"It really is a direwolf."
Everyone was stunned by the sight before them.
A direwolf.
The sigil of House Stark.
A creature said to live only north of the Wall.
None had appeared south of the Wall in more than two hundred years.
Finding one here now was hardly a good omen.
More importantly, that deserter had actually been right!
Theon Greyjoy whistled, dismounted, and approached cautiously.
"It's huge."
He prodded the stiff corpse with his boot.
"This is a monster."
"It's not a monster."
Jon Snow countered. He had dismounted too and crouched to examine it closely.
"It's a mother. Look."
He parted the tangled fur beneath the she-wolf.
Several little balls of fur huddled together against their mother's cold corpse, whimpering faintly.
They were still alive.
Bran's eyes lit up at once.
"Look, Father!"
He jumped down from his horse too and stumbled over.
The pups had yet to open their eyes, and their bodies were only the size of puppies.
They instinctively burrowed toward warmth.
Bran carefully picked one up and held it before his eyes.
The little creature was black all over, with a wet nose.
"Kill them."
Theon Greyjoy's voice rang out coldly.
"They won't survive without their mother."
Eddard Stark frowned, his gaze complicated as he looked at those fragile little lives.
"Born into death..."
"Theon is right."
Ned spoke gravely.
"It's the kindest thing to do."
"No!"
Bran cried out at once.
Robb hurried to speak as well.
"Father, please."
"A direwolf died in the south."
An unexpected voice cut in.
It was quiet, yet it stopped everyone in their tracks.
They turned toward the sound.
The speaker was the captured deserter, Lynn.
He stood there with his wrists still shackled, his face utterly bloodless.
Yet Lynn's eyes were unusually bright.
Ned Stark turned, fixing his gray eyes on him.
His gaze felt almost tangible, heavy with scrutiny and authority.
Lynn did not shrink back.
He met Ned's gaze and calmly continued.
"My lord."
"The direwolf is the sigil of House Stark."
"A she-wolf died beside the road, her throat pierced by an antler."
"Yet her body bears the marks of a mountain lion's teeth."
Lynn spoke without haste.
The smile froze on Theon Greyjoy's face.
He instinctively objected.
"How could there be mountain lions in the North?"
"Mountain lions only live in the warm south!"
The stag-the sigil of House Baratheon was a crowned stag.
The lion was the sigil of House Lannister.
The wolf represented House Stark.
A broken antler jutted beneath the wolf's jaw.
It also pointed to the problems left behind after King Robert's death.
None of Robert's children were his own, and it also pointed to Baelish's dagger, which had sown chaos...
And Ned was that wolf.
Once he had understood those words, "the seed is strong," Ned had been killed.
"There are six pups here."
Lynn's gaze swept over the little wolves waiting to be fed.
"Four males and two females."
"Exactly matching Lord Stark's six children."
Looking at the five direwolf pups on the ground, Theon wanted to object.
"There are clearly five..."
But Ned's icy expression made him swallow his words.
The wind howled, sweeping loose snow off the ground and into their faces.
This was no longer a coincidence.
It was an omen.
An ill omen from the Old Gods.
"What exactly are you trying to say?"
Eddard Stark's voice was colder than the northern wind.
If the pups represented his children, did that mean the dead direwolf represented him?
"Winter is coming."
Lynn pronounced each word distinctly.
Spoken by an outsider like him, the words of House Stark carried an eerie sense of destiny.
"This is no gift, my lord."
"It is a warning."
"The things beyond the Wall have awakened, and the Old Gods have sent a warning as well."
"They belong to the children of House Stark."
"They will protect them."
With that, Lynn fell silent and lowered his head again.
He had already said enough.
If he continued, it would no longer be a warning but a curse.
He had no desire to lose his head.
Eddard Stark stood in silence.
He looked at the dead she-wolf, at the lethal length of antler, then at the five pups.
"Remove his shackles."
Although Ned still harbored doubts about Lynn, his attitude had improved considerably.
Then Ned's gaze settled on his youngest son, Bran.
Bran hugged the little wolf tightly to his chest and looked at him pleadingly.
A long moment passed.
"You will raise them yourselves."
Eddard Stark finally spoke.
"You will feed them yourselves and train them yourselves."
"If they die, you will bury them with your own hands."
"You will not leave it to anyone else."
Joy instantly blossomed on the children's faces.
"There's another one!"
Jon Snow's puzzled voice rang out.
He lifted another pup from a nearby snowdrift.
Its littermates had pushed it out, leaving it lying alone in the snow.
This wolf pup was snow-white all over, with red eyes.
It lay quietly, without whimpering like the other pups.
"An outcast."
Ned recalled what Lynn had said. He had found it strange when Lynn claimed there were six wolf pups here, since he had only seen five.
Yet there really were six!
It made Ned begin to believe that Lynn could see things others could not.
Could he truly foretell the future?
Theon's whistle interrupted Ned's thoughts.
"A fitting match for you, Snow."
Jon ignored Theon and simply picked it up.
The little direwolf curled quietly in Jon's arms, neither crying nor struggling.
"That deserter really was right. There are six. This one's yours, then, Jon."
Robb smiled as he spoke to his bastard brother.
Robb and Jon were close.
He had reddish-brown hair and a sturdy build.
He was fourteen now.
As Eddard Stark's son, he had inherited his father's character.
He upheld honor, remained loyal, and stood for justice.
A rare smile appeared on Jon Snow's face as well.
And so the matter of the direwolves came to an end.
The guards resumed escorting Lynn and followed the party.
No one looked at him again.
It was as though his shocking words had been no more than delirious murmurs carried on the wind.
But Lynn knew that everything had changed.
Even with his head lowered, he could feel the lord of Winterfell's gaze lingering on his face for a very, very long time.
Suspicion still remained in that gaze.
But more than anything, there was wariness.
Robb and the others were still young and could not understand what the stag, lion, and wolf signified.
Ned, however, understood perfectly.
Upon their return to Winterfell, Lynn was neither sent to the gallows nor thrown into a dungeon.
He was confined to a room at the base of a tower.
The room was small, containing only a hard bed, a table, and a little window that let in a cold draft.
Built over hot springs, Winterfell was wonderfully comfortable, with its own hot-spring heating system.
It was not nearly as cold as he had imagined. Compared with the Night's Watch deserter's days of sleeping rough on the road, this was practically paradise!
A guard brought him a simple meal.
Black bread, roast meat, and a steaming cup of thick offal soup.
Lynn wolfed down every last morsel, and a trace of warmth finally reached his cold stomach.
His physical weakness eased a little.
He walked over to the bronze mirror. He still looked like his original self, and his name was unchanged as well.
It seemed his arrival in this world had altered everyone else's existing perceptions, making everything appear perfectly natural.
Perhaps this was the power of the system.
It also made Lynn feel a little better. At least he was not the ugly wretch beheaded at the beginning of the show. How would he have found women looking like that? They would probably have been utterly repulsed...
Standing by the window, he looked out through the narrow gap in the stone.
He could see a corner of the castle courtyard.
Guards were patrolling, and servants were busy at work.
Everything seemed orderly.
But Lynn knew that beneath this calm, a tremendous storm was brewing.
He had forcibly bound his fate to this family's in a way that bordered on madness!
The blue panel that only he could see appeared before his eyes again.
His gaze fell on the glaring [Experience: 0].
The enemy-killing system.
To gain experience, I have to kill enemies.
But I'm an unarmed prisoner, locked inside the strongest castle in the North.
Who can I possibly kill?
Lynn's brow furrowed deeply.
He had to grow stronger as quickly as possible.
In this world where lives were worth no more than weeds, strength was the only thing he could rely on.
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