The darkness consumed him. Day and night blended together, all passed in darkness. It had been a week since his arrival, since Maege Mormont brought the one ray of hope and a handful of candles, parchment and charcoal. Not having Aurelia or Ghost near him made Jon's hours pass interminably. The first few days he ran through fighting maneuvers and counted pushups. Then, he stopped counting. He slept when he tired, and ran plans in his mind when he did not. He scribbled, he wrote, he burned letters to his family written in memorial. He practiced with his dagger over and over and over. He forced himself not to worry for Aurelia. He felt certain that if some terrible ill befell her, he would know it. Somehow, in his bones, in every inch of him, he would know. Unless that feeling came, he could do no more than wait. And practice. And pray.
He thought he had lost the Old Gods somewhere in his trials the past couple years, yet in the dark of the maze of crypts, among dozens of his dead ancestors, something willed him back, to the legends of days past, to the hope of better days ahead. Jon knew it was his nature to be a bit sullen, and stubborn, and yet here in this place he once called home, and hoped to again, knowing Aurelia was near even though he could not see her, he felt as though generations of Starks, and the faces of the Old Gods, kept watch on them. And like him, they waited.