A Clash of Kings — Bran VII

Out of the ashes of Winterfell: Maester Luwin dying beneath the heart tree gives his last counsel, Osha gives him mercy, and the wolves go separate ways.

The chapter retold

Out of Winterfell’s ashes, the book’s final chapter gathers its northern grief into one scene: Maester Luwin, mortally wounded in the sack, has crawled to the godswood to die beneath the heart tree rather than inside the burning castle he served his whole life. He gives what last counsel he has left in him to Bran and the others gathered around him, a lifetime of careful service compressed into a few final, clear-eyed sentences about what they should do now that Winterfell itself is gone.

Osha, the wildling woman who has guarded the Stark children since her capture, gives Luwin the only mercy left to offer — a quick end rather than a slow one — and the surviving pack scatters in the chapter’s closing pages, each Stark child pointed toward a different, uncertain road away from the ruin. Maester Luwin’s death by the heart tree closes the book on the same note its opening pages struck: an old, faithful servant of a dying order, spent completely in service of people who will have to carry what he taught them forward without him. The book that began with a maester’s failed poisoning ends with a maester’s earned, merciful death — and Winterfell, for the first time in the story, entirely empty of Starks.

This movement: Valar Morghulis

• Tywin is Hand and savior; the Tyrells bring a queen and a rose-colored future; Sansa is quietly set aside.
• Winterfell is sacked — by Bolton men under Ramsay's flayed banner, not the ironborn; Luwin dies at the heart tree.
• Bran and Rickon split shadows: Rickon east with Osha, Bran north with the Reeds toward the Wall.
• The Fist of the First Men: three horn blasts in the dark, and the dead come with the snow.

The fallen — spoilers

• Maester Luwin — Mortally wounded in the sack; Osha's blade was a kindness by the heart tree.