Jon
The world was grey and still when Jon slipped from his room.
Mist curled between the stable buildings like smoke from a dying fire, thick enough to muffle his footsteps on the packed earth. The fortress slept around him—guards on the walls seeing nothing but fog, servants still in their beds, and even the horses drowsing in their stalls. The sun had not yet crested the mountains, and the air held that particular coolness of pre-dawn, the kind that made your breath fog and your skin prickle.
Jon moved through it like a ghost, carrying his secrets bundled in cloth.
The space behind the stables had become his sanctuary these past six weeks. A stretch of hard-packed earth between the rear wall and a crumbling section of the old fortress that no one used anymore. Hidden from casual view, forgotten by the servants, and too far from the main buildings for anyone to stumble upon by accident. Here, in the grey hours before the world woke, Jon had been building something.
He unwrapped the cloth with careful hands. Two wooden swords emerged—practice blades he'd carved himself from fallen branches, sanded smooth with stolen pumice, and balanced as well as he could manage. They were shorter than standard practice swords, sized for his still-growing frame, and light enough that he could wield them for an hour without his arms giving out.
"Six weeks," Jon thought, settling into his opening stance. Six weeks of practice. Three form sequences. The beginning of something real.
He moved.
The forms were his own invention—cobbled together from what Master Zhi had taught him, what he'd observed of the fortress soldiers, and what Marcus's memories whispered about combat theory. Attack patterns that flowed into defensive transitions, one blade covering while the other struck, and the complex footwork required to maintain balance while wielding two weapons instead of one.
He wasn't using the breathing techniques. Not yet. This exercise was about muscle memory, about teaching his body to move in ways that didn't come naturally. The human form was designed for one weapon or one weapon and a shield. Two swords required rewiring everything—how you stood, how you pivoted, and how you thought about the space around you.
The wooden blades cut patterns through the mist. The left sword swept low while the right sword guarded high. The right sword thrust while the left sword deflected an imaginary counter. The two swords moved together in harmony, then clashed against each other, and finally returned to moving in harmony again.
This is what healing feels like, Jon thought as he flowed between forms. Not just surviving. Becoming.
His hands worked now. The right one still ached in cold weather, the grip was not as strong as it should be, and the fingers were occasionally stiff in the mornings. But they worked. Master Zhi had rebuilt what Grazdan's guards had broken, and Jon had spent months learning to trust them again.
He paused between sequences, catching his breath. The twin swords rested in his hands, one blade angled up, one angled down. The familiar weight of them, the way they balanced against each other—
The memory came unbidden.
Winterfell. It had been four years since then, although at times it felt like four lifetimes.
A feast night. Jon sat with the other children in the spacious hall's corner, as far from the high table as Lady Catelyn's seating arrangements could manage. The adults drank and laughed and forgot that children existed, which suited Jon fine. It meant Old Nan could gather them for stories without being shooed away to bed.
"Tell us about knights!" Arya had demanded. She was barely three but already fierce, already unwilling to sit still for tales of maidens and flowers. Jon remembered her sitting on his lap, squirming with impatience, her small hands grabbing at his tunic.
"Knights, is it?" Old Nan's voice crackled like old parchment. Her eyes were milky with age, but they saw things that younger eyes missed. "Then I'll tell you of the greatest knight who ever lived. Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning."
The children leaned in. Even Sansa, who usually only wanted stories about princes and maidens and songs, went quiet.
"He carried two swords into battle, little lords and ladies. Dawn in one hand—a blade forged from a fallen star, pale as milk and sharper than winter. And another sword in his off-hand, for Arthur Dayne was so skilled he needed no shield. He'd killed the Smiling Knight in single combat, defeated the greatest warriors of his age, and served three kings with honor unblemished."
"Did anyone ever beat him?" Robb asked, his eyes wide.
Old Nan's gaze found Jon—just for a moment, a flicker of something strange. He'd never understood what that look meant.
"Your father did, young lord. This event took place at a tower in the mountains of Dorne, following the conclusion of Robert's Rebellion. Lord Stark and his companions faced Arthur Dayne and two other knights of the Kingsguard. Three against seven, the legends say. And when the fighting was done, only two men walked away."
"Father killed the greatest knight ever?" Robb sounded awed. Proud.
"They killed each other, in a manner of speaking. Arthur Dayne fell, and most of Lord Stark's companions with him. They say your father wept when it was done. He'd killed the finest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms, and it broke something in him."
Later that night, when the feast had ended and the other children had been taken to bed, Jon had slipped away to the godswood. Beneath the heart tree, he discovered a sturdy, straight stick. He'd held it like a sword, the way Ser Rodrik was teaching them.
Then he'd found another stick. Held both.
He envisioned himself assuming the role of Arthur Dayne. Two swords against the world. Unbeatable. Worthy. A knight so skilled that even Lord Eddard Stark had wept to kill him.
That was the first time Jon had dreamed of two swords.
Jon shook off the memory. The mist was beginning to thin; the gray lightened toward silver as dawn approached. He wasn't in Winterfell anymore. He was in Yi Ti, half a world away, in a fortress where no one called him bastard and a girl had decided he was worth saving.
But the dream had stayed with him. Through everything—slavery, storms, survival—the image of Arthur Dayne had remained. A goal. A possibility. Something to become instead of just something to endure.
If I can fight like him, Jon thought, settling back into stance, then I'm not just a survivor. I'm something more.
He decided to try one technique. Just one, carefully controlled.
He reached for Water Breathing—the calmest, most controlled of the forms Marcus had left him. Let it settle into his body like cool water filling a vessel. Then he moved through a dual-blade sequence at enhanced speed.
For a moment, it worked. The swords blurred slightly, his movements smoothing into something faster and more fluid than mere muscle could achieve. The forms flowed into each other like water over stones, his feet barely touching the earth—
His right hand cramped.
Not gradually—savagely. The fingers that had been broken in Grazdan's compound, rebuilt by Master Zhi, were still not fully healed—they seized mid-motion, locking into a claw.
The right sword flew from his grip, clattering against the stable wall. Jon staggered, the form collapsing, his breathing technique shattering as pain shot up his arm.
He stood there for a moment, gasping. Then he retrieved the sword, flexing his fingers, forcing them to work. The knuckles ached. The joints protested. But they moved, eventually.
It's early, he told himself. I'm still healing. This is just rust. It will get better.
He checked the angle of the sun. Grey had given way to pale gold at the mountain peaks. Time to stop—Mei Ling would be waking soon, and he'd promised to show her today. Finally, after weeks of her asking.
As he wrapped the practice swords in their cloth, Jon noticed his ribs aching. The old brakes, the ones from the Jade Serpent and before, protested the rotational movement that dual-wielding required. He pressed a hand against his side and felt the familiar tenderness.
He ignored it. He'd ignored worse.
Today was the day. He was finally ready.
Or so he believed.
Jon
The garden was green now—deep summer green; the cherry blossoms had long since fallen and were replaced by leaves that cast dappled shadows across the worn wooden bench.
Mei Ling had arranged breakfast on the space between them—sweet buns glazed with honey, fruit he still couldn't name after months of trying, and tea steaming gently in small cups. This had become their ritual: morning meals in the garden before the day's duties claimed them, an hour of peace in a world that was rarely peaceful.
She was practically vibrating with excitement.
"Today?" She leaned forward, eyes bright. "You'll really show me today?"
"I said I would."
"You've been saying that for weeks. Every time I ask, you say 'soon.' Soon never comes."
"Today, it comes."
She studied him, her eyes narrowing with playful suspicion. At eleven now, Mei Ling had grown into her features—the baby roundness giving way to something sharper, more defined. She looked more like her father every month, though she'd probably hit Jon if he told her that.
"What changed? Why today?"
Jon picked up a sweet bun, buying time. He wanted to tell her about the twin swords. About Arthur Dayne. About the dream he'd been nurturing in secret, building piece by piece in the grey hours before dawn.
But he wanted her to see it more than hear about it. Let her be surprised. Let her see what he could become.
"I've been practicing something," he said carefully. "Something new. I want you to see it when it's ready."
"Is it ready?"
He thought about the cramp in his hand this morning. He felt a sharp pain in his ribs. Pushed the doubt aside.
"Ready enough."
Mei Ling opened her mouth to press further, then closed it. She'd learned, over the months, when to push and when to wait. This was a waiting moment.
"I should tell you something," she said instead, suddenly not meeting his eyes. "I... invited Sun Cao."
Jon's hand paused halfway to his tea. "Why?"
"Because he's been asking about you. About what you can do. The rumors about the duel last month—when you disarmed Chen Wei with that counter nobody saw coming—they've spread. He wants to see for himself."
"I didn't invite him to see."
"I know. But..." She hesitated, drawing patterns on the bench with her finger. "He's been different lately. Since your fight in the courtyard, you kept getting up. I think he respects you. He just doesn't know how to show it."
Jon considered. Watching Sun Cao meant more pressure. More eyes. More judgment. The cold part of him that calculated odds and escape routes warned that more witnesses meant more risk.
But another part—the part that remembered Arthur Dayne, that dreamed of being worthy—whispered that more people seeing what he could become was precisely what he wanted.
Pride won over caution.
"Fine. He can watch."
Mei Ling beamed, relief and excitement mixing in her expression. "You won't regret it. This will be wonderful."
I hope so, Jon thought. But he kept the doubt off his face.
They finished breakfast as the sun climbed higher. The training yard awaited.
Jon
The training yard was empty when they arrived.
Mei Ling had arranged it—pulled whatever strings the general's daughter could pull to ensure this hour would be theirs alone. The sand gleamed pale gold in the late morning light. Wooden practice dummies lined one wall, their surfaces scarred from a thousand strikes. Weapon racks waited nearby, bristling with practice blades of every size.
Jon carried his hidden swords wrapped in cloth, held against his chest like sacred relics. His heart beat faster than he wanted to admit.
Mei Ling settled on a low wall at the yard's edge, legs swinging, practically bouncing with anticipation. Sun Cao stood a few feet away, arms crossed, his expression carefully neutral. He'd grown in the months since their duel—taller, broader in the shoulders—but his eyes held the same guarded watchfulness they always had.
A few servants had found reasons to be nearby. Sweeping sand that didn't need sweeping. Carrying water to barrels that were already full. Word had spread, despite Mei Ling's attempts at privacy. The foreign boy was doing something unusual in the training yard. Of course people wanted to watch.
Jon walked to the center of the yard. The sand shifted under his feet, familiar and strange at once. He'd trained here before, with Master Zhi's exercises and Sun Cao's reluctant corrections. But never like this. Never with so much riding on the outcome.
He unwrapped the cloth.
The twin practice swords emerged, their wooden surfaces smooth from weeks of handling. Mei Ling's eyes went wide.
"Two swords? Jon, you've been training with two?"
Jon felt a flush of pride he couldn't entirely suppress. "For a few weeks."
"Dual-wielding?" Sun Cao's voice cut across the yard, skeptical. "That's a fool's art. Every swordmaster knows this. You sacrifice power for flash. One strong blade beats two weak ones every time."
Jon met his eyes. The old rivalry hadn't vanished entirely—it had just... evolved. It had evolved into something more complex than mere hostility.
"Only if you're not fast enough."
The challenge hung in the air. Sun Cao's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
"Tell us," Mei Ling said, leaning forward. "Why two swords?"
Jon settled into his opening stance, one blade high and one low. "There was a knight in Westeros. The greatest who ever lived. They called him the Sword of the Morning."
He could feel Sun Cao's attention sharpen. Even skeptical, the older boy was listening.
"He fought with two blades. Not for show—because he was so skilled he didn't need a shield. No one could stand against him. They say he killed the Smiling Knight, the greatest outlaw of his age. They say he could have been king if he'd wanted, but he chose honor instead."
"What happened to him?" Mei Ling asked.
"My father killed him. At the end of a war. They say Father wept when it was done. He'd killed the finest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms, and it broke something in him."
Silence. Even the servants had stopped pretending to work.
"Show us," Mei Ling said softly.
Jon began to move.
He started slow. No breathing techniques, no enhancement—just the forms he'd practiced for six weeks, the muscle memory he'd painstakingly built. Basic attack patterns flowed into defensive transitions, one blade sweeping while the other guarded, his feet tracing patterns in the sand that would have been invisible to anyone who didn't know to look for them.
He was competent. Six weeks of secret practice had built something real, something that worked. The swords moved in his hands like extensions of his body, their weight familiar, their balance true.
Mei Ling watched with growing delight. She'd known he was training at something, known he was working toward a surprise. But seeing it—seeing the weeks of hidden effort made manifest—brought a smile to her face that Jon felt like warmth in his chest.
Sun Cao remained unimpressed. Or at least, his face remained unimpressed. His eyes tracked Jon's movement with an intensity that belied his crossed arms and neutral expression.
"Any soldier can wave two sticks around," he said when Jon paused between sequences. "This proves nothing."
"Show him the real thing, Jon." Mei Ling's voice was eager. "The fast thing."
Jon hesitated.
He hadn't used the breathing techniques at full power since the storm occurred. Since he had drowned in the Jade Sea, his memories became tangled with the techniques, making it so that using one would trigger the other. Every time he'd tried, the flashbacks had come—chains and fire and Alya dying on the cross.
But he'd been healing. He'd made progress in the garden, those moments of meditation where the calm came without the memories. And Mei Ling was watching with such faith, and certainty that he could do this. And Sun Cao's dismissive expression needed wiping away.
Just once, Jon told himself. I wanted to demonstrate this to them. I've been healing. Practicing. I'm stronger now.
They need to see what I can become.
He settled into a stance. Raised both swords. Found his center.
"Watch carefully."
Jon reached for Thunder Breathing.
The technique flooded through him like lightning given liquid form—not the explosive burst of combat, but a sustained flow of power that enhanced every movement, every nerve, every fiber of muscle. He layered Water Breathing underneath, adding fluidity to the force. Let Beast Breathing sharpen his awareness of the space around him, the location of every body in the yard, every practice dummy, and every grain of sand.
Everything was his. Everything Marcus had given him. Channeled through two swords, the way Arthur Dayne had channeled his skill through Dawn and its companion blade.
He moved.
For three seconds, it was perfect.
Jon flowed through the dual-sword forms at a speed that should have been impossible. The wooden blades became silver blurs, cutting patterns in the air that seemed to hang like afterimages. His feet barely touched the sand. His body pivoted and spun between strikes like water, like wind, like something that had never been fully human.
The servants gasped. One dropped a bucket, the clatter impossibly loud in the sudden silence.
Sun Cao's arms uncrossed. His carefully maintained neutrality shattered, replaced by something Jon had never seen on his face before: genuine shock. His eyes went wide, tracking movements he couldn't possibly follow.
Mei Ling laughed—that pure, unselfconscious sound that Jon had learned to treasure. Joy has given voice. This moment was filled with pride, delight, and a sense of vindication for Jon's faith.
Inside himself, Jon felt it: power flooding through him, the old strength Marcus had left him, flowing like a river after spring thaw. His body sang with the technique. Every movement felt like flight. For three seconds, he wasn't Jon Snow, a bastard of Winterfell, a branded slave, and a broken boy. He was Arthur Dayne. He was the Sword of the Morning reborn.
Three seconds.
Then his right hand cramped.
Not gradually—savagely. The fingers that had been broken in Grazdan's compound, rebuilt by Master Zhi, were still healing despite months of patience and care—they seized mid-strike, locking into a claw of agony.
The right sword flew from his grip, spinning away across the sand.
Jon's body tried to compensate. His torso twisted to cover the lost blade with the remaining one, and his ribs screamed in protest. The old fractures—from the storm, from before, from a lifetime of damage his young body had never properly healed—cracked again under the rotational stress.
He stumbled. Dropped the second sword. The breathing technique shattered like glass, the power bleeding away and leaving only pain.
And then the memories came.
Not Yunkai this time. He did not remember the slave pits, the brand, or the guards who had broken his fingers.
Winterfell.
The training yard, four years ago. Theon's practice sword shattered under his strike, splinters flying. The older boy was on the ground, Jon's blade at his throat, his own hand shaking with power he didn't understand.
Lady Catelyn's face on the gallery above—fear and hatred and something like horror.
Ser Rodrik's voice, careful and frightened: "Boy, what ARE you?"
The moment everything had changed. The moment he'd become a monster in their eyes.
Jon went to his knees. He was gasping, shaking, and unable to tell past from present. The training yard spun around him—but was it this training yard or that one? Was the sand beneath his palms warm from Yi Ti's summer sun or cold from Winterfell's eternal chill?
He could hear voices but they were wrong; they were speaking Yi Tish, not Common Tongue. where was he? when was he—
Monster, Lady Catelyn's voice whispered through time and distance. I always knew there was something wrong with you.
Mei Ling
She was off the wall before she realized she was moving.
"Jon! Jon!"
He was on his knees in the sand, hands pressed flat against the ground, shaking like a leaf in a typhoon. His white hair had fallen across his face, hiding his expression, but she could see his shoulders heaving with breaths that came too fast, too shallow.
His eyes were open. But they weren't seeing her. They were seeing something else, somewhere else—a place she couldn't reach, a memory she couldn't fight.
She'd seen such scenes before. In the early days, when he'd first arrived. The moments when he'd go away inside himself, when the present dissolved and the past swallowed him whole. She'd learned to talk him back, to anchor him with her voice and her presence.
She'd thought those moments were over. He'd been so much better lately. He'd been healing.
"Jon, it's me." She knelt beside him, not touching—she'd learned that touching during these episodes sometimes made them worse. "It's Mei Ling. You're here. You're in Yi Ti. You're in the training yard. You're safe."
His breathing didn't slow. His hands clawed at the sand like he was trying to hold onto something that kept slipping away.
"The sky is blue," she said, pulling words from somewhere, anything to anchor him. "The sun is warm. There are birds singing in the trees by the wall. I'm here. I'm right here. You're not alone."
Sun Cao
Sun Cao stood frozen.
He'd expected many things from this demonstration. A foreign technique, perhaps impressive but ultimately impractical. Alternatively, it could have been a failure, revealing the barbarian's tricks as nothing special and serving as further evidence that the foreigner did not belong here.
He hadn't expected this.
The boy had moved like nothing Sun Cao had ever seen. Not just fast—impossible. For three seconds, Jon had been beyond human, beyond anything Sun Cao had trained his entire life to become. A lifetime of practice, of perfect forms and disciplined effort, and Sun Cao knew with cold certainty that he'd never move like that. Would never even come close.
And then—
And then Jon had shattered like a clay pot dropped on stone. The impossible grace had become a graceless collapse. The power had become pain. Whatever Jon was, whatever gift or curse made him capable of that movement, it had broken him in the trying.
The servants were whispering. Sun Cao caught fragments:
"—cursed, I told you—"
"—white devil—"
"—shouldn't be here—"
"—the sea should have kept him—"
Anger flared in Sun Cao's chest, surprising in its intensity.
"Silence."
The servants looked at him, startled by the steel in his voice.
"He's a guest of General Kai's household. Any of you who spread rumors about what you saw here will answer to me. Is that understood?"
They bowed, scattered, and melted away from the yard like morning mist. Sun Cao watched them go, not entirely sure why he'd done that.
He didn't even like the foreign boy. Not really. The old resentment was still there, buried but not gone—resentment that Mei Ling had chosen Jon's company over his, that General Kai had made room in his household for a stranger when Sun Cao had spent four years trying to earn a fraction of that acceptance.
But whatever Jon was, he didn't deserve whispers and curses from servants who'd never held a sword. They had never attempted to achieve anything and had instead broken against their own limitations.
Sun Cao knew something about that. More than he'd ever admit.
"Get Master Zhi." His voice sounded strange in his ears. "Now."
One of the remaining servants ran.
Jon
Mei Ling's voice reached him through the fog.
Yi Ti. I'm in Yi Ti. The garden. The fortress. Mei Ling.
He forced his eyes to focus. He saw her face, which was both terrified and determined, just inches from his own. Her dark hair had come loose from its pins, falling around her face like a curtain. Her hands hovered near him, not quite touching, wanting to help but not knowing how.
"...I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." Her voice was steady, steadier than he deserved. "Just breathe. Regular breathing. This isn't about the technique. Just breathe."
He tried. His ribs protested, the cracked bones sending spikes of pain through his chest. His right hand wouldn't stop shaking—the fingers that had betrayed him, that had shattered his dream in the moment of its flowering.
He'd wanted to show them Arthur Dayne.
Instead, he'd shown them what he really was.
Broken.
Sun Cao
Master Zhi arrived faster than Sun Cao had expected, his medicine bag clutched in one gnarled hand. The old scholar took in the scene with a single sweeping glance—Jon on his knees, Mei Ling beside him, the dropped swords, the scattered sand—and his expression revealed nothing.
But his eyes were calculating. Sun Cao had learned to watch Zhi's eyes. They were never as calm as his face.
"Bring him to my study," Zhi said. "Carefully. Don't force him to walk if he can't."
Mei Ling looked up. "He was showing us—the breathing technique—and then—"
"I saw enough." Zhi's voice was calm, but something in it made Sun Cao stand straighter. "Help him up. Sun Cao, collect those swords."
Sun Cao moved to obey. He picked up the twin practice blades from where they'd fallen—one near the wall, one still close to Jon's trembling hand. They were lighter than he expected. Well-balanced. Clearly crafted by someone who understood how swords were supposed to feel.
Two swords, he thought. He thought of Jon trying to become like some Westerosi legend.
Fool.
But there was no contempt in the thought. There was only a sense of understanding.
Jon rose with Mei Ling's help. His legs shook. His face was pale as milk, paler than his hair, all the color drained by pain and memory.
He saw the twin swords in Sun Cao's hands. Something flickered in his grey eyes—shame, loss, grief. This was the same expression that Sun Cao had seen in the mirror years ago, when he finally understood that his father was never coming home.
"I'm sorry," Jon said again. To no one. To everyone.
He let Mei Ling lead him away, one careful step at a time.
Sun Cao stood in the emptying training yard, holding two wooden swords, and wondered what he'd just witnessed. A failure, certainly. But it's also something else. For three seconds, he'd seen something beyond human—something that existed in legends and stories and nowhere else.
And then he'd seen it break.
What are you? Sun Cao thought, watching Jon's white hair disappear through the gate. What happened to make you this way?
He didn't have answers. But for the first time since the foreign boy had arrived, Sun Cao found himself wanting them.