Faithful shadow, deadly light. - Jon snow

"Webs never lie."

Another old saying Robus used to throw around endlessly.

•Tissegivre, a frozen, isolated island to the northeast of Westeros,
slept under the snow. The wind battered the ramparts like the drums of an unseen army, and the moon glowed red behind the clouds like an ancient, discontented eye. In the Hall of Blades, only the fire still whispered. And her, she was dreaming.

Lucira stood there, in the shifting shadows, a flickering torch in her hand. The hall was empty, yet her heart pounded as if a crowd surrounded her. She knew every stone, every crack, and yet tonight, everything seemed more... alive.

She saw him.

Not as an apparition of light.
Not as a screaming wraith.

No. He was there, seated in the old obsidian chair they had sworn never to use again. Robus Vidunera. Her grandfather. A black crow-cloak over his shoulders, his gaze sharper than she remembered.

He wasn't smiling. He had never truly smiled.

"You're looking at me like I'm a ghost," he said. "I am me, just from elsewhere. Nothing more. I still bite, don't worry."

Lucira didn't dare speak. He lifted a finger, and the torch in her hand snuffed out without a gust of wind. The fire in the hearth blazed higher.

"You're stepping closer to a truth that burns," he murmured. "Mind your steps, Lucira. The threads you pull may strangle."

A silence. Then he added:

"Loyalty doesn't tremble. Neither does venom."

It was truly him, and yet, he had been gone for a long time.

She lowered her eyes.
The spider-shaped brooch he had left her at his death weighed heavily on her chest.

When she looked up again, he was gone. Only a web remained, strung between two stone pillars, one she could have sworn hadn't been there before.

At the center of the web, a drop of blood gleamed.

⸻

"Where House Vidunera shows their women do it better than any man."