The Crypts of Winterfell
Torrhen Stark (Age 10)
The moment Torrhen stepped through the stone, the biting chill of the crypts vanished.
It was replaced instantly by a heavy, humid heat that slammed into him like a physical blow. He gasped, the air thick and tasting of sulfur and wet earth. He stumbled forward, his boots sinking into soft, warm mud rather than hitting stone.
He lowered his torch. He didn't need it as much here.
Before him lay a vast, subterranean cavern, the ceiling lost in shadows high above. Domating the space was a massive pool of water, dark and glassy, bubbling gently. Steam rose from the surface in thick, lazy columns, curling toward the roof vents that likely carried this heat up to the castle walls far above. This was the heart of Winterfell.
But it was the walls that stole the breath from his lungs.
The cavern walls were not rough, natural rock. They had been smoothed down, polished by hands that had been dust for thousands of years, and covered in vibrant, swirling murals painted with ochre, charcoal, and weird, shimmering pastes.
Torrhen walked toward the nearest wall, his eyes wide.
The painting was massive, stretching twenty feet high. It depicted a procession moving across a landscape of eternal white.
At the front rode a figure—a man, grim and pale, wearing a crown of bronze swords. He was not riding a horse. He was astride a direwolf of monstrous proportions, a beast the size of a mammoth, painted in grey and white strokes that made its fur look like a blizzard given form.
"The Kings of Winter," Torrhen whispered, though he had never seen a statue like this.
Behind the rider and his great wolf, the army stretched out. But it was not just an army of men.
There were Giants, painted as towering, shaggy mountains with clubs made of entire tree trunks. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder with men in bronze armor holding spears.
And weaving between the legs of the giants and the men were others—small, delicate figures with large, golden eyes and skin dappled like the forest floor. They held spears of weirwood and nets of woven leaves.
The Children of the Forest.
Torrhen reached out, his fingers hovering inches from the ancient paint. Old Nan told stories of the Children and the Giants, but Maester Walys always said those were just tales for the nursery. He said the Giants were savages and the Children were gone, if they ever existed at all.
But here, on the wall, they were not fighting each other.
They were marching together.
The mural showed them facing a coming darkness—a wave of black and blue paint on the far side of the cavern wall that seemed to swallow the light of his torch. The man on the wolf wasn't conquering them; he was leading them. It was a unity of all the North—man, beast, giant, and magic—against the cold.
Torrhen looked back at the man on the wolf. The artist had captured a look of terrible resolve in his eyes. He wasn't a king ruling from a throne; he was a protector standing in the snow.
A ripple in the water drew his attention. The black surface of the hot spring broke, and something pale broke the surface near the center of the pool.
The ripple settled, and the object bobbed gently in the shallows where a shelf of rock rose near the surface.
It was a weapon, though unlike any Torrhen had ever seen in the armory.
He waded into the water. It was hot, soaking into his boots and heavy furs instantly, but he didn't care. His eyes were locked on the haft. It was carved from Weirwood—bone-white and smooth, resisting the rot of the water even after what might have been centuries. It looked like a limb of a heart tree, stripped of bark but keeping the organic, twisted strength of the wood.
But it was the head of the hammer that held him captive.
It was double-sided, massive and brutish, yet possessed of a strange, crystalline beauty. The metal was not grey like iron, nor bronze like the relics in the crypts, nor the dark smoke-grey of Valyrian steel.
It was pale. A translucent, milky white that seemed to catch the torchlight and trap it deep inside.
"Ice," Torrhen breathed.
He reached out, his hand trembling. He expected the heat of the spring, or perhaps the cold of winter.
When his fingers brushed the metal face of the hammer, it stung. It was cold—impossibly cold. Despite sitting in a boiling hot spring, the metal remained as frigid as the deepest freeze of the Long Night. A faint mist curled off the metal where the heat of the water fought the cold of the hammer.
Torrhen wrapped both hands around the white weirwood handle. It felt perfect in his grip, the wood slightly textured to prevent slipping.
Lift it, a voice in his head whispered. It sounded like the wind.
He planted his feet in the shifting mud of the pool floor and heaved.
He expected it to be immovable, a weight for a giant. And it was heavy—far heavier than a castle-forged steel sword—but as he pulled, the weirwood handle seemed to hum against his palms. The weight felt... right. It felt like an anchor being lifted.
With a grunt of exertion, the ten-year-old boy pulled the warhammer from the water.
Water cascaded off the head, sizzling as it hit the hot pool, turning instantly to steam against the freezing metal.
Torrhen stumbled back onto the dry bank, dragging the weapon with him. He fell to his knees, panting, staring at the prize.
He looked up at the mural on the wall—at the King of Winter riding the giant wolf. He squinted, holding his torch closer to the painting. There, in the painted King's hand, partially obscured by centuries of fading pigment, was a white shape.
It was the same hammer.
The weapon of a King who united Giants and Children. A weapon made of the forest (Weirwood) and the winter (the Ice metal).
A sudden vibration shook the floor. The water in the pool began to churn violently, not from the heat, but from something deeper. The Mist wolf, which had vanished, suddenly reappeared at the "door" through the wall. It howled—a soundless, terrifying cry.
He lunged for the flickering section of the wall, dragging the massive hammer behind him. The metal head scraped a deep groove into the cavern floor, sparking against the stone.
The mist-wolf didn't move its paws. Instead, it threw its head back in a silent, jagged howl.
Behind it, the pool exploded.
A tendril of scalding water, thick as a tree trunk, lashed out from the spring. It didn't splash; it moved with the precision of a whip. It slammed into the ground inches from Torrhen's boots, sending a spray of boiling droplets against his shins.
Torrhen yelped, stumbling back. "Let me pass!"
The wolf lowered its head, its hollow eyes narrowing. The water rose again, this time forming a towering wall between the boy and the exit. The liquid churned and boiled, radiating a heat so intense it singed the ends of Torrhen's fur cloak.
The wolf snapped its jaws, and the wall of water collapsed forward, aiming to wash Torrhen back into the depths of the cave.
Torrhen had nowhere to dodge. Instinct took over. He couldn't lift the hammer high, but he could swing it low. With a desperate cry, he heaved the weapon up, using the momentum of his body to swing the white metal head directly into the onrushing wave of boiling water.
CRACK.
The sound was like a thunderclap in winter.
When the hammer of Ice met the boiling water, the reaction was instantaneous. The heat of the spring died in a heartbeat. The wave didn't crash over him; it froze in mid-air.
A jagged wall of steam and ice erupted outward. The boiling water turned into a jagged sculpture of frost, shattering under its own weight and raining harmless ice shards down around Torrhen.
Torrhen stood panting, his arms shaking violently from the impact. The hammer hummed in his hands, glowing with a faint, pale blue light.
The mist-wolf recoiled, its form rippling as the cold blast disrupted its hold on the steam.
But the wolf was relentless. It gathered itself again, drawing more water from the deeper, hotter parts of the pool. Two new tendrils rose, shaped like watery claws, poised to strike him from both sides.
Torrhen realized the truth with a sinking heart. He was ten years old. He had swung the hammer once, and it had nearly dislocated his shoulders. He couldn't fight a spirit of water and mist forever. The "door" in the wall was flickering faster now, fading into solid gray stone.
Torrhen refused to yield.
"I am a Stark!" he screamed, his voice small against the roar of the churning water.
He heaved the hammer of Ice up for another strike, his boots slipping in the mud. But the mist-wolf was faster. It dissolved into the steam, and the water claws lunged.
This time, he couldn't freeze them fast enough.
A torrent of water, hot and heavy as a landslide, slammed into his chest. The breath was driven from his lungs. The hammer was ripped from his grip, sliding across the cavern floor back toward the pool.
Torrhen was thrown backward. His head cracked against the smooth, painted stone of the mural.
Pain exploded behind his eyes—a flash of white light, then a swirling grey. The last thing he saw was the mist-wolf standing over him, its hollow eyes swirling with vapor, watching him fade. The heat of the cavern seemed to distance itself, replaced by a deep, encroaching cold.
Then, darkness.
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Some Time Later
"Torrhen!"
The voice was far away, muffled as if coming through a thick wool blanket.
"Torrhen!
Torrhen gasped, his eyes snapping open. He sat up violently, his skull throbbing.
He was not in the warm, sulfurous cavern.
He was lying on the freezing stone floor of the lower crypts. The air was dry and stale. His torch lay a few feet away, sputtered out and cold. Total darkness surrounded him, save for the faint glow of a lantern rushing down the stairs far in the distance.
He scrambled to his feet, spinning around.
He was standing in front of the collapsed wall. He reached out and touched it.
Rough. Cold. Granite.
He pushed, he clawed, he pounded his fist against it. "Let me back in!" he croaked. "I need it!"
But the stone was just stone. There was no hum, no tingle, no illusion. The door was gone. The hammer was gone.
Torrhen sank back against the wall, shivering uncontrollably. His furs were soaked through—not with sweat, but with water that was quickly freezing in the crypt air.
He went to wipe the hair from his eyes and hissed in pain.
His right hand—the hand that had first passed through the wall, the hand that had held the throat of the weirwood handle—burned.
He fumbled in his belt for his flint and steel, striking a spark to relight the dead torch. It took three tries, his hands shaking so badly. When the flame finally caught, he held his hand up to the light.
The skin on his palm and the back of his hand was pale, as if all the blood had been drained from it.
There, etched into the flesh in a distinct, frost-white scar that looked like old ice, was a mark.
It wasn't a burn. It was a brand of cold.
The scar formed the shape of a wolf's head, snarling, with a crown of jagged icicles above its brow. He flexed his fingers. The movement didn't hurt, but the skin felt tougher there, harder.
He closed his fist. A faint wisp of frost curled off his knuckles, vanishing before it hit the floor.
"Torrhen!" The Master-at-Arms Hallis rounded the corner, holding a lantern high, his face pale with worry. "Seven Hells, boy! We've been searching for hours! The King is—" He stopped, seeing the boy's soaked clothes and the wild look in his eyes. "What happened? Did you fall?"
Hallis reached out to grab the boy's shoulder, intending to march him straight to the maester for a lecture and a hot bath.
"Don't touch me," Torrhen said. His voice wasn't loud, but it had a strange, hollow resonance that stopped the veteran soldier in his tracks.
Torrhen scrambled to his feet. He didn't hide his hand. He didn't pull his sleeve down. instead, he thrust his right hand into the circle of light cast by Hallis's lantern.
"Look," Torrhen commanded.
Hallis squinted, then recoiled, his breath hitching in his throat. "By the Old Gods..."
The boy's hand was not just pale; it was radiating a visible chill. In the damp air of the crypt, wisps of frost were curling off his skin like smoke from a fire. The mark of the direwolf was stark white against his flesh, pulsing with a faint, inner luminescence.
"It burns," Torrhen whispered, his teeth chattering, "but it doesn't hurt. It feels... awake."
"What did you touch down here, lad?" Hallis asked, his voice dropping to a fearful whisper. He looked around the darkness of the crypts, suddenly aware of how deep they were.
"The Fist of Winter," Torrhen answered. He looked up, his eyes meeting the Master-at-Arms'. The boyish softness was gone from his face. "I saw the First King. I saw the weapon."
He grabbed the front of Hallis's leather jerkin with his good hand. "Take me to my father. Now. Do not take me to the Maester. Do not take me to my mother. Take me to the King."
Hallis looked at the smoking hand, then at the collapsed wall behind the boy. He nodded, a soldier recognizing a command. He stripped off his own cloak and wrapped it around the shivering prince.
"Aye," Hallis said grimly. "Come with me."
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The Solar of King Edderion Stark
King Edderion Stark was pacing before the hearth, his face thunderous. The search parties had been out for two hours.
The heavy oak door banged open. Edderion spun around, ready to shout, but the words died in his throat when he saw Hallis practically carrying Torrhen into the room.
"He was in the lower levels, Your Grace," Hallis said, closing the door and bolting it—something a guard never did unless under siege.
"Torrhen?" Edderion rushed forward, dropping to one knee. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm not hurt, Father," Torrhen said. He stepped out of the heavy cloak.
The room was warm, the great fire roaring. But as Torrhen raised his right hand, the temperature in the immediate vicinity seemed to drop.
Edderion stared at the hand. He reached out to touch it, but stopped inches away, feeling the cold radiating from the white wolf brand.
"Is this... sorcery?" Edderion looked at Hallis, then back to his son. "Did a warlock get into the crypts?"
"No warlock," Torrhen said. "It was the Crypts themselves. There is a door, Father. Behind the collapse. There is a hot spring, and a mural of the first Stark, and a hammer made of white ice."
Edderion's eyes narrowed. "A hammer? That is a nursery tale. The Fist of Winter."
"It is real," Torrhen insisted, his voice rising. "I held it. I tried to bring it to you. But the wolf... the water spirit... it wouldn't let me leave with it. It said I wasn't strong enough."
Torrhen looked at his hand, flexing the fingers that still smoked with frost.
"It marked me so I wouldn't forget."
Edderion stood up slowly. He looked at his son, really looked at him. He saw the terror, but also the steel that had formed in the boy's spine. This was no prank. The mark was undeniable.
"Hallis," the King said, his voice low and dangerous.
"Your Grace?"
"Speak of this to no one. Not the Maester. Not your wife. If anyone asks, the boy cut his hand on a rusted sword playing in the dark. Do you understand?"
"On my life, Your Grace."
Edderion turned back to Torrhen. He placed a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder.
"If the Old Gods have marked you, Torrhen, then the world is changing. The Fist of Winter is said to have the power to command the winter and shatter the earth."
He pulled Torrhen into a fierce embrace, ignoring the unnatural cold of the boy's hand against his neck.
"You will not speak of this with anyone else ," Edderion whispered into his hair. "But you will train. You will learn to use that hand. And if the Winter is indeed coming... we will be ready."
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