The wind beyond the Wall spoke in a language that only the old knew. It howled through the twisted spires of ice, dragged across blackened trees like fingers scraping skin, and carried with it a warning far older than men.
Benjen Stark had heard that wind before. But today, it felt different.
He urged his black courser forward, the stallion's breath steaming in the frigid air. Snow crunched beneath hooves already weary from miles of travel. The sky had dulled into a bruised gray, where no sun nor star dared show its face.
He was alone. That much, at least, was not typical.
Usually, ranging beyond the Wall was done in pairs or full patrols. But this time, Benjen had volunteered for solitude.
The missing brothers had been gone for weeks—four of them. No sign, no blood, no bodies. Vanished. Mance Rayder hadn't taken them, or if he had, he left no trace.
Some whispered of wights. Others dared not whisper at all.
But Benjen needed to know.
He was searching for something—a campfire's ash, a broken blade, a bloodied patch of snow. Something to bring back to the Wall and say, "This is what happened to them."
His steed whinnied, uneasy.
They had passed the Haunted Forest two days past, and now moved through the high, jagged land near the Fist of the First Men—where the earth rose in an ancient ring, like the curled fingers of a dead giant. The place made the hairs on Benjen's neck stand stiff beneath his furs.
The sky darkened. A storm, maybe. Or just the North being cruel again.
He dismounted and tied his reins to a leafless ironwood stump. Ahead, he could just barely make out a shape—a weirwood, lone and gnarled, clinging to the edge of the frost-slick rise.
Its bark was bone-white, its leaves like bloodied hands pressed against the snow. Eyes carved deep into the trunk stared blindly into the white world. A face older than memory.
Benjen walked toward it.
He had no reason to, not really. The godswood in Castle Black was enough for most of the men. But here, in this untouched place, it felt... right. As if the old gods were waiting for him.
He stood before the tree and removed his glove, placing one hand flat against the cold bark.
"Tell me something," he muttered. "Anything."
Only silence answered. That, and the wind. Always the wind.
And then—a sound. Not from the tree, but from behind him.
A low growl.
Benjen turned slowly, hand reaching for his sword.
There, in the snow between him and his horse, stood a direwolf.
Not a pup. Not a normal wolf, either. This was a beast of legend. Nearly shoulder-high to a man, its coat was thick as winter's night, and eyes—deep golden—locked on his with strange intelligence. It did not snarl. It did not pounce.
It simply stood... watching.
Benjen froze. His instincts screamed caution, but something deeper, older, whispered wait.
The direwolf turned its head—not to flee, but to look toward the ridge beyond the weirwood tree. It paused, then padded off, slowly, then stopped, glancing back.
An invitation.
Benjen Stark of House Stark, First Ranger of the Night's Watch, had never been one for following wolves.
But there was something in the way the beast moved... not just animal instinct. Purpose. Urgency. He glanced once more at the tree behind him, the face carved in its wood, and felt a shiver—not from the cold, but from something deeper.
Then he followed.
Into the snow. Into the silence.
Toward something he could not yet name.