Author's note: This is my first fanfic that I feel genuinely proud to share, and it grew out of a simple request from my partner: "Drop Jon Snow into Elden Ring." I will be cross posting this fic elsewhere.
Thank you for giving this strange crossover a chance. The road gets weirder from here.
---
Prologue: The Call of Long-Lost Grace
The winds at Castle Black never stopped. They scraped along the stones like a living thing, slipping through cracks in the old fortress and under Jon's furs no matter how closely he drew them. The cold pressed in from every angle as he sat alone in his chambers, bent over a rough wooden table.
Letters from the North lay open before him. Hornwood. Umber. Karstark. Cerwyn. Houses that once rode at his father's call and later his brother's. Their replies blurred together in the dim candlelight.
Our harvests failed.
Our sons are dead.
We honour the Night's Watch, but we cannot send men.
Every letter said the same in a different hand. Jon traced the ink with a thumb gone numb from the draft. He told himself he was looking for something he had missed, but the truth pulled at him all the same: the North did not stand with him.
He leaned back and listened to the hearth crackle against the cold. The air smelled of tallow, old wood, and leather worn thin from years of winter. The room felt close around him.
A knock cut through the quiet.
"Lord Commander," came a breathless voice.
Jon looked up. "Come in."
Olly stepped inside, pale as snow and thin as a reed, red hair damp with melted snow. Jon felt a familiar ache in his chest. The boy was his steward and more than that, a reminder of everything Jon had tried to protect.
"What is it?" Jon asked.
"It's a wildling," Olly said. His voice shook with urgency. "He says he knows your uncle. Benjen Stark. Says he's alive."
Jon went still. For a heartbeat he wondered whether the cold had numbed his hearing as well. "Benjen?"
Olly nodded quickly. "He says he knows where to find him."
Jon stood so fast his chair scraped harshly on the stone. Benjen Stark had vanished years ago, swallowed by snow and silence Jon had tried to bury the hope long ago, yet the old wound split open all the same.
He snatched his cloak and followed Olly out.
They descended the tower stairs. The wind struck them at once, a cutting force that made the torches hiss and tremble. The moon hid behind a vault of dark clouds, leaving the yard lit only by flames wavering in the gale.
Brothers of the Night's Watch moved about their duties with guarded eyes. Some glanced Jon's way and looked away again, the way men did when fear soured their thoughts. Jon felt those looks. He remembered swearing the vows for the first time for a moment, the solemn promise to guard the realms of men… but beyond the Wall, he had learned how small men became when fear pressed close, how quickly duty bent under its weight.
That was why he had opened the gates, why he had let the free folk through.
And why so many now despised him for it.
Voices from recent days whispered through memory, bitter and frightened.
They'll kill us all, Lord Commander.
You've brought the enemy inside the walls.
Traitor. Fool.
Men he had bled beside could no longer tell mercy from treason.
Jon kept his stride steady. "Where is he?"
"By the corner of the yard," Olly said. "Near the old storage huts."
As they crossed the courtyard, Ser Alliser Thorne stepped into view. Torchlight carved hard shadows across his face. He fell into step beside Jon.
"A man claims he saw your uncle at Hardhome," Thorne said. "At the last full moon."
Jon's heart quickened. "It could be a lie."
"It could be," Thorne agreed. His tone held nothing but something cold and sharp. "There are ways to find out."
They approached the far corner where a small crowd had gathered, their cloaks forming a dark ring around something Jon could not yet see.
He pushed through the men.
There was no wildling waiting.
Only a closed wooden door.
And painted across it, still wet and gleaming in the torchlight, a single word:
TRAITOR.
Jon turned sharply.
Alliser Thorne stood close now. He did not blink. He did not shift. He watched Jon with the stillness of a man who had already made his choice. Then his face twisted in a sneer.
"For the Watch," Thorne spat.
The words struck before the knife did. Jon's hand had already gone to Longclaw out of instinct, fingers brushing the wolf-head pommel--but the knife found him first, driving beneath his ribs and knocking the breath from him.
He staggered back, breath tearing loose in a harsh, uneven gasp.
Hands closed on him before he could recover, shadows breaking from the ring of black cloaks.
Bowen Marsh, tears running freely, drove his knife sideways into Jon's flank.
"For the Watch," Bowen whispered.
Pain rippled through Jon in brutal waves. He tried to pull away, to brace, but the ground seemed to slide under his feet.
Yarwyck stepped forward, his face caught between sorrow and fury. His knife arced downward and sank into Jon's other side. "For the Watch."
Jon gasped, breath shuddering out like steam in the frigid air. He tried to speak--to remind them of vows, of nights fought shoulder to shoulder--but only a strangled sound escaped.
Another knife. Then another. Cold fire blossomed across his back as steel cut through muscle. His knees gave way. Snow caught him hard and unyielding.
He forced one hand beneath him, pushing, trying to rise, trying to draw Longclaw as blood soaked his gloves. His arm trembled. He managed barely an inch before another blow landed between his shoulder blades, crushing him flat.
The world narrowed to torchlight and moving shadows. Boots scraped around him. Cloaks swayed. Men he had trained blurred in and out of sight, faces warped by wind and regret and something darker.
Then a smaller figure stepped forward.
Olly.
The boy stood rigid, breath fogging the air, knife clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. Tears shone bright in his eyes.
Jon's heart clenched. Anyone but him.
"Olly," Jon whispered. Barely a sound. A plea.
The boy's lips trembled. His eyes flickered for a heartbeat.
Then he stepped forward and plunged the knife into Jon's chest.
Jon released a ragged breath that drifted as a cloud of white mist from his lips. His hand rose weakly and closed around Olly's wrist. Blood made his grip slip.
Olly's voice cracked as he forced the blade deeper. "For the Watch."
Jon's hand fell.
The circle of men retreated like a tide. Torches hissed in the wind. The cold pressed closer, eager to finish what the knives had begun.
Jon slumped forward, cheek striking the snow. Blood pooled beneath him, soaking into the snow until the white dulled to shadowed crimson.
"Ghost," he rasped.
The name tore from him like the last of his breath.
Far away, a direwolf howled, grief and fury woven so tightly they were indistinguishable.
Faces flickered through Jon's fading thoughts. Robb laughing in the yard. Arya darting through the corridors like a cat. Bran and Rickon tumbling in the snow. Sansa singing under red leaves of the godswood. Ygritte's flame-kissed hair and sly grin. Sam trembling but standing proud.
He thought of Winterfell buried in snow. A home that had never truly been his and yet somehow always would be.
Stick them with the pointy end, he remembered, and almost smiled.
The torches went out one by one.
And darkness took him.
***
For a time, there was nothing.
Not cold. Not pain. Not even darkness as he had known it. This dark pressed in like a weight, muting the memory of wind and erasing the bite of snow. Sound faded to a faint echo of something that might once have been breath.
Jon drifted, weightless and furious, trying to claw his way toward anything, the light, pain, the cold--anything that proved he still existed. But the dark smothered every effort, holding him like a fist around his throat.
The cold returned first.
Not the Wall's cold. Not winter's bite. This cold seeped into him like water through cloth, filling the hollow places left by knives. He couldn't tell whether he still possessed hands or skin or a beating heart.
Then came the pulse.
A slow, heavy thrum in the dark--like a heartbeat not his own.
Once.
Twice.
Again. Faster. Stronger.
Each beat pushed through him, pulling him toward something he could not see.
He tried to move, to rise, but direction didn't exist here. Only that steady, distant pulse.
A light appeared.
Tiny at first, no brighter than a drifting ember. It floated toward him, its glow gently rolling the dark back. He felt its warmth before it touched him, slipping beneath where skin should be, spreading through torn veins with something not quite blood.
The light reached his chest.
It sank into him with a slow pressure. Warmth spread through him in branching waves that felt both mending and strangely foreign. His wounds stirred, not closing yet but remembering their shape. Muscles knitting along lines they had forgotten.
An old and utterly indifferent presence pushed into him. The words weren't spoken; they carved themselves into him, each one striking like a hammer against bone.
Arise now, ye Tarnished.
Ye dead, who yet live.
The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all.
The commands pressed deeper, as if trying to shape him to their will.
Jon fought against it--or tried to--but the dark held him silent. Panic surged first, then anger, then the helpless ache of a man forced to his knees. Even his fury felt stolen from him.
Another force seized him.
Not gentle.
Sudden.
Absolute.
The light flared, searing and immense.
The world folded around him.
He fell without falling, felt stone rush up beneath him as though summoned. His palm crashed onto a cold, wet surface. The shock dragged a ragged sound from his lungs.
His first breath tore through him like he'd broken the surface of a frozen lake, sharp and burning.
Jon Snow gasped into a world he did not recognize.
---
Author's note: The prologue stays close to Jon's final moments at Castle Black, also I was inspired by Luffy's Gear 5 for the revival scene lol.