I liked climbing.
I always had.
There wasn't a wall in Winterfell I hadn't scaled at least twice, and most of them I had more times than I could count.
Father didn't love it. Mother hated it. Robb thought it was pointless.
I just thought it was fun.
There was something about being high up that made everything feel smaller and simpler.
The courtyard below, the guards doing their rounds, the smoke rising from the kitchens. All of it was easy and predictable from up there.
I hadn't been climbing much lately, though.
Mostly because I kept waking up tired.
It had started small. Stupidly small, honestly.
The first one I can even remember was a dream about supper.
I dreamed we had venison stew. Which wasn't strange on its own, we had it often enough.
But in the dream, the bread was burnt slightly on the left side, and there was more pepper in it than usual, and Old Nan spilled a small amount near the far end of the table before she sat down.
I remembered thinking it was an oddly detailed dream.
The next evening at supper, we had venison stew. The bread was burnt slightly on one side. There was more pepper than usual. And Old Nan spilled a small amount near the far end of the table.
I laughed about it in my head when I noticed, but told nobody.
What was there to even say?
The second one was Arya.
I dreamed she knocked a candle holder off the shelf in the hall near the armoury.
The thin bronze one Mother had moved there from the solar. I even dreamed the sound it made hitting the stone floor.
Two days later, I heard that exact sound from around the corner. Walking in the sound's direction, I felt I already knew what I'd find before I got there.
Arya was standing over it, looking guilty. I didn't say anything. Just picked it up and put it back.
She looked at me weirdly when I walked away without a word.
I felt kinda cool at the time.
The third one I actually went looking for.
I dreamed one of the gate guards, the older one with the grey beard, was standing at his post but facing the wrong direction.
Facing inward instead of out. Just standing there like he'd forgotten which way the threat was supposed to come from.
When I woke up, I thought about it longer than the others. Then I went to check.
He was standing exactly as I'd dreamed him.
I watched him for a while from a distance. He wasn't doing anything wrong, really. Just standing inward. Maybe he was watching something inside the yard. Maybe it meant nothing.
But I'd dreamed it first.
I went back to my room and sat on the edge of my bed for a while.
Then I decided they were still just dreams.
Coincidences.
Winterfell was a small place, and I knew it well. Of course, my mind would sometimes fill in weird details. That wasn't strange. That was just a coincidence.
I believed that for a while.
The falling dream was harder to explain away.
I dreamed I was climbing, which was normal. I climbed in dreams often. But this time I reached for a handhold that wasn't where I expected it to be, and my hand caught nothing, and then I was falling.
Not fast.
That was the part that stuck with me.
It was slow and painfully long. Like the fall had decided it wanted my full attention.
Thankfully, I woke up before I landed.
I remember waking up covered in sweat, sitting upright in my bed for a while after that one.
The other dreams had been small things—weird suppers. A candleholder coincidentally fell, and a guard who probably had too much to drink.
Anyway, those hadn't happened to me.
I felt that was the difference.
It's probably why this one felt heavier.
I hadn't told anyone about any of it.
Not Robb, although I'd almost said something once when we were walking back from hunting. But I stopped myself at the last moment.
I knew what he'd say anyway... how he'd look at me.
Not badly or anything, more like it was nothing.
I thought about telling Mother, but all she'd do is worry, while Father would probably act super responsible and calm, telling me it'd be "all okay".
Yet somehow that sounded even worse.
So I kept it to myself.
And so the dreams kept coming.
I don't know exactly when they changed.
There wasn't a clean moment where I could say, there, that night, that was when it became something different.
They just slowly got stranger.
Like they were becoming more and more deliberate.
An empty castle. That was one of them.
I was walking through Winterfell, and everything was exactly as it should have been, except there was nobody in it.
Not hiding. Not gone somewhere. Just empty. The fires still burned in the sconces. Food was still on the tables. But I couldn't find anyone, anywhere.
I had looked for Father first, but his study was empty. His chair pulled out slightly like he'd stood up and left.
Then Mother's solar. Empty. Her needlework was still on the arm of the chair.
Robb's room. Empty. Same with Jon's.
So I kept walking.
I don't know how long; it was a dream after all.
However, throughout my endless searching, I noticed that the castle felt larger than it should have been.
Then I came to Sansa's door.
I stood outside it for a moment.
But I didn't go in.
I woke up before I decided whether to.
I thought about that dream for two days afterward, specifically about why I'd stopped at Sansa's door.
I didn't have an answer.
I had been sleeping badly for almost two weeks by the time the fire dream came.
I remember it was cold that night. Colder than usual, the kind that crept under the furs and settled against your skin regardless of what you wore.
I'd been awake for a while before I finally fell asleep.
The dream began normally.
It was daytime in Winterfell. I was outside in the courtyard, standing near the well.
I could hear the usual sounds, boots on stone, distant voices, horses somewhere past the gates. Everything felt right.
Then I smelled smoke.
I looked around. There was nothing visible yet—only the smell.
Then the light changed.
It happened gradually, almost like the sun was setting, the light in the sky went orange and then deeper than orange, and then I saw the fire, and somehow understood it had been there all along, I had simply not been looking at the right parts of the castle.
The walls were fine. The gates were fine. Everything that should have been solid was solid.
But everything inside was burning.
Not wild burning. Not the way fire looks when it's out of control. This was steady. Patient. Like it had always been here and had simply been waiting for me to notice it.
There were no sounds of it. No crackling. No heat against my face. Just the sight of it filling every window, every doorway, climbing the inside faces of the walls in a slow orange blaze.
And there was no one.
Not a single person anywhere.
I stood at the well, and I looked at the burning castle, and I felt something I hadn't felt in any of the other dreams.
This one was different.
Then I saw the figure.
Standing in the center of the courtyard.
Between me and the great hall. Facing away from me.
It was still, unmoving, within the flames without a trace of fear, pain or anything.
As if it were exactly where it was meant to be.
I couldn't tell anything about it.
Not height, not shape, not whether it was man or woman or something else entirely.
Just a figure. Darkened against the fiery orange.
I remember feeling brave at the time, thinking that it was all just a dream, so I took a step toward it.
It didn't turn. Didn't react. But I felt something change in the dream the moment I moved.
Like the figure knew I was there. Like it had known the entire time and had been waiting to see what I'd do.
I stopped, not because I was scared. But because I felt a weight on me, it was not forceful, nor violent. But it was there.
The fire kept burning—patient without a sound.
I stood there looking at the figure's back for what felt like a long time.
Then I woke up.
I sat up in bed. The room was dark. The walls outside my window were intact, covered in snow and completely unburned.
I sat there for a while before coming to a realization.
This dream was different.
I'd been telling myself for weeks that they were just dreams, and some of them had come true because Winterfell was small and my mind knew it well.
I couldn't tell myself the same about this one.
The small ones had been real things. Supper. A candle. A guard.
If those had come true, then what about this one?
I thought about the dream for a long time, sitting in the dark.
Then I thought about who to tell.
I went through them all. Mother. Father. Robb. Maester Luwin. Old Nan.
Each one I dismissed before I'd even finished the thought. I knew what each of them would say, and I knew that none of those things would help.
Then I thought of Jon.
Jon wouldn't laugh. Jon wouldn't tell me it was nothing, pat my shoulder and change the subject.
Jon had a way of listening that felt like he was actually doing it, actually taking something in rather than just waiting for you to finish.
I got up before I could talk myself out of it. And began searching.
It didn't take too long until I found him in the yard near the stables brushing one of the horses' manes with his dire wolf tucked under one arm.
He looked at me when I approached. Taking in whatever my face was doing.
"Bran."
"I need to tell you something." I didn't waste time and spoke.
He waited.
I told him about the fire dream first.
About the courtyard and the fire and the figure standing in the middle of it.
Jon listened without speaking. It was kind of awkward, but I felt it was better than him cutting me off or ignoring me entirely.
When I finished, Jon didn't say anything right away. He looked at me for a moment with an expression I couldn't fully read.
Then he said quietly.
"How long have you been having these dreams?"
I paused
Longer than I'd admitted to myself until that moment.
"A while," I said. "Weeks, maybe."
"And the others. Before this one." I added.
"They all came true," I said. "The small ones, at least. All of them."
Something shifted slightly in Jon's expression. It was very small, but I picked it up—the minute scrunch of his eyebrows and the squinting of his eyes.
Perhaps contemplating something, we both sat in silence for a moment.
Then he asked.
"The falling dream. Has that one come true yet?"
Hearing the question, I felt something cold move through my neck that had nothing to do with the temperature.
Shaking it off, I responded.
"No."
Neither of us said anything after that.
The yard was quiet around us. His wolf made a small sound and wrestled around slightly under Jon's arm.
After a moment, Jon looked at me steadily.
"Come to me if it happens again."
I nodded slowly. Although I was hoping he'd immediately do something about it, having Jon believe me felt like a burden was lifted off my shoulders.
He nodded back once.
And said nothing, returning his attention to his horse.
I walked back toward the castle alone after that.
Looking around on my way back, I looked in detail at how the walls of Winterfell were stone, solid and cold in the morning light.
I looked at them for probably too long before going back inside.
Just walls. Just Winterfell. Just dreams.
Thinking so, I went in.
Jon stood in the yard a while after Bran had gone.
He held Ghost against his side and looked at nothing in particular.
Two things sat in his chest that didn't fit together, and he didn't know yet that they were the same thing.
He stood there until the cold became too much.
Then he went inside as well.