The raven came at dusk.
It landed on the sill outside Cregan's narrow chamber window, feathers slick with melting snow. It did not caw. It simply stared—black eyes glinting like glass—and dropped something onto the ledge before flying off into the darkening sky.
A strip of parchment. Bound in a seal of pale wax.
He broke it open.
"We must speak beneath stone. Midnight. Come alone."
No signature. But he knew the hand. Sharp, deliberate. Her hand.
Midnight brought no moon, only wind and the groan of ancient wood. Cregan moved silently through the empty halls, his boots muffled by wolfskin. Down through servant corridors, past rusted sconces and empty hearths. Down to the crypts.
He reached the threshold and stopped.
A whisper crawled from the dark.
"Do you hear it yet? The heartbeat of Winterfell."
She stepped from shadow, hood pulled low, silver-blonde hair catching what little torchlight there was.
Cregan didn't speak.
She raised a hand. The iron coin shimmered in her palm. It pulsed faintly.
"You're not the first with the gift," she said. "But you may be the last who can open the door without breaking it."
"What door?" he asked.
She led him past the tombs—past kings and queens, warriors and lords—to a place where the stone wall had been scorched and blackened.
"Here," she said. "The seal lies behind. Your blood remembers it. Mine fears it."
She placed the coin against the stone.
A line of red light spread like a crack, branching like a tree root. The stone groaned.
[Simulation Ready]
Choose a Simulation:
Touch the seal and attempt to awaken ancestral memory.
Observe the woman's actions and try to discern her true intent.
Resist the pull of the seal and attempt to seal it further.
He chose the first.
[Simulation Running...]
Your palm touches the light.
You fall.
You see the boy again—no longer chained, but standing in frost and ash, staring toward a throne of antlers and ice. You see a blade forged of moonlight and shadow, gripped by a Stark whose face is not your own.
You see the North burning—not by fire, but by the memory of it.
And behind it all... a woman's voice, weeping.
"The pact must be kept. The blood must flow."
Then silence.
[Simulation Complete]
Knowledge Gained:
The original pact sealed not a being, but a memory—a cycle repeating with each generation.
The chained boy is not a prisoner, but a guardian. If he awakens fully, so too does what he guards.
You are now part of that cycle.
Trait Gained: Memory Warden – In moments of extreme danger, fragments of ancestral knowledge may rise unbidden to guide your hand.
Accept outcome? "Accept."
Cregan staggered back.
The woman steadied him.
"It's begun," she whispered.
And beneath their feet, something vast stirred in the stone, like a breath drawn after centuries of silence.