Note: Sorry for the extended wait, It's good to be back. All the distractions I've had to deal with, finals, 21st birthday, and a ton of other things are done now, so updates will be more frequent for the next month, cheers :)

Warning: The following chapter is not for the faint at heart. Some of you might want to stay away until chapter seven is released

Flashback

It was dank down here. The ground below heated the snow up above, and the weeping of the melted snow was the only sound that was made.

Those who surrounded her came from every walk of life that could be found in the North. From the old weaver women in the tattered wool coats to the grizzled knights ringed in steel. Had it not been so desperate, they all would have looked as out of place as a lemon tree in Braavos*.

They were on the stairwell that linked the many levels of this farmiliar sight in the crypts of Winterfell and ensconced in a light colored stone. It felt like a sight from another life, and maybe it was.

She heard a rumble far beneath the many layered tomb. They had found a way in from below, and death would come soon. All knew.

A warhorn gave three quick blasts, and those around her prepared for the onslaught.

She saw the face of the man who was supposed to be her target, though the chance had not yet come. It did not truly matter, he was half a corpse himself and no one would survive even a few more days.

Footsteps came quick and closer as the man with the warhorn came into view at the edge of the great serpentine stairwell of the crypts. The footsteps ceased, but their sound did not. The echoes only gave way to the rumbling beneath the ground that made it seem as if some great battering ram was pounding the masonry below fighting to reach the surface.

Suddenly she noticed that the warmth of this place of death was gone just as a chill swept up the stairwell.

"Your grace, they're coming, they have … they have…"

A terrible high pitched shriek unlike anything she ever heard pierced the air and the chill became worse still. The solid flight of stairs beneath her that were carved into the rocks collapsed, and she fell into a pool where the now freezing water must have collected from above.

All around, an entire world seemed to collapse and her body convulsed with the frigid water. A falling boulder landed inches from her and in what seemed a lifetime later a smaller chuck of falling masonry that looked like a direwolf statue struck her on one leg.

The cold waters took away her strength to survive and she could only helplessly surrender to the inevitable. Her rapidly dimming sight was towards the heavens whose skies where clear today once all had collapsed.

The last thing she felt was the kiss of falling snow on her numbing cheek.

Jon

The fortress of Winterfell that he had once called home for most of his young life crowned the frozen landscape. In fact, they could see it for nearly an hour before they entered it.

They had travelled above ground for nearly three days since crossing the white knife near Castle Cerwyn, where the long caves under the barrows ended. In the castle they found modest supplies that did much to supplement their dwindling food stores.

They were ill at ease at the thought of entering his boyhood home.

The air around him reminded Jon of the time he had seen the Fist of the First Men after the battle.

Someone had been killed here, of that Jon was certain.

They passed by the Winter Town, which was deserted even in the dead of winter, and came upon the South Gate. The gate was shut.

Jon produced a grappling hook from his pack, and tied it to a stiff coil of rope. After three tries, it hooked behind the solid granite crenelations of the outer wall. Jon climbed first then Samwell. It amazed Jon that Samwell had made it. Though truth be told, he still found it strange that Sam had lost about two stone while he was in Oldtown.

He looked down the frozen solid moat and saw that the drawbridge was down. They climbed down the steps to the outer wall, and crossed the drawbridge.

Icicles hung from the open iron portcullis, like the filed teeth of a Hornfoot Cannibal which gave the entrance a sinister appearance. They passed the gate for the inner wall, trudging over the knee deep layer of snow. All around, there was no indication of the presence of any living creature.

But for Jon, the castle was alive with ghosts. To his left a smithy, but it wasn't the one where Mikken forged Stark Steel. The building he saw had been rebuilt by the Boltons after Ramsay Snow ravaged his childhood home.

As he walked in the courtyard, he remembered all the time he had spent here practicing with Robb. Between the armory and great keep, was the bridge that had only been partially repaired, with the rubble of the old one cleared away.

Winter was here and all others who had occupied this ancient castle were gone. The Krackens in the North found the land too unforgiving, and the flayed men simply rotted away.

The fiery stag, whose forlorn and bedraggled royal banner still yet flew against the bleak winter sky from the large circular drum of stone that was the great keep, bore a mute testament a man who had all but adopted the North as his new homeland. No Andal king had ever seen such respect in the eyes of Northmen as Stannis Baratheon had.

But now the falling snow silently wept over Winterfell, a blanket over their eternal slumber. Unless their bodies had given to the fire, they could rise again.

"We're being watched Jon." Suddenly he heard a noise. Looking up, a solitary raven landed on the partially built bridge. "Godswood," the raven called.

"The power the Old Gods is strong here, can you feel it Jon?"

There was a certain power in the air, that he recalled feeling whenever he was beyond the wall.

"Listen to the raven, Jon."

Reluctantly he agreed to go. He still wanted to get away from this nightmare as quick as he could.

Though the ironwood gate to the great godswood of Winterfell was damaged and yet unrepaired, the godswood itself was untouched and timeless as it had always been.

But there was something else to this place, something that remembered whatever had happened here, and a feeling of dread coiled within him. Even the Snow Shrikes, whose high, sharp trilling almost always heard whenever snow fell on the godswood were long gone. Even here it felt as if life had forsaken this land.

The pond facing the heart tree was frozen, and the snow was thick everywhere but under the trees.

Jon did feel the power in this wood, as he and Sam bowed their knees to face the heart tree of Winterfell.

Gone … Lord … Brynden

Jon felt his blood nearly freeze at the sound of the voice that seemed to come not only from the weirwoods but, also from the light wind that blew today. The stern face of the weirwood tree morphed into the face of a boy and confirmed Jon's belief. The face was that of a boy, one who looked much like Robb did before he left. The voice though he had not heard it for years, was unmistakeably that of Bran Stark.

Crypts … Night … King

"Bran, what happened to you?"

But the light wind only seemed to die, and the face he had glimpsed briefly, was gone just as soon as it had formed.

They left the godswood, with haste and more questions than they had anwsers.

Who who is Lord Brynden? What is this thing about the crypts?

Jon had been having many nightmares about the final resting place of the lords of Winterfell, and they came more often since heading north. Something inside of him was calling him to that forbidding underground tomb of many levels

"We have to go to through the crypts?"

"Is that where we find it Sam?"

Sam nodded, "The manuscript in the Citadel said that Spring of Time was in a cave underground and could be accessed through the path of the dead," It said the crypt went down many levels into the Earth.

It was true, Jon knew. He had never gone more than three levels of that place, and that was because he once took a dare from Robb.

Jon could always feel the eyes of the Kings of Winter who never seemed to like his presence.

When they arrived at the dreaded sight, there was no entrance to the crypts; there was only a gaping pit that looked as if it had burst asunder. The entrance had been destroyed, and the earth had sunk between the North Gate almost to the backside of the guards hall. Looking into the hole that cut across the many tiered tombs, he saw the ruins of the great crypts, of many levels ruptured by whatever great force had broken loose here.

Sam kicked against a gargoyle in the lichyard outside the first keep that stood vigilant and undisturbed by all the horror below. The statue didn't budge. Satisfied, Sam tied the rope they used to scale the outer wall of Winterfell to the Gargoyle and gave it a tug. The rope tightened and Sam looked down into the void as if he were about to jump off the top of the wall.

Jon hesitated for only a moment before he took the rope, "I'll go first; I can climb faster than you can if something evil is down there." Jon regretted those words the moment they left his mouth. Of course something bad is down there. Sam gave Jon a look that suggested he knew what Jon was thinking.

He secured his pack, and rapelled down the line.

Jon saw levels below that he had never visited. Towards the bottom of the pit, he saw the rubble of many stone direwolves and their masters littered across the floor of the great cavern below. A faint sickly light seemed to come from within the cavern and shone past the faint plumes of steam that came from the warm heart of Winterfell.

Though it was considerably warmer down here, Jon was slow and deliberate with his movements. After several weeks traveling north in cold weather worse than anything he remembered north of the Wall, breaking a sweat could be a death sentence.

Right now Jon felt a queer sense of fear. What made it queer was that he didn't know what really unnerved him about this place.

Was it the fact that the familiar settings of Winterfell seemed so desolate and alien? Was it the nightmares he was having about this place? Was it the feeling that the enemy was down there waiting for him to descend into darkness. He could almost hear voices in his head, warning him of the dangers that awaited him.

Sam was right, the Old Gods were trying to tell him things, but he could not understand them.

The descent was longer than the rope, so four levels below the surface; he landed by the edge of whatever cataclysm had happened here. He took his rope and hooked the end, to the broken statue of a long dead Stark.

After giving the floor a brief survey, he tugged the rope several times quickly and waited for Sam to come down.

He came down, and they surveyed the tombs whose complex was greater than Winterfell itself above it. Sam was unnerved too Jon did not fail to notice, but he was also in silent awe at this place.

"The books in the vault said that Winterfell was built over a hot springs and a series of caves. I didn't believe it, and I still can't, this place is larger than the castle above."

They came upon the shattered stairwell that was used to reach this place in better times. Though it had crumbled greatly, the stairs were functional for at least twenty feet above them, and many more below. They descended carefully, one at a time. Jon felt a small bit of shame that Sam knew his way around as much as he did, and that was from some book that a maester wrote two hundred years ago.

A small pool was seen three levels down near the edge of the great hole in the crypts overlooking the cavern under the tombs where the great hot springs were. He remembered seeing this from above.

Curious, Jon took a look. He had heard a tale from Old Nan once, about two springs under Winterfell. One was the great spring that heated Winterfell during times such as these. But nearby there was a smaller spring called the accursed spring that stood on the lowest level of the crypts which were carved into the edges of the cavern itself, which was now sunken and much of it had collapsed.

It was accursed, because of some evil magic that had supposedly fallen into the spring. Though the surroundings were warm, the spring stayed cold as if to defy the warm, moist atmosphere of the crypts.

Within the spring, he saw a single body at the bottom. The cold does not give up its dead, if they are under the sea, the men at Eastwatch used to say. The frigid waters by Eastwatch ensured that any man who went a watery grave would never come back up, as they would in warmer waters. They had proven wrong in time when Eastwatch by Sea was attacked by an army of wights coming diectly out of the sea.

He looked closer at the body and noticed that it had been well preserved. The corpe was also pinned down by a broken statue that had fallen from some tomb. So desolate was Winterfell, that this the first trace he had seen of human presence.

"Do you want to look at it Sam? How he die?"

Sam shuddered visibly at the sight of it, but put his hands into the shivering water. "It's a girl Jon," he said as he pushed aside the stone direwolf. Jon with his longer reach moved his arms to pull the body out...

And gave a sharp cry of pain, pulling his hands from the water quickly.

He saw a deep cut that went from his thumb past his wrist. Blood began to well up in the cut across his burned hand.

Samwell Tarly's eyes went wide, and pulled out his Qohorik dagger. The body that had been under the water was standing up now, the water just barely over its waste.

It was a girl, just like Sam said it was. She was beautiful too, with her bright blue eyes only adding to her malevolent beauty. What got his attention though, was the blade she held.

It was a tall thin blade much like those in Braavos. He had even had one made for Arya in better days.

The wight gave him a look that chilled his spine. The wight knew him, but he didn't know her, unless... No, no please no.

She was tall and thin when she died, even though he did not recognize the face, it was that moment that he knew who she was.

Without warning, the wight made a clumsy charge and missed the thrust.

Sam lunged from behind with a torch, but the wight was sopping wet, and did not catch fire. Instead she turned towards Sam the Slayer, who was held a dagger and a torch that didn't work against wet wights.

Jon drew Longclaw, and without thinking thrust into her between the two shoulders.

Valyrian steel must have indeed been dragonsteel, for the wight screamed as smoke emerged from her insides. Moments later he saw wight simply crumble. It was if its skin was just turning to ash.

As the wight writhed on the floor turning into a pile of ash, he suddenly realized that he was crying. I'm sorry little sister, but you died long ago.

He reached down muss the wet scalp that had not yet turned to ash, goodbye.

"Jon!" Sam called out, "they're down here."

A dozen wights lumbered into view, standing between them and the way to the hot springs. No doubt the noise had attracted them.

At the head of the horde of undead, one wight produced a blade. He saw the sword before he saw the bearer. The cavern became alive with light as he raised the flaming sword that bore no heat. Beneath the raised sword was the ghastly spectacle that wore a crown of flames that seemed to dance under the light of his blade. His eyes were bright with malice and eerie beauty all the same, and his figure cast no shadow.

"And now it ends," Jon felt the despair in his voice as they closed in.

"No!" Sam bellowed, and his scream echoed throughout the crypts, "Now it begins."

They came together in a rush of steel, shadow, and flame.

* No, I do not buy into the Illemonati bullshit about Dany being raised anywhere but Braavos