Notes: Before I begin, I must acknowledge that for this story to be pulled off in a believable way, I need to as they say on the reddit page, "open a new a pack o' tinfoil." This story is powered by many theories some of them mine, some of them from the forums that dwell on 'higher mysteries' and center on the how and why rather than the events themselves. I should also mention that fans who read the world of Ice an Fire, will recognize lots of content from the Westeros and Essos sections of the book (with a special eye towards worldbuildng), and there may be potential light spoilers from the Targaryen section.

Health Warning: the following story may result in damage to any preconceived notions and/or worldviews within the Planetos universe. Before embarking on this truly epic journey you may want to evaluate the state of your mental health. Should you experince any mental discomfort due to this story, you should stop reading and see your doctor immediately... Well, either that or you can go back to reading lighthearted single layered ship fics to soothe your troubled mind.

Prologue

Seeds that were planted long ago would ripen a long time later for a harvest unlike any other in the history of men. Much that had been grown before that fateful harvest was lost to the world.

It began with the pact on the Isle of Faces. The Children of the Forest and the First Men concluded their long and bitter war with a marriage between the high queen of the Children and the high king of the First Men. The greatest powers in the land were joined in one union, for where the First Men were patriarchal, the Children were matriarchal.

The Children of the Forest and the First Men lived in relative harmony. But there were some who resisted; the hatred was deep for some children.

In the land of always winter, a great Citadel of ice was erected by the chidren of the forest where the Lights of the North shone bright and nightly. Its new inhabitants had been chased from their lands by their more fearful but, more peaceful neighbors.

It was was here, that the outspoken greenseer priestess who led the group decided to reclaim the lands they had lost.

The children used their magic to create a new race, of humanlike creatures. They were tall as men and gracefull as the children. Their bodies were meant to withstand the cold, their skin pale as milkglass, their eyes colored like deep blue stars. Finally, one unlike any other was made to command them all.

This one had the features of a woman with inhuman beauty, as befitting of a design at the hands of such a matriarchal culture. Into whatever passed for its soul, the children vested their malevolence, and will to dominate. It would be known as the Great Other.

The Great Other, had been given no sense of loyalty to its creators, and with a force of Others behind it greater in number then their creators, the cult of children were slaughtered by the very monsters they had created.

Had it not been for one fatal flaw, the others would have inherited the world. They were easily killed by obsidian as the creators did not intend for them to overrun the world. For this reason, they could not breed either.

And so it was that the Others sought out to clean the World of those that their creators hated. The Others found soon found that young humans and even children could be turned, and if they resisted, the Others could simply perform necromancy on their slain enemies.

They were creatures of darkness and bitter cold, and in time, the population grew so much that the balance of seasons had changed. They held sway over winter, greatly throwing off the seasonal calendar. The winters became longer and harsher, but the cycle still had to continue, and so it was that summers were usaully as long as the winters that came after them.

As the age of heroes progressed the seasons became longer and in the wintertime, the days became shorter and shorter. It eventually came to pass that nights could last for months, even a year.

It was then that the long night came. Unlike previous winters, this one covered the world as a whole, when the Others moved further south. Even in Dorne, the sun rarely visited.

When the Children of the Forest learned that Obsidian, or Frozen fire as they called it could stop the Others, their advance was checked.

In this day, a prince who promised by the old gods who came from the line created the pact fashioned his famous sword lightbringer, with the blood of his true love, for all great swords seem to require blood sacrifice of some sort. The blade was so called not just for its brightness, but for the the heat it emitted when when the bearer was favored by the old gods.

A great battle happened in a place not too far away from the isle of faces where the virtuous armed with odsidian and fire threw back an army of undead five times their own size.

Though the Others were broken for a time, the virtuous had suffered tremendous losses. The hero who is now known to the world by a dozen different names set out with a dozen of his closest companions, and searched for the Great Other that he had seen in visions.

Years later, at a hot spring far north of the neck and the towers of Moat Caillin it found him, a great duel was held between the hero at the Great Other, a duel unlike any fought before or after, in which the fate of humanity was untimately settled. With a razor thin blade of crystal cold as ice, the Great Other was a match for the hero and his blade of light. The Great Other saw what manner of a warrior the last hero was and tried to use her hypnotic abilities and take him for her King, but the great warrior was protected by Lightbringer which shielded him from her attempts. In the end, it was not the blade that triumphed, but the cunning of its wielder. He had noticed some loose stones on the walls of the cavern in which the battle took place, as the noise the carvern grew, they loosed further and so the hero pulled out his warhorn and blew with all his might.

Much of the Cavern had caved in and the resulting rockslide mortally wounded its cause, but the Great Other could not have avoided it either, and was pushed into one of the hot springs, defeating Queen of Night. Suddenly the minions of the Great Other broke and fled, presumably returning to the place of their origin.

Dying he summoned his son who was the only companion to have survived the journey. To his son, he gave the broken warhorn, and his sword.

His son would live on to be a legend in his own right, and founded a kingdom on the land in which his father died. He was not the legendary warrior that his father was; rather he found fame in building great feats of engineering all over lands that would someday be called Westeros.

But the day came when his legacy was used against him. The Great Other had not been wholly destroyed and the time the came when its power was restored. It set out to use everything mankind had created against its makers and began with Night's Watch. The great other used it's hypnotic ability to seduce its lord commander whose namesake had formed the very wall he was charged to defend, and afterwards became the Night's Queen. Once again the righteous marched against evil and truimphed throwing down her king, but it was a hollow victory, for the Night's Queen had escaped.

Many years later, The Queen of the Night had a force at her back unlike any other, and brought down the Night's Watch in the same way she had earned the title Night's Queen. The Others swarmed the North and reaped a prodigious harvest from the chaos. There were many reasons that night would truimph this time, and many of them were left to the grip of the Others…


"Loose!"

The arrows were loosed with the song of a volley that came from half frozen longbows, and once again they rose and fell like a thousand falling stars all alight at the tips. With every volley, pillars of flame that bore stauch contrast to the barren snow covered moorlands, gave proof that the arrows had found their marks and were faintly visible in the storm that came with the others.

The survivors of the North had held their own against an army of undead wights whose numbers nearly matched their own. Many who held the line, did so with torches, and in some cases shards of dragonglass.

Victory could have come that night, but the power of things left behind to the darkness was too great and side of the light was too weak. The first thing they heard was a loud cry that came from up in the clouds on that dark evening. For one terrible moment friend and foe, living and dead alike, halted the battle and stared in awe at whatever it was that had come to the fray.

They came down through the clouds, all three of them and descended on the living. Their scales were black, grey, and white but they all shared those malevolent blue eyes. The beasts were ice made flesh, just like their riders. As got closer to the fighting they opened their jaws and from their jaws they unleased a torrent so cold that any steel in its path shattered and any men in its path died instantly from exposure to the cold.

The man, who commanded the survivors here, was no fool and saw no chance of standing alone in this war. South of the Neck, the greatest civil war since the Dance of Dragons had ended, and only one dragon survived where several had once existed at the climax of that great conflagration of fire and blood that would leave the Seven Kingdoms with scant chance of survival.

The Northmen were already retreating when Jon Snow gave the order to fall back to Moat Caillin.


Samwell

The bedraggled banner of the Starks flew defiantly over the Gatehouse tower Moat Caillin. The last time Sam had passed these ancient towers, it was late summer when the air gave a pleasant chill on the journey he undertook to Castle Black.

Today, the winds of winter took a bite sharp and cold as a leech.

He led a force behind him of eight hundred men. Many of them had fought on losing sides of the wars that the watch was not supposed to take any part in. Others had simply lost everything to the conflicts.

The Riverlands had been turned to ash after most major battles had been fought in the disputed lands of Westeros, and its people were starving from lack of foodstores. The Crownlands had fared little better during the war. They had the misfortune of supporting the Lannisters, then the Tyrells, then King Aegon. When Daenerys Targaryen took the city of her ancestors with Fire and Blood, her hand, the new Lord of Casterly Rock rode out into the countryside and put many he considered disloyal to the sword. Some at least were allowed to join the Night's Watch, which accounted for nearly a third of his recruits.

In the Reach, the showdown between Aegon and Daenerys bore an eerie parallel to the Dance of Dragons, with turning fathers against sons, and Brothers against brothers. Marriage alliances meant nothing when the Hightowers, Redwynes and Fossoways betrayed House Tyrell for the favor of Dragons. The Dornish who sided with Aegon had caused further devastation. Oldtown itself had been sacked twice, first by the Ironborn and then by the Dornish, who disobeyed their King's orders to spare Oldtown.

In the end, Daenerys Targaryen had triumphed at the battle for Tumbleton, when her last surviving Dragon, Rhaegal descended on Aegon whom they called Blackfyre, and ate him. In the aftermath of the battle he met with the queen who spared him for his membership in the Night's Watch just as much as for his knowledge of Maester Aemon. She was chivalrous and even pardoned his brother Dickon for House Tarly's support of her rivals.

As a gift, Sam gave a beautiful Qohorik blade that had been made for greatly feared Euron Crow's Eye that had been made sometime before Sam joined the Night's Watch when he was had been recently exiled by his family. The blade, he had taken off the corspe of the Crow's Eye when the Dornish besieged the Oldtown, which had been held by the Ironmen. The resistance in the city had felled just as many of the Ironmen as the Dornish had.

The Ironborn King, held a pair of daggers made in Qohor, which had clearly been cut from the same steel. Both of these, Sam kept for himself because he would need both of them.

Brushing aside thoughts of the past, he thought of the future as he entered the Gatehouse tower where Jon would be. All around him he saw ragged survivors huddled near fires that seemed to be everywhere. The atmosphere of despair that he felt, reminded him so much of retreat to Craster's Keep when the Fist of the First Men had fallen.

Jon looked up at him, as he entered the solar. He looked as if he had aged ten years since the last time they saw appearance.

For a moment they stared at each other in silence.

"Well, I'm back," Sam broke the silence.

"You've changed Sam," Jon spoke quietly. It was true, Sam had undergone some harsh journeys of his own, and he had even lost nearly two stone in weight.

"So have you," said Sam, the look Jon held was one of despair.

"We lost the war Sam, the Others won. Not even that dragon queen in the south can save us anymore, they have dragons now, dragons of ice."

"I learned some important things in the Citadel, what if I told you that we could change history?"

Jon looked at him as if he was mad, and maybe he was, but Jon was desperate and wanted to believe it just as much.

"How could we change the past?" Jon's tone was incredulous.

"I found fragments of a manuscript in the Citadel Vault that told of a way to go back in time, but we have to find the place that winter fell."


Notes: For those eagerly awaiting the next chapter of my other current story, "the Game Ends," don't worry, I haven't abandoned it. I just simply felt a stronger need to start this story (its currently slow writing for which I blame Aeron Dampbrain), which has already has great outline so far that will take an absolute minumum of 30 chapters to cover, and that's well before I reach the climax of this story.