***
The stairs went down. And down. And fucking down.
Castor counted steps out of habit—two hundred and thirty-seven from the dungeon level to the forgotten chambers below. His torch threw shadows that moved wrong, and the air got colder with each step until his breath misted and the stone walls wept moisture that never dried.
Medieval basements are creepy as hell, he thought, watching water drip somewhere in the darkness. No electricity, no ventilation, just cold and damp and the knowledge that people definitely died down here in horrible ways.
The walls here were older than the dungeons above. Ancient stonework, fitted so precisely that no mortar showed between blocks. The kind of craftsmanship that belonged to the Age of Heroes, when the First Men built things meant to last through Long Nights and fallen kingdoms.
His footsteps echoed strange—sometimes loud, sometimes swallowed by the dark—and more than once he caught movement in his peripheral vision that vanished when he turned to look.
Just rats. Probably. He could feel them in the walls through his warging sense, tiny sparks of animal consciousness scurrying through spaces humans couldn't reach.
Dozens of them, living in the forgotten places beneath the Dreadfort, feeding on whatever they could find in the dark.
Wonder if they've ever eaten human flesh down here, Castor thought idly. Probably. This is Bolton territory. There's definitely been bodies dumped in these tunnels over the centuries.
The bottom corridor stretched in both directions. Castor turned left, counted three doors, and pushed open the iron-banded oak.
Heat slammed into him like opening an oven door.
"Fuck," he muttered, immediately starting to sweat despite having just climbed through freezing tunnels.
The chamber was massive—at least forty feet across, with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into shadows above.
The furnace dominated everything, a stone and iron monstrosity that roared like a caged animal. Flames visible through the grated door, white-hot and hungry, fed by coal that three shirtless men shoveled with mechanical precision.
The workers didn't look up when he entered. Just kept moving—one feeding coal, one monitoring crucibles full of molten metal, one adjusting airflow with a series of chains and levers that controlled vents Castor couldn't see.
Their skin was flushed red from heat, sweat pouring down their backs and chests, and their movements had the careful precision of men who knew that mistakes here meant burning alive.
They're terrified, Castor realized, watching them work. Not of the furnace—of me. They know what they're making down here, know what happens if they talk about it.
Good. Fear kept men focused.
The chamber smelled like coal smoke and superheated metal, with an underlying scent of stone dust and something else—something acrid that caught in the back of his throat. The temperature had to be over a hundred degrees, oppressive and suffocating, the kind of heat that made thinking difficult and breathing feel like work.
And on the table in the center, three bars of metal cooling on stone slabs.
Castor moved closer, his eyes adjusting to the furnace-glow that provided most of the light. The bars were still warm—he could feel the heat radiating off them even from a foot away. They looked like iron. Dull grey, unremarkable, the kind of thing you'd use for making tools or weapons. The surface was rough from the casting process, with slight imperfections where the molds hadn't been perfectly smooth.
He picked one up through the cloth wrapping, feeling the weight settle into his hands.
Heavy. Maybe twenty pounds, dense enough that it took real effort to lift one-handed. Still warm enough to feel through the fabric, not quite hot enough to burn but close.
Then he unwrapped it.
Gold. Pure fucking gold, gleaming even in the dim light, reflecting the furnace flames across its surface in liquid ripples.
The color was deeper than he'd expected—not the bright yellow of jewelry but something richer, almost orange in the firelight. Beautiful in a way that wealth always was, the kind of beauty that started wars and toppled kingdoms.
Seven hells!
This is real. Actually real. Not just ore samples or estimates—twenty pounds of solid gold sitting in my hands.
In his past life, he'd dealt with money constantly—investments, portfolios, company valuations in the hundreds of millions. But those had been numbers on screens, abstractions that represented wealth without weight or substance.
This was different. This was physical. Tangible. The kind of wealth you could hold, could feel the weight of, could understand in your bones what it meant.
One bar could pay fifty soldiers for a year. Could buy a ship outright, crew and cargo included. Could bribe a dozen minor lords or fund months of construction on roads and buildings and walls.
And there were three on this table, with more being cast right now, and more ore arriving weekly from the Lonely Hills where ten men guarded a vein of gold so rich it would make the Lannisters weep with envy.
This changes everything, Castor thought, setting the bar down carefully. This is the foundation. The bedrock. Everything else I'm planning—the army, the ships, the machines, the fucking dragons—all of it starts with this.
"My lord."
Castor looked up. Jeren stood on the other side of the table, holding what looked like a ledger.
The lieutenant's scarred face was neutral, but his eyes kept flicking to the gold bars with barely suppressed excitement.
He'd been down here before, had overseen the first castings, but the sight of accumulated wealth still affected him.
"How much?" Castor asked, watching Jeren's reaction. "Total."
Jeren opened the ledger—not the official records kept by Wolkan the steward upstairs, but a private book that tracked numbers no one else would ever see. "Twenty bars cast in the past two weeks, my lord. This size." He gestured at the table.
"The ore from the hills is richer than we first thought. Much richer."
Twenty bars. Four hundred pounds of gold. Castor did the mental math reflexively—at historical prices, adjusting for medieval economics and the relative scarcity in Westeros, that was... fuck, that was more money than most Northern houses saw in a decade.
Maybe two decades for the smaller ones.
And this is two weeks of production. Two fucking weeks. At this rate, within a year I'll have more liquid wealth than anyone in the North except maybe the Manderlys. And unlike them, no one knows I have it.
"The men at the site?" he asked, forcing his mind to practical concerns. "Still keeping their mouths shut?"
Jeren 's expression darkened. "After Berk, yes. They understand now."
Castor remembered Berk. The deserter who'd made it two days' ride east before Jeren's hunters caught him on the road to Last Hearth. He'd tried to run with knowledge of the gold, probably planning to sell information to the highest bidder—maybe the Umbers, maybe someone else who'd pay for secrets about Bolton wealth.
So Castor had made an example.
The man's flayed corpse still hung in the courtyard, suspended from chains where every soldier passing through had to see it. Skin removed in careful strips from neck to groin, leaving raw red meat and white bone visible underneath.
Castor had done the work himself, using the knives that had been his father's, taking his time to make sure every cut was precise and every scream was heard. Berk had lived through most of it, his voice finally giving out around hour three, and had only died when Castor had granted mercy by cutting his throat.
And every single one of the fifty men who'd seen the gold in the Lonely Hills had walked past that corpse. Had seen what happened to people who broke faith with House Bolton. Had understood, with the clarity that only visceral horror could provide, that silence was survival.
"Good," Castor said quietly. "Anyone else even thinking about running?"
"No, my lord. The shares you promised help. They know staying loyal means getting rich when the time comes. Fear keeps them honest, but greed keeps them enthusiastic."
Exactly, Castor thought. Fear alone just makes people resentful, looking for chances to betray you. But fear plus reward? That's how you buy real loyalty. Same principle that worked with corporate executives in Delhi—just with more literal flaying involved.
He walked around the table, examining the other bars. All identical—same weight, same rough surface, same dull grey disguise hiding fortune underneath. Behind him, the furnace roared as workers prepared the next casting, and he heard the scrape of crucibles being positioned.
One of the workers—the youngest, maybe twenty—glanced at Castor nervously, then quickly looked away. His hands shook slightly as he adjusted the chains controlling airflow.
Terrified, Castor noted. Good. Means he won't forget what happens to people who make mistakes down here.
"Problem," Castor said, thinking out loud. "We can't just spend gold bars. They're too obvious. Anyone sees a Northern house paying for shit with pure gold, questions get asked. Questions we can't answer without revealing the source."
"Trade?" Jeren suggested. "Sell goods abroad, get paid in foreign coin? You mentioned Essos merchants before."
"Yeah, but that's slow as fuck. Takes months for ships to sail to Braavos and back. And we'd need to actually have something worth selling that would justify foreign payment." Castor frowned, running through options.
"Plus there's only so much 'Bolton Black ale' or 'quality Northern furs' we can claim to export before someone notices the numbers don't add up."
Jeren nodded, understanding the problem. "So we need multiple methods. Several streams that all look legitimate separately."
"Exactly." Castor leaned against the table, feeling the residual heat from the cooling bars.
"Trade is one angle—and we'll use it, but carefully. We also need to mint our own coins. Small denominations, mixed with base metals so they're not pure gold. Coppers and silvers that we can spend locally without anyone noticing where they came from."
"And how do we explain suddenly having more coin?"
"Records showing our legitimate businesses are making more money. The granaries, the new village at Crow's Rest, the road construction generating commerce. Make it look like Bolton lands are just thriving because I'm a competent administrator." He smiled without humor.
"Everyone expects young lords to be either wastrels or incompetents. When I'm neither, they'll just assume I'm naturally gifted at governance. Won't look deeper."
Jeren considered this, then asked the practical question: "How much of the gold do we actually convert? How much stays in reserve?"
Good question. Castor thought about it, weighing options. "Keep most of it hidden. Maybe seventy-five percent. Raw bars, stored in a vault we're going to build behind a false wall down here. That's our emergency fund if everything goes to shit—if we need to flee, need to hire an army fast, need to buy our way out of something catastrophic."
"And the other twenty-five percent?"
"Gets converted to working capital. Coins we can spend, bribes we can make, construction materials we can buy, whatever we need to actually build what I'm planning.
Can't conquer the North with gold bars sitting in a vault. Need to turn that wealth into soldiers and ships and infrastructure."
"The shipments from the Peaks, m' lord " Jeren bowed, "How frequent? Walton wants clearer guidance."
"Weekly, but keep the timing irregular. Sometimes five days between shipments, sometimes ten.
Make it look random, like normal mining operations that depend on weather and how fast they're extracting ore.
Can't have a predictable schedule or someone might notice and start asking why 'iron' needs such careful logistics."
Jeren made mental notes—the man was smart enough not to write down anything too explicit where it might be found. "I'll send word with the next supply wagon."
One of the furnace workers called out, his voice hoarse from heat and coal dust: "Ready, m'lord."
Castor straightened, watching as they began the casting process.
Two workers used long iron rods to lift a crucible from the furnace—glowing white-hot, the metal inside molten and flowing like water.
They moved with synchronized precision, carrying the crucible to where stone molds waited on a second table.
The third worker used another rod to tilt the crucible, and liquid gold poured out in a stream that glowed so bright it hurt to look at directly.
The metal hit the mold with a sound like thunder compressed into a hiss. Steam erupted where gold met stone, and the air filled with acrid smoke that made Castor's eyes water. But he watched anyway, fascinated despite himself by the transformation of formless wealth into solid, usable bars.
This is how you build an empire, he pondered, watching wealth take physical form.
Not with swords and honor and all that noble bullshit the Starks love. With money. Lots and lots of money, quietly accumulated where no one's looking. Then you buy the swords. Buy the men to swing them. Buy the loyalty that honor can never guarantee.
The workers completed the pour and set the crucible aside, already preparing the next one. The gold in the mold would take an hour to cool enough to handle, and even then it would be warm for hours afterward. By dawn, there would be four new bars ready to join the growing hoard hidden beneath the Dreadfort.
Castor stayed until the second crucible was poured, watching the process repeat with the same careful precision. Then he turned to leave, satisfied that things were proceeding correctly.
"Keep casting," he told Jeren. "I want ten more bars by week's end. And send word to Walton at the Peaks—double the guards, increase patrols, watch for anyone showing too much interest in what we're doing up there. Last thing we need is some wandering merchant or lost hunter stumbling onto the site."
"Yes, my lord."
Castor climbed back up through the darkness, torch lighting his way through corridors that seemed even colder after the furnace heat.
By the time he reached ground level, his shirt was soaked with sweat that immediately turned cold in the Dreadfort's chill air, and his mind was already on the next problem.
Gold secured. Production steady. Security established through fear and reward. That foundation was solid.
Now to build the machinery that would turn that wealth into power no one in Westeros had ever seen.
Different machinery. In different chambers. That Jeren didn't know about yet, because some innovations needed to stay secret even from trusted men until the right moment.
One thing at a time, Castor thought, heading toward the private workshops he'd commissioned. First secure the money. Then build the tools. Then use both to reshape the entire fucking North.
The game was just beginning.
***
CHAPTER END