The stones were slick and cold beneath Jon’s boots, a thin skin of frost clinging to the courtyard like a warning. The morning light reached the yard like a cautious guest, thin and colorless, revealing cold stone and worn wood. He paused at the edge of the training yard, breath slow, eyes sweeping the space before him.

  The other boys were already gathered, many boys in the yard, sons of guards, stewards, and Winterfell’s sworn men—every great house needed its blades, and these boys were being shaped into House Stark’s future swords..

  Wooden swords moved in measured arcs, rising and falling in practiced rhythm. The sound of them meeting—dull, hollow clacks—echoed faintly. Footwork scuffed frost aside. Breath steamed in the air. Nothing hurried, nothing sloppy, the boys were passing their time together, training unhurriedly, some showing off, some watching intently, but all waiting for ser rodrick.

  Jon moved toward the weapon racks lining the edge of the yard, where practice blades rested in neat rows—wooden swords darkened by sweat and splintered along the edges from years of careless use. His hand hovered for a moment before closing around one of them. It's grip polished smooth by countless other hands. As he lifted it free, he felt the familiar weight of attention settle on him.

  A snort. A muttered laugh.

  “Snow finally remembered which end to hold.”

  “Give him time. He’ll drop it.”

  Jon’s hands tightened around the grip of his own sword but didn't look toward the boys mocking him.

  His body remembered this place, remembered these motions—not clearly, not cleanly, but like an old ache that returned in the cold. He had stood here before, many times, as Jon Snow. Back when training had meant something different, back when Jon trained for acknowledgement not survival, Back when every mistake had been magnified by laughter, every stumble followed by a shove, a cutting remark, or Theon Greyjoy’s lazy grin.

  He stepped forward anyway.

  Back then, he had never been allowed to focus. Not truly. Theon’s mockery, the snickers of boys eager to please him, the constant pressure to fail—it had all bled together, turning practice into humiliation. Every swing had ended wrong. Every arrow had missed. And every failure had been remembered, repeated, used against him.

  Today would not be like that.

  He had no illusions of strength. His arms were still thin, his endurance poor. But he would not flinch. Not from words. Not from eyes watching for weakness. He would train as the others did, quietly, stubbornly, without fear.

  “Snow.”

  Theon’s voice cut cleanly through the morning air.

  Jon did not turn at once. He finished crossing the yard, took his place along the line, then lifted his chin.

  “Decided to join us today?” Theon said, stepping closer, wooden sword resting loose against his shoulder. “Or are you only brave when no one’s paying attention?”

  Jon met his gaze. “I’m joining today and by the way...... You mistake noise for wit, Theon.”

  The words came out steady. Measured. Not defiant—simply stated.

  Theon’s grin widened, sharp and pleased. “Good. Very good. Let’s see how long that fire in you lasts.”

  Before Jon could answer, Ser Rodrik strode forward, boots crunching against frost. He carried his wooden sword like a thing he trusted more than words. His beard was stiff with cold, his expression already carved into its usual scowl.

  “To the line,” Rodrik barked. “All of you. We begin with guards. No rushing. No showing off. Form first. Always.”

  The boys straightened at once. Now, the true training begins.

  Jon followed suit, feet shoulder-width apart, sword held uncertainly before him. The weight felt familiar, yet wrong—heavier than memory suggested, the balance unfamiliar in his hands.

  “High guard,” Rodrik commanded. “Vom Tag.”

  The boys raised their swords, most with practiced ease—blade lifted above shoulder or head, elbows angled, weight centered. Jon mimicked them a half-heartbeat late, lifting the sword overhead. His shoulders burned almost immediately.

  Rodrik’s gaze snapped to him. “Higher, Snow. You’re not sheltering from rain.”

  Jon adjusted, lifting the blade until it trembled faintly above him. The posture felt exposed, unbalanced, but powerful—like standing at the edge of a fall.

  “Vom Tag is not just a stance,” Rodrik continued, pacing before them. “It is intent. From here, you strike down with purpose. Hesitate, and you’re dead.”

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  “Downward cut,” Rodrik said. “Slow.”

  The line moved.

  Jon reached back into the fragments of the boy’s memories and understood, for the first time, just how much weight Ser Rodrik had always placed on the basics. The old veteran returned to stances again and again.

  Jon’s first swing went wide, too wide.

  A sharp snicker rose from somewhere to his left.

  “Again,” Rodrik snapped. “And breathe this time.”

  Jon reset, lifted the sword back into Vom Tag, and focused—not on the others, not on Theon—but on his stance. Feet planted. Knees bent. Grip firm, not strangling. He swung again.

  The blade moved cleanly.

  Rodrik gave a single nod, then moved on. “Low guard. Pflug.”

  The swords dipped, points angling forward at chest height. Jon shifted clumsily, lowering the blade too far at first before correcting. This stance felt safer—defensive, restrained. His arms shook less here.

  “Pflug teaches patience,” Rodrik said. “You wait. You measure. You do not waste motion.”

  They transitioned again.

  “Ochs,” Rodrik called.

  Jon lifted the sword near his head, point angled toward an imagined opponent’s face. The guard felt awkward, demanding balance and precision rather than strength. His wrists ached as he struggled to keep the point steady.

  Snickers drifted across the line as Jon’s breathing grew louder.

  “Look at him,” one boy muttered. “Arms shaking already.”

  Jon heard them. He heard everything. But he did not turn.

  Rodrik stopped in front of him.

  “You wobble,” he said. “Because you’re thinking about your arms. Stop. Power comes from the legs. Bend your knees.”

  Jon obeyed, adjusting his stance. The sword steadied.

  “Hmph,” Rodrik grunted. “Better.”

  They moved through Alber next—the Fool’s Guard—blade lowered, point near the frozen ground. It felt wrong. Exposed. Jon’s instincts screamed that it invited attack.

  “That discomfort is the lesson,” Rodrik said, as if reading his thoughts. “Not every weakness is real. Sometimes it’s bait.”

  Sweat gathered at Jon’s temples despite the cold. His breath came harder now, fogging the air before him. The frost that had once numbed his fingers was gone, replaced by a deep, spreading ache.

  They cycled through the guards once more. Vom Tag to Pflug. Pflug to Ochs. Ochs to Alber. Over and over, until Jon’s arms screamed and his legs trembled beneath him.

  Ser Roderick's eyes were on Jon in that exact moment.

  he watched all the boys and gave each one of them enough attention but today he noticed something different in the yard.

  He had seen boys exhaust themselves before—seen them burn hot and fast, chasing praise or trying to prove something they did not yet possess. Jon Snow had always been one of those who faltered early, whose focus cracked under eyes and laughter. Rodrik remembered that well.

  Now, he watched more closely.

  Jon’s form was not good. Not yet. His shoulders sagged, his grip tightened when it should have relaxed, and his transitions lagged behind the others by a heartbeat or two. But when the blade was knocked aside, he reset without complaint. When his arms shook, he adjusted his stance instead of lowering the sword. When corrected, he listened.

  That, Rodrik noted, was new.

  The boy did not look for approval. He did not glance sideways for mockery. He simply endured.

  “Focus, Snow!” Rodrik barked suddenly, smacking Jon’s blade aside.

  Jon froze for a breath—then adjusted his stance, grounding himself. He raised the sword again, slower this time, more deliberate. The movements were still imperfect, but they were his. Each transition cleaner than the last.

  Theon watched him from the corner of his eye, sharp and assessing, but Jon did not look back.

  By the time Rodrik finally called a halt, Jon’s arms were leaden, his breath ragged, his shirt damp beneath his layers. Frost clung to his hair where sweat had cooled too quickly.

  Jon thought that No matter how long it took, he would stand here—head high, blade steady—and earn his place in this world.

  And While Jon practiced, pouring everything he had into each swing of his small wooden sword, another pair of calm eyes watched him from afar, different from ser Roderick's eyes. Eyes that were too beautiful to be be a man's eyes.

  They held no malice—only unease, and doubt.

  Eyes belonging to a graceful woman, her looks defying the passage of time, with a frame any man might admire. A few of the men in the castle, catching her in passing glances, trying their hardest and doing everything they could to hide a flicker of envy for her husband, Eddard Stark, for the fortune of sharing his bed with her. Calm eyes, sharp and assessing, watched silently from afar. Catelyn Stark, Lady of Winterfell.

  She was the quiet center of the castle’s life. While her husband, Eddard Stark, ruled the North—burdened with bannermen, justice, and the thin economy of a harsh land—Catelyn ruled within these walls. The rhythms of the household, the servants, the stores, the order of daily life: all of it passed through her hands. Winterfell breathed by her will.

  She had heard the servants’ accounts of Jon Snow. For months—perhaps years—he had withdrawn from the others. Quiet. Brooding. A boy sunk into himself. He showed little progress in the yard, little presence in the halls. But recently, that had changed. The same servants—her eyes and ears, eager to please her even when she did not ask—had spoken of him lingering in the study for hours, reading. Behavior unlike his former self.

  Her thoughts returned, unwillingly, to an older memory.

  Jon had been small then—too small, she remembered thinking. Feverish, skin burning beneath her hand. The maester had been occupied elsewhere, and for a night and a day it had been she who stayed. She had changed the cloth at his brow when it grew warm, measured his breathing when it grew shallow, and whispered prayers to the Seven when his body trembled in sleep. He had clutched her sleeve once, weak and unknowing, as if she were his mother, and for a moment she was.

  The memory still unsettled her.

  She had not done it out of love. Nor out of duty alone. It had been instinct, something older than reason, and afterward she had felt shame for it—shame that such care had come so easily, shame that it had stirred something she did not wish to name.

  She had never hated Jon.

  But his existence was a wound that never closed. A living reminder of her husband’s silence, of a past Ned Stark would never explain. And as a woman raised in the Faith of the Seven, taught that bastards were born of sin, that discomfort had always found fertile ground in belief.

  Now she watched him move.

  There was something different in his stance. Not skill—he still lacked that—but intent. His swings were deliberate. His posture strained but stubborn. He rose after mistakes instead of shrinking from them.

  Determination.

  Catelyn’s delicet fingers tightened slightly at her side.

  It did not ease her heart.

  It troubled it more.