JON VII

Months bled into one another, each day a mirror of the last, marked only by the slow deepening of the winter snows. With the passage of time, Jon Snow had been reforged. The boy who had lain broken and afraid was gone, replaced by a young man of quiet, dangerous focus. His life was a trinity of purpose: the yard, the library, and the shadows.

His training had become a second skin. He could now hold his own against four of the household guards, his movements a blur of precise parries and fluid counters. His archery had reached a point where he could hit a thrown apple from a hundred paces, a feat that left even the most seasoned hunters in the castle shaking their heads. But it was in the library that his mind was truly being sharpened.

The Mentor's Codex was slowly filling out. He had spent months with Maester Luwin, his progress so rapid it bordered on the unnatural. He had delved deep into the geography of Essos, his fingers tracing the great trade routes from Braavos to Qarth, learning the names of the Free Cities, the Dothraki Sea, and the haunted shores of the Smoking Sea. High Valyrian, once a collection of harsh, alien sounds, now felt almost natural on his tongue. He could read simple texts and hold a basic conversation with the Maester, the System feeding him the grammar and syntax with an eerie efficiency.

But his two great quests remained. The Cracked Snowflake conspiracy was a knot he couldn't seem to untangle. He had spent weeks poring over books on Northern heraldry and merchant guilds, but the symbol was nowhere to be found. It was as if the organization didn't exist in any official record.

Frustrated, he turned his attention back to his mother. His Legacy Quest had given him a new focus: the tower in Dorne. He began a systematic search, reading every scroll and book he could find on the Dornish Marches. It was in a dusty, forgotten tome, a maester's personal travelogue from the reign of the Mad King, that he finally found it. The passage was small, almost a footnote, describing a journey through the Red Mountains.

"...and to the south, one can see the lonely spire the locals call the Tower of Joy, a place Prince Rhaegar was said to favor for its melancholy beauty..."

The words seemed to leap off the page. The Tower of Joy. The name was a cruel irony, a place of sorrow and secrets. He had the name.

[Legacy Quest Updated: The Ghost of a Mother]

Objective: Discover who was present at the Tower of Joy.

Reward: ???

The breakthrough in one investigation seemed to bleed into the other. That same afternoon, while searching for a map to pinpoint the tower's location, he stumbled upon a different section of the library, one containing the private records of past Winterfell maesters. He found a journal belonging to a Maester Walys, who had served his grandfather. In an entry detailing the economic decline of the Winter Town a century ago, he found it.

"...the Northern Trading Company, with its sigil of a cracked snowflake, was found to be the heart of a vast smuggling ring. Lord Stark ordered it disbanded, its leaders exiled, and its name struck from all official records."

It wasn't a current organization; it was a ghost, a secret society that had been reborn from the ashes. Now he had a name, he could begin his hunt. The System's quest to identify three key members now seemed possible.

This forced him into the field. For weeks, he spent his nights in the Winter Town, a ghost on the rooftops. He used The Sight to observe, looking for the tell-tale auras of [Intent: Deceptive. Illicit.]. He watched the taverns, the warehouses, the docks by the frozen river. He saw petty criminals and drunken brawls, but nothing connected to the snowflake.

Then, one frigid night, he saw it. A well-dressed merchant, a man Jon recognized as a purveyor of fine wines, was speaking to a rough-looking dockworker in a secluded alley. Their auras were a swirling, conspiratorial orange. As they parted, the merchant slipped the dockworker a small, folded parchment. Jon waited until the merchant was gone, then dropped silently into the alley behind the worker.

Before the man could react, Jon had a knife to his throat. "The note," he hissed, his voice a low growl. "Give it to me."

The terrified man handed it over. It was a list of goods. At the bottom was the symbol of the cracked snowflake. "Who gave you this?" Jon demanded.

"I don't know his name!" the man stammered. "He just pays me to move crates, no questions asked. He meets with the others at the old abandoned watchtower by the river road!"

Jon melted back into the shadows, leaving the man trembling in the alley. He had his location.

The watchtower was a crumbling ruin, a relic from a forgotten age. Jon approached it from the woods, moving like a phantom. He saw three figures inside, their silhouettes dark against the light of a single lantern. This was it. He scaled the tower's outer wall, his fingers finding purchase in the crumbling mortar, and peered through a crack in the stone.

He saw the wine merchant, a burly caravan guard he recognized, and a third man whose face was hidden in shadow. They were arguing over a ledger. Jon was so focused on their conversation that he didn't hear the faint scrape of a boot on the stone behind him.

"You're a long way from the town, little crow," a rough voice snarled.

Jon whirled around. A lookout, perched on an outcropping Jon hadn't seen, was standing there, a cruel grin on his face. The man was big, armed with a heavy club. The chase was instantaneous. Jon scrambled up the rest of the tower, the lookout close behind. He leaped from the tower to the roof of a nearby abandoned barn, his [Feather Fall] saving him from a bone-shattering landing. The lookout, not so skilled, had to climb down and follow on foot.

Jon led him on a desperate chase through the woods, his parkour skills pushed to their limit as he vaulted over fallen logs and swung from low-hanging branches. But the lookout was relentless. Finally, in a small, moonlit clearing, Jon knew he had to fight.

The man swung his club in a brutal, sweeping arc. Jon, instead of parrying, dropped into a slide, the club whistling over his head. He came up inside the man's guard, but the lookout was ready. He dropped the club and grabbed Jon, his thick arms like iron bands. In the struggle, the man's hand caught the cloth covering Jon's face, tearing it away.

The moonlight fell on Jon's face, and the lookout's eyes widened in recognition. "You... you're the Lord's bastard!" he gasped.

A cold, absolute terror seized Jon. His secret, his life, his entire world was now in the hands of this one man. He couldn't let him go. He couldn't let him talk.

Fueled by a desperate, primal fear, Jon drove the pommel of his dagger into the man's throat. The man gave a choked gasp and staggered back, clutching at his windpipe. Jon didn't hesitate. He didn't think. He acted. He closed the distance and drove the dagger's blade up and under the man's ribs, just as he'd been taught to do on training dummies.

The man's eyes went wide with shock, a soft, wet sound escaping his lips. He looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest, then back at Jon, a look of confusion on his face. He slumped to his knees, and then fell forward into the snow.

Jon stood over the body, his chest heaving, his dagger dripping with blood that steamed in the cold night air. The world seemed to fall silent. This was no training bout. This was not a disabling strike. This was the end of a life, a line he had just crossed and could never go back from. A wave of nausea washed over him.

The System's notification appeared, its blue light cold and impassive, a stark contrast to the red staining the snow.

[Quest Complete: The Cracked Snowflake]

[Reward: 300 Experience, [Ghost] Proficiency]

He knew he couldn't stay. He had the identities of two of the members, and he knew the third was their leader. But he had been seen. He had killed to protect his secret. He had to finish this, and he had to do it soon. The game had just become far more dangerous.