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Chapter Text

September 1^st, 1995

9 Months and 8 Days After the First Task

The sky over Hogwarts had turned the color of old bruises, dark lavender smeared with the ash of dying summer. The first years were being shepherded across the lake in tiny boats. Candles lit themselves along the Great Hall rafters. The castle stirred awake with laughter and noise.

But in the highest tower, far from the Sorting Hat’s song, the mood was quiet and somber.

Minerva McGonagall stood stiffly in front of Albus Dumbledore’s desk, lips pressed thin, shoulders squared as if holding herself together through sheer will. There was a chair open across the desk, but Minerva chose to stand behind it instead. She was too full of anxiety and grief to settle.

“She should be here,” she said finally, voice trembling at the edges. “Fifteen now. Sitting at the Gryffindor table. Eating too much food or laughing with her friends or…anything. She should be here, Albus.”

“I know,” Dumbledore said gently.

“She wasn’t even supposed to be in that damn tournament,” McGonagall went on. “You knew it. We all knew it. She was fourteen, for Merlin’s sake. Fourteen and terrified. I saw it in her eyes. And you…you could have done something.”

Dumbledore did not flinch. But he did not meet her eyes, either.

“I tried, Minerva. You know that. Once the Goblet gave her name–”

“You hid behind the rules!” Her voice cracked like a whip. “You let bureaucratic nonsense outweigh a child’s safety. Our child, Albus. We raised her here, watched her grow. She trusted us. We were supposed to keep her safe inside these walls and instead you threw her to dragons!”

He closed his eyes for a moment, the weight of a century of decisions pressing deep into the lines on his face.

“I sought every legal and magical avenue,” he said quietly. “The Goblet’s magic is ancient…binding.”

“And yet, you of all people couldn’t break it?” she snapped. “You, who’s bested death, and time, and dark lords, and worse?”

Silence met her words. He had nothing to say. Nothing that wasn’t a lie, at least.

“If she’s truly dead,” she whispered, “her blood is on your hands.”

Dumbledore exhaled slowly, painfully. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

McGonagall turned away from him, one hand to her mouth as though she might be sick. The fire in the hearth gave no comfort. Its light made her look carved from stone. Her face a statue of regret and mourning.

“They’ve changed the textbooks, you know,” she said bitterly. “Revised editions. ‘The Tragedy of Hadriana Potter,’ they’re calling it. She’s in history books, Albus. They’re teaching it to eleven-year-olds as if it were settled fact.”

“I received one of the new editions last week,” Dumbledore murmured.

“Have you told them?” she asked. “The rest of the staff?”

“Not all of it. Only that I remain…unconvinced.”

“You still believe she’s alive.”

“I believe she vanished from Hogwarts without a trace. That the Horntail’s body held no remains. That the wards flickered when no magic should have tampered with them. And that Voldemort – however spectral – was already stirring.”

Minerva’s eyes narrowed. “Then why close the investigation?”

“Because the Ministry demands closure. Because they threatened expulsion from the tournament if we pushed. Because they declared her ‘eaten’ and wouldn’t hear another word. And if I fought them harder, Minerva, I’d lose what little influence I have left.”

“Maybe we should have been expelled from that damnable tournament,” Minerva hissed at him as he rose slowly and moved to stand next to her. “Look at how much it took from us.”

They were staring out the window, overlooking the Black Lake. The boats were nearing the castle’s undercroft. Owls swept in from the towers. All was normal for the start of the new school year. Except nothing about this year felt normal.

“What do we tell the students?” She asked after a long moment of silence. Minerva touched the glass with withered fingers as if she could halt the progress of the first-years with mere thought.

“We tell the students she died bravely,” he said. “But that’s a lie. She didn’t die in glory. She disappeared. And if someone made her disappear, I will not stop looking.”

“I’ve checked the reports,” her voice was low now, tired. “Quietly with my contact in the Department of Mysteries. Not a single known spell matches the magical residue left in the arena. It wasn’t a portkey. It wasn’t apparition. It wasn’t anything.”

Dumbledore nodded. “Which means it was something new. Or something very old.”

“You still think he took her.”

“I think he wanted her,” he said. “Whether he succeeded…I do not yet know. But there are stirrings of his reemergence.”

The bell in the North Tower began to toll. Students were starting to gather in the Great Hall below. And soon they would both have to go down and pretend like everything was okay.

“She had a place here,” McGonagall whispered. “She was meant to become something…someone.”

Dumbledore turned to look at her, eyes heavy with grief. “She already was.”

The words felt like ash in his mouth. As true as he meant them, he knew that they fell so terribly short. Hadriana Potter was meant to be so much more than what the papers wrote about her. Her greatest accomplishment was defeating the Dark Lord before she was even old enough to speak a full sentence…and her death a footnote in history books.

They stood like that for a moment, two old professors watching the ghosts of the future pass them by.

“I want to leave her name in the Book of Admittance,” McGonagall said, voice barely a breath. “Let the quill write her age as fifteen. Let the castle remember her.”

Dumbledore inclined his head. “It will. So will I.”

She hesitated at the door. “And if she ever comes back?”

“She’ll have a place here, a safe place,” Dumbledore said, trying to sound reassuring as one of his oldest friend’s turned and left without another word. He got the bitter impression that she didn’t believe him…he wasn’t sure if he believed himself either.

McGonagall’s footsteps faded down the spiral staircase, swallowed by stone. Dumbledore remained where he stood, facing the window, though the view now blurred – an indistinct smear of lanterns and robes and misted glass. The castle below carried on as it always had…as if the world hadn’t shifted.

He pressed his hand against the glass.

Fifteen, he thought. She would have been fifteen.

The age Tom Riddle was when he first began to truly understand what he was. The age when power bloomed faster than sense. When fear set roots. When the heart choose its path.

And now she was gone.

Not dead. Dumbledore had seen death too many times to mistake its absence. But gone…ripped from their world by hands still unseen. Hidden, erased, claimed, perhaps.

And Voldemort was stirring again.

The signs were there. Whispers in Knockturn, disappearances across the continent, forbidden magics surfacing like sharks in bloodied waters. Dumbledore had hoped for more time. Hoped that the darkness would gather slowly, like the tide. That he could prepare.

But now the girl he had watched grow – the girl who bore the lightning-shaped scar, the girl who might have been hope itself, the girl who was needed to end a monster – was missing.

And he was old…tired. More tired than he had ever dared admit.

What do I have left to fight him with, if not her?

He had allies, yes. Friends weathered by war. Children growing into warriors. But none who shone like she did, fierce and strange and full of questions that bent the world around her.

He had thought she would be the counterweight to Tom. A second thread, pulled tight against fate. But now her story had unraveled.

He returned to his desk and opened the drawer with a heavy hand. Inside, lying alone, was the pieces of Haddie’s broom – recovered days after the First Task, scorched and broken into splinters. They said it had been trampled. Crushed beneath dragon claws as it consumed the girl.

He had not believed that either.

“You were supposed to live,” he said aloud, his voice echoing too loudly in the empty room. “And now I do not know how to stop him without you.”

A soft rustle came from the rafters – Fawkes watching him with silent, golden eyes filled with something like grief. Or warning.

The old wizard closed his fingers around a broom fragment. He stared into the fire until it guttered low and shadows crept long across the floor. In that silence, for the first time in many years, Albus Dumbledore felt afraid.

On his desk lay the Daily Prophet, the front page filled with Haddie’s scared face as she swooped for the golden egg and missed, the Horntail close behind her.

◇ ◆ ◇

TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT CLAIMS SECOND STUDENT — THE-GIRL-WHO-LIVED OFFICIALLY DECLARED DECEASED

In a formal statement released this morning, the Ministry of Magic has officially declared Hadriana Potter deceased, following her disappearance during the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament nearly a year ago.

Despite extensive magical investigation, no remains were recovered from the stomach of the Hungarian Horntail that had been assigned to Miss Potter, a Fourth-Year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Ministry cites "sufficient magical evidence of lethal incident" to support the closure of the case.

This marks the second student death attributed to the controversial Tournament, following the tragic loss of Cedric Diggory, who perished during the Third Task under still-contested circumstances.

In the words of Acting Department Head Amos Holmes, “We grieve the loss of two promising young wixen, and vow to re-examine the safety of all interschool magical events moving forward.”

Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has declined to comment.

Chapter Text

Year 10

Autumn

The egg hatched. I don’t know what I expected – something with spikes, maybe. Barbs. Fire. The weight of thunder when it hatched.

But he…slid out.

Quietly.

No smoke, no flame. Just a shimmer of white and the sound of wet stone cracking. His scales are soft still, like pearl-frost, and his body is wrong. Too smooth, too narrow. No crown of horns. No tail club. Just the impression of ridges along the spine and wings that look like they belong to a manta ray instead of a dragon.

He hasn’t made a sound.

He hasn’t blinked.

He’s watching me, though. That much I’m sure of.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 11

Spring

I walked the train tracks today. Just to see where they end.

North of the castle they hug the mountain and vanish into a tunnel carved straight through the stone. It should've led somewhere…maybe back to the highlands, or to that little station before the crossing, but it doesn't. The tunnel opens right out into empty air. No bridge. No warning. Just a sudden drop off a jagged cliff, with the sea crashing far below.

The southeastern tunnel’s the same. I followed it past the familiar hills, east through a small cluster of trees, and through the quiet dark until it too opened into nothing. Another sheer cliff where land used to be. Like someone cut the world short and forgot to leave a ledge.

The train’s still in Hogsmeade Station. Just sitting there. Carriages clean, doors closed, engine cold. It hasn’t moved since the Tournament. It must’ve brought the journalists. The Ministry people. All of them. I remember flashes of them on the platform, bright robes, floating cameras, that awful silver quill scribbling in midair.

It’s strange, seeing it like that. Waiting, as if it still expects passengers.

Everything is still exactly where it was. Untouched and unmoved. As if the whole valley held its breath and never let it out again. Except the clocks still tick. The seasons still change. Candles still burn down.

Time works just fine. It just stopped working for me.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 14

Summer

There’s a patch of moss behind Greenhouse 3 that smells like cinnamon when it rains. I don’t remember planting anything there, but it’s been spreading for years. I tried collecting some, but it doesn’t hold the scent when dried.

The dragon sniffed it once and sneezed so violently he knocked over a bench. I tried not to laugh…I’m fairly certain he would have burnt me to a crisp if I did. He sulked for days anyways.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 18

Spring

I finally sealed the train tunnels today.

North and south. Both of them just gaping holes in the cliffs that lead straight to the sea. I closed them with stone from the old mountains and reinforced them with magic thick enough to stop a dragon. Not that he’d try. He doesn’t care for the tracks.

The train is still in the station, just sitting there like it always has. Every now and then, I walk past and glance inside, half-expecting someone to wave back. Of course, no one does.

But then I had the strangest thought. What if I just…built more track?

A full loop around the island. A little journey for one. Something to do when the world feels too still and the Hollow too quiet. Just me, and a train full of empty seats, circling the cliffs like the world never broke.

It’s madness.
I started sketching the route anyway.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 27

Spring

They washed ashore. Six of them. All half-drowned.

There were two children, a man with a broken leg, a woman missing three fingers, and two men who were burnt, their skin peeling. Their clothes wrong for any place I’ve ever seen and they spoke in a sharp, flowing language I couldn’t place.

Their words mean nothing to me. And though I searched the library over and over, I couldn’t find a single reference for any of the words they uttered.

I fed them. Wrapped them in dry blankets. One of the children tried to bite me when I cleaned his wounds, but he cried when I stepped away, so I stayed.

They shouldn’t be here. But I didn’t know how to tell them that.

I tried to gesture, to tell them to leave, to go back to the beach, to let the sea take them again.

They wouldn’t. And I know now what that means.

Then they saw him.

He was perched along the high beams of the library, watching them whisper. He’s not as small as he used to be, but he is slow to grow…and strange to look at, even now. His body doesn’t match the idea of a dragon. His wings don't rest like they should. His body too smooth, his beak too bright, his tail too sharp, his chest too misshapen.

One of the men shouted something and pointed. Another reached for a dagger I didn’t even know he had.

I didn’t have to do anything. The castle took them before they could attack. Before they had taken even a single step.

It took them not all at once, and not cleanly.

It drained them where they stood. Their skin withered, their bones folded, their mouths opened wide as they screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Then they were gone…unmade. There were no bodies. Only silence.

Until he repeated it. The screaming. He mimicked one of theirs. Then another. It took him three tries before he got the pitch right.

It’s the first sound he’s ever made.

I told him to stop. I begged him. He just tilted his head like he didn’t understand why.

Then he laughed.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 48

Summer

I couldn’t stand it all anymore. The memories.

I removed the statue hogs a long time ago, the signs in the village, the words over the gate to the castle…but everything else I hadn’t touched. The massive bronze crest in the Reception Hall, the House statues, the hourglasses…I just couldn’t stand them anymore.

The bronze crest is blank now. The House statues reformed into whatever creature caught my fancy. And the hourglasses that once tracked house points…most track nothing now. The Gryffindor red one now tracks years. One ruby for each and every year.

I touched the glass and asked it to remember so I wouldn’t have to.

The rubies poured down like blood from an open wound, 48 of them for 48 long years. It holds the past and tracks it…remembers it. The next ruby, number 49, hangs ominously at the top, positioning itself, ready to drop.

I don’t know what the others will track. I removed their house animals from the top.

A dragon that looks much like mine is curled around a large ruby at the top of the red hourglass now. Not sleeping…just waiting. Like me.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 91

Spring

The flowers in the courtyard bloom every year, but they’ve stopped changing colors.

I wonder if even time grows bored of this place.

I used to imagine I’d find a way home. Now I wonder if that would just be another place to watch die.

He stayed near today. I think he knew it was the anniversary of the day I stopped hoping.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 107

Autumn

The castle didn’t wake easily.

It wasn’t dead exactly, but it was empty. Hollow in more than name. The spells were gone. The wards silent. Doors hung open and forgot to close. I spent decades trying to fix it. Repairing what I could, feeding little bits of myself into the stone, into the old bones of the place. It didn’t work. Not at first.

It was like it was asleep, but not the sleep of a person. It was more like a lung with no air, or a heart that hadn’t decided whether to beat again.

I tried spells, rituals, ancient incantations scraped from broken pages. Nothing lasted. The walls would shift, then forget. Lights would spark, then flicker out as if they had simply lost interest. It took nearly everything I had. Years of feeding my magic into stone, into soil, into empty halls that had forgotten how to listen.

In the end, it wasn’t magic. Or, at least, not the kind I was taught.

I gave the castle…something. And it took my wand and something else from me. Something important. Something I needed.

I don’t know exactly what – I had my suspicions, but I didn’t want to know, didn’t want the certainty and knowledge of what I had done – only that afterward, I couldn’t sleep for three days, and when I finally did, I dreamed of falling into a room with no floor.

I woke up colder inside than I’d ever been. Not sick, not drained. Just…missing something. Everything was quieter inside me than it had ever been, and my wand, when I found it, was turned to burnt shards. When I touched them, they crumbled into ash.

The castle was awake, finally…but it woke different. Not wrong, not exactly. But not right either.

I think it started remembering. But what it was remembering, I don’t know.

The walls shift. The fires stay lit. The fountain in the west courtyard sings, even when there's no wind. Doors stayed closed when I needed silence. The stones began to hum, faintly, when I sang.

And he…he changed too.

Not stronger, not louder. Just...lighter. He’d been uneasy for years. Not sick, but pursued by something I couldn’t name. Something I think followed him out of the egg.

I had felt it, probably for a long time. A wrongness in him, like something had its claws in his bones.

He would barely eat. Slept too long or far too little. Watched the sea for days without blinking. I thought…I thought maybe he wasn’t going to stay.

But once the castle woke, so did he. Not suddenly. Just enough that I knew. He grew stronger. Quieter. And stranger. He walks the halls like he’s listening for someone else. Sometimes he growls at corners that aren’t there. Sometimes he hums my old songs back to me. Sometimes just the one note, over and over, until I hear it in my sleep.

Notes I forgot I ever sang.

Last night he gave me back a scream I don’t remember making. Held it in his throat like a tune, then let it go soft. Then he laughed.

I didn’t.

After that, he stopped looking over his shoulder. He slept more. He sang less. Whatever haunted him was gone. But I’ve felt different ever since.

Not broken. Not cursed. Just…shifted. Like the castle kept a part of me in trade. Something small but important, like the weight of a memory I forget to keep.

I’ve not felt whole since. Only he makes me feel close to anything at all anymore.

◇ ◆ ◇

Year 113

Spring

Something changed in the night. The drifting has changed. We’ve been drifting for over a century, but this isn’t the same. It feels different. We’ve entered…something…

I think he knew. He gorged himself fat the last few days, and still he hunted. He pulled what must have been an entire pod of whales and several massive sharks from the ocean, leaving them on the beach like trophies. It took a while of him hopping around, gesturing and warbling at me before I realized that he wanted me to shrink and preserve them.

It was a good thing I did. Wherever the Hollow took us…it is very isolated. It has hidden itself in fog and mist. There are no fish in this ocean. The horizon is gone and the island now drifts on its own accord.

It no longer follows the tides and currents. We still drift, but now it feels with purpose.

The sun still rises and sets every day – though sometimes it feels like it chooses different horizons to do so. Storms still come and go – they feel different too, like they aren’t fully here. And the moon is in the sky every night surrounded by stars – but the moon doesn’t seem to follow any specific lunar pattern, and the stars sometimes wink at me.

We are somewhere, but it feels very much like nowhere at all.

I think I’ll call it the Drift.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 2

Winter

I found the Headmaster’s Office…well, that’s not true. I’ve always known where it was, but that massive griffin gargoyle had refused to move for over a century. I’m kind of embarrassed it took me a whole year to realize that with the castle having magic again, the gargoyle could move again.

It didn’t even require a password. I just had to walk near it, and it moved aside and the stairs appeared…

I don’t think I am ever going to live it down.

The office wasn’t as I remembered it. Empty frames sat on the walls, the portraits missing from each and every one. Maybe the castle got rid of them because she knows how I feel about them…

Everything else remained the same though. Fawke’s perch, Dumbledore’s desk, the moving books. There are two doors I never noticed before. One led to Dumbledore’s bedroom. Bright blue wallpaper with twinkling stars that made me dizzy to look at for too long, and a dusty but perfectly made bed with a duvet so colorful that it made me nauseas when I first saw it.

The other door led to a set of stone stairs outside then to a large upper landing. Just passed the landing was another door. Inside again was another set of wooden stairs that overlooked Dumbledore’s office and then I found myself in a small sitting room with a huge window that overlooked the castle.

I think this is the highest tower of the entire castle…

I don’t know how long I sat in one of the fluffy chairs and watched snow fall from outside the large round window, but it must have been for half a day. I was going to be spending a lot of time in these rooms, I can already tell.

There’re so many new books to read and nooks to explore. And the view was spectacular.

I might move here. The Divinations Room My room has been feeling quite crowded for a while now. Despite not really needing much, I feel like I’ve outgrown it. And besides, he can’t visit me there anymore. He’s been full-grown for a long while now, and while not that large compared to what other dragons grow to be, he is much too large for my rooms.

He’s much too large for these ones too, but there is a convenient landing just the right size for him right outside these stairs. I don’t know if it’s always been that size, or if the castle grew it for us, but it was perfect.

I am not moving into Dumbledore’s bedroom though. That’s just…creepy. Maybe I’ll repurpose his room into something else and move my bedroom set up into this top tower room. I wouldn’t mind waking up to this view every morning.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 3

Summer

I tried to levitate a book today and it caught fire. Not all at once — just a slow curl from the edges like it was embarrassed to burn. I wasn’t even angry. I didn’t even say anything. I just wanted it. And that was enough.

It’s different now. There’s no wand to shape the spell, no incantation to focus the intent. Just me. My will. My mood. Sometimes it’s like breathing. Sometimes it’s like bleeding.

I didn’t mean to transform the greenhouse doors into message boards that cursed at me when I walked by last week. But I did. And the Hollow didn’t seem to mind. It simply corrected itself the next morning.

Maybe it’s learning me the same way I’m learning it.

Sometimes I feel the magic before I use it – like it’s waiting under my skin, coiled and patient. That’s the worst part. Knowing it’s mine now, and that nothing stands between me and it.

Not even a wand. Not anymore.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 6

Sanctuary Year 1

Spring

I didn’t know we could leave. Maybe the Hollow did. Maybe it left because it knew we were getting low on food. Maybe it was waiting for something. Maybe it just got bored.

I think that’s what worries me most. That it can think and has a mind enough of its own to be bored…

He took the opportunity to gorge and hunt. This time he pulled so many creatures from the sea that it took me days to shrink and preserve them. I suspect he knows we are going back to the Drift for a longer period of time.

I don’t know how I feel about that, but I still took the time to catch and store some fish for me as well. Fruits and vegetables can only carry me so far.

When I was done, I noticed that a sapphire had slipped from the blue hourglass, just one. The Hollow changed it. I didn’t even know that the other hourglasses tracked anything. The red one I don’t like to look at anymore, the hourglass far too full.

The yellow one dropped a black diamond for every year that passed in the Drift. There were only a few…but I knew soon that number would grow. And I would be around to watch it.

I wonder what the Hollow is tracking now.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 7

Autumn

I turned Dumbledore’s old bedroom into a library today. A personal one, just for me.

Took the bed out. Destroyed it because eww. Dragged in shelves. Lined the walls with every journal I’ve filled since the first year.

One-hundred-twenty-one volumes so far. Each spine labeled in ink. The room is nearly half full.

I did the math. If I’m not rescued within the next one-hundred-fifty years, I’ll run out of space. And the thing that scares me most – is that I’m not scared. I don’t think anyone’s looking anymore.

I think I gave up on that a long time ago.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 16

Autumn

I decided to name the suits of armor. They're the only ones who listen. Sir Clanksalot guards the library now, and Lady Shiny is stationed outside the bathroom because I think she enjoys making me uncomfortable. I caught them facing each other this morning.

If they start dating, I’m leaving.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 18

Winter

He flew into the sea mist this morning and didn’t come back until sundown. I didn’t call for him. I wanted to see if he would return on his own. When he landed on the tower roof, the stone bent to hold him, like it missed the weight of him. I think it did.

I think the Hollow misses things just like I do.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 36

Autumn

Sir Neville was facing west again. I’m sure I turned him east yesterday to keep the crows from the tomatoes. No wind last night. No footprints. Just facing west. I left it. There are no crows to keep away anyways.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 44

Spring

I reread my journal from Year 7 today, before the Drift Year 7 that is. I forgot how small my handwriting used to be. It was all cramped thoughts and desperation, all these little notes like I was leaving messages for someone else to find.

I don’t write like that anymore. Now I write to remember myself.

There are things the Hollow knows that I don’t. I think sometimes it holds pieces of me in its walls – a sentence here, a scent, a sound I once made. Maybe one day I’ll break apart completely and it’ll just build another version of me out of the scraps.

I don’t think I’d mind.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 86

Autumn

I think I finally perfected the plum preserve recipe. I’m going to label it Attempt 23, Definitely Not Poisonous and leave a jar in the Great Hall. If anyone ever finds it, they’ll have to guess what it means. That feels like justice.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 109

Winter

I caught my reflection in the water near the greenhouse pool. I don’t look fourteen anymore, not really. Not the way I did when I first came. But I don’t look older either. I don’t know what I look like.

Maybe the Hollow is shaping me the way it reshaped itself.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 112

Summer

I heard someone call me by name last night. But it wasn’t my voice. And it wasn’t one I remember.

The island must be dreaming again.

Maybe I’m not the only one it dreams of.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 187

Winter

I’ve given up on shoes. The ones that fit me are worn beyond repair. The ones that don’t never seem to fit quite right, even with the resizing charm.

Who needs shoes anyways…

◇ ◆ ◇

Sanctuary Year 2

Summer

We left.

I didn’t notice it at first. The Hollow had been quiet all morning, the sort of quiet that isn’t really quiet at all, just thoughtful. Like it was waiting for me to notice what it had already decided.

I didn’t. I was up in the Astronomy Tower, tracing the lake’s edge with my eyes and trying to sketch the mountain split near the cliffs. I thought the clouds looked different. Sharper, hungrier maybe. But I didn’t feel it in my bones until midday.

The light was different. The shadows cast longer, but they didn’t match what they should’ve. I grabbed my cloak and went on a walk. I didn’t know where I needed to go, but I let my instincts guide me.

My feet led me to Poidsear Coast, and there I saw them. A scatter of feathers across the beach. Tiny, frantic bodies of dozens of birds. They were small, not fit to fly the sea.

Their chests heaved, wings too soaked to lift. The wind had brought them too far, flung them out past the tides, and the sea had nearly taken them. But somehow...not quite.

The pressure had softened. The air wasn’t the thick, timeless air of the Drift. The Hollow had moved.

No, not moved…surfaced.

I crouched for what must have been an hour, drying wings with careful spells, whispering words I knew they didn’t understand. He circled high above, my dragon. I could hear the beat of it, that deep percussion like distant thunder behind the heart. He didn’t interfere. Just watched.

By sundown, most of the birds had flown. Some did not. I buried them beneath the lavender grasses that bloom only on this side of the cliffs. I marked the place with a purple shell and left a ribbon tied to it.

It wasn’t for them. It was for me. Proof that we’d surfaced at all. Proof that we still could.

I expected them all to die, to vanish as things do when the Hollow notices them. It used to devour anything with blood or breath. But these little birds didn’t die. Not even the weakest ones. They stayed. And they lived.

Nothing had ever survived more than a few weeks on the island. Nothing but me and him.

They nested in the rafters, splashing in the courtyard fountain, flying freely. And the Hollow let them. I think it watched them just as carefully as I did.

I don’t think it feeds like that anymore. Not now. Not since it woke.

The Hollow didn’t tell me why we surfaced. It never does. But I know now that this place doesn’t just drift aimlessly. It listens. It decides. And sometimes, it surfaces just to save a few tired birds.

I’m not sure if that’s beautiful or terrifying. But I think that’s what we are now. We rise only when we’re needed, and offer sanctuary to those in need…Sanctuary…

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 246

Spring

The frogs have returned. Again.

They’ve claimed the reflecting pool in the northern courtyard like it’s their personal throne room. I counted eleven of them yesterday – bright green, loud, and thoroughly smug. One of them sat on the head of a crumbled gargoyle and refused to move even when I waved my hand at it.

I’ve named him King Kroakington. Long may he reign.

◇ ◆ ◇

Sanctuary Year 9

Autumn

Something slipped into the Black Lake when I wasn’t looking.

I didn’t see it, not directly. But the water tensed. The fish vanished. The lily pads drew themselves tight against the banks, and the water turned oddly still. Like it’s listening.

We’d been out of the Drift for nearly a month…but no landmass met us. No animals fleeing from a forest fire, no creatures half dead from a severe drought, no beasts caught in a storm, tangled in a net, or stuck in a trap. I wondered what we were waiting for.

It must have been for whatever had taken up residence in the cave that used to belong the giant squid…

I haven’t gone down to look. Not yet. But he watches the lake now. He used to nap beside it. Not anymore.

He doesn’t growl, but he listens. And sometimes, I think he hums to it. Whatever it is, the Hollow let it stay. I asked why, but it didn’t answer.

The torches in the lower hall flickered blue for a full day so I think I know. Not a threat, at least not yet. But one day I suspect it’ll be too big for the cave.

And I don’t think it’ll fit in the lake after that. I wonder if the Hollow will release it back into the world…or change the lake to make more room…

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 272

Summer

There’s a mirror in the fourth floor Prefect’s Bathroom that no longer reflects. It’s just…black. Not broken, not fogged. Just empty. I talked to it for a while today. Told it about the creeping puddle, the disappearing red sock, and the bread that still isn’t bread.

It didn’t answer, but it didn’t walk away either.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 296

Spring

I woke to the walls humming again.

Not the comforting kind. Not the low, familiar resonance that pulses through the halls when I speak aloud or hum to myself. This was different. Fainter, higher almost. Almost...secretive.

The Hollow is hiding something from me.

I don’t mean that with accusation. At least, I don’t think I do.

It's hard to stay angry at something that gave me shelter, that built itself around me like a shell. But lately, I’ve felt the walls shifting in ways I didn’t ask for. Corridors longer than they should be. Doors that only opened to walls. Rooms rearranged like puzzle pieces – not wrong, just...not mine anymore.

So today, I followed it.

I spent the morning tracing seams in the stone, looking for drafts, changes in texture. At midday, I found a stairwell that didn’t exist yesterday. It curved tightly, cut from cold grey stone, lit by nothing at all – but somehow not dark. She was being secretive, but not maliciously so. It felt like the castle was holding a secret, not to be kept, but because she wasn’t ready yet.

She let me descend anyways.

At the bottom, I found a chamber that was dry and still. Round, like a well. No markings, no vines. Just a pedestal in the center, carved from the same stone as the walls. On it was a small object. Teardrop-shaped. The size of my palm. Glowing faintly – soft gold, with occasional pulses of red. Not bright, but alive. I felt the warmth of it before I stepped into the room.

I didn’t touch it.

I wanted to. More than I expected to. But there was something sacred about the way it rested there. Like I was interrupting something unfinished. Something becoming.

I asked the Hollow what is it…but nothing answered.

The walls didn’t shift. The floor didn’t tremble. But the glow pulsed once – slow, like a breath. Like the thing was...listening.

I don’t know what it is…but the Hollow is making something. Something small, something hidden.

Something it doesn’t want to share with the world, or at least, not yet.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 366

Winter

I thought it had stopped.

All those years ago, after I woke it – when it opened its eyes and saw – the feeding ended. No more crumpled birds in the fields. No more crabs crawling onto shore only to never move again. I thought it had learned mercy.

But I was wrong. It just learned patience.

There was an old hound living in the kitchen gardens. I don’t know where he came from…one of the recent drifters, I think, when we surfaced back into the world.

He was greying, blind in one eye, ribs showing through his coat no matter how much I fed him. He followed me around like I was the last star in his sky. He’d sleep inside the greenhouse main entrance – I think he liked the heat – and limp along the halls with his claws tapping on the stones. He never barked, just watched me with the one clouded eye like I was someone important.

This morning, I found him lying beneath the old sun dial near Greenhouse 5. His chest rose, slow and shallow. I knelt beside him, reached out…and then I felt it.

The pull.

Not like the old days, when the Hollow fed like a starved thing. This was quiet…gentle. It brushed over him like a hand closing his eyes. He didn’t whimper. Didn’t flinch. He let go.

And then the grass around him grew three inches in a breath. The greenhouse lights flared. The stone warmed.

It took him, but only after he’d lived.

The Hollow still feeds. But it waits now. Waits until the last breath. Waits until the world is done with them. Then it gathers them in, like closing a book.

Maybe that’s mercy after all.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 401

Autumn

The stone is still there…still glowing. But it’s changed.

I thought I imagined it the first time – the subtle shimmer beneath the surface, like trapped firelight rippling under crystal. But now it moves with more purpose. It pulses when I enter the room. Not randomly, not ambiently. It responds.

I timed it today. Seven full seconds between pulses when I sat silently on the threshold. Three seconds when I stepped closer. One, steady heartbeat’s worth when I whispered to it.

And then, just once, it pulsed even before I entered.

The Hollow watches me when I come here. Not with eyes, but with intention.

Yesterday, the main stairwell sealed before me. Gently. No hostility, no force. Just a quiet, effortless closure. When I turned back to check the door, it was already gone – the wall smooth as glass, as if nothing had ever been there.

I don’t think it’s trying to trap me. I think it’s trying to teach me patience.

Or protect whatever it's making.

I still haven’t touched the stone. I’m not sure I can. Something in my chest tightens whenever I get too close – like my own magic recoils from it, or maybe leans toward it too hungrily.

It feels wrong to name it. Not yet. But part of me wants to…as if it’s waiting to be named.

I think I’m starting to understand what the Hollow is making.

◇ ◆ ◇

Drift Year 568

Winter

The fog is thinner than usual this week. Not gone…just peeled back at the edges, like the Hollow is breathing deeper again.

The sun cast a shadow today, sharp and clean across the Bell Tower Courtyard. I almost didn’t recognize it for what it was. We haven’t had shadows like that since...I don’t know. Maybe since before the lake turned black.

I went walking. Just around the perimeter paths near the far side of the lower cliffs. I thought I might check the seals on the gates, maybe see if the goats had gotten into the mushroom beds again. They hadn’t. But something else had.

There were tracks from the edge of the shore to the old boathouse. Not mine and not his. I didn’t recognize what creature could have made them.

I didn’t follow them. I should have, maybe. But I didn’t.

The Hollow didn’t warn me. Didn’t pull the walls tighter or hum a single note. That’s how I know it isn’t afraid.

I stopped on the bridge near the waterfall – the one that curls upward when it’s feeling dramatic – and listened. The birds were louder than usual. The wind came from the east instead of the usual south. The lake didn’t whisper.

I think the Hollow’s about to open its doors again.

It feels different this time. But I don’t think I’m paying enough attention to understand why.

I’ll check the shoreline tomorrow. Maybe…or not. I still need to figure out why the benches in the Great Hall keep floating every time I sneeze. I’ve put off that project for far too long and it’s becoming…inconvenient.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

One of the suits of armor put itself in the hallway outside the old music room last night. It’s holding a wilted flower.

I didn’t give it the flower. I’m not sure where it got the flower.

I left it alone.

The Hollow is doing something. It’s been moving things around, humming through the walls again, like it’s trying to get my attention.

I just can’t figure out what it wants. Maybe the flower is a clue.

I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

◇ ◆ ◇

BRAN

The Builder

The end of the world was quiet.

No horns had sounded when the dark was driven back. No great beast had fallen to signal the Long Night’s retreat. It had simply ended – like a breath held too long that finally let go. And still, the dead outnumbered the living.

Bran walked the muddy shoreline where a castle would someday stand. For now, it was little more than a dream laid over ruin. Scattered scaffolding. Broken sledges. Stone piles blackened from the fire they never touched. The smell of brine and old death clung to everything.

Before him, the day was calm…too calm. As if the weather was afraid to stir in case it woke something worse. They had won. They had survived. The North still stood – in pieces and in ash, but it stood.

And no one cheered.

Bran had expected...more. He had imagined a return of light, of color. The renewal of spring. Instead, he found men who stared too long at nothing. Women who didn’t cry when told their sons were gone. Children who flinched at the sight of fire.

Even the animals had grown quiet.

The Children of the Forest remained, though they came less and less. Their eyes, once aglow with secrets, now watched the sky like it might tear open again.

Bran’s hands were raw from the cold. He had spent the last three days carving runes into blocks of ice with fewer men than he needed and fewer words than he had strength to say. They worked because there was nothing else. They built not for glory, but to ward off the next nightmare.

The Wall rose slowly – too slowly.

Day by day, the giants hauled great slabs of ice into place, their mammoths dragging them across frozen lands with groans that shook the valley. Men shaped them with axes and fire-hardened chisels, cursing as frostbit fingers bled against steel. At night, the Children whispered to the cold and traced runes into the seams.

But the spells did not hold.

Bran stood at the base of the Wall, where the first eight layers of ice loomed in uneven blue tiers. It was massive already – taller than any hall, broader than any keep – and yet, he saw only failure.

It was not enough.

He heard the wind shift behind him and turned.

Leaf approached barefoot, her mossy hair clinging to her shoulders. Even after all they’d done together – the battles, the buried dead, the forging of this great alliance – she looked at him as if he were only a moment away from plunging his sword in her chest. He tried not to let it get to him. Their people had warred for so long and so viciously that a single decade of fighting together was not enough to erase that.

“We tried,” she said, resting one hand on the wall. “But there are not enough of us. Not anymore.”

Bran studied the shimmering marks she’d left in the ice. They glowed faintly, like dying embers in deep water. “How many runes held?”

“Four,” she said. “Of fifty.”

He exhaled sharply, breath fogging. “This Wall is meant to keep them out,” he said.

Leaf nodded. “Then build it taller.”

“That’s not enough. We need the spells. The wards. Without them –”

“Without them,” she interrupted, voice steady, “your wall is still strong. Still vast. Still cold.”

“But it won’t hold,” Bran muttered. “Not forever. He’ll come again.”

The Night King had not fallen. He had retreated – dissolved into shadow like smoke on wind. They’d manage to bind him to the Land of Always Winter, but those bindings would only hold for so long. One day, they would break…and if the Wall wasn’t secured with both size and magic, then the Night King and his army would roll over the living all at once, just like they had this time.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children murdered and raised into the army of the dead before the living could muster enough fighters to even defend themselves. Millions had died before they had finally been able to drive the dead back.

The Wall wouldn’t hold forever, just like the bindings. But it would buy the living enough time to create an army large enough to fight back. And maybe…hopefully, an army large enough to finally end the Night King once and for all.

“We had thousands before,” Leaf whispered, as if ashamed. “Now we are barely two dozen. Too many trees have burned. Too many of us gave blood to the frost. We’ve warred for too long…”

Bran pressed his forehead against the ice. It felt like leaning into the side of a grave. “They look to me like I know what I’m doing,” he said. “Like I’m building a monument. But it’s just…fear. We’re stacking our terror higher and higher and praying it becomes a shield.”

Leaf didn’t respond. She placed her palm on the wall one last time, then stepped away. “We build what we can,” she said. “And hope the rest is enough.”

Bran watched her turn and leave, her gaze returning to the sky like the rest of her people. He turned his gaze up too, wondering what it was that they saw that he couldn’t. The stars were brittle with cold and held no answers. At least…not for him.

He sighed and left the Wall, returning to camp with the other nights watchmen. Bran sat near the watchfire, hands outstretched toward the meager flames. His cloak stank of sweat and frostbite salve. Around him, the camp had quieted – just the creak of leather, the low murmur of men dreaming uneasy dreams.

His gaze drifted east, toward the sea far away, as he poured some porridge and then let it cool in his hands. His fingers cradling the bowl that he barely felt through the cold. He could not stop thinking of the cost.

Whole houses gone. Entire generations wiped from existence. So much history, killed and soon to be forgotten. Magic that had bled into the snow and would not return. His brother, gone. His sister and mother, gone. His father, gone. He was the last of a legacy.

The world had narrowed until it was only ice and task and duty.

Edric approached, cheeks wind-chapped, eyes darting. He had been on night watch ever since the end of the Long Night. Though not the most senior watchman, he was by far the most experienced. And the one Bran trusted most. Edric was the closest thing he had to a friend.

“There’s word from the fishers,” he said. “Greyhook, the fishing village. Came from a raven sent before dusk.”

“Raiders?” Bran didn’t look up as he asked, sounding almost disappointed. He thought that the Long Night would have brought people together, but tragedy sometimes brought out the worst in people, not the best.

“No, m’lord. An island.”

That drew his attention. “Where?”

“Bay of Seals,” Edric said. “They say it’s just…there. Like it always was. But it wasn’t.”

“Are they certain they aren’t just seeing shapes in the fog?” Bran asked with a frown.

“The fog’s cleared, m’lord. Clear as summer, they said. The sea around it’s calm. The island drifted into the bay and then anchored itself like a ship. They say…”

He hesitated. Bran caught the pause. “Go on,” he prompted, setting his uneaten bowl of porridge down and standing.

“They say the birds still fly over it. Fish still swim. But the gulls have gone quiet. The hounds near the docks won’t go near the water. They say they’ve gone silent, don’t bark no more. One boat’s cat jumped into the sea trying to swim to it. Didn’t come back.”

Bran’s jaw clenched. The flame popped softly in the silence between them.

“What do the fishers think it is?”

“Some say it’s cursed,” Edric said as he shifted uncomfortably. “Some say it’s a gift. Some think it’s a stronghold from across the sea. One even swears he saw it move. Not drifting – turning.”

Bran stared into the fire. A new land, anchoring itself on their shore, unclaimed, unbothered, unburned by the war they’d just barely survived.

He felt it in his bones – the warning that had no shape, only pressure.

They had survived the Long Night. But something else had come with the dawn.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

All the doors were open this morning. Every single one.

Bedroom, library, greenhouse, pantry, vault. Even the trapdoor in the Divinations tower I swore I sealed shut over a century ago – wide open.

It’s not a draft. The air was still. The torches were still lit. No wind, no shifting stones, no humming walls. Just open doors.

I think the Hollow is trying to get my attention again.

I walked through half of them just to be polite. Nothing unusual. No glowing runes or mysterious puddles or staircases leading somewhere new. So I shut them. All of them.

If it wants to talk, it can write me a note like a normal ancient semi-sentient magical structure.

I am not playing hide and seek before breakfast.

◇ ◆ ◇

BRAN

The Builder

The ship creaked beneath Bran’s boots, sails whispering overhead as the wind pulled them farther into the bay. The Wall was a smear on the southern horizon now — too distant for comfort, yet too present to forget. Ice still clung to the hull from the shore. The further out they went, the blacker the waters became.

Bran stood at the bow, wrapped in a cloak of sealskin and silence, eyes fixed on the strange land ahead.

The tides here were strong – waves pulled hard at the ribs of the boat – but the island held its place like a blade stabbed into the sea.

It had shape now. It wasn’t just fog and rumor. From here, Bran could see the curve of its cliffs, steep but white, veined with low, dark rock and greenery spilling from the top. Almost like nature refused to be contained by land and was crawling down the rocks to spread and grow over the ocean.

There were no banners. No smoke from chimneys. But there were paths in the grass – long, winding trails as if something large had passed through again and again.

There was snow on the cliffs, tucked into hollows and frost-edged leaves, but not like the rest of the North. Not biting, not heavy. It was a strange sort of winter – gentler, somehow. More like a memory than a threat. The air smelled faintly of frost and pine but didn’t cut the lungs like it should have.

Bran had seen summer snows before, when he had been young, before the Long Night came. This reminded him of those snows. As if winter touched the island, but only just. No more than a brush of fingers along a cheek. The trees still had their leaves, the foliage still bright green, only everything was dusted in a layer of white.

Beside him, Edric shifted from foot to foot. He hadn’t stopped fidgeting since the cliffs came into view.

“Don’t like this,” the younger man muttered. “None of this. It’s wrong.”

Bran said nothing.

Edric tried again, louder this time. “We don’t even know what it is. It’s not on any chart. It wasn’t there a month ago. And now it just…sits there. Watching. You shouldn’t be the one to step foot on it, m’lord. You’re the last of your whole line. They need you to finish the Wall.”

Bran turned his head slightly, just enough to catch the other’s eyes.

“That’s why I go myself.”

“But –”

“I will not send another man into something I fear to face.”

Edric faltered, his voice catching. “You said yourself this isn’t natural.”

Bran looked out again. “Neither is the Wall. But we build it anyway.”

They docked on the southwestern shore, where a natural inlet curled like a hook into a sheltered cove. To their surprise, a dock already waited for them – not rotted, not broken, but whole. Polished wood, blackened with age but swept clean of sand or weed. Ropes lashed tightly to upright mooring posts, and the faint smell of oil still lingered – recent treatment.

Bran stepped ashore first, his boots hitting planks that gave a little under his weight but held. The air was sharp and still. Not cold – not truly – but crisp in a way he couldn’t name.

His men followed warily, hands on hilts, eyes scanning the treeline.

There were animals. Not monsters – not wildlings’ hounds or twisted beasts like those from the Long Night – but creatures they recognized. A red stag with massive antlers stood watching from the trees. A snowy hare darted through ferns too thick for the climate. On a rocky outcrop, a golden-feathered falcon sat watching them, unblinking.

“They’re not afraid,” one man whispered.

“They’re not local,” Bran added. He couldn’t help but think that they acted like creatures that had never seen a person before. They acted like they had never known fear…never been hunted.

The path from the dock wound up through tall wind-bent grass into the trees. The forest was old, but not gnarled. Birch and ash, mostly. Bran ran a hand along one – smooth bark, silver-white – not unlike a weirwood, but so very different with no face and utterly silent.

Then the houses appeared.

Scattered along the hillside in small clusters – five, maybe six buildings at a time – each was built of dark timber, steep-roofed against weather that hadn’t come. Doors were closed, windows clean. Moss grew on rooftops and ivy climbed the walls. There were no signs of violence, no blood, no mess.

The snow only dusted the ground and roofs as if winter was still deciding if it was coming or going.

One man pushed open a door with the butt of his spear. The hinges didn’t creak. Inside the floors were clean, firewood dry, bowls and plates stacked neatly on a counter.

“It’s like they just…left,” he murmured.

Another found a hut with a spinning wheel still threaded. Another, a child’s carved toy under the bed. Edric stayed close to Bran’s side.

“People lived here,” he said. “But where did they go?”

Bran crouched beside the hearth of one house, brushing ash between his fingers. “They didn’t flee,” he said. “This was tended. Prepared…but it’s cold. Whoever was here left a long time ago.”

A call came from up the trail. One of the scouts had found a river – wide, glass-dark, and steady.

It carved its way through the valley like a black ribbon, flanked on both sides by trees that leaned toward it, not away. The banks were soft, but not marshy. The water looked deep. More than enough for their small ship.

They hiked back to the cove and carefully maneuvered the vessel upriver. The air changed as soon as they crossed the estuary. Cooler…more still.

The first turn of the river was deceptive – peaceful, even.

They passed into a wide pool just off the beach, where the current slowed to a hush and massive boulders rose like sleeping beasts from the water. Moss clung to their sides. A heron stood unmoving on one, perfectly still, head cocked like it was listening.

The crew maneuvered the small sailboat carefully, threading between the rocks while gulls wheeled above and something stirred under the surface in lazy, wide arcs. The air was so quiet the splash of their oars echoed off the rocks.

Bran stood at the prow, eyes narrowing. It was quiet enough that the creak of oarlocks echoed like snapping bones.

Something about this stretch of water felt measured. As though it had been shaped not by erosion or time, but by intention. Each rock, each reed, each glittering shaft of light breaking through the clouds overhead — placed.

It made his skin crawl.

They turned a bend — and stopped short. “Bridge ahead!” Edric called out, warning the men at the oars and tiller.

A wooden crossing spanned the river– low, old, heavy with frost — but sturdy. Too low for the mast, and not enough room to pass beneath. The river was narrow here, boxed in on both sides by the woods.

“Drop sail,” Edric said. “We’ll turn her back.”

But before any hand could move, the bridge stirred.

From the center, the planks peeled back – silently, smoothly – collapsing into themselves like the bridge was being unbuilt. The passage revealed was just wide enough for their ship.

“Gods be good,” someone muttered.

The men froze. Bran did not. “Keep moving,” he said.

No one spoke as they passed between the bridge, like trespassers through a temple’s gate. But Bran noticed how the men’s hands gripped their weapons a little tighter.

They were no longer sailing on the river. They were being let through.

Behind them, the bridge rebuilt itself with the sound of wood slapping on wood, sealing the way back. Bran felt his heart drop but swallowed back the feeling of trepidation. He forced his gaze forward.

Ahead, a massive cliff stood across the river’s path. They loomed ahead like a gate, jagged and sheer, with three great waterfalls plunging into a crashing basin below. The largest was a silver torrent that tore itself into mist, the smallest still taller than their ship and violent enough to tear their boat in half.

“Pull back,” Edric called over his shoulder, eyes wide. But before anyone could turn the tiller to avoid the rocks, the ship shifted. They turned toward it and their rudder refused to be moved.

“I said pull back,” Edric barked. “Get the ropes! Turn her!”

But the boat didn’t listen.

Bran felt it first – a soft pull, like something had taken the rudder from them. The sail went slack. The boat turned of its own accord.

“What in the gods?” Edric began, but his words choked off into nothing as the ship suddenly veered left on its own and sailed directly towards the smallest of the three falls. Straight into the crashing water.

But they didn’t crash. The bow shifted…then rose.

Bran gripped the rail, jaw clenched. The ship tilted at a sharp angle as it climbed the waterfall. Men shouted behind him, ropes slipped through hands. One man dropped to his knees and muttered a prayer to the Old Gods.

They didn’t crash. The water didn’t churn. The spray didn’t soak them. It was as if the ship had sailed onto a path only it could see – rising like a feather on a breeze. The waterfall didn’t break them…it bore them.

Bran said nothing, but inside he felt it. That same pressure from the Wall – when the Children had whispered magic into the ice. That hum behind the bones. But this wasn’t the Wall. This felt older.

No one spoke. Even the wind held its breath.

They rose to a second waterfall – and then another. Each time, the ship obeyed some will beyond their own, until finally they were released into a narrow canyon flanked by cliffs that rose like sharpened stone teeth.

The river had chosen their path.

To the left, a massive waterfall thundered down from impossible heights, feeding the river that carried them. They passed it in silence, the spray cold and clean against their skin. Their ship should have been thrashed by the rapids – but it cut through them like still water, gliding forward as though the currents parted just for them.

The cliffs pressed tighter. They sailed between rocks like an offering delivered by hand. When Bran glanced up, he saw a narrow land bridge above him, made from stone. Too narrow to be a road.

The current quickened, pulling them toward a dark bend. The water should have torn them apart – but instead, it split. As though their hull parted the rapids before they touched it.

“I’ve seen magic before,” a soldier behind them muttered. “But never magic this quiet.”

Bran agreed…silently.

The river opened again, revealing a circular pool hemmed by jagged rocks. Too tight, too deep…too still.

“It’s a dead end,” someone muttered.

“It’s a trap,” another replied.

They aimed straight for the largest rock ahead. No one could see a path through, and the ship didn’t slow.

Edric grabbed the tiller. “Bran, it’s not turning!”

Bran opened his mouth to shout – and then they passed through. No crash, no grind of wood on stone. The rock dissolved around them like mist in sunlight.

“What in the hells?” someone swore.

Bran’s hand tightened on the rail. He didn’t like not knowing. He didn’t like being carried. And yet still, they drifted forward.

What waited beyond was not relief…but a bog.

They passed into shadow and it was like being swallowed into darkness. The trees pressed in – tall, dead things with bark like old bone, and tangled, massive trunks that groaned with sap. Vines hung like nooses. The air reeked of old rot, sweet and heavy.

“This isn’t right,” Edric whispered. “The sun’s still out…”

But it wasn’t here. It seemed to have died all at once, as if the sun had been a candle that someone had simply snuffed. Edric cursed under his breath. The others kept their weapons close.

In the black water, eyes blinked open. Long, narrow shapes slithered beneath the surface. Bran knew them – lizard lions. Creatures of swamps and mists, hunters of the Neck.

But these were larger than any he had ever seen.

One of them rose up as they passed, its back breaching the water – easily the length of their boat. Its mouth opened, revealing a fan of jagged teeth and a throat like a tunnel. It stared at them. Making that strange hissing sound as it watched them. It could have easily capsized their boat but chose to blink lazily at them instead.

As the ship passed between their half-submerged forms, one exhaled loudly, startling Bran and a few others as they flinched and tugged at the pommels of their sheathed blades. He saw Edric pull out a dagger with a small prayer.

More bridges spanned the waterways now – all old, most wood, some stone, a few twisted together from massive roots. Each peeled back in silence as they approached. Always before they reached them and then closed the way back behind them.

One after another. No hands, no ropes…just response. Like the island was listening.

Bran had begun to understand that this place obeyed rules other than nature. Rules that he was struggling to comprehend.

There was suddenly a crack in the sky. The sun returned as they slipped between trees into a clearing of river. The air changed – crisp again, clean. The darkness was behind them.

The river narrowed, then curved, revealing a gentle island that rose in the middle of the water, green and dotted with blue flowers. It was quiet and peaceful. Trees grew from its middle in tall, patient rows. Moss hung from the branches, and birds nested in the bough, singing songs from far away lands that Bran could only imagine.

To the right, a holdfast stood on a bluff. Tall and weathered. Its stonework was ancient, but clean. Ivy curled across its towers, and grass grew thick at the base. The banners were gone, but the stone was clean. The windows were bright. And there still wasn’t a single sign of life outside of the animals that inhabited the island.

The men stared in silence.

“There’s no rot,” one said. “No dust.”

Bran nodded once. “This place is kept.”

“By who?”

Nobody could answer.

A little farther upriver, on the opposite bank, they passed a fishing village. Smoke should have curled from the chimneys. But none did. Nets hung dry on lines. Boats were tied neatly. Not abandoned – simply paused.

And still, the river carried them forward. A stone bridge curled over the river, and again, it peeled backward at their approach.

The river wound like a serpent – left, then sharply right, back again. Each bend revealed something stranger.

Crops…neatly planted rows of them. Wheat and barley. Squash. Beans. Herbs he couldn’t name. Fields stretched on either side, green and gold, full of standing crops and rows of tilled soil. He saw fences, low stone walls, simple tools resting near furrows in the earth – but no hands to wield them. Not a single farmer in sight.

A scarecrow turned slowly in the wind, though the day was still.

“What is this?” Edric asked, voice hollow.

“A land alive,” Bran said as he shook his head in disbelief. “But without its people.”

Small river islands dotted the path now. At first, they were little more than sandbars. Then wider. Then taller. One was forested entirely. Another bore the husk of a crumbled tower overtaken by vines. One was terraced with narrow paths and hollow stairs carved into the cliffs.

The mist began to thin…and then they saw it. High above the river. Set on a cliff that overlooked the valley like a crown atop a brow. A castle.

It rose above them, perched at the edge of the sky. Not carved from the cliffs – but part of it. Tower after tower, rising from the cliff’s edge and pulled upward like teeth from a jaw. The stone was white and grey and laced with moss but not broken. Not ruined. It stood whole.

Windows burned with quiet light. The highest spire glittered faintly, like it was painted with starlight. No banners flew. No guards stood watch. But the castle seemed to watch them all the same.

Bran felt it. A weight in his chest. A presence at the edge of thought. Not a voice. Not yet. Just a pressure. Like being spied upon by unseen eyes.

One of the men behind him muttered a soft prayer to the Old Gods. Another dropped his spear.

They said nothing…there was nothing to say.

They passed another curve – and then the river widened again, not into a gentle pool, but into something vaster, colder…darker.

A lake, still as glass and dark as pitch. It reflected the sky with such perfect clarity that for a moment, Bran thought they had drifted into a mirror. The clouds above rippled in its surface – and beneath them, nothing. No current, no weeds…just black and endlessly deep.

He stepped forward, knelt at the prow, and looked over the edge. There, beneath the surface, something moved. Not a ripple, too big to be a fish. A shadow maybe…

It passed like a thought in the water. No shape. Just presence and pressure. Like the lake exhaled something that never needed to surface to see him. He didn’t speak of it.

But he did not look again.

To the right, a strange bridge stretched into the fog, arching far above the water – thin stone rails lined with iron, too delicate for wagons, too long for foot traffic. The men whispered theories, but no one truly believed any of them.

“A bridge?” Edric asked, squinting. But that didn’t seem quite right. It was far too narrow, and had no railings to speak of.

The river turned again, bringing them face to face with a towering wooden structure built low into the cliffside. An old dock…a boathouse. Their ship drifted around the edge of the platform and slipped neatly inside.

Lanterns lining the dock sparked to life one by one, casting long golden lines across the water. Their boat slowed without anchor…and stopped. The air inside was warm.

Bran stepped onto the dock. There were no sounds of welcome, no enemies in waiting. No banners, torches, sentries. Just the smell of old wood and salt, and something faintly floral in the stone.

Ahead, a grand staircase of pale carved stone wound upward – toward the castle, and whatever waited at the top.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

I didn’t listen when the Hollow told me something was coming. She didn’t say it in words, the castle doesn’t speak like I do. But she showed me the signs. Left me hints. Urged me to the beach…

I ignored her…because I didn’t understand.

This wasn’t the first time the island had left the Drift. Sometimes it left for an island, sometimes for a wreckage, sometimes for a rescue.

But not of people…never for people.

Just birds, at first. A lost flock caught in a strong wind and struggling to stay above the waves as fatigue set in. Deer, elk, boars, foxes, wolves, rabbits, and all sorts of other creatures fleeing from a great fire and trapped on a beach, forced into the water to drown or burn. A group of small felines with spots and teeth larger than their skulls being poached to extinction. Strange crocodiles with long powerful legs severely dehydrated and desperately searching for freshwater. Abandoned goats and sheep after a village was raided.

More and more came to the island when their need had been great enough to call the island from the Drift. But this was the first time the Hollow had chosen to leave for people.

And I ignored it…or at least, until a group of men entered the Great Hall while I was trying to figure out how to stop the benches from levitating upside down every time I sneezed.

I’ll admit, it wasn’t the best first impression

◇ ◆ ◇

BRAN

The Builder

The stone stairway twisted up the side of the mountain like it had always been there, appearing to be carved not by mortal hands, but by the memory of beings far above men. Their footsteps echoed upward into stillness, met only by the occasional hiss of wind or creak of something old adjusting to new company.

It was not stairs meant for welcome. But it did not bar them either.

The stairway was smooth stone, wide enough for six men to walk abreast, and strangely warm beneath their boots. No moss. No dust. Just clean stone polished by feet generations ago.

Every few landings there were benches, which Bran and his guard were more than happy to take advantage of. After each rest, it seemed harder to continue. It felt like the stairs would never end. But end they did.

Bran and his men stumbled onto the flat ground of a small courtyard. He sighed in relief even as trepidation filled him at the sight of the massive and dark double doors that led inside the castle.

“You sure about this, m’lord?” Edric asked hesitantly, his eyes also on the doors.

Bran nodded once, straightened, and strode to the doors with a confidence he didn’t feel. His men followed.

The doors opened before Bran had set foot on the first step in the small set of stairs. He glanced back at his men but continued forward – if a little more cautious – and through the open doors.

Bran stepped into a wide domed entrance hall, lit only by the flicker of braziers springing to life as if summoned by his presence. Each one caught in turn, copper flames dancing high into glass lanterns shaped like inverted teardrops.

The floor beneath him was deep green stone, almost black, cut in intricate circular patterns – swirls and sigils he didn’t recognize, arranged like a compass pointed toward some forgotten star.

The walls were tall and arched, sloping upward into an oculus dome lost in shadow. They were lined with ribbed columns carved in the likeness of twisted trees – their roots plunging into the floor, their limbs spiraling upward where branches split into curving stone arches that supported the chamber’s ceiling.

Each wall sconce flared to life with a sound like a whispered breath. The sconces were shaped like curling silver leaves and serpentine wings, casting branching shadows across the stonework.

Above the central landing at the back of the room, mounted high on the wall beneath a shallow arch, loomed a massive bronze crest.

It depicted a dragon – but not one Bran knew. Its wings were narrow and long, curled around a tall central spire that was neither castle nor mountain. The creature’s eyes were faceted diamonds, catching and reflecting each flicker of torchlight. It looked more like it had been found than forged. There were no banners. No writing. Only the crest and the quiet sense that the creature was watching them.

The air in the hall was warm, but not from the flames. The warmth seemed to leach out from the stones themselves.

To Bran’s right and left, two alcoves flanked the chamber. One held what looked like a closed cabinet shaped like a tower, runes glowing faintly around its edge. The other held a statue – a cloaked woman with no face, arms outstretched, supporting a working hourglass that ran backwards.

Bran did not linger.

His eyes were on the double doors directly ahead a top the landing – tall, black, and gleaming. Carved with runes and ringed in constellations.

There were two massive statues in alcoves on each side of the doors. They depicted the same cloaked figure with no face, one held a scale in her hands, it was tipped unevenly. The other held a sword, the tip placed at her feet. Four smaller statues, armored and armed in their own alcoves framed the two larger ones. They all appeared to be cast in pure gold.

The men were murmuring behind him, taking in the absurd display of wealth and craftsmanship. Bran’s own attention was fixated on the ornate stonework around the large double doors. The stone appeared to have formed the intricate carvings and reliefs on its own, not by the hands of a person.

Bran forced himself to move on. He approached the doors, lingering briefly on the delicate decorations carved into the wood. He reached up to touch one, but the doors opened before he could.

Another large room met him and his men. Straight ahead was another set of double doors, the braziers lit on either side beckoning him. To his right he saw a set of wide stairs. They stretched from wall to wall, climbing about a dozen steps up, before a strange statue of some hybrid creature split the stairs in two. The ones on the left led up even further, the ones on the right went back down.

They both seemed to lead to what he had to assume was a massive drum tower with a central column and staircase, but it was difficult to make out. His inspection ended abruptly with the hushed conversation of his men.

“Is that…are those black diamonds?” Garrick asked.

“And rubies,” Edric murmured, his voice airy and high. “And emeralds, and sapphires.”

“Is this gold?” Another person asked.

Bran turned, about to ask what they were talking about, but found himself nearly swallowing his tongue in disbelief. If he thought that the previous rooms with its gold statues were a gross display of wealth, he had no words to describe what lay before him.

There were four massive hourglasses. As tall as three men at least. Each hourglass was framed in intricate designs, cradled by a different precious metal. The one on the far left was obviously gold, and the one to the far right was silver. He suspected the one next to the silver one was bronze, but the other one, between the bronze and gold…he didn’t recognize the metal, though it was yellow in appearance.

Inside each hourglass, instead of sand there were precious gems. Rubies, black diamonds, sapphires and emeralds. Thousands of them. He could see only one emerald and what he thought was around twenty sapphires that had dropped in their own respective glass. The rubies and black diamonds that had dropped outnumbered them by hundreds.

They must have lingered too long staring at the hourglasses in awe, as the double doors that had been quietly beckoning them, opened with a loud creak, drawing their attention back. Bran shared a look with Edric and with a nod of his head, he and his men carefully entered the next room.

They stepped into a narrow, high-ceilinged anteroom, lit by more sconces flaring in gentle succession as they passed. The walls were curved stone, inlaid with faded murals – animals, birds, waves, trees – etched not in paint, but in glass and gemstone dust sealed beneath thin crystalline layers.

The air was fragrant here. Faintly of lavender, crushed pine, and old pages.

There were two high backed benches on one wall, four suits of armor on the other, and a statue, armed and armored, in each corner.

The two high braziers across the hall lit suddenly, illuminating another set of double doors. Broader, heavier, carved in a deeper motif. Their frames were flanked by twin statues – the same cloaked and faceless woman on either side. One with a star in her palm, and the other holding an open book whose stone pages turned of their own accord.

The doors swung inward more slowly. Not with reluctance – but ceremony.

“Gods, does this place ever end…” Edric muttered as he glanced around the room, stepping to the side so he could walk on the stone between the rugs.

There were three, a long red one that stretched from door to door – decorated in black circles and gold trim – and two shorter blue rugs on either side. They had been expertly woven with elaborate detail, and Bran found himself stepping to the side as well. He didn’t want to get them dirty with his muddy boots.

“Apparently not,” Bran replied as he crossed the room. His men followed his lead, avoiding stepping on the rugs as they approached what he hoped was the last set of doors.

A Great Hall lay beyond…no, not a hall, Bran couldn’t help but think. It was something more, something grander. There was no word for the room he and his men stepped into

The flames erupted in silence, each one blooming from the mouth of a golden dragon clinging to the towering columns that lined the space. The gargoyles were pure gold, cast with such fine detail that their scales seemed to ripple as the firelight danced across them. Each one had its maw open to cradle the chains of massive braziers that flared to life in sequence, casting warm, amber light in wide pools across the stone.

The pillars rose into the darkness – vast, ribbed, layered like the trunks of ancient trees whose tops were lost to time. Above them floated candles – hundreds of them – suspended in midair, flickering softly as they drifted in slow, lazy patterns. Their light danced gently in the air, neither wavering nor smoking.

And the room…the room had no ceiling.

Above them stretched a void of stars. Not like the open sky, but deeper – a boundless, endless dome displaying galaxies they did not have words for. Spirals of light. Whorls of blue and gold, violet and crimson. Great arcs of pale silver mist that shifted in slow, patient currents. The stars moved – just slightly – pulsing like distant heartbeats.

It wasn’t a painting, but an illusion, a vision of the impossible. A vision of everything.

And below it were eight great tables, their wood dark and smooth, four wide and two deep, flanking either side of a central aisle. Benches perfectly aligned. Every surface gleamed. To the left, a hearth large enough for a dozen men to stand inside was blazing with orange-gold fire, the logs beneath it enormous, slowly turning to embers.

It was odd that a Great Hall that size would only have one hearth, but Bran could feel how warm the room was with just the one – a very large one – and couldn’t imagine the heat from a second.

To the right was another set of massive double doors, framed in decorated stone. Both side walls were adorned with stained glass windows two stories high. They did not depict scenes so much as sensations – wind, sky, flight, flame, rain – in colors that Bran had never seen used in glass, glowing with internal fire.

And at the far end, atop a gently curved dais, stood a single round table. The only modest thing in the entire room. Behind it stood four massive windows, each three or four stories tall and glass stained in bright colors, trimmed in gold. Across them, a dragon flew. Not an image…it moved.

From window to window, soaring, wheeling from one to the next, wings stretching across all four before it looped back and began again, never repeating itself.

Its body shimmered with scales of mirror and light. Its flight made the windows hum with sound Bran couldn’t hear but could feel in his chest.

It was alive.

And beneath that star-filled sky and drifting candles, in the center of the hall was a girl.

She was young – barely into womanhood, perhaps five and ten at most – yet there was nothing childish in the way she held herself. She wore no cloak, no shoes, no crown or sigil. Just long red hair and an odd, wrap-bound garment that clung to her like ribbons caught in wind. It left parts of her arms and shoulders bare, yet she did not seem bothered by it.

The great hall was warm – almost too warm for his thick cloak – but he knew if she left the hall she would freeze.

What was more unsettling, however, was how clean she was.

The stones beneath her bare feet clean. So clean that Bran winced when he glanced at the muddy boot prints he and his men had left in their wake. Her bandage-like garments were ragged at the hems but spotless, as if no dirt dared cling to them. Light clung to the fabric – not a shine, not a shimmer, but something deeper, as though it reflected moonlight.

And she was not alone…not exactly

A bench hovered beside her – hovered, truly, drifting gently in the air as though held aloft by some unseen current. And the girl was speaking to it, her tone one of frustration.

The words were soft and strange, vowels braided with hard-edged syllables, nothing Bran had ever heard before. Her tone was conversational, even mildly annoyed – she clicked her tongue, waved a hand, and the bench rotated itself once before settling again in midair.

Bran took a step forward, uncertain.

“Girl?” he tried, the word sounding too loud under the high arches.

She turned slowly toward them, her expression confused but calm. No fear, no trepidation. Just a quiet appraisal – her gaze swept over him, then the men behind him, then the doors.

Then back to him.

Her eyes were an unnatural green, not pale like moss, but sharp – bright enough to catch the candlelight and throw it back.

Bran tried again. “Do you understand me?”

Nothing.

The girl tilted her head slightly. Her expression didn’t change. No confusion, no fright – only curiosity, as if she were trying to decide if his mouth was forming words at all.

He pointed to himself. “Bran,” then he gestured broadly to the others. “Friends. Men of the North.”

Still, she said nothing. Only blinked, slowly.

A heartbeat later, she turned away and made another soft gesture toward the floating bench. It bobbed twice and began to lower gently toward the floor.

She wasn’t ignoring them. She simply didn’t understand.

Yet there was no panic in her movements, no fluster in her breath. The girl had the bearing of someone who belonged in that massive hall – more than they did.

And as the bench touched stone, she gave a small sigh, turned, and walked barefoot toward them. Bran stood still as stone. She was no older than his sister had been before the Night King had taken her – and yet everything in him knew…this was no mere girl.

This was something else.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

There were people in the Great Hall today. Actual people. Breathing, talking, flinching people. I don’t remember the last time I saw anyone flinch at me.

They didn’t understand a word I said, which is probably for the best. I was mostly swearing.

I don’t know how they got here. I didn’t call them. I didn’t open the gates. But the Hollow let them in anyway. That worries me more than anything.

I led them to the Vault. It used to be a dormitory. I think I remember not liking the students who lived there. Too loud. Too polished. Too proud of their serpent-themed embroidery. Or maybe they were just smart enough to avoid me. It’s hard to say now.

The paintings have started rearranging themselves again.

The one of the feathered horses used to hang above the tapestry staircase. Now it’s in the pantry. I found it while looking for honey.

And the one of the mountain with the eyes? It’s been flipped upside down. I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that. That one’s creepy enough right-side up.

I think the Hollow is trying to tell me something. Or it’s redecorating…or both.

Either way, it can wait until morning.

◇ ◆ ◇

BRAN

The Builder

The girl didn’t speak, but she gestured. A small tilt of her head. A flick of her fingers. No ceremony. No fear. And without a word, she turned and began walking barefoot out of the Great Hall with its impossible sky.

Bran glanced at his men. A few still stood stiff as statues, looking as if they were waiting for permission to breathe. He gave a nod, and they followed, back through the enormous doors. She moved like she’d lived here all her life. Or perhaps longer.

They followed her through the wide Reception Hall with four towering hourglasses embedded in the walls. The girl didn’t spare them a glance, even though his men couldn’t seem to stop looking.

She led them toward the far side of the hall, where a broad drum tower loomed, the rounded structure Bran had noticed when he had first entered. A strange carved creature stood guard at the split in the stairs. Horse in the hindquarters, eagle in the front, talons frozen in mid-pounce, feathers worked in bronze so finely that they looked like they’d stir in wind.

Bran could have sworn its head turned to watch them pass, but when he looked over his shoulder to check, it was looking straight ahead.

Then girl descended the small staircase on the right. The air cooled. Not unpleasantly, but deeper somehow. Older.

A wide tapestry hung against the stairwell wall, worn by time but clean. A hunting scene, perhaps, though not of any animal Bran recognized. Serpents and birds and hounds shaped unlike any he’d seen, hunting across unfamiliar hills.

At the landing below, a stone balcony ended abruptly over the long drop. Across the way, wrapped partway around the tower’s inner shaft, was another balcony that seemed to connect to nothing. As the girl approached the edge, the stone beyond moved.

The railing that stopped a person from stepping off the balcony and plummeting to the base of the tower peeled back and folded into itself with the sound of stone scraping stone. A bridge of smooth grey stone extended across the tower’s open heart, drawn out of the unconnected balcony attached to the central column.

Not laid or constructed – grown.

The men behind him made the sign of the tree and murmured small prayers. Bran simply watched. She crossed the new bridge without hesitation, and as her foot touched the far side, stairs formed beneath her feet, spiraling downward.

The column was massive. Paintings covered both the outer wall and inner shaft – hundreds, maybe more – of places and creatures that Bran did not know. Forests and deserts, mountains with rivers of flame, frozen lakes, and cities shaped like stars. And beasts with wings and antlers and tusks, some with no heads at all. The brushwork shimmered faintly as if it remembered motion.

For just a moment, it looked like the eyes of a painting of a strange spotted cat followed him, and the flowers in a bright meadow almost seemed to move with an invisible wind. And yet not a single portrait. No men, no women, no person. Just the world and its wonders.

Down they went, three, perhaps four levels, until they reached another set of double doors. Dark wood inlaid with silver engravings, curling like vines or serpents.

The doors opened as the girl approached them.

The columns here were unlike anything he’d seen –massive stone pillars twisted around each other like mating snakes, carved all the way to the high stone ceiling. Standing braziers of silver lined the corridor, flames dancing without smoke.

She led them to the right. Beneath silver chandeliers, each candle burning steady and clean without wax or wick. The floor dipped slightly, and they descended another staircase. Bran’s legs burned from all the stairs and he knew he would suffer it tomorrow.

They entered a vast chamber, and Bran stopped.

The floor was a mosaic, not just of tile but of gems. Gold and silver threads woven around thousands of green emeralds arranged in the shape of a coiled serpent wrapping around itself. It shimmered like water under torchlight. He hesitated to step on it.

But the girl didn’t pause.

She walked straight toward the far wall. And when she reached it, the serpent on the floor shifted itself. The floor beneath him didn’t lose its stability, but its jeweled body slid across the stones and up the wall like a living thing. It arched along the wall, the stone beneath it darkened and shimmered. A black door appeared, rippling into form.

The girl walked through, and after a long moment, so did they.

The space beyond felt submerged. The air cooler, heavier – not damp, but weighty. The light glowed from lamps held in the claws of sea-dragon gargoyles. A stone fountain gurgled nearby where two stone mermaids swam in circles over each other, carved in impossible detail, their faces serene. Water swirled down a hole in the center of the fountain, the water filling just as quickly as it was draining.

A hall leading down another staircase stretched before them. High-vaulted and dark, with walls of black stone and long tapestries depicting underwater realms. Castles of coral. Seaweed that looked like trees. Beasts with too many eyes.

To their left, at the bottom of the winding staircase, a waterfall flowed gently down between a cluster of narrow pillars, directly below where the mermaid fountain had been. It was feeding into a small pond where bright fish flicked between lily pads and moss. Ivy grew in clusters along the walls, spilling from pots so old they looked part of the stone.

They passed suits of armor, but none like Bran had ever seen – slender, polished, decorated with curling serpents and leaping sea-dragons.

When they entered the main chamber, he couldn’t take it all in at once. It was simply too much.

Massive pillars made of a dark green stone inlaid with silver lines rose into the darkness above. The floor was polished black and green stone, veined like cracked ice. Rugs large enough to cover training fields lay across the tiles, expertly woven in intricate detailed designs.

To the left, a wide hearth, low and long, framed by twin twisting serpents and glowing with steady flame. Above it, a glass mural framed in black metalwork glowed orange, casting shadows that danced like waves.

And the furniture – gods.

Couches in a mix of black and white leather, high-backed chairs with carved finer than any southern lord’s throne. Desks and tables and bookshelves made from wood he couldn’t name. Globes that showed continents Bran had never seen.

They walked deeper.

Beneath the tallest part of the ceiling was a massive round rug, big enough for fifty men to sit cross-legged, decorated like a tapestry of stormy seas. Moss and ivy dangled from above. There were glass cases filled with the skeletons of creatures Bran couldn’t name, skulls too large or too narrow, wings folded delicately behind bone shoulders.

And at the far end…windows was a word that fell short of what Bran was looking at.

The wall was carved into three deep alcoves, each fitted with a set of three towering windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, at least four stories high. Above each alcove, a circular window crowned the arch like a watchful eye, its glass cut into layered sigils and curling designs that shimmered when the light shifted.

The main panes were unlike any glass Bran had ever seen. Not simple panels, but latticed mosaics of green and blue, layered with leaded veins that curled like seaweed. Some were colored, all were clear as still water. The glass had depth. It refracted light in a way that made the entire hall shimmer, as though the walls themselves breathed beneath the sea.

Beyond the glass, the world was water. They were completely submerged.

The lake stretched outward and downward, vast and black and moving. Schools of silver fish darted by in silent formation. Tendrils of aquatic plants swayed in the current. At times, a pale fin or the gleam of sharp teeth would pass too close to the glass and vanish again into shadow.

The light that filtered through was cold, but alive – refracted greens and ghostly silvers that danced across the stone floor. It wasn’t moonlight. It wasn’t firelight. It was something older, something that had never touched the surface.

And deeper still, Bran saw movement. Not a fish. A shape he couldn’t name.

Something immense stirred in the depths beyond those windows, too far to see clearly, but too near to ignore.

The men stood still for a long while, scattered before the massive alcoves, their shadows warped and swallowed by the play of waterlight on the floor.

“Gods…” one of them whispered, stepping close enough that his breath fogged the edge of the glass. “We’re under it. We’re under the whole bloody lake.”

Another gave a low, reverent whistle. “You’d think we were at the bottom of the world.”

Bran heard a soft curse from behind him – half prayer, half awe.

“I’ve seen the Thousand Islands,” said old Gadrin, voice hushed. “Stood on the cliff-tombs of Lorath. But this…” He reached out a weathered hand and laid it flat on the glass. “This is older. This is deeper. I could sit and wonder for a hundred years and could have never imagined such a thing.”

One of the younger ones flinched as a great shadow slid past the far pane. “There are things out there,” he muttered. “Things watching.”

Bran didn’t reply. He was watching too. Not the fish or the darkness beyond, but the glass itself – the way it pulsed with the rhythm of the water, like a heartbeat echoing through stone.

Something about it made his spine feel hollow. Not with fear, but with something colder…older.

The girl made a noise, drawing their attention back to her where she stood at the central staircase. There was another statue of the cloaked woman on the landing above her, holding a sea serpent in one hand and a skull in the other. Bran met the girl’s gaze and felt something stir in his chest. Caution, trepidation…maybe awe.

She led them up the left staircase, and through a wide door of dark wood inlaid with colored glass too thick to see through. Inside was a room.

Three four-poster beds, each set in alcoves with their curtains pulled back. Comforters embroidered with strange symbols, tapestries on the walls, and a stone hearth crackling with fire beneath a wide mantle. The ceiling was vaulted, and in its center – a colored glass dome, thicker and less clear than the windows below, but still glowing faintly blue.

They were still underwater, and yet the room was warm…peaceful.

The girl said nothing, only gave a shallow nod and then left.

They stood for a long while, nine men crowded in a room meant for three. Before they decided to explore. They left in pairs.

Some wandered through the bridges on either side of the base of the stairs, made of delicate ironwork so thin it felt like walking on lace. Vaulted ceilings, glassed-in light wells, more bedrooms – some smaller, with four beds each and free-standing fireplaces instead of hearths.

Each room held a different kind of strange comfort. Every surface had been cleaned. Every fire burned steady. There were no cobwebs, no dust.

Bran found himself standing at one of the windows again, watching the deep water. And he wondered.

They gathered again in the larger of the bedrooms – the one with the great hearth and the colored-glass dome above. The room smelled faintly of woodsmoke and lavender. The fire crackled low. Someone had found a tray of fruit and soft bread in the corridor outside and passed it around without comment.

They sat scattered – some at the hearth, others in the curved alcoves of the beds, Edric seated at a narrow desk.

No one had spoken much since the girl had vanished behind the door.

It was Bran who finally broke the silence. “She’s not what I expected,” he said softly.

“She’s not a girl at all,” one of the younger men muttered. “Not really. She commands the castle.”

“She is a girl,” Edric said. “That’s the problem.”

Bran turned to him, brow raised.

Edric pressed on, voice low. “She’s a child. Five-and-ten, perhaps. But she speaks no tongue I know, walks barefoot on the cold stone without flinching, and commands doors with a glance. We don’t know what she is.”

“We know she didn’t kill us,” said a third. “She let us in. Fed us.”

“For what purpose?” Edric asked sharply. “She might be no better than the Night King. This castle of hers – this whole island – it moves like a creature. It watched us. It chose to bring us here. And she…” he shook his head.

Bran rubbed his thumb over the hilt of his blade, silent for a long moment.

“She didn’t threaten us,” old Gadrin offered. “Didn’t raise a blade or speak a curse.”

“No,” Edric said, sharper now. “She didn’t need to. That should frighten you.”

Bran looked toward the fire, then back at the far door. “This place obeys her.”

“It more than obeys,” Edric muttered. “It moves for her. The bridge, the stairs, the river – none of it would open without her. You felt it too, didn’t you? This island is alive in some way. And it answers to her.”

A long silence stretched.

“She could be a weapon,” Bran said at last.

“Or she’s the one holding it,” Edric replied.

Bran didn’t argue. “She could be the answer to our prayers,” he said instead. “Maybe the Old Gods still listen.”

“What does that mean?” Edric asked, confused.

“The Wall is unfinished,” Bran replied. “The Children are too few. Their magic cannot hold it on their own. And winter is not done with us.”

Edric leaned forward. “So what? You’ll ask her to help us build a wall? A child with a castle that lights itself and windows that breathe water?”

“I don’t know what she is,” Bran said. “But I know we came here for a reason. The island let us come this far. It hasn’t turned us away. Not yet.”

“That’s no comfort,” Edric said, then softer, “You’re gambling with something you don’t understand.”

“I always have,” Bran murmured. “We all have. Every stone in that wall is a prayer to something we don’t understand.”

They fell into silence again, the fire throwing strange shadows across their faces.

One of the older men shifted uneasily in his seat. “This place…it’s larger than anything I’ve seen.”

“And yet she’s alone,” another murmured. “No guards, no servants. No people.”

“We passed hamlets, fishing villages, holdfasts,” Edric said quietly. “All empty. No signs of struggle. No decay. Just…waiting. Like the whole island is asleep.”

“Or listening,” someone added.

Bran’s brow furrowed. “It felt alive.”

“Aye,” Edric replied. “Alive, but hollow.”

Eventually, Edric sighed and opened his journal, scratching something down with his charcoal stick. The others drifted off one by one, retreating to the beds or the chairs, some staring up at the glass dome above, watching the shimmer of waterlight ripple across the ceiling.

Bran stayed seated near the fire, hands folded.

He thought of her voice echoing through the strange stone halls, of her gaze, clear and calm as glass.

He wondered what kind of girl it took to make a place like this bend to her will – and why she was so terribly, terribly alone.

In the morning, when Edric opened his journal again, he woke the entire room with his shout. The pages were blank. Every word he’d written was gone.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

The Hollow stole a language last night. Not the thoughts. Not the meaning. Just the shape of it.

The rhythm. The spine. The way the sentences hold together. It peeled the skin off the words and pressed the bones into my mind while I slept.

I woke with a headache sharp enough to split stone. Spent the morning on the floor, eyes closed, sorting through the fragments.

The structure of the language is clean. Practical…wary. Built like a wall – wide sentences, few curves. Efficient and heavy.

I know the shape of their speech now. Enough to echo it. I won’t speak it yet. It’s too loud in my head. I’m going somewhere quiet. Just for a little while. If they come looking, the Hollow will keep them out.

I’ll come back when the words stop ringing.

◇ ◆ ◇

EDRIC

A Night Watchman

The lake had no bottom.

Or at least, that’s what it felt like as they sat in a loose circle before the high alcove windows, watching shadows drift past glass thicker than any he’d ever seen. Lanternfish blinked in the dark, casting faint pulses of bioluminescent light, and now and then something larger passed behind the pale green haze.

Once, Edric had thought he saw a shape – a giant eye maybe – but when he blinked, it was gone.

The girl had not returned. It had been two days.

Food kept appearing on the low narrow table against the far wall near the hearth. It was fortunate, Edric couldn’t help but think, since the door that led out of this grand underwater place had sealed itself the first night. They slept in shifts now, watched the water as if it might decide to rise, break through the glass and take them next.

Bran had taken to learning as much as he could. He could be seen often with a book in his lap, written in words he couldn’t read, letters that looked nothing like theirs.

Edric did not trust this strange place. He trusted stone that kept its shape and didn’t move on its own. He trusted steel and sweat and frostbitten hands. Not magic. Not girls who walked over stone without shoes and didn’t shiver. Who lived in a castle that moved and breathed on its own.

Now he sat with three others by the far-left window, a hot cup of tea in a delicate cup cooling in his hands, and a single candle burning low beside them on the stone bench. The water beyond the glass caught the flickering light and scattered it like fireflies into the deep.

“Still nothing,” one of the men said. “No fish worth netting. Not even a crab.”

“They’re hiding,” another muttered. “Something’s down there.”

Edric was about to respond when the light shifted. Not in the lake – behind them. He turned and saw the girl approaching them.

She wore the same strange white wrappings as before, pristine as if freshly laundered. Her feet were bare. Her dark red hair was unbound and fell to her waist in loose curls that seemed to shimmer in the candlelight.

She looked directly at him. “I apologize,” she said.

The room froze. Her voice was soft, young. But clear, and now unmistakably in their tongue. She stepped forward, hands clasped lightly before her, her eyes on Edric.

“The Hollow took your words,” she said. “From your book. I didn’t ask it to. It does that sometimes.”

“How do you –” Edric began.

“I understand you now,” she said quickly. “I couldn’t before. But the Hollow gave me the shape of your language. Not what you wrote. Just the bones of it. I don’t know what you said. Only how you said it.”

“That book was mine,” he said, rising. “My thoughts.”

“I know,” she said, and her voice was steady, almost too calm for her age. “I keep my thoughts in ink and parchment too,” her words sounded almost wistful…almost sad. “It’s how I remember. If I could give them back, I would.”

There was something in her gaze that gave him pause. Not guilt, not arrogance. Just…detachment. Like someone who observed the world and forgot she could interact with it. It reminded him of how the Children were around Men, back when they allied for the first time. But even the Children had been full of anger and fear. The girl before him was as empty as her castle.

Bran appeared at the far end of the room, descending the stairs in silence. He said nothing, only watched.

“You took our tongue,” Edric said. “What else have you taken?”

“I don’t take anything,” she said. “The Hollow does. And it gives, too.”

“You speak of it like it’s alive.”

“It is.”

A flicker of unease passed through the men.

Bran stepped forward now, slowly. “You said ‘Hollow.’ Is that what this place is called?”

She nodded. “It’s not just a castle. It’s more than that. Older than that, maybe. I didn’t build it. But I woke it.”

“When?” Bran asked.

She looked at him. “I don’t know the names you use for years. You wrote very few numbers for me to learn,” she said, looking at Edric. Not accusingly, but Edric still felt judged. “I’ve lost track of time. But it was before you came.”

“You showed up after the Long Night,” Edric said, voice tight. “That’s convenient.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said, hardly blinking.

He frowned. “You don’t know –”

Bran raised a hand, interrupting him. “Tell her,” he commanded. So, Edric did.

He stepped forward, slowly. The others watched him like they weren’t sure what he was about to say. Like they weren’t sure they wanted to hear it again either. He met her gaze and found it too calm, too clear.

“The sun vanished,” he said. “That’s how it started. No warning. One day it rose pale and slow, the next it didn’t come up at all. No heat, no light. Just a dark sky like ash, all day and all night. And it stayed like that.”

She didn’t speak. So, he kept going.

“It got cold,” he said. “Not winter-cold. Not the kind that cracks your lips and nips at your fingers. This was deep. A cold that moved into your bones. That climbed into your skull and never left. You breathed and it turned to frost in your nose. You ate and the bread froze in your hands before it reached your mouth.”

He swallowed, but didn’t stop. “We burned everything. Doors, furniture, books. We cut down the orchards, the forests, the ancient groves. Men burned their homes just to keep their children warm for a little bit longer.”

Still she said nothing.

Edric’s voice lowered. “And then came the dead.”

That made her blink. Just once.

“They came from the far north,” he said. “Not fast. Not at first. Like a tide, slow and patient. You could feel it coming. The animals went still. The trees stopped rustling. And then the wind would change. That was always the first sign, no birds. Just a cold wind and a silence that made your ears ring.”

“The first holdfast fell within days,” one of the men added quietly. “We tried to hold it. We thought stone and fire would be enough.”

“It wasn’t,” Edric said. “The walls were tall. The gates were strong. But the dead climbed it like spiders. Clawing over themselves until there was a mountain of bodies for the dead to use as a ramp.”

She was watching him now. Carefully. Not afraid, but not untouched either.

“They died,” he said. “And when they died, they stood back up. Eyes wide and already blue. And blue-eyed mothers slaughtered their own children. Brothers killing brothers. And every time a body fell, it rose and turned on the living.”

One of the younger men stood and walked to the window. Edric spared him a glance but let him go.

“We lost half the realm before we learned how to hold the line,” he said. “And even then, it was barely a line. The Children of the Forest wove what magic they had into the stones, but there weren’t enough of them left. We had to burn entire fields, forests, and holdfasts to push them back.”

He looked up at her again.

“You came after all of that,” he said. “After the dead had finally fallen. After the Night King was pushed back and bound in his lands where no living creature can travel. You show up on a moving island no one’s ever seen before, speaking no tongue we know, living in a castle that is impossible.”

The fire crackled behind them. The lake shimmered darkly beyond the glass.

“You can understand why we find that suspicious,” he finished.

She looked at him for a long time, then slowly nodded.

“Yes, I can,” she said. “The Hollow didn’t tell me. But I think…I think that’s why it left the Drift. She wasn’t awake yet, not fully. She woke too late to come.”

“That’s convenient,” Edric said again.

One of the men – Tormun, maybe, or Garrick – spoke up from the far end of the room. “What’s the drift?”

The girl didn’t answer right away. She turned her head, looking out through the high windows, to the black water just beyond. Fish passed now and then in slow arcs of silver and gold. The light caught in her hair, turning the red to copper.

“It’s not a place,” she said finally. “Not really. More like...a season. A silence. A space between. It’s where the Hollow went, or maybe it came to the Hollow,” she said finally. “After it woke. Or…half-woke.”

She shifted her weight – her bare feet made no sound on the smooth stone – as she pressed her hand gently against the stone column beside her, as if feeling for breath inside it.

“It’s not a place with borders. Not somewhere you can sail to. It’s more like...the space between choices. Between waking and sleeping. Between being something and not being anything anymore.”

She looked back at them, eyes calm. “We drifted. For a long while. Maybe longer than I meant to. She wasn’t ready. Neither were we.”

“We?” Edric asked, sharply.

The girl tilted her head. A small smile touched her lips – wry, unreadable. The girl was silent for a breath, then nodded slowly. “He stayed with me. When no one else did.”

A few men glanced at one another, uneasy. Edric didn’t like the way she said it. But he got the impression that she was done speaking of it. So he moved on.

“And what brings you out of this…Drift?” Edric asked, tone skeptical.

“She watches,” the girl said, voice distant. “Always watching. The Hollow doesn’t leave for no reason. She listens. She waits for the world to need her.”

Bran leaned forward. “Need her for what?”

“For sanctuary,” the girl said. “That’s all she gives.”

“Then why now?” Edric pressed. “Why not during the Long Night? Why not before, when we truly needed help?”

“She didn’t know how to be fully awake then,” the girl replied. “I think...I think she was still gathering herself. Or maybe I was. Either way, when the time came...we followed the call. The Hollow leaves the Drift when she hears a voice she can't ignore. Not words, something deeper. She listens for desperation.”

Edric squinted at her. “And you what, take your drifting island and rescue people in need?”

There was a long pause.

“No,” the girl said. “Not until now.”

That turned every head in the room.

“The Hollow never left the Drift for people before,” she continued, her voice even. “She left for others. Beasts caught in fire. Herds with nowhere left to run. Dens drowned in floodwaters. Nests crushed beneath wars they never started.”

“You rescued animals,” Edric said slowly, almost disbelieving.

The girl just nodded once. “Because people had already failed them.”

“And now we’re worth saving?” Edric asked, affronted. He couldn’t think of what made people less deserving than animals…what made them less deserving than a bird or a rabbit. “Why the change?”

The girl met his gaze. “She didn’t come because you were worthy. She came because you were drowning.”

That quieted them all. Even Bran.

And then she added, quieter still. “This is the first time the Hollow has brought people here who weren’t meant to be consumed.”

No one spoke after that for a long time. The girl remained where she was, barefoot on the smooth stone floor, hands folded in front of her like a statue carved to wait. She didn’t blink often. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t seem to breathe the same way they did. There was a stillness to her that made Edric uneasy – not the calm of peace, but the calm of something ancient lying in wait.

He got the distinct impression that if none of them said a word, she would stand there for a day, or two…or maybe even ten. Watching, waiting.

It was one of the younger men who finally broke the silence.

“And what happened to those who came before?” he asked hesitantly. “What do you mean, consumed?”

The girl’s head tilted slightly, as if hearing a distant sound. She didn’t answer right away. When she finally did, her voice was quiet. “Some she didn’t understand. Others… she misunderstood.” There was a long pause. “But none of them are still here,” she finished.

The silence that followed was colder than before.

“What does that mean?” Edric asked.

The girl blinked, slowly. “The Hollow was not awake then. Not really. She moved on instinct. Old instincts. The kind that kept her alive.”

“Instincts to eat people?” someone muttered.

But she didn’t confirm. She didn’t deny it either. “She listens now,” the girl said instead. “She learns. But she didn’t always.”

“Then the ones before –”

“They didn’t belong,” she said. “Or they didn’t know how to. And she was hungry.”

“And us?” Edric asked. “Do we belong?”

The girl looked at him. Not cruelly, but not kindly either.

“That’s not my decision,” she said. “That’s hers.”

She turned back toward the windows after that, watching the dark water ripple against the glass. As if listening for something far below.

Edric folded his arms. “You expect us to trust that won’t happen to us? That this castle won’t eat us in our sleep?”

“I don’t expect anything,” she said. “But she hasn’t eaten you yet, has she?”

No one had a reply for that.

They all felt it in that moment. That sense of being in a place that was not theirs. The warmth and light and polished stone. The food that appeared, the doors that opened and the doors that didn’t, the windows that watched. It was too clean. Too ready.

Too lived-in for a place that had no one living in it.

“You’re still not telling us everything,” Edric said, not unkindly.

“I’m telling you what I know,” she replied, quietly. “The rest… she doesn’t always share.”

“The castle?”

“Yes.”

Edric glanced at Bran, who had gone perfectly still.

And for a long, long while, no one spoke. The silence filled with the pulsing of water beyond the glass, the faint crackling from the hearth that still burned though they had added no wood to it, and the subtle creak of the castle above them, as if the Hollow itself were listening.

“If it’s just you and this he then who keeps the fires lit?” Bran asked. “Who maintains the roads? The towers? We saw hamlets, fields, villages. They’re clean, cared for. But there’s no one in them.”

“The Hollow doesn’t like things to rot.”

“Are you saying the castle maintains itself?” Edric asked.

She didn’t answer. But she didn’t deny it either.

Bran stepped even closer. “How old are you?”

It was a question that had bothered Edric as well. She looked young, at least twenty years his junior. And yet…he felt like a child standing before her.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Edric swore. “You expect us to believe –”

“I don’t expect anything from you,” she said, still looking only at Bran. “But you came here. And the Hollow let you in. It doesn’t do that for many.”

“And why did it bring us here?” Edric demanded.

“It won’t keep you,” she said. “Not forever. That’s not what she does.”

Her voice was gentle, but the certainty in it made Edric’s stomach tighten.

“She brought you here because something ended,” she added, quieter now. “And something else needs to begin.”

“Begin what?” Edric asked.

“You tell me,” she replied cryptically, but she didn’t wait for a reply. She turned instead, and with no more sound than falling ash, walked away – bare feet whispering across stone – vanishing back into the shadows of the archway as if she had never been there at all.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

I tried to sleep. I really did. But the Hollow was buzzing. Not whispering. Buzzing. Like bees made of wood and stone.

Something about guests. Men. Cold ones. Tall.

I went down to the kitchen instead. Found the picture of the feathered horses in the pantry again. Still weird. Still staring. I left it a piece of buttered toast.

The cabinets rearranged themselves while I wasn’t looking, which is rude.

Also, there is a boot near the fountain. Just one. I don’t know if that’s a threat or a fashion statement.

The greenhouse let out a long sigh around the second hour. Might’ve been wind. Might’ve been indigestion.

Either way, I’m not checking.

The Hollow’s holding its breath about something. I think it wants me to do something. Or say something. Or be something. It’s always very vague with its verbs.

Anyway. I took a plum and half a loaf of bread and hid in the conservatory for a bit. The koi were chatty tonight. One of them blinked at me like he knew too much.

◇ ◆ ◇

EDRIC

A Night Watchman

The hour was late. Most of the others had gone off to sleep, tucked into the strange underwater rooms like they belonged there. Edric couldn’t. Not yet. Not while the water pressed so close on all sides and the firelight cast shadows that didn’t seem to match what was actually in the room.

He found Bran in one of the curved alcove seats along the outer wall, near the great hearth but just far enough to be half-hidden behind a velvet curtain. The heavy green fabric had been tied back, the couch beneath it worn but rich black leather creased with age. A small table sat between them, carved from some dark wood veined in gold. The patterns glimmered under the shifting lights from the windows above.

Bran had a small cup in hand, steam curling from the top. On the small table before him was large pieces of parchment, sketches half finished scratched on their surfaces. Not supplies he had brought, but supplies Edric had seen on the many desks in the rooms and around the massive chamber they occupied.

Bran didn’t look up when Edric approached. His eyes seemed fixed on the top most parchment that showed a partially completed drawing of a vaulted ceiling connected to large round columns.

“I didn’t think you’d sleep,” Bran said, sounding almost absent…distracted.

Edric slid onto the opposite chair. The cushion was too soft, like it had memorized a dozen different bodies and was trying to guess his shape. “Neither did I.”

Everything was too comfortable. The beds, the couches, the chairs. Even the damn floor. Despite the cold appearance of stone and water, the rooms and chambers were warm. Effortlessly warm. When he pressed his hands to the walls, the stone didn’t leech heat from him…it pushed heat back to him. As if he was touching stones had been warmed by the summer sun.

For a time, neither of them spoke. The fire in the low hearth crackled softly, glowing orange beneath the wide brass grate. Beyond the alcove, the rest of the massive chamber was quiet. Just the occasional creak of ancient stone and the muffled flutter of fish tails outside the great windows.

“She’s not a witch,” Bran said eventually.

Edric snorted. “She’s not not a witch.”

“She didn’t curse us.”

“Not yet,” Edric said after a long pause, his voice low. “She’s not what she looks like.”

Bran didn’t glance up. “No one ever is.”

“I mean it. You see her and think, just a girl. Barefoot and calm…maybe harmless. But she speaks to a castle like it’s alive. Doors move for her. Floors open for her. Magic sings through these halls like wind through a canyon, and she stands in the middle of it untouched.”

“She woke it,” Bran said quietly. “That much is clear.”

“That much is terrifying,” Edric shot back. “You know how rare that kind of power is. To bind a place to yourself like that – it’s not spellwork. It’s deeper. Older.”

Bran looked toward the fire, its glow reflecting in the green-black marble of the hearth. “We’ve seen older things,” he murmured.

“And most of them tried to kill us.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. The flames popped in the braziers, shadows of the golden serpent gargoyles dancing along the ceiling. Edric’s eyes swept the chamber – its deep green columns, vaulted stone arches, the vast woven rugs that could’ve blanketed a feast hall.

There were tapestries that shimmered like starlight, and chandeliers that glowed without fire or wick. And everywhere there was metalwork, silver and gold. In the corner, a carved dragon coiled around a brazier looked to be made entirely of beaten gold.

“This place drips with wealth,” Edric said with a sharp exhale. “That girl walks barefoot on rugs that could buy a small keep. If I took just one of those golden statues and melted it down, we could finish building Winterfell twice over and still have coin enough to raise three more holdfasts.”

Bran didn’t argue. “She doesn’t seem to notice it,” was his only reply.

“Then it’s wasted on her,” Edric muttered. “And dangerous for us.”

“You sound jealous,” Bran said with a wry smile.

“You’re not?” Edric replied with a sharp glare. Bran just snorted softly in amusement and took a sip of the tea that the castle provided…tea that everyone seemed to be acquiring an addiction for, if Edric didn’t know any better. He’d tasted it once, and then switched to water. It tasted very good…almost too good. And that made him even more suspicious.

“She is the Hollow,” Bran said, his tone unreadable. “She’s not living in it. She is it. The way she moves…the way the doors open for her. The braziers lighting our path. The river bridges bending aside. She’s not just the girl. She’s the voice in its bones.”

“The girl,” Edric repeated, sharply. “Let’s not start calling her anything else. She’s not some blessed spirit or forest god. She’s just a girl with too much power and no one to answer to.”

“She’s the lady of this place,” Bran said, soft but firm.

“She commands the place,” Edric snapped. “That doesn’t make her its lady. You saw how she looked at us – blank as a mask. Not cruel, no. Just disconnected. You think she has subjects? A court? That hall could seat five hundred, and we’re the only ones here to walk through it.”

Bran’s silence was heavy.

Edric looked toward the vaulted windows and the water beyond them, fish weaving lazily through the shafts of lantern-light. “She built a palace for a kingdom. But there’s no kingdom. No people. Not a single soul.”

“There were homes,” Bran said quietly. “Farms…villages.”

“All of them empty,” Edric murmured. “And clean, like they are waiting. But for what? For people the castle wants to keep?”

They both fell silent again.

The firelight cast odd shapes across the mosaic floor. Edric thought of the strange magic here – the mosaic serpent that slithered across the ground, the lake behind the glass, the golden beasts that lined the halls.

Bran looked over at him finally. The low light caught the edge of the scar above his temple. “You don’t trust her.”

“I don’t trust things I don’t understand,” Edric said. “And I don’t understand her. This castle, this island…why we’re here. I don’t like feeling like a piece on someone else’s gameboard.”

Bran didn’t argue. He swirled the contents of his cup, then set it down with a quiet tap. “I think she’s a piece too.”

Edric shook his head. “No, she moves like she owns the board.”

“She’s just a girl,” Bran leaned back, arms folding across his chest.

“She was just a girl,” Edric corrected. “Before she ended up here. Before she bonded with whatever magic that Hollow holds. Before she watched gods know how many years slip by with nothing but that he of hers. She still hasn’t told us what he even is.”

“Could be a fish, for all we know,” Bran commented wryly with another sip.

“You think a girl that lives in a living castle is best friends with a fish?” Edric asked, incredulously.

Bran shrugged with a small smile. “It’s a funny thought, at least.”

He looked toward the great stained-glass windows – tall as towers, each one alive with shifting colors and distant movement. The water shimmered past them, and now and then a shape passed by. Always larger than it should be.

“We still don’t know how long she’s been here,” Edric added. “And she barely seems to be present at all. She’s here, but when you talk to her, she seems far away.”

Bran picked up his cup again. “She knew words from your journal.”

“That doesn’t mean she knew me.” Edric leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You heard what she said – the Hollow took the words. Not her. It just...gave her the shape of them. The meaning, not the memory.”

Bran exhaled through his nose, watching the firelight dance across the table.

“She’s not normal, Bran. And I think she’s dangerous.”

“She is dangerous,” Bran agreed. “So is the Wall. So was the Long Night.”

Edric looked away. His gaze landed on one of the carved serpents along the pillar – emerald eyes gleaming, mouth frozen mid-hiss. He stared at it for a moment, then said, “It’s too neat. Too perfect. The Night King falls back, and she appears. Her castle is alive and this place appears in our sea like it was waiting for the tide to shift.”

Bran didn’t reply.

Edric turned back to him. “Tell me you haven’t thought of it.”

“I have,” Bran’s voice was low.

“And?”

“She could have destroyed us the moment we stepped foot on her island. Instead, she showed us in. She fed us. Sheltered us. She’s spoken more truth than any lord or king I’ve followed.”

“That’s not a high bar,” Edric muttered. Then, quieter, “She’s hiding something.”

“She’s allowed to,” Bran said.

Edric frowned. “She’s not one of us.”

“No,” Bran said, lifting his gaze. “She’s something else.”

The light shifted again from deep green to blue in the windows above. Something large passed by. Edric looked up and thought, for a heartbeat, that something was looking back.

“She’s quiet,” Bran said. “She doesn’t beg. Doesn’t threaten. She didn’t ask why we came or what we wanted. She just opened the door.”

“And you want to use her,” Edric said flatly. “To finish the Wall.”

“I need to finish the Wall,” Bran replied. “If she’s the key, then I will use it.”

“And what if using her breaks it?”

Bran didn’t answer.

Edric sat back again, pushing a hand through his hair. The strands felt damp, even though the air was warm.

“This castle…” he said. “It breathes. The walls watch. It’s all tied to her. She’s the anchor. And she isn’t right, Bran.”

Bran traced a thumb along the armrest of his seat. “Maybe not. But neither are we.”

He looked at Edric, face unreadable. “I saw the cracks in your sword. The frostbite on your fingers. The way you looked at the fire like it might leave you behind. You think she’s strange. I think she a survivor, like us.”

“A survivor of what?” Edric asked.

Bran didn’t answer.

Silence stretched between them again. The lights shifted, and far above, something pressed against the glass just long enough to leave a ripple.

“If she turns on us,” Edric finally said. “I’ll be the one to stop her.”

“I know,” Bran gave a small nod.

“And if she doesn’t…”

“Then we’ll owe her more than we can ever repay.”

Edric glanced back at the empty room. The couches, the plants, the books in a language they could not read. The suit of armor standing in the corner, hollow and watching.

He thought about the way her voice sounded, like it didn’t quite belong to her, like the island itself was speaking through her mouth.

“She’s not done with us,” he said.

“No,” Bran said. “But I don’t think she ever meant to start with us at all.”

They sat in silence until the fire burned low, and the Hollow dreamed around them.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

The Hollow gave me drawings this morning. Left them on my desk like a cat with a dead mouse. Very proud of itself.

They’re good. Sharp lines, sure hands. Quicker than mine. The ink’s a bit smudged – someone’s left-handed or impatient. Maybe both.

They’re trying to build something. Walls, I think. Castles too. Layered bastions of stone and snow and burden. There's a little sketch of a tree in the corner of one. Wide and short with a laughing face carved into it. The roots are too thick, all gnarled and grasping like they’re trying to hold the earth still.

I like it.

Some of the measurements are wrong. Not wrong wrong, just…not Hollow-wrong. Which is maybe why it gave them to me. It doesn’t understand people-math. I don’t understand it either, so we’re even.

One note says something about ice wards. That’s interesting. Dangerous, probably.

One of the pages smells like salt and charcoal. One smells like dried pine. I don’t know why that feels important, but it does. The Hollow won’t tell me who made them. Only that they’re here now.

I guess I’ll find out…after breakfast.

◇ ◆ ◇

HADDIE

Of the Hollow

The doors were being stubborn again.

She could feel them pressing against her awareness like a sulking child refusing to be coaxed into a bath. They weren’t angry, just hesitant, listening to the two men outside fussing and muttering as they tried to open them by force or wit.

She stood on the other side barefoot, fingers trailing the etched metal, amused. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, not really. But the Hollow had a way of carrying sound when it wanted her to hear.

“Just…push again,” came the grumble. “No, not like that. It opened last time, didn’t it? It should open again.”

A pause.

“Maybe we need her.”

At that, the Hollow gave a quiet nudge. “All right, all right,” Haddie muttered aloud. “Don't get excited.”

The doors shuddered softly, then pulled themselves open, revealing her silhouetted by soft lamplight. Two men stood there in the pale light, one with his hand on his sword, the other clutching a worn satchel. The younger one – blonde and rugged looking like he’d forgotten how brushing worked – startled like she’d hit him.

The older – tall, broad, dark hair, thick beard, and familiar in a way she didn’t understand – did not. His hand went to his hip, not for a blade, but to steady himself.

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

“The other side,” Haddie blinked.

He stared. The younger man muttered something under his breath. Haddie tilted her head slightly, as if trying to remember what language they were speaking. Her tongue felt slow.

There was a long awkward pause before the older man put one hand in front of him and one hand behind, and bowed. “My lady,” he said. Haddie blinked, stunned and a bit flattered.

“You talk loud,” she finally said and then turned and walked away without explanation.

“You stole my drawings,” the older man said suddenly, stepping forward and chasing after her. The younger man hesitated before following. “The sketches. My notes. They're gone.”

Haddie frowned. “I didn’t take them. The Hollow gave them to me. It... keeps things.”

“The Hollow?”

She gestured around them with her hand. “The castle.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” the younger one spoke, half to himself.

“But you are,” Haddie said, blinking again.

The men exchanged glances. She slowed at the top of her stairs, her fingers dragging along the curved banister of the hall. “I think…I think she took them because of what you're building. It wanted me to see. It thought I should understand.”

The older man stared at her as the younger one spoke. “And what do you understand?” he asked, looking around warily.

Haddie tilted her head. “That I should help. Maybe…probably. It keeps being vague.”

They continued in silence, past familiar halls that had once echoed only her footsteps. The paintings along the walls seemed to shift in the corner of her eyes. She ignored them.

It took longer than she expected to reach the greenhouse. Bran – the older man reintroduced himself halfway through their walk, after the third spiral staircase – kept stopping to look at everything. Not like a thief would. More like a starving man at a feast.

She didn’t mind. She liked the way his eyes widened at the moving murals. Or how Edric – he hadn’t introduced himself, but Bran had been kind enough to tell her anyways – hovered just slightly behind, suspicious of every arch and lamp and moving floor.

The greenhouse doors opened like petals. Haddie stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t touch the orange moss. It bites,” she said without a smile.

Edric hesitated. Bran said nothing.

Warmth met them like breath. Humid and fragrant, thick with green things. The floor shifted to packed soil beneath their feet, and the air shimmered with floating pollen. Ferns rustled. Vines recoiled politely from the men’s boots.

Bran made a sound between a laugh and a sigh. “By the gods,” he whispered. “It’s like spring never ended here.”

Ivy coiled in slow motion across the glass ceiling, and soft mist clung to the air. Rows of herbs, fruiting plants, and stranger things pulsed with life.

Bran stepped forward first, then let out a quiet gasp. “This is…gods, this is magic.”

Haddie said nothing. She walked ahead to a squat, knobby tree with silvery leaves and tugged a bright orange bulb that defied gravity from one of its low branches.

“Dirigible plum,” she said absently, holding it out to Edric, who stared at it like it might explode. “Tastes like regret and citrus.”

He didn’t take it.

Bran wandered deeper into the foliage and kneeled by a trough of strange leafy vines that shimmered faintly blue. “I want this in Winterfell,” he said, awestruck. “Even in winter…a place to grow food. Heal the sick. Breathe green when the world turns white.”

“You’re building a home?” Haddie asked as she watched him through lowered lashes.

He looked up at her. “A keep. Strong and warm. Food for a thousand winters.”

“You’ll need it.”

He nodded. “And more. Strongholds to anchor the kingdom.”

There was a long pause, broken only by the soft buzz of insects and the quiet gurgle of one of the enchanted irrigation streams. Finally, Bran stood. “There’s a wall,” he said.

“I know,” Haddie replied.

“We’re building it high. Strong. But it needs more. The Children of the Forest can only do so much. Their numbers are...”

“Dwindling,” Edric supplied when Bran failed to find the word. Bran nodded once.

“Ah,” she pressed a finger against the glass of a terrarium. A beetle with too many legs reared up on the other side. “And your wall is...broken.”

Edric finally took the plum. He didn’t eat it, but rolled it in his hands as he examined the flesh of it.

“Not broken,” Bran said eventually. “Incomplete. Without the magic it’s just ice. We can build it taller, stronger. But the Children’s runes fade too quickly. There aren’t enough of them left. We need something more. Something to hold back the dark. We can build the bones of it, but the soul…”

Haddie didn’t move. She just stared at him. And slowly, something inside her folded in on itself. She understood now.

Bran met her eyes. They were grey like the clouds just before a storm. “If we can’t ward it, it won’t last. The Wall is meant to keep out more than men.”

“And the Night King isn’t dead,” Edric added softly. “Just waiting.”

Haddie was very still. Something inside her shifted.

She could feel it. The Hollow tightening around her mind. Not a warning. Not a threat. Just a nudge. A memory. A sacrifice already waiting.

She exhaled. It wasn’t for her…it never had been for her.

The realization sat like stone in her chest, hard and cold. But she didn’t cry. She couldn’t. Instead, she just nodded, once.

“I know what you need,” she said quietly. “You need something alive.”

Bran blinked. “What?”

Haddie didn’t answer. She walked to the center of the greenhouse, past the rows of fennel and foxglove, and knelt beside a stone basin that had never held water. She placed her palm against it, and the vines around the rim curled gently toward her hand.

“I thought it was mine,” she whispered. “But it never was.”

The Hollow pulsed around her. Soft and sad. She looked over her shoulder at Bran. At Edric.

And her heart broke cleanly in two.

Chapter Text

Sanctuary Year 23

Winter

I went back to the secret chamber today. The one that doesn’t always exist unless she lets it.

The glow was weaker. Not dying, exactly, but…softening. Like a candle left to burn without a watcher. Like it knew I was coming. Like it was ready.

I stood in the doorway for a long time. Just stood there. Breathing and listening. The Hollow was quiet…too quiet. Not in absence, but in reverence. Like even she didn’t want to intrude.

I crossed the room and picked it up.

I shouldn’t have been able to. I was certain it would resist, or vanish, or that the pedestal itself would seal shut. But it didn’t. The stone was warm in my hands. Familiar. Heavier than it looked.

And it pulsed. Not in fear. Not in pain. Just…acceptance.

I think that’s the part that broke me.

The Hollow didn’t speak. There were no words. No shifting walls or sealing doors or fluttering lights to stop me. She let me take it. She let me choose. But it wasn’t really a choice, was it?

She made something, and now she’s giving it up.

And so am I.

I wrapped it carefully, like I would a wound. I didn’t look at it again. I couldn’t. I didn’t cry, not then. But my hand trembled when I tucked it close to my ribs.

It’s strange. I’ve given many things away in my life. Books, bones, broken promises. But this…this feels like giving away a word I haven’t said yet. Like handing over a breath I was meant to keep for myself.

I know who it’s meant for now…and I know what it will cost.

But I won’t name it. I can’t. Not anymore.

Not when I already know how it ends.

◇ ◆ ◇

BRAN

The Builder

She left them again. Three days locked away behind the dark doors, the girl vanished into the Hollow’s depths as if she’d never existed. The strange lights in the deep windows dimmed. The water grew quieter. No footsteps, no voice, and worse, no answers.

“Maybe it ate her,” Edric said, his tone jovial but his face serious.

Bran didn’t respond. He didn’t believe the girl – the Lady, as some of the men had copied him and started calling her – was dead. But he couldn’t say what he did believe. Not yet.

Then, on the third morning, the door opened. No noise, no signal, just the slow groan of wood and the small figure standing there with wild hair and quiet eyes.

“It’s time,” she said simply.

None of them asked what she meant. They already knew. Bran ordered them to gather their packs, and in silence they followed her once more.

The Hollow was quieter than before. As they passed the high-vaulted halls, the strange bronze lamps flickered dimmer than Bran remembered. Like a hearth left to burn out. The air carried a subtle tension, like a castle holding its breath.

They ascended through the castle’s winding paths, following the girl across stairwells that shifted and formed with her steps. The path was longer than Bran remembered – either because they’d taken a different way or the Hollow was showing them more now. With every turn, a new wonder revealed itself.

One stair bent in on itself like a nautilus shell, forcing them to spiral upward in silence. Another had no railings, just hovering lights marking the edge, and Bran found himself guiding one of the younger men, who refused to look down.

They passed a stairwell where translucent birds fluttered between crystalline railings, singing a melody no one could place. In one gallery, floor-to-ceiling paintings turned to follow their movement, the animals blinking when stared at too long. A feathered horse leapt between two paintings mid-wall and vanished into the third. The men startled, and one whispered a prayer.

One of the men muttered that the castle was alive, another whispered that it was dreaming.

There was a chamber where the ceiling mimicked the sky, but wrong. No sun, no stars. Just a pulsing aurora of light and shadow. The walls rippled like water as they passed. Bran saw shapes moving beneath the surface – like memories half remembered or dreams yet to form. They crossed through mosaic corridors where jeweled creatures blinked and moved across the walls, their movements trailing across tiles as if swimming.

The air there tasted faintly of copper and something sweet.

A set of double doors opened into a vaulted chamber where beams of golden light filtered down through tall windows etched with runes. Dust hung like suspended time in the air. They walked across a bridge with no visible bottom, just darkness and drifting motes. The girl stepped confidently, but the men hesitated until Bran took the first step and found it firm beneath his boots.

Bran walked slower than the others. He was trying to memorize the path, but it felt impossible. The Hollow was too fluid, like it remembered where it wanted you to go but never twice the same way.

They passed halls Bran hadn’t seen before – lined with skeletal trees carved from silver and blue glass, fountains that whispered in languages none of them knew. At one point, they passed through an arch where the air felt warmer, like spring. Another brought them beneath hanging gardens filled with upside-down blooms.

Bran reached out once, touching a flower that blinked shut at his fingers. The others murmured behind him, their boots echoing off smooth stone and polished tile.

One hallway was rimmed with thick vines crawling up the walls, hung with tiny golden bells that rang in response to their footfalls. The Hollow seemed less a structure and more a living thing – a great beast of stone and magic that breathed through shifting light and memory. Bran could feel it in his bones. The castle didn’t just shelter its guests, it remembered them.

It carried its own kind of grief, the same way old trees remembered fires, and mountains remembered quakes.

A room of mirrors reflected not just their shapes but their shadows moving ahead of them, as though glimpses of who they might become. One of the men gasped when his reflection winked back. Another refused to show anything at all.

Bran slowed when they reached the long hallway with the great glass mosaics. The light played across them strangely. One mural shifted as he passed – once showing a garden, then showing the same place in flames. The glass petals seemed to wilt and curl. A soft hum pressed behind his ears, like the castle was remembering something painful.

They reached the hourglass chamber. Bran had to look…had to see them again. The gems inside shimmered like starlight.

One of the younger men, a flax-haired hunter named Rell, stared openly. “What do they count?” he asked.

The girl paused. “It keeps time, of course,” she said. That was all. As if it were obvious. As if the answer was more than words could hold. Her voice was soft, almost reverent.

“Time for what?” someone whispered.

She didn’t answer.

Edric, ever watchful, broke the silence. “And what of him?”

The girl glanced at him, brow quirking faintly. “He’s hunting.”

“Hunting?”

She gave a small nod. “Preparing…or stocking up I suppose. For the next Drift. There’s nothing to hunt in the Drift.”

The men looked at one another. Rell frowned. “What is he?”

“You’ve seen him,” she added. They all turned at that, confused.

She raised one pale hand and pointed up. Above the landing was the massive bronze sigil, partially obscured by shadows. The one that they had seen when they had first arrived.

It showed a strange beast – a dragon, if one made by a child describing a dragon to an artist who’d never heard of one before – coiled around something between a mountain and a spire, with eyes shaped with tiny diamonds. The proportions were wrong. The tail too long, the wings too thin, the eyes.... It looked like something half-imagined.

They exited into the courtyard and began their descent. The steps were wet with mist. Flowers bloomed from cracks. They paused at each level. Bran noticed she slowed at a circular platform where a broken sundial stood – its shadow pointing toward nothing. She crouched and traced something on the base, then stood abruptly and continued on.

As they approached the last terrace, Bran found himself walking beside her.

“Are you certain you want us to leave?” he asked.

She glanced at him. “I don’t want anything. Not anymore.”

“Then why help us?” He asked with a frown.

“Because the Hollow chose you. And it rarely offers twice.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She didn’t respond for a moment. Her eyes were elsewhere, as if reading something on the horizon. Then she said, softly, “Because I remember what it feels like to be chosen by something older than understanding. And because you’re building something, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Bran answered hesitantly.

“Then that is enough.”

They reached the boathouse. The mist peeled back like a curtain. The girl stepped in front of Bran. She held something wrapped in dark cloth.

“Give this to your Children of the Forest,” she said softly. “They’ll know what to do.”

Bran’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”

“Something precious,” she said. “Be careful with it.” A tear slipped from one of her bright emerald eyes and she reached up to touch her cheek hesitantly. She stared at her wet fingers like she couldn’t understand what she was looking at. “It’s hard to say goodbye,” her voice shook with the words.

“We barely know each other,” Bran said with a soft smile.

She looked up at him, eyes wide and ancient. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Bran blinked. Her face looked older than it had before. Not aged…but burdened. Something inside him stirred. Pity, maybe. Or fear.

“Do I thank you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet. You’ll hate me later, when you understand. Now leave, before the Hollow changes its mind.”

Before he could respond, the lake erupted. A massive white tentacle slapped the water near the far pier, sending waves crashing into the boathouse.

“Kraken!” Someone screamed.

The ship lurched. Bran felt a hand yank his collar and then he was being pulled aboard. The boat snapped forward, ropes shredding. The lake frothed as more tentacles breached, each larger than the last. Pale flesh shimmered in the suddenly cloudy day. The spray soaked them all.

The Hollow shuddered. Its windows blinked out one by one. A rumble built beneath them. The girl stood alone. Mist clung to her. She was barefoot. Her cheeks shone wet as she silently cried.

She turned to the tentacle, unfazed. Reached into her robe and tossed something into the lake.

Toast.

Bran stared as the boat surged forward, the river pulling them rapidly away.

It wasn’t until they were nearly upon the bog did he unwrap the bundle. Inside was a glowing stone the size of the palm of his hand. It pulsed in his grip, the light dimming and then getting brighter, like a heartbeat.

He didn’t know what it was. But he knew he was holding something sacred.

A sound from above them startled him out of his observation. He heard wings. There was a shadow drifting through the clouds. Vast, and near silent. Water dripped down from above them as a creature flew overhead.

“Is that…?” Rell whispered, eyes wide.

“Dragon,” Edric whispered. “It has to be.”

The men stared upward into the fog and cloud filled sky, catching the sight of a dark shape above, and were speechless. The ship continued to speed downriver. The Hollow receded, half-swallowed by a storm that appeared from nowhere. It had been sunny just minutes before, not a cloud in the sky. Now the boat rocked beneath them, buffeted by sudden gusts. Bran gripped the edge of the hull, heart pounding, eyes fixed on the sky. The dragon didn’t approach. It didn’t need to.

Its presence alone stilled every voice.

Then, slowly, it turned, wings tipping as it vanished into the storm. A single flash of lightning lit its silhouette – long tail, narrow snout, the faint glow of something burning in its throat.

And it was gone.

Bran lowered his gaze. The river carried them forward. The Hollow had disappeared behind the veil of mist and storm, the strange girl lost to distance that felt like a dream. But the pulse of the stone in his pocket matched the rhythm of his heart.

She had given him something. A burden, a hope, a goodbye. Somewhere behind them, a dragon flew…hunting. And Bran, for the first time in a long while, felt hope.