Chapter 13: The Calm Before
Spring should have been a time of renewal, of hope flowering alongside the trees that lined Winterfell's godswood. Instead, Kole felt the oppressive weight of approaching catastrophe like a storm front gathering beyond the horizon. Three weeks had passed since Theon's departure, and every quiet moment felt borrowed from an hourglass running low on sand.
He stood in the armory at midnight, alone except for the metallic whispers that sang constantly in his enhanced consciousness. Bronze arrowheads hummed low notes behind wooden shields. Copper rivets in leather armor provided harmonious overtones. His range had expanded to nearly a hundred feet now, and with it came headaches that felt like ice picks driven through his skull.
The transition to Stage 3 abilities was brutal. Each breakthrough came with a price measured in blood that streamed from his nose during practice sessions, in dizzy spells that left him gripping stone walls for support. Tonight was no different. He pressed his palms against his temples and felt the familiar throb of power pushing against biological limits.
Bronze bracers on the far wall shifted slightly toward him, responding to emotional turbulence he couldn't quite suppress. Copper fittings on a ceremonial helm began to vibrate with barely audible frequency. Non-ferrous metals required exponentially more effort than iron or steel, but the ability was there now, growing stronger each day.
"You're pushing too hard again."
Mira's voice carried no accusation, only the warm concern of someone who'd learned to read his moods through micro-expressions and the way his shoulders carried tension. She emerged from the corridor's shadows like materialized moonlight, auburn hair loose around her shoulders and green eyes bright with intelligence that missed very little.
"Can't afford not to," Kole replied, lowering his hands and trying to ignore the way bronze fittings settled back into their proper positions. "Time's running short."
"For what? You've been saying that for weeks, but you won't explain what you're preparing for."
She settled onto a bench near the weapon racks, patting the space beside her with the easy familiarity of someone who'd earned the right to demand honest conversation. Kole hesitated, then joined her, acutely aware of the way her shoulder brushed against his.
"Tell me about your past," Mira said quietly. "Not the convenient amnesia story you tell everyone else. The real version."
The request hung in the air between them like a challenge. Kole had constructed so many lies over the past two years that truth felt foreign on his tongue. But sitting in the armory's quiet darkness, surrounded by weapons he'd enhanced with impossible precision, the weight of constant deception felt heavier than armor.
"I don't remember my childhood," he began, choosing words with surgical care. "Not clearly. But I remember dreams—visions, maybe. Images of things that will happen, conversations I haven't heard yet, faces I haven't met but somehow know."
Mira's hand found his, fingers callused from sword work but gentle as they interlaced with his own. "What kind of things?"
"War. Betrayal. People I care about dying in ways I can't prevent." Kole's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Sometimes I think the Old Gods cursed me with knowing just enough to fear the future but not enough to change it."
"That's closer to truth than anything I've ever told anyone here. She deserves honesty, even if I can't give her all of it."
"Then we'll face it together," Mira said with the simple certainty of someone who'd made peace with impossible odds. "Whatever comes."
The moment of human connection reminded Kole why he fought, why he pushed himself past safe limits and bled for abilities he'd never asked for. Not for abstract duty or cosmic destiny, but for the people who chose to stand beside him despite not understanding what he was.
Harwin Stone appeared in the doorway, his scarred face apologetic but urgent. "Begging your pardon, but there's a raven from the Wall. Urgent, marked for you specifically."
Kole's enhanced senses immediately detected elevated stress hormones in Harwin's scent, the slight tremor in hands that had held weapons steady through countless battles. Whatever Jon had written, it was bad enough to rattle a veteran who'd seen everything the North had to offer.
The letter bore Jon's careful script, but the words were unlike anything his brother had sent before:
Kole,
You warned me about shadows and ice. I didn't understand then. I'm beginning to now.
Rangers are disappearing beyond the Wall. Not just dying—disappearing completely, as if the earth swallowed them. The wildlings are fleeing south in terror, speaking of the dead walking, of things that hunt in the Long Night.
The Old Bear is planning a great ranging beyond the Wall. Three hundred men to investigate reports from the Fist of the First Men. I have a bad feeling about it. The same feeling I get when winter wind carries sounds that aren't quite human.
The dead are coming, Kole. I don't know how else to say it. They're coming, and we don't have the men or weapons to stop them.
Write back quickly. I need to know someone believes what I'm seeing.
Jon
Kole's hands shook as he read, the parchment crinkling under his grip. Around him, every piece of metal in the armory began to resonate with low-frequency vibration that made the stone walls hum like struck tuning forks. Mira and Harwin stepped back instinctively, recognizing the signs of power responding to emotional trauma.
"Bad news?" Mira asked carefully.
"The worst kind." Kole forced his breathing to steady, and the metallic resonance gradually faded. "The kind where you know exactly what's coming but can't do anything to stop it."
He wrote his response immediately, ignoring the way his enhanced senses screamed warnings about the growing pressure behind his eyes:
Jon,
Trust your instincts. The things beyond the Wall are real. More real than any of us want to believe.
Do everything you can to convince the Old Bear to cancel the ranging. If you can't, then survive it. Stay alive, Jon. The realm will need you for what's coming after.
The dead walk, but they can be stopped. Fire works. Valyrian steel works. Obsidian works best of all—the wildlings call it dragonglass. Find it. Use it. Remember it.
Winter is coming, but spring follows after. Hold that thought when everything seems lost.
Your brother, Kole
It was the clearest warning he'd managed to send without triggering the cosmic curse, and it still felt woefully inadequate. But perhaps it would be enough to plant seeds of preparation in Jon's mind, to give the Night's Watch some small advantage when the darkness came calling.
The days that followed fell into a rhythm of desperate preparation disguised as routine. Kole worked with his Brotherhood in the morning, pushing them through drills that would have been excessive for soldiers preparing for immediate deployment. In the afternoons, he disappeared into the forge, shaping weapons with precision that left even veteran smiths shaking their heads in amazement.
Evenings were spent in quieter pursuits—sharing meals with Bran and Rickon, teaching the boys games that were actually tactical exercises, reading stories that were actually lessons in recognizing threats and finding safe paths through dangerous territory.
"Why are you teaching us to think like this?" Bran asked one evening as they sat by his window, looking out at stars that seemed unusually bright. "It's like you're preparing us for war."
"Because I am," Kole said simply. "Not tomorrow, maybe not next month. But soon."
Bran's grey eyes grew distant, that otherworldly awareness stirring behind them like wind through leaves. "I see flashes sometimes. Burning towers. Ships with black sails. Banners I don't recognize flying where they shouldn't."
"What else?"
"Iron chains. Lots of them. And you, standing in water that reflects fire." Bran's voice carried the dreamy quality that accompanied his prophetic moments. "You're choosing something. Something important. But I can't see what."
The vision sent chills down Kole's spine, but he kept his expression neutral. Bran's greensight was growing stronger, but thankfully remained too fragmented to reveal dangerous specifics.
"When those flashes come, will you remember to watch for people who aren't what they seem?"
"I will," Bran promised. "But Kole? When the choosing comes, remember that some prices are too high to pay. Even for winning."
Three days later, while inventorying supplies in Winterfell's deepest storage chambers, Kole discovered something that made his enhanced senses scream warnings. Hidden beneath sacks of grain, wrapped in oiled cloth and marked with sigils that should never have appeared within Winterfell's walls, was a cache of weapons bearing the flayed man of House Bolton.
Swords, axes, crossbow bolts—enough to arm twenty men for a coup attempt. The implications crystallized in his mind with terrible clarity: Roose Bolton was positioning assets for the aftermath of Robb's inevitable downfall, preparing to claim Winterfell when the Young Wolf fell to Lannister treachery.
Maester Luwin's face went pale when Kole showed him the cache. "The Boltons have always been... problematic. Ambitious beyond their station. But open treachery? Storing weapons within Winterfell's walls?"
"It means someone believes Robb's campaign will fail," Kole said grimly. "They're planning for new management."
They destroyed the cache that same night, but the damage was done. Winterfell had enemies approaching from multiple directions—the Iron Islands from the west, the Boltons from within, and something far worse gathering beyond the Wall. The convergence felt like a trap closing around everything Kole had tried to protect.
The raven from Robb arrived the next evening, carrying news of another victory but also frustration that bled through even formal military correspondence. The war in the South was grinding on, bleeding the North dry while accomplishing nothing decisive. Jaime Lannister remained a prisoner, Sansa and Arya were still hostages, and the Lannisters showed no inclination toward meaningful negotiation.
We need a decisive action, Robb wrote. Something to break this stalemate before winter makes campaigning impossible. I'm considering several options that carry significant risk but might end this war quickly.
Kole knew what those options were. Marriage alliances that would betray existing commitments. Political maneuvers that would trigger the Red Wedding. The great wheel of fate continued its inexorable turning, carrying everyone toward destruction despite his best efforts to alter their course.
He was drafting a response urging caution when shouts from the walls shattered the evening's fragile peace.
"Ships! Ships on the horizon!"
Kole's enhanced hearing caught the warning before it reached the courtyard. His metal sense immediately expanded outward, searching for familiar signatures among the approaching vessels. What he found made his stomach drop like a stone through ice water.
Ironborn longships, flying the golden kraken of House Greyjoy. And on the lead vessel's prow, a figure he recognized despite the distance—Theon Greyjoy, returning not as prodigal son but as conqueror.
"It's too early. He shouldn't be back yet. But the timeline's accelerating, just like everything else."
Mira found him on the battlements as the last light faded from the western sky. Her hand rested on her sword hilt with the unconscious readiness of someone who'd learned to expect violence from unexpected directions.
"How many ships?" she asked.
"Twelve. Maybe two hundred fighters." Kole's enhanced vision tracked the approaching fleet with mechanical precision. "More than enough to take Winterfell by conventional assault."
"But not enough to take it from us."
Her certainty was absolute, founded on months of training and the quiet confidence that came from fighting beside someone whose abilities bordered on supernatural. Kole wished he could share her optimism, but he knew the trials ahead would test every bond they'd forged.
"Signal the Brotherhood," he said finally. "Full combat readiness. And send ravens to every loyal house within fifty miles. If they want a siege, we'll give them one they'll never forget."
As the Ironborn fleet anchored in the bay below, Kole stood watch on Winterfell's ancient walls and prepared to face the first act of a tragedy he'd been powerless to prevent. Theon was coming home to claim his birthright, just as Kole had always known he would.
But this time, when the kraken struck, the wolves would have steel in their teeth and fire in their hearts.
Winter was coming.
But the Iron Wolf was ready.
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