288 AC, Winterfell, the Godswood.
Thick snow blanketed the black earth, while the pale weirwoods stood silent amid the wind and snow.
Blood-red leaves stirred gently in the cold wind, and snow kept slipping from the branches.
Apart from the howl of the wind, no other sound disturbed the grove.
Jon sat on a green stone beneath the Heart Tree, quietly studying the ancient face carved into its trunk.
Crimson sap slowly seeped from the hollow eye sockets, leaving dark red trails across the pale, rough bark.
He liked coming here alone.
In the Godswood, no one looked at him differently because of his identity, nor did anyone go out of their way to remind him what he ought to be doing.
Aside from his father, Uncle Benjen, and Robb, there were few people in all of Winterfell who were willing to be close to him.
Catelyn in particular had never bothered to hide the coldness and distance in her eyes whenever she saw him.
Jon understood why, so he did not resent her for it.
Any woman who saw her husband return home with a child he had fathered with another woman would probably find it difficult to accept.
So Jon did his best to avoid Catelyn whenever he could.
It was better for both of them.
Besides, he preferred the quiet of this place to remaining inside the castle.
“Jon!”
A hurried shout broke the silence of the Godswood.
Jon turned and saw Robb hurrying toward him, wrapped in a thick wolf-fur cloak.
His little face was flushed red from the cold, and he clutched two carefully carved wooden swords in his hands.
“I knew you’d be here!”
Robb ran up to him, grinning as white mist puffed from his mouth.
“The moment Maester Luwin dismissed us, I turned around and you were gone!”
Without waiting for an answer, he shoved one of the wooden swords into Jon’s hand, his eyes bright with anticipation.
“Come on, let’s spar again!
I spent half the night thinking about it.
This time I’m definitely getting past that turn-and-block move of yours!”
Jon took the somewhat heavy wooden sword and raised an eyebrow.
“Are you sure?
You said the same thing yesterday, and I knocked the sword out of your hand on the third move.”
“Yesterday I slipped!”
Robb flushed with embarrassment and brandished his wooden sword.
“This time will be different.
Take this!”
Before the words had fully left his mouth, the young wolf charged through the snow.
Jon stepped aside and flicked his wooden sword upward.
“Clack!”
Robb’s wooden sword flew from his hand at once.
“Hey, I wasn’t ready!
Again!”
Robb snatched up his sword and charged him once more.
The sharp clack of wooden blades soon echoed through the silent grove.
Jon’s footing remained steady, and his movements were far more agile than those of other children his age.
Again and again, he parried Robb’s clumsy but forceful strikes.
Their laughter and the clash of wooden swords shook snow from the branches and drove away some of the grim stillness of the winter morning.
…
The next morning.
Jon jolted awake, his chest heaving and a thin layer of cold sweat beading across his brow.
Another dream.
Over the past year, those strange yet impossibly vivid dreams had continued to change.
At first, they had been fragments of memories from his previous life.
Steel forests towering into the clouds, cars racing along asphalt roads, and thin black slabs glowing faintly in people’s hands.
But as time passed, the dreams became increasingly scattered and fragmented.
He dreamed of an immense wall of ice with no end in sight, standing amid endless wind and snow.
He dreamed of the desolate lands Beyond the Wall, buried beneath a blizzard, where countless eerie points of icy blue light slowly appeared in the darkness of the endless night.
Thousands upon thousands of dead men in tattered leather armor, some missing limbs and others rotting away, formed a vast tide as they marched across the frozen ground.
Behind that sea of corpses stood several cold figures mounted on pale dead horses.
Their eyes were blue as ice crystals, and even the snowstorm around them seemed to grow colder.
The dream he saw most often, however, was of the white dragon that filled him with an inexplicable sense of closeness.
There were other dreams he still could not explain.
He had searched through many books and even tried to draw answers from Maester Luwin without asking too directly, but he had found nothing.
Yet in recent months, the dreams had begun to change again.
A girl had appeared in them.
The first time he saw her was the previous year.
At the far end of a raging snowstorm, a small, indistinct figure stood faintly in the distance.
Over the months that followed, whenever Jon fell into a deep sleep, he would see that girl again in the world of wind and snow.
Each time they met, the distance between them grew smaller.
He did not know who she was or why she appeared in his dreams.
Including this time, he had seen her five times.
As the wind and snow slowly faded within the dream, Jon finally saw her clearly.
She was a little girl about his own age.
Long silver-gold hair whipped around her in the gale.
Her fair face was so delicate it seemed almost translucent, and a pair of violet eyes gazed quietly at him.
Whenever the dream was about to collapse, the girl would raise one small arm and gently wave at him across the distance between them, as though offering a silent greeting and farewell.
Jon pushed aside the heavy wolf-skin blankets, climbed out of bed, pulled on his leather coat, and walked slowly to the narrow window.
He pushed one half of the wooden shutter open and let the bitter Northern wind strike his face.
He placed a hand over his chest.
His heart was still beating strongly beneath his palm.
As he stared out into the snowstorm, the image of that girl rose in his mind once again.
…
The world of wind and snow was still pale and colorless, with not a trace of any other hue between earth and sky.
Only the pale yellow hem of Daenerys’s little dress stood out against the lifeless snowfield.
On the other side, the black-haired, gray-eyed boy stood quietly.
Having wandered from place to place since childhood, she had never had friends her own age.
Viserys did not allow her to speak with strangers, nor would he let her out of his sight.
She was intensely curious about this boy who kept appearing in her dreams.
She wanted to ask who he was and why he was here.
Filled with questions, Daenerys instinctively took two steps forward.
The boy opposite her also walked toward her through the wind and snow, but an invisible barrier remained between them.
No matter how they tried, neither could move a step closer.
She opened her mouth and tried to ask his name.
But the instant her voice left her lips, the howling wind tore it apart, leaving not even the faintest trace.
The boy frowned slightly.
He clearly could not make his voice reach her either.
“Boom!”
Suddenly, a low rumble like distant thunder came from the far end of the snowfield.
Both of them turned at the same time.
In the distance, a pitch-black cavern slowly began to tremble.
The next moment, a pair of enormous violet slit-pupiled eyes slowly opened within the darkness.
The instant those eyes appeared, the wind and snow weakened, and the howling faded with them.
Daenerys’s heart began to pound.
The massive shape in the darkness shifted forward, sending heavy sheets of snow crashing down from both sides of the cavern entrance.
But whenever its outline was about to emerge from the shadows, the dream would begin to collapse.
Cracks spread across the sky like a spiderweb through shattered glass.
Daenerys instinctively reached out with her small hand.
The boy across from her also lifted his hand toward the empty space between them.
Just as their fingertips were about to touch, the world fell into darkness once more.