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Chapter Text

The Godswood was too quiet.

No bird sang from the branches, no breeze stirred the leaves, and even the air seemed heavy, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath. Sansa pressed close to her mother’s skirts as they passed beneath the weathered arch of stone and into the stillness. The hush swallowed everything…her own heartbeat, the faint rustle of her gown, even her brothers’ constant bickering.

Robb and Jon walked side by side without a word, their boots crunching in the summer snow in the same measured rhythm. Arya, for once, did not dart ahead. Bran’s questions died unasked, caught on the solemn weight of the place. Even Rickon, ever squirming and explorative was silent in their mother’s arms.

Only the sound of breathing remained. Hers was too quick and shallow, while theirs was steady and calm.

At the center of it all waited the weirwood. Its trunk gleamed bone-white, smooth and pale in the dim light, the carved face staring with red eyes that glistened as if freshly weeping. Its branches reached high, stark against the gray sky, and the silence of the grove seemed to pool deepest beneath them.

The tree did not sway or whisper, yet Sansa felt its gaze fixed upon her, patient and unblinking.

It should not have been this way. It should have been done in the Sept. There should have been marble floors cool beneath her knees, sunlit glass painting her prayers in color, and the warm perfume of beeswax candles drifting around her. That was where she belonged, kneeling beside her mother, head bowed before the statues of the Seven. That was where she had spent the whole morning, whispering one plea after another, each prayer soft as breath. First to the Mother for mercy, then to the Maiden for grace, to the Warrior for strength of spirit, the Father for justice, the Smith for creativity, the Crone for wisdom, and even to the Stranger in fear.

Jeyne Poole had knelt beside her too, though her own Book had come weeks ago. It was the soft brown leather for an Artisan. Her Subclass had not yet shown itself, though few ever did so young, most only revealed once a craft or calling had been honed with years of practice. Sansa suspected Jeyne’s would be something with the needle, perhaps a Seamster, for no one in Winterfell could stitch a cleaner hem.

Usually only family attended an Awakening, but she was Sansa’s dearest friend, and believed an Awakening was too important to face alone. Sansa agreed and was thankful for her presence, for though today was an exciting one, it was also incredibly nerve wracking.

They had giggled between prayers, whispering which fates might open for her. Courtier seemed most likely, with her lessons and her mother’s guiding hand. Yet Sansa would not have minded an Artisan’s path, for she loved the needle and the thread, the patient work of embroidery. And sometimes – though she scarcely dared say it aloud – she wondered if the gods might grant her more than one.

A Secondary Class never came with an Awakening, but there was the possibility of acquiring another one, later in life to those who practiced and practiced until their very soul demanded it.

But the Book hadn’t come. Not in the Mother’s alcove, nor the Maiden’s, nor even the Stranger’s, where Sansa had held her breath the longest. One by one, the candles guttered, the hours stretched, and at last even Septa Mordane’s smile turned uncertain. When her father said she must try the Godswood instead, Sansa’s heart had plummeted.

The Seven had given her nothing, and so the Old Gods waited for her now.

She knew what people said about the weirwoods. That they saw straight into you, past silk gowns and sweet smiles, down to the bones of what you truly were. Her father prayed here often, alone. Arya was never afraid of the tree. Even Jon claimed he felt calm beneath its boughs.

But Sansa…she didn’t belong in the cold shade of a heart tree, where the air smelled of earth and secrets. She wanted to belong to her mother’s gods.

Her brothers walked behind her now, whispering despite the quiet hush the Godswood evoked. Robb already bore the steady weight of his Warrior’s Book, leather bright red as a ruby. Jon’s had come a few months after with the same ruby red cover, and he touched it often as if afraid it might vanish.

Nearly every Stark for generations had been named Warrior or Scout. Women even just as often as men, and their children had grown up expecting the same. But their mother had other hopes, determined that at least one of her daughters should awaken as a Courtier.

Arya’s day would come soon, and she strutted as though she expected to be named a Warrior, much to their mother’s dismay. Even Bran had begun to dream aloud of the path that would open when he turned ten, hoping his Book might name him a Scout and set him running wild through forest and field.

Sansa’s hands were empty. No Book floated to her yet, no Class written in her name. And until she touched the tree, she would not know if she had any place at all.

There were always whispers about the Classless. Though it happened rarely, it was very much a real possibility.

Children had prayed and prayed, touched stone or wood or water, and nothing came. She had seen one once, a man who lingered at the edge of a market in Wintertown, shoulders hunched as if to hide the shame of his empty hands. People pitied him, sometimes. More often they turned away. They said the Classless were shunned by the gods themselves.

Sansa’s stomach tightened. What if that was her fate?

She glanced behind her, where her family followed in a solemn line. Her father had his Book in hand, though she knew it needn’t always be carried. Courtesy demanded it, at least at another’s Awakening. Every Book could be banished back to the Eternal Archives until called forth again, but it was considered in poor taste to not summon it during an Awakening.

Her father’s Book was as plain and unyielding as the man himself. A deep crimson leather for the Warrior’s Guardian Subclass with the mark of the Warden pressed clean into its spine. Beside him, her mother’s gleamed a rich plum – the Courtier’s purple hue deepened for an Arbiter – its edges bound in careful silk.

The spine of her Book was embossed with the symbol for Lady of Winterfell. Not surprising, considering her position, but it wasn’t unusual to not have a title at all. Titles were fickle things and acquired if only certain requirements were met. Most everyone in the whole of Westeros bore no title at all.

Robb and Jon’s Books matched like the rubies all Warriors bore before they claimed a Subclass. If Jon’s looked a shade darker today, it was likely only Sansa’s worry painting shadows where none existed.

She had half-expected Theon to be there as well. He was not a Stark, but he had lived among them long enough that his absence tugged at the moment like a loose thread. He was no doubt waiting at the gates where she had been forced to part from Jeyne. The Sept was for everyone of the Faith…but the Godswood in Winterfell was only for the Starks.

The Books seemed to glow in the dimness beneath the trees. All of them shining with certainty. All of them a reminder that Sansa’s hands were bare.

Bran and Arya trailed at the back, whispering. They did not yet have their Books, and Rickon was too small to understand what any of it meant. But they would have their days. Today was hers. And if the gods turned their faces from her…if she touched the tree and nothing came, then she would never have her day at all.

The weirwood loomed closer. Its bark gleamed like bone, its carved eyes dripping bright red. Sansa wanted to turn, to run back to the warmth of the Sept and the Maiden’s gentle smile. But her mother’s hand rested firm on her shoulder, guiding her forward.

Every tale she had ever heard about heart trees crowded her mind at once. They saw everything, they whispered secrets to the Old Gods, they could lay bare the truth in a soul whether one wished it or not. The Seven never looked at her this way. The Sept had been filled with colored light and kind statues who seemed to listen politely. But the weirwood watched…and it judged.

The silence deepened as she neared, until even the sound of her own breathing seemed too loud. She dared a glance over her shoulder, hoping for courage. Her father’s face was solemn, unreadable. Her mother’s hand still pressed to her shoulder. Robb and Jon stood tall with their ruby Books, Bran and Arya fidgeted, Rickon squirmed. They all belonged.

But what if she did not? What if she was Classless. Doomed to a life of drifting, never chosen, never bound. She swallowed hard, the thought pressing cold against her ribs.

The red eyes of the tree seemed to narrow as she stopped before it. The carved mouth was open, weeping sap that glistened like fresh blood. It would have been so easy to run. To cling to her mother’s skirts and beg for the Sept again. But she would shame herself and her house if she faltered now.

Her mother’s hand gave one last squeeze, and then Sansa was alone.

She raised her hand, trembling, and pressed her palm to the smooth white bark.

All at once the world fell away. The rustle of leaves became a roar, and pale cold light blossomed before her. Out of it drifted a Book, floating weightless in the air, its pages fluttering open to the place that was hers.

Her Book hovered before her, pale as snow, its covers gleaming with a light that made her squint. Relief flooded her even as she silently despaired for being bound to the Old Gods over the Seven. But she wasn’t Classless, she wasn’t forsaken. The blank pages flipped to the beginning of the Book and for one breathless moment, Sansa thought it might stay that way, perfect and blank.

Then the pages stirred. Ink bloomed in careful script at the top, elegant as a herald’s proclamation.

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Sansa Stark
Base Class Confirmed:

COURTIER
Grace, poise, and diplomacy are your inheritance.
A noble’s tongue is sharper than any blade.

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Traits Unlocked

Tier 1

Passive – Courtly Bearing
Innate composure in posture, tone, and etiquette.
Your presence alone commands respect.

Active – Courtly Poise
Once per encounter, cloak yourself in flawless grace.
Stumbles vanish, words flow smoothly, and all eyes turn to you.

Active – Silver Tongue
Speech holds subtle enchantment. Lies slip smoother,
truths shine brighter, persuasion is in your favor.

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Purple washed across the Book’s cover, soft as twilight at first, then blooming into a regal glow that seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heart. The color shimmered like velvet in candlelight, alive beneath her fingertips. Relief surged through her chest so suddenly she almost swayed where she stood.

It was everything she had begged for, everything she had whispered at the feet of the Maiden and the Mother. She was a Courtier, just like her mother. She would walk in silks and jewels, glide across polished floors, command attention with a lifted brow. She would be admired, she would be loved. The gods had heard her. They weren’t the ones she had wanted, but they had listened.

Her lips parted, ready to smile…but the pages kept turning. The ink did not stop.

Letters bled across the parchment in strokes too thick, too dark, pooling like spilled blood that would not dry. Line after line unfurled, deliberate and damning. The purple of the cover deepened in her hands, darkening past regal sheen into something bruised and heavy. It was no longer a Courtier’s noble hue but plum-dark, darker than her mother’s, shadows clinging to the edges as if the Book itself recoiled.

The glow dimmed to a throb beneath her fingers, like something alive and wounded.

Sansa’s breath hitched. The pride that had lifted her a moment before shriveled to a knot of dread. Her smile faltered, slipped, vanished altogether as the script pressed on without pause. Each word etched itself into being as if carved with a knife, permanent, undeniable.

And with every stroke, prickles crawled at the nape of her neck. Her skin felt too tight, her bones too small to contain her. A cold weight settled in her stomach, dragging her down, and for the first time in her life she wished she had not prayed so hard.

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Secondary Class Confirmed:

NECROMANCER
You are marked by the veil. Where others hear silence, you hear the echoes of death.

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The Book did not stop. Its pages shivered with a will of their own, the parchment trembling as though stirred by some hidden breath. New words seared themselves onto the page, curling larger than the rest, bold strokes glowing hotter and darker, burned deep into the fibers.

The letters seemed to rise from the paper itself, smoking faintly, not merely written but branded, demanding her gaze, demanding an answer.

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Choose Subclass

SHADOW WEAVER
Call forth the lingering shades of the dead, bound to the place where their lives were lost. Shadows heed your will, cloaking you in their veil and lighting your path in the dark.

BONE BINDER
Command the remains of the fallen, tethered to the earth where their bodies lie. Bone, sinew, and flesh move at your bidding, vessels emptied of spirit, bound in silence to your hand.

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Her breath caught. She could not close the Book. Her fingers clawed at the covers, willing them shut, but the pages refused to yield. They held fast, fluttering against her hands as though the gods themselves had bound them open.

Behind her, the silence of her family pressed like a weight. She could feel their eyes on her back, their breaths measured and waiting. Her Awakening had already taken too long. Others’ Books appeared in moments, their classes written quick and clean, but hers dragged on, ink still spilling across the page as though determined to betray her. Suspicion would grow with every heartbeat she lingered beneath the weirwood’s gaze.

If they saw these words, if they saw the truth written blacker than blood, it would be the end of her. Her throat tightened. She swallowed hard against the lump rising there, heart hammering so loudly she feared they might hear it.

The Book pulsed, waiting…demanding.

Sansa’s vision blurred with tears she dared not shed. She pressed her trembling fingers down on the choice that sickened her least.

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Secondary Class Confirmed:

SHADOW NECROMANCER
The veil bends at your touch; the shadows beyond death answers when you call.

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Traits Unlocked

Tier 1

Passive — Death’s Whisper
Faint echoes of the dead reach you near places and people steeped in loss.

Active — Shadow Veil
Blend into darkness. Lamplight slips from you and footfalls hush for a brief span.

Active — Shade Lantern
Conjure an orb of shadow-light that reveals shades and hidden traces without betraying your position.

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Title Bestowed: Lady of Ashen Boughs

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For a moment, Sansa thought it was over. The words had slowed, the dark plum cover pulsed faintly in her hands, and she felt the weight of silence pressing close, expectant. The title burned the pages, burning into her mind as she stared at them. That was all. No blurb, no traits, no careful lines of guidance as there had been for Courtier or for Necromancer. Just the name, dropped like a stone into still water, leaving only the ripple of dread behind.

Sansa stared at it, throat dry, waiting for more, waiting for some hint of meaning…but the page offered nothing. It was as if even the Book itself did not know what it had written, or dared not explain.

And the Book kept writing.

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Reveal Secondary Class?
Yes / No

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Her breath caught. Her hand moved before thought could follow, slamming her finger onto the word No before she could give it any thought. The words dissolved, fading into the parchment as if they had never been.

The Book shuddered in her grasp, then closed with finality. It was hers now, dark purple and heavy, the ink of her secrets locked within. Sansa pressed it to her chest as if to hide it, knowing that the color would give away that her Awakening had not been a normal one. But there was only one way to hide the Book, and for that she had to let it go.

With trembling hands, she released her death grip on her Book, and she watched it fall for just a moment, before it broke apart into shards of light and disappeared to the Eternal Archives.

She turned, relief half-formed on her lips and then froze.

There were words above her family. Not written on parchment, but hanging in the air, pale as breath against winter sky. Her father’s name was burned a deep red, edged with purple, and felt heavy as iron to look at. Beneath it stacked his Class and Subclass, and at the bottom was his title.

Eddard Stark

Warrior – Guardian

Warden of the North.

Her father stood just as he always had, hand steady on her mother’s shoulder, but now she knew. The Book had opened her eyes. Her mother’s name gleamed in yellow, softer but no less commanding.

Catelyn Stark

Courtier – Arbiter

Lady of Winterfell

Behind them, Robb and Jon bore yellow letters. Robb’s glowed bright, untested, while Jon’s was edged faintly orange, as if already sharpening into something more.

Robb Stark
Warrior
Heir of Winterfell

Jon Snow
Warrior
Bastard of Winterfell

The younger ones shimmered pale white, harmless as snowflakes. Arya fidgeted beneath hers, Bran’s eyes were wide, Rickon’s tiny mark fluttered faintly above the nurse’s arms. White was the color of children, of the untested and the weak, the lowest rung on the scale of danger.

Sansa’s mouth went dry. She had heard of this, everyone had. It was said to be the first gift of Awakening. To see the measure of others written above them, plain as names carved in stone. The colors were no private judgment, not hers alone, but a truth the world itself declared.

A man marked yellow carried some strength, orange stronger still. Red warned of danger, and purple of peril beyond measure. Those that held the edges of the next color were close to crossing into the next threshold, but never quite tipped over.

Like her father’s name…Sansa hadn’t realized he held so much power to be nearly on par with a King.

She also had not expected it to feel so heavy to look at, and so impossible to ignore.

And then a colder thought struck her. If she could see theirs, then they could see hers. What color burned above her head at this moment? White, as it ought to be…or something darker, something tainted by the Book she dared not speak of?

Her father’s brow furrowed, her mother’s lips pressed thin. The faintest flickers of disapproval shadowed their faces, and Sansa’s stomach dropped. What had been written above her? What color glowed for them to frown so?

She did not dare ask.

Her mother’s gaze lingered on her a moment longer, and Sansa thought she might faint beneath it. But then Lady Catelyn’s face softened, the tight line of her lips easing into a smile.

“Courtier,” she said, warm enough for all to hear.

The knot in Sansa’s chest loosened, if only a little. That was the word her family would carry back to Winterfell. That was the word they would tell the servants and whisper to the banners. Courtier, graceful, noble, proper…safe.

“Why does it say Lady of Ashen Boughs, then?” Robb’s voice broke the hush, earnest and puzzled as he squinted at the air above her.

Before Sansa could even draw breath, her father cuffed him sharply on the back of the head.

“Mind your tongue, boy,” Eddard Stark said, voice low but firm. “It is not our place to question what the gods bestow.”

Robb ducked his head, cheeks red, muttering a quick apology. But the words still hung between them, heavy as the shadows beneath the weirwood’s boughs.

Relief flooded through her so sudden and fierce she nearly buckled at the knees. Courtier…her mother had spoken it for all to hear, and the sound of it felt like a hand lifting her from the edge of a cliff.

They couldn’t know what else had been written. They couldn’t have seen the dark purple shade of the Book’s leather cover, or the Secondary Class spelled out under her own name. If her mother smiled, if her father had said nothing, then her name above her must have gleamed the safest hue of all…white, like any child, harmless and untested. The darker truths, the necromancer’s script, must belong to her eyes alone.

Her brothers and sisters crowded near, Bran and Arya tugging at her sleeves, Rickon babbling from their mother’s arms. Jon hung back as he always did when Catelyn Stark was present. Only his Stark blood kept him in the Godswood during the Awakening, and tradition demanded he be present, regardless of what her mother wanted.

There were too many faces, too many voices, and above them all the endless words glimmering in the air. Colors and titles and measures pressing down on her until she thought she might scream. A steady hand rested on her shoulder.

“Come,” her father murmured, drawing her aside beneath the looming branches as Arya and Bran argued their future Awakening results and Robb tried to catch Jon in a headlock while her mother watched on with a fond look on her face and ruffled Rickon’s hair as he squirmed in her grip.

“You’re seeing more than you can yet bear. That’s common,” his gray eyes studied her, cool and unwavering. “Close your eyes.”

She obeyed, trembling.

“Now picture it as though it were mist. Let it thin, let it drift, let it fade. When you open your eyes again, and it will be gone.”

Sansa’s lashes fluttered open. The words had vanished and the colors with them. Only her family remained, ordinary and solid, and she almost wept with the relief of it.

Her father gave a single nod. “In time, it will come as easy as a breath. One day, with little more than a blink, you’ll call it forth or let it go as you choose.”

She prayed he was right.

The godswood was silent again, save for the slow drip of red sap down the face of the weirwood. Sansa turned from it and followed her family out beneath its watching eyes to the feast that awaited her in celebration, ignoring her brothers questions about her missing book.

Each step away from the tree should have lightened her heart, yet the title still echoed in her mind, ink-black and unshakable.

Lady of Ashen Boughs.

Chapter Text

The wind worried at the shutters of his solar, a thin keening that slipped through stone the way a knife found a seam in chainmail. Ned Stark set his palm flat upon his Book and let the quiet fill him. The leather was warm to his touch as if it remembered every winter he had carried it, every judgment made in its shadow.

“Search,” he said softly, and the pages stirred.

They turned with a life of their own, parchment rustling like dry leaves caught in a current. Columns of script shimmered and shifted, rising and falling like a tide as the Eternal Archives answered. Ned bent his mind to the task, the words unfurling in long, ordered ranks, some old as runes, some recent as a scribe’s quill in Oldtown.

He let the queries cast wide at first. Titles bestowed by gods, titles bound to places, titles given to children. The answers flickered by. Saints of the Seven, forgotten Queens of the Reach, Northern lore that spoke of woods or lakes. He sifted them patiently, his eyes trained to glean sense from the deluge.

Then he narrowed the words, drawing the net tighter. Lady of the Boughs. Lady of Ash. Ashen Boughs. Ashwood. Weirwood’s Lady. Each phrase carried the weight of a prayer, and each time the Book obliged, spitting out lineages, village tales, scraps of ballads. He asked for southern tongues and northern nicknames, for old Riverlander saints and First Men spirits, for anything that might twist those three words into sense.

There was nothing.

The words faded, dissolving back into the page as though ashamed to have wasted his time. The parchment smoothed, the ink stilled, and the Book grew quiet again, heavy and mute beneath his palm.

The silence rang in his ears. Ned exhaled through his nose, a breath he had not realized he was holding.

On the table beside him, Maester Luwin’s parchments lay in ordered but unhelpful stacks. The maester had applied himself with the tidy relentlessness of his advanced tier, quill scratching far into the night. The neat script recorded everything…inquiries to the Citadel phrased in proper caution, annotations on ancient groves and sacred trees, a catalog of known epithets bestowed by the Seven and by the old gods both.

Luwin had even ventured into the stranger corners of lore, noting rustic spirits from Rhoynar and river-gods long since forgotten in the hopes that maybe a Tully had crossed with a Dornish sometime in history since nothing turned up in the Riverlands nor the North. He searched the Crownlands, the Reach, the Westerlands, and even Old Valyria.

The ink was dry on all of them.

The ravens had flown, wings beating south and even further north into the cold skies. The replies that had trickled back were clipped and careful, or else vague and dismissive, none daring to claim knowledge. The ravens returned empty handed…every single one.

Ned shut his Book. It was like closing a door on a room he already knew was bare, and the sound of it snapping shut was louder than he liked in the stillness of the solar.

Beyond the walls, Winterfell moved through its morning. The ring of hammers from the smithy echoed like heartbeats. From the yard drifted the bark of orders, the answering cries of boys straining to plant their feet and keep their guard. A woman’s laugh rose from beyond his window, warm for a moment before the wind cut it short. A hound bayed and was silenced by its master. All the sounds of home, of life pressing steadily on, unbothered.

Familiar and comfortable. And yet none of it comforted him.

He leaned back in the chair his father had used before him and watched the fire gnaw a log to ember. Sparks drifted from the hearth. He remembered Sansa at nine, just before her Awakening, nagging Arya into better manners with her prim little frown, plucking at Rickon’s hair with ribbons until the boy howled and kicked. Bright as a summer berry among the gray stone, her laughter had carried through the halls as surely as any harp-string.

She should have been down there still, weaving herself into the clamor of the keep. But she was not.

Instead, for weeks now, she had moved like a girl dancing along the edge of a dream she could not speak aloud. She smiled when she was smiled at, curtsied without being asked, every gesture smoothed and polished until there was nothing left to correct. Her posture so flawless it might have even pleased even Catelyn’s grandmother, whose eye had missed no fault in deportment.

Yet perfection in a child was no comfort to him.

Every now and again he caught her standing very still in a doorway, as if she had stepped out of time itself. Her head would tilt, her lips parted just slightly, listening to something he could not hear. To any other it might have looked like a girl daydreaming. To Ned it looked like a shadow lay heavy across her shoulders and her mind.

At supper she ate little, pushing food across her plate until her mother’s gentle rebuke brought her to motion. In the mornings he found her awake before dawn, hands folded on her lap, eyes fixed eastward through the frost-streaked glass, so intent it was as if she expected the sun to carry her an answer.

He had asked her once, if she was happy…and then again, later when he wasn’t convinced by her first reply.

The first time she only kissed his cheek, sweet and swift, and told him she was happy…of course she was happy. She was a Courtier, like Mother. The second time she gave him the same words, and then quickly changed the talk to needles and silks and a new pattern she wished to try, her voice bright with practiced ease. All sweetness, all surface. A mask that fit her too well for ten.

Ned rubbed at the bridge of his nose and felt the beginning of a headache press behind his eyes. He had seen children go solemn after their Awakenings, it was true. The world grew larger in a breath and the sight of it was not always kind. The Measure that appeared above men and women had unsettled Robb and Jon for a day or two as well, until they learned to master it.

In time it became a trick of focus, called forth and dismissed with no more effort than a blink.

Sansa had learned that lesson quickly enough when he taught her beneath the heart tree. She had nodded, practiced, and shown him she could do it. Still, since then, there was a hush about her that did not sit right with him. She did not stumble or fret as others did when new power brushed against their lives. She simply carried it, quiet and grave, as if she had always known it was waiting for her.

And that was what chilled him most.

He drew the Book nearer again out of habit more than hope and let his thumb worry at the edge of a page. Lady of Ashen Boughs. The words had hung above her like a frost-moon, bright and cold, without explanation or guidance. No neat description of duty, no list of traits, no path laid out as there had been for Lord or Heir or Warden.

It was a thing dropped into a still pool, leaving only ripples of unease in its wake. Ned did not like mysteries that touched his children. The world would bring them hardship enough without the gods adding riddles besides.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

“Enter,” Ned said.

Maester Luwin slipped in, neat as always, the chain of links at his neck whispering faintly as he moved. He carried another scroll, held carefully in both hands. “From the Riverlands, my lord. A reply from Septon Osric at Fairmarket, who keeps a collection of antique prayer-forms.”

Ned took it, broke the seal, and unrolled the parchment. The septon’s hand was round and eager, his ink flowing with the confidence of a man who fancied himself thorough. There were apologies for delay, citations of obscure hymns, comparisons drawn between rustic chants and the veneration of saints. Yet when all the flourishes were stripped away, the words said what all the others had said.

No such title was recorded among the Faith’s honors, neither high nor low.

At the bottom, a hesitant postscript suggested that perhaps the name was only local, rustic in origin, the sort that springs from a village tale and never leaves the village that first spoke it.

“Summer tales,” Ned said, folding the parchment in two with deliberate care. “And winter hears none of them.”

Luwin’s shrewd eyes lingered on him, weighing the silence. “If it is of the Old Gods, my lord, the Citadel will have little to offer. The First Men left few records we can read, and those they did are half-lost in stone and runes. The trees keep their own counsel, as they always have.”

“So they do,” Ned’s gaze slid past the parchment in his hands to the window beyond. The glass was rimed in frost, and through it, passed the lower courtyard, the Godswood stretched stark against the gray sky. The branches of the heart tree clawed upward, bright red and waiting, as if it reached for something beyond men’s understanding.

“You’ve seen the girl,” he said at last.

“I have,” Luwin’s reply was gentle, careful, as though each word were chosen like a stone laid in a wall. “She is not frightened in the common way. Not of thunder, nor of shadows, nor of her lessons. She listens. That is all.”

“To what?”

“I cannot tell,” the maester’s mouth turned rueful, his eyes soft with the patience of age. “You know what children hear when the world first speaks back to them. Some hear glory and grow proud. Some hear warning and grow wise. Some hear both together and grow quiet.”

Ned said nothing. The fire cracked and spat, collapsing a log to ember. From the ledge above the window came the harsh croak of a raven before it took wing, its shadow fleeting across the frost.

His thoughts drifted, unbidden, back to his own Awakening, so many winters past that the memory should have grown dim. Yet it had not. He could still feel the chill of the Godswood at the Eyrie, where he had been fostered. Not Winterfell’s heart tree, but a smaller grove, its weirwood pale and twisted, its red eyes watchful all the same. He had gone to it alone, with only the rustle of leaves and the silence of the gods for company.

His Book had come quick and sure, bright red and terrifying. He had not trembled. He had not wondered what the gods might write. There was pride in him, a boy’s pride, and when the pages granted him Guardian six years later, he had felt ten feet tall. When they named him Lord of Winterfell only to be immediately overwritten by the higher title of Warden a few years after that, in the wake of his father’s and brother’s deaths, he felt hollow.

It had been a simple thing. A clean thing. There had been no lingering pages, no silence afterward, no riddle of titles that came without meaning. The Book had closed, and with it the matter was settled.

Ned leaned his brow against his knuckles, the heat of the fire warm on his cheek. He had not thought of those days in years. Now it came back to him with the sharpness of a fresh wound, and the difference between his path and his daughter’s lay heavy as iron in his chest.

He thought of Sansa’s hand in his when she was small, her fingers warm and certain in his grip. He thought of her clutching her mother’s skirts in the Godswood, blue eyes wide beneath the bleeding face of the weirwood, her breath hitching but her chin lifting all the same when the Book appeared.

He thought, too, of the straight line of her shoulders when Catelyn had said Courtier for all to hear, and how her smile had seemed to brighten the world for a moment.

And he thought of what had come after. That flicker in her eyes, fleeting and strange, as though the light that bathed her was colder than any sun. For a brief moment, he thought he saw her eyes glow blue. He had told himself it was nothing, a trick of shadows beneath the branches. But the memory clung to him still, sharp as a splinter lodged too deep to work free.

“What would you have me do?” Ned asked at last, his voice low.

“Watch,” Luwin said. “Ask, but gently. The Book is hers, not ours. No one may open another’s Book without consent, not even a father. If harm lies in it the gods will not hide it long. If help lies in it, she will find the use of it near enough. Some titles declare themselves in deed, if not in ink.”

Ned’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “And if the title is a warning?”

“Then better that Winterfell learn it now than later,” Luwin answered. His tone was even, though his eyes flicked toward the darkened window as though the words themselves might carry. He hesitated before speaking again. “I will send a quieter inquiry to the Citadel’s secret archive. There are…older glossaries, not often shown. They do not love the Old Gods there, but they love knowledge more, and some among them will trade caution for curiosity.”

“Do it,” Ned said, his jaw tightening.

The maester bowed, the faint clink of his chains marking his departure, and the solar door clicked softly shut behind him.

Alone again, Ned rose from his chair and crossed to the window. Frost feathered the leaded panes, clouding the view, but he could see well enough to peer down into the yard.

Robb’s laughter cut sharp through the cold air, bold and careless. Jon circled him with measured steps, quicker than his brother and more patient, his wooden blade darting in with the precision of a boy who thought before he struck. Arya had climbed a barrel to jeer at both of them, her hair coming loose from its braid as she shouted advice neither boy wanted. Bran tore past them with a stick in hand, stabbing at enemies only he seemed to see, his small face alight with earnestness.

The sight of them should have eased him. It was the sound of life, the sound of children in a safe hall. Yet even there, with his sons and daughter tumbling through the yard, the weight of Sansa’s silence pressed close. Her laughter was missing from the chorus, her ribbons absent from Rickon’s hair, her bright chatter gone from the air.

The others were loud in their growing. She, somehow, had grown quiet.

Ned caught a glimpse of her bright red hair, and he saw her walking with Catelyn along the covered way, her head bent to catch her mother’s words. The two moved like mirror images, gowns brushing stone in the same rhythm. When they parted, the girl paused. For a heartbeat she lifted her face to the keep as if listening, her eyes distant, unreadable. Then she smoothed her skirts, composed once more, and went on.

He considered going to the Godswood, to lay his own hand upon the pale bark and ask the silent face what the gods meant by setting new names upon his child. He had learned, long ago, that the trees answered as they wished and in their own time, and not always in words a man could understand.

Ned even thought to Sansa to his solar, seat her across from him, and setting her Book between them. To open it would mean truth. To open it would mean an end to the questions that gnawed at him.

But Books were private things, as private as prayers. Even a father had no right to demand a daughter bare hers. To ask would be to break trust, and worse, might force her into lies before she had even had the chance to choose honesty. That thought chilled him more than any silence.

He opened his own Book one more time, letting the pages flutter, their sound like dry wings in the stillness. They lay quiet when they settled, the ink yielding nothing. He could protect Sansa with sword and with guidance. But he could not unwrite the ink the gods had spilled for her. He could not pull a title back out of a page.

Ned closed the Book and set it aside as he returned to the window.

The door creaked behind him, softer than the wind against the shutters. He did not need to turn to know it was Catelyn. Only her and the children entered without knocking, and only his wife entered so quietly.

She stepped into his solar without haste, the hem of her gown brushing the floor, the faint scent of rose oil following her. Cat had the look she often wore at night, when the day’s labors pressed heavily but she held her chin high all the same.

“You brood too much in here,” she said gently, folding her hands before her.

“It is a Warden’s duty to brood,” Ned answered, though the words were dry. His eyes returned to the window where his children all played, except the one that lay heavy on his mind.

She moved to the table, her gaze falling briefly upon the closed Book. She did not touch it, she never did, but he saw the flicker of question in her eyes. Some married couples shared their books with each other, but Ned had never dared, not after the Tower of Joy, afraid of what Cat would see when she read his pages. She never asked, but he could she wondered.

“It is Sansa, is it not? That you are up here fretting over.”

“It is always our children, Cat,” Ned sighed, the sound heavy. “But yes…this time it is her.”

Catelyn came closer, standing beside him in the window to look down upon their children in the courtyard. “She is everything I prayed she would be. Graceful, dutiful, polite. She will be a jewel in any court. What troubles you in that?”

“She is all those things, true,” he looked up at her then, his mouth set in a grim line. “Yet I see her smile too quickly, hear her voice too carefully measured. It is as if she is playing a part that costs her dearly. Children should not wear masks so young.”

“All children wear them sooner or later. Especially daughters of great Houses,” Catelyn’s brow furrowed, but her voice stayed calm. “Better that she learns it now than when it is too late.”

“Not like this,” Ned shook his head. “There is more in her than she shows, something she does not dare speak. The gods named her Lady of Ashen Boughs, and I cannot say what it means. Luwin has searched, and I have searched, and we have found nothing…not even whispers.”

At that, Catelyn’s composure wavered. Her hands twisted together before her as she turned fully from the window to face him. “The gods choose their words carefully. If it was given, it was meant. Perhaps it is not for us to understand yet.”

“Perhaps,” Ned allowed, though the word tasted like ash. He turned back to the fire, voice low. “But it is my place to guard her until she does. And guarding her against shadows and whispers is harder than against swords.”

Silence stretched between them, filled only by the pop of the hearth and the moan of wind through stone.

At last Catelyn laid her hand on his shoulder. “She will grow into it, whatever it is. She is still a child, Ned. Let her be that, at least a while longer.”

“That is all I want, Cat. For her to have a little longer before the world claims her,” he reached up and covered her hand with his, though his eyes stayed on the window.

The wind rattled the shutters, cold air needling through the cracks. Somewhere in the keep a door slammed. Loud laughter echoed through stone before being hushed. From the distant tower a baby’s cry rose and softened as its nurse soothed it back to rest. Winterfell breathed around him, stone and steam and hearth-smoke, alive in its ancient rhythm.

But the title clung to him, as it had clung over Sansa like frost on a branch. Lady of Ashen Boughs. A thing given without explanation, too heavy for a girl of ten, too weighty for him to lay aside.

He did not know what it meant. He only knew it was his place to stand between his child and the world until she was grown enough to face it. He turned from the window as Catelyn slipped from his solar as silent as a ghost. And, like a man going to war, Ned began to make his quiet preparations to wait and see and to be ready for whatever came for his eldest daughter.

And he would wait for Sansa to come to him. He prayed she would, before the gods or the world forced the truth into the open.

Chapter Text

Sansa had grown taller in three years, but her shadow seemed taller still.

At thirteen, her days should have been filled with songs and stitches, whispered tales of knights in the yard, and girlish secrets shared in the solar. She played her part well enough. Her embroidery was always laid out neatly before her, her courtesies learned by rote, her laughter chiming at the right moments like a bell struck on command.

From the outside she was every inch the child her mother had hoped for, bright and proper, a Courtier in training. But the mask she wore was tight against her skin, and behind her smile something darker pressed.

And every day, it seemed her book turned a little darker as well. She kept it hidden, summoned only in moments when she was sure no one would see, holding her breath as it shimmered into her hands. Its dark purple leather had deepened with the seasons, so rich now it was almost black in certain light. Inside, the pages waited like a living thing, heavy with a hunger she did not understand.

A twisted white branch with red leaves crawled up its spine. Her title of Lady of the Ashen Boughs embossed in weirwood and shadow. Each moon brought some subtle change, while her brothers had taken years to earn theirs.

The worst part was that it still had not stopped writing, no matter how she prayed it would. Sansa had refused its call for advancement, turning her eyes away from the neat lettering that urged her onward.

═════════════

SHADOW WEAVER

Tier 2 Advancement Available

To proceed, you must choose. One path cannot be walked without the sacrifice of the other.

═════════════

Active Ability Achieved on Advancement

Veil of Ash
Your presence is cloaked beneath a false measure. To every eye your Measure gleams White, harmless and untested. When the veil is lifted, the truth will be revealed.

Passive Ability Achieved on Advancement
Shadow’s Refuge
Bound shades and doubles retreat into your own shadow when dismissed. None may see them until you call.

═════════════

Choose One Active Ability:

Shadow Summon
Bind the shadow of a creature or person that has just passed. The tether is intimate and fragile, yet the shade retains fragments of what it was in life.
Umbral Echo
Call forth a double made of your own shadow. Insubstantial, convincing at a glance, it may mislead, distract, or cover your escape.
═════════════

She didn’t want to read it, she didn’t want know what the next stage demanded of her. The very thought of it felt like a door she dared not open, like a staircase spiraling into darkness.

And yet, her refusal seemed meaningless.

Each night she tested herself in secret, calling the Measure with a whispered thought. The letters above her glowed white still, but less so with each passing moon. A faint yellow shimmer crept along the edges like bruised sunlight, the purity of the light thinning as if her name were being stained by something it could not hide.

Every time she brushed against shadow, every time she felt the presence of the dead stir faintly near stone or bone, she imagined that thin edge of yellow spreading a little farther.

She knew what it meant. White was for the harmless, for children and those untested. Yellow was the first step toward danger, the color of potential untempered by control. Robb’s name had not begun to warm toward yellow until he was nearly five-and-ten, already deep in his training, strong and sure with sword in hand. Jon’s had come just before, his own glow edged faintly with orange where it marked the Warrior’s rising confidence.

Both boys had been proud of the change, boasting in quiet to each other, certain it meant they were becoming men.

Sansa could remember standing beside them when their Measures first shifted, the glow brightening as though the very air approved. Her father had clasped Robb’s shoulder and called it well-earned and his stern face had softened when he saw Jon’s light change.

She had wanted her turn then, had wanted the proof of growing stronger. Now she wanted nothing more than to keep her light from dimming further.

Sansa was only three-and-ten. No child her age had ever began to yellow unless their Class drew them toward combat or danger. Courtiers stayed white until they were grown, sometimes longer, their color a sign of safety, of gentleness, and of grace. For her, it should have been years before the glow even thought to shift.

Measure did not mark strength of arm alone. Its color deepened for power of any kind. Political, magical, or social. It was not unheard of for a young lord or heir of great house to yellow early. But for girls, especially Courtiers, it was different. Their Measure was meant to remain pale, a symbol of peace, of poise, of innocence unsullied by struggle.

To darken early was unseemly, a quiet whisper of threat. And hers was darkening all the same. The Book was changing her from within, dragging her forward whether she wished it or not.

That was when temptation whispered loudest. If she advanced, if she accepted the next tier, the active ability promised concealment. Veil of Ash would shroud her truth, cloak the blackness rising in her, keep her hidden even from her family’s eyes. With it, her Measure would remain white and harmless, no matter what shadows coiled within.

More than once, she had stared at the waiting page and thought of yielding. She imagined pressing her hand flat against the parchment, imagined the surge of relief as the veil slipped over her like a second skin. More than once she had found her fingers hovering over the page, so close to choosing the least-worst of the options to bring her some relief from her everyday dread of being caught.

But terror always held her back. What if advancing bound her tighter to the Necromancer’s path? What if by taking the veil she admitted to the Book, to the gods themselves, that she belonged to it? The choice felt like a door that, once opened, could never be shut again.

Her only saving grace was that few people thought to take Measure often. Men did not spend their days weighing the strength of their wives and children. Women did not pause at every hearth to peer at their neighbors’ names. It was a trick most left aside except in moments of need, of meeting, of curiosity. That gave her room to breathe, a sliver of safety in which to pretend.

So long as no one thought to look too closely, she could go on smiling, curtsying, playing the Courtier she prayed she would one day truly become.

She threw herself harder into her Courtier’s path to try and erase the darkened pages. Sansa curtsied until her knees ached, practiced poise before her mirror, bent her voice toward silver and sweetness. She studied rhetoric until her throat was raw and recited the histories of every noble house until she dreamed of their banners fluttering behind her eyes.

If she could advance that path quickly enough, if she could make the Courtier’s white light burn bright and pure…then perhaps it would mask the yellow that crept along the edges of her name.

Dedication could be mistaken for divine favor. Mastery could be mistaken for grace. If she shone brightly enough, the shift might go unseen. And if her progress was swift enough, no one would notice that her Measure shifting would be considered strange. Her radiance would blind them to the truth beneath.

And so she smiled brighter, bowed deeper, and prayed harder that her lies would look enough like virtue to fool even the gods.

But Winterfell was no court. It was a fortress of stone and snow, not silk and song, and there were few chances to hone the arts her Book demanded. Unless her father called a feast or a visiting lord passed through the gates, there were no gatherings to charm, no courtiers to impress, no rivalries to outmaneuver.

Sansa did what she could. When her lessons ended and her mother’s back was turned, she slipped down into Wintertown with her hood drawn and her heart pounding. There, among the noise and smoke, she practiced what she could not within the keep. The women of the brothel, painted and laughing, humored her. Especially Ros, who found endless amusement in Sansa’s prim curtsies and careful diction.

“You’ll never win hearts with perfect manners alone, little lady,” Ros would tease, brushing a curl from Sansa’s cheek. “People like to be seen, not studied.”

Sansa would nod, cheeks burning, and try again. She learned to listen, to tilt her head just so, to ask questions that made others glow beneath her gaze. Her poise came easily; her tongue still tangled when charm required truth she did not wish to give. But Ros was patient, and their early morning lessons continued until the matron caught wind and sent her scurrying back to the castle before the Warden’s daughter could be corrupted.

The practice helped. Slowly, her Courtier’s light brightened, her words gained weight, her confidence sharpened. But it was not enough. For every step forward her Courtier’s path took, the Necromancer’s shadow stretched two paces longer behind it.

Little things pushed the Shadow Weaver forward even though Sansa went out of her way not to improve that particular Class. But it was like water seeping through stone. Unstoppable and persistent.

When Sansa lit a candle in her chamber, the shadows did not scatter as they should. They shivered and stretched instead, leaning toward the flame as if they longed to smother it. When she walked the corridors after dark, her steps were followed by faint sighs that brushed against her ears. The whispers always slipped away when she turned her head, leaving only silence, yet the hair on her arms prickled with the memory of them.

Even in daylight Winterfell carried too many ghosts, its stones sighing with old memory. Her dreams were corrupted. Sometimes she woke certain she had spoken with someone all night, though no words remained in her mind, only the sense of voices murmuring low in the dark.

She lived in terror that someone else would notice. Sometimes she thought someone already had.

Each time her father’s gaze lingered, steady and gray, she wondered if he could see it. She wondered if he noticed how the torchlight bent too much away from her or how the shadows followed her like hounds that refused to be dismissed. Every word he spoke seemed weighed, and she dreaded the moment he might say her name and find it altered.

Her mother’s hand on her shoulder was worse. More than once she had flinched, afraid that Catelyn Stark might feel something strange in her pulse, something colder than it ought to be. She forced herself to smooth it over quickly each time, with a laugh or a smile too bright to be questioned, though her heart would pound in her chest until the moment passed.

Again and again she imagined what would happen if the truth came out. In her mind she saw herself dragged from Winterfell with the word Necromancer hurled like a curse. She saw her father’s sword raised high, Ice gleaming in the cold light. She saw her brothers turn their backs. She saw her mother’s hands fall away. Worst of all she saw the Godswood open for her, the weirwood’s mouth gaping wide, its eyes dripping red as it pulled her down into the roots.

She told herself these were only fears. She told herself no one could see what she hid. But the visions came back each night, and each time she woke shivering, even when the hearth was warm.

The word necromancer itself was enough to chill her blood. No other name in all the histories was bound to it save one, and he was a terror whispered of in every cradle-song. The Night King, breaker of oaths, master of the dead. To share even a sliver of his path was unthinkable.

If anyone learned the truth, they would not see Sansa Stark at all. They would see only him, reborn in her. And she could only tremble in fear at the thought of what future awaited her should her truth come to light. Even when she whispered that these were only fears, only shadows in her mind, her hands grew clammy and her heart refused to believe her.

She told herself it was nonsense, a child’s fear. But she never truly believed it.

So Sansa smiled when she was smiled at. She bowed and curtsied to everyone she came across when appropriate. She laughed when it was expected and fell silent when silence was proper.

She pretended not to hear the low voices that stirred when she passed near the crypts or the Godswood, the half-heard murmur of words too old or too sorrowful to understand. And she forced herself to ignore the womanly voice that would sometimes whisper around her father the same plea over and over again.

Promise me, Ned. Promise me.

Sansa never asked him if he heard it too. She never dared.

Instead she kept her Book hidden, summoning it only when the doors were locked and the candles had burned low, her breath held tight as she traced the edges of the cover with trembling fingers. The leather was cool beneath her hand, the dark purple shade seeming deeper with every moon that passed. She prayed for it to still itself, to quiet, to leave her in peace. But it never did.

Each day she told herself she could hold it back. That if she refused Tier Two of Shadow Weaver long enough, it might go dormant, like a seed starved of water. But in her heart she knew it was already growing, whether she wanted it to or not.

Necromancy crept forward whether she accepted it or not, the marks of progress appearing in quiet, unavoidable ways. When she lit a candle in her chamber, the flame always guttered twice before it steadied, shadows around her lengthening as though listening. After that, she tried to avoid lighting candles when possible, but if the servants didn’t light them, she was forced to. Her parents were determined to have her do her own tasks to teach her humbleness, just like all their children.

Sansa would have sat in the dark instead, but that only seemed to advance Shadow Weaver faster. So she lit her own candles and ignored the way her skin tingled each time.

When she walked the corridors at night, she heard the faintest whispers stirring at the edges of her hearing, the stone itself sighing with memories of the dead. She had stopped walking alone after dark, though it mattered little. Even in daylight, she wasn’t safe from the whispers, and listening to them long enough to understand them only advanced her faster.

The worst were the crypts.

Her brothers had tricked her into going once. Bran and Arya daring, Robb and Jon teasing, Rickon toddling after with wide-eyed mischief, and Theon laughing, urging them on. They had snuffed the torches and left her there, promising to return, their footsteps fading up the stairs. It was meant to frighten her, no more than a child’s prank.

But it wasn’t a prank. Sansa had been left alone in the dark, the weight of centuries pressing down from the carved stone around her. She could not breathe, could not scream. The air seemed thick with eyes she could not see, with whispers she dared not answer. And then her hands had moved of their own accord.

Shade Lantern.

The command she had sworn never to speak shaped itself in her throat, and the darkness parted. A black orb of shadow-light blossomed from her palm, cold and steady, casting long trembling figures against the walls. They were not her shadows alone. Faces half-formed in darkness and memory blinked from the stone, fading and reforming with each step careful step.

She had walked the length of the crypt with them at her side, the dead of Winterfell watching in silence, until at last the stairs opened to daylight and her siblings returned, laughing. She had smothered the shadow-light at once though she doubted her siblings could see it, smothering it as if it might burn her, but the echo of it clung to her skin long after.

The Book had rewarded her for it. She didn’t need to open it to know. That night, when she laid her head upon her pillow, she felt the tug of new ink being written. Tier Two waited for her now, no longer a choice to come, but an inevitability that stalked her steps.

She dared not tell anyone.

Her mother still smiled when she said Courtier, smoothing her hair with proud fingers. Her father still called her graceful, proper, his little lady. And all the while Sansa prayed they never looked too closely, never saw the way shadows bent toward her feet when she passed through a hall, never felt the faint chill that clung to her even by the hearth.

She thought often of Arya’s Awakening, how simple it had been. Her sister had strode up to the same heart tree just a year ago, with her chin tipped high, and her eyes blazing with defiance. The Book had come at once, bright emerald green for Scout, and Arya had grinned so wide that even Septa Mordane could not scold it away. Their mother had been disappointed, but had still congratulated her.

There had been no hesitation, no whispered pages writing themselves long after they should have stopped. Arya had laughed when she held her Book aloft, as though it had been a game she had always known she would win.

Bran’s had been no less swift. He had laid his small hand upon the bark barely a month ago, eyes round but unafraid, and the Book had floated down like a falling leaf. Its cover gleamed the same green of Scout, plain and sure, the kind of path Winterfell had seen a thousand times before. His smile had been shy, but his pride clear.

Their father had rested a hand on his shoulder, and that was the end of it. It was simple, clean.

Sansa had stood beneath the same red eyes of the weirwood, had touched the same white bark, and for her it had been different. Too long, too strange, too heavy with words that should never have been written. She had watched her siblings receive their futures as if from a clear spring, while hers had poured dark and unending from a well she could not stop.

That was the truth she prayed no one ever guessed.

It was easier, sometimes, to pretend around Jeyne.

Her oldest friend still lived within Winterfell’s walls, though she might as well have come from another world. Jeyne Poole’s laughter drifted through the corridors often, light and untroubled, a reminder of simpler days before Books and Measures and hidden truths. Her father, the castle steward, kept long hours with Lord Stark, leaving Jeyne free to linger wherever Sansa was allowed to go.

They still spent their afternoons together, just as they always had. Sansa stitched with quiet precision while Jeyne prattled beside her, all chatter and warmth. Gossip from Wintertown, the apprentices who tripped over their own boots trying to impress her, the colors of the new fabrics that came with the southern traders.

Jeyne’s world was still soft and bright, untouched by dread.

She spoke of small things, safe things, as if Sansa’s life had not changed at all. And Sansa let her believe it. She smiled when Jeyne teased her, blushed when she joked about Robb’s friends, and nodded along to talk of ribbons and songs.

It should have been easy, this pretending. It had once been the way of their friendship. Sansa’s poise to Jeyne’s mischief, her grace to Jeyne’s giggling boldness. But now the balance felt wrong. Every burst of laughter seemed too loud, every patch of sunlight too sharp. When Jeyne leaned close, Sansa feared she might notice how the air cooled around her, how her shadow stretched just slightly longer than it should.

“You always look so serious now,” Jeyne said once, setting down her needle to squint at Sansa. The afternoon light slanted through the window, painting their threads gold and crimson. “It’s only embroidery, not battle.”

Sansa forced a small laugh, though her stitches never wavered. “Mother says perfection is a lady’s armor.”

“Armor?” Jeyne giggled. “You sound like Robb.”

“Do I?” Sansa turned a page in her handwritten pattern book, careful not to meet her friend’s eyes. “Robb’s armor is steel. Mine is silk and smiles. It’s all the same in the end.”

“That’s nonsense,” Jeyne said, cheerful and certain. “You don’t need armor at all. You’re already perfect. Everyone says so.”

“Everyone says many things,” Sansa smiled again, because it was expected of her.

“Oh, listen to you,” Jeyne rolled her eyes, stabbing her needle through the hoop. “You’ve gotten all grown-up and mysterious since your Awakening. I liked you better when you still whispered about knights and kissed the air when no one was looking.”

“I was a child,” color rose in Sansa’s cheeks, half from memory and half from shame.

“And now you’re not?” Jeyne teased. “You’re only three years older, Sansa. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to dream.”

Her needle stilled. The question cut deeper than Jeyne knew. Dreams. Sansa still dreamed, but not of knights or songs. She dreamed of shadows shifting behind her reflection, of soft voices whispering her name, of a cold hand brushing hers in the dark.

“I still dream,” she said quietly, eyes fixed on the pattern. “Only...different things now.”

“About what?”

“About…” she hesitated. About control. About being safe. About a light bright enough to drive the darkness away. “About what comes next,” she answered instead.

“What comes next is supper, silly,” Jeyne laughed and nudged her shoulder. “And maybe Ser Rodrik will let the new young men he’s training for the guard stay in the hall this time. You can practice that dreamy look you get whenever anyone mentions a knight.”

“There are hardly any knights in the North,” Sansa said, wrinkling her nose, though her lips curved despite herself.

“Then you’ll have to make do with the ones that come visiting,” Jeyne said, grinning. “Maybe some southern lord will ride through, see you sitting all pretty, and fall off his horse.”

“You’re impossible,” Sansa blushed. “And I do not have a dreamy look.”

“You do,” Jeyne said with a grin. “Every time someone says tourney or White Harbor or southern lord, your face goes all soft. You should see it. Even Septa Mordane would call it unseemly.”

“That’s not true,” Sansa’s cheeks warmed.

“It is,” Jeyne insisted, threading her needle again. “If a handsome knight ever came riding north, he’d probably faint from how sweet you’d look at him.”

Sansa tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat before she managed to force it free. “Then he should stay in the south, if northern air makes him that weak.”

“You’d still write him songs,” Jeyne snorted.

“Maybe,” Sansa smiled faintly, her eyes fixed on the hoop in her lap.

It was the kind of talk they had always shared – dreams of courts and songs and noblemen with kind eyes – but it felt different now. Each word scraped against something raw inside her. She could picture it so easily: a southern court full of light and color, far from the shadows that clung to Winterfell. Yet even in her imaginings, those shadows followed.

Jeyne didn’t notice. She hummed as she worked, her laughter bright and unburdened. “One day,” she said, “we’ll both go south. You’ll marry a prince, and I’ll be your handmaiden and eat all the lemon cakes meant for you.”

“You’d grow sick of lemon cakes,” Sansa smiled again, the motion smooth, practiced.

“Never.”

They giggled together, two girls at play in the sunlight. But when Jeyne looked away, Sansa’s smile faded. That easy warmth, that small and ordinary happiness, already felt like something from another life.

“And you’re brooding again. You’re turning into your bastard half-brother,” Jeyne said, triumph in her grin. “Come now, tell me what’s really got you glum. Is it Septa Mordane again? Did she scold you for using the wrong stitch?”

“No,” Sansa said softly. “Not Septa Mordane.”

“Then what?” Jeyne tilted her head.

Sansa glanced up, wanting to confess and terrified of what confession would cost. But something in Jeyne’s expression stopped her. The light caught her friend’s face, soft and open and utterly alive, and for a moment Sansa felt the air grow thin. There was such innocence in her gaze, such trust, that Sansa could not bring herself to break it.

“Truly,” Sansa said at last, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing. I think too much, that’s all.”

“Thinking never did anyone harm,” Jeyne said, returning to her work. “Though you might end up like the maester if you keep at it. I’ll have to start calling you Lady Bookface.”

“Better that than Lady Emptyhead,” Sansa laughed again, genuine this time.

Jeyne gasped in mock outrage, and for a little while they were children again, laughing over the clumsy insult. The sound filled the solar and drove back the silence that always seemed to creep toward Sansa when she was alone.

But even as Sansa laughed, she wondered how long she could live with this secret. She had spent so long trying to please her mother and make her father proud. Now all that grace and courtesy felt like polish over cracks, silk drawn tight over rot.

Nothing could stay hidden forever.

Sometimes, when Jeyne spoke too quickly or leaned too near, her voice would falter mid-sentence, her gaze sliding over Sansa’s shoulder as though she had seen someone standing there. Each time, Sansa changed the subject. The weather. The Queen’s latest gown in the southern court. Anything to draw Jeyne’s attention away from the strangeness.

But even laughter felt brittle now. Every shared smile was another lie laid neatly atop the last. Jeyne spoke of the world beyond Winterfell’s walls, and Sansa listened with envy and fear in equal measure.

Sometimes, when Jeyne left and the chamber went still, Sansa found herself whispering to the empty room, “I am a Courtier.” She said it again and again until her voice trembled with the effort. “I am a Courtier.”

But the shadows at her feet whispered other things back.