Brandon awoke to the familiar sensation of gentle hands lifting him from his cradle.
His wet nurse smiled as she carried him toward the chair beside the hearth, humming an old northern tune he had already heard more times than he could count.
Moments later, he was once again reminded that no matter how extraordinary his circumstances had become, some things remained stubbornly ordinary.
He was hungry.
A few minutes later, with his stomach full and his complaints thoroughly exhausted, he found himself tucked back beneath warm furs inside his cradle.
Such was the rhythm of his days.
Months had passed since his birth, yet little had changed.
He still slept through most of the day, waking only for a handful of hours before exhaustion claimed him again.
At first he had tried to resist it, determined to make use of every waking moment.
That effort had lasted exactly three days before his infant body ignored his determination entirely and sent him into a deep sleep in the middle of what he had considered a particularly productive train of thought.
It had been an important lesson.
Willpower belonged to the mind.
Sleep belonged to the body.
The latter cared very little for the former.
By now, Brandon remained awake for six or seven hours on most days, sometimes eight if fortune favored him.
The rest vanished into peaceful, dreamless sleep.
It frustrated him, but there was little point fighting nature.
Even kings had once been infants.
Most of those precious waking hours belonged to his family.
Lady Lyarra rarely left him for long.
Whenever she was free from her own duties, she insisted on holding him herself, speaking softly as she walked through the chambers or sat beside the fire.
She would tell him stories from the Age of Heroes, sing old songs whose words he only half understood, or simply smile at him in that quiet, affectionate way only a mother could.
His grandmother proved little different.
If anything, she spoiled him even more.
Between the two women, Brandon quickly discovered that being the only child in Winterfell came with very few moments of solitude.
Every smile earned another embrace.
Every curious noise prompted laughter.
Every attempt to crawl—however spectacularly unsuccessful—was met with enough encouragement to make one think he had personally conquered a kingdom.
He could hardly complain.
He had been born into love.
Many children, in either world, could not claim as much.
Still, he guarded what little time he could call his own.
Usually an hour.
Never more.
Once the chamber quieted and everyone assumed the heir to Winterfell had drifted back to sleep, Brandon would turn inward, calling upon the strange gift that had followed him into this life.
The library appeared not as shelves or endless corridors, but as thoughts waiting to be found.
It was less a place than a certainty.
Every subject existed somewhere within it, provided he knew what he wished to seek.
He always began with the same question.
Food.
More specifically, how to grow enough of it that the North would never again fear an empty granary.
His greatest advantage over the people of this age was not intelligence.
There were surely men every bit as clever as he was.
It was perspective.
He knew what centuries of trial and error had taught his own world, and though he could not simply pull that knowledge into his mind, he could search for it, study it, and commit it to memory.
Potatoes remained at the heart of nearly every plan.
They were hardy, nutritious, and remarkably productive, but they were no miracle crop.
Mismanaged fields invited disease as readily as abundance.
Planting them year after year in the same soil would eventually ruin both harvest and land.
Proper rotation, careful storage, seed selection, drainage, and contingency planning mattered just as much as introducing the crop itself.
The North posed another challenge.
Its seasons were unlike anything Earth had ever known.
A summer might last two years.
Or ten.
Winter could arrive early, linger for a decade, and bury every carefully prepared calculation beneath snow.
Any reform that ignored that reality was doomed before it began.
So Brandon spent his quiet hours building plans rather than dreams.
If summer proved unusually long, which crops should replace potatoes before pests and disease spread through the fields?
If winter arrived after only a single harvest, what reserves would be needed to carry the population through?
How much grain should be stored?
How much seed should remain untouched?
What proportion of each harvest could safely be eaten without endangering the next?
The questions multiplied faster than the answers.
He welcomed them.
Agriculture occupied only half his studies.
The remainder belonged to war.
Not strategy.
The body.
Brandon had no illusions about the North.
A king might issue laws, but enforcing them required more than wisdom.
The First Men respected courage, admired strength, and followed those who proved themselves worthy.
A weak ruler could possess the finest ideas ever conceived.
They would still die with him.
Strength alone was not enough, but without it, justice often amounted to little more than hopeful speeches.
So Brandon studied the principles of building a warrior’s body—not merely one that looked imposing, but one capable of enduring long campaigns, wearing heavy armour for hours, and wielding a sword without surrendering speed or endurance.
He could not train yet.
His limbs were scarcely strong enough to crawl.
But one day they would be.
When that day came, he intended to begin with centuries of knowledge that no master-at-arms in the world possessed.
The future, he decided, favored the prepared.
Not every day belonged to study.
Every few evenings, his grandsire would visit the nursery.
Rickard Stark never announced his arrival.
The servants simply stepped aside, and the room seemed to grow quieter as the Winter King entered.
He remained an imposing figure, broad of shoulder despite the grey threading his beard.
His face was stern enough to make seasoned warriors straighten their backs, yet that severity softened whenever his gaze settled upon his grandson.
He would lift Brandon into his arms with surprising care, examining him as though reassuring himself that the child remained healthy.
“Growing well,” Rickard would say, more to himself than anyone else.
The wet nurse always agreed.
Brandon merely looked back at him.
Behind the king’s composed expression, he could always see it.
Relief.
Pride.
Hope.
Whatever burdens rested upon Rickard Stark’s shoulders, they seemed to grow lighter whenever he held the boy who would one day inherit them.