The Night King appears on the plain before Winterfell. No one else is visible. He gazes impassively at the castle. A low thunder becomes louder and louder. Then, the wights run past him at a, as it were, dead sprint, giving him a wide berth. A wide-angle shot shows thousands, tens of thousands swirling around him as if he were the eye of a hurricane.

Two weeks earlier. Jon, Dany, Sansa, Tyrion, Sam, Brienne, Davos, Grey Worm, Theon and the other principals stand around a map table covered with little model armies. Sam seems uncharacteristically confident, but perhaps only because of necessity. He speaks up.

"Now, we know the dead are mindless. They follow the Night King's commands as one, sacrificing themselves without hesitation if must be, and they are legion. In effect, they are one completely unified force that will absolutely overwhelm and crush us if we do not manage to manage them. That is why we have established a unified command structure as well, with Lord Tyrion and Lady Sansa giving orders from the highest tower of the castle with these coloured flares we have found in the Maesters' vault. We have made sure they will pierce the darkest night and thickest cloud. Ser Jorah, Grey Worm, Lady Brienne and the others, and also Your Grace and Jon who are the only ones who can fly the dragons, will do as they command. It is absolutely essential that we answer the unified force of the Night King with our own unity."

"Shouldn't we rather hide in the crypt with the women, children and elderly?", Sansa asks.

"In the crypt? Where there is only one entrance and exit? Where the dead Starks are?"

"Ye-es?"

"The dead Starks? Whom the Night King can raise at will?"

"Oh."

"Why would we waste two of our most valuable assets that way? Anyone in the crypt when the battle begins would just be a sitting, trapped duck. With respect my Lady, you and Lord Tyrion belong on the tower. And the women, children and elderly will wait in the winter town outside Winterfell. If we lose, they will soon be dead anyway. If we win, no use putting them in harm's way like that."

"So we strike in a unified way, yes? Everyone charging against the army of the dead as soon as it appears!", Dany interrupts.

"What? No! How stu-"

Daenerys cocks an eyebrow. The dragon queen has the most expressive and terrifying eyebrows Sam has ever seen.

"I- I mean, I apologise, Your Grace. If I may, let me kindly tell you the story of 300 brave Dornishmen who vanquished an army of, it is said, one hundred thousand at the Hot Gates. Once, there was a king called Leonydas …"

There are four moats around Winterfell. The Starks' ancestors spent many decades and centuries digging into the hard, frozen soil to make, deepen and broaden them, knowing that the castle would otherwise be poorly defensible, standing on an only gently sloping plain as it is. Only a few bridges, set off from each other, allow crossing the moats. Now all of them have been drained and filled with dry wood soaked in oil. Multiple hidden fuses connect the wood to the castle. There are also archers with fire arrows, runners with torches, and of course the dragons to make sure the wood will catch fire. It would be beyond foolish to rely on, say, the Red God's magic to make it work. Sam made the others actually spell "R-E-D-U-N-D-A-N-C-Y" ten times out loud, much to Jon's annoyance.

The wights arrive at the first moat and run to the nearest bridge. A green flare illuminates the sky. As the dead are crossing the bridge, all hell breaks loose: the wood alights in a blaze. Dothraki screamers with dragonglass weapons (not just their usual arakhs, those would be useless) and flaming arrows appear from nowhere to flank them and cut through them like a hot knife through butter. On the other side of the bridge, the Unsullied form a shield wall and try to push the wights back. Many of the dead fall into the moat and burn. As the pressure from more and more dead soldiers rises, the Dothraki disperse as quickly as they came and take another bridge to the second defensive level. Out of the sky, Rhaegal and Drogon drop and incinerate the bunched wights. Finally, when even the Unsullied can hold no longer, they retreat to the third level, and the bridges are exploded. The wights stand dumbly on the other side, their ghastly faces illuminated by the burning wood.

"I get it now", Dany says, "even though you could have made your point less impertinently. Funnelling the dead into chokepoints will allow us to greatly decimate them. But that will only slow them down, not defeat them. There are just too many of them. They will just pile into the moats until they can cross them or something. And don't forget the Night King controls my poor Viserion *sniff*."

"I fully agree Your Grace. That is why we must establish air superiority."

"Air what? I thought we would just fly around randomly on the dragons, hitting some wights and perhaps a few White Walkers here and there, enjoying the night breeze above the clouds …", Jon volunteers.

Sam cocks an eyebrow.

The wights, on a command from their king, indeed pile into the burning moat until their comrades can cross it. Others jump on each other's shoulders until they are four high and then fall forward to form bridges of the undead, by the undead, for the undead. Burning arrows, dragonfire and Dothraki hooves rain down on them, but in this manner, the wights advance over the first and second moats. Then, there is a blood-curdling shriek: Viserion charges straight for Rhaegal and Jon, breathing icy death.

A blue flare goes up.

Twenty giant burning balls fly from behind Winterfell, where the vulnerable trebuchets are stationed in safety (not on the plain for the enemy to destroy, of course). One hits Viserion, who squeals in momentary disorientation. Others target the undead bridges and destroy them. Flying very low and very fast, Drogon and Dany breathe fire against the ice dragon and ram him full speed. Viserion crashes into the third defensive line and rolls into the moat, taking fifty wights with him. He screams as he burns. Moving quickly, but with tears in her eyes, Dany lands on him, Drogon's weight pinning the thrashing Viserion down. With all her strength, looking her child straight in the eye, she pushes a large dragonglass dagger into his heart. Viserion dies.

The Night King looks on. He has not been this surprised since 500 years ago, when White Walker Jones asked for a vacation at the Dornish beach.

"Then what?", asks Jon. "We have the air and then what? The dead will press on until all the living have joined their ranks. We will not be able to hold them off forever. So then what?"

Sam is taken aback.

"B-but Jon, don't you have any ideas? I mean, I am nobody, really. You were the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and even the King in the North. You have fought all these big battles and won, even braved the Night King before. How did you do it?"

"Generally, I just swing Longclaw wildly and rely on my good looks."

"… Anyone else? Any idea? You are some of the best and most renowned fighters and leaders in all of Westeros and Essos, so … Your plan can't just be to let the dead breach the walls and then hide in the library or something. Right? Right?"

There is a long silence. Everyone looks at their feet.

"Seriously? Any …other plans?"

"Yell WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS really loudly?", suggests Dany.

"Use your immense reach to hack all wights into pieces?", proposes Brienne.

"Get knocked on the head and miss the entire battle until we have won?", says Tyrion.

"I go where Mother of Dragons leads. WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?", yells Grey Worm.

"Alright", says Sam, sighing just a little bit. "Here is what we will do. Try as we might, the army of the dead will eventually reach the walls of Winterfell, and they will most likely breach them. But until then, we will make them pay. The castle will make them pay."

Despite two dragons strafing them from the air and despite trebuchet projectiles, burning and dragonglass arrows, the moat fires, wild Dothraki and disciplined Unsullied punishing them, a greatly reduced number of wights, some giants and even a few undead mammoths make it to the outer wall of Winterfell. The wights begin piling upon each other to scale it, the giants start pounding it with their hammers and bare fists, the mammoths slam themselves against it. The reverberating sounds make the defenders feel as if inside a very large bell.

At last, a red flare goes up. It reminds Dany of the Red Comet of so many years ago.

The walls of Winterfell, slippery from oil, catch fire. Burning pendulums swing along the outside, making hay. More golden, scalding oil pours from the battlements and is ignited. Everything glows. The screams of the undead and the roars of the mammoths fill the air. The last of once 150.000 attackers burn to a crisp. The Night King looks on. Is it over?

"So how many soldiers does the Night King have, anyway?", asks Jon.

"Didn't you ever bother to recon-" says Sam, but catches himself. "Well, we don't really know how far the Lands of Always Winter go and how many men lived there. But these lands obviously can't be more fertile than the lands of the wildlings, which are not very fertile, as you kn- as I am telling you. Assuming average standard output of partly frozen soil, a rather high infant mortality and that the Night King has converted about 95% of the people he has encountered to his, er, cause, I would wager that his army should now be about, oh, 100.000–200.000 strong. If we do very well, we might, just might be able to stop them even before they breach the walls, with low losses, mainly among Dothraki and Unsullied. Unless …"

"Unless?"

"Unless he has also raised those long dead and buried."

"Has he?"

"Most of them would barely be skeletons by now, even if preserved by the cold. Very brittle, likely. Many now buried so deep they couldn't claw their way to the surface. But many others, still useful."

"How many of those are there?"

"Many."

The Night King walks through the combined fire of Drogon and Rhaegal, to Jon and Dany's astonishment. Now, he stands alone before the moats of Winterfell. Smoke rises from the ashes of his army. The defenders look at him. Dany and Jon on their dragons look at him. The King raises his gaze to Jon and then raises an arm, slowly. A faint yelling and whooping in the distance, becoming louder. A patter as of rain, growing stronger. A white shine filling the horizon, in all directions. A million, perhaps a million and a half skeletons, half-skeletons, just disjointed bones converging on the castle. Leaping over the moats. Swarming over Viserion's corpse. Scaling the still-hot walls with ease. Completely overrunning Winterfell. Then silence. The large drawbridge comes down. The Night King crosses it. The skeletons part to let him through to the godswood. The fresh snow, grey from ash, crunches under his boots. There, in the middle of a circle of skeletons, under a weirwood tree, is the cripple boy. The Three-Eyed Raven. The hated memory of this hated world. All alone. All his. He walks towards Bran.

"Shouldn't I …you know… redeem myself at some point, perhaps by a heroic sacrifice? I could charge the Night King with a pointy stick, perhaps? No?", suggests Theon.

"Haven't you suffered enough, you idiot?", says Davos.

"Um. I am inclined to agree with Ser Davos, Theon", says Sam. "When the walls fall, the castle must be empty. No sacrifices, heroic or otherwise, unless absolutely necessary. We must take the tunnels to the winter town and await the end. All of us. That is, all of us except Bran."

"Will Night King not come after us?", asks Grey Worm.

"The Night King", corrects Missandei.

"I believe not. I think he doesn't care when he gets us as long as he gets us. Marching north to south, he will eventually find and kill us, even if it is only in Dorne. His army will also swell all the way, so it won't really matter if he misses ten or twenty thousand men at first. But there is only one Three-Eyed Raven, and the Night King has a wish, a desire to kill him, preferably earlier than later. Isn't that right Bran?"

"It is right", says Bran, startling everyone. He had been creepily watching, unnoticed, from the corner all the time.

"We must make use of that desire. It is our only reliable intelligence about the Night King's preferences. We must bait him with Bran and then, somehow, kill him. If he falls, the army of the dead falls. If he stands, the world falls. This is the point where we do it."

"Won't he see through the trap?", asks Missandei.

"Of course. But the lure might still prove irresistible. Most likely, he won't risk the Three-Eyed Raven getting away again as when Hodor, ah, held the door. The Night King is patient, but is he so patient as to search for one being perhaps all over the world for decades or centuries? Does he want to risk another Raven eventually being created, one that doesn't bear his mark, his beacon? No, I believe he will try to kill Bran right then and there. So that is where we must kill him instead."

"How we do this?"

"But how will we do- ah, nevermind."

For the first time all night, Sam smiles.

"A girl has an idea."

Slowly, very slowly, the Night King walks towards Bran, looking straight at him. The boy looks back with a strange expression, different from those he is used to. He does not dwell on it, for he never dwells. He raises his arm to pull his sword, so slowly. He savours. A small smile widens his mouth. He looks down at the cripple. The boy looks up at him. Then, something very odd: the boy's eyes wander a little bit left.

A girl jumps on him. He turns, chokes her. A dagger falls out of her hand. She catches it with her other hand, pushes it through a gap in his armour. He corrects himself: not a dagger. The dagger. How-

The Night King shatters. The skeletons and half-skeletons and the disjointed bones shatter. Millions of bone fragments litter the world. Bran looks at Arya. Arya looks at Bran.

A large stone is pushed aside. Our heroes emerge from a tunnel. Sam looks very pleased with himself. Even Davos's mouth is agape. Jon nudges Sam.

"Well done! Who would have thought that all your books would actually be of use one day, Sam? Perhaps I should spend less time 'warming' the Queen and more time reading, eh?"

"Perhaps", Sam says diplomatically.

"Imagine what could have happened if you hadn't painstakingly walked us through basic tactics any feudal noble would know before he turns ten! Horrible things might have happened. Some semi-important people could possibly have died uselessly. A once-great, deconstructive, but also in some satisfying ways expected narrative could have turned into a facepalming cringefest you couldn't wait to be over because everyone is stupid! Any payoffs would have been completely unearned, dumb luck instead of a glorious victory pulled off against impossible odds thanks to your genius and foresight, our heroism, and Arya's cunning. And we didn't even mention yet how Jorah defended the trebuchets against a surprise attack of mounted White Walkers, giving his life for his Khaleesi. Or how Ser Brienne and Ser Jaime died side by side, professing their love for each other with their last breaths, protecting the 'burning castle' stage against wights dropped from giant undead eagles, their wings whooshing through the night air like silk on cold skin. Or how Grey Worm, seeing Missandei being-"

Sam is horrified.

"What, did you think all of us would survive this epic battle? Don't be silly Sam, this is not one of Old Nan's fairytales. They died so we may live. There is nothing more noble than that. Even Ghost died, may the gods rest his kind soul. Just imagine how cheap, how debased we would now feel if our victory only came down to Arya weirdly hating blue eyes while we bungled absolutely everything, but somehow still survived. Imagine it! Wait, what did I just say?"

"I guess you have a point", says Sam. "Is this the end then?"

"No", says Arya. "But you could say this is the pointy end."

Everyone laughs. Freeze frame. Curtains.