chapter one
POV: Maester Luwin
I couldn’t help my excitement. I’d been working for the Starks of Winterfell for many years now and had discovered a great many things about the family, long forgotten knowledge, buried deep within the large library and catacombs. Now, however, my most interesting discovery to date was before me. It was a grave, deep within the catacombs, so old that none knew whom it was buried within and yet, the grave was perfectly preserved. I had studied the higher arts back in the citadel and therefore knew how to detect a preservation enchantment- it was supposed to be a purely theoretical skill and yet, I found one of them down here. a candle burned near such an enchantment would never grow any smaller and indeed, the candle I’d placed on the grave hadn’t moved an inch downwards since the three days it was burning.
Magic was supposed to have died long ago, when the last Targaryen dragon died and yet, here it was, a grave within the catacombs, which featured a very much working spell. The lord stark stood beside me, his grey eyes focused on the grave, whilst his hands shuffled away some dust which’d laid onto it over the years, too little dust for a grave this far down, “this is no stark grave”
“What?”
Lord Eddard repeated his statement, “this is no stark grave”, before explaining, “here is a name engraved, I almost didn’t see it beneath the heavy dust, small as it is”
True to his word, there was a name, etched into the grave small enough that my thumb could’ve covered it, “Lord Magnus Brightstone”, I read aloud, finding another inscription beneath it, written in the old tongue, which I luckily could decipher, “An ally preserved beyond time for the longest night, he shall be our guiding sun”
My eyes flickered to the statue standing stoically above the grave, its sharp features did indeed not match those of the other stark statues littered around. Even the making of the statue was too well done. The others around here were only vague, leaving details to the imagination but if the subject of the carving were alive when the statue was made, more detail could’ve been captured, “Do you think he is still alive”, Lord Stark asked me.
Even with all the citadel’s teachings engrained upon my mind, I couldn’t help but confirm the lord’s suspicion, “He might very well be, this magic has kept a candle burning, mayhaps it has kept this lord alive, buried in his own grave”
Without a further word, the lord pushed against the statue, moving it -over several minutes of intense pushing- back, revealing the coffin. It was made from bright white stone, a house emblem engraved upon it, which I did not recognize, a field of blue with a golden skull above it, the supposed house words in a banner beneath, again in the old tongue, ‘Holy are we’
Holy? The old gods weren’t worshiped as holy, only as divine and this grave was built prior to the Andal invasion, was this another religion? One that existed in the north prior to both the seven and the old gods of the forest? So many questions, no answers.
Whilst I was busy contemplating these words, the Lord had opened the coffin and sure enough, there he was, the man whose statue stood above the grave, eyes closed, breathing slowly. With a sudden jump, the man awoke, his golden eyes, shimmering like metal and his armor glistening like it was made of pure dragon glass, yet I knew it couldn’t be. One couldn’t form dragon glass into chainmail.
“Is it time, has the long night come?”, the supposed-to-be-a-corpse asked, in surprisingly modern tongue.
“We are terribly sorry but- we only recently learned of your existence”, I tried to explain to the man, who was slowly getting out of the coffin. He wore chainmail that looked like dragon glass and weapons made of white crystal, with rings of similar crystalline origin.
“You… by the divine”, he cried out, “they forgot about me”
The strange lord turned to me, “Are the stark kings still in power?”
“We are”, Lord Eddard told him, “though we are no longer kings. We have lost our kingship almost 300 years ago, now we rule the north as lord wardens under King Robert Baratheon”
“What has become of my keep at sea dragon point?”
“Sea Dragon Point is deserted”, I told him, “nothing but ruins”
The man fell back onto his arse, “Damn that builder, he promised to take good care of my keep till I return”
His eyes wandered from me back to Lord Stark, “So… Lord Stark, what happened while I was sleeping?”