274 AC
Maester Walys stood at his tower window, watching the yard below with eyes that missed nothing.
The boy was there, as always. Kaelen Stark, now ten years old, moved among the men of the Winter Guard with an ease that should not exist in one so young. He corrected a soldier's stance with a touch. He demonstrated a technique with fluid precision. He spoke, and grown men listened.
Walys had been at Winterfell for eleven years. He had watched this boy grow from an unusually quiet infant into something he could not explain.
The glassworks alone would have been remarkable. A child improving an craft that had remained unchanged for centuries? Unprecedented. But then came the steel. Walys had examined samples obtained from the forge, and what he found disturbed him deeply. This was not merely good steel. This was steel that should not exist, steel that matched the finest Valyrian-forged blades in everything but the magical properties.
And now the roads. This new material they called concrete. Walys had walked on it himself, feeling its impossible smoothness, its unnatural strength. The boy had created something that would bind the North together as never before.
Walys turned from the window and sat at his desk. He uncapped his ink pot and began to write.
To the Seneschal of the Citadel, Oldtown
Eleventh year of my observation. The boy Kaelen Stark continues to exceed all reasonable expectations for one of his age. He has now created a steel superior to anything produced in Westeros for centuries, and a building material that promises to transform northern infrastructure entirely.
I have attempted to gain his confidence, to understand the source of his knowledge. He remains polite but distant. He does not trust me. I do not know why.
What troubles me most is not what he does, but how he does it. His experiments are not the random trials of a curious child. They are systematic, directed, as if he already knows what he seeks before he begins. He speaks of ore chemistry and carbon content and quenching temperatures with the vocabulary of a master smith, not a ten year old boy.
I have reviewed every text in Winterfell's library. Nothing in them could account for what he knows. I have consulted with traveling merchants, with visiting maesters, with anyone who might offer insight. No one can explain him.
The Conclave has not responded to my previous letters. I understand that the Citadel has many concerns, that the affairs of a distant northern house may seem unimportant. But I must emphasize: this boy is not merely clever. He is something else entirely.
I request guidance. I request resources. I request that someone with more experience than myself be sent to observe what is happening here.
The North is changing. And at the center of that change is a child with white hair and green eyes who should not exist.
Maester Walys of Winterfell
He sealed the letter with wax and sat back, staring at the flame of his candle.
The raven would fly south. The letter would be read. And perhaps, this time, the Citadel would listen.
The raven master was an old man named Tern, who had tended the birds for longer than anyone could remember. He took Walys's letter with a nod and promised to send it with the next bird south.
But later that day, a stable hand mentioned to Harry Stone that the maester had sent another raven. Three this moon, the hand said. More than usual.
Harry filed the information away and mentioned it to Kaelen that evening.
"Walys sends many ravens," Harry said casually, as they cooled a fresh batch of steel.
Kaelen looked up. "How many?"
"Three this moon. The raven master mentioned it."
Kaelen considered this. Walys had always written letters, of course. Maesters corresponded with the Citadel regularly. But three in a single moon was more than usual.
"Do you know what he writes about?"
Harry shook his head. "The raven master does not read them. Just sends them."
Kaelen nodded slowly. "Watch. Listen. Let me know if anything changes."
Harry nodded. He had learned to trust Kaelen's instincts about such things.
Walys, unaware that he was being watched, continued his observations.
He began spending more time in the yard, watching the Winter Guard train. He made notes on their methods, their equipment, their growing skill. He timed their drills. He counted their numbers. He recorded everything in a journal he kept locked in his quarters.
The Guard had grown to two hundred men now. Two hundred soldiers who answered only to the Starks, who trained year round, who carried Wolf Steel blades and moved with a precision that made them worth five times their number in a fight.
If the boy could build this at ten, what would he build at twenty?
Walys did not want to find out.
One afternoon, he approached Kaelen in the forge.
"Lord Kaelen. May I speak with you?"
Kaelen looked up from his work. His green eyes were calm, unreadable. "Of course, Maester."
Walys smiled his practiced smile. "I have been observing your work with great interest. The steel, the roads, the training. Remarkable achievements for one so young."
"Thank you."
"I wondered if you might share some of your methods. The Citadel would be most interested in your techniques. They could benefit the entire realm."
Kaelen set down his hammer. "The techniques are not secret. Anyone with the right ore and the right fire can make Wolf Steel. It is written down in the forge records."
"Ah, but the knowledge itself. Where did it come from? How did you come to understand these things?"
Kaelen looked at him for a long moment. Walys felt those green eyes boring into him, seeing things he did not want seen.
"I read," Kaelen said simply. "I experimented. I learned from failure." He picked up his hammer again. "Is there anything else, Maester?"
Walys hesitated. He wanted to push, to demand, to force the truth from this strange child. But he saw something in Kaelen's eyes that made him hold back. Something cold. Something patient.
"No," he said. "That is all. Thank you for your time."
He walked away, feeling the boy's gaze on his back the entire way.
That night, Walys wrote in his private journal.
I attempted to question the boy today. He was polite, as always, but revealed nothing. His eyes... those green eyes look at me as if I am a puzzle to be solved. As if he is the one observing me, rather than the other way around.
I do not think he trusts me. I do not know why. I have been careful, so careful, to give him no cause for suspicion. And yet he watches me the way I watch him.
The ravens continue south. The Citadel continues to ignore me. I am alone here, surrounded by people who see the boy as a wonder, a gift from the gods. They do not see what I see. They do not feel the wrongness of it.
Something must be done. I do not know what. But something.
He closed the journal and locked it in his chest. Outside his window, the snow fell on Winterfell, silent and cold.
And somewhere in the castle, a boy with white hair lay awake, thinking of maesters and ravens and the long winter to come.