Chapter 54

The Kingsroad eventually gave way to the hard-packed earth and familiar grey walls of Winterfell.

Word of the returning vanguard had reached the castle ahead of our arrival. As the column passed through the winding, muddy streets of the winter town, a massive crowd of smallfolk had gathered to welcome the Young Wolf and the Lady of Winterfell home. But the cheers died in their throats before they even began.

A terrified silence fell over the town.

Robb Stark rode near the front, tall and proud in his armor, but the eyes of the North were not on him. They were fixed entirely on the vanguard. I walked at the very head of the procession, my massive, six-foot frame moving with grace. Every step I took radiated a wave of heat into the freezing Northern air. Women pulled their children behind their skirts as men stepped closer to their family. Their eyes wide with absolute awe and fear, to them, I was a creature pulled straight from stories old.

Inside the wooden wheelhouse rolling behind me, Arya Stark pressed her face against the small, slatted window. She watched the awestruck, terrified faces of the commoners, a fierce, incredibly proud smile spreading across her face.

The heavy iron portcullis of Winterfell's main gate groaned upward, and the drawbridge was lowered.

The courtyard was lined with guardsmen, stablehands, and household staff. As I stepped through the arched gateway, the tension in the yard spiked. Hardened Northern spearmen gripped their weapons tightly, taking involuntary half-steps to give me a wide berth.

Standing near the armory was Theon Greyjoy. The ironborn ward stood with his hands resting on his belt, wearing his usual arrogant smirk, fully intending to greet Robb with some swaggering remark.

I stopped. I turned my heavy head and locked my glowing amber eyes directly onto his.

Theon's smirk vanished instantly. For two agonizing seconds, he tried to hold the gaze, his pride fighting his survival instincts. But he was only a kraken. Theon swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He broke the stare, dropping his gaze entirely to the muddy cobblestones, his hands falling nervously to his sides.

I dismissed him and turned my attention to the center of the courtyard.

Waiting near the steps of the Great Keep was Bran Stark. The boy sat in a specially crafted wooden chair, a thick blanket laid across his useless legs. Standing right beside him was little Rickon, and behind them both stood Maester Luwin, his grey robes sweeping the stones, his chain of many metals clinking softly in the cold wind.

As I approached, Rickon let out a frightened squeak and scrambled backward, hiding behind the maester's robes.

Maester Luwin did not run. His hands trembled slightly, but the man of science held his ground. His wide eyes scanned the sheer impossibility of my size. He had heard the rumors from the Citadel and knew that the impossible beast standing before him was Red.

I lowered my massive head, bringing myself down to Bran's eye level. The boy didn't flinch. His eyes were wide with wonder. I closed the distance and gently nudged his shoulder with my nose.

Bran let out a breath he had been holding, a small, tentative smile breaking across his face. He reached out with his hand, sinking his fingers into my mane.

From the crypts and the kennels, two streaks of shadow bolted into the courtyard. Summer and Shaggydog bounded forward. They didn't dare bark or challenge me. They fell into step alongside Grey Wind, Nymeria, and Lady, forming a complete circle of direwolves around Bran's chair and my frame.

I lifted my head and looked directly at Maester Luwin. I let out a low, vibrating rumble that rattled the chain around his neck before I looked back down at Bran for a lingering moment, making sure the boy was okay.

Then, I felt it.

A prickling sensation at the back of my mind. A watcher.

I slowly lifted my head, my ears swiveling toward the high stone towers and the sprawling branches of the Godswood leaning over the inner walls. A murder of black ravens sat unnaturally still along the branches. Their eyes completely black, all of them staring directly at me with a singular, unified intelligence.

I narrowed my glowing amber eyes. I didn't just look back. I reached into the invisible threads of the world, found the tether connecting those birds to their master, and violently yanked it.

Far beyond the Wall, deep beneath the frozen earth in a cave tangled with the weirwood roots, Brynden Rivers gasped.

The Three-Eyed Raven, the greatest greenseer in the world, was ripped from his thousand and one eyes. The darkness of his cave dissolved. He was no longer watching the courtyard of Winterfell. He was pulled into a void of pure, blinding heat, a mental landscape he did not create and could not control.

He found himself standing, not as the withered corpse tangled in tree roots, but as his old self: a pale, one-eyed man with a wine-stain birthmark, wrapped in the black cloak of the Night's Watch.

The air around him was suffocatingly hot. The ground trembled.

Slowly, Bloodraven looked up.

Looming over him in the darkness was a monstrous entity. It was the beast from Winterfell, but here, in the projection of the mind, its true spiritual weight was unchained. Its fur glowed like liquid fire, its mane flared aggressively around its neck, and its massive teeth were bared in a terrifying rumble that shook the very foundation of the vision. Its amber eyes bored into Bloodraven's soul, pinning the seer in place like an insect.

For the first time in a century, the Three-Eyed Raven felt fear.

Bloodraven whispered, his singular red eye wide with absolute disbelief as he stared up at the living sun. "What are you?"

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