Chapter 9: The Warden's Confession
The fire in her hearth had burned low, leaving a nest of pulsating embers that painted the stone walls in shades of shifting orange and deep shadow. Y/N’s chamber was silent save for the faint groan of the ancient keep and the distant, ever-present wind.
She unbuckled her sword belt, letting it fall to the thick fur rug with a heavy thud. The padded tunic came next, pulled over her head with a tired grunt. The cold air bit at her skin, raising gooseflesh along her arms and across her torso. She stood before the bronze mirror, its surface mottled and wavering, and turned her back to it.
Over her shoulder, the symbol was a landscape of raised, pale scars.
It was no neat tattoo, but a ritual carving. The ancient runes of the First Men, a lineage claimed by so few now, interwoven with the stark, angular image of a weirwood face, its mouth open in a silent scream or song. It covered the span of her shoulders, digging deep between her shoulder blades. She remembered the sting of the bone needle, the smell of pine smoke and blood, the low chant of the old woods witch who’d performed the rite. She’d been sixteen, desperate to prove she belonged to the North in body and soul, since her own body felt like a contested land. The pain had been an anchor. The scar it left was a promise. A binding. You are of this stone, this snow, this tree. You are home.
Her calloused fingertips traced the ridges. The skin there was forever numb, yet the memory in her nerves was electric. That night, the bitter cold, the witch’s eyes like chips of flint, the sense of something older than names settling under her skin.
A sharp rap at the door fractured the memory.
She snatched the tunic from her bed and pulled it on, covering the history written on her back. “Enter.”
The door swung open. Arya stood there, her expression unreadable. Not behind her, but beside her, was Missandei. The former translator stood with a quiet grace, her hands clasped, eyes taking in the spartan room—the weapons on the walls, the simple bed, the single frayed banner.
“She wanted to speak with you,” Arya said, jerking her chin toward Missandei. Her tone was neutral, but her eyes flickered to Y/N’s hastily-donned tunic. “I’m not a messenger. But she asked without… courtly nonsense.”
With that, Arya turned and disappeared down the torchlit hall, leaving the two women in the doorway.
Y/N gestured inward. “Come in. Shut the door, the draft is a fiend.”
Missandei did, closing out the whispering hall. She didn’t hover. She took a few steps in, her gaze lingering on the warhammer by the hearth. “Your room is as I imagined,” she said, her voice soft but clear.
“Dull and smelling of oiled metal?”
“Purposeful.” Missandei turned to face her. “I apologize for the intrusion. The Queen’s councils are full of words that circle like birds without landing. I find it… draining.”
“You’re not the only one,” Y/N muttered, moving to stir the embers with a poker. A log caught, flames licking up anew. “What can the Warden of the North do for the Voice of Dragon’s Bay?”
“I saw you at practice today. In the yard. With the great hammer.”
Y/N paused. “It keeps the arms strong.”
“It is not a common weapon. It requires immense strength, and control. I knew a fighter in Meereen, before the siege. She was in the fighting pits, briefly, before Daenerys Stormborn closed them.” Missandei’s words were careful, each one placed like a stone in a path. “She was a slave, taken from somewhere far to the east. She had a hammer, though smaller than yours. She fought with a fury that seemed less like anger and more like… a form of prayer.”
The air in the room tightened. Y/N set the poker down slowly. “Many people fight with hammers.”
“Not like she did. And not like you do.” Missandei took a small step closer. The firelight danced in her dark eyes. “She had a marking. Across her back. Carved, not inked. It was sacred to her. She said it was the mark of her people, a people of stone and root, and that it was cut into her skin to remind her bones where to return when she died.”
A cold that had nothing to do with the draft seeped into Y/N’s spine. She stood perfectly still. The scar on her back seemed to burn beneath the wool.
“She told me the symbols,” Missandei continued, her voice barely above the crackle of the fire. “She taught me a little of their meaning. The weirwood. The binding vow. She said only those sworn to the old gods of earth and tree, the true gods before faces were carved, received such a thing. She called it the ‘Oath of the Last Breath.’ You die where you are sworn, or your spirit wanders.”
Y/N’s throat was dry. “What happened to her?”
“She died in the pits. A spearman from Volantis. Her spirit, I hope, found its stone.” Missandei’s gaze was direct, not challenging, but profoundly knowing. “When you removed your cloak in the yard today, your tunic rode up. Just for a moment. I saw the edge of it. The top of the tree.”
Silence stretched, thick and heavy. Y/N could deny it. She could order her out. This was a secret, her secret, buried under years of leather and steel and silent expectation.
“Why tell me this?” Y/N asked, her voice a rough low thing.
“Because you carry yourself as she did. As if you are a guest in every room save one. And I wished you to know that you are not the only one. That the mark you hide is not a secret of the North alone. It is a story that has traveled. That has survived.” Missandei offered a small, sad smile. “She would have been glad to know it endured in a place like this. In someone like you.”
The revelation unmoored her. This private pain, this fierce pride, was not hers alone. It was a thread connecting her to a slave fighter in a Meereenese pit, a world away. The isolation around the scar softened, just a fraction.
“Did she…” Y/N hesitated, an uncharacteristic vulnerability breaking through. “Did her people see her as she was?”
Missandei understood the true question. “In the pits, they saw only a fighter. But to me, she was Khesra. A woman. Unbroken. The carving was part of her, like her voice or her strength. It did not define her. It was a chapter.” She tilted her head. “You fear the seeing of it. But you carry it facing inward, on your back. It is for you, first. Always. The rest… the rest is just other people catching a glimpse.”
Y/N let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She gave a single, slow nod.
Missandei mirrored the nod, a quiet understanding passing between them that needed no more words. She turned to leave, then paused at the door. “The hammer. It is a good weapon. It does not cut. It does not pierce. It reminds. It reminds the world of its solidity.” With that, she turned to leave, but Y/n stops her closing the door. Y/n slowly turns around before pulling the tunic off letting Missandei see it.
Missandei walks up softly to see it before saying ‘there was no Khesra it was you’. Y/n pulls the tunic down saying ‘yes it was, and clearly not dead so why sell the story?’
Missandei looks at Y/n before sighing saying ‘I stood near my owner as I watched you fight and now here you are after seven years. You were always a mystery to me.’