Chapter 18.

For the readers who are finding it difficult to read on webnovel, I post chapters simultaneously on scribble hub as well. Same name. Go and read there.

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"Lord Stark." I greeted the frowning man as I walked into the courtyard where a company of soldiers had gathered. Beside him stood Jon, Robb and Lady Catelyn, discussing what was happening.

"Ardwyll." He turned to me, "Where have you been? Why have you called for the barring of gates early? People need to leave for their homes. We are missing supper for this. Explain yourself."

"I'll do you one better Lord Stark. Let me show you." I gestured for him to follow me as I led them all, along with the company of guards, to the crypts. I stopped at the door and turned to the Starks.

"Lord Stark, I think Lady Catelyn should wait here with the guards. What is inside is not suitable for a lady's eyes. It is too gruesome." I said, and Ned Stark got the hint.

"I can handle a little blood. I am a northern woman."

"If you insist Lady Catelyn." I didn't protest. It makes no difference to me either way. I was just being considerate.

"Follow me." I undid the bounded field and led them down.

I had placed a bounded field on the crypt earlier to stop the assassin from tampering with the bodies or hiding any more of them in here, thus limiting his ability to take more forms. If he can't hide bodies here, he will have to find a new place to hide them, which itself is a deterrent. And even if he does, it'll eat up into his time.

Of course, I knew that more likely than not, the assassin was in the company of guards we had brought with us, keeping close to them. He knew I would come here to them.

Now he was just biding his time.

But I had a plan to lure him out.

With a thought I re-established the bounded field around the crypt and began the first step to my two step plan.

Step one : Get the Starks up to date on the situation.

I lit the torches along the way as I led them to the sarcophagi I had opened earlier. Lifting the covers again, I let them fall to the side as I revealed what was inside.

Lady Catelyn gasped as she took in the sight and turned away, hand over her mouth. Ned Stark frowned with a deeply saddened look in his eyes.

"The graves of our ancestors, desecrated..." He gripped his hands tight, a cold rage brewing within him as he looked down at the sarcophagi.

There in the stone coffins lay three faceless bodies bleeding atop the remains of long dead Starks, the same as I had found them. The maid, the soldier, the merchant.

"Who did this?" He asked.

"A faceless man. There is an assassin on the loose in Winterfell."

"A faceless man...." Ned Stark muttered with horror. He had heard the tales. And now it was real.

"That maid...." Rob realised, "Is that why you were spying on the kitchen?"

"Yes. I wanted to make sure none of the food was poisoned and if possible, to catch the assassin red handed."

"How long have you known?" Ned Stark asked.

"Not long enough. Just before supper." I replied.

"Then why you didn't inform me first?" He asked.

"And let the food be poisoned?" I joked, but he didn't find it funny.

I sighed.

"Yes, I should have come to you as soon as I found out, but I feared that in the time I came to inform you, the assassin would kill whoever they came to kill and escape. So I tried to keep my eyes on them while I sent Robb to bar the gates. I am sorry." I admitted, showing a regretful expression.

"Who is their target?" Ned Stark asked.

"I don't know, Lord Stark, but I don't have to know either.

"Why?"

"Because I know how to find the faceless man." I grinned.

He raised an eyebrow.

"How fo you find a faceless man?"

"Quite easily Lord Stark. By knowing how he would think. He would want to be as close to a position of safety and convenience. In fact, the faceless man is in here, in the crypt among us."

PK, are you ready?

[Do you even have to ask?]

I smiled.

My magic circuits flared with an unearthly blue, sending an electrifying feeling rippling across my body and my eyes glowed as I grasped the mystery inherent to the crypt, flooding the ring with power.

Nope. Do it.

[As you wish.] PK replied, [Trace]

Mystery actualized around me and a spiderweb of string thin lines imbued with the concept of tracking slithered across the floor, the air, the dust and the stone. And finally, flesh and blood.

Sure, I didn't have the mana to run a Trace of the entirety of Winterfell but right now, I didn't need to, because the assassin was in the room with us, stuck within my bounded field.

Information flowed into my head like a coursing river and PK parsed through the flood to pour me the delightful cup of truth.

I looked across the room and raised a hand, pointing my gun at the man at the forefront of the company of guards here with us.

"It's him."

Ned Stark turned to face the man with a conflicted look.

"Jory?"

Yes. It was Jory Cassel, captain of the guards of Winterfell.

"M'lord he's lying. I am not, I cannot be-" he pleaded, and even the other guards hesitated.

"Are you certain?" He asked, "Jory has been my closest retainer for ten years. You cannot just accuse him of such a thing."

"Yes, and I can prove it with just a touch. Trust me, Lord Stark. If I am wrong, no harm shall come to him either way. But if I am correct...."

Ned Stark understood.

"Restrain him." He ordered and this time the guards stepped back, pointing their spears at Jory.

A guard came forward, trying push him to his knees but right as he was about to be caught, he employed a strange footwork and slipped out of their grasp, appearing behind Lady Catelyn, a dagger to her throat.

"Catelyn!" Ned growled, "You!"

But the man ignored him and looked straight at me.

"You have many tricks, sorcerer, but so does a man. A man is on a divine mission. A man cannot fail. Pull down your threshold, and let me leave. Or else...."

"Yeah, I'm not doing that, 'Mr. Man'. But you might want to let go of Lady Catelyn. It's no use. You're trapped in here with us."

"That is where you are wrong, sorcerer. A man is not trapped here with you, you are trapped here with him." He turned to Ned Stark.

"Ask your soldiers to kill him and let a man leave. In return, a man will let your wife live. A man does not like taking innocent lives."

A good offer.

I didn't give Ned Stark a chance to think on it though.

"Just like you spared the innocent lives of the maid, and Jory?" I asked.

Ned Stark's gaze hardened.

"Let her go and we will spare you a cruel death." He spat.

"I cannot do that." The man shook his head.

PK, some telekinetic help here would be appreciated.

[On it.]

The ring lit up and mystery actualized around my hand. A phantom limb appeared overlayed onto my hand and with a thought it flashed forward disappearing into the ether.

In the distance, I felt it grab onto the assassin's hand and dagger, holding them in a stony vice grip.

His shroud of divine power clashed against my magic but my magic was more refined and powerful, narrowly winning out over his god's blessing as it only granted him minor superhuman bonuses. It's true power was in that mysterious footwork and transformation ability.

Before everyone's eyes his cloak of divine power burned dark beneath his skin, streaking black and oozing a colorless miasma as he struggled to break free from my grip.

"Lord Stark." I pulled at his hand with a visible gesture before them all, moving the knife away from him with a great force, "Get him!"

Immediately, everyone rushed in. Robb tackled the man to the ground and Jon ripped the dagger out of his hands

Ned Stark pulled Catelyn away from him and within minutes, he was bound and gagged, on his knees on the dusty crypt floor.

"Now, if I may, Lord Stark, allow me to reveal his true face. I am sure you would rather not execute him with your most loyal retainer's face on. It would be disrespectful to Jory and his honourable service to House Stark."

Ned Stark nodded.

"You are right. Show me his true face. I want to look in his true eyes as I deliver him to justice."

I smiled.

I walked up to the assassin, and kneeled down before him.

My hand flashed with an eerie glow as mystery curled around it like a glove and I gently ran it across his face, looking for a seam.

Just below his chin, I Trace-d it. A little, invisible snag, like a magical tether to a shroud brimming with the tiniest sliver of divine power.

"There we go." Digging into it with my fingers, I pulled and just like that his faces came off, sliding with the feeling of socks against a polished, powdered floor. First, it was Jory's, then the maid, followed by the merchant, and another merchant, then a farmer, or a dockworker.

One by one, his many faces began to peel off under my scrutiny as his divine shroud shifted, it's power weakening and internalizing into his body with each shift till I reached his true face, and couldn't peel any more. His true form was of a gaunt man, with sallow, sunken cheeks and a haunting pair of eyes, bagged with the weight of the horrors of the burden of being an instrument to the divine. The divine power was eating through him even as I examined it and him in return, consuming him from the inside out as it transformed further and further, at a snail's pace, as if eager to take another form, like an addict panhandling for meth.

"We captured a faceless man...." Robb muttered with a smile and a chuckle at the absurdity of it all as the situation settled down.

"The legends are true. Who would have thought?" Jon agreed.

"More legends are about to come true at your doorstep, Jon. And in the coming years, what you will see will overturn all notions of what is and should have been known and understood. Of what is common and sensical. This is the second coming of the Long Night, my boy. The age of heroes and gods come again.

It is unfortunate, how what is remembered is the glory of such ages, but what most people forget is that legends are forged on the pyre of millions of lives, lost to the sands of time. It is why I'm here. To make sure, everyone survives through this coming tide, and lives to tell the tale. And you will witness one such legend today as well. Before your very eyes." I grinned and turned to Ned Stark.

He had grief and rage and just fatigue in his eyes. He had lost a good man today. And his trust in what he knew was shattered before his very eyes.

"Lord Stark, might I ask that you execute him here, before taking him out. Who knows what other tricks he might pull of left to his own devices for even a moment?"

"Very well. But not in the crypt. Above, just outside it."

I nodded as we led him up by the hand, putting him down on a stair outside the crypt, in a desolate corner of Winterfell.

I knelt down beside him and put my hand on his back, muttering a prayer for show.

"May your soul find better tidings in the afterlife. And may you return to the court of the old gods to face what judgement comes to you." I turned to Ned Stark as he unsheathed Ice.

"Do it."

He nodded.

"In the name of the old gods, of house Stark, I, Eddard Stark, Warden of the North, and Protector of the Realm, sentence you to die."

And with one mighty swing of the ancestral Stark greatsword, severed his head from his torso, sending it toppling down onto the damp, bloodsoaked earth below.

"Lord Stark, if I may make one last request. I would like his head in a box, to send it back to the House of Black and White in Braavos with a message. To show them that faceless men have no place in the North. Make an example they will remember for generations and protect your family from retaliation."

"It shall be done." He gestured at one of his soldiers and they got to work.

Meanwhile, I searched through his pockets as they boxed up his head to my specifications and found a singular iron coin within, stamped with a hooded man and a pair of weighting scales on the other with a mysterious script around it's edges.

I smiled.

Now then, time to make a show of deterrence to prevent any further excursions.

And then.....Kill a god.

A second layer of deterrence, one at a level far higher than before. To carve it into the very divine souls of this world's gods.

You. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Me.

I grinned evilly as a soldier handed me a wooden box with the man's head in it.

I took the box and moved to the Godswood, making a show of it all as the Starks followed me, and as a final act to solidify their utter faith in me.

I knelt down by the heart tree and made a mock prayer as I reached out to PK.

PK, did you track where his soul went?

[Yes. But are you sure you want to do this?]

Absolutely. If I let them be they'll keep sending assassin after assassin at me till I croak. Better to nip this in the bud.

Besides, we're going to be leaving soon. Not to mention you can just whisk me away to a other world if it gets too bad.

[And what about your lifespan?]

I will manage. Now can you open a portal to White Harbor?

[...yes. But I don't like what you're doing.]

I know. It's dangerous. But this time, I have thought it through.

The gods already know what I can do. Why else would they send their assassins after me?

And if they know about me already, what is the point of hiding it?

It is best to make a show of force to deter them from any future action, lest they meet.....an unfortunate fate.

It's called mutually assured destruction. A very successful strategy might I add.

My magic circuits flared, power coursed through my veins and mystery actualized before me.

I opened my eyes as reality shattered like glass, drenching the world in eldritch hues, each shard of the shattered plane reflecting a whole another world within and before me stood a pathway of light, shining like a kaleidoscope, ever twisting and curling into impossoble geometries.

The Second True Magic.

Kaleidoscope!

I turned to the gobsmacked Starks and smiled gently like a shepherd to his flock.

"I will return to the realm of the old gods. But worry not, for I will be back shortly."

Discreetly, I cast Suggestion on them all.

"You should leave and rest for the night."

"Wait-" Ned Stark called out to me but I had already walked through the portal, and my spell began to take effect as they turned around and left the bounded field I had set up around Godswood as it closed around me.

An invisible force tugged at me, like toothpaste through a tube, I was squeezed out the other end.

.

Above White Harbor, the sky shattered into a million pieces, each shard coloured in a kaleidoscope of vivid features, as a figure dropped down from within.

It was me.

I landed on the street below, shattering it with my fall, as a reinforcement glowed beneath my skin.

Time to make an impression the gods will never forget.

Beneath the awestruck gazes of the citizens of White Harbor, I made my way across the street to the docks, all eyes upon me and called out.

"I am looking for a ship that is leaving for Braavos today. Come forward, if you are the one I seek."

The merchants and sailors whispered amongst themselves before one of them came forward, looking at me curiously.

"I am leaving for Braavos today." He said, "Do you wish to charter a voyage?"

"No. I have a gift, for the House of Black and White." I spoke softly as I handed him the box and the coin.

"Valar Morghulis." He recognized the coin instantly.

"Valar Dohaeris." He replied, "And who might it be from."

I smiled.

"The Herald of the Old Gods. Tell them, this. This time, I am sending the gift by a courier. Next time, I will come to deliver it myself. And if I have to come bearing such a gift again? The House of Black and White will not survive my visit." I patted his shoulders and watched as a horrified look spread across face when he opened the box to reveal the head and several faces, charred within.

"Oh and one more thing!" I raised a finger.

PK, open the portal.

[Ok. But be ready.]

Bitch, I was born ready.

I raised a hand to the sky, and my magic circuits flared with more power than ever before as an incantation echoed in my mind like thunder upon a silent sea, sending waves of mystery rippling away.

Above me, the clouds shifted and the sky cracked like an egg, shattering into a million kaleidoscopic shards and I muttered the words that rand the death knell for the god of death himself.

"Logic Path/On - BLACK. BARREL!"

Mystery actualized, reality shuddered and natural law bent to my will as the concept of natural lifespan was imposed upon the world itself.

My arm transformed into the odd mix between a sword sheath and the barrel of a gun and from within shot out a shard of conceptual matter and bone, sending sonic booms echoing out into the distant sea.

Shlick!

FWOOM!

And above a scream echoed out from the portal, so vile and horrid, so terrifying and powerful that the sea itself roiled and the earth shook, houses clatttered and the streets cracked as a wave of divine power in it's dying throes burst out from within, and swept across the land like a malignant wind. The portal closed above before the god could retaliate but a final wave of power exploded out, dissipating the clouds and casting a dark shadow across the sky for the briefest of moments.

And with a final cry of despair, a god bled.

And a god died.

I looked at the terrified man before me even as my consciousness thinned.

"Remember this. Convey this message to the House of Black and White.

Even Gods may not live if they go against me. The faceless men are but mortals." I raised my voice further, "And to the gods watching, listen up you peeping fucks!" I put my hands behind my back appropriating a dignified look, "If you send your agents against me, let me assure you; you will not live to see the sun rise upon another day. That is not a threat. It's a promise."

With that, I opened another portal and disappeared within, returning to the Winterfell Godswood, collapsing to the floor, just after setting up a bounded field around me.

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Aaand MC ends this event with a bang. The god of death is death, long live the god of death!

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So that. Don't take it the wrong way. Or do. It's your life, your choice.

I'll still appreciate criticism, just not going to incorporate everything.

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