ASOIAF : Creed

[A/N] - I've been thinking ahead about Daenerys's arc, and honestly—it's tough to keep her truly relevant without touching on parts of her canon journey. As much as I wanted to go in a totally different direction, I'm realizing some of those beats (dragons, rule, struggle) are kind of essential.

That said, I still want to change how they happen—give her more agency, more edge, less passivity.

Curious what you all think.

Thanks for reading !

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The journey to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea was a tiring endevaour. For eight days, they rode east, a small, dark procession against an endless backdrop of white. To their left, the Wall was a constant, silent companion, a mountain range of ice that blotted out the northern sky. To their right, the Gift was a desolate, windswept emptiness, the snow lying in deep, sculpted drifts. There was nothing but the crunch of their horses' hooves in the snow and the ceaseless howl of the wind.

Jon rode with the three rangers Benjen had assigned to escort him, but he was not truly with them. He was adrift in a sea of his own thoughts, the revelations of the past weeks a constant, churning storm in his mind.

His only comfort was the small, warm presence tucked inside his cloak. Ghost. The direwolf pup was a silent, watchful companion, his red eyes seeming to understand the turmoil in Jon's heart. At night, when they made their cold camp, Jon would let him out, and the small wolf would explore their surroundings with a quiet, fearless curiosity.

On the fourth night, as they sat huddled around a meager fire, one of the rangers, a grizzled man named Halder, stared into the flames, his face grim. "This cold," he muttered, "reminds me of the mess at the Antler River. Two years back."

The other rangers shifted, their own expressions hardening at the memory. "Lost good men that day," one of them said.

"What happened?" Jon asked, his curiosity piqued.

Halder took a long pull from a waterskin. "Twenty of us, trackin' a band of Thenns. Found their trail headin' south, to a river crossin'. Thought we had 'em trapped. Made camp on the north bank, figured we'd catch 'em tryin' to cross at dawn." He shook his head, the memory still sharp. "We were fools. They came at us in the dead of night, a screamin' horde pourin' out of the woods. Just chaos. Men yellin', steel on steel. They fought like vicious beasts, all teeth and claws. We held 'em, but only just. We were better trained, is all."

He paused, his eyes distant. "We were so busy with the ones in front, this wall of screamin' wildlings, that we never saw the others. A smaller bunch, maybe two dozen, had circled 'round. Came right out of the river behind us, quiet as ghosts. Had their axes in our horse-lines and our rear guard before we knew what was happenin'. Caught us between a hammer and an anvil. Wasn't a battle; it was a slaughter. Only reason any of us are here is that more of our people arrived and they vanished back into the woods."

Jon listened quietly, his mind not on the horror of the story, but on the strategy. "They came from the north, you said?" Jon asked when Halder had finished. "But did they attack from the north?"

Halder frowned. "What're you on about, boy? They're wildlings. They come from beyond the Wall."

"Yes," Jon said, "but the Skirling Pass is to the west. If they came from there, they would have had to cross the river here." He pointed to a spot on the crude map they had drawn in the snow. "A frontal assault would be foolish. Did you have pickets on the southern bank?"

The rangers stared at him. Halder was silent for a long moment. "No," he admitted, his voice gruff. "They hit us from two sides. The small group came up from the south while we were busy with the main lot. Never knew how they got behind us."

Jon nodded, his eyes distant. "They used the river to mask their approach." The other rangers nodded.

The nights were the hardest. The dreams truly unsettled him. The [Wolf-Dream] skill, once dormant, was now a nightly occurrence.

He would fall into a fitful sleep, and then, suddenly, he would be awake, but not in his own body. He was running. The world was a symphony of smells—the sharp, clean scent of pine, the musty odor of a fox's den, the faint, tantalizing promise of a snow hare a hundred yards away. His paws were silent on the snow, his body a coiled spring of muscle and instinct, moving with a speed and grace he had never known. He was Ghost. He would tilt his head back and howl at the moon, a sound of pure, untamed freedom that was not a sound at all, but a feeling. In the dream, he was not a boy, not a prince. He was a hunter. He was a wolf. He was free.

One night, the dream was more vivid than ever. He caught the scent of prey, a snow hare, its fear a delicious perfume on the wind. The hunt was a blur of white snow and dark trees. He cornered the creature in a small clearing, its heart hammering, a sound he could almost hear. He pounced, his jaws closing with a satisfying crunch of bone. The hot, coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, a primal, exultant thrill.

He would wake with a gasp, his heart hammering in his chest, the phantom feeling of fur on his skin and the wild, predatory instincts of the wolf still clinging to him like a second skin. He could still taste the blood, a faint, metallic tang on his tongue that made his stomach churn. He would look over at Ghost, who would be staring at him from the foot of his bedroll, his red eyes seeming to say, You were with me. The experience was both exhilarating and terrifying.

Two days later, as they rode through a stretch of broken, rocky terrain, a shout echoed from the rocks above. "Food! By the gods, they have food!"

Not six, but a dozen men burst from the crags, their black cloaks in tatters, their faces skeletal and gaunt with a starvation that had burned away everything but a desperate, animalistic hunger. Deserters. Their eyes were not on the rangers, but on the supply packs on their horses.

"Form up! Back to back!" Halder roared, his sword rasping from its sheath. The three rangers formed a tight, desperate triangle, steel ringing as the first wave of starving men crashed against them. They were outnumbered four to one, and the deserters fought with a terrifying, reckless abandon.

Jon dismounted in a single, fluid motion. He saw the battlefield with a strange, new clarity. The three rangers were good, but they would be overwhelmed in moments. A prolonged fight was not an option. It had to end. Now.

He reached for the cold, calm place in his mind, the place he had forged through his phantom deaths in the Colosseum. The world did not slow down. It became sharper, clearer, as if a veil had been lifted from his senses. The howl of the wind, the crunch of snow, the desperate grunts of the fighters—it all faded.

He moved.

A deserter, seeing a lone target, broke from the main fray and charged him, an axe held high. Jon didn't parry. He flowed past the clumsy swing, his own blade slid between the man's ribs with a sickening, wet crunch. He pulled the blade free before the man even had time to register the fatal wound.

He turned, his movements a single, unbroken line. Another deserter swung a rusty sword at Halder's exposed back. Jon met the blow with a parry so perfectly timed, that the deserter was thrown completely off-balance, his eyes wide with shock. Jon didn't give him a second to recover. A single, precise thrust to the throat, and the man fell, gurgling, into the snow.

He was a whirlwind moving through the chaos. His parry flowed into a bind against the third man's sword, and with a sharp, leveraged twist that nearly broke the man's wrist, he tore the weapon free before shattering his collarbone with a brutal pommel strike. He didn't even watch the man fall. The fourth lunged, and Jon pivoted, driving his blade backward in a clean, fatal thrust through the heart.

As the fifth swung low for his legs, Jon leaped, his boot catching the man under the chin, and his sword came down in a single, precise cut that severed the man's hamstring, sending him screaming into the snow. The sixth came in with a dagger, and Jon met the charge head-on, his blade deflecting the stab and guiding the man's own momentum forward, impaling him on the waiting point of Jon's sword, which slid up through his eye socket.

While Jon had been fighting, the rangers had not been idle. Halder had dispatched one of the deserters who had broken past him, and another had fallen to the coordinated strikes of the other two rangers. The remaining four, seeing their numbers decimated in seconds, did not falter. Their desperation turned to a singular, murderous rage. They saw Jon as the primary threat. With a collective roar, they all charged him at once.

For the rangers, it was a terrifying sight: one boy against four hardened men coming at him from all sides. For Jon, it was simply four more dead bodies.

He didn't retreat. He moved forward, into the heart of the chaos. He parried a sword from his left, the perfect block staggering the man so that he stumbled into the path of the man on his right, their bodies colliding in a tangle of limbs. Jon's blade lashed out, slitting the first man's throat. He spun, using the dying man's body as a momentary shield against a wild axe swing from behind him. The axe buried itself in the corpse, and Jon's own sword came up, punching through the axeman's jaw. The final two hesitated for a fraction of a second, and it was all Jon needed. He closed the distance and ended the fight with two swift, brutal thrusts.

It was over in less than a minute. Jon stood in the center of a circle of bodies, his chest heaving, the feeling of the battle-trance fading, leaving him with a trembling, adrenalized exhaustion. A series of notifications chimed in his vision, their text a cold, emotionless blue.

[Quest Complete: Survive the Onslaught]

[Reward: 1000 Experience]

[Rank Up! Rank 4 -> Rank 5]

[You have 2 Skill Points]

[Core Ability Upgraded: The Sight (Tier II) - Perceive the likely paths of targets. Highlight routes through the environment.]

He looked at the carnage, at the red staining the pristine white snow. He had killed. Not one man, but many. And it had been... easy. His Sight felt sharper now, the world around him seeming to resolve into a series of lines and pathways, but he closed his eyes to it. He had two more skill points, but the thought of spending them felt wrong. He would save them. The sea voyage to Braavos would be long. He would need to learn to survive on a ship, and he knew the [Sea Legs] skill would be a necessity. He would save them for that.

The silence that followed was heavier than any before. The rangers stared at him, their own fight forgotten. Halder's mouth was agape, his eyes wide with a look that was no longer respect, but a deep, primal fear.

The last two days of their journey were a tense, quiet affair. The rangers no longer spoke to him, their gazes always skittering away when he looked at them. They rode with a new, wide berth around him, as if he were a loaded crossbow that might go off at any moment. Jon did not mind. He was lost in his own thoughts.

On the eighth day, the air changed. The clean, dry cold of the inland was replaced by a damp, salty chill that carried the cry of gulls. They crested a low hill and saw it below them: Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. It was a grim, grey fortress, its towers battered by the wind and sea, but it was a port.

The commander of Eastwatch, a stern man named Cotter Pyke with the hard, squinting eyes of a sailor, greeted them with a gruff nod. Benjen's letter was all the introduction he needed. He gave Jon a room and left him to his own devices.

Jon's first act was to say goodbye to his horse, a fine, steady garron from the Winterfell stables. He led it to the Night's Watch stables. He ran a hand down its neck, the rough hair a final, tangible link to the life he was leaving behind. "Take good care of him," he said to the stablemaster.

He made his way down to the harbor. The port was a chaotic, noisy place, a world away from the grim silence of Castle Black. The air was thick with the smell of fish, tar, and the strange, foreign spices of the east. He found what he was looking for: a sturdy-looking trading cog, the Sea Serpent, its sails patched but its hull sound. The captain was a gruff, bearded Tyroshi man with eyes that had seen too much.

"You want passage to Braavos, boy?" the captain asked, his accent thick. "It's a long, cold trip this time of year. Four weeks, if the winds are with us. Six, if they're not."

"I can pay," Jon said, his voice steady. He had the purse Benjen had given him, a small fortune that felt like the last gift from his family. They settled on a price, and Jon secured a small, private cabin for himself and his "dog."

On the morning of his departure, he stood on the deck of the Sea Serpent, Ghost a silent, white shadow at his feet. The sailors bustled around them, their shouts a foreign language he did not yet understand. He looked back at the shore. The Wall stretched out to the east, a colossal, indifferent cliff of ice, the last piece of Westeros he would see for a long, long time.

He thought of Robb, of Arya, of the family he had left behind. He thought of the honorable lie of Eddard Stark and the impossible truth of Aemon Targaryen. He thought of the boy he had been, and the man Aemon had told him he must become.

The ship's horn blew a long, mournful blast. The lines were cast off, and the Sea Serpent began to move, slowly at first, then picking up speed as its sails caught the wind. Jon did not look back again. He turned his face to the east, towards the vast, grey, and unforgiving sea.