Winterfell awoke beneath silence.
The snow had not stopped falling since the night the curse awoke thick flakes drifting over the walls like feathers from a dying god.
Job stood at the battlements, his breath ghosting against the dawn. His cloak hung heavy with frost, his hair streaked white at the edges. The world around him looked less like home and more like a half-remembered dream one in which the dead still whispered.
Below, Althea walked through the courtyard, her boots leaving trails of ice. Servants bowed as she passed, though their eyes held fear instead of reverence. She was not the same woman who had come to Winterfell there was a stillness to her now, a kind of holy distance.
Job watched her, remembering how she had screamed his name when the Crown of Frost split in two. The sound still echoed in his bones.
He descended the stairs to meet her.
"You didn't sleep," he said quietly.
"Neither did the gods," she replied, her voice soft as the snow. "They whisper still.
Job frowned. "What do they want?"
"They want to be remembered."
Her eyes met his pale light against dark fire and for a moment the world bent around them, air freezing mid-breath.
"They will remember us," Job murmured.
"They already do," she answered.
Letters from the South
By midday, a raven arrived from King's Landing.
Its feathers gleamed red at the tips a sign of enchantment. The Maester hesitated to touch it, muttering of cursed ink, but Job took it anyway.
The parchment bore the lion's seal once more, pressed in gold. The message was short, written in a hand he knew too well:
"The gods stir in the North, and the realm trembles.
Bring her to me.
Or the fire will find you both."
Lily Lannister, Queen of the Ashen Throne
Job crumpled the letter. "She knows."
"Of course she does," Althea murmured. "She felt it."
The Maester crossed himself. "Your Grace, the southern ravens say the Queen has reopened the Black Keep beneath the Red Keep the old Valyrian vaults. She calls it the Dragon's Sepulcher."
Althea looked northward, her expression unreadable. "Then she's calling to the same thing that called to me."
Job turned to her. "What do you mean?"
"The magic in the Crown wasn't northern. It was born of Valyria fire trapped in frost. If she's summoning it again"
She met his eyes.
"She means to take what we've become and make it hers."
Dreams of Fire
That night, Job dreamed of King's Landing burning again.
Only this time, it wasn't dragons it was shadows.
They moved like smoke, whispering in Valyrian, wrapping the city in an endless eclipse. From the heart of the fire rose a woman wearing a crown of molten gold.
"You cannot stop what was promised," she said.
"The dragon and the crow were never meant to share the wolf."
He woke gasping, the air around him frozen solid. His sword glowed faintly beside the bed as if remembering the fire in his dream.
He found Althea already awake, standing before the Weirwood window.
"You saw it too?" he asked.
She nodded slowly. "The Dragon's Sepulcher."
"She's using blood magic."
"Worse," Althea said, turning to face him. "She's using our magic. The bond that tied us. The curse."
Job stepped closer. "Then we go south."
She shook her head. "Not yet. The North hasn't chosen sides. They still remember the wolf. But they fear the crow."
He smiled faintly. "Then let them see both."
The Council of Ice and Flame
By dawn, the Great Hall filled again northern lords wrapped in furs, their breath steaming in the cold. They had not gathered like this since the Long Night.
Job stood before them, silent as stone. Althea sat beside him, her presence quiet but commanding, like a storm waiting to break.
Lord Manderly was the first to speak. "You bring her here, and the snows deepen. You wake the Weirwoods, and the dead stir in their barrows. Tell us, Jon Snow what is she?"
Job's gaze didn't waver. "She's the reason we still draw breath."
A murmur rippled through the hall.
Althea rose slowly. Her shadow stretched across the table long, dark, feathered. "The North is changing because the gods have returned," she said. "Not the ones who sat idle while you froze and bled. Older ones. The ones who remember blood as the language of creation."
"And you?" another lord asked. "Whose tongue do you speak?"
Her smile was faint. "The one that listens."
The room grew cold enough to make the torches sputter.
Job placed a hand on hers. The frost receded.
"Winterfell stands with both fire and ice," he declared. "Those who cannot bear it may leave."
No one moved.
Because even in their fear, they knew something greater than kingdoms was stirring.
The Raven Queen's Pact
Later that night, when the hall lay silent, Althea returned to the godswood. The Weirwood's face had changed the eyes were wider now, the mouth half-open as if ready to speak.
She knelt. "If I am to stand against her, I need more than the Crown."
A whisper coiled around her, Then take back the wings you lost.
The ice at her feet cracked and from beneath it rose three black feathers, glimmering with faint silver veins.
When she touched them, the snow swirled into a vortex and a figure emerged ,the Crow Queen, her other self, the echo that had followed her since her curse began.
"You ask for power," the echo murmured. "But you forget its price."
"I've paid it already."
The reflection smiled, cruel and knowing. "Then pay again."
The feathers pierced her palms like blades. Her breath hitched, blood freezing as it touched the air and wings, shadowed and glistening, unfurled from her back before dissolving into mist.
When she stood again, the godswood was empty but her eyes were no longer human.
The Wolf's Oath
Job found her there before dawn, the snow still red from her ritual.
"What did you do?" he whispered.
"What I had to."
He touched her face gently. Her skin was colder than ever, yet his hand did not burn this time. The fire and frost in him had balanced for now.
"If we go south, we'll face her together," he said.
"If we go south," Althea replied, "we'll face more than her. We'll face every god that died when we defied them."
He smirked faintly. "Then we'll kill them again."
The faintest smile touched her lips. "You sound like me now."
"Maybe I always did."
Outside, the dawn burned crimson over the snow a sun that looked more like a bleeding wound.
The war between gods and mortals had already begun.
The Fire Queen's Summoning
Far away in King's Landing, beneath the Red Keep, Lily Lannister stood before the Valyrian vault.
Her hair had gone pale with streaks of white; her eyes burned golden-red, flecked with madness. Before her, a circle of priests chanted in High Valyrian, the air trembling with heat.
Upon an obsidian altar lay a skull not human, not dragon, something between.
Lily raised her hand. "He took my crown of fire," she said softly. "She took my kingdom. Now I will take their souls."
The priests cried out as flame erupted from the skull's eyes, forming a spiral of burning ash that coiled into the air like a serpent.
From its heart came a voice ancient, feminine, and cold.
"Blood for blood. Soul for soul."
Lily smiled. "Then burn them both."
The Coming Storm
Back in the North, Althea stood beside Job atop the battlements. The sky to the south glowed faintly red.
"She's begun," Althea said.
Job's hand found hers. "Then so do we."
Snow fell thicker, swirling around them like a shroud.
And beneath Winterfell, the ice cracked once more a heartbeat pulsing from the depths.
The gods were waking.