Torrhen Stark
The exhaustion of the day hit Torrhen the moment his head touched the feather pillow. His bedchamber was high in the Great Keep, warmed by a large hearth and thick wolf-pelt coverings, a stark contrast to the freezing darkness where he had spent his afternoon.
But the warmth couldn't penetrate his right hand.
He lay on his back, staring at the heavy timber beams of the ceiling, his marked hand resting on his chest outside the furs. It throbbed with a dull, deep ache, like holding a snowball for too long. Every time his heart beat, a pulse of cold radiated up his forearm.
His father's words echoed in his mind. The world is changing... We will be ready.
He was ten years old. He didn't want the world to change. He just wanted to play at swords with Bran in the yard, not train for a war against legends.
Sleep came heavily, dragging him under like a stone in deep water.
In the dead of night, the fire in the hearth died down to embers. The room grew dark.
Then, slowly, a light began to bloom from beneath the sleeping boy's furs. It was not the warm orange of firelight. It was pale, blue-white, and hostile.
The mark on Torrhen's hand was glowing. The snarling wolf's head shone like frozen moonlight, casting long, eerie shadows across the tapestries on his walls.
Torrhen did not wake, but his breathing hitched. The dream took him.
He was not in his bed. He was standing on a plain of infinite snow, under a sky blacker than the deepest crypt. It was silent here—a silence so absolute it felt heavy.
He looked down at his hand. The mark was blazing, the only light source in this frozen world.
Then, the shadows came.
They were not cast by any light he could see. They peeled themselves off the horizon, two-dimensional silhouettes against the snow, darker than the night sky.
Torrhen tried to move, but his feet were frozen to the ice. He was forced to watch.
The first shadow was massive, towering over Torrhen. It stood near the horizon, its form thick with muscle and fur. It was heaving great blocks of ice, stacking them one atop the other, building a wall that stretched forever to the east and west. Beside it, smaller shadows—men—worked tirelessly. The Builder, Torrhen thought, the name floating up from his nursery lessons. Building the end of the world.
The dream shifted.
The second group of shadows were thin, brittle things. They moved through a dense, frozen forest. They didn't walk like men; they stalked, silent as snowfall. Where they stepped, the shadows of the trees seemed to wither and die. One of them turned its head toward Torrhen. It had no face, only two pinpricks of star-blue light where eyes should be. A terrible, ancient cold washed over him, colder even than the mark on his hand.
The dream shifted again, violently this time. The snow turned to ash.
The third shadow stood alone on the battlements of a great castle that looked like Winterfell, but broken. The figure wore a crown of bronze swords. It was looking up at the sky.
A vast shadow crossed the moon. It was huge, winged, and terrible. The air in the dream grew suddenly, impossibly hot. A scream tore the silence—not a wolf's howl, but something reptilian and fiery. The crowned shadow on the wall did not raise a sword. It just watched the sky burn.
Then came the final vision.
The fourth shadow was the clearest of all. It was a man, standing alone in a muddy field. He wore the grey cloak of a Stark. He stood before a terrifying, overwhelming force—a wall of spears and fire that stretched as far as the eye could see.
The shadow man was holding a crown in his hands. He looked at the crown, then at the oncoming fire.
Slowly, agonizingly, the shadow went down on one knee. It laid the crown in the mud.
Torrhen felt a spike of revulsion and fear in the dream. No, he tried to shout. Starks do not kneel. Winter does not kneel.
But the shadow remained bowed, crushed by a weight Torrhen couldn't understand.
A low growl rumbled through the dreamscape. The mist-wolf from the cavern appeared in front of Torrhen, its form made of churning snow. It looked at the kneeling shadow, then turned its hollow eyes to Torrhen. It wasn't attacking; it was showing.
This is the burden, the wolf seemed to say without words. Ice or fire. Stand or kneel.
The wolf threw its head back and howled soundlessly.
Torrhen gasped, snapping awake in his bed. He sat bolt upright, drenched in cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The room was dark. The glow from his hand had faded back to the pale white scar.
Torrhen clutched his marked hand to his chest, trying to stop the trembling. The images of the dream burned behind his eyes—the ice wall, the blue eyes in the woods, the burning sky, and the King who knelt in the mud.
He looked out his window. The moon hung high over Winterfell, peaceful and cold. But Torrhen knew, with the terrible certainty of a boy touched by ancient magic, that the peace was a lie. Something was coming. From the north, or from the sky.
And he knew, somehow, that the shadow in the mud had been him.
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