Eddard I
293 - AC
Winterfell knows silence, it was an eternal friend of the northern winds but it had not known true quiet in a long time.
The week following his son's collapse brought a silence that seemed to swallow the very breath of the castle.
The fires still burned, the kitchens still clattered with pots and ladles, the guards still made their rounds upon the walls, yet everything felt subdued, as though the great fortress itself held its tongue in mourning. Even the ravens had gone strangely still, their calls fewer, softer, as if they too feared to disturb the air.
Each morning, Ned rose before the dawn, when the world outside his chambers was still black and cold. He would stand at the window for a time, watching the faint glow of torches upon the battlements, the breath of men steaming as they passed. Beyond the walls lay the Wolfswood, vast, dark, and endless.
It had been seven days since Robb was found there, half-buried in snow, with blood upon his face and no wound to show for it.
Seven days since his son last spoke a word.
The maester had done what he could, herbs, milk of the poppy, prayers whispered under breath.
His boy lived, but he did not wake. His breathing was shallow, his color pale, and though warmth had returned to his skin, there was no life in his eyes.
He had seen men stricken by wounds of war, fever, and poison, but never this. It frightened him more than he would ever say aloud.
By the third day, the whispers began.
Servants spoke in hushed tones by the wells, stableboys muttered behind their hands, and women crossed themselves when they passed near the solar.
Some said it was a curse from the old gods, punishment for forgotten prayers. Others claimed Robb had angered something in the woods, an old spirit, a ghost of the First Men, a beast not meant to be seen. The boldest suggested poison, that someone within the castle sought to take Winterfell's heir before his time.
But the most common murmur, the one that wormed its way into every hall and hearth, was that he might never wake.
And if he did, he might not be himself.
Ned heard it all. He made no show of it, but every word reached him.
The North was loyal, he knew that as well as he knew the lines of his own hand, yet loyalty did not silence fear. The people loved their lord's son, but fear made tongues loose, and hope scarce.
Still, they remained steadfast. The blacksmiths kept their fires lit through the night, the septon and the heart tree alike saw candles burning for the boy's soul, and not a man in Winterfell went to sleep without a word for the young wolf who lay unmoving.
Yet the quiet lingered.
Ned spent much of his time between his duties and his son's chamber. In the first few days, he could hardly bring himself to leave his son's side. The sight of the boy, his eldest, his pride, pale and motionless beneath the furs, tore at something deep within him.
Catelyn never left the room.
She had not slept more than a few hours since that day. Her eyes were red, her face hollowed by grief, but she would not leave. She prayed at every hour, sometimes in silence, sometimes whispering the words of both old gods and new. Sansa often knelt beside her, pale and trembling, repeating the prayers she'd been taught since childhood.
Each morning, Sansa would bring a small tray, water, broth, bread gone cold by the time her mother noticed it. And when Catelyn would not eat, the girl would sit quietly and pray, her hands clasped, lips moving soundlessly.
Arya was different.
She cried, though she tried to hide it, scrubbing at her cheeks with her sleeves when she thought no one saw. When Ned entered Robb's chamber, it was often Arya he found perched at the edge of the bed, stubbornly holding his limp hand in her small one.
"I'm not leaving him," she had said when Catelyn tried to send her away to rest. "If he wakes, he should see someone he knows."
No threat nor gentle word could move her.
Jon sat across from her most days, quiet and still as stone. He spoke little, though his eyes betrayed the storm within. Ned saw it, the guilt, the confusion, the unspoken anger at something he could not name. The boy blamed himself, though there was no cause to.
Ned had tried to ease his burden.
"You did all you could, Jon," he told him once, resting a hand upon his shoulder. "You found him. You brought him home."
Jon only nodded, but said nothing. That night, he heard him in the godswood, his voice low and raw, praying beneath the weirwood's red leaves.
Even little Bran wept when he learned. The boy clung to Maester Luwin's robes, begging to see his brother, though Catelyn would not allow it. Arya told him Robb was only sleeping, but Bran was old enough to understand it was not entirely true.
Rickon, still a babe, did not understand. But he felt it, the heaviness that hung over the castle, the way his mother did not smile, the way his father's voice had grown quiet and distant. He wandered the halls clutching his wooden direwolf, asking if his brother was "coming back yet."
Ned had no answer that would not break his own heart.
On the second day, he had sent a dozen riders into the Wolfswood, led by Jory Cassel and a handful of the Winterfell guard. They scoured the woods for three days, searching for sign of beast, man, or anything that might explain what had happened.
When they returned, their faces were grim and pale.
"Nothing, my lord," Jory reported. "No tracks, no blood, no sign of struggle. Only the snow, and the trees."
"Nothing?" Ned had asked.
"Not a thing," Jory said, shaking his head. "It's as if the woods swallowed him and spat him out again."
That night, Ned stood by the heart tree in the godswood long after the moon had risen. Snow fell softly around him, melting on his cloak. He looked up at the pale face of the weirwood, its red eyes bleeding sap down the trunk, and for the first time in many years, he prayed not as a lord, but as a father.
He prayed for mercy.
The days blurred together after that. Reports from White Harbor, letters from bannermen, the endless duties of lordship, they came as they always did, but his mind was elsewhere. He found himself reading the same parchment thrice over without understanding a word. His thoughts always returned to the boy lying still in that darkened room.
And then, on the seventh day, as the afternoon light began to fade, there came a knock at his solar door.
Ned looked up from the ledger he had not truly been reading. "Enter."
The maester's chain gleamed dully in the firelight, his face drawn with both exhaustion and relief.
"My lord," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "It's Robb."
Ned rose so quickly his chair scraped the stone floor. "What of him?"
Luwin smiled faintly, eyes wet. "He's awake."
For a moment, the world went still, no wind, no crackle of fire, no sound at all but the pounding of Ned's heart.
Then he was moving, striding for the door before the maester had even finished speaking.
Winterfell's halls echoed with his steps.
And as he reached the room where his son lay, the silence that had gripped the castle for seven long days began, at last, to break.
He pushed open the chamber door, the hinges giving a soft groan that cut through the hush. The air within was thick with the scent of herbs and melted tallow, the fire burning low.
Catelyn was frozen where she stood, one hand pressed to her mouth, eyes bright with tears.
Near the bed, Arya was half-clinging, half-collapsed against her brother's chest, sobbing into his tunic, small hands gripping him as though she feared he might vanish if she let go.
And there, beneath her trembling form, his son stirred, his eyes open at last, grey and clear though dazed, his breath shallow but steady, as if he had only just awoken from a long and dreamless sleep.
—--
Robb? II
293 - Ac
The first thing he felt was the weight of the world pressing on his chest, not crushing, but heavy, as if he'd been buried beneath snow for an age.
His breath came ragged and thin, the air sharp and cold in his lungs. A dim light wavered above him, gold and red, flickering like the last embers of a dying hearth.
For a long while, he did not move. He simply breathed, each inhale a victory. The scent of smoke and tallow filled his nose, the warmth of furs clinging to his skin.
The faint murmur of voices reached his ears, soft, distant, like echoes through water. He blinked.
The ceiling above him was carved stone, rough and uneven, the shadows of firelight dancing across it. He turned his head slightly and winced.
The motion sent a dull ache through his skull, and for a heartbeat the world tilted, threatening to slip away again. But he held on.
When his vision steadied, he saw them.
A girl — small, wild-haired, her face streaked with tears — was clutching his tunic, trembling against him.
Her sobs came in quiet gasps, like a child who'd run too far. Her voice broke between breaths. "Robb… you fool… you scared me…"
He wanted to answer, to comfort her, but his throat was dry, raw. The words came out as little more than a rasp. "Arya…"
Her head jerked up, eyes wide, glistening. "You're awake."
He wasn't sure what to say. He wanted to laugh, to tell her it was alright, but the sound that came from him was rough and strange, half a chuckle, half a cough. Still, it made her smile through the tears, and that alone steadied him.
Beyond her, a woman stood frozen, her auburn hair disheveled, her face pale and lined with sleepless nights. Her lips parted in disbelief. "Robb?"
His mother's voice.
The word struck him harder than he expected.
Mother. The sound of it echoed somewhere deep inside him, stirring a hundred feelings all at once, warmth, confusion, longing, guilt.
He sat up slightly, or tried to. The motion sent a wave of exhaustion through him, but her hands were there immediately, holding his shoulders, steadying him with the gentleness of someone who had done so a thousand times before.
"Easy," she whispered, her voice trembling with relief and fear all at once. "You've been asleep for days."
Days.
The word drifted through his mind like snow on the wind. He didn't remember much of what happened, fragments, maybe. The woods, the cold, the faint glint of eyes in the dark. Then the pain. Then nothing.
His heart beat faster, too fast. He swallowed hard, grounding himself in the here and now. The crackle of the fire. The softness of the furs. The weight of his mother's hand. The smell of Winterfell, woodsmoke, stone, and something faintly metallic, like the taste of cold iron in the air.
He was alive.
Alive
For a long moment, that was all that mattered. The world could have been anything, dream, curse, miracle but life had warmth again, and breath, and the sound of his sister crying against his chest.
"I'm alright," he managed, voice low and hoarse. The lie felt good on his tongue. It made the fear smaller.
Arya shook her head, still clutching him.
"You better be," she muttered. "Jon said you'd wake up. I told him you were too stubborn to leave us."
At that, a faint smile ghosted across his lips. "Sounds like him."
A shadow moved near the doorway, and his gaze lifted. His father stood there, broad-shouldered and solemn, the look in his grey eyes unreadable. But beneath the sternness was something else, the smallest flicker of relief, quickly hidden.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Only the fire filled the silence, crackling softly as snow hissed against the window.
'Robb' looked around the room again, taking in every detail. The stone walls, the heavy beams, the woven banners of the direwolf.
The faint smell of pine and wet wool.
Everything felt impossibly real.
And yet, deep beneath the warmth of the fire and the tears of his family, there was something else, something coiled and quiet in the back of his mind, whispering that this world, this name, this life, was not his.
'Remember your vows, Pretender.'
He pushed the thought away. Not now.
Right now, he 'is' Robb Stark of Winterfell.
He had a family, a heartbeat, and a life that had been stolen and returned. Whatever bargain had been struck, whatever mystery lay waiting in the dark, could wait.
He exhaled slowly, letting the warmth of the fire sink into him.
"I'm fine," he whispered, almost to himself.
Catelyn wept quietly beside him, her hand cupping his cheek. Arya clung tighter. Somewhere outside, a raven called, its cry sharp against the stillness of the winter air.
The Heir of the North was awake.