It clings to cloaks, soaks banners, turns roads to mud and fields to graves. Across the Riverlands, war has become a season of its own — one of burned mills, empty villages, broken men, and ravens flying faster than mercy.
Word travels the same way it always does in troubled times: half rumor, half warning. Edmure Tully is to wed a Frey girl at the Twins. Robb Stark rides there under banners still proud enough to call him king. Men speak of reconciliation, of apologies paid in bread and salt, of old insults set aside for the sake of the war.
No one says they believe it.
The realm is fraying at every seam. In King’s Landing, lions and roses tighten their grip on the Iron Throne. In the North, ironborn still hold what they can. Beyond the Wall, darker things stir in the cold. And everywhere in between, lords make promises they do not mean and sharpen blades they pray they won’t need.
You are here, now, in Westeros at the edge of something vast and bloody. A castle, a camp, a roadside inn, a city gate — wherever you begin, the game is already in motion, and even those who want no part in it are dragged in all the same.