A faint grey seeped into the sky by the time Jon stirred. Not the clean grey of a Northern morning, but something hazed and foreign, a colour caught between gold and ash. For a moment, he didn't move. He listened.
No wind rattling shutters. No crows. No muttered snoring from watchmen. Just the low crackle of fire dying to embers and the nameless hum of a land he still didn't trust.
He sat up slowly. His spine protested, stiff from the stone floor beneath his cloak. Kalé was already awake, sorting wares by the faint glow of Grace. The merchant's movements were quiet, unhurried, as though mornings had always behaved this way, even under wandering stars. "Sleep didn't take too much from you, then," he said without looking up.
Jon rubbed his eyes. "I've known worse nights."
"I imagine you have." Kalé's tone held no request for explanation, and Jon gave none.
He rose, brushed grit from his cloak, and stepped outside the ruin. Morning washed the plains in pale gold, the kind of light that made every blade of grass gleam like metal. Stormhill waited in the distance, jagged and dark against the bright horizon.
That glimmer brushed the corner of his sight again, warm and coaxing. Jon turned away from it. He studied the land the way he'd learned to read the Haunted Forest: noting lines of movement, places where men might hide, or beasts might stalk.
No smoke on the plains. No silhouettes on the ridge where the Sentinel had walked.
Good.
He ducked back into the ruin.
Kalé finished packing a bundle of dried fruit. "You'll want this. The climb up Stormhill rarely grants a man time to hunt."
Jon accepted the strip silently, tucking it into a pouch.
Kalé's hands stilled for a breath. "Before Stormhill you'll reach a place called the Gatefront ruins. Old battlements. Godrick's soldiers squat there now. If you want a safe climb, there's a map in those ruins that will spare you wandering blind."
Jon gave a short nod. "Then that's where I go."
Kalé studied him for a moment but whatever he sought, he kept to himself. He simply said, "Follow the road until the arch. From there, keep your eyes sharp and your steps sharper."
Jon adjusted the strap of his scabbard. "You've been honest with me."
"Honesty's worth nothing if a man dies before using it."
Jon allowed himself the smallest flicker of a smile. "Fair enough."
He stepped out into the open. The morning air brushed cool against his face, carrying a scent that was neither sea nor snow nor forest. Something new. Something impossible.
Kalé called after him: "Keep to the shadows where you can. And if you must cross the open, cross fast."
Jon lifted a hand in acknowledgment without turning.
By the time he crossed the first rise, the ruined sept had vanished behind a fold of earth, swallowed by distance and morning light.
The plains opened wide before him.
Stormhill's cliffs waited beyond them.
And somewhere between here and there, he would learn what this strange land expected of him--or what it feared.
The wind shifted as he walked, losing the easy warmth of Kalé's fire. Out here, the silence deepened, no birdsong, no distant horns, only the long sigh of grass bowing under the golden light. Each step carried him farther from the safety of stone walls and into land that seemed to watch him in return. A lone traveller on a road that felt older than its tracks. His hand drifted near Longclaw, not out of fear, but recognition: whatever ruled these plains, it wasn't friendly to the uninvited.
The road narrowed as it bent east, trading open plains for a darker smear of trees. Jon smelled the change before he reached it: the faint, metallic tang of rot carried by a breeze too warm for morning.
He slowed his pace.
The first trees rose before him like sentries, oaks warped by age, bark veined with moss the colour of old bruises. Their branches knit overhead, dimming the daylight into a half-lit hush. The grass thinned into bare earth packed by many boots. Too many for shepherds. Too deliberate for wandering folk.
Men had walked this way too often. The ground showed it--pressed flat, beaten into a path no grazing herds would make.
Jon's hand drifted near Longclaw's grip.
The wind shifted.
A sourness clung to it.
He stepped forward and stopped.
Shapes hung among the branches ahead. At first, he mistook them for sacks or broken banners. Then a breeze stirred the nearest figure. Cloth shifted. A bare foot turned slowly in the air.
Men. Women. Common folk, their heads bowed by rope-bitten necks. Their clothes simple: patched tunics, mud-stained hems, a shepherd's cloak. No weapons. No armour. No signs of banditry or rebellion.
Just people.
The breath left Jon in a hard, controlled exhale. His chest tightened, the same instinctive recoil he'd felt seeing the pyres at the Fist, or the children the Thenns roasted for sport. Smallfolk weren't made for war. They endured until they were ground down.
This was slaughter dressed as order.
He stepped closer to one of the bodies. A woman this time--young, maybe twenty. The plank hanging against her chest bore jagged lines, harsh angles, nothing Jon truly recognised. But the way they'd been carved--deep, careless, meant to be seen--spoke plainly enough. A condemnation. A sentence passed on someone who'd never had the chance to answer it.
Rage rose in him sharp and cold, the kind he'd learned to leash or be ruled by. But it bit deep. Whoever had done this hadn't acted in frenzy or fear. This was methodical. Expected.
Sanctioned.
The forest creaked around him as though shifting under the weight of it.
Jon forced himself to move. There was nothing he could do for them now. But he would remember.
The deeper he went, the thicker the silence pressed. Birds kept to the outer branches. No insects hummed. Even his own footfalls felt swallowed by the moss, as if the forest had learned to hide from its own horrors.
Bootsteps echoed ahead.
Jon dropped low behind a gnarled root, breath steadying itself as his pulse flared.
Two soldiers entered a small clearing. Their armour was dented and neglected, straps patched with twine, but their weapons gleamed, well-oiled and eager for use. They walked with the careless swagger of men who had been allowed to do harm unchallenged for too long.
One glanced at the bodies. "Rope's wasted on their sort," he muttered.
"If they'd any fight in 'em," the other scoffed, "they wouldn't be swinging there."
Jon's jaw tightened. He'd seen men speak cruelty, but rarely with such bored certainty.
He waited, motionless. The soldiers lingered longer than he liked, idly kicking at roots, muttering about their next shift. One turned back once--too soon, too sharp--and Jon's muscles coiled for a fight he knew he couldn't win quietly.
But the man only spat and moved on.
Jon stayed crouched until the last echo of boots faded.
He rose slowly, breath low, and slipped deeper into the trees.
More bodies hung farther in, but he kept his eyes forward now. Looking too long felt like letting grief gain ground.
Somewhere beyond this forest lay the ruins and the map Kalé had spoken of.
Somewhere beyond that, Stormhill.
And atop it, the lord who had ordered this, or allowed it.
Jon moved faster.
At the far edge of the woods, the sound of camp noise drifted to him. The sooner he left this forest behind, the better chance he had of making sense of a land that greeted strangers with nooses and silence.
He moved toward the sound with measured steps, keeping to the thicker brush until the last of the trees thinned. The forest spat him out onto a slope of broken earth and scattered stone. From here, he could see farther, enough to understand the scale of the encampment ahead. Smoke drifted in lazy threads above half-collapsed walls. A snapped banner flapped weakly on a bent post.
Jon slid down behind the nearest fallen block of masonry; the old stone was still cool beneath his palm. The scent of damp leaves gave way to the harsher smell of oil, soot, and unwashed armour.
Jon studied the sprawl ahead from behind a shattered wall: broken columns jutting like ribs from the earth, watchfires burning low, and soldiers slouching in lazy clusters around the remains of what had once been a barracks. Shredded banners hung from leaning posts. Tents sagged. Armour clanked without rhythm.
Kalé had called this place "held," but it looked more like squatters picking meat from old bones.
The map he needed lay somewhere in that mess.
Jon crept along the edge of the ruins, keeping low as he wound between fallen stones. Smoke from cookfires drifted across the clearing, masking him for a moment. A soldier poked at embers with a spear, muttering to himself. Two more argued over dice near a firepit. Others dozed against crumbling masonry, helmets tilted forward.
A camp grown careless.
Jon slipped behind a toppled statue, some forgotten hero cracked clean at the waist--and peered into the heart of the ruins.
There.
Near a half-collapsed wagon, a small stone table had been set up. A single parchment lay pinned beneath a dagger. A map.
One guard stood over it, armour scuffed but attention sharp.
Jon weighed the odds and felt that cold steadiness settle over him, the same grounded focus that had carried him through Craster's Keep, or through the snow outside Mance's tent. Fear didn't sharpen him; purpose did.
He waited until the guard's gaze drifted toward the ridge, distracted by a distant shout.
Then he moved.
Silent. Quick. A shadow.
Jon crossed the space in three controlled strides. The guard turned a heartbeat too late, eyes widening as Jon seized him by the collar and hammered his head against the wagon's side. The man slumped without a cry.
The man's fingers twitched as he fell, scraping against Jon's sleeve. Jon froze, expecting a gasp or a shout, anything to snap the camp awake. None came. But the brush of skin threw Jon's breath off for a heartbeat.
A chime rang in his ears.
Jon turned, an instant too late.
A blade raked across his ribs, hot then cold. He twisted away, pain flaring sharp as teeth. The attacker--a soldier with a too-wide grin--lunged again. Jon parried, steel ringing off steel, then slammed his shoulder into the man's chest. The soldier stumbled back.
Shouts rose.
Steel rasped from sheaths.
Jon backed toward the shadows, Longclaw held low and ready.
Pain flared up his side, sharp as a hammer blow. Not clean. Not easy. Nothing in this cursed land ever would be.
The motion dragged fire along his ribs. For a heartbeat, bright flecks pricked the edges of his sight--too sharp, too sudden. The creature's strike had burrowed deeper than he'd allowed himself to admit.
A sharp breath escaped before he could smother it.
His ribs screamed with the motion, the bruised flesh pulling tight beneath his tunic. He forced the pain down, but it clung to him, a hot coil under every breath. Running would cost him. Fighting would cost him more. But staying would kill him.
Another soldier barrelled toward him. Jon slipped aside, letting the man's momentum carry him forward, and cut behind the knee. The man collapsed with a howl. Jon didn't linger to finish him.
He needed distance. Not bodies.
A spear whistled past, grazing his arm. The pain was brief but bright.
More voices. More boots. Torchlight flaring.
Jon ducked behind ruined stone and forced himself into a run--more a driven, stumbling rush than the clean sprint he wanted. Every stride jarred his ribs, sending pain up his side in sick pulses. Arrows hissed past, one shattering against rock, another slicing a hot line across his forearm. Shouts chased him up the slope, but as he gained ground, the noise behind him changed.
The soldiers slowed.
Not because of terrain--there was space enough for ten men to march--but because of what loomed ahead on the cliffs. Their ranks bunched, then hesitated, the front-line glancing toward the heights with a fear that had nothing to do with Jon.
"Hold!" someone barked. But even the officer's voice shook.
A few hardier men followed a dozen steps more, driven by duty or pride. Then the wind shifted, carrying a low, shuddering moan from the great stone arch above. It wasn't the voice of the gorge. It wasn't the weather. It was something waiting.
Their courage cracked.
One man backed away first. Another followed. Then a third. The whole line faltered, retreating in uneven steps, not toward safety but away from that. Jon had seen men break before, but this was different--they weren't afraid of him. They were afraid of the Stormgate.
By the time he reached the incline's crest, the last of the soldiers had already fallen back toward their camp, leaving him alone with the rising wind and the vast shadow ahead.
The road went up a towering gate carved into the cliff face. Two massive battlements flanked a high, yawning archway, old banners hanging in tatters from eroded stone. Wind knifed through the gap, carrying a deep, hollow moan that felt too deliberate to be chance.
Jon climbed the final stretch--and froze.
High above the gatehouse, on a jut of broken rock, a hulking silhouette waited. Broad. Jagged. Wrongly shaped. Its outline shifted as the wind tore at it, and something glinted where its arms--or what passed for arms--hung low at its sides.
A watcher.
A warden.
Or something far worse.
Jon's fingers tightened around Longclaw's grip.
The Stormgate had been expecting him.
---
Author's note: Jon gets his first clear look at the cruelty Godrick's men inflict on common folk. It was important to me for Jon to see this kind of injustice. I won't be entirely following the Elden Ring map 1 to 1 because it would get a bit too boring if its just a Jon Snow Elden Ring playthrough but also because it's a lot bigger in lore and in my mind closer to feylands than Westeros.