- Roose Bolton -
What madness is this! The thought ran through Roose Bolton's mind as he never in his life would expect his plan to turn out like this.
Everything had been meticulous and set him into becoming the North's new lord!
He even has the riverland by the neck by having Catelyn who was the only surviving Tully after he had killed Edmure Tully.
Only for it to grumble when a lone armored knight creature descends from the sky.
He was not a man of faith and always saw things in a pragmatic way. To see a creature that displayed magic was beyond the things he would foresee in his plan.
If anything, rumors of the Remaining Targaryen acquiring not one but three dragons was more believable than the one set before his eyes.
Roose watched as the creature appeared like a young man almost the same age as his bastard spoke to Catelyn directly.
"That's good to hear. I have propositions for you."
His words immediately rang an alarm inside Roose's mind. He rarely feels threatened but predicted things won't end well for him if he lets Catelyn accept a deal from this.
"And you," he said, his voice cutting through the night like ice.
"Silence. I've no need for your deceit nor foolish offers. Whatever you think you can give me—" his lips curled into a thin sneer
"—I can simply take."
He barely finished the last word before the world answered him.
The air itself hummed. Every piece of armor, blade, buckle, and nail around him began to rattle.
Roose froze.
The metallic of unseen power crawled across his skin, seeping through his armor, coiling around his throat.
Before he could blink, his own breastplate convulsed metal warped like liquid, snaking upward and clamping tight around his jaw.
"Mmmph—!"
The rest of his words died in his throat. His eyes widened, cold composure shattering as the pressure around his mouth tightened until it hurt.
He stumbled back, breath rasping through his nose, the first beads of sweat forming on his usually pale face. The sight made his men hesitate; the flayed lord, the butcher of the North, was struggling.
'This is absurd! My work! Curse you damn vermin!'
He could only glare and thrash from his bind while Catelyn saw how helpless he had become decided whatever this people's desire of her then will try her best to offer it.
Catelyn understood whatever he wished to speak with her could easily gain by having her dead but he found her more interesting than Roose.
"Whatever it may be, I'll do what I can, Lord?"
She is unsure how to address him but tries to be respectful.
"My name is Mattias Reis from a land far from Westeros and Essos."
This revelation shocked Catelyn. She knew none who had tried to venture beyond the sea came back, making other places in Planetos a mystery.
She wondered if he was noble since he has a last name. House of Reis? What a unique name.
"I intend to end the war and set myself as the new king of the seven kingdoms simply because I find it entertaining."
Mattias calmly said looking at the people and to Catelyn.
"If you, Lady Catelyn, the remaining Tully of the riverland were to accept this alliance with me then I guarantee that your enemy shall suffer by your hands."
His words kindled something in Catelyn that had been buried under ash and grief — a fierce, terrible hope. The name of vengeance had been a dull ache; now it flared into a bright, scorching hunger.
She straightened where she stood, the rope biting into her wrists like a vow. Around them the tents and banners of the Freys and Boltons trembled in the night wind, the laughter from the campfires reduced to a distant, ragged sound.
"If what you promise is true," she said, voice steadying,
"I will stand with you. I swear it — the Lannisters, the Freys, the Boltons… they will answer for what they have done."
Her declaration carried the weight of a woman who had nothing left to lose but everything to avenge. The jeers and crude songs that had filled the clearing shifted into uneasy murmurs; men who had been tearing at meat and spilling wine fell silent at the tone of her voice. She was no longer only a grieving mother; she was a bargaining force beneath the moon and the watchful stars.
Mattias inclined his head as if approving a chess move.
"Good," he said, quiet and casual, as if naming the weather.
"Do not let grief blind you, Lady Catelyn. Blood bought in fury is messy and short-lived. Kill them in haste and you spill justice into vengeance and both are poor governors."
Catelyn blinked, startled by the clinical dissection of her impulse. "Then what—" she began.
"You do not rush," Mattias replied.
"You do not give them the mercy of a clean death. Mercy is too simple. Let them rot under the weight of what they have done. Let their names become curses whispered in every hall they ever claimed. Let them suffer a fate worse than death — humiliation, loss, the slow unmaking of everything they prize. Make the world remember why they deserved it."
Her mouth went dry. The idea was darker than she had first imagined, but it settled over her like a new kind of armor. It was crueler, longer, and—she felt it—truer to the scale of the wrongs done to her family.
"Very well," she said at last, voice low and resolute.
"I will wait. I will help you plan. I will not let them have the quick release of death."
Mattias moved like a shadow through the gathered men. In moments every hand was fettered—cords and strips of metal biting wrists—men drunk on triumph now immobilized. Even those who had once called themselves Stark or Tully lay bound beside their captors.
Catelyn started to speak, alarm and confusion rising in her throat.
"Why have you—? You bound my men as well."
The stranger raised a single hand, calm and measured. "I cannot tell friend from foe by sight in this muck. Bolton and Stark wear the same blood. If there are any you wish spared, point them out."
She stared at him, the question dying on her lips as she looked over the trembling faces. Frey, Bolton, a few loyalists with sullen eyes—each a portrait of fear and hunger for mercy.
A bitter laugh escaped her.
"You expect me to sort corpses and traitors in a single breath?" She swallowed, then steadied herself.
"Very well. I will speak for those who remain true."
She stepped forward, chin lifted. "That one," she said, voice steady as iron, pointing to a gaunt man whose sigil still clung to his cloak.
"And the younger ser with the Tully cord—untie them."
She let her gaze sweep the rest.
"All the Freys. All the men of Bolton who cheered." Her fingers curled around the rope at her wrists until the knuckles whitened.
"None of them deserve mercy."
The stranger inclined his head, almost like a man accepting a fine chess move.
"As you command, Lady Catelyn."
Mattias watched the change as if witnessing winter harden into iron. Where Catelyn had stood there was no longer the woman who had bent under grief something else had been stitched from her ruin.
The Silent Sister, Mother Merciless, the Hangwoman. The Lady Stoneheart.
Her eyes were emptier and brighter at once, a face carved from vengeance. He thought, with a cold, humorless certainty, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
She gave one ragged, terrible laugh that carried across the clearing like a bell tolling doom.
"Rise," she barked.
"Take arms for Edmure. Take arms for Robb. Take arms for what is left of House Tully and House Stark!"
Where there had been stumbling fear, steel answered. Men who had trembled at a stranger's shadow now gripped their swords as if they had been forged anew. The loyal Tully and Stark among the bound and the spared drew together, faces set in a rictus of hatred that matched her own.
"Avenger!" one Tully sergeant spat as he strapped a fallen man's helm to his head.
"For Edmure!"
"For Robb!" a northern voice roared; another took up the cry, and then another, until dozens of throats parroted the names like a litany of war.
Catelyn stark who would later be known as Lady Stoneheart walked among them, chains clinking like a judge's gavel.
"No mercy," she intoned, voice low and certain.
"They sang when he died. Let them know the sound of mourning."
The strike was immediate and ruthless. The Freys and Boltons tried to form ranks, to raise banners, to shove men forward in some semblance of order, but order broke like thin ice under weight.
The North and Riverbloods poured into them with the force of a winter flood, swords shearing through leather and flesh, spears finding throats, boots driving faces into mud. Men screamed, of course; some cursed, some begged, but the camp answered with a chorus of steel and rage.
A Frey captain went down with his head split beneath a polearm; his men tripped over his body and were run through before they could rise.
A Bolton sergeant's cheek burst in a spray of red when a northern blade nicked him, and he staggered like a puppet with cut strings. Horse and rider collided; a lance snapped a man in two. The air filled with a metallic, coppery smell and a sound like tearing canvas as armor gave way to blade and bone.
"Remember Edmure! Remember Robb!" a Tully youth screamed as he struck a Frey down, and the man's last howl ended in a wet, surprised silence.
Another Stark knelt to finish an old woman who had hidden daggers beneath her apron; he did it without looking, as if finishing chores.
Some of the Freys attempted to flee; their flight was cut off by ropes, pikes, and keen eyes. Those captured were dragged up and forced to kneel before Catelyn, who did not weep now but catalogued their faces as a ledger.
The hangman's list grew by tally marks scratched into leather; the men who had sung over Robb's corpse were made to stand beneath newly raised ropes while others once their comrades tore at the ropes until they were noosed and left to dangle, their muffled pleas for clemency swallowed by the forest.
Roars of vengeance rose and fell, punctuated by the wet sound of life being extinguished. The Tullys and Starks did not revel in the spectacle; they moved like a tribunal.
Each stroke was an answer to a memory: a mocked child, a burned farm, a mother taken. The cleanness of their fury made the clearing into a dark arithmetic of debt and repayment.
Mattias watched all of it with the same stillness that had first made them stare skyward. Blood splattered his greaves; the smell of slaughter clung to the tents and the wind.
He did not applaud or scowl. He did not give orders or prayers. He simply observed — the arbiters of justice and the hunted both played their parts, and he catalogued the result with a detached, surgical eye.
When a Frey tried to meet his gaze and plead, his words died as the Tully blade met throat; Mattias' face remained unreadable, as if this, too, was merely another move across a board whose edges he had already measured.
By the time the slaughter thinned, the clearing was a ragged graveyard of bodies and smoking embers. Survivors—few and broken—crawled, sobbing, into the dark. The banners were torn, the music gone; only the clicks of settling armor and the ragged breathing of the living filled the space. Catelyn, chest heaving, turned and found Mattias watching her.
The hunger in her eyes had not been sated, but it had been focused.
Tears traced down Catelyn's dirt-streaked cheeks, glimmering faintly in the moonlight. In that quiet, between the dying echoes of vengeance and the whispering wind, she prayed—may my son and husband rest at peace… for their enemies are now being delivered to them.
Mattias stepped closer, the weight of his armor whispering like a promise of strength. Without a word, he wrapped an arm gently around her waist, drawing her toward him so that her head rested against the cold steel of his chestplate. His warmth bled through the metal—a rare, human kindness after so much ruin.
Catelyn stiffened at first, startled by the intimacy, but found herself unable to resist the small comfort it offered. She did not push him away. Perhaps she could no longer afford to.
Her mind—ever the cautious one of a mother and lady—turned even as she wept. She understood what this gesture meant. Her new lord fancied her; of that she had no doubt. And with Edmure dead and her house broken, House Tully would soon need an heir.
She glanced up at him through blurred eyes, searching for deceit and finding only calm certainty—the look of a man who truly believed he could take the Iron Throne.
Whether highborn or not, it mattered little now. The age of honor had drowned with Robb and the Starks. Power alone would rule what was left of Westeros… and Mattias Reis intended to seize it.
[ Thus begins the First Resonance of the Iron Monarch. ]
[ The weave of Fate has been torn and rewoven by unseen hands. ]
[ The Wolf lies slain, and the River mourns its sons. ]
[ The Lion, once the hunter, shall now be hunted. ]
[ The flaying men who laughed now wail beneath their own skins. ]
[ The Tower of Pride shall crumble, swallowed by steel and ruin. ]
[ You have risen — Lord Arbiter of Death, Judge of Kings and Graves. ]
[ The Iron Monarch whose step makes the heavens tremble and the earth bow low. ]
[ The world itself bears witness. Your deeds have shaped its soul. ]
[ Thus, A reward is bestowed upon you. ]
[ You have received "The Noxian Grand General, Jericho Swain." Familiar. ]
[ You have received "Commander General, Darius." Familiar. ]
[ You have received "Armament Magic." ]