Sleep came hard beneath the Grandmother's branches, but when it came, it pulled Lyanna down like a river current. She dreamed, and the dream was not hers.
Stone towers rose where no trees grew, pale and hot beneath a southern sun. The air smelled of dust, parchment, and steel. She saw her brother, Eddard, standing at the foot of a vast chair made of blades. His face was older, weathered by years she had not lived yet, but the set of his jaw was the same. Duty pressed into him like a second skin.
Hand of the King. The words whispered from nowhere, etched in the dream like truth.
Lyanna saw him in dark halls with golden lions watching. A queen with hair like beaten gold, her green eyes sharp as knives. Beside her a twin, smiling too softly, too closely. Their children all golden, their blood too bright. Ned's eyes hardened, the truth clear to him. Too clear, too dangerous.
The dream lurched. A throne room, banners drooping in stale air. Her brother's voice rang out: "Joffrey is no true king. His claim is false." Swords rasped from scabbards. The boy-king shrieked from the dais, his pale face twisted in cruelty.
Guards seized Ned. She tried to move, to scream, but her body was only shadow here, forced to watch as her brother was dragged into the light of day.
The Sept of Baelor loomed, its bells tolling. A crowd roared for blood. Ned stood on the steps, battered, but unbroken. His eyes lifted once — and for a heartbeat, Lyanna felt them find hers, though she knew it could not be.
He spoke false words, meant to save his children: "Joffrey Baratheon is the true heir."
But mercy did not live in that boy's heart. A boy king raised a pale hand. "Ser Ilyn. Bring me his head."
Steel sang. A greatsword rose and fell. The dream went white with the sound of thousands gasping at once.
Lyanna felt the cut cleave her own heart. Her brother's life ended, not by honor in battle, but by the whim of a spoiled child and the scheming of lions.
Lyanna woke beneath the Grandmother, breath ragged, hands clawing the moss. The branches above shivered as though they mourned too. For a long moment she could only weep silently into the earth.
When she found her voice, she whispered: "I will not let it happen. Not to Ned. Not to any of us."
The Grandmother's song sighed above, mournful but steady, as though reminding her: this was only one path.
Lyanna pressed her hand to the moss at the Grandmother's roots. "I want to help you. To protect the weirwoods, truly. But how am I meant to do such a thing? I can't even control my own marriage."
The branches above shifted, a sigh rolling through leaves the size of shields. The song that came down was not words, not in any tongue she knew, but the sound of wind through hollow stone and water under ice. The Grandmother's voice.
Maple tilted her head as though listening. Her leaf-like hair stirred, though no breeze touched her. When she spoke, her words seemed shaped by the echo of the tree's song. "The Grandmother says a blade alone will never be enough. Your spirit is strong. Strong enough for the other gift."
Lyanna frowned. "What gift?"
"Skinchanging," Maple said, her large ears twitching. "The passing of your spirit into another living thing. To see through their eyes, to feel with their heart. All singers can do it. Some men too, if the bond is deep." Her eyes flicked toward Winter. "You already carry a tether."
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So the lessons began beneath the sheltering boughs. Each dusk, Maple led them to the grove where the younger singers gathered. They crouched in circles, eyes unfocused, their small clawed hands gripping fluffy rodents or chirping birds. Lyanna, Howland, and Dacey joined them, foreign but welcomed by the Grandmother's decree.
They began with stillness. Maple made them sit cross-legged until their limbs tingled, whispering, "First hear your own heartbeat. Then reach for another's."
Howland tried hardest to mimic the singers. His reed-cloak pooled about him as he repeated their words and songs in the Old Tongue, chasing meanings, trying to record rituals in his memory. Dacey, restless as ever, complained that she would rather put her mace to use than stare at rabbits in the brush, but she followed anyway, if only to stay near Lyanna.
Every day, Lyanna sat beneath the weirwood boughs with Winter tethered close. The mare was patient by nature, but her dark eyes rolled when the singers pressed too near. Even so, Lyanna laid her hands against Winter's flank, feeling the steady warmth through her palms.
At first, nothing happened. Only the rise and fall of the mare's breathing, the twitch of muscle under skin. Then finally, something shifted. A pulse, not her own. Her chest tightened as the rhythm of Winter's heart pressed against hers, until her senses blurred.
For a heartbeat she was taller, heavier, her sight strange and wide at the edges. Every sound was magnified: the rustle of Dacey shifting in the grass, Howland whispering old prayers, Maple humming in the Old Tongue. Lyanna's ears twitched to catch them — no, not her ears. Winter's.
The shock broke the bond and she stumbled back into herself, gasping. Winter merely shook her head, as if annoyed at the intrusion.
Maple grinned, her red leaves rustling. "Harder with a horse. They are stubborn. But you are stubborn too."
The more Lyanna practiced, the easier it came. Maple coached her gently, praising each small victory. Dacey managed once to slip into a raccoon's eyes, though only for a flicker, and Howland found himself more often tangled in ritual than result. Lyanna, though, she lingered in Winter's skin longer each time.
The Grandmother watched, branches rustling in approval, her song deepening.
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Even as she trained her bond with Winter by day, the visions came each night beneath Grandmother's boughs.
She saw a crown of antlers, bright and mocking, pressed onto the brow of a boy with Robert's easy grin. Knights cheered him, banners of green and gold rippling behind, but their loyalty was as shallow as their laughter.
Another crown of antlers, this one blackened with ash, sat upon a man of flint and fire — Stannis, Robert's brother, who bore the same blood but none of his warmth. Stannis stood at a table of painted wood, the Stormlands' fleet burning behind his eyes. Beside him a shadow stirred, a woman red-robed, whispering prayers that twisted into smoke and death.
A boy-king on the Iron Throne, golden hair glinting like sun on steel. His mouth curled in delight as he ordered a maid struck, his mother's pride the loudest applause in the hall. The hall was filled with whispers of the name Lannister.
Robb Stark, her brother's son, wolf by name though Tully by face. His hosts howled across endless fields, naming him King in the North. Yet shadows gathered at his flanks: discontented lords, discord in his hall.
Stormy seas swallowed her next. Grey sails rose with the kraken's cry, ironborn chanting of crowns of salt and rock. Yet rather than sailing for Lannister gold, their prows turned north.
Five kings. Five crowns. Five wars, all clashing and grinding until the realm bled itself dry.
But the visions did not end with crowns.
The snows deepened, swallowing the banners and the cries of lords. She saw black-cloaked men upon the Wall, their torches flickering like stars against endless ice. They fought savages pouring through the frost: wild men in furs, giants thundering at their side, mammoths breaking the gates with their tusks. The brothers of the Watch braced spears against the storm, their breath steaming in the frozen dark.
And then came worse.
Pale shadows walked through the drifts, eyes burning with an otherworldly blue. Arrows did not stop them. Blades shattered from cold when they clashed. The dead who fell to the ice rose again, stiff and silent, and turned their weapons upon the living.
She saw one young man, stoic and solemn, standing with sword in hand, rallying the Watch. A true Stark, even if he didn't carry the name.
The dream climbed higher, showing the Wall itself from above: a sheer white face stretching to the heavens, cracks groaning in its frozen skin. Beyond it, the snowfields shifted and moved, filled with thousands of corpses. The army stretched farther than sight, endless as the winter night.
The war of kings meant nothing here. No crown could halt what marched from the far north.