AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hey everyone, I've been thinking about publishing this fanfic in Portuguese as well.
I've noticed that some words and expressions feel a bit strange when translated into English, and that can change the feeling I'm trying to convey. In Portuguese, I feel like I can express 100% of the tone, emotions, and ideas behind the story.
I'm not going to stop posting in English, but I'm considering posting in both languages, Portuguese and English. What do you think?
Also, don't forget to add the fanfic to your collections — that really motivates me to keep writing. Seeing the numbers grow shows me that more people are enjoying the story.
Please leave comments too! Tell me what you think, share ideas, make theories — that motivates me a lot.
And it doesn't have to be in English or Portuguese — feel free to comment in your own language. I'll translate it.
I really enjoy reading your comments.
Thanks, everyone, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!
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Chapter 4 — Rules of the Skin
POV — Barthogan
We left three days later.
The bow was finished on the morning we departed the Valley of the Thenns.
Crester called me outside the cabin before the sun had fully risen. The cold bit hard, and the vapor of my breath rose in short clouds. He handed me the bow without saying a word.
It was beautiful. Simple. Dark wood, well worked, reinforced with thick sinew. No carvings, no markings — a bow made to be useful, not to impress.
"Try it," he said.
The bow was large. Its tip rested against the ground. I set my feet the way my mother had taught me and pulled the string.
It barely moved.
I growled softly and tried again, feeling my muscles strain. The string gave a little… just a little. Not enough.
Crester watched in silence.
I wasn't going to give up yet. I used the breathing art — a weaker form than what is truly expected. I took a deep breath, and as I finished filling my lungs, I began to pull the string again.
It was only a little more, but it was enough. For now.
The moment I released it, sharp pain stabbed through my lungs and my arms throbbed. I had expected it. My body still wasn't ready.
"It's heavier than your mother's," Crester said, seeing my effort. "To draw… and to hold."
"It still doesn't suit me."
"Still," he repeated, amused.
Magnus placed a hand on my shoulder.
"There's no shame in setting a weapon aside," he said. "Shame is breaking yourself on pride, trying to look stronger than you are."
I sighed and nodded. I stored the bow carefully.
Crester went back inside, and I followed him. I knew that would be my last day there.
The final days passed quickly.
Crester didn't speak much — only rules and stories. Nothing very different from what I already knew, but hearing someone speak from their own experience is truly enlightening.
About what it means to be a warg.
Not the way storytellers speak of it, but the way someone who lives it every day does.
"Skinchanging is not a gift," he said one night, stirring the fire. "It's a path. And every path has rules."
"What rules?" I asked.
He looked at me seriously.
"First: never eat human flesh while inside a beast."
I swallowed hard.
"Second: never… never mix desire with the animal. That breaks the mind. Those who do it don't come back whole. Sometimes, they don't come back at all."
Magnus looked away.
"Third," Crester continued, "never enter the mind of another human."
"Never?" I asked.
"Never. A warg who crosses that line ceases to be a man."
The silence grew heavy.
"And the last rule," he concluded, "is the hardest one: do not lose yourself in what you control."
That stayed with me.
Later, he told us how he bonded with Vhaala, and a few other stories.
We decided to return home.
We needed to speak with my mother. Ask for her judgment. None of this could continue without Clea.
This time, there was no rush.
Vhaala was leading us when she stopped suddenly.
"She sensed something. Stay alert," Crester said.
The she-wolf growled low and veered off the path. Crester followed her gaze, focused.
"There's something there."
We advanced carefully.
We found an adult snow owl dead, partially eaten. A shadowcat was still there, its teeth stained with blood. It bristled when it saw us, ready to attack — but when it sensed the giant wolf, its gaze changed. It watched us with a different kind of intelligence, weighing whether it was worth it.
In a matter of seconds, it vanished into the trees with the owl in its jaws.
Anyone who called that thing a cat was mad. It was closer to a panther, a tiger, than any cat.
We heard sharp chirps coming from a tree beside us.
I looked at my father and at Crester. They nodded.
I began to climb quickly.
In the nest, only one remained.
A snow owl chick.
Small. Fragile. Shivering.
My heart tightened. This was what I had been looking for. An opportunity. As much as it hurt me, the situation was perfect.
"She won't survive alone," I said, casting a hopeful glance at Crester as I climbed down.
He studied me.
"You want to try?"
It wasn't a question.
I sat slowly in the snow with the owl in my hands. I closed my eyes and did as he had taught me. I breathed deeply. Silence. Emptiness.
I imagined myself standing in that floating space, just like when I spoke with ROB. The same sensation.
I imagined a yellow-golden thread leaving me and reaching toward the owl.
I've always liked the color of my eyes. My mother says they're beautiful. Maybe that's why the thread took that color, instinctively.
The thread began to enter the owl.
I didn't try to dominate.
Only… to touch.
I felt something weak. Frightened. Alive.
The little owl calmed.
"It's a beginning," Crester said quietly. "Don't force it. Over the next few days, do it again. For a short time. Very slowly."
I nodded and tucked the owl into the compartment of my tunic — I don't call it a pocket, because it doesn't feel like one.
We left the valley the next day, after setting up a small camp to rest.
The ambush came far too fast.
Vhaala stopped abruptly. Her fur bristled like blades. The growl that rose from her throat wasn't a warning — it was certainty.
"Ambush!" Crester shouted, drawing his bronze sword.
Men emerged from between the rocks, too fast and too coordinated to be simple starving raiders.
Then I saw it.
Two bronze axes.
One in each hand.
My stomach dropped.
That wasn't common. It wasn't a raid.
It was someone who had come prepared to kill.
"Barth, stay back!" Magnus roared.
He surged forward like an avalanche. One man fell with his chest split open before he could even scream. Another tried to flank — Vhaala took him down instantly, her teeth closing around his throat.
The noise was deafening.
Metal striking metal. Screams. The heavy sound of flesh tearing.
Crester was fighting too close.
I saw the man with the twin axes feign a retreat… then strike low.
"CRESTER!" I screamed.
Too late.
The blade drove into his chest.
For a moment, I thought he had died there.
But Crester didn't fall right away.
With a near-animal snarl, he twisted his body, ignoring his own blood, and tore the man's head off in a single motion. The body fell before the head hit the ground.
The world seemed to stop.
Then Crester collapsed.
"NO!" I ran to him.
Magnus finished the rest of the fight with cold brutality. When he returned, he was unharmed… covered in blood that wasn't his.
I knelt beside Crester, pressing the wound with trembling hands.
"Stay with me," I whispered. "Please."
He was breathing. With difficulty. But breathing.
"It's not… over for me yet," he said, forcing a crooked smile.
We took refuge in the mountains.
The hot spring steamed amid the ice, like a warm wound in the stone. That's where we stayed.
Fifteen days.
I changed bandages. Helped Magnus hunt. Slept poorly.
The owl stayed with me most of the time, hidden inside my clothes. Sometimes, when the wind howled, I felt something strange… as if my eyes wanted to follow the sky.
Crester improved slowly.
"You have steady hands," he said one night. "Even when you're afraid."
"I was terrified," I replied.
"And still you didn't run. That matters."
After another ten days, we reached home.
My mother rushed toward us the moment she saw us. As she approached, Vhaala growled softly.
Clea met her gaze, looked at Crester in confusion, then pulled me into an embrace.
"I was so worried," she said. "Every night I wondered what had happened."
"Just a few setbacks," Magnus replied, joining the embrace.
"You're going to tell me everything. Don't leave anything out… and you, Crester, you're pale. What happened?"
"It's a long story," he murmured. "May I at least sit down? I'm exhausted."
Inside the house, being there after so long brought a strange sense of peace.
"Home sweet home," I said with a smile.
Clea passed by, ruffling my hair.
"I think I've grown attached to them," I murmured, smiling.
We sat on a thick fur rug in the main room. Crester leaned against the wall.
When we finally finished telling everything, the fire was low.
My mother said nothing, her hands extended toward the flames, as if warming something that wasn't her body. The crackle of the wood sounded too loud.
"I cut ties with my father and my brother nearly a decade ago," Clea said at last. "And still, he holds a grudge."
I lifted my gaze.
"My brother crossed the line."
There was no anger. No sadness.
It was worse.
It was resolve.
"This cannot happen again," she said. "Not within my family. Not near my son."
Then the anger came.
"I will kill that bastard. I nearly killed him once already when he tried to lay hands on me."
Magnus nodded once.
Crester tried to speak, but she stopped him.
"You stay," she said. "Until you are whole again. Don't argue."
"You bled protecting my son. That decides it for me."
Crester bowed his head in respect.
In that moment, I understood: my mother ruled that house.
And it made me smile.
In a society where men ruled and commanded, she commanded a powerful warg… and my father, a monster among men.
Perhaps it was the blood of a Magnar of the Thenns. They say the first Magnar was a divinity.
And so, Crester stayed with us for three months.
We built another room. Simple, but solid. Nothing about it was temporary. That made me happy — when we left again, I would have a room of my own.
Without anyone saying it aloud, he became part of the household.
I trained every day.
The breathing arts still hurt, but each day they became easier. It was as if my body was learning… or accepting. The physical training helped a great deal. Maybe that's why, in stories I've heard, warriors carried stones, stood in freezing lakes, pushing their bodies to the limit. Maybe I would start doing the same.
The owl grew quickly, though it still didn't fly — it only glided between the furniture in the house.
Its feathers grew dense, but they weren't white as snow. They were a dark white, hard to explain, marked with many black streaks — more than normal. Perhaps it was simply different. In Westeros, strange things exist. Why couldn't an owl be one of them?
It no longer trembled when I touched it. Sometimes, it slept perched near me, its head tucked beneath its wing.
And the dreams changed.
They weren't confusing.
They were… alternating.
Sometimes, the deep weight of the sea. The distant sound of chains. Something enormous moving beneath the water.
Sometimes, I saw through my owl's eyes. I still haven't given her a name, but I already have an idea of the role she will play.
When I told Crester, he didn't smile.
He only nodded.
"You're not fleeing from one to the other," he said. "You're learning how to go and come back. That's good."
That made me glad. It meant I was improving.
On the day we began preparing to leave again, my mother watched in silence.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
Crester looked toward the horizon. The wind came from the north, heavy with salt.
"To the coast."
My chest tightened — not with fear, but with expectation.
"To learn," he added. "And to find your narwhal."
I clenched my fists, feeling the cold, the wind, and the weight of what lay ahead.
And for the first time, I understood.
I wasn't just surviving.
I was choosing who I would become.
And whatever I become, I will leave a legend behind.
Westeros will remember me.