Jon walked alone along a rocky passage.
The passage was hidden deep within the belly of a mountain, twisting and narrow, branching here and there into several forks, some leading up, some down, each one vanishing into darkness at its end.
The air carried a faint smell of sulfur, and a light breeze blew up from somewhere deep below.
This was not the first time Jon had come here.
In the past, he had always stopped at some fork in the path, and then woken from the dream.
Only this time had he gone deeper and farther than ever before.
Passing through a cracked stone archway, he came upon a wide underground cavern.
Black rock walls surrounded it on every side, with several stone ledges scattered unevenly about.
A breeze slipped in through cracks in the cavern’s ceiling, and a thin mist drifted slowly above.
On a ledge close to the rock wall, a great white beast lay curled.
Milk-white scales covered its body, its neck coiled against its chest, its wings folded at its sides.
Even curled up like that, its body was larger than the sturdiest warhorse in the stables of Winterfell.
With every breath, a thin wisp of pale smoke rose from its nostrils, and the ash beneath it stirred faintly.
Jon could not help stepping back, and the loose stones beneath his feet rolled off the ledge.
Clack.
A pair of violet, slitted eyes opened, glinting in the darkness.
Jon’s instinct was to retreat, but his legs would not obey him.
Boy and beast stared at one another across the ledge.
Jon, who had expected to be attacked, found instead that the beast was only watching him quietly.
The fear in his heart slowly faded, and a warmth rose from his chest, as though something were answering him.
He did not know where the feeling came from.
He only knew that the beast’s violet eyes stirred in him a sense of familiarity he could not explain.
Jon tried taking a step forward.
The beast still did not attack.
Its nostrils flared faintly, as though it had caught some scent.
Then, slowly, it rose to its feet, as if it meant to come toward him.
At that moment, the entire cavern began to shake violently, and everything before his eyes began to blur into unreality.
The next moment, Jon was plunged into darkness.
Gasp—!
In his bedchamber in the tower, Jon jerked upright in bed, gasping for breath, his forehead beaded with cold sweat.
Only as the sky outside his window began to lighten did he slowly grow calm again.
Tonight’s dream had been different from the others.
This time he had gone deeper and farther, and there he had found a great white beast.
He stared up at the wooden beam above him and murmured, “What was that thing? Why did it feel so familiar?”
Those violet eyes from the dream stayed with him, refusing to be shaken loose.
This was no ordinary dream.
Jon got up from bed and walked to the silver mirror beside it.
The mirror reflected a black-haired, grey-eyed boy, his face still soft with a child’s youth.
But his eyes were quiet, without a trace of a child’s innocence.
He had been in this world for four years now, and still could not remember how he had come to be here.
His identity now was Jon Snow.
The bastard son of the Lord of Winterfell.
A child who carried Stark blood, yet could never truly bear the Stark name.
As for the memories of his past life, they lay behind a thick fog that would not lift.
The harder he tried to remember, the less he could recall.
Only now and then, in a dream or some familiar scene, would fragments of images come back to him.
Those forgotten memories seemed to be returning, little by little, but very slowly.
Jon was not troubled by this.
He believed that, in time, the memories hidden behind the fog would return to him fully.
The next morning.
After a hasty breakfast of oat porridge and bread, Jon slipped away alone into Winterfell’s library tower, in the gap before Maester Luwin’s lessons began.
The tower was thick with the musty smell of old parchment, candle wax, and dried moss.
Rows of tall shelves, built from the hard oak of the North, stood in the dim tower, laden with heavy hand-copied volumes.
There were histories chronicling the wars of the Kings of Winter, and volumes recording the great houses of the Seven Kingdoms, their lineages, and old legends.
Jon’s eyes swept along row after row of spines, and soon he found the book he was looking for.
Being still small, he had to struggle to drag over a wooden stool, standing on it to search through the old volumes on the shelves.
He went through book after book on Northern legends and great beasts, until, in a corner, he pulled out an old volume bound in dark leather.
Its title was: Valyria and the Heirs of the Conqueror.
Jon flipped quickly through its pages.
Partway through, his fingers suddenly stopped.
On the yellowed page, an illustration done in charcoal and paint caught his eye.
In it, a massive creature spread its wings, nearly covering half the page.
Hard scales armored its whole body, wings like a bat’s spread from its back, and its long neck bristled with bony spines.
And its great jaws, opened wide, breathed out roaring flame.
And its name: dragon.
It was the creature that had once ruled over the Freehold of Valyria, on the continent of Essos.
It was also the beast that, three hundred years ago, had conquered the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and raised House Targaryen onto the Iron Throne.
The book recorded in detail the glory and the ruin of ancient Valyria.
And the mark carried only by those of pure Valyrian blood: hair of silver-gold, and eyes of violet.
But at the end of the passage, the author had scrawled a single line of conclusion:
“The last dragon died over a hundred years ago. Since then, no dragon has been seen in this world, and all believe the age of dragons has come to its final end.”
Jon closed the heavy book, sat down on the cold stone floor, and stared blankly out the window at the grey Northern sky.
If dragons had truly gone extinct over a hundred years ago…
then what, exactly, was the white beast he had dreamed of beneath the earth last night?
If it was not a dragon, why did it look so much like the dragons recorded in history?
But if it truly was a dragon…
he himself was nothing more than a Stark bastard raised in the North.
He carried no blood of dragon kings.
So why, when he dreamed of it, had he felt no fear at all — only an overwhelming sense of familiarity?
This was, without question, no ordinary dream.
Unable to suppress the doubt gnawing at him, Jon put away the book and strode quickly across the courtyard, where a cold wind howled.
He went straight to the lord’s solar at the top of the main keep.
At the door, he greeted the guard, then knocked.
Knock, knock.
“Come in.”
Jon pushed open the heavy oak door.
Ned Stark sat behind his broad desk, bent over ledgers of taxes sent in from the holdings of the North.
One hand held the ledger flat, the other gripped a quill, jotting notes beside a few of the figures.
A stack of finished ledgers sat piled in the corner of the desk, along with a few letters still unopened.
On the wall behind the desk hung a great Valyrian steel greatsword: Ice.
Seeing who it was, Ned set down his quill, a gentle smile crossing his face.
“Jon? Looking for me this early — is something the matter?”
Jon walked up to the desk and looked up at Ned.
“Father, I’ve been having a dream lately.”