Chapter 8: The Burden of Knowing
Winterfell emptied like a wound bleeding out its life. Kole stood on the battlements watching thousands of men disappear into the distance, Robb's direwolf banner snapping proudly at their head as they marched toward a war that would devour them all.
The castle felt like a tomb now—too quiet, too empty, too full of ghosts yet to die. Servants moved through corridors with the subdued efficiency of people trying not to disturb the dead, while the skeleton garrison that remained practiced their drills with grim determination born of knowing they might be Winterfell's last line of defense.
Kole established a routine of bitter normalcy: training the remaining guards, checking defenses that seemed increasingly inadequate, and reading ravens from the war that brought news like knife wounds to his heart. Each message was a reminder of his helplessness—Robb's victories at the Whispering Wood and Riverrun, Ned's continued imprisonment, Arya missing somewhere in King's Landing's chaos.
"I have the powers of a demigod and the influence of a prisoner. What good is seeing the future if I'm mute in the present? What's the point of enhanced strength and metal manipulation if I can't reach through time and space to strangle Joffrey before he gives the order that will destroy everything?"
The internal monologue repeated itself like a prayer to uncaring gods, a litany of frustration that followed him through days that stretched into weeks. He knew what was coming—every disaster, every betrayal, every death that would reshape Westeros into something darker and more terrible than the world he'd found when he first arrived.
But knowledge without the ability to act was its own special kind of torture.
The breakthrough came during one of his daily visits to Bran's chamber. The boy had been awake for several days now, his dark eyes bright with intelligence despite the paralysis that had claimed his legs. Maester Luwin maintained cautious optimism about his recovery, but Kole could see the growing awareness in Bran's expression—the knowledge that his climbing days were over, that the world had fundamentally changed while he slept.
"Tell me about your dreams," Kole said, settling into the chair beside Bran's bed.
Most visitors tried to distract the boy from his condition, filling the chamber with cheerful chatter about anything except the obvious tragedy of a young lord who would never walk again. But Kole had learned that Bran preferred honest conversation to well-meaning lies.
"They're strange," Bran admitted, his fingers picking at the blanket that covered his useless legs. "Not like normal dreams. More real somehow. Like I'm watching things that are actually happening somewhere else."
Kole's enhanced senses detected the subtle change in Bran's heartbeat, the slight dilation of his pupils that suggested he was accessing memories that existed outside normal human experience.
"What kind of things?"
"Ravens flying over battlefields. Wolves running through forests. And..." Bran's voice dropped to a whisper. "I see you sometimes. But you're different in the dreams. Made of metal and light, like something that doesn't belong in the world."
Ice flooded Kole's veins. Bran's greensight was emerging, and somehow it was perceiving his fundamental wrongness in this reality—his nature as a transmigrant from another world, his enhanced physiology that operated outside Westeros's natural laws.
"Dreams can be strange," Kole said carefully.
"These aren't dreams." Bran's grey eyes fixed on Kole's face with unsettling intensity. "The three-eyed raven showed me. You're like a wrong thread in a tapestry, something that got woven in by mistake. But the pattern's stronger because of you, not weaker."
Maester Luwin chose that moment to enter the chamber, his chain of office jangling as he approached the bed to check Bran's condition. But Kole caught the way the old man's eyes lingered on both of them, the scholarly curiosity that meant he'd been listening to their conversation.
"How are you feeling today, my lord?" Luwin asked, his tone carefully neutral.
"Like I can see things I shouldn't be able to see," Bran replied with the honesty of someone too young to understand the danger of such admissions.
Luwin's examination continued with methodical precision, but Kole felt the weight of the maester's attention like a physical thing. Another person adding pieces to a puzzle that could destroy everything if assembled correctly.
Later that afternoon, Kole made his way to the chambers where Osha was being held. The wildling woman had been captured along with her companions during one of their raids south of the Wall, and Robb had decided that someone should question her about conditions beyond the great ice barrier.
Osha studied him with sharp eyes that missed nothing as he entered her makeshift prison. She was older than most wildling raiders, her face weathered by years of survival in the harshest environment Westeros had to offer. But there was intelligence there too, and a kind of feral wisdom that came from living close to forces most people preferred to forget.
"You're the ward," she said without preamble. "The one they found beyond the Wall with convenient amnesia."
"That's right."
"Bullshit." Osha's grin revealed teeth stained by years of harsh living. "You've got the smell of something old about you. Not bad-old, just... wrong-old. The kind of thing the children of the forest might've made when they were desperate."
Kole forced his expression to remain neutral while his mind raced through possible responses. Osha was dangerous—not because of any physical threat she represented, but because she possessed knowledge that could connect dots others had missed.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Course you don't." Osha settled back against the stone wall, her posture relaxed despite the chains that bound her hands. "But you feel it, don't you? The cold that's coming from the north. The wrongness that's been growing beyond the Wall."
Despite every instinct screaming against it, Kole found himself leaning forward. This was the first person who had spoken his fears aloud, the first conversation where he didn't have to pretend that the threats from the show were just fantasy.
"Tell me about the cold," he said quietly.
"It's not natural cold. It's the kind that freezes your soul before it touches your skin." Osha's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than shouting. "The things beyond the Wall, the cold ones—they're real. And they're coming. You feel it too, don't you?"
For the first time since arriving in Westeros, Kole didn't have to lie about believing in the supernatural threats that haunted his dreams.
"Yes. I feel it."
"Good. That means you're not completely mad." Osha studied his face with predatory interest. "Question is, what are you planning to do about it?"
Before Kole could answer, the sound of running feet echoed through the corridors outside. A moment later, one of the guards burst into the chamber without bothering to knock.
"Begging your pardon, my lord, but there's a raven from the capital. Maester Luwin says you need to see it immediately."
Kole's blood turned to ice. He knew what that raven carried, knew the words that would shatter what remained of his world. But he followed the guard anyway, his enhanced physiology carrying him toward news that would change everything.
Maester Luwin waited in his tower with a scroll that seemed to radiate malevolence despite being nothing more than parchment and ink. The old man's face was grey as winter stone, and his hands trembled as he offered the message.
"From King's Landing," Luwin said simply.
Kole broke the seal with fingers that felt distant and strange. The words swam before his eyes like living things, but their meaning was crystal clear:
Eddard Stark has confessed to treason. Execution to be carried out at week's end. The traitor's crimes against the crown demand justice. Long live King Joffrey.
The parchment fell from Kole's nerveless fingers. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a sound like a wounded animal crying out in anguish, and realized with detached surprise that it was coming from his own throat.
He collapsed to his knees on the cold stone floor, his enhanced physiology overwhelmed by grief and rage and the crushing weight of knowledge he couldn't use. Ned Stark—the best man in Westeros, the father who had taken him in, the lord who had shown him kindness when the world offered only suspicion—was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
The howl that tore from his throat echoed through Winterfell's empty halls like the cry of winter itself, carrying despair that seemed to seep into the very stones of the ancient castle.
In his chambers that night, every piece of metal orbited his sleeping form like a mechanical solar system, responding to emotions too powerful for conscious control. But Mira found him that way in the morning, gently woke him from nightmares of headsmen and execution blocks, and helped him collect the scattered objects without saying a word about what she'd witnessed.
Her silent acceptance meant more than any words could have conveyed.
But Ned Stark was still dead, and all the metal manipulation in the world couldn't bring him back.
The war had truly begun, and Kole Thorne was running out of people to save.
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