Game of thrones: Winter's Bastard

It began with a whisper from the marsh.

Cregan Norrey stumbled upon it during a routine scouting patrol, just a month before Wulfric drafted the letter to Eddard Stark, requesting a return to Winterfell to discuss information and have a reunion.. The patrol had not meant to stray far, only a circuit through the southern boglands to chart lizardlion movements and check for signs of trespassers or poachers. But Cregan, restless and drawn to quiet edges, wandered deeper than the others. He moved with the instinct of a born ranger, feeling the land's weight beneath his boots, the breath of the air on his skin.

That was when he saw it. A clearing choked in mist that never seemed to lift, ringed by twisted blackbark trees whose roots knotted above the surface like grasping fingers. And at the center, a sinkhole. Still. Watching. There was no noise, no buzzing insects, no croaking frogs, not even the lapping of water. The silence was not peace. It was as if something was watching him like some predator eyeing its prey.

Cregan knelt at the edge, lips parted slightly. The water was dark and sluggish, unremarkable save for the stillness. He felt no fear, but he felt seen. Chilled, yet certain, he carved a small mark into a nearby stone, a crude rune resembling a coiled root, and left.

Upon returning, he immediately hailed up the steps to Wulfric's solar and told him of his finding.

The moment Cregan described the place, Wulfric's gaze sharpened. He pushed his notes aside and stood.

"Take me."

They left in the pre-dawn dark, the air thick with dew. The journey was long, the wetlands clinging to them with every step. Mist coiled between branches, draping the marsh in gray veils. By midmorning, the canopy dimmed, and the path narrowed.

When they reached the hollow, the silence pressed in immediately. The water at the center remained untouched, the trees arching in strange reverence. No glow. No heat. Just the quiet.

Wulfric stepped forward, crouched, and pressed his palm to the moist earth. The scent that rose was of rot and old life. His eyes closed. Something ancient stirred here. Not alive, awake.

He sat in stillness for over an hour, tracing symbols in the dirt with his fingertip, recalling faint glyphs from the codex he had begun building, runes half-remembered from dreams and the forgotten scraps he'd once read in the deepest chambers of Winterfell. He remembered pages inked in rust-blood and bound in damp leather. He remembered the faces of warriors in his visions, faces half-hidden in fog and falling snow, their eyes glowing with unnatural light, moving through the sleet and snow with terrible grace. The Frostbound, his mind whispered. Yet not as he had known them, as they once might have been.

This would be the place. Not just to remember, but to remake.

That night, he summoned his closest. Cregan, Torrhen, Domund, Brandon. They gathered in a quiet hollow lit by runes etched into standing stones, glowing faintly from Wulfric's own hand.

The five of them sat in a loose circle around a shallow brazier. No titles, no armor. Just men who had bled together, and might do so again.

Wulfric let the silence stretch before he spoke.

"I dreamed of the Frostbound again," he said, voice even. "Not as we made them. Not the men we armed and sent into the snow. But older and wilder. They marched through ice and snow, over mountain and stone, through forest and open plain. They hunted and guarded but never for a lord or king. Only for the land."

Domund leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "You sure it was a dream?"

Wulfri's lips twitched. "Does it matter? Some truths come clearer through sleep than scrolls."

Brandon scratched the back of his neck. "So you want to bring it back, then? The Frostbound?"

"I thought I did." Wulfric looked into the fire. "But I've realized... it won't hold. We're not them. The world isn't the same. And honor, as it was written, is a poor shield against the things that will come."

Torrhen frowned. "So what then? We just abandon it?"

"No." Wulfric looked up. "We build upon the bones of the ancestors to bring life to our descendants."

He revealed the scrolls, etched with blood glyphs, symbols of sacrifice and growth, fragments from the depths of Winterfell and the roots of his visions.

"I've studied this rite for years. It's pain at rebirth. And if we succeed, we become more than men. We become what the North will one day fear and need in equal measure. We bring forth that which was forgotten and left buried."

He looked to each of them, eye to eye.

Cregan gave a small nod. "You're my brother, Wulfric. You don't need to ask."

Brandon grunted. "You lead. I follow. Always."

Domund shrugged. "This is home now… so let's make it strong."

Torrhen took longer, jaw clenched, staring into the fire. "If I'm going to be the North's greatest commander and your strongest shield… I can't be left behind."

They returned to the sinkhole at dawn.

The marsh lay cloaked in fog. Still, silent and waiting.

Wulfric stirred the ritual mix himself, each ingredient offered like blood to an altar.

Lizardlion blood, dark and pungent.

Powdered predator bone, ground to powder.

Ironroot shavings already engraved with runes.

Weirwood sap mixed with his own blood.

Luminescent moss from the dying grove.

As he dropped the mixture into the water, the bog responded.

The air thickened with heat.

The sinkhole glowed sickly green-yellow, belching steam like a fever dream. Runes etched around the basin sparked to life, casting ghostlight across twisted trees.

Wulfric faced them.

"This is not a blessing. It is a trial. The mire will tear your body apart and piece you back together with claw and root. What you return as... only the bog decides. Now is the time to turn back if you wish."

Cregan stepped forward first, fearless. The steam curled around him, his silhouette flickering. He waded in waist-deep, then chest, then vanished.

The silence held.

Then came the screaming.

From beneath, Cregan's roar tore through the grove, inhuman, as if the bog had swallowed him and he was tearing his way out tooth and nail.

The water churned. Steam hissed.

He burst from the surface, flailing, gasping, his eyes glowing yellow-gold, slitted and sharp. Blood-black mire poured from his nose, ears, and eyes. His hands clutched at the edges, fingers longer, ending in blunt claws. His chest bulged unnaturally, jagged bone lines radiated from his sternum and collar like grown armor.

Wulfric held him steady.

"Hunter's Sight," he whispered. "A remarkable boon for you my friend."

Domund was next. He gave a cocky but misleading grin, then vanished into the depths after a few unsteady steps.

His scream came slower, ragged, choked, as if he were being pulled down and never let go. The air reeked of burning hair and moss.

He rose from the pool limping, staggering, his eyes green as wet pine, face soaked in blood and mire. His chest heaved, and with each breath, his jaw cracked slightly, teeth longer, more pointed.

"Truthsense," Wulfric said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "But beware, truth is heavy at times."

Domund collapsed into the mud, laughing and crying at once.

Brandon stepped forward with calm resolve, but the moment the water swallowed him, the grove shook.

He screamed like an animal trapped in fire, limbs thrashing beneath the glow. Black ichor bubbled from the surface.

When he erupted from the depths, the water turned crimson around him. His eyes burned red, and deep cracks raced along his brow. His chest had split, not bleeding, but opened, a new plate of bone jutting from the collar and sternum like a second armor slightly crested. His growl echoed through the grove.

"Berserk," Wulfric said solemnly. "The fury is yours. So is the cost."

Torrhen hesitated at the edge, then nodded once and entered. The steam swallowed him.

What followed was silence, not peace, but absence. He did not scream. He endured.

Until suddenly he exploded from the water, eyes pale, frost-bitten blue, mouth open in a silent gasp. His limbs twitched with pain. Blood streamed from every opening, and the veins in his neck glowed faintly.

His hands had changed, larger, knuckled, stronger, with bone-colored ridges beneath the skin. Across his chest, the jagged growths etched upward like thorny branches.

Wulfric crouched beside him.

"You will see the flaw in all things."

The fog curled tighter.

Wulfric took them one by one, dragging ink-soaked bone along their spines, drawing runes from memory and instinct. Each man flinched, but none broke.

"You are mine," Wulfric said, voice hoarse. "And I am yours. Our order will not serve the North nor any king not of our blood. You are Blightguard, born of rot, shaped by pain, warriors of my blood."

No one answered. They only breathed, steaming in the light. And in that half-dead grove, the monsters rose. 

The mist lingered like a blanket of breath, low and clinging, even after the rite had ended. The grove around the sinkhole was hushed, but not dead, just waiting. Steam still drifted up in ribbons from the water's surface, and the scent of moss, sweat, and old blood thickened the air. Faint traces of the runes glowed along the stones in soft red pulses. Not as bright as before, but enough to remind them that the place had not finished with them.

Wulfric stood in silence, his arms crossed, watching his companions gather slowly on the mossy bank. Their chests were bare, their skin slick with a film of sweat and bog water. Each of them had a fresh, gleaming trail of weirwood-ink tattoos carved along their spines. The skin was raw, pink, tender, but the binding had taken.

Cregan arrived first, wiping a hand across his face and flicking mire from his fingertips. His eyes, now a piercing yellow, adjusted constantly, flicking toward every shifting shadow, every creak of root and wind. The slits of his pupils widened and narrowed with each subtle shift in light. His ears, slightly angled back, twitched involuntarily at distant sounds.

He crouched beside the fire pit Wulfric had kindled. "Everything's louder," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Like I'm hearing through walls. Can smell things too. You," he said, nodding toward Domund. "Still got blood in your nose. From the right side."

Domund snorted and wiped at it. He winced slightly, then grinned, sliding down onto a fallen log nearby. His hands trembled faintly as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Looking all the weary traveler after a traumatic event. 

"Feels like someone scraped my skull clean from the inside," he said, eyes narrowed and twitching. His irises were a vivid, unnatural green now slowly turning into a pale marsh green. "Every time someone talks, I pick up too much. Tone, breath, twitch in their cheek. My mind tells me things even as I listen to your words."

Brandon came last, slower than the others. His body moved differently, heavier, tense, like he was fighting something just beneath the skin. His eyes glowed with a low red hue, the veins around them still dark but slowly receding, his breathing shallow. He settled onto the grass with a grunt and ran one clawed hand down his face, dragging mud away from his chin.

"My back's still burning," he muttered. "Chest too. Like it's stretching. Itches, deep under the bone."

Wulfric moved around them quietly, saying little. He had been watching the changes. Not just the glowing eyes or sharpened features, but the way they carried themselves. All four were hunched slightly forward, as if they were holding weight through their spine and shoulders that hadn't been there before.

Their bone structures had shifted.

Up close, it was clearer. An additional layer of hardened bone had formed across each man's upper chest and along the collarbones, a subtle ridge beneath the skin, firm to the touch, like wearing a layer of living plate beneath the flesh. It didn't jut out or distort their builds, but gave the chest a denser, fortified appearance. The kind of protection that would stop a blade if angled right, and remain hidden beneath cloth or armor.

"Try stretching your hands," Wulfric said.

They obeyed without question.

Each man held his hands up. The fingers were longer now, the joints slightly thicker. The nails had darkened to a dull slate-gray and curved ever so slightly. Not monstrous, but different and damn close.

Domund flexed his fingers experimentally. "Felt like they snapped back into place coming out of the water," he muttered. "Thought they were going to keep growing until they split."

Torrhen finally spoke, sitting cross-legged near the roots of an old tree. He'd been quiet the whole time, studying the others.

"I felt everything," he said evenly. "Every bone. Every nerve. It didn't stop when I surfaced either. Still feel… pressure."

His pale blue eyes tracked Wulfric's movements. "Things look strange now. Not wrong, just clearer. Like I can see cracks in stuff. Hairline splits, loose threads. It's not just metal or stone either."

Brandon nodded faintly. "People too. Like I can feel when someone's losing control. Or about to make a move. Like I can feel all of your emotions."

Cregan scratched at his collar. "My skin's thicker. I scraped it on stone by accident earlier. Barely left a mark."

"Climb something," Wulfric said. "Now."

Cregan didn't question him. He stood, turned, and dug his hands into the bark of the nearest blackbark tree. His new claws sank in easier than they should have, and in seconds, he was halfway up the trunk. His movements were fluid, silent.

He dropped back down with a soft thump and exhaled. "Didn't even think about it. My body just… did it."

Wulfric looked at each of them, circling like a smith inspecting a new forge.

"You're not finished yet," he said. "The changes will keep coming. You'll ache. You'll twitch. You might wake up hearing whispers or scents that don't make sense. That's the mire still in you, trying to settle."

Domund leaned back on his elbows. "That supposed to be comforting?"

"No," Wulfric said. "It's supposed to be true."

They chuckled quietly, the mood easing just slightly.

"What now?" Brandon asked, wiping his brow with his forearm. "We just train like usual?"

Wulfric nodded. "We push further. Learn what your body can do before it surprises you at the wrong time. And stay quiet about this. No one needs to know what's happened here."

Torrhen nodded. "With armor and clothes, no one'll see much. Just eyes. Hands maybe."

"And the chest?" Domund asked, tapping his collarbone. "It's hard as iron. Feels like I got punched by the bog itself."

"Learn to carry it. Don't show it off," Wulfric said. "It's not for display. It's for survival. Fix your posture too, you all look like you're hunched over. "

The fire crackled between them. None of them spoke for a while.

Finally, Cregan tilted his head, ears twitching again. "Think I just heard a frog fart two groves away."

Brandon snorted. "At least it wasn't you this time."

The laughter came light, brief but much needed.

-

The mist hadn't left the grove since the rite. If anything, it had thickened, clinging to the earth like breath to glass, thick, unmoving, sacred. Wulfric stood alone at the edge of the sinkhole, eyes fixed on the dark water as steam curled upward, never fully dispersing.

For days he had watched them, Cregan's sharpened senses, Torrhen's chilling precision, Domund's insight, Brandon's raw fury and feeling sense. He had given them the rite to forge them into something stronger.

But now, he wanted it too.

No. He needed it.

There was no shame in the craving. He had felt something akin to it once, years ago, when the godswood changed him in silence, in secret. But this, this was clearer. Structured and guided by his own machinations.The rite here was sharper, more refined than what he had endured in solitude, and something he had more influence over.

And something in his bones told him, this place had always waited for him.

He turned to the others who waited in silence. Brandon knelt beside the ritual stone, his hands steady as he ground the remaining ingredients into the thick, glowing paste. The ink had already been prepared.

Cregan stood to Wulfric's right, arms crossed. Watching not as a subordinate. Not even as a friend. As a witness.

"I'll oversee the markings," Brandon said quietly. "There's room between the shoulder blades. It'll hold the pattern."

Wulfric nodded once, already disrobing. The tattoos from his earlier transformations, faint and subtle compared to the Blightguard's, marked the length of his arms and spine, but the space Brandon had chosen remained clear.

Cregan stepped forward and stirred the bog. The ingredients hissed as they were poured into the sinkhole, lizardlion blood, powdered bone, ironroot, sap with blood, and moss. The water glowed that familiar sickly hue, the heat rising with a low pulse, like the heartbeat of the marsh.

Wulfric said nothing as he stepped into the bog. It was hotter than he remembered or maybe that was just because he wasn't inside last time. The surface met his chest, then neck, then chin. He inhaled once, deeply, and dropped beneath.

The pain was immediate.

It wasn't searing, it was grinding. Like the bog itself had teeth, gnawing at the marrow of his bones.nHis back arched. Muscles spasmed. He tried to scream, but the water filled his mouth at an amazing speed like it was rushing to choke him.

Something moved inside him, pulling, tearing, binding.

His limbs jerked in every direction. His chest ached as the bone beneath the skin shifted and locked into a harder layer, fused to collar and sternum. His knuckles cracked and expanded, and the bones in his hands thickened, reinforced. His canines pressed downward, sharper, more prominent. His ears stretched slightly, the cartilage hardening into sharp angles.

Then his eyes.

They burned.

From within.

Color bled into his vision, silver first, his original hue returning like a howl through smoke. Then the red veins in his irises pulled outward, forming a crimson ring around each pupil. Green and blue threadlike veins raced across the far reaches of his sclera, spidering outward from behind the eyes like roots breaking through ice.

His body went still.

And then he rose like an apparition of the deceased.

Wulfric burst from the surface, water cascading off his form. Steam clung to him like smoke from a battlefield. His chest rose and fell slowly, controlled, but his eyes glowed beneath the mist.

Silver almost white.

Pure, searing, unnatural hue that glowed faintly.

The red circled each iris like a seal. The blue and green veins along the edges of his eyes pulsed once, then dimmed.

His face was paler than before, almost ghostly, but not sickly, ethereal. His white-silver hair hung wet and heavy around his face, partially obscuring the sharp, wolfish angles of his now-tilted ears.

His body, already tall and broad, had shifted.

Now, he moved with a different tension. Each movement was coiled, controlled. There was a subtle forward lean in his stance, a predator's readiness. The muscle along his shoulders and arms had deepened in definition, but it wasn't just added muscle, but denser and more efficient like a predators gait.

Scars, long forgotten, had risen back to prominence. Some were curved and jagged, old claw marks from beasts past. Others were clean, blade-forged. Across his torso, one long scar cut diagonally across his chest, now partially overlain with the bone-hard plating that had formed beneath the skin. Faint runic scars shimmered faintly, especially under the low light of the ritual fire.

The boneplate across his chest and collar formed a subtle shell, smooth but ridged, like bark grown over a wound. It didn't hinder but offered layered protection.

His hands bore thicker claws now, thicker and darker than the others. The knuckles beneath them looked reinforced, stones forged beneath flesh ready to bear the weight of conflict.

Brandon took a half step back. Cregan's eyes narrowed, but he did not move.

Wulfric's presence was no longer merely commanding, it was unnatural. Like a spirit risen from earth and memory. He said nothing at first. Just stood there, letting the water trail down his body.

Then, "I'm ready."

Brandon stepped forward and began the rune-work without delay. The ink, cold against his spine, shimmered briefly in reaction to the skin it touched. The pattern was more intricate than any the others bore, like veins growing across stone. Brandon carved each line with reverence and precision, tracing a map meant only for Wulfric.

The skin accepted it quickly. The ink vanished into the flesh as though drawn into the marrow. Wulfric let out a slow breath.

Cregan offered him a cloak, which Wulfric took but didn't raise. He remained bare-chested in the mist, letting the silence hold.

"This is where we begin our legend," he said, quiet but certain.

The others didn't respond.

They didn't need to.

He looked at them, not as brothers, but as extensions of something greater. Together, they had crawled from the mire.

But Wulfric… He had returned, not just reborn. He had become the Blight.