Jon's Room, Winterfell, The North, 291AC
Once more, Jon stands in front of the two great wooden doors. He knows, as he has always known, that he must continue onward. A deathly silence surrounds him, the world so still that he's sure the pounding of his heart must be audible. Isn't it odd, he thinks, this stillness? Where are Uncle Art and Father? Robb and little Sansa and Arya? There are no servants, either, no sounds of life. There are swords on the ground too, shattered and broken with shards strewn everywhere. Cloaks, too, lay atop the snow, some torn and bloody. Jon cannot remember what happened here, but he knows that everyone else is gone. He is alone. The silence is too much, maddening and aching and tears well up in his eyes, refusing to fall, and his throat hurts and his chest is too tight and he cannot mourn, not now. Winterfell is dead. Jon is the only one left. Winterfell is dead. Only he walks the grounds and sleeps in the beds and prays in the Godswood and breathes the air. Only Jon alone lives and he must push forward. Winterfell is dead and he must move, else all is lost. So here he stands, facing the stone beasts, heart racing and blood rushing and breathing so shallowly that he might as well be holding his breath.
Again, the stone guardians come to life as the light dies and the shadows reach across the ground. Their glacial eyes watch him carefully as they approach; they burrow deep into his soul, probing and gouging and leaving a hollow, near lifeless feeling in their wake. Jon sinks into himself as the wolves circle closer and closer. He tries not to make any sound, but still hears the quiet huffs of his own breaths. The beasts must hear it too. The shadows twist and stretch around their forms and Jon shivers violently from the harsh cold. He looks up quickly and startles; a wolf snarls at him, too close. He can't breathe and the wolves are moving closer and he forces his eyes shut so tightly that he can see bright, colorful lights dancing across the endless black of his eyelids and the wolves are closer than ever now, he can smell the stone of their bodies and the earthen dirt on their fur and he doesn't want to leave Uncle Art or Robb or Father or Sansa, already a little lady, or the little hellion Arya and he doesn't want to die but he will if it will protect them, he swears he will.
Suddenly, the frigid cold lessens, but he can still feel the ghost of it in his bones. He looks up just as the wolves settle in front of the doors once again. As one wolf returns to stone, the other still watches him, too-blue eyes piercing him, warning him, before returning to its sleep. Jon is waiting, limbs still trembling, for what feels like hours. Finally, he inches forward and stops. The wolves do not reawaken. He shuffles forward slowly, watching for any movement. His boots scratch across the ground, the sound shattering the quiet, and Jon freezes, his eyes wide and his heart pounding, but the wolves do not wake. He begins moving towards the doors again, so slowly that he can feel his muscles straining, urging him to move faster, but he won't.
When he reaches the towering doors, he rests his palms on them and shoves with all his might. The door creaks loud enough to wake the dead. He winces at the sound, hurries inside, and quickly shuts the door behind him. He refuses to suffer the wolves again so soon. He rests against the doors for a moment, eyes closed, as he tries to take deep, calming breaths the way Uncle Arthur showed him once when the world and the noise and Robb and Lady Stark's glares were too much. He breathes deeply once more before opening his eyes and begins walking into the depths of the crypts. He stumbles over loose rocks and his eyes are darting around and he still isn't breathing right but he keeps moving. He passes row upon row of severe stone faces in heavy crowns, hands clutching iron swords. All are frowning at him. Nervously, he starts walking faster and faster until suddenly he is running down the long, poorly lit corridors, and his breaths are sharp and loud and he can barely see anything but he keeps moving forward. He hears whispers, now, coming from every direction. Some are soft, calling sweetly to him. Come deeper, they sigh, down and down and down into the quiet, barren dark. Find us. Others are harsh screams for him to leave. He does not belong here, they howl. He knows this, but there's something he must do. Something he must find, deep within the catacombs.
What light there once was is dying now and something is wrong with the air; it is too heavy. He can't breathe properly anymore, his chest is heaving and his throat aches, each breath brings a sharp pain with it, but still he runs onward. The shadows are growing, and the air is thinning, and the cold is returning. This cold is wrong, different from before. It scares him. He has never felt a cold like this, a bone-deep chill that burns, somehow, burns his skin and his eyes and his lungs. He can see his breath now, small puffs of white mist in the dying light. He wants to turn back, to find Uncle Arthur or Father. He doesn't want to be here anymore, but the Winter Kings are behind him now, he knows they must be, he can hear the groaning of their dead limbs and the scrape of swords on the ground. He runs and runs and runs, but they are still right behind him, getting closer and closer to catching him. And they will never let him leave.
He stumbles, startled, but regains his footing; he moves forward still, but slower now. His ankle hurts, each step shooting a dull pain up his leg. One voice catches his attention, muted, and yet he can still hear it perfectly over the screams. Soft and kind. Her voice is soothing, what he imagines his mother's would have been like. It's like Uncle Arthur's voice, he realizes. The one he uses when he comforts Jon after Lady Stark or Theon or one of the servants says something needlessly cruel. He has slowed his run, trying to find the voice, but it is all around him. Still, he does not understand what she is saying, her words to soft for him to understand. He turns and turns, more corridors appearing around him. He is not alone. The shadows are here with him and the Winter Kings are not far behind. He can see outlines of their bodies in the shadows.
The kind voice sounds worried now and he's panicking. Corpses are lurching towards him, closer and closer, too-blue eyes piercing through the darkness. These are not the Winter Kings, he thinks, they can't be. These dead are cursed. They must be cursed. I am not a Stark, he thinks, but I have Stark blood in my veins. I belong here, same as you!
The grotesque, twisted corpses keep moving towards him. His eyes dart around wildly, looking for a gap in their ranks. His heart will surely beat right out of his chest. They move ever closer, rotting bodies surging forward, hands clawing at his cloak. The voice shrieks in his ears, "Ñuha trēsy, run!".
Jon Snow wakes up in his little bed in a forgotten corner of Winterfell, chest heaving and sweat running down his face. He remembers seeing eyes in dark sockets. Impossibly blue eyes, a blue so cold they burned, set deep in a dead man's face.
