The storm had settled by the time Lord Cregan Stark reached the edge of the Wolfswood. Snow lay heavy on the pines, silent and thick as wool, but the trail remained. A line of prints—too small for a ranger, too deliberate for game—pressed through the fresh white. No birds sang. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

He dismounted, letting the horse go. No beast should be near when that scent was in the air. Ash, blood, pine sap. The markers of old ways.

“They say the wolves eat from her hand,” the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch had muttered before Cregan set out. He had said it with the tight mouth of a man who wanted to believe in stories but feared they might be true. Cregan followed the prints deeper into the woods.

The trees thickened. Somewhere ahead, a branch cracked—not with the chaos of breaking under snow, but with the purposeful rhythm of footsteps. He slowed, one hand at his belt, the other resting on the pommel of his sword. Greycloak draped around him like a shadow, he waited.

Then came the howl.

Not one, but many. Close. Too close.

He didn’t reach for steel. Not yet.

A figure moved in the dim—just enough to know it wasn’t alone. Shapes padded beside her, low and quiet, their eyes catching flickers of dying light. Direwolves. At least three, full-grown. Untethered, but not wild. Not to her.

Cregan’s voice was low and gruff when he spoke. “Are you the one they whisper of?”

The woman stepped forward, unhooded. Snow kissed her lashes. She did not smile. She only raised a hand—and none of the wolves so much as blinked.

He studied her face like a map, searching for something older than rumor.

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” he asked. “The fire in the snow. The dream of dragons dying.”

Still, she said nothing.

But the woods did. The hush, the cold, the pulse beneath the snow. He set his jaw.

Something old was awake and alive... stirring.

And he was running out of time.