### 1. The Dream That Shouldn't Exist
It began with a fire that whispered.
Jon slept beneath veils of breath and gold, Wanda curled on his left, Daenerys on his right, both shaped by exhaustion and the kind of union words couldn't contain. Their bodies still glowed faintly from earlier — after the battle, the softness, the absence of war for only a moment.
And then he was no longer with them.
He stood barefoot in a Cold Hall, the walls shaped from broken swords, flame suspended from the ceiling like captured stars.
In the center was a throne. Not Iron — not Golden — but something crystalline. Alive.
Upon it, a woman sat.
Not Goddess. Not Monster.
Just… her.
Red hair. Freckles. Furs. A smile like winter smoke.
> "You know nothing, Jon Snow."
Jon's throat choked.
"Ygritte."
She smiled without bitterness. "You've changed."
He stepped closer. "Is this real?"
"No. Not yet. But someone wants to offer you a truth so tempting it could unravel all you've built."
The walls melted.
A gate appeared — carved like the Eye of Flame.
And the voice of the First Flame spoke from beyond.
> "You may bring one life back. Any life. From any thread. Ygritte. Robb. Your direwolf. Your child never known. One soul — returned. No cost to your queens. No war. No lie."
But Ygritte walked to him, touched his heart, and whispered:
> "You choose one.
> And the others… remember it forever."
### 2. A Bond Strains Under Truth
Jon awoke with fire in his chest.
He staggered into the sanctum's spell-warped cathedral chamber, where flame-veins still pulsed along the ceiling — now synced to Dany's heartbeat.
She stood there already, arms folded, silver-blonde hair wet from her steam bath.
"You felt it," she said.
He nodded. "It offered me one life back."
Her voice was quiet. "Ygritte."
Wanda entered moments later, barefoot and bare-shouldered, magic still trailing sleeplight. Her tone was sharper.
"Who do you love enough to risk memory?"
Sif climbed down from the upper hall balcony. "What's his choice got to do with ours?"
Arya appeared last.
She didn't speak. She just looked at Jon. Waiting.
> "Only one," he said softly. "That's the gift… or the trap."
"Did you choose?" Wanda asked.
"No. I couldn't."
He looked at them one by one.
"How could I choose anyone over you and not let it tear us to pieces?"
And for a second, all was breath and spinning ache.
Until Arya stepped forward and hugged him — not as part of the harem, not as soldier or queen — but family again.
She looked at the others and said simply:
"He does not belong to grief. Let's not anchor him to it again."
### 3. Sersi Returns — And Offers a Bigger Sin
At midday, as the rest trained or recovered, Sersi arrived.
Slipping through a time-dome unharmed. Dressed in astral green, wrapped in golden circuits, and with eyes that shimmered with thousands of years of restraint.
Her touch on Jon's shoulder was featherlight.
"You turned the Flame's offer down," she whispered.
He looked at her. "I can't rewrite memory without killing everything we've been."
"And yet everything we build is a murder of something older," she said.
He blinked. "You knew the Flame's true name. Before my bloodline inherited it."
She nodded slowly and removed a crystalline bracer from her wrist. "I want to show you something. Lay with me tonight. Not with body, but soul. I'll show you the Flame's... first heartbreak."
Jon hesitated.
Then nodded once.
### 4. The Memory of the Multiverse's First Betrayal
That night, beneath dreams and seduction, Sersi linked to Jon through touch.
Not sexual. Not even intimate. Just sacred.
And he was taken into memory:
A world where Flame fell in love with a human soul.
A man named Lior — bearer of a key that could disorder time.
And when he died, the First Flame screamed.
So loud, it cracked every universe's walls.
> "I am not holy," the Flame had said once. "I am simply what passion leaves behind."
Sersi whispered as Jon gasped: "When the Flame asked you to choose someone to bring back… it was because *she never could.*"
### 5. A Return, A Revelation
At dawn, Wanda stood waiting for Jon in the meditation chamber of the Phoenix Forge.
He hadn't slept beside them.
"She showed you how you could love another beyond us," Wanda said.
"Yes."
"Are you ready to let go?"
Jon looked at her for a long breath.
"I'm ready... to choose this life fully."
She nodded slowly. Then walked to him and kissed him — desperately, but not possessively.
She reached down his chest, fingers trailing flame-pattern scars, and whispered, "Then burn with me tonight like it's the only fire left in the world."
And they did — no power, no gods.
Just pain, breath, sweat, forgiveness… and the slow warmth of two souls who shared destruction and chose love again.
### 6. The Ghost That Shouldn't Be
But not all things stay buried.
Across the sea of realms, someone stirred.
> Another Jon.
Eyes burning deep red.
Wearing Queen Cersei's crown.
Holding Longclaw reforged through a cursed Eye of Agamotto.
He smiled at the mirror before him.
> "Our timid self made choice within love."
He tapped the map of timelines behind him.
"And now he's vulnerable."
His army of broken god-Queens stirred.
Lavender-eyed Wanda.
Tyrant Daenerys.
Maskless, weapon-bound Arya who'd long stopped speaking.
And he whispered,
> "I'll return him a gift. The one soul he didn't choose. And storm his world with it."