Author's note: Hey, thank you for taking the time to read my fic! This chapter wasn't betaed, so feel free to point out any mistakes I might need to edit it at a later date.
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Jon woke to pain before anything else. A slow, dull pounding beneath his ribs, like a fist knocking from the inside. The cold stone at his back had done him no kindness through the night, but it hadn't been the cause of the ache--the thing waiting above that arch had left its mark deeper than any stone.
He pushed himself upright. Melina stood a few paces away, hood drawn, still as a carved figure. Not watching him, but aware of him all the same. She seemed a part of the strange dawn, woven out of its light rather than standing beneath it.
"You rested," she said.
"Enough," Jon answered. His ribs argued the claim, but he ignored them the way he'd ignored pain since boyhood, when the training yard bruises taught him what could be endured.
Melina gave a small nod, the kind that acknowledged both truth and doubt.
"We should go," she said.
Jon rose. "Aye."
Kalé was already awake when they stepped out from the ruin, crouched beside his pack, and was tying down the last of his wares. Dawn's gold light caught the rings in his hair and the worn leather of his coat, making both seem older than the man himself.
"You move early," the merchant said without looking up.
"Not early enough," Jon replied. His voice came rough with sleep and pain.
Kalé straightened. "Soldiers from the Gatefront will be stirring soon. They'll have found their wits again after last night's chaos. And their anger."
Jon adjusted Longclaw's weight at his hip. "Let them try."
Kalé snorted. "Spoken like a man who doesn't know what hunts these hills. Wolves roam the higher paths, and not the kind that shy from fire. Spectral remnants linger after old battles. And if you see anything with horns…" He shook his head. "Run the other way."
Melina listened, expression unreadable, though Jon thought he saw something tighten beneath her hood at the last warning.
Kalé slung the pack over his shoulder with a grunt. "Stormhill was never gentle. It's grown less so under Godrick. May Grace see you through what waits above," Kalé said with a softer exhale.
Jon inclined his head. Melina did as well.
They left the old church behind, stepping out into wind that smelled of grass and cold stone. The plains rolled out ahead in great, open waves, the hills rising one atop the next like the steps of some giant's stair. The old ruin vanished behind the first rise as they moved toward the line of trees that marked the forest's edge.
The woods were quiet--too quiet. The same crooked trunks and gnarled roots they had passed through the day before stood unmoved, but something in the air felt thinned, stretched. Jon scanned the undergrowth, expecting soldiers or wildlife, but nothing stirred except the wind.
They skirted the forest and descended along the plain until the Gatefront Ruins came into view--broken walls, watchfires, scattered barricades still blackened from the night Jon had led soldiers into chaos.
Smoke drifted faintly above the ruins as the soldiers below stirred. Jon dropped low without thinking.
"We shouldn't linger here," he muttered.
Melina stepped beside him, her cloak brushing the grass. "Then we move in shadow."
They slipped along the outskirts of the ruins, keeping to the high grass and broken stones. Jon's eyes read the ground by habit--boot prints, discarded spearheads, the ruts of a wagon dragged too fast. Men were already rebuilding the barricades. Some hauled timbers across the central yard. Others muttered about missing scouts, demigods, and a sighting of "a wolf-man."
Jon kept moving. His ribs burned at a crouch, but he pushed past the pain until they'd cleared the last collapsed wall.
The Stormgate loomed ahead--its massive gate rising from the cliffside like a severed jaw. Jon's footsteps slowed before he realized it.
He remembered the creature crouched above those stones, its silhouette jagged and wrong in the storm-lit dark. He saw the place where it had dropped, the place where its weight had shaken the earth, the place where it had struck him down.
But the passage was empty now. Quiet.
Melina watched him without turning her head. "Do not linger on what is no longer here."
He exhaled and forced himself forward. "I won't."
They passed by. Nothing stirred. Only a few broken spear shafts and the crushed imprint of something heavy that had landed there before dragging itself away.
Once through the gate, the land opened into a stretch of wind-scoured hill.
The climb began gently, though nothing about the land felt gentle. Stormhill stretched wide before them, a sweep of grass rippling beneath the wind as though the ground itself breathed. The plains looked empty, but Jon felt watched all the same—an attention without eyes, a tension without sound. He'd known forests that tracked him, mountains that tested him, snows that swallowed footsteps. Stormhill was different. It didn't want to kill him. It wanted to see what he would do.
Grass bowed as the wind surged, not with any common gust, but in long, deliberate waves that rolled across the hillside like the shadow of some unseen thing passing overhead. Scattered among the blades lay remnants of battles long done--shattered shields, rust-chewed helms, a spear haft splintered in two. Most were so weathered Jon couldn't tell if they'd been left a year past or a lifetime ago. What troubled him more were the blades driven deep into the soil, as if struck down by hands long dead yet unwilling to release their grip.
Melina walked lightly beside him, her cloak brushing the grass without truly disturbing it. "These fields remember," she said. "Stormhill has swallowed countless battles, and not all echoes fade cleanly. What stirs the wind here is not always the sky."
Jon touched a half-buried sword with the tip of his boot. The metal crumbled to flakes. "I feel them sometimes," he murmured. "Not clearly. Just… something."
"A remnant," she said. "A shadow in the shape of a feeling. You sense their weight, not their form."
He said nothing. It reminded him strangely of ghosts at the Wall, of old terrors spoken in whispers when the fire burned low.
They pressed onward.
The wind rose sharper, tugging at Jon's cloak and sending faint whirls of dust skittering across the ground. Jon kept pace as best he could. Each step pulled faintly at the bruised muscles along his ribs, not enough to stop him, but enough to remind him of the thing that had struck him down above the Stormgate.
"Tell me something," he said after a long stretch. "Back there, at the Gatefront… those soldiers spoke of demigods. What are they?"
Melina's hood turned slightly. "In your tales, how is a demigod named?"
Jon thought of Old Nan's stories: giants birthing sons with human women; sea-dragons fathering kings; heroes blessed by the gods for their pride or punished for the same. "Power in a man's skin," he said at last. "Something like that."
"A fair likeness," she murmured. "But here, the line between mortal and divine grew thin--and then it shattered." Her gaze lifted to the distant silhouette of Stormveil looming jaggedly atop the cliffs.
"When the Shattering began, the lords clawed at what pieces of power they could reach. Some went mad. Godrick… changed himself in pursuit of strength he was never meant to hold."
Jon felt the weight of her words without understanding their full meaning. "Changed how?"
Melina only said, "He sought strength where none was his, and forced it onto himself--piece by piece, until even the body that bore him began to protest."
A chill crept through him that the wind had no part in.
They crested another rise, and the land's quiet cruelty revealed itself a little at a time. Spears lay half-buried in the soil, jutting out at odd angles as though some great force had swept them aside rather than driven them in. A carriage lay overturned, its ribs splintered, its wheels canted like broken limbs. Even the ground seemed wounded, patches of churned mud darkened by old blood that no wind or sun had managed to lift.
"Godrick's soldiers did this?" he asked.
"Some," Melina said. "Others were done by things that serve him without knowing why. Stormhill holds what Godrick would rather the world forget--those he tested… and those who displeased him. The land remembers what he tries to bury."
Jon stared at the scattered wreckage. A lone boot lay beside a crushed helm. Bones peeked through the grass like pale roots. Whatever happened here hadn't been a battle. It had been a culling.
Wind tore across the plains again, sharp enough to sting Jon's eyes.
He tightened his grip on Longclaw's hilt.
Stormhill wasn't merely dangerous.
It was ruled.
And its ruler wanted pieces of everything he touched.
The land grew harsher as they climbed. Grass thinned to scraggly patches, and the soil hardened into cracked earth. The wind carried a sharpness now--not cold, but hungry, as if it tasted every shape that moved across the hill.
Jon stopped when he saw a body. What he'd taken for a dead soldier slumped against stone turned stranger the closer he came. The closer he drew, the more the wrongness took shape. The armor hadn't been broken in battle--it had been pried apart, then bound again with black wire threaded through metal and flesh alike. One arm twisted sideways, pinned in place by a gauntlet hammered into bone. Someone had tried to make the man into something else… and stopped halfway.
Jon crouched, breath low. "This wasn't a fight."
Melina's voice drifted beside him, softer than the wind. "Godrick covets strength in all its forms. When he finds none, he fashions it."
Jon shook his head. "This was no fashioning. This was cruelty."
Melina did not argue. "Call it practice. His soldiers bring him what he asks for. Sometimes they bring him living ones."
Jon rose slowly. The morning light washed pale over the dead man's warped face. He had seen cruelty--Bolton cruelty, Thenn cruelty--but this felt colder. Impersonal. As if the corpse had been turned into a tool and abandoned once it failed to satisfy.
The wind shifted again.
Movement flickered along the ridge. Shapes paced the high ground, thin bodies, fur ragged in patches, eyes catching the morning light with a strange, watchful shine. Wolves. Or close enough. They neither lunged nor slunk away. They only tracked him, heads tilted, ears pricked toward Jon with a focus that felt too measured to be hunger.
Something in their posture tugged at a memory he couldn't place. Not Ghost. Not Grey Wind. Just a shape of recognition buried deep.
Melina watched without alarm. "They roam where Godrick allows no man to tread."
Jon kept his hand near Longclaw. "Do they follow travelers?"
"They follow what interests them," she said. "And sometimes what confuses them."
Jon didn't like the sound of that, so he kept walking. The wolves shadowed them for a dozen more paces before drifting back into the tall grass, vanishing like smoke.
The land dipped ahead, falling away into a tangle of crumbled walls and watchfires. Thin threads of smoke rose from the Gatefront Ruins, drifting across fallen towers and half-built barricades. The murmur of soldiers carried on the wind--boots, spear-shafts, low voices.
Jon dropped lower, instinct taking over. His eyes traced the paths between rubble; the shadows cast by broken columns; the places where boots would land loud, and where they might not land at all.
Melina stood beside him, still as a carved figure. "You know these roads of thought."
"I know how men search," Jon said. "And how they fail to see what moves beneath their feet."
He pulled out the parchment he'd taken from the ruins. The map was crude but true enough--lines of road, markers scratched by a hand more hurried than skilled. He found the narrow path that skirted the eastern edge of the ruins, then traced it to the cliffside trail leading toward the upper slopes of Stormhill.
"We move there," he said.
Melina nodded once.
They slipped into the grass, keeping low. Jon moved carefully, all weight on the edges of his boots, stepping where the earth dipped softest. Melina made no sound at all--she followed him like a shadow, choosing to mimic flesh.
A cluster of soldiers marched across the ruin's center, muttering about rebuilding shattered barricades. Another group hauled a broken ballista arm into place. Jon and Melina skirted them at a distance so narrow that Jon could hear the scrape of their boots and the clatter of spears against shields. But none looked their way.
Only once did Jon's ribs threaten to give him away--a sharp pull as he crouched beneath a leaning wall. He sucked a breath through his teeth and stilled until the pain settled, then moved again.
By the time they crested the far end of the ruins, the soldiers shrank to specks behind them.
The land steepened. A single winding path led upward toward the Stormgate from the side, hugging the cliff as though the stone itself meant to swallow the trail whole. Halfway along it stood a small wooden shack slumped against the rock. Smoke trickled weakly from its chimney.
Melina slowed, gaze settling on the crooked little structure. "There is someone inside."
Jon rested a hand on Longclaw. "A friend?"
"A voice that has not yet found its choice," she said.
He didn't know what that meant--but he knew the tone. Melina sensed something, and that something mattered.
He stepped toward the shack.
A soft, frightened sound drifted through the warped boards--the scrape of a stool, a breath held too long.
Jon pushed the door gently.
A girl sat curled near the hearth, arms tight around her knees. Blonde hair in loose, shaking curls. A red cloak patched and frayed. She looked up as the door creaked, eyes wide with fear that had settled deep enough to stay permanent.
Jon stopped so she could see his hands.
Melina's voice came behind him, quiet as a candle's breath.
"Roderika."
The girl flinched at the sound of her own name, shrinking deeper into her red hood as though it might hide her from the world.
Jon stayed just inside the doorway, giving her space. The shack smelled of smoke and damp wood; a single weak flame struggled in the hearth, its light barely enough to reach the corners. The girl--Roderika--sat wrapped in her cloak like someone trying to hold herself together by force of will.
Her eyes kept flicking between Jon's sword and his face.
Jon spoke softly, the way he had with frightened recruits on the Wall. "We're not here to harm you."
She swallowed hard, her words scraping out thin and weary. "Folk speak kindly before the knives come out. I've learned not to trust soft words."
"We're not with the soldiers," Jon said. "I'm Jon. This is Melina."
Roderika's gaze darted to the cloaked figure behind him. Melina did not enter fully, but neither did she hide her golden eye. It gleamed like a shard of distant fire in the dim room.
Roderika's breath hitched. "You're… not theirs. Thank the stars."
"No," Jon said. "Not theirs."
Her shoulders sagged a little, though fear still clung to her like a second skin.
A moment passed before she whispered, "I wasn't alone when I came here. There were others--my friends. We traveled together. They said Stormveil had work for folk like us. Honest work. A keep as grand as that… we thought we'd be safe."
Her fingers knotted in her cloak. She stared into the hearth as though trying to see the faces she'd left behind.
"They took them inside first," she said. "Said they'd be tested. Chosen. They smiled when they said it, like it was some great kindness." A tremor ran through her words. "Then the screaming started. It went on and on. And when the doors opened again… it wasn't them anymore."
Jon felt a slow chill settle beneath his ribs. He'd seen fear before--wildling children, villagers hiding from raiders from beyond the Wall, even men at the Wall before battle--but this fear had been worn down to threads. The kind that didn't know where to go anymore.
Roderika's chin dipped toward her knees. "I heard one of them--their voices sounded wrong. Pulled apart. Stitched together. The soldiers called it the spider's work." Her voice cracked. "Said anyone strong enough to survive would be grafted to the spider. To the great lord's… masterpiece."
Jon froze. "Grafted?"
Roderika gave a tiny, broken nod. "Pieces of folk, taken and made into something else." Tears welled in her eyes. "My friends--they were taken to be part of him. Part of that creature in the keep. I heard them crying for help, and I… I ran. I ran like a coward. And now I don't know what to do."
Jon lowered himself onto a stool opposite her, careful with his ribs. "Running doesn't make you a coward," he said. "It makes you alive."
She shook her head, eyes filling. "It makes me alone."
Jon looked at her for a long breath. This land had thrown horrors at him since the moment he woke--but there was something about this trembling girl in her tattered cloak that slid past all his defenses.
She reminded him of the living. The ordinary. The ones every war forgot.
Jon held her gaze. "Not anymore."
Melina stepped inside then, just enough that her cloak brushed the threshold. "The path you fled has not closed behind you," she murmured. "There is still choice before you."
The girl blinked, confusion and hope warring in her face. "Choice? After all that's happened?"
"To leave," Melina said. "Or to endure long enough to become something the spider cannot touch."
Roderika's looked between them--Jon's battered steadiness, Melina's eerie calm. Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
"…Would you help me? Just enough to reach someplace safe? I don't think I can walk far on my own."
Jon nodded before he fully realized he'd done it. "Aye. If you want to live, we'll get you somewhere the soldiers can't get you."
The girl pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. A tear slipped free, catching the firelight before falling into her lap.
"You're the first kind faces I've seen since I came to Stormhill," she whispered.
Jon felt something tighten in his chest--not quite pity, not quite anger, but a resolve shaped by every smallfolk he'd failed to save in Westeros. He would not fail this one.
"We'll see you to safety," he said. "One way or another."
Roderika stiffened at the sound of the wind outside--the low, moaning breath of Stormhill sweeping past the shack. She hugged her knees tighter.
"That castle… Stormveil…" Her voice quivered. "It changes folk. Twists them into things that aren't meant to be. If you go inside--please--don't let it take you too."
Jon didn't answer. He couldn't--not honestly.
But he met her eyes and said, "You won't face it alone."
For the first time, she allowed herself to believe him.
Melina stepped back toward the doorway. "There is a Warmaster's shack not far from here--sheltered and protected by a knight. You may rest there until your strength returns."
Roderika wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. "I… I'll try."
Jon rose, offered her his hand--not to drag her to her feet, only to give her something steady to hold.
She took it.
They stepped out into the gold-tinged daylight together, the wind carrying the faint sound of wolves shifting somewhere on the heights.
The wind rose as they stepped outside, carrying the distant howl of wolves across the heights--as if the hill itself marked their leaving.