THE RUINS OF WINTERFELL – THE NORTH

The storm bled through the mountains, billowing and surging as if it were the afterbirth of a volcanic eruption. Instead of incineration, it trapped trees and animals in a terrifying end – freezing the air in their lungs, the blood in their veins and the sap in their limbs. These dead things were left dusted in frost. Barren. A grave of statues with eyes locked open, forced to watch eternity from death.

Gales raged for days across the mountains, laying down half a dozen feet of powder which transformed the North into an impasse of snow. Anything that survived the initial onslaught was left trying to navigate a desert. Within a few hours, most gave up and curled into a crook in the rock.

From afar, it looked like the aftermath of war. Stumbling deer pushed through the graveyard of pines, nibbling at the bark which had been stripped away from every single tree. Traps of deep snow sucked the animals under only for the deer to emerge later where the ground flattened out, shaking their heads while their eyes darted nervously at the unfamiliar surrounds. All sorts of unsettling sounds filled the air. Sharp winds picked at the mountains, sheering off loose rock which plopped into the fresh drifts. Bears growled from perches in the mountains, clawing at the barren stone ledges before retreating deep into the caverns. Crows gathered, locking together on branches as if they were one black eye scouring the land. Maybe they were. Who knew what sat beneath the White Tree, wandering through the minds of the trees and eyes of the birds...

This demonic maelstrom came from everywhere, descending with intelligent malice. The harsh seasons of Westeros were brutal by reputation but always indifferent in their destruction. It was fair combat for those who prepared themselves. Not these stirrings of Winter. There was no door strong enough to stop the wind pushing it in, or hearth warm enough to keep its embers alight. Steel swords shattered in hand while stories of Bear Island's demise travelled with the winds. Others spoke of The Wall falling, unleashing ancient magic as its abandoned castles folded back into the snow. The promise of the Eastern dragon had been simply that – another Targaryen failure.

Whatever this storm was, it churned ruthlessly in a swarm of anger that caused its winds to pick off the pine bark leaving it hanging down in long sections – flayed and exposed like something out of a Bolton torture chamber. The temperature dropped, freezing fast moving creeks solid inside an hour. An hour after that, they were buried in snow and the land left to ruin as a featureless nothing confusing those trying to flee.

Brutality drove the last of humanity – the hunters, tribesmen, criminals and wanderers – out into the open fields. They were desperate to get away from the threatening groan of glaciers which buckled under the pressure of fresh snow, continuously whooshing down through the valley where they erased villages and blurred the landscape. The weight of endless snow moved in a tide, drowning the land as far as the eye could see. Fear spread like wildfire until the only thing the groups of huddled Northerners spoke of was Snow, death, and dragons.

Wrapped in fog, the army of the dead wandered within the heart of Winter where the gale blew so strong that some of the skeletons smashed apart. Their King raised bones from every corner of the mountain valley. Bodies clawed their way up through the ground to join the ranks. Wolf corpses in their hundreds emerged. The Night King called them to heel. There were other creatures too, those who were not dead but, like the Others, had been born into their present hell. Ice Spiders crept along the rock faces, preferring to keep their distance. Dozens of them, maybe more, were coming down from the glacier peaks where they'd kept to themselves for thousands of years. Some were no bigger than dogs but several were fully grown, lumbering terrifying limbs that ended in sharp points that could skewer a man in a single thrust.

As the army approached Winterfell, direwolves padded out on decayed paws from honeycomb caverns where they'd hidden themselves to die. Centuries of ice had preserved their fur leaving it draped over the re-animated corpses in thick mats. Black lips pulled back into soundless snarls. Empty skulls surveyed the North before they took their natural lead at the front of the other wolves, forming a pack. Instinct threw their heads back in a howl but their lungs were full of holes and so they remained soundless, snapping at the air.

And then… and then came the Children of the Forest. Bones and shell – skin like leather with eyeless sockets and bones the colour of straw. Their magic did not protect them from death, unlike the dragons who lay in their graves as rock for eternity. They were the most frightening to look upon and before killing, they filled the air with a clatter, rattling their shell and bone bracelets.

By the time the army reached the great frozen flats surrounding Winterfell, the collection of dead things had swarmed into a single entity. The ice groaned under their collective weight but the lake beneath had a crust eight feet thick made even stronger by the current conditions. At the height of noon, the sun forced its way into the white world, creating a blinding glare that set the scene into silhouette. The pyres surrounding the castle ruins were deep in snow and appeared as little more than ant nests while the fortress was a sad, burned ember losing the last of its heat. Its Godswood amounted to a brittle corpse surrounding what was left of the Heart Tree. The Night King reached out his hand to raise more bodies but the Starks had taken care to burn them all.

He did not know what he had expected. Winterfell had been the sole occupation of his mind for so long that it was more alive in his mind that the wreck he saw scattered through the snow. This wasn't the great empire of the North which his family had built – it was a few charred bones in an unfamiliar landscape. The reveal left him empty. Part of him had wanted to fight his way through Winterfell's gates and spill Stark blood until the sun hid itself and let the moon take over its watch. There was a certain catharticism to battle that healed the soul but what he saw before him was simply too sad to hate. He had truly died.

The Night King turned his head. A hundred thousand empty bones stopped and waited, straining against the magic that held them in place. He walked out, leaving them lingering behind on the ice with the wind picking their rib cages in an horrific song.

This place… Winterfell. It was the first time that the Night King had felt anything in his corpse since the curse ravaged his body. There wasn't much to feel – a fluttering underneath where his blood should be – a pulse. He remembered standing exactly here, long ago when there was an empty valley of grass with a stream circling a wood of Weirwood and Ironwood. In those days the valley's natural heat caused steam to lift off it during the Winter like a pudding out of the oven. It was always green in Winterfell – the place where the first men said that Winter had been felled, but the immense passage of time lulled its gods to sleep. The castle that stood here now was not his. He would never create something with such ugly features – heavy and awkward – so much so that their collapse had improved them. This was the art of the inferior.

However ruinous the façade, what mattered was what laid beneath in the crypts of Winterfell. Those recesses would always be his. The catacombs. The maze of rock. The darkness filled with death.

The Whitewalkers grew restless. The Night King could hear the cracking and hissing of their rage on the air. They had little interest in this detour, preferring to murder their way indiscriminately Southward. Brandon the Builder's magic gave him power over desire, so he commanded them to approach the fortress. The army pushed against him, like the current of a river. One day, soon, he was sure that they would sweep him away.


Winterfell castle was empty. The Night King allowed the dead to crawl all over it, scouring its hallways and rooms for any trace of life. They found nothing. Not even a crow. The Whitewalkers waited outside, lining the edge of the Godswood where the old cobblestones had collapsed into a pile of frost and rock. A recently worn path wove through the mess, trailing off toward the entrance of the crypts. The Whitewalkers swayed slightly towards it but made no attempt to step across the threshold into the Godswood knowing that if they tried, their bodies would be reduced to snow.

The Night King strode up to the ghostly creatures. The Whitewalkers were slightly taller than him and, when standing side-by-side, quite alien. A difference species altogether. He suspected that they were forged in the furthest reaches of the world and then abandoned. Perhaps they were children of the gods – or bastards. Maybe even a previous race of men turned to death like him.

Either way, none of them could step through the curtain of magic protecting the Godswood. A few mindless wights tried their luck only to explode into a pile of bone and dust, beyond revival. It was unclear whether these abominations of the gods were sentient but, at the very least, they appeared wary of the danger. Perhaps an horrific imitation of life was better than none at all – or maybe it was not the minds of the creatures at work but the magic that knit through them, controlling the hoard like a hive of bees.

The Starks should have stayed in their fort, the Night King thought to himself. It was the oldest of rules and yet it had been discarded. Now, they would all die in Southern graves. He did not have enough power to stop the massacre. It was inevitable. The Whitewalkers would have their kill. The Night King could feel them colluding in secret against him. They despised being tied to his will. Like slaves that had grown stronger in their servitude, the time of revolution drew near. He was careful not to test them to that point. Power was an illusion – a thin veneer of whispers.

To the astonishment of the Whitewalkers, the Night King stepped forward and entered the Godswood unharmed. It was his home after all and no amount of sorcery, necromancy or exile could undo the Stark blood magic written in his flesh. He closed his eyes as the wind kicked burned Weirwood leaves over the ground in front of him. Then – from his lips – a whispered prayer to the Old Gods. He dared not think what awaited him inside the crypts. All this time. Entire civilisations had risen and collapsed while he waited at the ends of the Earth. Waited for her. Dreamed of her. Her memory was the voice in his head as he'd wandered the endless white drifts of a dead world. The Night King had to believe that a part of her was alive. Their love had survived eternity and she was as warm to him now as the day they'd met even if she lay in sleep as dust. He would scoop her up and let her ashes fall through his fingers. Anything to touch her again.

His brother, the King of Winter, was down in the crypts collecting worms with the rest. He was all honour and no sense – blinded by black and white truths – unable to see the dawn and dusk that bridged the two. It was his fault that the enchantment was never finished – his fault that the hold over the Whitewalkers hung by a thread – his fault that the Amethyst Empress dreamed her way through the halls of death. In the end, the whole miserable disaster was nothing more the malice of honour. If only Stark kings were not so stubborn.

The Night King was going to end it. Free the empress. Finish her magic. Then? Then he'd have the power to do what no man had dared and banish the gods of Winter to their eternal Northern hell. This time, forever.

To save everyone, Brandon had to be the monster of his childish nightmares.

The Night King descended the uneven steps. The abyss brought out the unnatural blue sheen in his eyes. Demonic. Not quite dead.

Odd. The original Ironwood door stood in place, blocking off the crypts. He laid his hand it. All the runes were long gone, as was the bright red paint that once warded off evil spirits. The red door of Winterfell. Stained with the blood of woodswitches. A layer of frost spread out from his hand, poisoning the wood. Ice crystals unfurled through the grain. He closed his eyes and allowed the magic to channel through his body. The wood grew older and colder until the insidious ice crystal delved deep into its skin and then expanded violently, transforming the door into a powder of splinter and snow that cracked the air with a boom that shook the crypts to their core.


Lady Sansa and Clegane edged toward each other until they were standing back-to-back in the darkness, holding a sword in one hand and torch in the other. The tunnel was long, narrow and made with blocks of grey stone each over four feet wide and three feet deep.

A chill worked its way toward them as a breath of cold air. Ice formed over the rock on both sides of the wall, the low ceiling and even the damp floor. It grew so fast that they were able to watch white swirls spreading around, clawing their way along the tunnel as if they were alive like the fronds of a fern twisting toward the sunlight.

"He's here..." Sansa whispered.

Clegane, who had been facing the other way, glanced over his shoulder and saw ugly fingers of ice growing out of the roof in uneven, transparent teeth. "Oh fuck," he grabbed Sansa by the arm. "We have to go further in. Somewhere the magic is stronger."

Sansa lingered, closing her eyes. The tombs in the deeper levels were rarely visited.

There was an explosion followed by the sound of their crates and stores being tossed aside. The rush of wind blew the flame of her torch closer to Clegane's face, causing him to duck into the shadows.

"It doesn't sound like an army." She whispered.

"I am sure we'll find out soon enough," he insisted, pushing her torch away from him, "but now's not the time for questions."

They took the darkness at a run until they outpaced the spread of the ice. Even with the comfort of normal rock beside them, they could feel the prickling of ice at the back of their necks chasing them into a trap. They ran anyway, like common animals spiriting through the forest with dogs at their heels.

The crypts of Winterfell were immense, sprawling out under the lake until the ended in bedrock or folded back in on themselves. There was no lake here in the beginning. Thousands of years ago it had been an ordinary mountain valley until Brandon the Builder ordered the entire area excavated. It was not clear from the stories if he had been looking for the source of the area's unusual heat or if it was simply another of the famous constructions that peppered the Age of Heroes. When his men had dug a deep pit, Brandon set about creating the labyrinth. The work was meticulous, with dark slate being shipped in from the distant flanks of the Frost Fangs. It has an unusual smokey beauty to it, only visible in the moonlight. After it was finished, Bran had the ground put back – the Godswood built on top and the castle erected off to the side. Then he waited for the rains to fill the artificial lake. Upon its completion, it was feat of engineering. Like an ice berg, most of its grandeur lay beneath the ground, out of sight. It was simple and beautiful, nothing like the decayed state it now found itself in.

"Here," Sansa dragged Clegane off course and down a set of steps. "I have never been this far before," she admitted, breathless, "but father caught Arya down here, chasing rats. He was furious. Only time I ever saw him hit her. She spent two days sobbing under my bed."

Clegane became wary of this new sub-level of the crypts. The deeper they went, the less Northern their surrounds felt. This place was hostile. Whispering and cracking around them as they walked. Its rocks were covered in runes interspersed with towering spirals that repeated until their swishing in and out of the shadows became a sort of nausea.

For a moment, Clegane thought the patterns looked like the fiery tales of of comets chasing each other. Perhaps that's what the symbol represented – the eternal dance of the red star crossing stuck on the wheel of time.

Then came the statues. Lines of Stark kings and queens in various states of disrepair and neglect peered out of the dark, each with an iron sword across the laps. Silverwing, who had made her nest in these halls, had caused most damage off to their right where an entire room was left as rubble. With its roof partially collapsed, it had been steadily filling with snow since the dragon made its escape which then melted against walls that were warm to the touch, fed by whatever magic had lured the dragon. There were cracks all across the world through which the gods peeked, spying on their hunting grounds. The Weirwood sank their roots deep into the chasm.

"The tombs should be through these doors..." Sansa said, pointing to her left as a cascade of empty stone archways signalled a side room. Their doors were long since rotted away. Each room had one coffin sitting on a pedestal. Some contained personal items or spears and armour laid against the walls. One or two were empty, intended for someone who never arrived.

Clegane ducked his head into a few, curiosity getting the better of him. What he saw turned his blood cold. Death. It was so – empty.

"I know..." Sansa whispered, laying her hand gently on his arm. "These are the kings the maesters tell grand stories about. And here they are. A pile of bones. Their riches dust. It's why we tell stories. No one is inspired by the pathetic nature of our demise."

They kept going, following the crypts until their passageway ended in lattice work made of black wood blocking off the grand tomb build at the centre of the maze.

The lattice was smooth, shimmering in the torch light as if it were a liquid. Sansa pressed herself against one of its oddly-shaped gaps and saw the enormous, oval-shaped tomb sprawling behind. It was lit by flames that sprang from cracks in the ground. The walls and floor were capped in black glass, set together like the marble of King's Landing. White, withered roots dropped down from the roof like maiden's hair, pooling into coils where they hit the ground. Blue roses clambered up them, producing perfect blooms the size of Sansa's hands. They dropped their petals all over the ground into a bed of sapphire tears shed in mourning for the white coffin sitting in the middle of the room.

"It's beautiful."

Even Clegane thought so, captured for a moment by the melancholy romance. There was an elegant balance of eternal cold and the heat from the dozens of tiny flames snaking across the glass floor. Even he knew that this was cursed magic from the East. Whatever lay here, it was a jewel hiding in a king's tomb like plunder from the underworld.

"No wonder yer had a dragon dug in 'ere..." said Clegane, nodding at the fire. "Stand aside." He pushed Sansa roughly out of the way before handing her his torch.

"Wait. Desecrating a tomb is a sin against the gods."

"Yer have a better idea, Lady Stark?"

She didn't.

The ice thickened on the walls around them, growing into hooked claws from the ceiling as the Night King made his way through the labyrinth. His ungodsly presence stole the life from the air, making it stick in Sansa's lungs. A strange feeling crept into her mind, as though she could feel him in there, hunting around the edges of her thoughts. She'd never been like her siblings, dreaming in the minds of others. Her limited gift extended to a few feverish turns as a child. These glimpses were all she experienced before she grew out of the condition that wove its way through most Starks. Magic was foreign to her. Part of Sansa was worried that there wasn't enough of it in her blood to protect her from what was coming, even in the very heart of Winterfell. It was only now that she realised, it was this self doubt that had driven her to cast her kin out into the South away from the protection her birthright afforded them. Was it a mistake? More likely it made no difference. When the gods wanted their revenge, they found a way to take.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Clegane's blade coming down hard on the Ironwood door. The wood splintered under the force, screeching as several of its cross-bars were cut apart. It wasn't enough, so he raised his weapon again and started hacking at the door. The whole thing was a vile raping of a sacred tomb and, while watching the horror, Sansa wondered who it was that lay in such splendour. There had been nothing said in her maester's stories. No whispers from her father. Great things were sometimes forgotten – more often, they were buried. But how did the Starks forget this?

The last blow to the door came as a kick. Its framework twisted while Clegane bent part of it inward then prised it far enough apart for Sansa to slip inside. Her feet slid at once on the glass floor. It was like walking on ice except dry – an unusual sensation that unsettled her as the thick curtains of Weirwood roots assaulted her face and shoulders. Dread weighed her down, as if someone had thrown her into the sea with a sack of stones lashed to her ankles. She turned to run but Clegane blocked her path, pushing his large frame through the door. He eyed the young queen curiously but made no comment on her obvious fear.

"Now, we wait… There's nowhere left to run. It's alright." He added, in a rare moment of softness. Pity, maybe. She was very young to die. "Death comes for us all, little bird. Meet it on 'yer perch."

"Maester Luwin used to tell stories about the extinct Houses. I imagine he enjoyed their mystery. When things are gone, we are able to forgive their sins and envision greatness that is perhaps not entirely accurate. They were the missing threads of the world, to him."

"You did not enjoy his stories?"

"Not really," Sansa admitted. "I remember thinking, what would it have been like to be the last lady of a House? To oversee the death of an empire… The rise and fall of the game is all well and good, Lord Baelish stirred a fascination for that in me during my years in King's Landing, but finality? No. I hated the stories of those whose purpose in history was simply to finish. I must have guessed what the gods had in mind for me. Even as a child. Do you believe that's possible? Fate..."

"Your bastard brother certainly thinks so." Clegane answered, wary of her mood. Fatalism was as dangerous as the sword. He had lost track of how many soldiers had walked into death simply because they felt it was their destiny. "I've never been much for it. Not much of a fate, is it? Only the highborn think they have grand destinies. The rest of us pray not to be shat on or cut to bits by a stranger."

"High born like the dragon queen? Is she not playing into some grand destiny and sweeping the world along with her?"

"She certainly seems to think she is – that cunt Bear too." He agreed. "But the gods have promised them nothing. They could soon as die today leaving us fools to work out the rest on our own."

"I wish I were more like her."

"Don't," he stopped her firmly. "I'd die a thousand times for you and not once for that Southern Horselord whore."

Now, the Weirwood roots were freezing together, their gentle motion killed by the encroaching cold. Frost coated the black glass floor, taking away most of its beauty.

"Get yerself ready."

Sansa tried, holding her small sword in one hand while setting her torch on the ground where it continued to burn. They didn't need its light with the rest of the room filed with flame. There was nothing she could do to stop her hands shaking. Her heart raced furiously as the tread of inevitable doom approached. When her father had been murdered before her eyes, there had been no time to fear, but this – knowing with absolute certainty what awaited – it was worse. This must be how the soldiers felt when her family sent them into battle. What a horrific thing. How cursed the gods were to make them play out sad, hopeless lives.

Above, the ice crystals grew. They jutted down, building on nothing as they competed with the frozen veils of roots. Together, they created a world of blades, obscuring movement with delicate sheets of ice that Sansa guessed could be broken with a strike from Clegane's sword if he decided to swing. He did not. Like her, he waited in silence.

They could tell that the creature was approaching as their breath thickened into mist. Around them, the veneer of ice continued to expand across the stone outside the crypt but was prevented from touching the black glass that lined the room. They were under the dead Weirwood, Sansa reaslied. Its burned out husk protruded from the snow in the Godswood, ravaged and ruined, but underground its roots appeared to be alive, seeking out another life like a vine working its way through the passages of the dead.

And then, there he was. The Night King. Appearing in the corridor like a ghost with his blue eyes piercing through the darkness.

Clegane tightened his hold on his sword with a creak of leather.

The walking corpse wasn't looking at them, he was fixated on the stone coffin behind. Slowly, his arm reached out into the air, pointing toward the sight. His fingertips grazed through nothing, as if in caress of a memory.

"What's it doin'?"

"Sh!" Sansa hissed.

The Night King stood in the doorway, transfixed.

Clegane craned his head, peering behind the creature. "Bastard has come alone..." He added, although with his voice dropped to a breath. This renewed his courage. "Reckon I can take him."

"Something's wrong," Sansa insisted. "If he was here to kill us, we'd be dead. Maybe he can't enter the ro-"

That fleeting hope was dashed immediately as the Night King picked his way between the ruined bars whose Ironwood edges seared his skin wherever they touched, sending faint trails of smoke into the air. Sansa reached for Clegane's tunic, holding him back from violence. His behaviour was not what she had expected.

"The – the woods are cold this night." The ancient Stark words scratched, unpracticed, from Sansa's throat. It was a fragment taught to her in childhood by her father, a relic of words even older than their house banners.

The Night King snapped his head around to her, broken out of his reverie. Those blue eyes bore in to Sansa. She could feel them digging at her soul like a rat eating its way out of an empty grain silo. Oh yes. He was a Stark. An old Stark back when they had been pure, First Men. She did not know if he recognised her as kin. What must she look like to him? A pale imitation of the Stark House without a dream.

His reply came as a scratch of wind. Sansa did not understand the words but the mere fact that he spoke meant that at most of the stories about him were wrong. "He's a Stark…" Sansa rose onto tiptoes, to murmur against Clegane's ear.

"We could run."

She shook her head, careful not to startle the Night King with any sudden movements. He was like a wolf picking its way through the wood, content so long as it was left alone. "The whole army of the dead will be outside waiting for us. We'd be cut to pieces."

He knew that she was right. Clegane imagined their hollowed out faces standing against the snow, wondering if he would count himself among their ranks before the day was out. A sensible man would set himself alight but he could not face the fire, even in death.

As a single body, he and Sansa tried to quietly drift away from the Night King, creeping around the sheets of ice that had formed between the Weirwood roots. Soon, they found themselves trapped against the wall with a few stray fires licking between the cracks in the floor.

The Night King approached the white tomb with the reverence of a priest. Blue petals fell onto his body as he passed beneath a thick bower of Winter roses. They froze where they sat upon his shoulders and neck. Any that brushed loose, clattered to the glass floor and shattered. He reached for the featureless coffin and, in a minute of absence, lay himself across the stone as if he were a silvery cape draped on the shoulder of a queen.

Ice crystals quivered in sorrow. The flames died down, lowering the room to an artificial twilight and extinguished the torches Sansa and Clegane carried which they then discarded on the floor. Sansa laced her fingers through Clegane's hand without a word. She could feel his heartbeat against her palm. Though he appeared steadfast, it thrashed wildly, like hers, as they witnessed the intimacy of the gods.

Collecting his nerve, the Night King rose from his embrace and gripped onto the edge of the coffin lid. Then, with considerable strength far greater than that of a mortal man, he started to push. At first, nothing happened. The lid was sealed in place with the weight of thousands of years. His feet slid against the glass floor, struggling for traction. Finally, his heel propped itself against one of the coiled Weirwood roots and the added force broke the seal. The coffin lid gave a few inches to one side with a hiss of air. The Night King startled but did not stop, redoubling his efforts until he had the whole slab of stone open at a sharp diagonal.

It was impossible for Sansa to tell if the look on his face was one of joy or despair. For what felt like an eternity, nothing in the whole world moved. Perfection, if it ever existed in the material world, lay in the uncertainty between life and death.

From the coffin, a hand reached out. Delicate. Pale. It belonged to a young woman and laid itself tenderly over the Night King's. More blue petals twirled through the air. Then, the steady drip of water as some of the ice near the open flames melted. A terrible, mournful sound slipped out from his lips. Part of the Night King had wished her to be dead but now he knew for certain that his queen had been imprisoned alive, or as close to life as an ancient empress resurrected by necromancers could be. While he had been forced to wander the furthest extremities of the frozen world in the company of cursed bones, she had been here – existing in the horror of a night that never ended.

Enraged, the Night King pushed the coffin lid all the way off. It broke into three pieces as it hit the glass floor. There was no magic in it, just the weight of ordinary stone. He reached in and fished out the Amethyst Empress, lifting her gently into his arms. His army, forgotten.

Sansa had never seen anyone more beautiful than her.

When the stories talked about the Night King's corpse bride, she had envisioned a skeletal creature, hunched over like a witch with cruel blue eyes and matted hair. There were tales of bones sticking out of her cheeks, ice grown over her breasts, and threads of sinew knitting her dried skin into place. Only a powerful spell could bewitch a Northern man into the arms of such a monster. It was easier to believe. A cautionary tale against the mingling of North and the corrupt religions of the South.

Now that Sansa found herself standing beside them, there was no mistaking the truth. The woman cradled in the Night King's arms was a dragon. Her violet eyes were iridescent, flickering like stars breaking through at dusk. Long silver hair was spun up into messy plaits that had partially undone while she lay in her prison, gathering dust. Threaded through their weave were tiny purple jewels. Amethysts. There were more of them hung around her neck in heavy chains, twisted together like dragon tails in the heat of copulation. Her bodice was formed into a delicately crafted leather corset imprinted with runes that only a handful of priests in Asshai could read. Its collar was lined with the mane of a white lion, while lengths of seal leather fell down into a battle skirt, beneath which she wore sturdy pants – scared from the wars that they had endured. Even her skin, where it was exposed, had faint scale-like impressions. Sansa could not tell if these were tattoos put on by her priests, or a natural expression of the rumoured mingling of dragon blood. The deformity was most noticeable at the back of her neck, where the scales came together like the spine of a dragon, complete with a few small protrusions that were either horns or pieces of shell inlaid into her skin.

No, Sansa was wrong, the woman wasn't a Targaryen. Targaryens were nothing but shadows collecting after the Dawn, distorted by a forest of fallen swords. If ever the old gods had walked the earth, this is what they had looked like. The first people. The creators of magic in its purest form. The people who lived through vast expanses of time as if they had a hold over life and death. Was this white queen alive or dead? Sansa could not tell. There were stains of death clinging to her flesh but the work of the necromancers had returned her to a mimic of life good enough to fool the rigours of decay which had not laid so much as a sweep of hair on her.

The Night King lowered his forehead, pressing it against hers in the tenderest of gestures. Instinct made Clegane's hand tighten around his sword. Surely the time was now. Here, he could end this whole damn mess of war while the bastard was distracted. Whether it was right or wrong, if he slaughtered them both then it would be over. He swept forward, sliding out of Sansa's hold with his sword rising over his shoulder. Clegane side-stepped the Weirwood roots and puddles of freshly melted ice – each one reflecting the flames hissing at the edges of the room.

Sansa reached to stop him, but it was too late. Clegane appeared beside the Night King and bore his sword down on the couple with every ounce of brute force he had left. As the rough dragonglass edge approached the Night King's neck, the Amethyst Empress slid her delicate arm between the sword and her lover. There was a flicker of terror in the Night King's eyes when he saw what she had done but when the blade hit her skin, the smoking glass shattered with a screech that echoed through the catacombs. Clegane fell to the side with the weight of his strike, hitting the ground clutching the empty handle of his sword. Its pieces were strewn around him, black as night. He saw her bare feet touch the ground and the fragments of dragonglass roll away from her in fear. Clegane already knew that his mistake would cost him. Disarmed, he heard the woman's foul whispers upon the air. They caught in the veils of roots hanging around them. Those which were free, twitched. Their ends picked themselves up off the floor and wrapped themselves around Clegane's ankles, arms and neck – pinning him to the ground. He struggled against their freezing grip, but each time he moved they tightened until he was forced to lay perfectly still if he wished to keep breathing.

Fury burned behind the purple eyes of the Amethyst Empress. She had been asleep too long with only her own thoughts for company. In her prison, she'd listened to the world through the roots of the Weirwood. Year after year, the Starks would come and kneel on the ground above her tomb, murmuring their prayers and their secrets to their sacred tree. She followed the evolution of their language and the misspent lives of their children who, one after the other, came to rest in the ground alongside her – silent. Stepping over Clegane, she set her attention on the red haired woman. A pup, at best. If this creature had been born a thousand years ago, she'd have been left out to die in the snow. Weakness used to be a thing of scorn, now it had infested the Northern lines, leaving their kin soft and easy to slaughter. They may as well be children.

"Please…" Sansa breathed, her breath that of ice.

"Please – what?" The empress replied, as the dragonglass pieces continued to scatter around the room like a nest of beetles. Her magic was tangible – as if she could stop men's hearts with a look.

Sansa didn't know what she was asking for. The underground forest of Weirwood shook the ice off their roots, leaving a thick layer of snow on the ground. It was as if the North waited on her command. Sansa felt betrayed by the Old Gods. The Wildlings had tried to warn the North for millennia – the gods work for their own ends. Northern prayers amuse their ears and if they are granted, it is only on a whim. Now, Sansa understood. There was only type of magic…

She fell to the ground, kneeling both at the queen's feet and Clegane's side. Sansa placed one hand on his chest and dipped her head in the universal sign of servitude.

"Mercy…" Sansa begged the queen, knowing full well that the woman's life had been one of torment and betrayal at the hands of her kin. She could hear Clegane's breath strangled in his throat where the Weirwood toyed with his life. He was like a felled oak laying helpless after the huntsman's axe.

"You are queen of the ashes," the Amethyst Empress purred. "The trees said you'd come in the Starks' last Winter."

Her warning made Sansa shake. Last. Slowly, Sansa lifted her head and dared to look upon the Dawnish woman. "What do you want? To rule the North?"

A flutter of wings disturbed them as an old crow awkwardly navigated the narrow passageways of the Winterfell crypts. Its little black body ducked through grate across the door, brushed its wings on a few roots and finally settled on the Empress's outstretched hand. The old Night's Watch raven that had kept the commanders company for thousands of years rubbed its beak affectionately against the woman's hand. She, in turn, stroked its feathers.

"Do you still imagine that this is a game of thrones?"


THE BARROWLANDSTHE NORTH

The air had been full of muted thunder. Every time a glacier swallowed a mountain pass, it reverberated through the fragmented tailbone of the Frostfangs. Jon Snow's caravan had moved well beyond the last of the ranges but there was still the odd lonely mountain jutting up from the plains. Most were mere bumps on the Northern façade but some, like the one to his West, stabbed out of the ground as a blade pushed right through a man's chest with sheets of ice bleeding down its steep, black faces.

Jon had the entirety of Winterfell eight-abreast, staggering on the muddy Kingsroad. There was a frost starting at its edges, capping the uneven rocks that made the fields either side a nightmare to farm. Every now and then, a squat hut or thatched cabin appeared desolate on the wind-stripped grass. It should have been six feet high with grain but the cold turned the rains to snow, falling on the mountains instead of the flat. The War of the Five Kings had left its mark with the odd abandoned wagon turned onto its side, pilfered of wheels and steel. There were a few people tucked away in the houses furthest from the road. Firelight in their windows and lazy drizzles of smoke sinking out of their chimneys gave them away.

Brienne was nearby. Jon waved her over. They were all on foot at the moment, giving their horses a break. She led hers with the lightest of touches. Brienne rarely addressed Jon, preferring to wait for an instruction.

"See those houses along there?"

"Aye."

"Send a man to each one as we pass. Tell them that Winterfell is abandoned and the snows are coming."

"Is there any point?"

He could not help his smirk. She fought her superiors as easily as other men drew breath. "Give them the chance. Every one that dies is another sword we'll have to fight later."

With that, at least, Brienne could not disagree. She whistled and a cluster of soldier materialised around her. Jon left her to it and soon there were scouts heading off into the farms.

"What are you doing off your horse, stumbling about?" Royce emerged from the grey mass of ambling bodies. A few days in the mud and there was scarce to choose between lord and soldier. Everyone was tired and blistered but the mood was improving now that there was solid ground beneath their feet instead of snow. There might even be rabbit and deer later.

"Only for a moment," Jon insisted. He had one arm draped around his horse's neck, leaning heavily on her. "My arse was in danger of falling off if I stayed up there any longer. Something wrong, Lord Royce?"

The large man nodded. "That Red Witch of yours. My men saw her ride out in advance of the party before dawn. We are just coming up on her position now. Looks like she's climbed one of them hills up ahead and built herself a fire. Far as anyone can work out, she's been in a trance for hours, facing North."

Jon led his horse out of the caravan, moving over to the edge of the road with Royce. He could see Kinvara's red cloak half way up a rocky escarpment and a smear of grey. The fire, if it was still alight, was too small to make out. All he could do was shrug. "I don' know much about witches."

"Nor I," Royce concurred. "They were not exactly standard attire in the war." This time he stopped and turned toward the North. "That storm is sitting right over Winterfell. Hasn't moved since first light."

Jon stood beside him but could not bring himself to turn around. He kept his eyes on the South. That is where he had to take his people. "I know what you're thinking."

"Do you, aye?"

"And you know what I am going ter say."

"What if we're wrong, Snow?"

"Too late now if we are." Jon paused. His hair had grown in the past weeks and now his dark, greasy curls stuck in his eyes under the weight of the persistent fog. He'd always preferred the world cold rather than damp. The damp was like rot – it got into everything. "I think I have walked far enough today, help me back onto my horse."

When it was done, Royce gave the mare a good rub along her neck. Jon watched silently. When they had first met, he had no strong opinion one way or the other on the Royce family but he was beginning to see why his father valued their advice. They were a strong, stoic House – despite their love of flashy armour and pretty trinkets. There was a pragmatism about them that Jon rather liked. Perhaps it came from growing up in the rafters of the world.

"I don't want her ter die…" Jon whispered. Royce's hand stilled on the horse's mane. "I've lived death. It's not like what the maesters say. There's no peace in it. No quiet dreams. You know you're dead. Laying there. Another corpse breaking down into the earth. We are food for the gods like shit in the roots of a tree. If men knew the truth of it, they would scatter on the winds. Find a hole and hide away."

"Is that why you don't sleep, Snow?" Royce lifted his gaze up to the pale-faced Stark.

"I can't help but think that all we're doing is delaying the inevitable – adding more bodies to the pile. The gods don't want to kill us, they farm us. What would you do, if you knew the truth?"

"I wouldn't tell a fucking soul." Royce hissed, in caution. "This lot are scared shitless as it is. Men don't win wars when they're despondent. You've got to give them something to fight for. So, if anyone comes asking yer questions about the great beyond – lie your arse off, right? Halls full of fish, mead and gold."

Jon's face loosened into the closest thing a Stark got to a smile. "What about you, Royce?"

"Me? I'm going to pretend that I never heard any of that. Learn to talk about women, Stark. It's a better topic for the long march to war."

"Well… There was this Wildling…"

"Oh aye… And how did that go?"

For the first time, Jon was able to remember Ygritte without a stab of pain in his soul. "She ah – shot me with an arrow. More than once."

"You Starks are always chasing something dangerous. My father used to say it was what kept you the scariest sons of bitches in the North. Would shag the woodswitches if you thought it'd stop the Winter."

"That must be what my sister sees in you."

Royce shook his head. "Truth be told, Snow, I have no idea what Sansa thinks. That cunt husband of hers bricked her into a tomb. She'll come out when she's ready I just – I hope – I hope I'm more than a good name. Gods help me, I actually love her."