Quoted By:
>Look to the man across from you. Still unmoving. Why does the sight of him twist something in your chest?
>Rolled 38 for Insight - Partial Success
Your eyes, still swimming with ache, squint through the gloom. The cell opposite lies mostly in shadow, but there’s light enough now - just enough - to catch more than before. His form is slumped, legs sprawled in a way no man sleeps. A stain darkens the straw beneath his side. Dried. Sunk in.
There’s no mistaking it: he’s dead. You blink, chest tight, and almost look away.
But something pulls at you. His wrist, pale and half-exposed, bears a strip of cloth, weathered and soiled with time. But even so, you recognize the pattern: the grey and white bands. Ending with a stitched wolfshead. Northern weave. Northern hands. You know that cloth. You wore the same, once, when Lord Stark rode south to serve as Hand. So did others. Riders. Stewards. Men sworn and quiet in their duty.
Your breath catches as your thoughts claw backward, piecing names to faces: Vayon Poole, the attentive steward. Hal from the Rills, who played at dice with a knife’s point. Willum, grim and loyal, who’d lost a thumb in the Rebellion.
Was it one of them? You can’t say. The face is too still. Too wrong. Too long in the dark. But something about him feels known. Like the shape of a shadow you forgot was cast behind you.
And then it hits you, hard and quiet. You were not the first. You’re not alone in this place - but others have come before. And not all of them got as far as you. Not all of them woke.
The weight of the missing token and your duty presses down like a stone in your gut. The memory of your father’s voice still echoes behind your ribs.
Ahead and to the left, Old Man Tom speaks. Not to you. Not to anyone. “Ghosts talk, sometimes,” he mutters, “if you’re too long in the dark. That one’s been quiet, though. Quiet as stone.”
--
The effort finally catches up with you. Your ribs clench like iron bands. The bruise across your side flares white-hot, and your leg folds beneath you as if it had forgotten how to hold weight. You sink to the cold stone, trembling. The dream of your father fades like mist on the frost. The resolve it brought now burns under your skin like shame. Resolve could not knit flesh. Will alone could not keep you upright.
Then begin the slow days. You do not black out. You suffer through. You try to keep count. Scratches on the stone blur together, days bleeding one into the next. The aches dull, but only because your body dulls too. Survival means rationing pain - ignoring the lesser to endure the worse. You wrap your wounds with scraps of your own shirt. You wet cloth from the dripping wall and press it to your eye. It does little. But it’s all you have.
One of the guards pauses by your cell every time. Never speaks. You think he’s waiting for you to look up. You don’t.
