Chapter Text
First time writing a GoT/Song of Ice and Fire story. I hope you enjoy it!!
Note: This prologue is mostly a (paraphrased) retelling of content from the following source canon, with some actual quotes:
A Game of Thrones (Chapters Jon VII, Jon VIII, Jon IX)
Game of Thrones Season 1 (Episodes 8, 9, 10)
Jon couldn’t sleep.
The news from King’s Landing—that his lord father had been branded a traitor and thrown into a dungeon—tore at him like a dull blade. Lord Eddard Stark was the most honorable man in the Seven Kingdoms. Whatever poison was brewing in the capital, Jon knew in his bones that his father’s arrest wasn't justice.
I should be there, he thought, staring up at the dark wood rafters. What was he doing at the edge of the world, sharing bread with rapists, thieves, and unwanted younger sons? Commander Mormont had urged him to stay, to keep his mind on his duties, but a quiet, honest voice inside Jon knew his presence here was temporary. He didn't belong on the Wall—not really—for all that Catelyn Stark had been eager to send him to it. That enthusiasm should have been a warning, but he’d been too foolish, too eager to find a place of his own, to see it.
His place was with his family. With his father, with Robb, and with his little brothers and sisters. Here, there was nothing but ice, iron, and disappointment.
Tyrion Lannister had the right of it, Jon thought bitterly, turning onto his side. A colony of ghosts.
A low, vibrating growl broke the silence.
Jon sat up on his cot. Beside the door, Ghost stood stiff-legged, his thick white fur standing on end along his spine. The direwolf let out a low, wet keen before his lip curled back to show white fangs. Without warning, Ghost began to scratch savagely at the heavy door, his claws tearing deep grooves into the grain.
Across the drafty room, Grenn’s heavy snoring rattled in the cold air, while Pyp lay wrapped tightly in his wool cloak against the stone wall, fast asleep. None of them stirred. Ignorant of the shadow at the threshold, they slept on, leaving Jon alone in the dim candlelight as Ghost’s pale claws scraped softly, insistently against the bottom of the wooden door.
"Ghost? What is it, boy?" Jon whispered, his pulse spiking.
Ghost never acted like this. Throwing off his furs, Jon pulled on his boots, gripped the hilt of his sword, and eased the latch open. The wolf bolted into the corridor before the heavy door had even finished swinging wide.
The bitter cold of the walkway hit Jon like a physical blow. A howling gust swept down the gangway, making the old wood of the Commander’s Tower groan under the strain. Beneath the roar of the wind, Ghost heard something else. The wolf froze, his ears flattened back.
A moment later, Jon heard it too.
It was a dragging, scraping sound—a heavy boot sliding unevenly across stone, accompanied by a strange, unnatural silence. No breathing. No grunts of exertion. Just a dead weight moving through the dark.
Jon’s heart hammered against his ribs, but he drew his sword and followed the white shadow of his wolf. Ghost led him straight to the door of Lord Commander Mormont’s quarters.
The door stood half-ajar, swinging slightly in the draft.
"Commander Mormont?" Jon called out softly, edging into the threshold, his knuckles white on his sword hilt. "Are you alright, sir?"
A figure stood near the center of the room, outlined in the dim shadow. It wasn't Mormont.
"Who’s there? State your name," Jon demanded, holding his blade steady.
The figure turned slowly. Jon’s breath hitched in his throat, a sudden wave of ice flooding his veins.
It’s impossible.
It was Othor. But Othor had been found frozen in the Haunted Forest two days ago. They had dragged his stiff, blue-lipped corpse back through the Wall. He had been dead.
Yet here he stood. His skin was mottled a sickening purple and grey, his throat torn open—and his eyes were not the eyes of a living man. They burned with a bright, terrifying, luminescent blue.
Before Jon could process the horror, the corpse lunged. Jon swung instinctively, his steel biting deep into Othor’s midsection, carving a wide, gaping wound across the belly.
No blood flowed. No sound came from the creature's lips. The dead man didn't even stumble.
Othor slammed into Jon with unnatural, horrifying strength, hurling him across the solar. Jon crashed against the heavy oak desk, air exploding from his lungs. Before he could raise his blade, icy, rigid fingers locked around his throat, cutting off his windpipe and pressing him hard against the stone floor. Jon clawed uselessly at the cold hands, his vision swimming with dark spots.
A white streak blurred through the shadows—Ghost slammed into Othor's flank, his jaws locking around the corpse's thigh, tearing the monster backward off Jon.
"What in the name of—!"
Commander Mormont stood in the inner doorway in his nightshirt, a burning oil lamp raised in his hand. The wight turned instantly toward the voice, lunging and knocking the old man to the cold stone floor. The lamp tumbled from Mormont's grip.
Jon dragged himself up, his throat raw and burning. Acting on instinct, he lunged forward, grabbed the fallen lamp, and hurled it with all his strength straight into the dead man's chest.
The glass shattered. Burning oil splashed over rotting flesh and the heavy linen drapes behind the desk.
In a fraction of a second, the wight erupted into a roaring pillar of orange flame. For the first time, a sound tore from its throat—a high, piercing, shriek that sounded like metal scraping over iron.
It thrashed wildly, flailing toward Mormont. Jon lunged past the flames, grabbed the heavy drapes with his bare hands, and ripped the burning fabric from the wall with a desperate tug, hurling the blazing mass directly over Othor’s head and shoulders.
The heat was blinding. A white-hot knife of agonizing fire seared through the flesh of Jon’s right palm as the melting curtain burned straight into his skin. He didn't let go. He forced the thrashing, screaming nightmare to the floor, pinning it beneath the flaming cloth until the thrashed limbs finally went limp and the high shriek died away.
When Jon pulled the blackened fabric back, the bright blue light in the charred sockets was gone.
Silence filled the room, save for the crackle of smoldering wood and Jon’s ragged, sobbing gasps. Ghost padded over, pressing his warm shoulder against Jon’s hip. Jon collapsed sideways, burying his face in the wolf's fur.
Mormont pulled himself up against the wall, his face ash-pale, his eyes fixed on the blackened heap on the floor—and then on Jon, who sat shuddering, clutching his ruined hand to his chest.
"Snow," Mormont breathed, his voice trembling with awe and horror. "By the gods, boy..."
Footsteps thundered up the wooden stairs as guards and stewards finally burst into the room.
The world faded into a blur of voices and movement until Jon found himself lying on a narrow cot in the infirmary. The air smelled of vinegar, dried lavender, and old leather.
Above him stood Maester Aemon and his steward, Clydas.
The treatment was pure agony. When Clydas offered a cup of dark, fragrant liquid, Jon pushed it away with his left hand.
“No milk of the poppy,” Jon spat through gritted teeth. “I need my head clear.”
Aemon’s sightless, milky eyes turned toward him. Though the old man was stone blind, Jon felt a sudden, uncanny sensation that those pale eyes were looking straight into his soul.
“Very well,” Aemon murmured softly.
Jon locked his jaw as Aemon began lancing the blisters. His right hand felt like a mass of molten lead; his fingers were raw, swollen, and weeping red fluid. Pain throbbed in sickening pulses up his forearm and straight into his collarbone, but he kept his eyes fixed on the timber ceiling, refusing to scream.
“A cooling salve with healing herbs, my child,” Aemon explained, his voice low and soothing as his fingers dipped into a stone jar.
The old man’s hands moved over Jon’s wrist with astonishing delicacy. Though sightless for decades, Aemon’s fingers possessed a vision of their own—feeling the raw edges of the ruined skin, measuring the hot, thrumming pulse beneath the tendon.
Jon flinched as a nerve flared violently.
“Sure you won’t have the poppy?” Clydas muttered, holding a basin.
“I’m fine,” Jon bit out.
Aemon paused, his hands resting lightly over Jon’s wrist. "Pain is a cruel master, Jon Snow, but a truthful one. It tells us we are still among the living." He dipped a clean cloth into a bowl of cooled nightshade wash, pressing it gently to the burn. "You fought bravely tonight. Commander Mormont owes you his life."
Jon swallowed past the tightness in his throat. “I did what I had to. But Maester... that thing... it was like something out of Old Nan’s stories. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't fought it myself.”
“There is much in this world that men call legend simply because they fear it to be true,” Aemon said gently, wrapping clean linen around the wound. “Now rest. You will need your strength for the days ahead.”
Clydas cleaned the instruments and slipped out, leaving the chamber quiet. Jon’s eyelids grew heavy, the exhausted shock of the fight finally overtaking the throbbing agony in his palm. Within minutes, his breathing deepened into sleep.
Aemon lingered at the bedside. He stood quietly in the dim room, listening to the steady rhythm of the boy’s chest.
Slowly, carefully, the old Maester reached out a trembling hand. His gnarled fingers lightly touched Jon’s face, tracing the high, firm line of his cheekbone, the straight bridge of his nose, and the sharp structure of his jaw.
A sudden, icy prickle rose along the back of Aemon’s neck. Unbidden, his mind drifted back through eighty years of memory to the grand halls of King's Landing. Something in the boy’s bone structure brought back images of his beloved family– of Jaehaerys… and Egg…
Jon shifted in his sleep with a low sigh. Aemon withdrew his hand, slowly folding his arms deep into the sleeves of his robe, sitting in a silent vigil with the ghosts of his past as the firelight flickered against the stone walls around him.
Three days later, the word came on black wings: Lord Eddard Stark had been beheaded on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor by order of King Joffrey.
Jon didn't cry. His grief was too vast, too cold for tears. It sat in his chest like a block of iron while the rest of the Watch went about their indifferent routines. Down in the courtyard, men joked over salted beef; up on the Wall, the wind howled as it always had. The world had not stopped turning because Ned Stark was gone, and the injustice of it made Jon want to set the castle ablaze.
His hand throbbed beneath its thick linen wraps, but he welcomed the pain. It seemed to give the fire in his chest a voice.
That night, he made his choice. He remembered the words Maester Aemon had spoken to him in this very room only two days before, when the old man had revealed his true name—Aemon Targaryen—and spoken of the agony of staying on the Wall while his family was slaughtered in the South:
"What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms... or the smile of a brother? Honor is a shadow on a wall. Air and darkness. We are only human, and the gods have made us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."
The Maester’s words echoed in Jon’s ears like a war horn.
At midnight, Jon saddled his horse in pitch darkness, whistled quietly for Ghost, and prepared to slip through the southern gate.
"Jon, please. You can’t! You mustn't!"
Jon turned to see Samwell Tarly standing in the shadow of the stable doors, trembling in his wool mantle.
"Get out of the way, Sam."
"They’ll kill you, Jon! They’ll call you a deserter and take your head off!"
"They took my father’s head!" Jon shouted, the words tearing out of his raw throat as he swung up into the saddle. "Get out of my way, Sam, or I’ll ride you down!"
He kicked his horse into a hard gallop, bursting past Sam and out into the freezing darkness of the Kingsroad. The wind lashed his face, biting through his cloak as he rode hard into the night, the dark silhouette of Castle Black shrinking into the gloom behind him.
He rode for an hour, the horse's breath pluming white in the freezing air, before the thunder of pursuing hooves echoed out of the dark behind him. Grenn, Pyp, and Sam rode him down near a snowbank at the treeline, reining in their horses to block his path.
"We aren't letting you throw your life away, Jon!" Grenn yelled, grabbing his horse’s reins.
"If you leave, you’re a deserter," Pyp said, his voice shaking. "Mormont will take your head! Is that what your father would have wanted?"
Sam reined in beside him, panting in the cold air. "We took a vow, Jon! Night gathers, and now my watch begins... It shall not end until my death. We are your brothers now. You can't leave us."
Jon sat in the saddle, his breath coming in ragged, agonizing gasps. He looked at Sam, at Grenn, at Pyp—three farm boys and stewards who had no blood claim to Winterfell, but who had ridden out into the freezing night to save him from an executioner's block.
The white heat of his rage slowly collapsed into hollow, agonizing grief.
Jon slumped forward over the pommel, burying his face in his gloved hands, and let his brothers turn his horse around to lead him back to the Wall.
Thank you for reading! New content will start next time :)