The chill of Castle Black was different from the fields beyond the Wall. It was not the endless slaught of wild winds but the steady bite of cold that sank from the black ice of the Wall itself into every hall and chamber below.
Jon Snow knew this place. Too well. The clatter of boots in the yard, the ring of swords, the murmurs of new recruits complaining about their rations. Yet as he walked through it now, he felt a hollow strangeness, as though the walls remembered a boy he no longer was.
He had died beyond the Wall. He had stood before gods older than kings. Yet here he was, whole again, his hands unscarred.
It was few days before his vows. He knew it in his bones.
The younger faces of the brothers confirmed it—Pyp's laughter, Grenn's awkward bulk, Samwell's nervous shuffle. Ghost padded silently at Jon's side, and not a soul seemed surprised to see him.
The gods have sent me back, Jon thought, his heart beating heavy. But why here? Why now?
In the mess hall, he caught word of his uncle Benjen, send north on a ranging. That much he remembered. But another name was climbed back—an uncle he had never thought of as such, because he had never been told.
Maester Aemon.
The thought struck like a hammer-blow. He had eaten beside the old man, taken his counsel, and never known that blood ran between them.
Now he did.
That night, when the hall grew quiet and the brothers dozed in their cots, Jon made his way through the winding stairs of the rookery. Ghost followed until Jon stilled him with a hand. "Wait here," he whispered, and the direwolf lay in the shadows.
Jon rapped lightly at the oaken door.
A quavering voice called from within. "Enter."
The chamber smelled of ink and parchment, with a faint trace of ashwood from the brazier. Maester Aemon sat hunched at a table, blind eyes turned toward the flame, his frail hands folded in his lap.
Jon bowed his head. "Maester. Forgive me for disturbing you."
"You walk softly," Aemon said, his voice papery yet warm. "But I know the steps of all my brothers. You are Eddard Stark's bastard, are you not? Jon Snow."
Jon's throat tightened. He stepped further in, closing the door behind him. "I am Jon Snow. But I am more than that."
Aemon tilted his head, the clouded orbs of his eyes searching a face he could not see. "More?"
Jon took a breath as if drawing winter air into his lungs. "I am your blood, Maester. Your great-great nephew."
The silence that followed was deep, broken only by the faint crackle of the brazier.
Slowly, Aemon lifted a trembling hand. "Come closer."
Jon knelt. The old man's fingers brushed his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw, the shape of his brow, the slope of his nose. A shudder went through him, and his blind eyes filled with unseen tears.
"Rhaegar," Aemon whispered. "And Lyanna. I hear them in your voice. I feel them in your face. Gods forgive me, I should have known. You bear my brother's mark—Egg's very likeness, when he was young."
Jon bowed his head, unable to speak. For all the years of being called Snow, of being told he was less, this moment pierced him deeper than any sword.
At last, Aemon let his hand fall. "Tell me, child… what do you seek?"
Jon swallowed hard. "Tomorrow, I am to take the black. But I am also your blood, a Targaryen, perhaps… perhaps I should not. Would it dishonor our family, Maester, if I chose the Watch still?"
Aemon's laugh was soft, weary, touched with sorrow. "I am near the end, Jon. I have lived almost a century without family. I could wish for a nephew's hand in mine at the end, aye. But I have lived long enough to know need is not want. I do not need a family now."
His blind eyes turned toward Jon, as if piercing the veil in his heart itself. "But you—you are not at your end. You are at your beginning. The realm bleeds, child. Our blood has been scattered, hunted, forgotten. Yet still it runs in you. You are no bastard. You are the promise that was broken, the crown that was lost. To take the black would be to bury it again in the snow."
Jon felt the weight of the gods' words pressing once more on his heart. His lips parted, a whisper escaping. "But I wanted only to serve. To do right."
"Then do right," Aemon said, his frail voice sharpening with sudden fire. "Not by hiding. Not by binding yourself in chains of black. The world needs a king worth the name, Jon. Not another oathbroken tyrant, not another butcher in a crown."
The words burned in Jon's chest, heavy as the betrayal he felt before death.
He bowed his head into his hands, torn between the boy who had longed for honor and the man whom gods and kin alike demanded to rule.
And in that chamber, lit only by fading flame, Jon Snow began to understand that his destiny was not a crown he could refuse—it was a debt, and it had already been paid in blood.