Year: late 280 AC
The Wolfswood loomed like a slumbering giant beneath the snow-draped sky. Pale light filtered through a gray canopy as Wulfric, Benjen, and Lyanna rode ahead of their escort, hooves muffled by the thick forest floor. Darnell rode near the front with two other Winterfell guardsmen. Behind, another three flanked the rear. Their breaths plumed visibly in the chilled air, every sound deadened by snow and silence.
Lyanna laughed with unrestrained joy for the first time since her nephew went into seclusion. "You're falling behind, ghost boy. Forget how to ride?"
Wulfric grunted. "Maybe you're too light to feel the wind."
Benjen laughed while Lyanna glared.
"Don't know why you're laughing, you're almost as small as me!"
"Bah! No way!" Benjen puffed his chest. "I'll have you know I beat two recruits in the yard just last week."
Lyanna snorted and kicked her horse ahead. "Maybe they were asleep!"
Benjen groaned while Wulfric allowed the hint of a smile.
Lyanna cackled and kicked her horse into a trot, darting ahead with wild joy. "Catch me if you can!"
Before she shot forward past the others, Darnel stopped her with a sudden raised hand then rode forward cautiously, his eyes scanning the undergrowth. Snowflakes floated lazily, but the stillness had changed. The silence was too complete.
The momentary silence drifted as snowflakes drifted lazily around them, but something hung in the air, wrong, thick with tension.
"Movement," one of the guards muttered. "South slope."
Then the world broke into chaos.
Wildlings poured forth like a living avalanche, feral, howling, brandishing bone weapons and rusted steel. Painted faces twisted in fury as they charged. There were too many, a dozen maybe, pouring in from all sides. At their center stood a gaunt man with eyes glazed white, Scarred arms in tribal designs. A necklace of bone hung from his neck as his crooked yellow and black toothed grin sickened the sight.
Darnell barked commands. The guards fell into formation, interposing themselves between the children and the onrushing tide. Shields were raised, swords drawn.
Steel clashed with bone. The wildlings fought like mad beasts, hacking and shrieking. The Winterfell men were trained, precise, their blades carving measured arcs. Darnell led the defense with grim fury, felling three attackers in moments, but there were too many.
The first arrows came from the trees, whistling through the morning mist. One of the guards fell without a sound, another staggered back with a shaft in his side and grunted panic. Chaos erupted all around.
"Get behind me!" Darnell shouted, throwing himself between the young Starks and the treeline.
From the woods charged wildlings, lean and snarling like the wolves. But it was the thing that emerged last that turned the blood in Wulfric's veins to ice.
A direwolf.
Not the sleek, ghost-grey of stories, but a monster, massive, battle-worn, and ancient. Its fur was coarse and matted, half its face a ruin of scars, one eye clouded over with cataract. The other gleamed gold, hateful and sharp. A warg rode its mind, Wulfric could feel it, like pressure behind his eyes.
The beast barreled through the clearing like a battering ram.
Darnell met it head-on with grim resolve.
He screamed something incoherent and hurled his spear with both hands. It struck deep in the beast's shoulder, staggering it, and Darnell drew his longsword with grim purpose.
The direwolf lunged, jaws like twin axes. Darnell ducked, sliced upwards steel glanced off bone. Blood splashed. The wolf screamed rage through torn lips and whirled, slamming its massive weight into him.
They rolled through snow and brush. Darnell struck again and again, sword hacking into fur and flesh, more wild swings into the icy air than into the monster he fought. The direwolf howled but never stopped. Its jaws found Darnell's side and clamped. Bone cracked under the pressure. Darnell roared in agony, punching the hilt of his sword into the beast's muzzle.
Blood poured from his wounds, ribs crushed and armor torn open. But he stood between the beast and the children. He took a step, limping forward.
"RUN!" he bellowed to anyone listening, voice cracking. "TAKE THEM!"
The direwolf leapt again.
It tackled him full in the chest, pinning him down. Snow exploded around them. Darnell punched at the beast's snout as hard as his waning strength allowed him.
The direwolf bit down, right at the neck.
There was a horrible sound: a snap, wet and sharp like a tree branch breaking under weight.
Darnell twitched once. Blood fountained.
The direwolf shook him like a rag, tearing away meat and bone, the snow beneath them turning black and red. His head lolled at an unnatural angle, one eye still wide, lips parted in a final breathless cry.
Lyanna screamed bloody..
Wulfric terrified and hesitant, his feet inching away.
The direwolf turned, muzzle soaked, and fixed its single good eye on them. It dropped Darnell's ruined corpse into the snow like a butcher discarding gristle, and began to prowl forward.
"Run!" Wulfric shouted, voice hoarse.
The trees were screaming with movement, wildlings pouring in, blades flashing. The blood dripped from its jaw hot and red. Its one good eye fixed now on the children
Wulfric shoved Benjen and Lyanna ahead, dragging his new sword as they turned and sprinted into the brush.
Branches clawed at their faces, snow crunched beneath desperate feet. Wulfric glanced back only once, and it was enough.
The direwolf was coming.
Not bounding. Not barking. Gliding as if it were part of the forest itself. Its massive paws made no sound. Its teeth were bared.
Then it was on him.
A heavy weight smashed into Wulfric's side, sending him sprawling. He hit the ground hard, snow driven into his mouth and nose, the air knocked from his lungs.
Then pain blinding, white-hot pain.
The direwolf's jaws sank into the junction of neck and shoulder, teeth piercing through cloak, tunic and flesh. Wulfric screamed, a raw, primal sound that startled birds into flight.
The wolf shook him violently. Something tore. Blood poured.
"WULFRIC!" Benjen's voice cracked with terror.
Benjen didn't hesitate. He turned around and ran back, wielding nothing but a broken spear haft he picked up while running. He slammed it into the direwolf's side. "Let him go!"
The beast snarled and released Wulfric, just long enough to rear up and slam Benjen across the face with a swipe of its paw.
But it wasn't a paw that struck him. A shadow moved behind Benjen one of the wildlings. The club he carried struck the boy in the temple with a dull thunk.
Benjen dropped like a sack of oats, motionless.
"Benjen!" Lyanna shrieked.
One of the few guards remaining appeared and ran towards the Wildling dropping his bow and drawing his sword.
Wulfric coughed blood. He tried to lift his arm, but the nerves weren't listening. His sword was gone.. The wolf loomed over him again, jaws wet and stinking, breath steaming in the winter air.
And then,
Thunk.
An arrow, beautiful to wulfric in that moment even as the blood began to seep around the wound.
Straight into the beast's face. Not its side. Not its shoulder. Its eye.
The direwolf staggered back, howling, its voice no longer fully beast, but something strange and wrong, like a man wailing in a wolf's throat.
It collapsed sideways, kicking at the snow, twitching violently. Blood pooled from its ruined eye socket.
Wulfric blinked through the pain.
Lyanna stood maybe ten paces away, another arrow already notched though her hands shook. Her face was pale. Her breath came in sobs.
The wolf twitched once more, then lay still.
Wulfric didn't move.
The snow around him soaked red. The forest fell into a sudden, terrible silence. Even the wildlings had retreated, leaderless, their beast slain. Only the wind and the crackle of breath remained.
Lyanna, clutching her bow, with shaking hands and trembling lips stood staring at the whole scene.
The milky eyed leader with a crooked grin now lay in the snow with blood leaking from his nose and ears still and motionless.
The guards rallied. The wildlings, without their beast and warg, who collapsed with a scream when the direwolf died, broke ranks and fled.
Two guards remained. Wounded and lucky.
They gathered the bodies. Darnell's corpse lay half-frozen, eyes wide to the sky. Wulfric could not look away.
The return to Winterfell was a somber crawl.
Wulfric rode in silence, one arm bound tightly to his chest as he drifted from consciousness and unconsciousness. Benjen, pale and bruised, remained slumped in his saddle. Lyanna's hands were red from clenching the reins.
When they passed through the gates, the yard fell into shocked silence. Maester Walys and Rodrik Cassel rushed to meet them as soon as nearby servants screamed.
"Get them inside!" Rodrik bellowed. "Now!"
Winterfell was silent when Wulfric was summoned.
His wounds had been cleaned and stitched. His left arm remained bound, his shoulder stiff, the bandages thick and soaked with salve. The bite had nearly killed him. Maester Walys said another inch, and it would have severed the artery.
He stood before Lord Rickard, the flames of the hearth casting both their shadows long against the stone.
"Sit," the Lord of Winterfell said, not unkindly.
Wulfric sat, slowly, muscles aching.
Rickard watched him for a long time, the firelight dancing in his eyes.
"I've heard what happened in the woods," he began. "What you did. What you endured. That direwolf, it would've torn a grown man in half."
Wulfric said nothing. He looked down, ashamed, almost.
"You think bearing scars is a weakness?" Rickard asked.
Wulfric shook his head. "I think it's proof I wasn't strong enough."
Rickard's brow furrowed. He stood slowly, walking to the window where frost rimmed the corners of the glass. "Darnell was a good man. Brave. Loyal. I will see to it his family is cared for. And the men who lived, well, House Stark will care for them too. I'm in your debt though. You shielded your kin. You stood your ground when no one would expect it from someone so young."
Rickard turned. "That's not a weakness, boy. That's the marrow of the North. Its not about what you accomplished all the time. Sometimes its about what you try to do. Remember that because Benjen and Lyanna will for a long… long time."
He motioned to a table nearby, upon which lay a map of the North, yellowed with age.
"Now tell me," he said, "about these deposits you've found."
And Wulfric spoke.
Of old iron veins in the Granite Hills west of Last Hearth, long-abandoned for fear of raids, yet now promising new wealth. Of amber-rich bogs in the southern reaches of the White Knife's tributaries, their locations marked only in fragments across forgotten ledgers. Of peat beds and limestone ridges for construction, of salt wells on the northern coast.
He spoke of soil composition, of signs of ancient farming near sunken villages, of glacial runoff streams that could nourish apple groves if redirected carefully and used correctly. He spoke not quite like a child but certainly like someone with ambition and a vision.
Rickard listened intently, nodding at key moments. Once, he raised an eyebrow. "Amber? You're sure?"
"Found a pattern in three of the old tax ledgers, cross-referenced with the Dreadfort's land registers. Trade stopped when raiders burned the routes, but the source wasn't destroyed. Just forgotten."
Rickard leaned over the map. "With the roads cleared again, and a few decent caravans..."
"The North could supply jewelry to the Riverlands and beyond," Wulfric finished.
"Grand ideas, and ones that won't be ignored. We'll talk more your ideas for strengthening the North another time.."
There was silence.
Then Rickard said, "Its almost funny.. You're speaking like a lord. Your father barely ever sits in here to learn or discuss but you.."
"I'm a bastard."
"You are," Rickard agreed, "but your blood is still Stark. And your heart, I think, is Northern in ways that make me wonder what the gods have planned."
He sat down, sighing heavily. "Brandon came to me not long ago. He wants you granted a keep, one to restore or one to raise anew in time."
Wulfric blinked.
"I would build it," he said. "Not for a name or a seat. But for the North. To make it stronger. To protect those who can't protect themselves."
Rickard studied him.
"And that's why I may let you. Not because of your blood. But because of your intent. Though I may want you to take Moat Cailin if we end up not building you a new seat. Good place to protect the North."
He stood and reached into a small chest near his desk, withdrawing a heavy iron token etched with a wolf's head. He handed it to Wulfric.
"You keep that. You've earned it, and in spring, when you're healed, we'll ride and speak of what lands are yours to tend."
Wulfric took it in silence, feeling the weight not just of the token, but of all it meant.
That night, Wulfric stood alone atop Winterfell's battlements.
The wind was sharp. The cold didn't bother him. Not anymore not nearly as much as some others.
He touched the bandages beneath his collar. Darnell's blood still stained his sleeve. Benjen's voice, slurred from the head wound, echoed in his mind. Lyanna's arrow had saved him, but the fear in her eyes haunted him more than the bite.
He was tired.
Tired of being weak.
Tired of bleeding.
Tired of watching others fall.
He would grow. In strength. In knowledge. In spirit.
Not because of ambition. But because he could not stand to lose another person he loved another person he might have saved.
He closed his eyes.
And for the first time in a long while, thought of his father, not the Lord's Heir of Winterfell, but Brandon the man.
Rickard had said he'd spoken of Wulfric. That meant Brandon thought of him. Remembered him. Cared, in some hidden way.
A smile tugged at the corner of Wulfric's scarred lips.
He was not forgotten.
He would not let himself be.