Cranna’s throat worked as he stared at the raven.
Cold sweat beaded on his palms despite the freezing air.
Old stories of the Children of the Forest and their green seers flooded his mind—tales of power that could twist fate itself.
“Relax,” Jon said without looking at them.
“It doesn’t eat people.”
He had never met this particular “relative” in person before.
He had only sensed, once, a hidden power trying to peer into his future—an act that could have burned the spy alive.
Thanks to his gift, Jon knew exactly who watched through those three eyes.
Brynden Rivers.
The infamous “Bloodraven.” Bastard son of Aegon the Unworthy.
Great-uncle to the boy standing before him.
The raven glided down in a graceful arc and landed on Jon’s shoulder.
Its three eyes regarded him with calm, unmistakable intelligence—not the vacant stare of a bird, but the focused gaze of a human soul that had lived more than a century.
Jon ignored the three terrified wildlings.
All his attention fixed on the creature perched on him.
“First time meeting face to face, great-uncle.”
The raven gave a harsh croak, almost like acknowledgment, then launched itself and landed near the wildlings.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your solitude,” Jon said calmly to the bird, “but I need you to guide these three and introduce them to Mance Rayder.”
The wildlings stared into that single, soul-piercing eye and felt their blood turn to ice.
“As you can see,” Jon continued, turning back to Cranna, “you can return north unharmed. If you wish, bring more of your people. Consider it an extra reward for your service.”
His voice was quiet, yet it carried the weight of command.
Cranna, a man who had survived forty hard years beyond the Wall, felt suddenly small under that steady purple gaze.
The choice was simple: obey and live, or refuse and die.
“We’ll do it,” Cranna said at once.
He wanted nothing more than to put as much distance as possible between himself and this unsettling southern boy.
Jon nodded, satisfied.
He pulled a piece of yellowed parchment and a stick of charcoal from his pack.
In the flickering firelight he wrote quickly, then rolled the letter and bound it with a thin, flexible branch.
At the bottom he drew the three-headed dragon sigil with bold strokes.
It was crude work for a prince of the blood, but Jon had never cared for appearances when results mattered.
He watched the three wildlings disappear into the snow, following the three-eyed crow.
A small, satisfied smile touched his lips.
If the letter reached Mance Rayder, it would save him weeks of effort and steal tens of thousands of potential wights from the Night King’s army before the Long Night even began. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
Jon exhaled, closed his eyes, and let his mind sink into the dream.
When he opened them again he stood before a colossal weirwood.
Its trunk was bone-white, its leaves blood-red.
A carved face wept crimson sap down the bark.
Ancient roots twisted across the frozen ground like veins.
Jon followed them downward.
At the base of the tree, half-buried in roots that had grown through and around him, sat Brynden Rivers.
The man looked more corpse than living.
One eye was gone, leaving a dark, empty socket.
Long white hair hung in tangles around a pale, gaunt face.
He wore cracked black leather and a tattered cloak, and the thick weirwood roots bound him like living chains.
The smell of old wood and decay hung in the air.
“We meet properly at last, great-uncle,” Jon said.
Bloodraven’s remaining eye focused on him.
His voice was a dry rasp, the sound of someone who had lived a hundred and eighteen years.
“My… never-met grandnephew. You look exactly like your father.”
Jon shrugged.
“Since my father was widely considered the handsomest man in Westeros, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
A low, rusty chuckle escaped Bloodraven—the first real laugh he had given in years.
“You have the makings of a powerful greenseer,” the old man said.
Jon dropped to the ground and sat cross-legged, perfectly at ease.
“If we’re talking about seeing the future, there’s no one stronger than me in this world.”
Bloodraven studied him in silence.
Ten years ago he had tried to look too far ahead and struck something vast and terrible—a swirling blue-silver vortex that had nearly destroyed him.
The backlash had cost him his remaining eye and almost his life.
Only Leaf and the other Children had saved him.
He did not yet realize that vortex had been the time nexus Jon controlled.
Bloodraven changed the subject.
“Since you claim to see the future clearly, you must already know what is coming.”
Jon’s smile faded.
“I do.”
The weight of it pressed on him even here.
Claim the Iron Throne.
Stop an army of hundreds of thousands of the dead.
All of it had to be finished in less than a decade.
Sometimes he wished the world would switch to easy mode.
Instead it had locked him into the hardest difficulty.
“What do you intend to do?” Bloodraven asked.
“Simple,” Jon said.
“Take the Iron Throne, crush the dead, and then enjoy the long, comfortable life that belongs to me.”
Bloodraven’s mouth twitched.
The casual tone, as if they were discussing dinner rather than the war that would decide whether humanity survived or became nothing but walking corpses, was almost insulting.
Jon read the old man’s expression without effort.
“Relax, great-uncle. I have a dragon. I have an army of twenty thousand fanatical dead men who will burn for me. The situation looks dangerous now, but I’m already preparing for the full reconquest war in 296 AC.”
Bloodraven’s face went slack with shock.
He seized on the one word that mattered most to any Targaryen blood.
“Dragon?”
Jon waved a hand.
The dream-realm rippled.
A massive crimson shape materialized before them, wings blotting out the sky.
Korakshu had grown far beyond what any normal dragon should achieve in six years.
Fifty-one meters from snout to tail.
Wings twice that span.
The sheer presence of the beast made the air itself feel heavier.
Bloodraven forgot to breathe.
A true dragon.
Alive.
Here.
Jon watched his great-uncle’s reaction with mild amusement.
“The growth rate is… unusual,” he admitted.
“But useful. Size alone will break the will of anyone who thinks to stand against me.”
He did not mention the other side of that growth—the dragon’s appetite had become monstrous.
Whales were disappearing from the Bay of Ice, and bones were washing up on northern shores.
Korakshu’s nightly hunts were becoming harder to hide.
Bloodraven finally found his voice, still staring at the crimson giant.
“…Gods help us all.”