Riverlands,Riverrun
Robb POV
The war room at Riverrun was thick with smoke and the scent of sweat. My lords crowded around the great oaken table, their voices rising and clashing like swords on steel.
"Storm King's Landing!" Greatjon roared, slamming his fist onto the map so hard that the carved markers shook. "Take the city, take the crown, and end this damn war before winter finds us!"
Murmurs rippled through the gathered bannermen. Some nodded, others scoffed.
Uncle Brayden leaned forward, calm but firm, his voice cutting through the noise. "A bold move, Greatjon but reckless. We are not here to play at sieges. We hold Jaime Lannister. We should trade him for your father and sisters, Robb. Blood for blood. Family for family."
The lords argued again with some calling it wisdom, others weakness. I felt my chest tighten, but my mind was clear.
"I agree with Uncle Brayden," I said, loud enough to silence the table. "If Jaime can bring back my father and sisters, then that is the path we must..."
The door burst open. A young soldier stumbled in, pale and stiff, a sealed letter clutched in his hand. His eyes would not meet mine.
"My lord…" His voice cracked. He held out the letter.
I took it, broke the seal, and read.
Eddard Stark has been executed by His Grace Joffrey Baratheon.
For a heartbeat, I heard nothing. Then a surge of rage coursed through me like wildfire. The letter crumpled in my fist, and I slammed it onto the table.
The lords cried out, voices overlapping "What is it? What's wrong?" but I could not answer. My blood roared in my ears. I turned and stormed from the room without a word.
Down the dark stone steps, my boots echoed. The stench of damp and rusted iron filled my lungs as I shoved open the heavy door to the cells.
Jaime sat within, bound but lounging against the wall, his golden hair a mockery even in the torchlight. He smirked the moment he saw me.
"Well, well," he drawled, mocking. "The Young Wolf himself. Come to gloat? Or beg?"
I stepped forward, fists trembling. "Your piece of shit son just killed my father."
His smirk faltered. For the first time, I saw it the fear flickering in his eyes beneath the arrogance.
I struck him. Once. Twice. Again. Each blow was months of anger: the day Robert Baratheon rode into Winterfell, the chains around my father's wrists, the sight of Sansa's tears. Jaime's head snapped back against the stone, blood spattering his lip, but still I struck.
Strong arms pulled at me with Theon on one side, Uncle Brayden on the other. "Robb! Enough!" Brayden barked, his voice edged with desperation.
I tore free, chest heaving, rage blinding me. Without thinking, I seized a sword from the rack, its steel cold and merciless in my hands.
I stormed from the cell, leaving Jaime bruised and bleeding in the torchlight, his mocking laughter drowned beneath the fury pounding in my skull.
Jon POV
I finally arrived at Riverrun, where the rumors said Robb was. I had expected a bustle, the relief of men trading stories and laughter after long marches. Instead the castle moved like a place half-buried in winter with their faces drawn, mouths shuttered, footsteps muffled. No one met my eyes with anything but that hollow look you get when a wolfpack has lost its alpha.
I threaded through the courtyard and there, leaning against a low wall, was Theon. He looked up when I came close, and his face shut like a door.
"Theon what's going on? Where's Robb?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Theon's mouth was dry. "Lord Stark is dead," he said, each word scraping out. "Killed by that blond prick Joffrey. And Robb disappeared after beating the Kingslayer to a pulp."
My heart dropped so hard I felt it in my knees. Father is gone. The memory of his last words slipped into my head the way a ghost finds an open window:
"When we next see each other I'll tell you about your mother."
His kind smile. His lessons: how to look at a man and know what he hides, how to carry yourself when the world expects you to fail. Tears burned clear and hot down my face, but there was no time to drown in them not with Robb missing.
"I'll find him," I told Theon, steadier than I felt.
I crouched beside Ghost, who padded up as if he had already known my intention. "Find Robb," I said.
Ghost's nose went to the ground. He sniffed, then turned and padded to the right, tail low and purposeful. I followed him without a second thought, boots thudding across frozen earth.
We had not gone far when a sound split the ai and it was an animal howl of rage that was human-shaped. I pushed through a clump of trees and saw Robb ahead, alone, swinging a sword at a gnarled trunk so hard the oak bark splintered with every strike.
"Robb stop! It's me, Jon stop!" I ran forward and caught his forearms as he brought the blade down again. He was trembling from head to foot. The sword clattered from his hands and he sagged, exhaustion swallowing him. I caught him against my chest as if he were a boy again.
He was sobbing, low and ragged, words tearing out between breaths. "I'll kill them… I'll kill them all."
I held him tighter, feeling how small he seemed and how enormous his anger had grown. "We have to save Sansa and Arya first," I said, voice even, pressing logic like a bandage over the bleeding wound of his fury. "Then we get our vengeance. I'll be right by your side."
I hauled him to his feet and forced him to look at me. Up close, the grief in his eyes was a map of every terrible thing that had happened since Robert came to winterfell. I did not try to make it less; I only put the one thing I knew he could trust into words.
"Remember," I said, meeting his gaze, "we will conquer the world together."
Robb's nod was a small thing, but it was everything. He stepped into me and we held each other like two halves of the same oath. I heard him whisper into my shoulder, voice wet with relief and something like gratitude: "I'm glad you're here, brother."
"I am too," I answered.
Timeskip
Robb POV
We sit in the main hall, bent over maps and wine, planning our next move. Some lords press for an alliance with Renly—more men, brighter banners—while others argue for Stannis, because by the laws of succession he is heir. Debate curls and breaks like surf against the shore, each voice trying to claim the tide.
Greatjon slams his hand on the table so hard the tankard rings. He spits on the ground. "This is what I think of those southerners kings." His voice is a boulder dropped into a quiet pool; it ripples outward and everything else stills.
"Why should we bow to southern kings? They know nothing of us. Nothing of our snows, our wolves, our strength! Why should we bow to them? Why should we bleed for a crown of southern iron?"
He straightens, all bulk and fury, his one good eye burning like a coal. He jabs a finger toward me as if to drive the point into the floor. "There stands the only man I mean to follow. Robb Stark the son of Eddard Stark, trueborn of Winterfell. He led us to victory at the Whispering Wood, he holds the Kingslayer in chains, and the Northmen would ride through the Seven Hells for him if he asked it!"
With that he draws his sword and lifts it high; the steel catches torchlight and throws it back into every face in the hall. His roar fills the rafters.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll not bend the knee to Joffrey Baratheon, or Renly, or Stannis, or any man south of the Neck! Why should we have two kings? The North has always been its own. I'll have one king Robb Stark, King in the North!"
The hall breaks like a wave. Chairs scrape, armor rings, a hundred throats thunder together:
"The King in the North! The King in the North!"
I look at Jon; he shrugs, then kneels with the others. I meet Theon's eyes and there is a question in them, small and sudden. "Am I your brother now and forever?" he asks. I nod, and he drops to his knee beside the rest. But I raise my hand to silence them.
"You crown me king and I'll take the crown," I began, my voice low so that they had to bend toward me to hear. "But a crown is a chain as often as it is a crown. It binds the bearer to the debts of the dead. It binds me to my father's debt."
My throat closed and for a heartbeat only his face lived in my mind and his face was tired, patient, the soft teaching when I could not sleep. "Honor," I said, tasting the word like iron, "was the lodestone he trusted. It is the one thing he clung to when the world bled around him. Honour got my father killed. Honour got my sister locked in King's Landing."
The words spilled out, sharper than I had planned. Grief is a blade that never dulls; it carves the truth free.
"I asked myself what would he have wanted? To watch us bury ourselves in the rules of men who never meant us well? To bow until our backs broke for a crown of southern iron?" I let the question hang like a knife. "No. I will not let his faith in honour become our grave."
My voice rose, not in anger alone but with the terrible steadiness of someone who'd weighed the cost and chosen anyway. "We need to make the south fear us. Fuck honor." The words were a jagged thing, and they cut clean through the old courtesies that still clung to the rafters. "Honor is not what will bring Sansa home. Honor is not what will keep Arya safe. Honor did not stand at my father's side when he fell."
I saw faces tighten at that some in agreement, some in shock. I pressed on, because there was no other mercy here but truth and action. "We will go to the Westerlands and burn it down. We will take those Lannister golds with every coin bought with our blood and we will spend it on what keeps our people alive. If Renly and the Reach cry foul, let them. We will feed our bellies with Reach grain while they preach about justice from their feasts."
The words were brutal and honest. They had to be. To lead a people you must show them the path through fire, not the pleasant road that leads to ruin. "You may call it vengeance," I said, "call it war. Call it whatever name you like. I call it the only way left to make the South remember the North."
Silence broke like thunder as the hall answered me with a rising roar. "WHO'S WITH ME?" I called, not as a boy asking permission but as a man offering an oath. "Who will stand and make them fear us?"
They answered first a scatter, then a tide, then one voice braided into a hundred: "KING IN THE NORTH! KING IN THE NORTH!"
My heart was a raw thing in my chest. Father if you could hear me, if the old gods could see this is how I will keep my promise. I will make every southern lord count the name Stark and feel his teeth in their sleep.
Father, I'll avenge you by making every southern fear us
Essos
Daenerys POV
He's gone my husband, my sun. Drogo is dead because of that fucking witch.
My eyes find his body on the pike before they find anything else. The world narrows to wood and rope and the hollow of his chest. Jorah steps forward and sets the pyre alight. Flames take at the dry wood; heat washes over me, but it is not heat that pulls me. There is a tether, a cord of something older than pain, tugging me forward until my feet move and my body follows.
As I walk into the flames, the flames do not burn me so much as open my eyes. Three dragons wheel in the smoke above, black shapes cut against a bruised sky. Beside me, a man holds my hand and he was tall, broad-shouldered, auburn hair and a red beard, a crown of swords resting on his head like a bloody wreath.
He turns to me and his voice comes rough but certain, the accent like Jorah's northern and strange in my ear. "I'm here for you, my love," he says.
I open my eyes and the world is small dragons curled around my feet, warm and alive. I cup one in my hand and feel the tremor of its heart.
When these dragons grow, I will find my red-haired husband, and together we will take my family's birthright with fire and blood.