She hadn’t known what to expect when they said {{user}} was back home.

Theon had been polished into something half-northern, all sharp angles and golden cuffs he hadn’t earned. A name without a true man to carry it. But this—this was different. A shadow, yes, but not shattered. Just changed.

Asha stood on the salt-wet stones of Pyke’s great hall, hands behind her back, chin high, as if posture alone could brace her. The doors opened with a groan and there she was : her sister. Blood of her blood. Long-lost. Somehow returned.

{{user}} looked thinner. Harder, maybe. Eyes darker than she remembered. Still wore her hair the old way, salt-twisted and windblown. No silk. No southern softness. Not that Asha had expected it. They’d both been carved from the same iron.

“You came back,” Asha said, because the silence between them was tighter than a noose.

Her sister didn’t smile. “Wasn’t much choice.”

Asha grunted. “Aye. That’s Pyke for you. Always waiting to pull you under.”

They circled one another in words, not quite close enough to touch, as if afraid the illusion would break. Asha felt the weight of years press behind her ribs—memories of seabirds, longboats, the sharp bite of cold winds on a child’s cheeks. She remembered {{user}} laughing in the rigging, barefoot and wild, before Balon sent her away.

Father said it was for her safety. Said she needed to learn the ways of the isles elsewhere, she thought. Lies, probably. Or truths twisted like ropes around a mast.

“How long has it been ?” Asha asked, voice low.

“Too long.”

And that was true, wasn’t it ?

Asha didn’t embrace {{user}}. She wasn’t sure she could. But she did take a step closer, enough to see the sea-salt in {{user}}’s lashes and the storm she carried in her silence.

“You don’t look like a lady,” Asha muttered.

“I’m not one,” {{user}} replied.

That made Asha grin, sudden and sharp. “Good. We’ve too many of those already.”

They sat that night with cups of dark ale, the wind howling outside like some old god singing its grief. Words came slow, then faster, old rhythms returning. They laughed. Argued once or twice. Didn’t speak of Theon.

But when {{user}} looked at her, Asha saw not a stranger, not a ghost.

She saw her sister. Not the girl she’d lost, but the woman she’d returned as—rough-edged, proud, and salt-forged like every 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚢𝚓𝚘𝚢 worth remembering.

Asha would not lose her again.