An unexpected occurence

282 AC – Winterfell Crypts

pov Benjen Stark

The crypts of Winterfell were colder than usual.

Benjen shivered, not from the chill of the air, but from the weight of grief that pressed against his chest. He stood in front of the stone slabs where Torrhen and Lyarra Snow now lay in stillness, their bodies washed and dressed in Stark colors—though they had never carried the name in life.

He remembered the moment Maester Walys gave up. The way Lyarra had coughed blood into her sheets, clinging to her brother's hand even in her final moments. Torrhen had followed her not long after, silent and still in his bed, as if his soul had simply given up the fight the moment hers was gone.

Benjen had never truly seen them as just bastards. They were quiet, clever, warm-hearted. Lyarra always had a way of getting a smile from even the most sour-faced guards. Torrhen, for all his seriousness, had once stood in the yard between two quarelling squires just to prevent a fight.

Lyarra had been very interested and Benjen had to admit been a lot better in Walys' lessons, if she had been a man Benjen was sure she would have gone to the Citadel in a few years. Torrhen had been skilled with a blade, not a monster but better than most his age and would have undoubtedly earned enough merit in the future to become Winterfell's master of arms.

They had been different—kinder, brighter, strange in a way he couldn't name—but still Stark blood.

And now they were gone.

He stepped forward with a torch, watching as Maester Walys muttered quiet words of farewell behind him. The crypt keeper moved to close the stone lids over their biers. Benjen hesitated.

"Wait."

Something—instinct or dread—stayed his hand. He stared down at Torrhen's face. Pale. Still. Too still.

Then Torrhen's fingers twitched.

Benjen's heart stopped. "What…"

Lyarra gasped.

The torch clattered from his fingers, hitting the stone with a crash of sparks. Her back arched violently as she let out a scream that echoed through the crypts, ragged and raw. Torrhen lurched upward beside her, eyes wide and staring as if waking from a nightmare.

Benjen stumbled back against the crypt walls.

"What sorcery is this…?"

Maester Walys dropped his satchel and froze, pale as milk. The twins clutched each other, eyes wild, breathing in jagged gasps as though drawing air for the first time.

They were alive.... what was going on?

**Scene Break**

pov Torrhen Snow

Breath.

The first thing Torrhen felt was breath—like fire and ice surging into his lungs all at once. He didn't remember waking. One moment there was darkness, the next, pain and confusion and— And then... nothing.

Now there was stone around him. The scent of death. Of cold earth and old bones.

He couldn't move at first. His limbs were heavy, unfamiliar. He turned his head slowly and saw a girl—no, his sister—gasping for air beside him.

Lyarra, his mind supplied, though a second name, a second self, lingered just beyond his grasp. "Lyarra?" he rasped.

His voice sounded like sand scraped over stone.

She turned to him, tears streaking down her cheeks. "You're alive!" she said softly.

He nodded. Then...

Memories.

A classroom.

Gunshots. (what the hell were guns?)

His sister falling beside him.

Screams.

It came flooding in like a tsunami (though in that moment he would not have been able to explain what that even was): a childhood in another world, a world of light and noise and machines. A world that had ended in a flash of violence. And now they were here. Not just Torrhen and Lyarra Snow. But someone else, someone more.

There were voices above them. A torchlight flickering madly. Benjen's wide eyes staring as if he'd seen a ghost.

"Ben," Torrhen said weakly. "Help us… please."

Benjen stepped forward slowly, almost in disbelief, as Lyarra leaned into Torrhen's side, clutching his sleeve with trembling hands.

And Torrhen knew, with sudden certainty, that the path of the world had changed.

They had died once already.

They wouldn't waste the second chance.

But first he had to somehow make sense of these two conflicting sets of memories.

**Scene Break**

POV: Maester Walys

The dead did not rise.

That was the truth Walys had been taught in the Citadel. The truth etched into every copper link he wore around his throat. Death was the end. The body ceased. The spirit faded. Nothing remained but rot and memory.

And yet.

He stared in stunned silence as Torrhen Snow leaned upright on the bier, his breath ragged and uneven, and Lyarra clung to him, sobbing into her brother's shoulder like a girl risen from drowning.

It could not be. It should not be.

Yet they lived.

His hands trembled as he picked up his dropped satchel. It felt absurd now—poultices, smelling salts, tools meant for the living, for wounds and broken bones. These two had been dead. He had declared it. He had felt the chill leave them.

"Maester?" Benjen Stark's voice cracked the air like a whip. "Is this… is this real?"

Walys approached the biers cautiously, like a man approaching a burning pyre.

"They were dead," he whispered, mostly to himself. "I checked. I performed the rites. There was no heartbeat. No breath. No warmth. Dead."

"And now they're not."

The maester looked at Benjen. The boy—no, the young man—looked pale and frightened, but resolute. A Stark through and through. Walys looked back at the twins.

Torrhen's eyes met his.

There was intelligence there. Awareness.

Not the mindless rage of a wight, nor the vacant confusion of a miracle. Torrhen Snow was aware. And so was Lyarra, clutching his sleeve, her expression too old for a girl so young.

Walys fell to one knee beside the crypt and muttered, "By all the gods and the chains of reason… what are you?"

Neither child answered.

But Walys knew then, deep in his marrow, that Winterfell's godswood would see more prayers than usual in the days to come.

He fidgeted, eager to run to his office and send a raven to Oldtown asking for answers... asking for advise.

Though he was already certain what the archmaesters would think. The twins' could not be allowed to live... and Benjen Stark might have to go too.

**Scene Break**

POV: Brynden Rivers, the Last Greenseer

The weirwood's roots coiled around his ancient form like the embrace of time itself—tight, inescapable, feeding his vision with blood and memory. Bloodraven had long since ceased to be merely a man. He was shadow and thought now, tangled in the timeless murmur of the trees, watching the world through sap and snow.

He was watching Winterfell, eager to see Eddard Stark's arrival and the calling of the banners of the north which would lead to the downfall of the dragons, when it happened.

A shiver ran through the grove—not wind, not weather. Something older. Something wrong.

He felt it first in the earth beneath him. A pulse, like a heart that should no longer beat. The faces carved in the weirwoods across the North groaned silently, their eyes weeping red tears of sap. Two threads, long severed, were woven back into the pattern. Against nature. Against death.

The twins.

His thoughts flew faster than ravens. Winterfell. The crypts. He saw it—the boy, Torrhen, pulling in a ragged breath where no breath should have come. The girl, Lyarra, weeping into her brother's tunic, alive in a tomb meant for the dead. They had died from a fever that he had his hand's in, eager to remove the disruptance to the song. Bloodraven had already celebrated (as much as he could anyway) but now this!

Bloodraven recoiled, though his body did not move. "This was not my doing." he muttered aloud.

He had touched their dreams, months ago. Whispers in sleep. He had seen their futures, nothing out of the ordinary but enough for him to decide that the risk of them surviving was too great. And when his dreams in the hearts of the Stark siblings had not been enough to cause their death he had done the dirty work himself. And now these two anomalies were alive again...

No greenseer, no sorcerer, no maester of the Citadel had ever done what had just been done. This was deeper. Wilder.

The Old Gods stirred, agitated, their will not so much spoken as felt. He did not hear words, not exactly—but he understood.

They had not been chosen. They had returned. On their own.

In all his centuries tangled in root and vision, Brynden had seen great workings: the forging of swords that could drink light, dragons born from stone, kings made mad by prophecy. But this?

This was different. This was a rupture. And with it came… chaos. And Bloodraven hated chaos.

He turned his mind away from the North for a moment, seeking through the trees to the far South. The South would not understand. But the North would.

The wolf-blood ran deep. In Benjen and in Eddard, returning with fire behind his eyes and grief behind his ribs. In the twins.

He saw now that their return would be a turning.

A blade between what was and what will be.

"They are not mine," he whispered into the roots.

And yet… they were part of the song.

Brynden Rivers closed his one red eye.

And watched, just like he always did.

**Scene Break**

POV: Eddard Stark

Winterfell looked smaller than he remembered.

The grey stones that had once meant safety now loomed like specters in the snow as Eddard Stark rode through the gate, cloak heavy with travel and ash. The war had drained him, loss had carved hollows under his eyes, and Robert's grief sat on his shoulders like a second sword.

His horse stamped wearily. He dismounted in silence, guards rushing to greet him.

Benjen was already moving down the steps of the keep, his expression unreadable.

"They told me…" Eddard's voice rasped from weeks of cold air and harder truths. "They told me about Father. And Brandon."

Benjen nodded solemnly. "I know."

"I left Winterfell whole," Eddard murmured. "And now..."

Benjen held up a hand, his face severe "We can grieve later. You need to see something."

Eddard frowned. "Ben—"

"Please, Ned. No questions... just come".

Eddard followed without another word, exhaustion fighting curiosity. Benjen led him not to the great hall or the godswood, but down into the crypts.

And there—seated quietly on a bench carved into the stone—were Torrhen and Lyarra Snow.

Their cheeks held color. Their eyes followed him as he entered. And as Eddard staggered forward, their mouths curled into something soft. Familiar.

"Ned," Lyarra said quietly.

Eddard Stark, who had faced fire and blood and madness, was confused why his siblings were down here in the crypts. Had something happened?

"Roughly 3 hours ago, we were preparing to bury them. They were dead, Ned, dead!" Benjen said with a wild look that was so unlike him.

"I have better things to do than to be pranked with something unbelievable, Benjen. Come, we need to call the banners" Ned said with a shake of his head and turned around.

"No my lord, your brother is right. The twins were dead, I myself confirmed it yesterday evening" Maester Walys said with a grimace and Eddard stilled. Benjen just like Lyanna had been prone to pranks but Walys? He was as serious as any other maester. But still..

"You cannot just think I would believe something like that" he retorted, hoping they would confirm it was just an elaborate prank. And yet tthey didn't.. even worse all the servants he questioned confirmed the same... Torrhen and Lyarra had died yesterday. Eddard carefully dodged the servants' questions—why he needed to ask, what he feared—and gave them only silence in return.

They don't know yet... and for now that is probably for the better.

He met with Benjen and Walys not much later, Torrhen and Lyarra had been sent to their rooms and one of Winterfell's most loyal, Rodrik Cassel, was now guarding their room.

Eddard only said: "Call the banners and... sigh yes I suppose tell those who need to know about what happened. We cannot keep this buried for long anyway"

Too many in Winterfell knew that the twins had died... they would not have been able to keep all of them silent for more than a week.

**Scene Break**

The ravens took wing at dusk.

The first flew from the rookery at Winterfell with trembling hands and sealed wax, carrying one word more unbelievable than the next.

Rickard's bastard twins' death from fever and subsequent return to life.

Feathers cut through the skies to Riverrun, where a contemplating Hoster Tully sat with his daughters, debating whether to send men north to deal with the affront to the seven or south to deal with the other affront to the seven and how to deal with his impulsive daughter who had gotten pregnant from Riverrun's ward Peter Baelish of all people.

Another fluttered toward Oldtown, where archmaesters at the Citadel debated over portents and precedents, unaware that one of their own had just collapsed upon reading the message.

One reached the Eyrie, and a silent Maester Colemon turned white as chalk as he read the news aloud to Lady Anya Waynwood.

Other ravens flew to White Harbor, Barrowton, and Last Hearth, their claws gripping secrets that could change the nature of belief in Westeros.

Some dismissed it as a hoax. Others prepared pilgrimages to locations near them with a godswood including a weirwood tree. A few wondered aloud if it was an omen of magic returning.

But one thing became certain: Strange things were happening in the North.