Chapter Text
The dynamic between a bastard and a trueborn lady was a fragile, jagged thing, and at eight years old, Jon Snow had finally been broken by it.
It wasn’t a physical blow that drove him out into the biting chill of the North, but rather the heavy, suffocating weight of Catelyn Stark’s gaze. Whenever his eyes chanced to meet hers in the Great Hall of Winterfell, he felt the freezing truth: he was an unwanted stain on her honor, a living insult carved into the very stone of his father's home. He couldn’t handle it anymore. The silent accusations, the cold dismissals, the sharp edge of her resentment. It pressed against his chest until he could barely draw breath.
So, he fled. He hadn't packed a bag, nor had he stolen a horse or mapped a course. Jon simply slipped past the sleepy guards in the dim hours before dawn, driven by a desperate, desperate need to be anywhere else. Anywhere where his breathing wouldn't be considered a sin.
Now, the Wolfswood swallowed him whole.
The ancient forest was a labyrinth of gnarled weirwoods, towering ironwoods, and sentinels that blocked out what little moonlight pierced the heavy canopy. It was freezing, a deep, bitter ache that seeped through his thin wool cloak and stiffened his small joints. Jon stumbled through the thick snowdrift, his boots sinking deep with every labored step. He had no idea where he was going. The vast, terrifying expanse of the North lay before him, an endless sea of white and shadow, but the fear of freezing to death was a distant thing compared to the raw urgency driving him forward.
Then, the silence of the woods shattered. That was quick.
The low, mournful wail of a horn echoed from the direction of Winterfell. It bounced off the frosted hills, a rhythmic, frantic signaling. One blast. Someone had discovered his empty bed. Who could it be? Robb? Whoever it was knew he was gone.
Panic, sharp and electric, spiked through Jon's chest. His father, Lord Eddard, would send riders. They would track his clumsy footprints in the snow, drag him back by his collar, and force him to face Lady Stark’s renewed, burning contempt. He couldn't go back. He wouldn't.
Ignoring the burning exhaustion in his lungs, Jon lunged forward, abandoning the faint animal trail he had been following. He plunged blindly into a dense thicket of briars and low-hanging branches, his only thought to put as much distance between himself and the horn-blasts as humanly possible.
He didn't see the drop.
His boot caught on a buried, frozen root. With a sharp gasp, Jon pitched forward, but instead of hitting the snowy earth, the ground simply vanished beneath him. He tumbled through a curtain of heavy ivy and rotting brambles, sliding down a steep, slick chute of stone and dirt that had been completely concealed by the overgrown brush.
He crashed hard against a solid stone floor, the breath knocked completely from his lungs. Jon lay there for a long moment, gasping, staring blindly up into the darkness. Above him, the hidden tunnel opening was a tiny, distant square of dim grey light.
When he finally managed to sit up, rubbing his bruised shoulder, the first thing he noticed was the temperature. The biting, freezing wind of the Wolfswood was gone, replaced by a strange, circulating warmth. The air smelled different here—not of wet earth and pine, but of something metallic, sharp, and entirely alien to him.
Shivering slightly from the lingering cold in his bones, Jon pushed himself to his feet and looked around. He wasn't in a simple cave. He stood at the threshold of a massive, cavernous chamber that stretched so far into the gloom he couldn't see the opposite wall. But it wasn't the size that stole his breath; it was the architecture. The walls weren't rough, jagged rock. They were made of smooth, seamless panels of a dark, polished material that gleamed faintly in the dark. Strange, geometric lines were etched into the surfaces, pulsing with a faint, dormant energy.
Jon took a hesitant step forward, his small boots clicking softly against the floor. He knew nothing of the world outside of his small corner of Westeros. He knew of castles, swords, horses, and the tales of Old Nan. He thought, perhaps, he had stumbled into a ruined stronghold of the Children of the Forest, or a deep vault belonging to the First Men.
Suddenly, a sharp, hummed vibration resonated through the floorboards.
Jon flinched, retreating a step as a pillar of brilliant, flickering blue light erupted from a raised circular dais in the center of the cavern. He gasped, falling to his knees, shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness.
The light shifted, condensing, and taking form. Jon watched in sheer, unadulterated awe as the blue energy shaped itself into the silhouette of a man. The figure was clad in heavy, layered robes of an unfamiliar cut, armored plates girding his chest and shoulders. A flowing cloak draped over his back, and his face was entirely concealed beneath a fearsome, dark metallic mask.
Jon held his breath while his body kept on trembling. He had no concept of holograms or projecting technology. To his eight-year-old mind, this was sorcery. This was a ghost, a phantom of the Old Gods, or a demon from the Shadow Lands.
The figure shifted, turning its masked head slowly as if looking around the chamber. Jon remained perfectly still, desperate to blend into the shadows of the cave floor, assuming the apparition was merely a static phantom, a remnant of a magic long dead. He didn't realize the projection was reactive. He didn't realize the entity inside the light was, in a sense, very much alive.
The hologram stopped its rotation. The masked face tilted downward, locking its unseen gaze directly onto the small, shivering boy huddled in the dirt.
Within the ancient, stowed memory banks of the automated underground fortress, the dormant consciousness of Revan stirred. For thousands of years, this automated vault had slumbered beneath the surface of a primitive, uncharted world, completely isolated from the rest of the galaxy. But now, a presence had broken the perimeter.
Through the sensors of the ancient array within the fortress, Revan didn't just see a frightened child. He felt him.
The Force gathered around the boy like a raging, swirling tempest, thick and unrefined, yet blindingly bright. It was a wellspring of raw power, untamed and aching for direction. In all his travels across the known galaxy, through wars with the Republic and the Sith, Revan had rarely encountered a connection this potent—and it belonged to a child who didn't even know it existed. On this cold, isolated planet, the Force had finally found a voice.
The blue, flickering figure stepped down from the dais, the image crackling slightly with static, and approached the boy.
"Who are you, child?" a voice echoed through the cavern. It didn't sound like a ghost; it was deep, resonant, and filtered through a strange, mechanical resonance that vibrated in Jon's very body.
Jon swallowed hard, his voice small and cracking with fear as he looked up at the towering, armored phantom. "I'm... I'm Jon. Jon Snow."
TBC