The audience hears sobbing, a boy almost man sobbing. He's seventeen. And because he ran into the forest in search of his brother, twenty, he fell into a trap. Darkness.

THE CHILDREN whisper.

17YEAR OLD: Where am I?

THE CHILDREN whisper.

17YEAR OLD: Where's my brother?

THE CHILDREN whisper.

17YEAR OLD: Will I die?

THE CHILDREN whisper.

17YEAR OLD: I'm scared, big brother. I'm scared.

THE CHILDREN'S eyes grow bright blue, and stab into 17YEAR OLD. As he agonizes in pain, his hands reach through darkness to feel a hand, his brothers.

17YEAR OLD: Brother, what's happening? Your fingertips feel like ice.

[GAME OF THRONES music.]

JON witnesses the horror of the bomb exploding in DRAGONS' LANDING. Towers are toppled, walls are blasted to gaping open, and Jon hears the screams of men and women who weren't dissipated by the atomic blust, but only burnt. He hears the screams and knows, in the pit of his stomach, that their skin barely clings onto the rest of their bodies. This is the power that DAENERYS posessesses.

JON: What have we done?

DAENERYS: All our enemies must burn.

JON: Dani, what have we done?

DAENERYS: All our enemies must burn.

JON: Dani! Dani!

DAENERYS: All our enemies must burn.

JON: Dani! Dani!

GREYWORM: Our Dani isn't our Dani.

JON: Dani, dani!

GREYWORM: Missandei's sister also like this. She schizophrenic. She hears voices we cannot hear. She sick. We must go.

JON: Where? We're miles from King's Landing.

GREYWORM: Dragons' Landing. We find help.

JON: Help? How?

GREYWORM: Maybe Maester has medicine. If Maester alive, we find medicine. Understood?

JON: We enter Dragons' Landing. I'm no betting man, but there were 26 million undead minions. Even with a blast as powerful as this, some remain.

GREYWORM: Some remain. We walk in stealth.

JON: OK.

A FEW CUTSCENES as GREYWORM and JON advance through the UNDEAD MINIONS through the blasted ruins of DRAGONS' LANDING. A force as powerful as magical nuclear HAS EXPLODED, AND MILLIONS OF DEAD AND UNDEAD lives are lost in the span of seconds. Some of the former living survive with skin barely attached, their bodies burned into atomic redness, fission beyond anything that previously man had witnessed: a magical nuclear bomb.

QUYBURN is obliterated in seconds, like dust. So were millions of men, women, and children like QUYBURN.

CRYING. CRYING. THE CRYING WAILS from the few that survive.

VARYS: I'm going to die.

VARYS' skin is burnt to a crisp.

VARYS: The pain. Oh, how this hurts.

VARYS screaming in agony.

VARYS: Please stop. I want the pain to stop. Please. Please. I want to die. I beg to die. I beg that the pain stops. Please. Please. Please, dear Go –

VARYS dies.

ARYA is in the basement of DRAGON'S LANDING, and survives through the rubble unscathed.

TYRION is on the beach, and just as the atomic bomb explodes his way, water from the enchanted tsunami washes over the shore. Water the height of a castle washes towards the shore, and protects TYRION, SANSA, AND CHILDREN. But just as water gives, water takes. The tsunami pulls back into the ocean, strong currents tugging at bodies into the darkness. A current grabs SANSA and a few other children. The current tugs SANSA deeper and deeper into dark water. Dark cold water until SANSA gurgles, chokes on water, and drowns.

Darkess until crying. A man sobs alone.

THE NIGHT KING cries.

JON: I hear something here.

THE NIGHT KING is crying.

JON: Who's there?

THE NIGHT KING is behond the IRONE THRONE. Iron has protected THE NIGHT KING from oblivion. IRONE THRONE has melted, but THE NIGHT KING hides behind the throne, unscathed but sobbing.

JON: Who's there?

THE NIGHT KING stops crying, then rises: You've won.

DAENERYS with ABOMINATION fly overhead.

THE NIGHT KING: I failed to restore balance.

JON: What do you mean?

THE NIGHT KING: I failed to restore balance.

JON, GREYWORM, and THE NIGHT KING meet face to face. THE NIGHT KING'S right hand is burnt to a crisp, and is only bone.

THE NIGHT KING: You've won.

GREYWORM: What do you mean, fail to restore balance?

THE NIGHT KING: Starvation is our future if we don't restore balance. Have you ever starved?

JON: No.

GREYWORM: Yes.

THE NIGHT KING: It is a fate worse than death.

GREYWORM: It is fate worse than death.

DAENERYS flies overahead, burning.

JON: Daenerys is sick.

THE NIGHT KING: She is the most powerful magic, and she has unbalaned the world. Do you wonder why I advance south?

JON: I just thought you were a murderous villian.

THE NIGHT KING: The north was melting. The arctic ice was melting, and my home disappeared with the disappearing ice. I fled a home that no longer could be home.

JON: You're a climate refugee?

THE NIGHT KING: My ice world was melting, crashing, and dissolving within me. I advanced south because I had no choice.

GREYWORM: That sounds like refugee.

THE NIGHT KING: You've won, but the world you've won will starve. Do you feel how hot it is? It's only one degree warmer, but you already feel it, how the air has changed. If this abomination detonates another nuclear explosion, the air will turn so hot that the air ignites.

JON stares at the FLYING ABOMINATION, a cloud of black smoke and smouldering dragonscales.

ARYA enters.

ARYA: Brother...

ARYA then bows.

ARYA: My king.

JON: My king?

ARYA: My king, I was in the cellars. I debated, whether I should kill you. I was in the cellars alone with my thoughts, planning on how best to kill you. I sensed what you wanted. You wanted a glorious death.

THE NIGHT KING: For me, not my family.

ARYA: Then, the bomb exploded.

THE NIGHT KING: My family.

ARYA: Not all. First General is alive.

THE NIGHT KING: My brother.

ARYA: I will take you to him.

THE NIGHT KING and ARYA walk through the ruins of DRAGONS' LANDING as JON and GREYWORM follow.

THE NIGHT KING: Brother, you're alive.

1ST GENERAL: I am. So is Essess.

THE NIGHT KING: How did you survive?

1ST GENERAL: I was on the beach with Essess. We were caught in the explosion, and I felt pain like I had never felt. It burned so hot then suddenly cool water. A wave of water washed over me and Essess. Essess is fine, but me, I'm barely alive. If it weren't for the water, I'd be dead. I know that.

THE NIGHT KING: But you're alive.

1ST GENERAL: Everything hurts.

THE NIGHT KING: Everyone I love is dead except you.

1ST GENERAL: Is the world in balance? Have we avoided the inevitable?

THE NIGHT KING: The explosion came from the abomination. This abomination lurks within the city. Balance will not be restored with this abmoniation alive.

1ST GENERAL: Then you know what must be done. Kill this abomination. Restore will need Ice Spear.

THE NIGHT KING: Our greatest weapon.

1ST GENERAL: The bag of missiles. Give them to Jon and Greyworm. They will lure the abmoniation into a trap then you impale Ice Spear into the Abomination's neck. Then you will restore balance, and we can go home.

THE NIGHT KING: Home. Are you certain?

1ST GENERAL: Have I been wrong until now?

THE NIGHT KING: No. You will remain undead until then?

1ST GENERAL: In pain, but undead. Alive of sorts.

THE NIGHT KING walks toward ARYA, JON and GREYWORM.

THE NIGHT KING: My hand, what happens to the world if we don't restore balance?

ARYA: Whole habitats starve. A fate worse than death.

THE NIGHT KING: A fate far worse than death.

JON: How could you? You are on his side?

ARYA: He impregnated my neck with this. It bestowed me with the gift to tell the future. Well, only one future. I saw death all around me. When I entered towns, I saw their deaths. Farmers, bakers, whole cities starving. But I also saw whole forests starve. A world unbalanced means a future where forests starve. But with the Night King's Army, as it advanced south like a glacier eroding millions of square hectares of continent, after the glacier, I saw plants grow, plants so green and as great as heartwood trees. But suddenly, now, with the bomb, I see only fire. Fire and gas so thick, I can't breath. The forest will not only starve, it'll suffocate.

THE NIGHT KING: If balance is not restored, life as we know it cannot breathe. A fiery world that exists only as rock, fire, and the remnants of great, smoldering cities. I've watched it, that abomination, as it flies above. A heat radiates and pulses deep from within it, and each beat is more frenetic than the last, as if its pulses were a countdown.

The audience hears a pulse like the countdown of a nuclear power plant's meltdown.

THE NIGHT KING: The destruction it wrought on this city will repeat itself again like a tragic encore.

JON: Arya, you trust this man?

ARYA: He has not lied to me.

JON: How much time have we until the next explosion?

THE NIGHT KING counts the pulses, then: Sixty minutes.

JON: Tell me like I'm a simpleton. How do we avoid another explosion?

ARYA: We kill this abomination.

JON: We will kill Dani.

THE NIGHT KING: This abomination is no longer the woman or dragon it once was. Once what it was no longer matters. This abomination is now anger, sadness, and the lust for power.

ARYA: I am no longer just Arya Stark, the girl who left Winterfell. I'm Arya the Assassin, and I've witnessed much in life. So have you, Jon Snow, now Jon Targaryen. We must destroy this abomination before it destroys Westeros. If a bomb explodes in Oldtowne, twelve million will perish. Twelve million dead in seconds.

TYRION appears: And the Citadel, the greatest library in all of Westeros.

PODDRICK appears: We are here to defend Westeros or kill the Night King.

TYRION: Excuse my friend, but his original quest was to find you and kill you, but I sense with the bomb everything has changed. Our motives have aligned.

ARYA: Where's Ser Davos?

PODDRICK: Dead. I couldn't protect him from himself.

THE NIGHT KING: You enchanted the tsunami. Your magic is powerful. I underestimated you when you disappeared at the Crypt of Winterfell.

TYRION: You remember. Well, I can never forget that fear.

THE NIGHT KING: Things would have been different, if this explosion hadn't happened.

TYRION: You would have killed me, yes, I know. Or you at least would have tried. My magic isn't as useless as original thought. When I enchanted the tsunami, I saved Essess and your brother. If the water hadn't washed over them and protected them, they would have dissipated like the rest.

THE NIGHT KING: I owe you my brother's life.

TYRION: And Essess.

THE NIGHT KING bows.

TYRION: A king bows before me. I never expected, as hand of the queen that has become mad and threatens to destroy these seven kingdoms.

THE NIGHT KING: You are a fast talker.

TYRION: And witty.

THE NIGHT KING: In another scenario, I wouldn't have killed you. I would have turned you and you would have been undead. You would have had the choice to grow your arms and legs to whatever size you desired. Imagine a life where you would be as tall as your brother.

TYRION: When I was young, I'd sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I wasn't a dwarf. If I were as tall as Jaime, I'd sometimes ask myself. Growing up, there'd be times I'd ask myself how things would be different if I were as tall as Jaime. Or normal. Or handsome. If I were Jaime, I wouldn't be a dwarf, I'd be tall and handsome. If I weren't a dwarf, what would life have been like. I wouldn't be as witty, that's for sure. But as a dwarf, was this somehow medically related to why my mother died while giving birth to me? I asked the Maester this question when I was old enough to ask.

THE NIGHT KING: How old were you?

TYRION: Seven.

THE NIGHT KING: That's a big question to ask from a seven year old.

TYRION: He told me some answer given to a seven year old, but when I was sixteen, I asked again, and then he told me the truth.

THE NIGHT KING: Which was?

TYRION: I came out not head first, but legs first. I was a small baby, he said, and somehow I had managed to crawl the wrong way inside my mother's womb so birthing me legs first meant her death. I can't help but feel guilty for that.

JON: Where's Sansa?

TYRION: She didn't make it. She drowned in the tsunami. So did a few other children.

JON: Children die in wars too.

TYRION: They do. I'm so sorry.

JON: Do we have a plan?

THE NIGHT KING: Have you ever hunted?

JON: With Ghost. Where is he by the way?

TYRION: He didn't make it. I'm sorry. War kills children and animals.

JON: War kills our friends. Yes, Harbinger of Winter. I have witnessed the hunt.

THE NIGHT KING: Then you know how to hunt the big game.

JON: The big game always assumes he has the bigger claws, jaws, or ways of killing you.

THE NIGHT KING: Until it's too late.

JON: A trap.

TYRION: We lure Daenerys aka Drogondragonwolfunsullied aka the Flying Abomination into the Dragon Pits of the city. You, harbinger of winter, hide underneath. The remainder of us seperate into teams, and lure aka you know what to the Dragon Pits. Only Ice Spear into its throat will kill it. But then, what happens? What do you do?

THE NIGHT KING: When balance is restored, I return home.

TYRION: What if I want to kill?

TYRION, through magic and a melody through the background score, takes a magic ball from THE NIGHT KING's pocket. Butterflies dance with the blue ball as they float into the sky, then pulsates to the melody until it sharpens into a spear, and slices through the stone wall right behind THE NIGHT KING.

THE NIGHT KING: You're welcome to try. I've a feeling it'd be fun to battle with you, magic to magic.

ARYA: But first, it.

FLYING ABOMINATION flies overhead.

TYRION: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We're agreed on the plans?

THE NIGHT KING: You lure and I wait. Do you have a strategy on how to lure the flying abomination?

TYRION: You worry about hiding and I'll worry about that thing. I've a few ideas.

TYRION takes the bag of magic missiles from THE NIGHT KING.

THE NIGHT KING hides underneath the trap door of the DRAGON PITS and waits in darkness when, in the background, THE NIGHT KING melody plays in the background [Reader: go to Spotify and listen to The Night King from Ramin Djawadi.]

THE NIGHT KING:

Once.

I was scared, once.

Once, when I was alone, and my only hope was your love lived. I was seventeen, and once, I was innocent. My eyes were blue but innocent blue, like the blue of a winter sky, sun shimmering across the ice. Once, my eyes were this blue, but in time, my innocence was lost.

Not lost, taken. Taken.

Not lost, taken. Taken.

Not lost. Taken.

I was taken, and my brother was taken. Taken like animals to slaughter. Taken like meat to these children, their eyes blue. Somehow, when my innocence was gone, my eyes glimmered blue just like their eyes, a shade of blue unnatural for this world.

I am the Night King, my innocence was taken.

I am the Night King, my innocence was taken.

I am the Night King, my innocence replaced by rage.

Rage, rage, raaAAAaaage... I wait for my time... I bide my time... when I am ready, when the world sees the rage I harbour inside me, when I am no longer taken, but the man who takes. I am the Night King.

I am death and the inevitable. I am winter.

I am brutal force to bring the world from unbalance, starvation, and ruin.

I am the Night King and the inevitable. I am winter and the saviour from ruin.

I am the Night King, and when winter passes, when the world is balanced, winter succeeds to spring. When spring is ready, when you're ready, when we're all ready, do you feel the spring? She's bright, abundent, verdant, fragrant, love and happiness.

My anger will perish the fools. My anger will destroy the fools. My anger will override the fear.

I'm the Night King.

[End song]

DRAGON STEPS and THE NIGHT KING emerges from darkness. He emerges in the middle of a battle between TYRION, JON, GREYWORM, PODDRICK, and VISERION. THE NIGHT KING is small compared to this monstrous FLYING ABOMINATION, like a chamelon compared to a komodo dragon.

TYRION is reshaping magic missiles into spears and lauching attacks to the FLYING ABOMINATION's flanks. JON has sliced off the wolf head and PODDRICK battles the shadow dragonhead. Chaos.

THE NIGHT KING: I relish the chaos.

THE NIGHT KING jumps onto DROGON while his left hand clutches onto ICE SPEAR. DROGON is about to exhale when THE NIGHT KING leaps into the air, and brings down ICE SPEAR to pierce the exposed neck.

DROGON screams.

FLYING ABOMINATION screams, the clouds screeching as black tendrils blown to grey nothingness by gale force winds.

DAENERYS lands to the ground.

JON: Dani, Dani, are you all right?

DAENERYS, crying: Jon. I was not myself. The voice took control of my mind and I couldn't stop.

JON: You were sick. I still love you.

DAENERYS: I knew you loved me when, despite all my madness, you accompanied me. Through better or worse, we're king and queen. I may have been mad, but with help and treatment, I will get better.

JON: I love you, my Dani. For better or for worse, we will be together forever.

DAENERYS: I'm hurt. My chest hurts. It feels like a dagger stabbed into my chest.

JON: It's a cut, aye, but no dagger into the heart, least of all as a stab into the heart before dragonfire to melt the iron throne, whatever that's supposed to mean.

DAENERYS: Does this mean I'm not dead?

JON: It's a cut, but it'll heal. You were sick. Sick people can heal. You will heal.

DAENERYS: The city is in ruins. It's my fault. People are dead because of me.

JON: We share blame. Your Drogon inhaled my shadow wolf-dragon.

THE NIGHT KING: We all share blame.

TYRION: Not me. We tried our best to avert catastrophe, and now that it's over, I'm relieved but still eerily uncomfortable around you, harbinger of winter.

THE NIGHT KING: We fear the winter but when the cold finally comes, it's not so bad.

DAENERYS: It's snowing. It's beautiful.

JON: The first snowfall of winter is beautiful.

THE NIGHT KING: Balance has been restored.

DAENERYS: I will heal and we will rebuild the city.

JON: We first need to survive the winter. I can tell you've never lived through a proper winter. When it's a proper bitter winter, surviving is challenge enough. How long will this winter last?

THE NIGHT KING: An ice age? A few thousand years, give or take a few hundred.

JON: It's winter, not an ice age. Dani, you and I, we survive the winter. It's just you, me, and a few thousand survivors. Many of them need bandages and dressings, attending to their wounds. The hospital is in ruins, so we're housed in the university halls.

GREYWORM: Jon and I are nurses and help as we can.

DAENERYS: We survive the winter as survivors of a war. We survive. Then when spring arrives, we think about rebuilding Dragons' Landing.

THE NIGHT KING: We first must bury the dead.

TYRION: Sansa is dead. Varys. Quyburn.

THE NIGHT KING: My 36th.

ESSESS the undead pegasus lands. THE NIGHT KING mounts.

JON: Is this goodbye?

THE NIGHT KING: I will bury my dead, then return home. You have my word as king.

JON: Goodbye, Night King.

THE NIGHT KING: Goodbye, King and Queen of Westeros.

TYRION: Is this goodbye as well? Revenge may be a harsh word for it, but I would have loved a match, magic to magic. Not fatal mind you, but magic spell against magic spell.

THE NIGHT KING: Like a game.

TYRION: The greatest game the world will ever known.

THE NIGHT KING: We can play telepathically.

TYRION: That'd be good fun. Goodbye Night King.

ARYA: Goodbye.

THE NIGHT KING: My former hand. Goodbye.

ESSESS gallops then takes flight.

TYRION: What will you do now, hand of the king who lost the war?

ARYA: Help the survivors. Spend the winter here, but when spring comes and the winds return, I want to be on a boat headed somewhere, set sail west as far as west as I can go, maybe to the edge of the world. Maybe to a new world.

TYRION: Or sail so far west that you land east. There is an ancient middle kingdom that far east.

ARYA: How do you know?

TYRION: I've read about it. You're technically a princess, but modern princesses travel the world.

ARYA: As a modern princess sailing so far west to land east, that would be an adventure. But I don't think we've had the last adventure with the Night King.

TYRION: We will encounter him again, that's for certain. Whether the next time is as friend or foe, that remains a mystery.

CUTTO: IRONE THRONE. ESSESS lands. THE NIGHT KING walks with 1ST GENERAL, and THE NIGHT KING holds the body of JULIA in his arms.

THE NIGHT KING: I should not have to bury her. She was like a daughter to me. A father should not have to bury his daughter.

1ST GENERAL: Starvation is a fate worse than death, but war is as worse. Wars and famine kill children.

THE NIGHT KING: Julia, I'm sorry I couldn't protect you.

THE NIGHT KING lays JULIA's body onto the ground, and as JULIA's body lands on snow, her hands unclasp to reveal the acorn.

THE NIGHT KING holds the acorn in his hand.

THE NIGHT KING: You saved this with your body. My clever girl. You knew this acorn was the most important thing in the world.

THE NIGHT KING digs into the earth, and buries JULIA with the acorn deep in the ground.

1ST GENERAL: Will a heartwood grow here?

THE NIGHT KING: The largest heartwood the world will ever know, right here in the capital.

1ST GENERAL: Westeros will not be the same with a heartwood growing powerfully right in the kind of place would it be?

THE NIGHT KING: With a heartwood, more magically endowed.

1ST GENERAL: That's a sequel I'd like to see. They'll have to rename the city. King's Landing became Dragons' Landing, and with a magical heartwood growing in the middle of the city, Acorn's Landing?

THE NIGHT KING: Acorn doesn't have the same power as king or dragon, but Acorn's Landing sounds green. Like spring. Julia would have wanted that.

1ST GENERAL: She became undead by realizing the best death is to die surrounded by family, knowing that you're loved.

THE NIGHT KING: She became a heartwood by sacrificing to protect the next generation.

1ST GENERAL: Dying for love.

THE NIGHT KING: Dying for love. It is the greatest sacrifice.

THE NIGHT KING and 1ST GENERAL are silent as they mount ESSESS and fly home as the snow continues to fall.

CUTTO: Snow, snow, snow.

OLIVER is in the snowfields. He sees NIMERIA. She sniffs, but doesn't growl.

OLIVER approaches slowly. NIMERIA doesn't retreat, and doesn't growl. A few more steps, and then NIMERA licks OLIVER's hand. She leads him through the snow to a farmhouse where a light from a fire burns through the windows.

OLIVER: I smell stew. Warm delicious stew.

KOVARRO: Welcome. Any friend of Nimeria is friend of mine. Come in from the snow and get warm by the fire. I have sausage stew. Are you hungry?

OLIVER: Yes.

OLIVER smiles as he sees other children in the farmhouse.

Epilogue

Dear reader,

I too was a fan of Game of Thrones, and also disappointed by Season 6 to 8. But instead of just complaining about it, I wrote an ending. Yes, this was written in script format, but when the story progressed past John Snow's death (and who knows when the books will come), Game of Thrones stopped being a book and morphed into a television series. Unfortunately with a bad end, but – this is where you can help. If you tell three of your friends, and if three tell three tell nine tell to twenty-seven and so on – maybe this becomes viral and HBO refilms the entire Season 8 with a good ending. That would be great television and something that fans desperately hope for: another television series to binge on, over and over again, like one of Shakespeare's plays.

Ba H. Luong

author of Naked Berlin

October 31st, 2020