Maple led Lyanna along a narrow deer-trail beneath the weirwood canopy, the air cool and dappled in shifting shades of red and white. The roots seemed to curl toward her boots as she walked, guiding her deeper, until the trees parted around a hollow.
There, sitting with his back to the bole of an ancient trunk, sat a singer Maple introduced as Thistle. His body was wiry rather than frail, more bark than flesh, but his youth still showed in the tautness of his limbs. Only his eyes betrayed his gift — startling crimson, glimmering like fresh sap. Where Maple's hair blazed in leaves, his crown was a tangle of pale twigs budding red at the tips.
"He does not know the Common Tongue," Maple warned, voice lowered with respect. "But you will understand him. You already have the Old Tongue on your lips."
Lyanna bowed her head and stepped forward. Her words came slow, shaped by the rough dialect she had learned at Winterfell from traders and mountain men. The Wulls of the northern hills often preferred it over the Common Tongue, and as a girl she had pestered their sworn men for phrases until she could speak enough to barter. Here, though, among true singers, the syllables felt heavier, older, like stones dropped into deep water.
"I greet you, Singer," she said.
Thistle's gaze fixed on her. His lips moved, but the sounds were no mere speech — they poured forth as a low, woven song, the Old Tongue bent into cadences that made her stumble at first. Yet the meaning pressed itself into her, clear despite the strangeness. She answered back haltingly, correcting herself when Maple gently murmured a word. Each exchange grew easier, until the rhythm of the tongue wrapped around her like a half-remembered song.
"You carry the seed of sight," he said at last, his red eyes narrowing with curiosity. "A rare thing, even among our kind. Among men, rarer still. Perhaps one in a thousand."
Lyanna thought of the flickering green silhouettes she had seen, seconds ahead of her own choices. "My sight shows only moments. Heartbeats. Not years, not centuries."
Thistle's expression was unreadable, carved in wood and shadow. "A narrow gift, yet sharp. In battle, a heartbeat is the measure between death and triumph. Do not scorn what you have been given."
He told her then of the greatest greenseers — those who could slip freely into any time, past or future, as easily as one might walk from one room to another. They had watched the birth of the sun, had glimpsed the death of kings not yet born, had whispered into the dreams of men across oceans.
"But that is not your path," Thistle said. His voice was like wind in leaves, rising and falling. "Yours is the edge of the blade. You will not weave the ages together, but you may strike within them. Learn to see clearly the seconds that others waste. Learn to act where they stumble."
Lyanna listened, her jaw tight. She had wished for something greater, something that could change all the grim visions of her death and the realm's ruin. Yet she felt the truth of his words. In the clash of steel, a heartbeat was all that mattered.
Thistle lifted one gnarled hand, his bark-like fingers tracing the air before her. "Train with this gift. Make it your strength. And when the forest calls, your blade will answer with more than steel."
Lyanna only nodded, though pride was not what filled her chest. It was resolve. If the gods had given her but heartbeats of sight, she would wring destiny itself from those fleeting moments.
Thistle led her to a hollow where the trees thinned just enough to let pale light spill through. A target of woven reeds stood at the far end, worn with old arrows. Beside it, the earth was littered with shafts fletched in feathers of crow and owl.
He pressed a bow into her hands — pale wood, strung with sinew, light but taut. "See, before you shoot," he sang in the Old Tongue, voice like roots grating together.
Lyanna nocked an arrow, her shoulders stiff. She had loosed shafts before at Winterfell, but always by rote — line up, draw, breathe, release. She drew now, the string creaking, but Thistle shook his head.
"Not with your eyes," he murmured. "With the gods'."
Maple leaned in, whispering in the Common Tongue so Lyanna would not lose the thread. "Try closing the left. Keep the right open. Let the green come through."
Lyanna swallowed, sweat stinging her palms. She shut her left eye. For a moment there was only the world as it was: target, bow, trees. Then the air shimmered. A faint green flicker traced a path before her, an outline of flight drawn in thin light. She gasped softly, the arrow's arc already there, waiting.
Her arm trembled as she adjusted, aligning her draw with the vision's line. The string bit her fingers. She loosed.
The arrow flew exactly where the flicker had shown, thudding into the reed circle's heart.
Her breath came fast. She lowered the bow, staring at the faint glow still fading from her sight. "I saw it," she whispered in the Old Tongue, halting but sure. "I saw it before it was."
Thistle's twig-crown shifted as he inclined his head. His red eyes gleamed. "Few are given this sight. Fewer still learn to wield it. Do not waste it, wolf-girl."
Behind her, Dacey gave a low whistle. "If you learn to do that in a fight, Seven save the fool who faces you."
Lyanna loosed again, the arrow flying clean but striking just shy of the target's center. She clicked her tongue in frustration. Another shot went wide, clipping the edge. The green flicker still guided her hand, but with her left eye closed, the world shifted, depth and distance becoming slippery things.
She lowered the bow with a huff. "It's maddening. One eye to see the vision, but with the other shut, I can't judge the distance. I need…" She paused, half-smiling at her own folly. "I need a third eye."
Maple tilted her head, but Thistle's expression sharpened at once. His bark-crowned head leaned forward, red eyes glinting like coals. His voice in the Old Tongue was low, a whisper of warning. "There was one once. A singer with a third eye. He saw more than past or future. He saw too much. He was the most dangerous being this world has ever borne."
The words chilled her. She searched his face, but he gave no name, no further story. Only that warning, humming like a taut bowstring.
Lyanna drew another arrow, unsettled but unwilling to falter. This time she tried something new: left eye closed to catch the shimmer of green, then open in a blink so both eyes worked together. The future, then the present. Trajectory, then target. Back and forth like the beat of a heart.
The arrow flew and struck true, deeper than before, the reed target quivering with the impact.
Her lips curved despite herself. "Perhaps I don't need a third eye after all. Two will do, if I can teach them to take turns."
Thistle inclined his head slowly. "Better. A hunter who learns to weave sight and self is more dangerous than any who rely on one alone."
Maple clapped softly, eyes bright. "You see the path, wolf-girl. Now you must learn to walk it without stumbling."
Lyanna nocked another arrow, heart pounding with the thrill of possibility. The old gods had cursed her with visions, yet now they had given her something she could use, something that made her more than a pawn.