Jon chose the exodus at dawn, when the frost still clung to the ground and the Wall cast its longest shadow.

  It was not fear that drove him from it. Fear would have been easier. Fear could be mastered, reasoned with, shaped. What he felt when he looked up at the blackened ice was something quieter and far heavier, a memory of cold steel in his back, of brothers’ hands shoving him down into darkness while they told themselves it was duty.

  “I will not die here again,” he said softly, and the land heard him.

  The Free Folk were preparing for the journey. Sleds were repaired, lashed together from scavenged wood and bone. Mammoths were brought forward, their breath steaming, their massive heads lowered patiently as if they understood what was being asked of them.

  Jon moved among them without command, without ceremony. He helped lift children onto sleds, tied knots with hands that no longer shook in the cold, murmured reassurance in a voice that carried farther than it should have. The Free Folk watched him with a mix of wariness and awe. Some knelt when they thought he wasn’t looking. Others spat to ward off bad luck.

  A Green Man walking among them was at least a good sign for their journey.

  Benjen Stark oversaw the rear guard with the calm efficiency of the dead. Wights had been sighted only days away—scattered, uncoordinated, but growing in number. The land recoiled from them. Jon could feel it like a pulled muscle, like rot beneath a clean wound. Where the dead passed, insects fled. Roots withdrew. Even the snow lay wrong, crusted and brittle, refusing to settle.

  The Children of the Forest gathered at the edge of the camp as the last preparations were being made. Leaf approached Jon, her small hands stained with sap and ash. “So you chose the old island!”

  Jon nodded his head, “Shall we continue our lessons?”

  “Yes and we spoke among each other and will journey with you. We owe that much after what happened with the Raven.”

  Before they headed off, Jon meet Mance. “Take care of them. I know they are in much better hands than anyone with you there.”

  “So you will make a stand here at the Wall?” Jon heard the rumors.

  “Yes, I still have the black brother oaths in me,” he smiled. “And I rather they be safe,” he whispered looking to a pair. His woman and his newly born child.

  “I will take care of them,” he promised.

  They did not travel as an army. They traveled as a migration, slow and deliberate, guarded by sharp-eyed hunters and scarred warriors who knew when to fight and when to vanish. The elite raiding bands took the flanks and the rear, moving light and fast, leaving traps behind them that would not stop the dead but would slow them pits masked with snow, ice weakened to crack beneath weight, paths laced with roots encouraged to rise and snare.

  Jon walked at the heart of the column, and as they moved, he continued his training. Green magic did not pause for war. If anything, it demanded more of him.

  Leaf named the next discipline on the second night, when they camped in a ring of stones half-swallowed by the earth. The fire burned low, fed by wood that did not smoke. Ghost lay beside Jon, massive head resting on his knee, ears flicking at sounds no one else heard.

  “You have learned how to listen,” Leaf said. “You have learned how to endure. Now you will learn how to be.”

  She traced symbols in the dirt. “We call this spell the King of the Forest.”

  Jon felt it stir in him at once, a deep answering thrum. Power, yes but not raw, not violent. Adaptive. “You will learn the strength of the many beasts of the land and take that for your own.”

  Jon spent weeks studying the beasts of the far north as the caravan moved. Not as prey. Not as threats. As living systems. He watched hawks circle and learned how their eyes drank distance, how their necks compensated for motion, how their bones were lightened without losing strength. He observed aurochs among the Free Folk herds, felt the density of muscle beneath hide, the way power came not from rage but from grounding and breath.

  Shadowcats were harder. They did not wish to be known. Jon learned them through absence the way snow lay undisturbed until suddenly it wasn’t, the way prey vanished without sound. Bears, at least, were honest. Their strength was not speed but patience, not fury but inevitability. They endured.

  The spell did not come easily. The first time Jon attempted it, he nearly tore himself apart. He knelt with his hands pressed to the frozen earth, breath steady, mind reaching outward.

  The world surged into him; too much sight, too much weight, too many instincts layered atop his own. His vision sharpened violently, the horizon snapping into impossible clarity even as his limbs grew heavy, joints screaming under phantom mass. His balance failed. He pitched forward, retching, claws that were not there scraping uselessly at ice.

  Ghost howled. Leaf severed the connection at once, striking the ground with her staff. Jon collapsed fully this time, shaking, blood trickling from his nose. “Too many,” she said sharply. “You tried to wear the forest like a crown.”

  Jon lay there, gasping, tasting iron. “I thought… I could hold it.”

  “In time,” Leaf said. “Not yet.”

  He learned restraint after that. One trait at a time, at first. Hawk’s vision came easiest. His sight extended, sharpening until he could see individual figures moving miles away scouts, animals, weather fronts forming like bruises on the sky. Bull’s strength followed, grounding him, letting him pull sleds free when they stuck, lift fallen beams with controlled force rather than desperate strain.

  Shadowcat’s dexterity took longer. It required unlearning the way men moved. Light steps. Silence. Trust in balance rather than muscle. Bear’s constitution came last, settling into him slowly, a deep reservoir of endurance that let him march through cold nights without shivering, heal bruises overnight, stand watch long after others faltered.

  Five was the limit. He felt it clearly, a natural ceiling, beyond which the spell would turn parasitic, tearing at his sense of self. Leaf warned him once and only once. “More than five, and you will not know which instincts are yours. The more powerful you become the more you can take on.”

  Jon did not test that boundary. By the time the coastline came into view, a jagged line of dark water and broken stone Jon was ready for the journey that would take them to Skagos.

  -

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  The wind had shifted by the time they reached Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The Wall loomed behind them, stark and glittering in morning frost, a frozen sentinel they would leave to face its fate. The harbor was a rough place of jagged stones and half-broken piers, but the Free Folk had prepared what ships they could. Rickety vessels, patched with hides, boards, and tar, bobbed uneasily in the tide. Small sails flapped like wounded birds. It would not be elegant, but it would float and that was enough.

  Jon walked among them, Ghost at his side, the Children of the Forest lingering near the treeline as always. Benjen inspected the ships with silent diligence, his cold hand trailing along timber and rope, his presence unnerving even the hardiest wildlings. Jon counted the families. Women, children, the wounded, the hunters, the raiders, the scavengers they all had to fit, had to survive the waves.

  Leaf approached him, carrying a small bundle of herbs and carved stones. “The sea is a place of trial,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost drowned by the wind, but Jon understood. “The Green reaches here too, but it is… different. Adapt or die.”

  Jon nodded. He checked the bindings on the sleds and the packs, ensuring that all fragile supplies were secured.

  By midday, the first vessels lurched into open water. Jon took his place on the lead ship, standing at the prow. He felt the sway in his bones, the pitch of the waves beneath him. The saltwater carried its own voice: currents, deep water, hidden rocks, the creatures below the surface moving in patterns older than men. He traced them with his senses, feeling the pulse of the ocean like a heartbeat, a living thing that would not be commanded by him.

  The first few days were the worst. The wind rose, a savage shriek across the rigging. The smaller ships pitched violently, tossing children and adults alike into cold, bitter spray. Jon moved among them, hands laid upon trembling backs, whispering, guiding, lending what strength he could to keep the wooden ships afloat.

  Hawk’s vision helped him see through the darkness, tracking rocks and currents, keeping them from crashing onto hidden reefs. Bull’s strength let him haul ropes, anchor lines, and sway the deck with an effortless authority that belied the chaos. Shadowcat’s dexterity kept him balanced when others slipped, when planks twisted beneath boots wet with brine. Bear’s constitution steadied his breath, slowed his heart, and allowed him to move tirelessly from bow to stern as the storm tore at their fragile flotilla.

  Days blurred into nights. The wind never truly ceased. Salt stung their eyes, their lips cracked, and the cold gnawed through layers of furs. Yet still they moved, each vessel a small, stubborn heartbeat on the gray sea. The Free Folk and wildlings began to murmur in awe of the green man who walked among them as if he were part of the storm itself, commanding no one, guiding all. Children whispered of his eyes glowing green in the night, of roots climbing like invisible ladders beneath the hulls, keeping the ships upright when the waves tried to topple them.

  Jon spent each dawn and dusk with the Children, teaching himself everything he could learn. While the others slept or ate sparingly, he studied the seabirds and the seals, learned the hunting patterns of seals swimming along ice floes, the patience of fish moving in schools beneath shadowed water. The magic did not care for human suffering, only adaptation. Jon adapted.

  By the second month, exhaustion was a living thing, pressing against bones and sinew. But the coastline of Skagos came into view at last: jagged cliffs rising from violent waves, black rocks slick with tide, small coves hidden behind razor reefs. The land was harsh, unwelcoming, but alive, and Jon felt it immediately. Roots and stones stretched outward to greet him. He closed his eyes, let the King of the Forest weave him into its strength. Hawk, Bull, Shadowcat, Bear all five forms surged together for a heartbeat, then settled, restrained, balanced. The spell hummed beneath his skin like a song half-remembered.

  Landing was slow. The smaller ships were guided into calmer bays, but even here, the sea did not yield easily. Jon stepped onto the rocks first, boots crunching on black stone, the land greeted him. Frost receded where he walked, vegetation pressing up through cracks in the cliffside. Ghost padded beside him, sniffing the air, muscles taut. Benjen followed, carrying what small arms they had kept dry, a sentinel of ice behind the living.

  The Free Folk poured onto the beaches after, dragging sleds and supplies, helping women and children over rocks and through shallow tide pools. Jon called to them constantly, whispering directions, feeling roots and plants guide each step.

  Skagos was not welcoming. Wolves watched from distant cliffs, and the smell of the sea-mist mixed with the musk of wolves and the tang of rotting kelp. Yet Jon felt promise here. This land could be defended. It could endure.

  Night fell over the new beachhead. Fires dotted the sand, their light reflected in the restless sea. Families huddled close, tired but alive. Jon walked along the shoreline, Ghost padding silently at his heels, roots curling beneath his hands into sand and stone. He knelt and pressed his palm to the ground, feeling it thrum with the heartbeat of life, of death, of survival.

  -

  The wind off Skagos cut through furs like knives, carrying the brine of the sea and the musk of wolves, and along with it came the first screams. Jon had only just begun to settle the Free Folk and his small band of Children of the Forest into the island’s harsh terrain when the attack came.

  They were fast, brutal, and numerous. Skagosi warriors; broad-shouldered, tattooed, faces painted in streaks of black and white stormed the makeshift camp, brandishing axes, harpoons, and crude spears tipped with iron scavenged from shipwrecks. They moved with the certainty of men who knew the land as well as they knew the hunger in their bellies.

  Jon didn’t wait for panic to take hold. Barkskin crept across his skin, dulling blows from axes that struck him with enough force to fell a tree. Ghost leapt into the first line of attackers, claws rending through furs and flesh alike. The Children of the Forest wove protective spells along the ridge of the camp, roots surging up from rocks to entangle the invaders’ feet, thorny vines snapping across knees and shins.

  Jon’s voice carried across the field, calm but deadly. “Hold the line! Protect the women and children! Fight like your lives depend on it!”

  He leapt into the fray, King of the Forest layered and alive in him. Hawk’s vision let him track five warriors at once, anticipating their swings and thrusts. Bull’s strength lifted him over fallen logs and smashed shields, letting him throw enemies aside with ease. Shadowcat’s dexterity made him untouchable, weaving through axes and harpoons, slashing in return. Bear’s constitution let him shrug off injuries that would fell a dozen men. All five forms merged in a way that made Jon feel more land than man, more predator than prey.

  The Free Folk followed his lead, emboldened by his presence, and the battle tilted. The Skagosi were formidable, but they had not faced a Green Man before. Roots erupted beneath their feet, spikes of frost hardened under their blades, and the wind seemed to answer Jon’s silent commands, whipping snow into their eyes. Slowly, the tide turned.

  By dawn, the attackers were scattered, their dead and wounded left behind. Jon’s breathing was heavy, muscles trembling under the weight of the layered beast-forms, but he felt alive in a way he hadn’t in years. The women and children were safe, and the island had yielded its first victory under his guidance.

  It was not long, however, before another bigger challenge arrived weeks later. From the northern cliffs came the banners of House Crowl, a minor but aggressive noble line who still clung to their titles on Skagos. They brought men trained in combat and ships bristling with weapons. Jon had expected resistance from the wild Skagosi, but a structured force, disciplined and ruthless, was another matter entirely.

  He knew why they were attacking them, this island couldn’t hold that many folks. There was a reason why in the winters people turned to cannibalism here, there was not enough food to go around and with all of them here now. Everything in this ecosystem would collapse.

  Jon and his raiding band, wildlings hardened by the journey, Free Folk hunters, and Children of the Forest wielding nature as a weapon met them at the edge of Crowl lands. The battle was brutal, fought across frozen marshes and rocky ridges. Jon moved like a force of nature incarnate.

  The Skagosi were tough men and women but his wildings were more toughened by the lands beyond the wall and wanted to survive more than anything after what they had seen out there.

  They routed them completely, scattering soldiers into the hills. But Jon did not rest. He and his warriors pursued the remnants, and soon they reached the keep of House Crowl itself. Meager though it was, fortified with stones and timber, it could not withstand the Green Man and his unorthodox army. Jon directed the assault personally, roots pulling gates from hinges, walls creaking as the earth itself seemed to rise against Crowl. By the end of the day, the keep had fallen, the surviving men of the house fleeing in terror.

  Jon did not allow mercy in this case. The lands of Skagos were harsh; only the strong, the cunning, and the adaptive survived. His raiders claimed the keep, distributing supplies to the Free Folk, securing shelters for the women and children, and fortifying defenses along the cliffs. Every day was a lesson for the green man; survival, strategy, and the weight of leadership.

  Patreon: https://pa treon.com/abdirah

  We Hit Adept rank in Green Magic!

  + 3 to Learning

  Adept Green Man(Druid)[3/3]

  Main Spell: King of the Forest