All for the sake of our greater goals — Sheev Palpatine
Eddard Stark found himself unable to respond.
For weeks that had bled into months, his son had refused to stop astonishing him.
The boy was exceptional, displaying a warrior’s grace in training, a deep love and concern for his younger siblings, and diligent execution of his castle duties.
However, above all else, it was Robb’s clandestine studies that unsettled Ned.
In the dim, quiet corners of the library, the boy had become a miniature maester in everything but name.
At the very moments Ned thought he had seen the absolute limit of his son’s mind—comforting himself with the thought that there were no more surprises left in a nine-year-old child—Robb would step forward and prove him wrong all over again, he would prove everyone that knew of his cunning and raw talent for knowledge and learning wrong in his ways of applying them.
Maester Luwin had insisted at many points that it was a phase and he was reluctant to agree, but he did.
Ned thought back to those earlier days.
The maester reassured him that a gifted son’s fervent interest in the world’s intricacies and a curious nature were not undesirable traits.
Of course, the maester could say that with a straight face, given that Luwin himself was awkward in his own scholastic ways, buried under stacks of old parchment and rattling chains in his tower when not giving him advice or carrying out his other duties.
The boy’s intellect was vast, exceeding anything either of them had imagined for a child nearing ten, especially compared to Luwin.
How could a child fashion things that even an old maester, with all his links of Valyrian steel and silver, had never dreamed of conjuring?
The maester was a firm supporter of education and science, and Robb had pushed that boundary to its extreme.
The boy tinkered with whatever materials he could lay his hands on to craft his intricate instruments, all while speaking of sums, coin, politics, and accounts with continued passion.
Tools of innovation, the boy called them.
He had promised tools that would ensure wealth and prosperity for House Stark and the entirety of the vast, hardy North.
However, enthusiasm and promises seldom ensured honesty.
Ned had learned that bitter lesson too many times before.
Still, he took what Robb said into consideration, if only especially since Luwin always took the boy’s side and pushed whatever ideas he had forward.
So too did Catelyn; his beautiful wife would often beg him to do something for their eccentric son.
More often than not, Ned felt compelled to withhold his approval from the various ventures the boy proposed, even though the boy consistently argued that monetary investments in some of these ideas could improve their fief.
And because he harbored doubts about the method, he felt he couldn’t just advance without caution.
Considering Robb’s youth and inexperience, his claim to possess the deep understanding and solutions for complex issues, despite his ambition, was still doubtful.
Brilliant as he was, ideas barely survived the harsh reality of execution.
Ned could not upend his fief based on the word of a nine-year-old, no matter how logical and clever the boy proved to be.
And yet, here they were again.
The boy wonder sat in his solar, selling Ned another dream on parchment.
This time, Ned could not deny that it was impressive—far more impressive than anything that had come before.
Luwin sat beside the boy and interceded on his behalf, explaining the wonders that could unfold if they built this so-called “steel device.”
That was not all.
Robb had also been working alongside the stewards in the glasshouses, experimenting to grow better crops and prove that northern soil could yield more if nurtured correctly.
The boy had even compiled an entire volume documenting his procedures and insights—a massive leap forward from the vague notions they had discussed during their last audience on the said topic.
But what captured Ned’s attention was the steel.
Robb detailed a process for manufacturing steel at an exceptionally low cost, employing a production volume so immense it would far surpass the output of an entire kingdom.
The scarcity of steel, making it a highly coveted and luxurious material, would precipitate a profound and far-reaching alteration of the existing world order.
It was something that the realm’s knights, lords, and their elite guards eagerly craved for use with their swords, chain mail, and armor.
While ordinary implements like plows, tools, and nails could be fashioned from common iron, the persistent presence of conflict meant that master armorers and affluent merchants were perpetually in need of steel billets. Get faster updates on novelping(.)com.
Although the Northern territories may not be recognized as the foremost exporting region within the realm, they were instrumental in supplying abundant quantities of iron ore, timber, valuable furs, and ivory to the southern territories.
If Robb’s device worked, it wouldn’t just increase Winterfell’s coffers.
It would change the balance of things from the lands belonging to him and even the other great lords.
More coin in his pockets and more affordable steel for those who needed it.
And that was if it worked.
Ned’s investment in this incredibly large and intricate machine was an essential precondition for achieving such a remarkable victory.
Considering he had never invested even a single copper coin in the smaller instruments that Robb had presented to him throughout the weeks, it was quite perplexing as to why he would consider making such a substantial leap at this particular juncture.
It might well be nothing more than a pipe dream—a drawn, spoken illusion.
The premise was beyond tempting, but Ned remained wary.
He knew how easily grand ideas could waste away into just thin air.
Ned commenced once more, his voice fluctuating yet maintaining a firm resolve as he shifted his posture, leaning forward across the surface of his substantial desk, addressing both Robb and the Maester.
“This is well beyond tempting.
Given that Maester Luwin has corroborated your judgments more so this time than usual, if this device functions according to your claims, it would indeed mark a unprecedented occurrence in the historical record of the North.
But my dear boy, much like the transient nature of other aspects of life, there is no absolute assurance for this matter.
To undertake construing something like this, one would require an enormous sum of money,
His son’s voice cut in with the single sentence, “Father that sum would be low.”
Ned, startled by the boy’s abrupt interjection, blinked in surprise, yet Robb’s gaze conveyed an unwavering conviction.
The young boy, whose voice once carried the hesitant inflection of a nine-year-old, stated without that characteristic pitch that he had performed all possible checks and that they had thoroughly accounted for every contingency during the planning stages, with the maester, and under the advice of a builder as well.
‘More big words.’ The stark patriarch thought.
“Father, believe me when I say this,” Robb cheered up passionately.
“The cost is less than you might imagine. Among all potential expenditures and difficulties, the expense of compensating workers stands out as the singular true impediment to overcome. Within the walls of Winterfell, our very own smiths and the talented craftsmen of Wintertown are equipped to fashion the essential components, undertake the intricate masonry, and build the bellows on site. We have established that the cumulative monetary outlay will not surpass the sum of one thousand gold dragons, and this figure incorporates a considerable buffer for any potential waste. And that amount would justify the returns we would earn.”
Ned exhaled with resignation, acknowledging his inability to surmount the young man’s reasoning, a familiar predicament, especially when contemplating the substantial sum of a thousand gold dragons for an item that, by the boy’s own assertion, represented an unprecedented innovation.
“My lord, think on it,” Maester Luwin spoke up, his voice bearing that familiar, seasoned wisdom.
“I have always looked kindly upon the young lord’s conceptions, and among them all, this has shown one of the greatest potential. It would not merely provide steel for trade, but swell our own armories tenfold should conflict ever come to our gates once more, Gods forbid . It is a considerable sum to vent from our coffers, true, but it is a worthy beginning. I have reviewed these parchments more times than I care to count, and the draftsmanship, the geometry… it is entirely sound.”
“For one moment, Father,” Robb pleaded, his youthful voice softening, his blue eyes striking Ned with an earnest, desperate emphasis.
“Just take a chance. Not for my sake, but for the sake of our House, and for the smallfolk under our protection who will see the fruits of it.”
Ned felt the stony walls of his resistance beginning to crumble.
He knew his own mind, but he also knew that if he turned the boy away now, he would find no peace in his marriage bed.
Catelyn would spend half the night whispering in his ear, chiding him for stifling their firstborn’s brilliant ingenuity once more.
Perhaps he’d entertain him and the maester just this once.
“Fine,” Ned said.
He saw his son catch his breath in a sharp gasp of sudden joy, a rare, brilliant smile breaking across the boy’s face.
“Be it on your own heads,” Ned announced sternly, fixing both the maester and his son with a hard, uncompromising stare.
“And heed me well, Robb—should this fail, there will be consequences.”
The threat was heavy enough to make grown bannermen flinch, but the boy stood entirely unmoved.
And looking at his son, Ned saw a sudden glimmer in the boy’s eyes—a fierce, unyielding perseverance that looked like it belonged to a man more than a child.
The harsh conditions of the Far North encompassed far more than mere wind and ice.
Deep within his hollow hill, woven into the suffocating embrace of weirwood roots, Brynden Rivers—the Three-Eyed Raven—sat suspended between life and death.
Though his physical form had decayed to near-ruin, his intellect persisted as an expansive network stretching across Westeros and into the lands beyond, an unseen observer tracking the fragile, unstable pathways of fate.
Yet on that contested day, a day that would forever burn in his memory, the very nature of his vigilance changed.
Even now, the mere thought of it struck a chord of agonizing terror deep within his soul—and the lingering fear that the entity might discover his location only made matters worse.
He had been engaged in his usual practice of observation when his inherent curiosity led him to investigate a peculiar, dense shadow gathering within the walls of Winterfell.
It was a presence he had never felt before during his long watch over the Stark family.
Driven to comprehend the anomaly, he reached out with the full breadth of his power.
Slipping his consciousness into the ancient heart-tree, Brynden looked through its weeping red eyes.
To his surprise, he beheld the young Stark heir sitting in meditation beneath its boughs.
Simultaneously, he guided a raven to a nearby branch to watch from above—a dual method of spying that had served him through a century of politics and war.
Seeking to pry deeper, he combined his warging with the ambient energies of the weirwood to uncover what this Stark boy had truly become.
The presence in and around the youth felt entirely unnatural.
When he pushed further, it was as if he had grasped a sun of pure, unfiltered malice, anger, and hatred.
The boy—or rather, the thing wearing Robb Stark’s skin—had not just noticed the intrusion; he had expected it.
In an instant, an invisible, crushing pressure clamped down on the carrion bird.
Brynden felt the agonizing, physical squeeze through the skin changed bond: the sickening crunch of bone, the bursting of air sacs, and the sudden, violent collapse of the raven into a wretched mass of flesh and matted feathers before its wings could even beat to flee.
But the death of the bird was nothing compared to what followed.
Through the very thread of connection Brynden had opened within the weirwood bark, the entity retaliated.
It unleashed a wave of dark power—an invisible scream, a surge of concentrated, suffocating hate that tore through the spiritual pathways of the tree like wildfire.
It was a potent, catastrophic violation of the natural order, a miasma of absolute darkness entirely antithetical to the earth’s life-giving magic.
Deep in his cavern, Brynden’s physical body convulsed.
A sharp, ragged cry tore from his throat as old, dried blood leaked from his blind eye.
A shivering terror he had not experienced since he was a mortal man marching to war—a dread far more harrowing than the cold, dead things that walked the frozen wastes gripped him.
Worse still, the entity was hunting.
Using the very thread of fear that gripped Brynden, the presence surged backward along the connection.
It tracked him almost instantly, tearing northward with terrifying speed.
It bypassed the wonder of the Wall in a heartbeat, plunging into the frozen wastes and closing the distance to his hidden cavern by the second.
Panicked, Brynden did the only thing he could to survive: he severed the connection.
He pulled his consciousness back into the deepest, most silent recesses of his own mind, retreating into a total, defensive void.
The presence washed over the area where he had just been—a blind, sweeping searchlight of dark energy—before finding nothing but silence and moving on.
As the immediate danger passed, Brynden sat trembling in the dark while the roots of the weirwood groaned around him, shaken to his very core.
There was a new enemy now, one far greater than the cold things walking amidst the cold north.
For months, he had tried to pry around Winterfell, but he could never get within three leagues of the castle.
A web of dark tendrils, connected directly to that insidious being, served as both an impenetrable barrier and a sensor.
The moment he dared to push through, the insidious being would detect him again—and he knew, deep down in his very being, that a second escape would be impossible.