JON VI

The thrill of his first successful mission faded quickly, replaced by frustration—a new, unfamiliar feeling. For three nights, Jon had been a prisoner in his own castle, his plans thwarted by the consequences of his own actions. From the high battlements, he watched the Winter Town below with his [Sight] active.

The number of orange auras had doubled. The guards, once lazy and predictable, now moved in tight, coordinated patrols, their torchlight cutting through the darkness with sharp vigilance. His father's orders had been carried out, and the "vigilante" Jon had created was now the most wanted man in town.

Something about the mission felt incomplete. Jon replayed the events in his mind. The thief was petty, yes, but the cache of goods was too varied—furs from one stall, wool from another, cured meats from the smokehouse.

A common thief would steal what he could eat or sell quickly for ale. This felt different. More organized. The goods were being collected for someone else, someone who could move them without drawing suspicion. A fence.

The thought took root in his mind like a stubborn weed. The mission wasn't over. He had only cut off a single finger, but the hand remained, hidden in the shadows of Winter Town. He needed to know more. This wasn't about a quest; it was about finishing the job, about understanding the shape of the board before making his next move.

On the fourth night, he finally saw his opening. The initial fervor had died down. The patrols remained active, but a pattern had emerged—a small, five-minute window between one patrol leaving the edge of town and the next arriving. A razor-thin margin, but enough.

He slipped out of the castle once more. Winter Town was quiet, the thief's shack now boarded up by the guards—a stark warning to others. The perfect cover. No one would think to look for anyone here. He pried the boards loose, the wood groaning in protest, and slipped inside. The smell of stale oil and fear still lingered, a sour, cloying scent.

He had to be fast. He activated The Sight. The world turned to shades of grey as he scanned the small, squalid room for anything unusual—anything with the tell-tale aura of concealment. He saw nothing but the faint, residual orange of the thief's presence. He ran his hands along the walls, tapped the floorboards, checked the crumbling chimney. Nothing. He was about to give up, the sound of distant footsteps reminding him his time was running out, when his eyes fell upon the floorboards where he had found the cache. One of them glowed with a slightly different, more deliberate aura.

He had missed it. In his haste, he had seen the main cache but not what lay beneath. He knelt, his fingers finding the edge of the board. It was tight, but he managed to pry it up. Underneath, nestled in a small, carved-out hollow, was not another pile of goods, but a small iron lockbox. Cheap but sturdy. He didn't have the tools to pick it, but he didn't need them. He tucked it under his tunic, replaced the floorboard leaving no trace, and slipped out of the shack. He melted into the shadows just as the light of the next patrol's torches began to crest the nearby hill.

Inside the safety of his room, he used the pommel of his practice sword to break the simple lock. The contents were meager: a handful of copper pennies, a tarnished silver ring, and a small, folded piece of parchment. He carefully unfolded it. Not a letter, but a receipt of sorts—a list of goods with prices scrawled beside them. But it was the symbol at the bottom of the page that drew his eye: a stylized snowflake, elegantly drawn, with a single, jagged crack running through its center. A signature. His instincts had been right.

As if acknowledging his discovery, the System chimed in his mind, its blue text sharp and clear.

[User Initiative Recognized. New Quest Issued: The Cracked Snowflake]

Description: You have discovered the mark of a hidden network operating in the Winter Town. Identify three key members of this organization.

Reward: 300 Experience, [Ghost] Proficiency.

With one mystery advancing, Jon turned his focus back to the other—the one that gnawed at his soul. His afternoons were now spent entirely in the library, a silent, studious fixture among the towering shelves. His training, however, wasn't confined to books. Each morning he spent at the archery range, often alone.

The System provided subtle, constant feedback: a faint shimmer in his vision highlighted the optimal angle of his elbow; a soft chime sounded when his breathing was perfectly controlled for the release. His accuracy had become unnerving. He could now consistently hit the bullseye from a hundred paces and had moved on to more difficult, assassin-centric drills: firing two arrows in rapid succession or hitting moving targets swung on ropes by the guards.

He had moved beyond the Dawn Age and was now deep in the history of the Targaryen dynasty, specifically the final, bloody year of Robert's Rebellion. With Maester Luwin's guidance, he cross-referenced timelines from three different historical accounts. He knew the official story by heart: Rhaegar abducted Lyanna, Aerys murdered his grandfather and uncle, and his father called the banners in rebellion.

He read of the Battle of the Bells, where a wounded Robert Baratheon hid from Lord Connington's forces, a battle won only by the timely arrival of his father's army. He studied the Sack of King's Landing, a brutal affair where the Lannisters, late to the war, proved their new allegiance with the murder of Rhaegar's wife and children.

As he meticulously mapped the movements of every major player after the sack, a glaring anomaly began to take shape—a detail so illogical it felt like a missing puzzle piece.

"Maester," he asked one afternoon, looking up from a map of Dorne. "The Kingsguard. Their duty is to the king and the royal family, is it not? Above all else?"

"That is the oath they swear, Jon," Luwin confirmed, looking over his spectacles. "An oath for life. They are the seven shadows of the king."

"Then why," Jon said, his finger tracing a line on the map, "at the very end of the war, when King Aerys was dead, King's Landing had fallen, and the pregnant Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys were on Dragonstone, were three of the Kingsguard here?" His finger rested on a small, hand-drawn mark in the Red Mountains of Dorne. "Lord Commander Gerold Hightower, Ser Oswell Whent, and Ser Arthur Dayne. The three greatest knights of their generation were not protecting their new king, Viserys, or the queen. They were guarding a small tower in the middle of nowhere. Why?"

Maester Luwin was silent for a long moment, his old eyes thoughtful. "That is a question that has puzzled historians for years, my boy. The official chronicles are... vague. It is assumed they were acting on some final, secret orders from Prince Rhaegar."

"But what orders could be more important than protecting the king or the queen?" Jon pressed, the logic of it gnawing at him.

"Perhaps they believed the war was already lost," Luwin offered, playing devil's advocate. "Perhaps they were simply obeying their prince's last command, a matter of honor rather than strategy."

But Jon knew, with a certainty that chilled him, that it was more than that. The Kingsguard did not follow orders that went against their sacred duty. The only possible explanation was that they weren't abandoning their duty. They were fulfilling it. They were guarding someone they considered more vital to the Targaryen line than the king himself or his known children.

Who? Who could possibly have been that important?

He left the library that evening with his mind reeling. He now had two impossible investigations swirling in his thoughts. One was a shadow war in the alleys of Winter Town, a conspiracy marked by a cracked snowflake, a rot that could be new or centuries old. The other was a ghost story from a decade past, a paradox of honor and duty that led to a lonely tower in Dorne.

He didn't know how they were connected, or if they were at all. He only knew that the truth, for both, was buried deep in the shadows. As he walked through the cold stone corridors, the System chimed, updating his most important quest.

[Legacy Quest Updated: The Ghost of a Mother]

Objective: The Kingsguard protected a secret in a tower in Dorne. Discover the name of this tower.

Reward: ???