Year: 261 AC
Location: A nameless hamlet near the Wolfswood
The wind screamed like a butchered animal, tearing through the cracks of the shack where Arthur Snow was born. Outside, the blizzard painted the world white, burying the hamlet—a forgotten smudge of hovels too poor for maps, too weak for Winterfell's notice. Inside, the air reeked of iron and exhaustion. The midwife's hands shook as she severed the cord with a rusted knife. The mother, a hollow-cheeked woman with eyes like cracked ice, gasped once—then stilled.
Life for a life, the North whispered. Always a debt.
Junghyeok Baek opened his eyes.
No—Arthur. The name was a stranger, a blade wedged in his skull. He blinked, infant lungs burning as he wailed, but his mind roared. This is wrong. He remembered dying. Remembered a mountain of corpses, his qi a wildfire in his veins, the taste of blood and triumph. Now? Trapped in this feeble flesh, swaddled in rags, his power gone like smoke in the wind.
The midwife—Old Meg, her fingers gnarled as roots—peered down at him. "Another mouth to feed," she muttered, wrapping him tighter. "Snow. That's what ye'll be. Like as not, the cold'll take ye 'fore spring."
Snow. A bastard's name. A nobody's name.
But beneath the helpless squalling, his thoughts were a storm. Why here? Why like this? No answer came. Only the howl of the wind, the stench of blood, and the crushing weight of a truth: he would not die here. Not again.
Five Winters Later
Arthur crouched in the dirt, gray eyes tracking the rat scuttling along the shack's wall. His hands moved before he thought—a sharpened stick lashed to a splintered board, thrust like a spear. The rat squealed once, pinned.
"Demon," Lysa hissed from the doorway, her face gaunt under her woolen shawl. She'd taken him in when Old Meg died, if "taken in" meant kicks and watery gruel. "Ain't natural, a babe what don't cry. Ain't natural, a boy what kills like that."
Arthur yanked the stick free, skinning the rat with a shard of flint. "Hunger's natural," he said, voice flat.
Lysa flinched. He'd learned early: fear was sharper than kindness here. The first time she'd beaten him, he'd stared back, silent, blood dripping from his split lip. She'd crossed herself after, whispering prayers to gods he didn't know.
At night, while the wind gnawed at the walls, he trained. Crude strikes with a stick, stances recalled in fragments—knees bent, weight low, breathe. His body was weak, but his mind was a whetstone. Memories flickered: a sword's weight, the song of qi in his veins, a woman's laughter cut short by steel.
Who was I?
The Wolfswood knew. On nights when Lysa's snores drowned the silence, he slipped into the trees, testing his limits. A frozen stream became his training ground; icicles, his blades. One evening, he swung a branch too hard—it shattered against a pine, and he collapsed, laughing through bloody lips.
Pathetic. But the cold couldn't smother the fire in his chest.
The Spark
Lysa found him at dawn, fingers raw, a pile of splintered wood at his feet. "Mad," she spat, dragging him home by the ear. But he'd felt it—a flicker, deep in his gut. Not qi, not yet. The ghost of it.
That night, he dreamed of the mountain again. Blood on his hands, enemies at his feet, the sky screaming his name. He woke with a gasp, fists clenched.
Not a memory. A vow.
By morning, the village boys jeered as he passed. "Scrap Boy's got no father," one taunted, kicking snow at him. Arthur palmed a jagged stone, weighing it. Not a weapon. Not yet.
He looked north, past the Wolfswood's shadow, to where Winterfell's towers might pierce the sky. A world of lords and wars. Of power.
The wind carried his whisper:
"Wait for me."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support me on patreon.com/c/Striker2025