Chapter 17: The Bones of the Sea and the Leviathan's Call
The departure from Winterfell was a stark, hurried affair, conducted under the oppressive gloom of a sky that perpetually threatened snow yet rarely delivered anything but a chilling, bone-deep dampness. Torrhen Stark, his face a mask of grim resolve, rode out from the main gates not with the fanfare of a lord going to war, but with the quiet intensity of a man embarking on a sacred, terrifying quest. Lyanna, pale but her eyes burning with a preternatural light, rode beside him, her connection to the weirwood network now a constant, humming presence in her mind, a lifeline and a burden. Ghost, a silent white shadow, scouted ahead, his crimson eyes missing nothing in the desolate landscape. Their escort was small, barely twenty of the Winter Guard's most seasoned and loyal veterans, men and women who had faced the horrors at Last Hearth and White Harbor and had not broken, their faith in their lord absolute, even if they did not fully comprehend the nature of this desperate new gambit.
Lord Rodrik Glover, a man whose gruff exterior hid a deep well of Northern loyalty, had been left in command of Winterfell. His parting words to Torrhen had been simple, laden with unspoken fear and a fierce hope: "Bring us a miracle, Stark. Or bring us the means to make our own."
The journey to the Bones of the Sea, a desolate stretch of coastline on the Bay of Ice pinpointed by the cryptic weirwood scroll and Lyanna's increasingly precise greensight, was a passage through a dying land. The unnatural winter, a manifestation of the Others' spreading power, had tightened its grip. The air was thin, tasting of ice and despair. Forests stood like skeletal graveyards. Rivers were frozen solid, their surfaces reflecting the bruised, sorrowful sky. They encountered few living souls. Most villages were either deserted, their inhabitants having fled towards Winterfell or other rumored sanctuaries, or worse, stood as silent, snow-drifted tombs, chilling testaments to the enemy's relentless advance.
Occasionally, they would find signs of wight packs – tracks in the snow, a lingering scent of decay that made Ghost snarl, or distant, mournful howls that were not of true wolves. Twice, they were forced into brief, brutal skirmishes. Torrhen, fighting with the cold precision of his assassin past and the desperate fury of a cornered king, dispatched the animated corpses with Ice and dragonglass, his movements a deadly economy of motion. Lyanna, though no physical combatant, would cry out warnings, her eyes unfocused as she tapped into the weirwood network, sensing the wights' movements before they were visible, giving their small party precious seconds to prepare. Her abilities were growing alarmingly fast, a wild, untamed magic responding to the crucible of their desperation.
One evening, huddled around a meager fire in the ruins of a sept whose seven-faced god had offered no protection against the encroaching cold, Lyanna shivered violently, not from the frost, but from a vision. "Brother," she whispered, her voice hoarse, "I saw… I saw the ships. The shadow ships of the Others. They are not gone. They are… regrouping. Far to the north, in the Shivering Sea. And the ice spiders… they spin webs between the ice floes… vast, terrible webs."
Torrhen's jaw tightened. The respite at White Harbor had been just that – a momentary pause. The enemy was adapting, preparing for a larger, more coordinated assault. Their desperate gamble at the Bones of the Sea now felt even more critical. It was not just about defending the North; it was about finding a weapon, any weapon, that could turn the tide against an enemy whose resources seemed as limitless as the winter itself.
After seven grueling days of travel, through a landscape that felt increasingly alien and hostile, they reached their destination. The Bones of the Sea was a place out of nightmare and legend. Jagged black cliffs, looking like the ribs of some colossal, petrified beast, jutted out into the churning, ice-choked Bay of Ice. The wind howled incessantly here, a mournful, keening sound that seemed to carry the whispers of forgotten gods and drowned sailors. The beach was not sand, but a shingle of black, wave-smoothed stones that rattled like bones with every surge of the frigid water. And at the cliff's edge, half-crumbled and encrusted with millennia of salt and rime, stood a circle of monolithic stones, their surfaces covered in unreadable, ancient runes that resonated with a deep, primal power, a power that made the hairs on Torrhen's arms stand on end and Lyanna gasp with a mixture of awe and terror.
"This is the place," Lyanna breathed, her eyes wide, fixed on the stone circle. "The power here… it's immense. Older than the First Men. Older than anything." She shivered. "And it's… waiting."
The celestial alignment described in the scroll was upon them. A blood-red moon, swollen and malevolent, was beginning to rise over the churning, ice-flecked sea, casting an eerie, crimson glow on the black cliffs and the bone-like stones. The stars, cold and diamond-hard in the unnaturally clear sky, seemed to blaze with an almost sentient intensity, their positions matching the ancient charts.
"We begin at moonrise peak," Torrhen declared, his voice barely audible above the shriek of the wind. He felt a profound sense of trepidation, a feeling that he was meddling with forces far beyond mortal comprehension. Flamel's memories, filled with warnings about the catastrophic consequences of ill-prepared or hubristic magical workings, screamed caution. But the North was dying. Desperation was their only currency.
The Winter Guard formed a tight, defensive perimeter around the stone circle, their dragonglass-tipped spears glinting red in the blood moon's light, their faces grim masks of loyalty. Ghost paced restlessly at the edge of the circle, his ears flattened, a low growl rumbling in his chest, his unease a palpable thing.
Torrhen and Lyanna stepped into the center of the monolithic stones. The air within the circle was significantly colder, yet thrumming with a suppressed, ancient energy that made Lyanna tremble. Torrhen drew the same alchemically-treated dragonglass dagger he had used at White Harbor. His hand was steady, but his heart hammered against his ribs.
"Lya," he said, his voice low and intense, "you are the anchor to the weirwood song, the deep roots. Find that ancient pulse, the one you felt before, the slumbering intelligences of the earth and sea. But this time, do not just listen. Call to it. Offer it… an invitation. A plea from a dying land."
He then looked at the specific instructions in the weirwood-bark scroll, which he had committed to memory. "The King's blood… willingly given… upon the Heartstone…" He identified the largest, central monolith, its surface strangely warm to the touch despite the freezing air, a faint, deep thrum emanating from within it.
As the blood moon reached its zenith, casting its unholy light directly into the stone circle, Torrhen raised the dagger. He met Lyanna's gaze, her eyes filled with fear, love, and an unwavering trust that both strengthened and terrified him. "For the North, Lya," he whispered. "For the dawn."
He then plunged the dragonglass dagger deep into his left forearm, not a shallow cut this time, but a grievous wound, aimed to draw a significant offering of blood. The pain was a searing agony, but he welcomed it, embraced it, a physical anchor against the overwhelming magical forces he was about to unleash. Crimson blood, Stark blood, king's blood in all but name, welled forth, steaming in the frigid air, shockingly vibrant against the black, moon-slicked stone.
He pressed his bleeding arm against the Heartstone, letting his lifeblood flow onto its ancient, rune-etched surface. As the blood touched the stone, the faint thrumming within it intensified, a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through Torrhen's bones, through the very ground beneath their feet. The runes on the stone began to glow with a faint, internal light, first red where his blood touched them, then shifting to a deep, oceanic blue.
"Now, Lyanna!" Torrhen gasped, the blood loss already making him feel lightheaded, the pain a distant, roaring fire. "The song of the deep roots! Call to the Sleeper!"
Lyanna closed her eyes, her face a mask of intense concentration. She began to chant, not in any human tongue, but in a series of resonant, ululating notes that seemed to mimic the roar of the wind, the crash of the waves, the groaning of ancient ice. It was the song of the weirwood network, amplified, given voice, and directed outwards, towards the churning, ice-choked depths of the Bay of Ice. The obsidian disc she held pulsed with a cold, silver light, her connection to the distant heart tree of Winterfell a blazing conduit.
The effect was almost immediate, and far more terrifying than Torrhen could have imagined.
The wind, already a gale, rose to a deafening, elemental shriek. The ground beneath them began to tremble, not with the subtle hum of the Heartstone, but with violent, earth-shuddering tremors. The sea, lit by the blood moon, began to churn with unnatural violence, massive waves smashing against the black cliffs, sending plumes of icy spray hundreds offeet into the air. The Winter Guard cried out in alarm, struggling to keep their footing, their spears clattering against the shaking stones.
Then, from the depths of the bay, a sound arose – a vast, sighing groan, like the earth itself exhaling, followed by a colossal disturbance in the water. A section of the sea, miles out, began to boil and heave. The ice floes were tossed aside like children's toys. And then, slowly, majestically, terrifyingly, something began to rise from the black, frigid water.
It was impossibly huge, larger than any creature Torrhen had ever dreamed of, larger than any dragon from song or legend. Its form was indistinct at first, wreathed in mist and the spray of the churning sea, but as it rose higher, its silhouette became clearer against the blood-red moon. It had a long, serpentine neck, a massive, whale-like body covered in what looked like barnacle-encrusted, icy plates, and limbs that ended not in claws, but in immense, paddle-like flippers. Its head was vast, reptilian, with eyes that glowed with a cold, ancient, blue-green light, eyes that seemed to hold the wisdom and indifference of millennia.
This was no mere beast. This was a primal force of nature, a true leviathan of the deep, one of the "Great Sleepers" the scroll had hinted at.
The creature let out a call, a sound that was not a roar or a shriek, but a deep, resonant, sonorous moan that vibrated in the very marrow of their bones, a sound that spoke of unimaginable age, of crushing pressures in the abyssal depths, of a consciousness utterly alien to humankind.
The Winter Guard were frozen in terror, some falling to their knees, others simply staring, their faces slack with disbelief and primal fear. Even Ghost, for the first time since Torrhen had known him, whined and pressed himself low to the ground, his usual wolven courage overwhelmed by the sheer, awesome presence of this ancient being.
Torrhen himself felt a wave of dizzying vertigo, not just from blood loss, but from the psychic immensity of the creature he had helped to awaken. Its mind, if it could be called that, brushed against his own – a vast, cold, slow-moving consciousness, like an ocean current, filled with ancient memories of a world before men, before Starks, before even the First Men had crossed the Arm of Dorne. It was not hostile, not yet. But it was overwhelmingly powerful, and utterly indifferent to their plight.
Lyanna screamed, her connection to the weirwood network, and now to this awakened leviathan, threatening to overwhelm her. The obsidian disc in her hand shattered, and she collapsed, her body convulsing.
"Lya!" Torrhen cried, stumbling towards her, his vision blurring. He knew he had to break the connection, to shield her, but the power thrumming through the stone circle was too immense.
The leviathan in the bay turned its massive head slowly, its glowing, ancient eyes fixing upon the small, insignificant figures huddled on the clifftop. It let out another of its deep, resonant calls, and the sea around it seemed to respond, the waves growing even more violent.
Then, something even more terrifying happened. From the north, along the coastline, a new wave of the unnatural, bone-chilling fog that heralded the Others began to roll in, moving with alarming speed, as if drawn by the immense surge of primal power unleashed by the ritual. And within the fog, Torrhen could just make out flickering, malevolent blue lights – Others, drawn to the disturbance, perhaps even to challenge this newly awakened ancient power.
Had he saved the North, or had he just rung the dinner bell for an even greater conflict, caught between the icy malice of the Others and the untamable, alien power of the deep?
The leviathan in the bay seemed to sense the approaching Other-fog. It let out a different kind of call now, a lower, more guttural rumble, a sound that held a distinct note of… challenge? Or perhaps ancient, primal enmity. The waters around it began to glow with a faint, eerie luminescence, the same blue-green light that shone in its eyes.
Torrhen, his strength failing, his blood soaking the Heartstone, watched in horrified fascination. He had sought an ally, a weapon. He had awakened something vast and terrible, something that operated on a scale far beyond human comprehension.
As the Other-fog began to creep closer to the shore, threatening to engulf the Bones of the Sea, the leviathan moved. With a speed that belied its colossal size, it surged forward, its massive body creating a tidal wave that crashed against the cliffs. It did not head for the shore, for Torrhen's small party. Instead, it turned north, directly towards the advancing fog bank.
It opened its immense, cavernous mouth, and from its depths, it did not breathe fire, but something far stranger, far more terrifying. A wave of pure, concentrated sonic force, a focused blast of infrasound so powerful that it was felt rather than heard, a pressure that made the very air solidify, that threatened to crush their lungs. This was followed by a plume of what looked like super-chilled brine, a liquid so cold it instantly flash-froze the surface of the sea where it struck, creating vast, jagged spears of ice.
The effect on the approaching Other-fog was immediate and devastating. The fog seemed to recoil, to shatter, as if struck by an invisible hammer. The faint blue lights within it winked out or scattered in disarray. The leviathan let out another of its deep, resonant calls, a sound that now held a clear note of territorial aggression. It was not fighting for the North, Torrhen realized with a sickening lurch. It was defending its domain, its ancient territory, from an encroaching, unwelcome presence. They were merely insignificant bystanders in a war between titans, between ancient, elemental powers.
The effort of this display, however, seemed to tax even the colossal creature. It sank lower in the water, its movements becoming more sluggish. But the Other-fog had been decisively repulsed, at least for now, from this immediate stretch of coastline.
Torrhen, his vision swimming, his consciousness fading, saw Lyanna stir. She was looking out at the leviathan, her eyes filled with a mixture of terror and a strange, almost empathic understanding. "It… it heard the song of the earth," she whispered. "It answered the call of its … kin."
Kin? What did she mean? Before Torrhen could ask, before he could process the sheer, overwhelming implications of what they had unleashed, the world went black. The last thing he heard was the distant, mournful, resonant call of the great leviathan, echoing over the churning, ice-choked sea, a sound that promised not salvation, but a new, terrible, and utterly unpredictable chapter in the North's desperate war for survival. He had knocked on the door of ancient powers, and something vast and unknowable had answered. Whether it was a guardian or a destroyer, only time, and the blood-red moon hanging silently overhead, would tell.