Chapter 1:
The snow fell slow and silent, like the breath of a dying god. Winter had returned to the North—not the white peace of old tales, but the cold reminder of what had been lost, and what should have stayed buried.
Arya Stark stood beneath the scorched husk of an old Weirwood tree. Its once-red leaves had withered long ago, burned in the fires of war or faded from the years that followed. The carved face was still there, cracked and bleeding sap like dried tears. She did not pray. The gods had stopped listening long ago.
She'd returned to Winterfell three nights ago, and no one had noticed. That was the way she wanted it.
Not as Arya Stark.
Not as Lady of Winterfell.
Not even as the hero who helped end the Long Night.
She was no hero.
A shadow now. A blade with a name and no master.
---
She watched from the crypts that night. Watched Sansa hold court with the new Northern lords, watched her wear the crown of the Queen in the North like it had always been hers. Maybe it always had.
Sansa had changed.
Arya watched her sister move like Catelyn reborn, all grace and iron. But Arya remembered how that grace could slice sharper than steel. She remembered the letter Sansa had once written at Cersei's command. She remembered the quiet betrayals. The hunger for power that bloomed like a frostbite wound behind Sansa's smile.
And yet, she loved her. That was the problem.
Arya didn't kill the ones she hated.
She killed the ones who needed killing.
---
A name slipped from her lips like steam in the cold: "Royce."
Lord Yohn Royce had been among the first to bend the knee after the war. Loyal to the Vale, he'd made himself a champion of peace and reconstruction. That's what the songs said. But Arya had seen the truth written in the soot-stained faces of smallfolk in the Riverlands. His men took more than taxes. The burned village near Harrenhal still reeked of his "mercy."
And now he sat fat and safe in Winterfell's great hall, with stories of honor and new treaties.
Arya had worn a different face to get close. A servant girl from White Harbor. Eyes down. Steps soft. A tray in her hands and poison on her tongue.
She didn't use it.
Not yet.
---
That night, she walked the halls of Winterfell like a ghost. The stone remembered her. The wind through the broken battlements whispered her name. Arya. Arya. A girl who is no one, and yet still... Arya.
She made her way to the godswood again, where the snow seemed deeper, the cold more real. Needle was at her hip. Not the Valyrian dagger. Not the many-faced tools. Just Needle—thin, light, and familiar as breath.
"I never came back," she said aloud. No one answered.
Her voice sounded foreign in the air, brittle and small. She hated it. She hated how the North moved on without her. How it forgot the dead. Rickon. Robb. Her mother. Her father. Even Bran, the boy who had once flown, was gone now, ruling from his southern throne as if Winterfell had been a stepping stone, not a home.
The North Remembers. That's what they said.
They lied.
---
The next evening, she followed Lord Royce through the inner bailey. Snow crunched beneath his boots as he made his way to the raven tower. Arya moved like a shadow behind him, footsteps falling in silence. The air smelled of ash and damp stone. She watched the way he walked—confident, heavy, careless.
It would've been easy.
A quick slice across the throat, drag the body into the shadows, let the snow do the rest. She'd done harder kills. Done them without blinking.
But this wasn't Braavos. And she wasn't no one.
She wanted him to know why.
So she waited. She listened.
Royce met a man inside the tower—bald, cloaked, with a southern accent. The door was open just wide enough for her to hear.
"Another shipment will arrive before moon's turn," the man said. "Gold, food, and steel. King's Landing honors the Queen's alliance."
Royce grunted. "And the starving farmers?"
"They're not our concern, my lord."
Arya's knuckles turned white on the hilt of Needle.
The same game. The same lies.
A war had ended, and another had quietly begun—one fought with coin, silence, and dead men who couldn't speak.
---
She returned to the old tunnels beneath the castle. Mice skittered in the dark, the air thick with mold and memory. Arya had used these passages when she was young, playing at being a spy. Now, she used them because it was the only place left where she could breathe.
She sat in the dark and unrolled a scrap of parchment.
There were names on it.
Names she thought she'd forgotten.
Some crossed out.
Some recently added.
Yohn Royce.
Tarly.
Bronn of the Blackwater.
Even Gendry, written in a shaky hand. She'd scribbled over it. Then re-wrote it. Then scribbled again.
Sansa's name wasn't there.
Yet.
---
A knock echoed from above. Someone in the corridor.
Arya melted into the wall. Silent. Breath low.
The door creaked open.
"I know you're here," said a voice.
Brienne.
Arya stepped out. "Did Sansa send you?"
Brienne's eyes were tired, but sharp. "No. I came because I felt something. A shift in the air. Like when snow begins to fall before the storm."
Arya gave a small, cold smile. "Poetic."
"You've changed."
"So have you."
They stood in silence for a long moment. Two women who had bled for the same cause, now standing on the edge of something darker.
"I heard what happened in the Riverlands," Brienne said. "Three men. All dead. Eyes carved out."
Arya tilted her head. "I didn't take the eyes. That wasn't me."
"But it was you."
"Does it matter?"
Brienne took a slow step forward. "Arya… what are you doing?"
Arya looked past her, out into the snow-blind night beyond the small window slit.
"Cleaning up," she whispered. "What we didn't finish."
---
That night, she crept into Royce's chambers.
No mask. No disguise.
Just Arya Stark, daughter of the North.
He woke to cold steel at his throat.
His scream never came.
Only the whisper of her voice:
"The North remembers."
And then nothing at all.