rodrik raised a brow. "Your father started with a sword."
"I'm never knew him, a wolf must have teeth, the more the better"
They trained an hour that day, then another the next. Cregan did not smile. He did not complain. He learned how to fall. How to rise. How to watch.
When night fell, he sat in his room beside the flickering fire, staring at a small journal he had found in his fathers room, the words within confirming his suspicions.
Cregan walked the halls of Winterfell with silent steps, soft as falling snow. He spoke to no one unless spoken to. The servants watched him from the corners of their eyes. Some whispered behind sleeves; others bowed deeply. None dared call him a boy.
He was not loud, but he saw everything.
In the kitchens, he counted stores. The barrels of salted meat, the dried root vegetables, the dwindling sacks of flour. In the armory, he noted where oil had gone unfilled, where blades dulled with rust. He passed ravens resting in their roosts and watched which scrolls were carried, and which were not.
At dawn, he walked the walls. At night, he memorized the guard rotations. East tower changed too quickly. South tower's second man slouched on his post. The man's boots were always dry, even when the snow fell heavy.
He said nothing. He simply recorded it.
Maester Walys noticed.
The man began appearing more often, always at the edges. A word of advice here. A warm blanket laid over the boy's bed. Parchments offered. Offers to read to him from the annals of the southern lord's and kings.
Cregan accepted the parchment. Not the stories.
"Would you like me to write letters to your southern kin its wise to foster relationships with the south, your grandather understood that" Walys asked one afternoon, voice light. "Lady Allyria of Starfall perhaps? Or Lord Velaryon, who gave shelter after your mother…"
Cregan looked up from the parchment with narrowed eyes.
"I'll write my own."
The maester's smile didn't waver. "Of course, my lord. Of course."
Later that day, Cregan walked through the empty library hall. It smelled of dust and oil and winter moss. Scrolls rustled gently as wind crept through unseen cracks. He stood on a stool and retrieved an old ravening record.
The letters Walys had sent in the past months were noted. The ones received… fewer than expected.
Too few.
Old Nan found him in the godswood again, sitting beneath the heart tree. His boots were soaked. His hands were red from cold, resting in his lap.
She didn't scold him.
She simply sat beside him on the log and watched the snow drift down.
"You're learning fast," she said softly. "Too fast."
He didn't answer.
"He's afraid of you, you know. The maester."
He turned to her, finally. "Why?"
Old Nan smiled, thin and cracked. "Because you don't act your age. And worse—you don't trust him."
"I don't trust anyone... not anymore" was said under his breath.
"That's good. That'll keep you warm longer than fire."
She reached into her cloak and pulled out a flat piece of weirwood, polished smooth. Carved across its surface were runes—not the kind used by southern scholars, but old marks, sharp and jagged and hungry.
"He left this in the solar," she said. "Meant to burn it. But the fire wouldn't take it."
Cregan took the piece, weighing it in his palm.
"Keep it," she said. "It will be good for a Stark to speak the old tongue again"
That night, the snow deepened. Wind howled against the shutters of his chamber, and the hearth's fire sputtered low.
Cregan didn't sleep.
He sat at the small desk, eyes flicking between the map of the North and a fresh ledger Rodrik had brought. Trade routes. Food stores. Bannermen. Their numbers. Their loyalties.
He circled each name with care.
The Manderlys. The Umbers. The Glovers. The Karstarks. The Dustins and Ryswells
The Boltons.
When the candle burned low, he turned instead to a blank page and began to draw—slow, methodical strokes. A diagram of Winterfell. Not just the towers and gates, but the old tunnels, the wells, the forgotten crypt passages Old Nan had spoken of.
His hand trembled only once—when he reached the heart tree.
He paused and reached out with his magic, feeling the roots of the weirwood and how they had stretched beneath the castle and into his land.
When he stopped, he sat back and stared at the ink. The page looked like a web. Winterfell was not just a fortress. It was something else. The roots stretching across winterfeel connecting everything. Winterfell was something else. Something older, something magic.
Something alive.
---
Cregan knelt in the snow beside the godswood, the bark of the heart tree flaking like dried blood. His hand rested on the cold stone, eyes closed. The gods did not answer. They never had—not in this life, nor the last. But he didn't kneel to pray.
He knelt to think.
Old Nan's voice echoed from the past night, thick with firelight and old truths. "The First Men carved the runes with their blood, not ink. When the snows fell and the wolves came, they didn't write laws—they made pacts."
He had asked for the old tongue. She'd brought him scraps of bark etched with clawed script, faded and cracked. "Words from before the Seven," she said, "when the North still remembered itself."
He remembered what it meant to believe in something.
Once.
But that boy had died in another world, sacrificed on an altar of betrayal. The scar of it still lingered, invisible but fresh. Every smile back then had hidden knives. Now, every silence held truth.
---
Earlier in the week he had foundbehind a rusting iron sconce, what had been left behind: a leather-bound book sealed with a wolf's head clasp.
Brandon Stark's journal.
Cregan sat at the stone table, fingers tracing the worn cover before flipping it open. The ink had faded in places, but his father's hand was bold, sharp. Not poetic—functional.
"—moat cailin is impassable three months a year. Will petition Lord Manderly for levy of stonemen. Cut canal through the barrowlands. Reinforce with winterlime cement. And rebuild the structure to control flow of people"
"—problems with harvest. House Reed recommends wind-grinders. Will commission Glover carpenter—"
"—Winterfell too reliant on southern roads. Build toward White Knife port. Ships must return. North must breathe on its own."
Cregan read page after page.
His father had been more than fire and steel. He'd dreamed. Planned.
And failed.
Because you thought they'd let you.
He shut the journal and breathed slowly.
Brandon had trusted in systems. South⁴ern promises. A future given, not taken.
Cregan's hand curled into a fist.
"I'll not be a dreamer," he murmured. "I'll be the knife, and if the knife doesn't work the hammer to bring all crashing down around them"
---
In the training yard, Rodrik waited with a row of weapons. The ground was hard and slick with frost. A spear. An axe. A hammer. A longsword. A shield. Cregan studied each in turn.
"You'll not wield them well today," Rodrik said. "But you'll know how they move."
"I want all of them," Cregan said flatly.
Rodrik frowned. "Best master one before reaching for more."
Cregan stepped forward and picked up the axe first. "I don't have time."
They trained through the morning. He sparred with wooden weapons, bruised his knees, split his lip once on a guard's counterstroke. He bled, but didn't wince. When he fell, he rose. Each movement more efficient. Every mistake catalogued.
Later, Rodrik gave him a nod of respect.
"You're not your father," he said.
"No," Cregan replied, chest heaving. "I'm worse."
---
Benjen joined him that evening, watching him draw lines in the dirt with a charcoal stick.
"Moat Cailin's foundation still sound?" Cregan asked.
Benjen raised a brow. "Not many lords ask that at three years old."
"I'm not many lords."
Benjen sighed and sat beside him. "It's stone sunk in mud. But yeah—sound enough if someone clears the causeways."
Cregan looked over at him. "Did Brandon… ever listen?"
Benjen was quiet for a moment. "No. He acted. Sometimes too fast. Sometimes too loud. But gods, he cared."
"And Lyanna?"
"She was wild. Like the wind. Our father tried to tame her with rules. It only made her fly faster."
Cregan didn't smile, but he nodded. "Thank you."
Benjen looked at the boy beside him—the stillness, the sharpness in those eyes. "You're not like either of them."
"No," Cregan said. "I remember what trusting people gets you."
Benjen tilted his head. "You're three."
Cregan looked him in the eye. "Am I?"
---
Later, in the quiet of his chambers, Cregan opened the journal again and turned it sideways, sketching along the margins.
Windmills. Drainage canals. Snow-fed reservoirs. Runes layered into stone like ice veins. He mapped out trade routes, alternative grain storage systems, infrastructure. It came to him fast—like instinct.
Not instinct.
Memory.
He remembered spells that twisted time and lessed the chill of winter, Blood wards that bound castles to bloodlines. He remembered how easily power slipped through hands too weak to hold it.
As he drew, the words whispered in the back of his mind—Tom's voice, or maybe his own.
There is no good or evil. Only power… and those too weak to seek it.
---
Two moons passed like ghosts over Winterfell—cold, silent, and watching.
The keep changed with them.
Snow piled heavier on the stone walks. The wind cut sharper through the cracks in the tower walls. And inside, beneath the fire-warmed halls, Cregan Stark began building something colder than winter.
---
He sat at his table most nights, oil-lamp low, parchment spread before him like a general's war table. The great map of the North lay unrolled, weighted with small iron tokens: direwolves for loyal houses, broken towers for uncertain ones, black dots for the silent.
The Manderlys had sent three ravens, warm and supportive.
The Glovers, terse but respectful.
The Boltons had sent none.
He marked them with a dark cross.
Rodrik knocked once before entering. "Moat Cailin's roads have begun clearing. You were right—the barrowstone beneath the frost still holds."
Cregan nodded. "And White Harbor's shipyards?"
"Dormant. But could be reawakened with coin."
"Good. I'll find the coin."
Rodrik tilted his head. "You've a sharp mind for your years."
"I've seen the cost of delay," Cregan said flatly. "It's too high."
---
Maester Walys began interfering subtly.
A letter meant for Rodrik went missing. Reappeared two days later, "misfiled." He began advising against rebuilding efforts—"Winter is better endured than challenged," he'd said.
One evening, Cregan approached him in the rookery, the walls lined with rustling ravens.
"Maester," he said softly.
Walys turned, hands folded.
"The raven to Karhold," Cregan continued, "was sent three days late."
"There was confusion—"
"There wasn't. It's a pattern."
Walys narrowed his eyes. "You imply sabotage."
Cregan stepped closer. "No. I imply I'm watching."
There was no threat in his tone. Only certainty.
---
That night, Cregan scratched his first rune into the stone beneath his writing desk.
ᚱ – Raidho. The journey, the path.
But modified. Twisted. Blood-bound. A silent tracker to ensure he knew who was in his domain.
He pricked his finger and pressed it to the mark.
It pulsed faintly. He smiled.
---
The next day, he shifted four staff positions. A guard loyal to his father now watched the hallway outside his chambers. A stableboy who spoke to Walys too often found himself reassigned to muck detail.
He did not explain these changes.
He simply made them.
---
Benjen visited less often. When he did, it was quiet talk—of Winter Town, of patrols, of memories.
"She used to ride at dawn," Benjen said once, eyes on the frost outside. "Lyanna. Would race shadows across the snowfields."
"Shadows always catch you in the end," Cregan murmured.
Benjen looked at him then—not as a nephew, but as something stranger.
"You know what you sound like sometimes?"
"A Stark?"
Benjen shook his head. "A ghost."
Cregans smile didn't reach his eyes as he laughed bitterly.
---
Old Nan brought him a scrap of ancient cloth from the stores—dyed in old Valyrian purple, threadbare but strong. "For your experiments," she said.
He thanked her. Then asked quietly, "Would you tell me if someone tried to poison me?"
She stared at him a long moment, then smiled.
"No need," she said. "You'd already know."
---
He did not trust Winterfell yet.
So he mapped it.
But not like a builder. Like a spellcaster.
He began work on a rune-based map, sketched over stretched leather, with key rooms marked not just by ink—but by intent. Each section was paired with sigils meant to sense passage, breath, footsteps. He remembered the Marauder's Map from another life, and he rebuilt it—not with parchment and enchantments, but with blood, stone, and old magic.
It wasn't complete.
But it would be.
---
And every night, before bed, he looked at the journal.
His father's dreams.
Not foolish, not weak—just… unfinished, rushed, wild. Somewhat lime the man himself.
"I'll finish them," Cregan said to the empty room. "But I'll do it my way."
His childhood fantasy of having a family to make proud clinging to him by scraps, although James Potter would always be his father he would ensure he found who caused his father to be killed, and revenge would be taken like a wolf.
---
The snow fell outside, heavy and muffling.
Cregan stood at the tower window, hands clasped behind his back, watching it bury the world below.
Let them call him a child.
Let them forget the North and who won't the rebellion for Robert.
"The direwolf is the apex predator in the North, It hunts silently, it stalks and tracks it's prey. And when it attacks it always goes for the throat ," he mused.