Jon
The mountain road was familiar now.
Jon's feet knew the stone steps without looking—knew where the footing was treacherous, where the path narrowed to a single body's width, where the switchbacks turned so sharply that careless travelers might walk off the edge into mist and oblivion. His legs remembered the rhythm of the climb, the steady pace that conserved strength for the final ascent. His lungs—stronger than before, though still not perfect—handled the thin air better than they had two months ago, drawing deep breaths without the familiar catch of damaged ribs.
Last time, I climbed this path terrified of what waited at the top.
This time, I know exactly what waits. And I'm climbing anyway.
The fear was gone. Not replaced by confidence—Jon wasn't foolish enough for that—but by something quieter. Acceptance, perhaps. Understanding that the path was the path, and walking it was the only way forward. The Stone Tiger's monastery waited above, with its silence and its discipline and its demands. Jon had survived it once. He would survive it again.
The mist thickened as he climbed higher, turning the world to grey and white. Shapes emerged and vanished—twisted pines clinging to rocky outcrops, streams that appeared and disappeared between boulders, the occasional bird that burst from cover at his approach. The mountain was alive in its own way, indifferent to the small human climbing its flanks.
Jon touched the jade wolf pendant through his shirt. Still there. Still warm from his body heat. His connection to everything below—to Mei Ling, to the fortress, to the life he was temporarily leaving behind.
I'll be back, he promised silently. Stronger. Ready. Worthy of the swords.
The monastery materialized from the mist like a dream taking solid form. Ancient stone walls, weathered by centuries of wind and rain. Curved roofs heavy with moss. The silence that wasn't empty but full—full of presence, of attention, of something watching.
The gate stood open.
Jon stopped, surprised. Last time, he'd waited for hours before anyone acknowledged his existence. The closed gate had been its own test—patience before training even began.
A monk stood within the entrance, hands folded inside his grey robes. Jon recognized him: the man who had brought his meals during the Bone Washing, who had left tea outside his door on cold mornings without ever speaking a word.
"Jon Snow. You're expected."
Not "Master Zhi's student" or "the foreign boy" or "the Western one." His name. Recognition. Acknowledgment that he was someone the monastery knew, someone who had earned the right to be addressed directly.
I belong here now, Jon realized as he stepped through the gate. Or at least, I'm not a stranger anymore.
The central courtyard was unchanged—the same swept stone, the same ancient trees with their gnarled branches reaching toward the sky, the same flat rock worn smooth by generations of students who had stood upon it, knelt upon it, broken upon it. The grooves in the stone told stories Jon could now read: the worn paths where feet had paced during training, the smooth patches where knees had pressed during meditation, the subtle depressions where countless bodies had found their limits and pushed beyond.
Jon saw it differently now. He knew what those patterns meant. He'd added his own footsteps to the grooves.
Master Feng Huang stood beside the flat rock, hands clasped behind his back, watching Jon approach with those unreadable black eyes. The Stone Tiger looked exactly as he had two months ago—small, compact, ancient, immovable. As if time touched him only lightly, leaving marks but not damage.
"You returned."
"I said I would."
"Many say that. Fewer follow through." A pause, the silence stretching between them like a held breath. "How was your time in the flatlands?"
"Short. Good. Hard to leave."
"Yet you left."
"The training isn't finished."
Something shifted in Feng's expression—not quite approval, but acknowledgment. Recognition that Jon understood what mattered and what didn't.
The old master circled Jon slowly, the same examination as before but briefer. He already knew what he would find. His fingers pressed briefly against Jon's wrist, his shoulder, his ribs. Testing. Confirming.
"The foundation holds. Good. You didn't damage it with impatience."
"Zhi warned me not to use the techniques."
"Zhi is wise. Wiser than most give him credit for." Feng completed his circuit and stood before Jon again. "The Bone Washing broke you down and rebuilt you. The Marrow Refinement will fill what we built with strength."
He gestured toward the eastern terrace—the same place where Jon had spoken his truth about Alya and Robb and Mei Ling, where Feng had finally accepted him as a student.
"The first stage was about destruction and reconstruction. External processes, applied to you. You endured them. This stage is different."
"How?"
"This stage comes from within. You will learn to feel your own bones. To guide their growth. To cultivate the golden light that transforms mere calcium into something stronger." Feng's eyes found Jon's, held them. "The Bone Washing required endurance. The Marrow Refinement requires stillness."
He paused.
"I suspect you will find stillness more difficult than pain."
Jon didn't argue. He already knew it was true.
Jon
The new routine revealed itself over the first days.
No more dawn baths. No more herbal fire seeping into bones, no more the acrid smell of seventeen compounds designed to burn away weakness. The eastern courtyard stood empty in the mornings, the great stone basin covered and dormant.
Instead: meditation. Hours of it. In the eastern courtyard as the sun rose, painting the mountain peaks in shades of gold and rose. In his cell during the long afternoons, when the monastery drowsed in summer heat. In the evening, as stars emerged and the temperature dropped and his breath fogged in the thin air.
The schedule unfolded with monastic precision:
Dawn: meditation in the eastern courtyard, seated on cold stone, breathing and being.
Morning: breathing exercises—different from his techniques, slower and deeper, focused inward rather than outward. No enhancement. No power. Just breath moving through the body like water through channels.
Midday: light physical practice with the monks, maintaining the body without stressing it. Forms so slow they barely qualified as movement, positions held until muscles trembled and then held longer.
Afternoon: meditation again. More sitting. More breathing. More stillness.
Evening: instruction with Feng, the only time speech was expected or welcomed.
Night: meditation before sleep, the golden light visualization that Feng was teaching him to cultivate.
The first day, Jon felt relief. No pain. No burning. Just sitting and breathing and trying to feel something he couldn't quite grasp. After two months of agony, the absence of suffering felt almost luxurious.
The second day, he felt restless. His body wanted to move, to train, to do something. The sitting felt like waiting—waiting for something to happen, waiting for the real training to begin.
The third day, he understood what Feng had meant.
This is harder than the basins. At least in the basins, I knew what I was fighting.
"Close your eyes. Breathe. Not your external techniques—those are for later. Simple breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow."
Jon obeyed. The mountain air filled his lungs—thin, cold, sharp with pine and stone. He held it for a moment, then released it in a steady stream. Again. Again. The rhythm of breath becoming the only rhythm that mattered.
"Now. Feel your right hand. Not the skin, not the muscle. The bones beneath."
Jon tried. He focused on his right hand—the hand that had been broken in Grazdan's compound, rebuilt by Master Zhi, transformed by the Bone Washing. He knew those bones intimately. He'd felt them burning during the first stage, had felt them soften and reshape and emerge stronger than before.
But feeling them now, without pain as a guide...
He felt his skin. The calluses on his palm. The temperature of the air against his fingers.
He felt his muscles. The small movements of tendons as he tried to hold perfectly still. The slight tremor that came from effort, from trying too hard.
He felt nothing deeper. His bones remained invisible to his inner sense—present but imperceptible, like trying to see the back of his own head.
"I can't. I just feel... hand."
"You feel skin. Muscle. The surface." Feng's voice was patient, but only barely. "Go deeper."
"How?"
"By sitting here until you do."
Days passed. Jon sat. Breathed. Tried to feel his bones.
He felt everything else. The cold stone beneath him, slowly warming from his body heat. The wind on his face, carrying scents of pine and distant snow. The ache in his legs from sitting cross-legged for hours, the muscles cramping and releasing and cramping again.
But his bones remained invisible to his inner sense. Present but imperceptible. He could imagine them—could picture the skeleton he knew existed beneath his flesh—but imagination wasn't feeling. The picture in his mind had no connection to sensation, no link to the body it was meant to represent.
The frustration built slowly, like water behind a dam.
The Bone Washing had been agony, but it had been clear. Pain meant progress. Survival meant success. Each morning in the basin, Jon knew exactly what he was fighting: the fire in his bones, the urge to scream, the desperate need to escape. The enemy was obvious. Victory was obvious. Endure, and you win.
This was different. There was no pain to push through. No clear marker of advancement. Just endless sitting and the growing certainty that he was failing at something he didn't understand.
Mei Ling would laugh, he thought during one particularly frustrating session. She'd say I'm finally learning what it's like for normal people. People who can't move impossibly fast or fight like demons.
Normal people have to work for everything. Have to sit and practice and fail and try again without any guarantee of success.
Maybe that's what Feng is really teaching me.
Day ten. Dawn. The eastern courtyard.
Jon sat as the sun rose, painting the mountain peaks in shades of gold and rose. He'd stopped trying so hard sometime during the previous days—had stopped straining toward something he couldn't reach, stopped clenching his mind like a fist around the elusive bone-sense.
He just sat. Breathed. Existed.
The mountain didn't care whether he succeeded or failed. The sun rose regardless. The wind blew regardless. The world continued its ancient rhythms, indifferent to the small human sitting on cold stone trying to feel his own skeleton.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe I'm supposed to stop mattering so much.
And then—
A flicker. Not sight, not sound—something else entirely. A sense of structure beneath his flesh. The architecture of his hand, felt from within. Not imagined, not pictured, but felt—the bones there, solid and real, distinct from the muscle and skin that wrapped them.
It was gone almost immediately. But it had been there.
Jon opened his eyes. The courtyard was unchanged. The sun continued to rise. But something was different now.
He found Feng watching him from the edge of the terrace, those black eyes missing nothing.
"I felt something."
Feng didn't look surprised. Didn't look pleased either.
"Describe it."
"Like... like seeing the frame of a house through the walls. Just for a moment. The bones were there, solid, separate from everything else. Then it was gone."
"That is the beginning. The first glimpse of what you must learn to see clearly."
"How long until I can hold it?"
"That depends entirely on you."
Jon
The bone-sense came and went like a shy animal, appearing when Jon wasn't looking for it, vanishing the moment he tried to grasp it directly.
Some days he could find it within a few breaths, could hold it for minutes at a time—his skeleton present in his awareness, solid and real, the architecture of his body felt from within. Other days, nothing. Just the frustrating blankness of a mind that wouldn't cooperate, the familiar sensations of skin and muscle blocking his access to what lay beneath.
"You're trying to force it," Feng observed during one evening session, after Jon had spent the entire day failing to find the bone-sense. "Stillness cannot be forced. It must be allowed."
"I don't know how to allow. I only know how to do."
"Yes. That is your problem."
Jon wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that doing was what had kept him alive—in Winterfell, in Yunkai, in the storm. That action was survival and stillness was death and he couldn't simply unlearn everything his life had taught him.
But Feng wouldn't care about excuses. Feng cared about results.
One evening, after a particularly frustrating day, Feng spoke more than usual.
They sat on the eastern terrace, tea steaming between them. The ritual of tea was significant, Jon had learned. Feng only shared tea when something important was being said—when the teaching went beyond technique into something deeper.
"Your external techniques—the breathing arts from across the sea—they are about action. Speed. Force. The explosion of power in a single moment."
"Yes."
"The internal arts are the opposite. They are about stillness. Accumulation. The slow gathering of strength over years, not seconds."
Feng poured tea, his movements precise and unhurried. The steam curled upward, caught the last light of sunset, vanished into the gathering dusk.
"You have trained yourself to act. To move. To respond instantly to threat. This is valuable. This has kept you alive through circumstances that would have killed others."
"But?"
"But it has also made stillness feel like death. When you stop moving, some part of you believes you are in danger."
The words landed like stones in still water, sending ripples through Jon's understanding.
He's right. He's completely right.
Jon thought of the slave pits, where stillness meant vulnerability—where stopping to rest invited the guards' attention, invited the whips and the breaking. He thought of the storm, where stopping meant drowning—where he'd kept swimming long past the point of exhaustion because the alternative was death. He thought of the training yard at Winterfell, where hesitation earned bruises—where Ser Rodrik taught that action was safety and reaction was survival.
His entire life had taught him that stillness was dangerous. That stopping meant dying. That the moment you ceased moving was the moment something caught you.
"How do I change that?"
"By sitting here, day after day, being still and not dying. Eventually, your body will believe what your mind already knows."
"That stillness can be safe?"
"That stillness can be power. Not the explosive power of your external techniques, but power nonetheless. The mountain is still—and the mountain cannot be moved."
The meditation brought things up.
Not flashbacks—not the drowning terror of trauma, the world collapsing into memory and sensation. Just memories, rising to the surface like bubbles in still water. Floating up from depths Jon had tried not to examine.
Winterfell. The godswood. Sitting beneath the heart tree on summer afternoons, the red leaves rustling above him, the hot springs warming the air until it felt like a blessing from the old gods. He'd sat there for hours sometimes, just existing. Just being. A boy in a garden, not yet touched by the strangeness that would change everything.
That was stillness too. Before everything went wrong. Before I became something people feared.
He'd forgotten he knew how to be still. The world had beaten it out of him—the slave ships and the pits and the storm, the desperate flight across continents, the constant need to move and adapt and survive. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost the boy who could sit beneath a weirwood and simply be.
Maybe Feng isn't teaching me something new. Maybe he's helping me remember something old.
Something I lost when I stopped being a boy and started being a survivor.
The thought was strangely comforting. If stillness was something he'd once known, perhaps he could know it again. Not learning a foreign skill, but recovering a lost one. Coming home to a part of himself he'd abandoned.
By the sixth week, the bone-sense came more easily.
Jon could find it within a few breaths, could hold it for minutes at a time. He felt his skeleton as a complete structure—not just his hand, but his arm, his ribs, his spine. The rebuilt architecture of his body, sensed from within like a house knowing its own frame.
It was strange. Intimate in a way nothing else had ever been. He was feeling parts of himself that no one else could touch, would ever touch. The deepest layer of his physical being, hidden beneath flesh and muscle, finally revealed to his inner awareness.
"You've reached the first plateau," Feng said after observing one of Jon's meditation sessions. "The foundation of feeling."
"Is that good?"
"It's necessary. Without it, the next step is impossible."
"What's the next step?"
"You've learned to feel your bones. Now you must learn to speak to them."
Jon
The sun set behind the mountains, painting the eastern terrace in shades of gold and crimson. Jon sat across from Feng, their positions mirrored—legs crossed, hands resting on knees, spines straight but not rigid.
The evening sessions had become Jon's favorite part of the training. During the day, he struggled alone with stillness and bone-sense and the constant temptation to move, to act, to do something. But in the evenings, Feng taught. Explained. Revealed the deeper purposes beneath the endless meditation.
"What you've learned so far is perception," Feng said, his voice quiet in the mountain stillness. "Sensing what is. The bones exist; you've learned to feel them. Now you will learn cultivation. Growing what could be."
"Growing?"
"The golden light." Feng's eyes caught the last rays of sunset, gleaming like dark mirrors. "Close your eyes. Find your bones as you've practiced."
Jon closed his eyes. The bone-sense came quickly now—the skeleton within, solid and present. His ribs curved around his lungs. His spine stacked vertebra upon vertebra. His arms extended, hands resting on knees, each finger articulated perfectly.
"Good. Now imagine light. Golden light, like sunlight made liquid. Imagine it pooling in your bones. Filling the hollows where marrow lives."
Jon imagined. Golden light, warm and bright, seeping into his bones like honey. He pictured it flowing through the architecture of his skeleton, collecting in the spaces within—the marrow cavities, the small hollows that the Bone Washing had cleansed and rebuilt.
For a moment, nothing happened. Just imagination, just pictures in his mind with no connection to his body. Pretty images floating in darkness.
Then—
A warmth. Faint but real. In his right hand, where the bones had been most damaged, where the Bone Washing had worked hardest. Not imagined warmth. Actual warmth, rising from within.
"I feel something. Warmth. In my hand."
"That is the beginning of the golden light. The first spark of what will become cultivation."
"The golden light is not magic," Feng said, pouring tea as the last light faded from the sky. "It is not mysticism. It is the body's own power, directed by the mind."
"I don't understand."
"Your body is constantly rebuilding itself. Old cells die, new cells are born. Bones grow, heal, strengthen. This happens without your awareness, without your control. The body knows its work and does it, as the heart beats and the lungs breathe."
He gestured to his own hand, held up against the darkening sky.
"The golden light is learning to guide that process. To tell your bones how to grow. To direct the body's natural power toward specific ends."
The implication staggered Jon.
"You're saying I can control how my bones grow?"
"With years of practice, yes. You can make them denser. Harder. More resilient. You can heal injuries that would cripple others. You can slow the decay of age." Feng set his hand down, lifted his tea cup. "The masters of the Golden Marrow Art have bones like iron. They can take blows that would shatter ordinary skeletons and walk away unharmed."
"Is that how you move the way you do? How you appeared without sound that first day?"
A ghost of a smile crossed Feng's weathered face—the first time Jon had seen anything like humor from the Stone Tiger.
"Among other things. The golden light is only the foundation. What you build upon it depends on your nature, your training, your purpose."
"And my breathing techniques?"
"Will be transformed. When your skeleton is truly a golden frame, it will be able to channel power that would have destroyed you before. The techniques you glimpsed in the training yard—they will become reliable. Sustainable. Truly yours."
Jon thought of those three seconds. The twin swords moving like extensions of his will. The impossible speed, the perfect balance, the feeling of being exactly what he was meant to be.
That could be mine. Really mine. Not a glimpse, not a moment—a permanent state.
"How long?"
"Years. Perhaps many years. The golden frame is not achieved quickly." Feng sipped his tea. "But you have made a beginning. That is more than most can say."
The following days, Jon practiced the visualization.
Golden light, pooling in bones, filling the spaces where marrow lived. He sat in meditation and imagined the warmth spreading through his skeleton, gentle as morning sun, patient as growing things.
Sometimes it worked. The warmth came, faint but present, and he held it for as long as he could—minutes at first, then longer as his focus improved.
Sometimes it didn't. The images remained images, disconnected from sensation, pretty pictures with no power. He would sit for hours and feel nothing but his own frustration.
He began to notice patterns:
The visualization worked better in the morning, when his mind was fresh and unburdened by the day's accumulation of thought and effort.
It worked better after the breathing exercises, when his body was calm and his awareness was already turned inward.
It worked better when he wasn't trying too hard—when he allowed the golden light to come rather than forcing it into existence.
Feng's lesson again. Stillness cannot be forced. Neither can growth.
Week nine. A breakthrough.
Jon sat in morning meditation, the golden light visualization running like a familiar song. He'd found his bones easily, felt them solid and present within his flesh. The warmth was there in his right hand, as usual, faint but real—a small sun burning in his palm, gentle and patient.
He breathed. Allowed. Didn't force.
And something shifted.
The warmth spread. Flowed up his arm like water finding channels in stone. Into his shoulder. Across his chest. Down his spine and out through his legs. For a moment—just a moment—his entire skeleton glowed in his inner vision, suffused with golden light.
He was a frame of fire. A structure of warmth. His bones weren't just felt—they were alive, responsive, waiting for instruction.
He gasped. The sensation broke. The light vanished like a dream upon waking.
But it had been there. Complete. Whole. The golden frame, glimpsed if not grasped.
Jon opened his eyes. His hands were shaking—not from weakness, but from the intensity of what he'd felt. His heart pounded. His breath came fast.
"That was..."
"The golden frame glimpsed, not yet grasped." Feng's voice came from nearby. He'd been watching, as always. "You saw what you might become."
"It was incredible. Like being... more. More present. More real. More alive."
"It was a shadow of what's possible. A promise, not a fulfillment. The masters can hold that state for hours. Days. Eventually, it becomes permanent—the golden frame no longer a visualization but a transformation. Bones that are truly golden, in their properties if not their color."
"How long until I can hold it?"
"Months more. Perhaps longer." Feng paused, something shifting in his ancient eyes. "But you've proven you can reach it. That is more than most achieve in their first year. Some students never feel the complete frame, no matter how long they train."
Jon looked at his hands. They seemed the same as always—pale, scarred, unremarkable. But he knew now what they contained. What they could become.
The golden frame. The foundation for everything I want to be.
I can do this. I will do this.
Jon
A monk appeared at Jon's door after evening meditation.
The man was silent as always, but he carried something Jon hadn't expected: a scroll, sealed with wax. The seal was unfamiliar—not the Stone Tiger's mark, not any symbol Jon recognized from the monastery.
"From the flatlands," the monk said, his voice unused and rusty. "Master Feng has permitted correspondence during this stage."
Jon took the scroll. His heart beat faster.
Mei Ling.
He waited until the monk had gone, until he was alone in his cell with only a single candle for light. Then he broke the seal.
Mei Ling's handwriting sprawled across the paper—bold, slightly uneven, impatient even in ink. He could hear her voice in the words, could picture her face as she wrote them.
Jon,
Zhi says Feng might allow letters now, so I'm sending this whether he allows it or not. If you don't receive it, I'll know who to blame.
The fortress is the same. The garden is the same. Everything is the same except you're not here, which makes it all feel different. Emptier. I go to our bench sometimes and pretend you're sitting beside me. Don't tell anyone I said that.
Sun Cao has been helping me with sword forms. I think he feels guilty about something, though he'd never admit it. He asks about you sometimes. Tries to make it sound casual. He's very bad at casual.
Father had a victory on the western border. Everyone celebrated, but he looked tired. I don't think winning feels like winning to him anymore. There's always another battle, another council, another problem that needs solving. I worry about him, even though worrying doesn't help.
The twin swords are still wrapped in silk. Still waiting. I check on them every night before I sleep. I don't know why. It just feels important. Like if I stop checking, something bad will happen.
I hope the training is going well. I hope you're eating enough. I hope you're not pushing too hard, but I know you are, because you're you.
Write back. Tell me everything. Or tell me nothing, if you can't. Just write back.
—Mei Ling
P.S. I beat Sun Cao in a spar last week. He claims he let me win. He didn't.
Jon read the letter three times. Then a fourth. Then he held it against his chest like something precious, like the jade wolf pendant she'd given him.
She was real. She was waiting. She was growing and changing and living, down below the mountain, in the world he would return to.
He found paper in his cell—rough, simple, meant for notes rather than letters. He found ink. A brush that felt clumsy in his fingers after weeks of holding nothing but stillness.
He wrote:
Mei Ling,
I received your letter. Feng allowed it. I think he's going soft in his old age. Don't tell him I said that.
The training is different now. Less pain, more stillness. I'm learning to feel my bones, to guide their growth. It sounds strange written down. It feels strange too.
The hardest part is sitting still. You'd laugh if you saw me. Hours of meditation, trying not to think about moving, thinking about moving the entire time. Feng says my survival instincts work against me—that I've trained myself to believe stillness is death. He's right. I'm trying to unlearn it.
But there's progress. I felt something last week—the whole technique, working the way it's supposed to. Just for a moment. Feng says I'm doing well, which means I'm probably doing adequately, because Feng doesn't compliment anyone.
Tell Sun Cao I'm working on my left shoulder. He'll know what it means.
Take care of the swords. Take care of yourself. I'll be back when I can—not as soon as I want, but as soon as Feng allows.
You're the reason I can sit still at all. When my mind wanders during meditation, it wanders to you. The garden. Our bench. I think of you, and the stillness doesn't feel so much like death.
Don't tell Feng that either.
—Jon
He gave the letter to the monk who had brought Mei Ling's. The man took it without comment, disappearing into the monastery's depths with footsteps that made no sound.
Jon stood in the doorway of his cell, looking out at the mountain night. Stars burned cold and bright above the peaks. The wind carried the scent of pine and distant snow.
A thread. Thin but real. Connecting me to the world below.
She's waiting. She writes to me. She beat Sun Cao in a spar.
Jon smiled in the darkness.
I'd better hurry. She'll be better than me by the time I get back.
Sleep came easier than it had in weeks. The golden light visualization ran through his mind as he drifted off, warmth spreading through imagined bones. He pictured the frame complete, glowing, and powerful.
Somewhere below the mountain, a girl with dark hair was probably reading his letter by candlelight, smiling at his terrible handwriting.
We're connected. Even here. Even now.
That has to be enough.