Chapter 1: The Ward Who Remembers Nothing
The morning sun broke over Winterfell's grey walls, and Kole Thorne woke from another nightmare of screaming metal and headlights. Two years in Westeros, and his subconscious still dragged him back to that final moment—the truck's horn blaring, his Honda's dashboard cracking, the taste of blood and gasoline mixing on his tongue before everything went black.
He pressed his palms against his eyes until stars bloomed behind his lids. The dream always ended the same way: with him waking up naked and shivering beyond the Wall, speaking a language he shouldn't know to rangers who found him more dead than alive.
"Another restless night?"
Kole jerked upright. Jon Snow stood in the doorway, already dressed for morning training. Even in dim light, the bastard's grey eyes missed nothing.
"The usual." Kole swung his legs out of bed, muscles already responding with super-soldier efficiency. His body had adapted to this world's rhythms, but his mind remained stubbornly elsewhere. "Nightmares about wolves and winter."
Jon's mouth quirked. "In Winterfell, those are just called 'dreams.'"
They walked through corridors carved from ancient stone, past tapestries depicting long-dead Stark kings. Kole catalogued details from muscle memory—the smell of pine smoke and wet wool, the echo of their footsteps, the way servants averted their eyes from Ned Stark's mysterious ward. Two years of careful performance had earned him acceptance, but never complete trust.
The training yard buzzed with morning activity. Robb Stark commanded the center space, his auburn hair catching sunlight as he worked through sword forms with deadly precision. At seventeen, he already carried himself like the lord he'd become.
"Kole!" Robb lowered his practice blade, grinning. "Perfect timing. Jon's been ducking our sparring matches all week."
"I don't duck," Jon protested. "I strategically avoid humiliation."
Kole accepted a blunted sword from the weapons rack, his enhanced senses immediately cataloguing its weight and balance. The steel felt warm under his palm, practically humming with potential energy. He pushed down the urge to reshape it into something more efficient.
"Three-way melee?" Robb suggested. "First blood wins."
They formed a loose triangle in the yard's center. Kole's super-soldier reflexes tracked both opponents simultaneously—Robb's aggressive stance, Jon's defensive positioning, the way their feet shifted on packed earth. Around them, other fighters paused to watch. This had become entertainment.
"Begin!" Ser Rodrik called.
Robb moved first, driving straight at Kole with characteristic boldness. Kole sidestepped the thrust, bringing his blade around in a controlled arc that would have opened Robb's ribs if this were real steel. But Jon was already there, intercepting the strike with perfect timing.
Metal rang against metal. Kole let himself be pushed back, appearing winded when his enhanced physiology barely registered the exertion. He had to constantly recalibrate—too skilled and they'd ask questions, too clumsy and they'd worry about head trauma.
"Your guard's dropping," Jon observed, pressing his advantage.
Kole ducked a horizontal slash, rolled left, and came up swinging. His blade caught Jon's wrist guard—not hard enough for injury, just enough to sting.
"First blood to Kole," Ser Rodrik announced.
As they reset for another round, a dagger slipped from a nearby weapon rack. Kole's metal sense screamed warning before anyone else noticed. His hand shot out, catching the falling blade inches from a young page's shoulder.
"Good reflexes," Robb said, impressed.
"Lucky catch," Kole replied, returning the dagger to its place. Lucky. If only they knew how much his survival depended on being anything but.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted Theon Greyjoy leaning against the yard's far wall. The Ironborn prince watched with calculating eyes, arms crossed over his leather doublet.
"Amazing how often luck favors our lost boy," Theon called out, loud enough for others to hear. "Almost like he was raised by wolves. Very well-trained wolves."
The comment drew scattered chuckles. Kole forced a sheepish smile while mentally noting Theon's tone. Jealousy, suspicion, or simple meanness? In the show, Theon's resentment had festered for years before exploding into betrayal.
"Theon," Jon warned quietly.
"What? I'm just observing patterns." Theon pushed off the wall, sauntering closer. "Two years we've known him. Two years of convenient amnesia and remarkable intuition. Never seen anyone adapt to Northern fighting styles quite so... naturally."
Kole kept his expression neutral. "Hard work pays off."
"Does it?" Theon circled them like a shark sensing blood. "Tell me, Kole—what do you dream about when you're not having nightmares? Any memories surfacing from that mysterious past?"
The questions hit too close to home. Kole's grip tightened on his sword hilt, and several iron nails in a nearby crate shifted slightly toward his position. He forced his hand to relax.
"Fragments. Nothing useful."
"Pity." Theon's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I'd hate to think someone was keeping secrets from the Starks. They're so trusting."
"Enough," Robb commanded, stepping between them. "Theon, find something better to do with your morning."
Theon shrugged and wandered off, but the damage was done. Other fighters had heard the exchange. Doubts planted, questions raised. Kole would need to be more careful.
Later, after the crowd dispersed, Robb found him alone by the practice dummies.
"Don't mind Theon," Robb said. "He gets moody when Father ignores him too long."
"It's fine." Kole drove his blade into straw and wood, imagining Theon's smirk. "He's not wrong about the amnesia being convenient."
"You can't control what you remember."
If only it were that simple. Kole pulled his sword free and turned to face Robb, words forming before he could stop them: "Sometimes I worry about your family. About what's coming."
"What do you mean?"
The warning felt vital, urgent, necessary. Kole opened his mouth to explain about Robert's visit, about Ned's inevitable fate, about—
"The fat stag's crown carries winter roses to the crypts of kings!"
Robb blinked. "What?"
Heat flooded Kole's cheeks. The cosmic curse had struck again, scrambling his warning into prophetic nonsense. "I... sorry. Sometimes words come out wrong. Head injury, probably."
"That was oddly poetic for gibberish."
"I've been reading too much." Kole forced a laugh, internally screaming. The curse was absolute. Every attempt to share foreknowledge resulted in the same pattern—truth twisted into riddles, direct warnings transformed into meaningless poetry.
He'd tested it extensively during his first months here. Writing produced random letters. Speaking in Old Tongue yielded similar scrambling. Even charades resulted in his hands forming incomprehensible gestures. Whatever force had brought him to Westeros wanted him to experience events, not prevent them.
"Father wants to see you," Robb said eventually. "Something about sword work in the godswood."
Kole nodded, grateful for the subject change. As they walked toward the castle's heart, he tried not to think about iron figurines and watching eyes. Someone suspected something. The question was who—and what they planned to do about it.
The godswood felt different at midday. Ancient trees filtered sunlight into cathedral patterns, and the heart tree's carved face seemed to follow his movements. Ned Stark sat on a fallen log, cleaning his great sword Ice with methodical precision.
"You wanted to see me, my lord?"
Ned looked up, grey eyes studying Kole's face. "Ser Rodrik tells me you've been practicing alone. Additional training beyond the yard sessions."
"I enjoy the solitude."
"Good. A man should know himself before he knows his blade." Ned sheathed Ice and gestured for Kole to sit. "Tell me about honor."
The question caught Kole off-guard. "My lord?"
"You've been in Winterfell two years. You've observed how we conduct ourselves, how we treat guests and smallfolk alike. What do you make of Northern honor?"
Kole chose his words carefully. "It's... pure. Clean. Southern courts seem to value cleverness over truth."
"You speak as though you've seen southern courts."
Had he slipped? Kole's enhanced memory replayed his words, searching for the error. "Stories. Travelers' tales."
Ned nodded slowly. "Honor is a luxury many men can't afford. In King's Landing, during Robert's Rebellion, I learned that good men sometimes do terrible things. Not from cruelty, but from necessity."
The pain in Ned's voice was real. Kole recognized it from the show—the weight of finding Jaime standing over Aerys's corpse, of making moral compromises in pursuit of greater justice.
"What did you find in the throne room?" Kole asked softly.
Ned's hands stilled on his knees. "Why do you ask?"
"You have the look of a man carrying secrets. I recognize it."
"Do you?"
There was something dangerous in Ned's tone now. Kole realized he'd pushed too far, revealed too much insight.
"Sometimes I dream about a city burning," he said truthfully. "Dragons' skulls watching from the walls. A mad king laughing while people died. I don't know if they're memories or nightmares."
The truth seemed to satisfy Ned. His shoulders relaxed fractionally.
"Aerys Targaryen was brilliant once. Charming. But madness runs in that bloodline like a river, and power feeds it. By the end, he was more monster than man." Ned's voice dropped. "I found things in that throne room. Plans. Preparations. If Robert hadn't killed Rhaegar at the Trident, if the siege had lasted longer..."
He trailed off, but Kole knew the unfinished thought. Wildfire. Aerys had planned to burn King's Landing rather than surrender it. Tens of thousands would have died.
"Some secrets are mercies," Kole said.
"Yes." Ned studied him with new intensity. "You understand that sometimes protecting people means lying to them."
"I do."
They sat in comfortable silence, two men bound by the weight of hidden truths. Finally, Ned stood and offered his hand.
"Walk with me tonight after supper. There are things about this castle you should know. Old passages. Hidden entrances. The kinds of knowledge that might prove useful someday."
Kole accepted the offered hand, noting the calluses from sword work and the strength of Ned's grip. "Why tell me?"
"Because you're part of this house now. And because..." Ned hesitated. "Because I suspect you're not the only one keeping secrets. If trouble comes to Winterfell, I want you prepared."
That evening, as Kole returned to his chambers, exhaustion weighed heavier than usual. The constant performance was grinding—measuring every word, controlling every reaction, pretending to be normal while his enhanced senses catalogued threats and his fractured memories whispered warnings he couldn't voice.
He pushed open his door and froze.
On his pillow sat a small iron figurine—a wolf, exquisitely carved, with eyes that seemed to gleam in candlelight. The craftsmanship was beyond anything produced in Winterfell's smithy. And carved into its base, barely visible in the flickering light, was a rune that made his enhanced vision ache to look at directly.
Kole picked up the figurine with trembling fingers. The metal felt warm, almost alive, and for a moment he could swear he heard whispers in a language that predated human speech.
Someone knew. Not suspected—knew. But who? And what did they want?
He hid the figurine beneath his mattress next to its predecessor and tried to sleep. But every shadow seemed to hide watching eyes, and every creak of settling timber sounded like footsteps in the hall.
Whatever game was being played, Kole was no longer just a hidden piece on the board. Someone had noticed him moving.
The question was whether they saw him as an ally or a threat.
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