Hey guys! I'm an enormous fan of the books and show of 'Game of Thrones', and I thought: hey, lets write a fanfic about it… Which also means: I do not own any of this, except the people I thought up...but the idea belongs to GRR Martin

What's different about this fanfict, is that it plays like 1000-1200 years before the books. I thought: let's do something different (:

Prologue: Fever As Messenger

Ailith sat next to the bed where her small brother Darnell laid. Softly she stroked his hair and looked at him. He looked so much like their mother, Ingrith. She had died when Darnell was only two and Ailith was eleven at that time. Darnell had never known her and had no memories of her, but for Ailith he was the living memory. Unlike Ailith and her brothers, Darnell had light brown hair and brown eyes. Whereas Ailith and her four brothers, including her half-brother, had dark brown curly hair and grey eyes. They were typical Stark-children, as their father Benjen always said. Since the day her mother died, Ailith had been wearing a small black lines around her eyes. Barely visible, but there. A sign of grief. An ancient sign. Ailith had seen her grandmother wear it and read about it in books, and she wished to continue the ancient traditions. She had loved her grandmother, though Ailith could not remember her name. She had wished her children would have such an amazing grandmother as well, but then her mother died. It got even worse when her father remarried years later to Gunnora. The round-faces, big-cheeked, pig-nosed woman from the Iron Islands. Though her father was truly in love with her and her brothers liked her in some way, Ailith could not stand the woman, from the day she had met her. Neither had Darnell, since Ailith had always been like a sister-mother to him, Gunnora was a stranger who wanted to take Ailith away from him in his eyes.

'Are you still here, child?' Ailith recognized the voice, but did not look at Gunnora. She walked from the door straight to the bed where Darnell laid. He was murmuring from the fever.
'I'm not your child,' Ailith replied simply. Gunnora had gotten so used to the answer that she did not even responded to it.
'Your father has been asking for you at the table,' Gunnora simply went on.
'My lord father knows I have to take care of my brother,' now Ailith turned her head and gave an icy look with her iron grey eyes to Gunnora, 'as I promised my mother on her deathbed.'
'Just show your face to your father soon,' Gunnora sighed. But Ailith had already turned her face and attention back to Darnell. Gunnora turned around and walked to the door.
'Winter is coming, milady,' Ailith said, 'and if he does not wake up before it…'

With a gasp Ailith sat up straight in bed. Still panting she looked around. After a moment she remembered. She was in her own room, in her own bed. After she had dined with her father he had insisted that she would sleep in her own bed again, in the morning she could go back to Darnell. Suddenly she remembered another thing from the evening before: the white raven. Winter was coming. Immediately she jumped out of bed. As she ran through the halls she thanked the gods for the warmth Winterfell had. But as she approached Darnell's room, all the warmth left her and she knew she was too late. Behind her the voice of maester Sezar and her father rose, but she did not stop. She burst through the door into the room and immediately knew she was to late. Ailith could not move any further and saw het father and master Sezar ran past her towards Darnell. But maester Sezar shook his head. Ailith almost fell to the ground, but her oldest brother Benjan caught her and held her in his arms. She looked at him as tears rolled over cheek.
'I failed,' she whispered, 'I failed...'