Lyanna's training continued: skinchanging practice in the morning, greenvision sparring in the afternoon, and dreams of the future at night.
The story in Lyanna's visions continued for several moons. Beneath Grandmother's boughs, the dreams came heavy and bright, tumbling one upon the next until they blurred into a single, episodic tale.
A wedding hall drowned in crimson. Wolves and fish fell where they feasted. Crossbows thrummed while a dirge scraped the air. Her nephew died with his mother, his crown rolling into the rushes. The Freys lifted red-slick cups, the Boltons smiled with clean hands. Lyanna woke biting her palm to keep from crying out, choking on the shame of guest right broken and oaths burned to ash.
The dream turned east. A slight girl with silver hair stood before a pyre. When the fire sank, dragons stirred, yet what held Lyanna was not flame but iron falling open. Chains struck stone. Manacles unlocked. Streets filled with people who had nothing, shouting their own names as if tasting them for the first time. The girl walked among them and did not flinch from their touch. Pride rose in Lyanna like heat; the dragons mattered less than the collars thrown down and the markets silenced.
Another nephew, quiet and strange, knelt before a tree older than kingdoms. A raven with three eyes perched above, whispering time's secret grammar. Through the boy's sight, Lyanna glimpsed memories not her own. Oaths sworn and broken. Crowns traded for coffins. He became a vessel for truths men were never meant to hold. Then a chamber of rough stone swam up from the dark. Blood on linen. A newborn's thin cry. Her own voice, faint as a breath in frost, pleading a promise from Ned. She watched herself die and could not look away. When the vision let her go, she sat shaking beneath Grandmother's boughs, palms pressed to her ribs as if to keep the life inside her from spilling out.
The dead marched relentlessly. Endless ranks of pale-eyed corpses pressed south, cold rolling before them like tide. A queen misjudged their king and lost a dragon. The Wall cracked and fell. Wildlings and watchmen, northmen and southerners, freed slaves and Dothraki gathered into one unlikely host. They fought until breath smoked and blades snapped. In the chaos Lyanna noticed the flaw. When the crowned thing of ice shattered, so did the ranks around it. One death unmade ten thousand. It was not merely sorcery. It was a chain with one weak link.
The story of the chainbreaker should have ended in triumph. Instead, it twisted. The silver-haired queen returned to Westeros, her dragons blotting out the sun, her armies vast. But the fire of her heart that had freed slaves now turned upon her, an untamed blaze of Targaryen madness. From the back of a dragon she looked down on a golden city and chose ruin. Flame fell, and streets became rivers of glass. Stone sagged. Children vanished into smoke. Pride for the freeing of slaves twisted into grief so sharp Lyanna tasted iron. She mourned the girl who had been brave and kind, and the woman she became when no one could turn her from the edge.
In the final dream sequence the queen died in an embrace, and the Iron Throne ran like wax. The realm turned to the quiet nephew, now an emotionless shell filled with knowledge. A tragic and disappointing end to a once riveting epic. Lyanna wept in her sleep, the scent of burning roses curling through her dreams.
She woke with tears drying on her cheeks and a new, cold certainty in her bones. Visions were warnings, not chains. If death could be unmade with one stroke and mercy could curdle into slaughter, then the path ahead would need a surer hand. She meant to be that hand.
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As the moon turned, Lyanna's skill ripened. She could slip into into the mind of nearly any beast now, though each new body felt like a door that needed three keys. It cost her. Each return to herself left her shaking as if pulled from deep water. Yet Winter remained easy, a familiar warmth she could enter with a thought.
Greenvision changed as her blade work sharpened. In slow drills the outlines came clear. A green figure stepped where Dacey would step, the future leaving a faint shine on the grass. She could parry, then strike where the next opening would be. Yet when Dacey pressed her hard, the shimmer fled. Speed stripped it thin. The blur of a real exchange turned the future to mist.
They tested it in a ring of roots while Howland and the children looked on. Dacey moved with a bear's sure weight, mace-stick snaking low. Lyanna closed her left eye and let the right drink in the scene. A ghosted pattern rose from Dacey's shoulders, a hint of where the blow would land. Lyanna slipped aside and tapped Dacey's ribs with a wooden blade. The next pass came faster. The green echo stuttered. Lyanna lifted her guard a heartbeat late and took the crack on her bracer.
After, Thistle watched them in that half-rooted stillness of his. Maple sat at his feet, chin in her palms. The greenseer's red eyes held a patient light.
"You taste the river, but rivers have boundaries." Thistle spoke in the Old Tongue, each syllable a note. Lyanna answered with care, shaping the sounds as she had been taught.
Thistle went on, "a thing cannot move freely in both time and space. Trees walk the river because they never step. They trade feet for centuries. Beasts and men keep their feet, so the present binds them close. If you run, time slips from your grasp. If you stand, it will meet you."
Lyanna looked down at the welt rising on her forearm. "So I must choose."
Thistle's twiggy hair gave a faint creak, almost a laugh. He added a few more notes. "There is a third way. Do not run. Do not freeze. Root one part of you, and let the rest move." He tapped one of his eyebrows. "Anchor your sight. Let your body follow."
They tried again. Lyanna set her feet as Jorah had taught her. She fixed her gaze not on Dacey's hands or hips, but on a point just beyond the Mormont's shoulder. The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat. The green outline returned, thin but steady. Dacey lunged. Lyanna did not chase the mace or her arm. She stepped where the echo said she must and set the wooden blade to Dacey's throat.
Dacey huffed, then grinned. "Better."
That night Lyanna sat with Winter's head on her knee and listened to the leaves. She thought of Thistle's law. Trees that could not move had mastered time. Men who ran headlong were blind to it. She closed her left eye and watched the green trace bloom and fade among the branches. Root one part of you, he had said. Let the rest move. She held that lesson the way she held a hilt, tight enough to guide, not so tight it made her clumsy.