Jon Snow woke up gasping for air.
His lungs seized as if they had forgotten how to work. For a moment, he braced for the taste of blood in his mouth and expected the knives to still be in him.
But the cold beneath him brought him back to reality.
Whatever had dragged him back to the world of the living hadn't done it gently.
Jon lay on bare stone—inside an open coffin. Not the carved cedar of a lord nor the rough pine of the free folk pyres. It was a clean grave, meant for something—or someone to return. The realisation crawled through him like a waking nightmare. He reached for the coffin's edge with his fingers, and they scraped raw against the rough stone as he dragged himself upright.
I died, he thought.
It was truth, and it struck him hard. He remembered the moment too clearly, how the world narrowed and the sound dimmed, and the final cold peace that took him.
This was not peace. He should not be here.
Shapes started to ease into focus as his sight adjusted: he was surrounded by toppled stone coffins, fractured slabs and statues flanking a grand stairway carved into cavernous walls. The statues' features looked eroded by time, yet their blank faces still seemed to return to his gaze.
A tomb? Jon questioned. Or at least, something like it.
At the foot of the stairs, half buried in rubble, stood a sapling made of light.
Gold flickered along its branches like a failing heartbeat, and shadows clung to its roots. Jon got out of his coffin and stepped toward it. Warmth brushed his cheek, gentle yet invasive in a way.
Jon raised a hand, then stopped a breath away from touching it.
For a fleeting second, he expected something to speak from the sapling—voices of the old gods, whispers of the weirwood trees he saw in the North. But the tree stayed silent.
Stone scraped behind.
Jon spun, hand dropping to Longclaw.
One of the coffins shuddered, and its lid split open with a grinding shriek. A figure dragged itself free. It wore armour, yet it was fused to its withered muscle. Ribs shown through torn mai, and its eyes burned red.
The thing was neither dead nor living.
Whatever held it upright and moving was not the cold abominations he faced in the North.
It lunged for him.
Jon met it with Longclaw, and the blade passed through its chest in one brutal and practised thrust. Light—golden motes of light—spilt from the wound, enveloping the corpse in a soundless scream before the entire thing collapsed into ash before it even hit the floor.
There was no blood. No rot.
Just light and dust.
Jon didn't have the time to process or think.
As two more coffins split open.
Jon fought on instincts honed with years of training, a parry, a pivot and a cut. The second creature fell under a clean slice to its chest, and the third tried to go for his side, only to be met by Longclaw.
Both things came apart unnaturally easily, collapsing into ash and leaving only gold motes in the air.
Jon stood alone once more, chest heaving.
He had never seen anything like this.
Ash drifted onto his sleeve, then dissipated into nothing.
Jon crouched by the nearest broken armour and touched it. The moment his fingers touched the metal, it broke apart into dust. No rust. No decay. It was gone too fast.
He stood up and turned back to the tree. Its branches swayed without wind, and its light pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm.
Jon stepped away from it.
He looked to his surroundings and came to a single conclusion. There was only one way forward: up the stairs, past the statues and broken coffins.
He climbed the steps. Every footstep sent echoes travelling the cavern. The shadows of the statues stretched across the steps; their stone hands folded in poses of mourning. Or was it submission? Jon could not tell which was worse.
Halfway up, he paused and looked back at the stone box he woke up in.
There were no signs that he had ever died. No marks or blood. Was he put in the coffin after? They would have burned his body so he couldn't come back. Yet here he was.
He shook his head clear of thoughts and focused on his immediate circumstance.
At the top of the stairs was a heavy ironbound door. He studied the out-of-place door and put his shoulder to it and slammed against it. The doors swung open more easily than he expected them to. Age had likely worn them down.
Jon stepped through the doors and found himself in a narrow hall, lit only by the lingering glow of the tree behind. Dust hung heavy in the air, and nothing seemed to move.
Good.
To his right was a small stone imp crouched against the wall. It clutched a stone blade, and grooves came out of its eyes. On top of its head was a keyhole.
Jon looked at it long enough to decide he trusted none of it and moved on.
The hall led him to a wide circular chamber, pillars ringed around a round stone platform carved with runes. Smokeless candles flickered thin white lights.
Jon stepped on the platform, and it ascended upwards.
Stone grinding on stone echoed as the air around him cooled. Dust spiralled slowly, and for a moment, he felt suspended between two worlds, neither fully living nor fully dead.
The elevator stopped.
A short flight of stairs led to a big iron gate. He climbed the stairs and set his hands under the gate's lower edge and heaved, pushing with his lower body rather than his arms. Metal scraped as it lifted.
And suddenly, wind rushed in.
Warm, real wind, smelling of grass and open earth. It had none of winter's bite—yet he still braced for that cold that never came. He stepped forward, away from stone and shadow and into a world that shouldn't exist.
Daylight poured over him in soft golds.
All around him, grasslands rolled out in uneven folds, dotted with jagged rocks and low shrubs. Mist drifted along the hollows, thinning around cracked foundations and topped arches that scattered across the land as bones of lost and forgotten keeps. In the distance, Jon saw a bridge stretched across the valley—massive stone rising in broken intervals, half hidden by fog.
Trees with crowns of bright yellow leaves swayed gently in the wind. Their branches shimmered in the sunlight.
But Jon's gaze rose higher—pulled up by something.
A tree dominated the sky. So vast it made mountains seem small. It shone like polished amber, and its boughs unfurled across the sky in glowing strands of gold. Light cascaded from its crown in slow, rippling currents.
Jon had stood beneath heart trees and had felt the weight of the old gods in carved faces, but even those things felt rooted in something he understood. This did not.
No tree should stand that high, no branches should shimmer like sunlight and reach the sky.
Jon felt small in a way even the Wall could not. In a way, a man stared at something beyond mortal reason.
A thought rose sharp and cold: Is where the dead go?
Not in the Seven's Halls nor in the Godswood's silence. Would he meet his father and brother here once more? Or was this place for oathbreakers?
Something shifted.
Jon turned.
And a man stood along the path as if he had always been there. Covered in blood-stained clothes and wearing a porcelain mask. In one hand, the man carried what looked like a bouquet of red blooms—until Jon paid it closer attention and saw the hooked barbs woven into the stems.
He didn't draw Longclaw, but he allowed this stranger to notice his arm resting on the pommel.
The masked figure bowed his head. "Well now," he said mildly. "Another corpse learned to breathe again."
Jon's hand went to the hilt. "Who are you?"
The man chuckled, "A friend to the fortunate, a spectator to the doomed. I am Varré. And you, my dear unburied friend, are—" he tilted his head "—Tarnished."
"Tarnished?" Jon asked. The world felt unfamiliar and scraped wrongly against his ears. He watched the man's stance and gait carefully. It was too calm, too relaxed for this to be a meeting by chance.
"You knew I'd come out of there," Jon stated.
"Oh, certainly. All tarnished do." Varré tapped the side of his mask with his free hand. "Dragged back from the dead like stubborn weeds. Graces summoned you—as it did the rest."
Jon felt the pull of it even now—this Grace. As if invisible threats brushed at the edges of his sight. Insistent.
Something like injustice and rage coiled low and cold in his stomach. The notion that something dragged him back and that death meant nothing here scraped against everything he had known.
He shoved his feelings down and steadied himself with the feel of Longclaw's worn leather grip. Whatever Grace was, he would not let some stranger magic tell him what he was.
"This Grace.." Jon said slowly. "What does it want of me?"
Varré hummed. "It urges you towards your purpose. Whether you wish it or not."
Jon clenched his jaw shut and tried to make sense of it.
"And… if I decide to ignore it? What then?" he asked.
Varré shrugged. "Then you drift. Through the lands aren't kind to wanderers, I'm afraid."
Then his tone changed, pitying yet Jon sensed mockery beneath it.
"You seem to be missing something rather important."
"Missing what?"
"A Finger Maiden." Varré gestured with the thorned bouquet. "You see, most Tarnished like yourself wake up under the care of one. They interpret the will of the Two Fingers and offer you strength from runes and usher you to the Roundtable Hold."
Varré clicked his tongue.
"But you… No maiden waited at your side. No blessing. No invitation."
The mask turned fully towards him.
"Unfortunately for you, my dear fellow, that makes you…"
The mask titled.
"…Maidenless."
The way he said it was light, but it made it all the more feel like a curse.
"Without guidance and the strength of runes… well, you'll simply wander and die, rise and die again. Again and again, and each time you'll be a bit weaker. A bit emptier. A bit less… you."
Varré sounded cheerful.
And Jon's grip creaked on Longclaw's leather.
"I don't need a keeper."
As if he were some child waiting on a nursemaid. He had stood frozen nights on the Wall, commanded rangers older than he was, faced the dead with no fucking guiding hand but his own with grit and a bloody sword. Whatever this land thought he lacked, it had mistaken him for a man who needed permission to piss.
Jon felt a cold and familiar rage settle in his chest. He would not be pitied by a mummer who thought himself clever.
"Where are we?" Jon asked.
"Limgrave," Varré answered lightly, as if knowing it wouldn't answer any of his questions.
"Who is the lord of this land?"
Varré gestured to a distant castle on a cliff. "Godrick the Grafted rules Limgrave these days. He is the master of Stormveil Castle."
"Grafted," Jon repeated. Not a title he knew.
Jon heard a smile in Varré's tone. "A good epithet, I think. For a man of such ceaseless hunger for strength and legacy. For…" He paused and twirled the bouquet.
"Well, you'll see soon enough. Most Tarnished do, anyways, to their regrets."
Jon kept his voice calm. "You've seen many?"
Varré nodded, "I've seen countless rise and far more fall."
He leaned forward a bit, "Tell me, Tarnished… do you believe yourself different?"
Jon thought of coffins cracking open, light spilling from corpses, a strange warmth stirring in his mind and of snow and steel.
"I'm nothing special," he said. "But I'm here."
Varré sounded delighted. "Good. Then you'll fit right—"
"What do you want from me?" Jon interrupted.
Varré laughed, "Why, nothing at all. I merely enjoy seeing which fate a Tarnished chase. Ruin or triumph. Most often, the two are one of the same."
"I'll find my own way," Jon said.
"I imagine you will," Varré said. "Until something greater chooses for you."
The words were not threats, but they still made Jon's skin prickly as if they were.
Varré stepped back with a bow of his head. "Off you go now," he said lightly.
"The Tree Sentinel roams nearby, and I'd hate to see you trampled before your tale even begins."
Jon passed him. Varré didn't follow; he simply watched, still as a blade lay across a throat, tracking Jon with interest and something… darker.
Whatever game Varré played, Jon wanted no part of it.
He put distance between them—twenty paces, then fifty—yet the sense of being watched clung to him like fingertips tracing his spine. Only when the rough path dipped behind a low hill did the feeling ease.
Wind stirred the tall grass, and the faint tug in the corner of his vision returned, insistent. Jon scowled. Nothing would guide a man like that without a dangerous price. But standing still in a foreign land was a faster way to die, and eventually caution edged out pride.
Jon followed the feeling warily.
Memories rose unbidden: the Wall's icy winds, Ghost trotting at his side. Jon turned, expecting silent red eyes behind him.
But only broken stone and rolling fields looked back.
He ignored the ache in his chest and pressed forward.
Ruins and arches strangled by ivy and shattered walls dotted the plains. Birds flew above. Rabbits, white as winter snow, bolted in the grass. Farther off, near the trees, a deer lifted its head; its antlers gleamed like glass in the light.
They were normal animals, yet something about them made the hairs stand at the back of his neck.
Then the wind shifted.
And Jon felt a dull vibration pass through the soles of his boots. Too slow for thunder and too clear a sky, the grass along the hill bent in a single direction, pressing flat as if by an approaching tide.
Then he saw it.
At the top of a hill, framed against the sky, something massive appeared. Gold caught the light and burned like a fallen star. A towering shape descended the slope.
A horse and a rider.
The rider carried a huge spear.
Jon's breath caught for a moment.
Whatever that was, it was too big for a normal man.
And whatever it was…
It was riding this way.