Sidestory:

Leaf shook off Ash's hand. She turned away from the others, who followed her with eyes forlorn and worried. Leaving her kindred to their songs, the Last Singer drew her cloak close as she scurried toward the mouth of the cave.

It was coming.

They called it the Great One, for they did not know its name and dared not ask. They knew not what it was or from whence it came, only that the Great One did as it pleased, and none had interfered. Not the cruel creature that lurked under the sea nor the baleful flame that dwelled beyond the shattered arm of the Empty Lands*. Even the venerable voices beneath the earth had remained hushed and silent.

The greenseer seldom spoke these days. He slept, but Leaf doubted he dreamed. Leaf herself had not for quite some time, for she and her kin were standing upon a shore, awaiting a wave that would reach a hundred leagues inland. What were dreams in the face of such certainty?

As the ground grew cold and her destination closer, the Last Singer thought of the others, of Ash, Black Knife, Coals, Scales, and Snowylocks. Those were not their names, but names they would be given by the last greenseer. Now, the last seer might never be born, and the Final Battle would never come to pass.

Claws scraped stone, and fingers trembled as Leaf reached the entrance.

She would never forget the night the Great One pierced the dark space between stars, casting constellations eons old into disarray. In the span of a single breath, it had subsumed the moon overhead and descended upon the lands stolen by Men. An unfathomable weight had pressed upon the very fabric of the world, unraveling countless songs yet unsung like poorly spun thread.

Leaf had once wandered the land. Though young by the measure of her people, she had witnessed the dying days of the dragons and shared in the visions of the three-eyed crow. Though she knew of events past, present, and promised, Leaf had beheld the shadow of the Great One and foresaw the world's end.

The ruin she feared never passed. That night, the Great One would cede the sky to the morning sun, but the songs would never return, hushed by a foreign power, runoffs from a leviathan settling within a shallow pool. Leaf had felt its power wash over her, suffusing her senses yet still out of reach, a strength she could not borrow, no more than she could quench her thirst from the sea.

The Enemy had lashed out with winter and wroth. But their struggle proved fruitless, for the Great One had turned its gaze northwards, and Leaf had never felt the stirrings of something so great and terrible.

There was no hope for the Enemy. All that remained was to learn if she and her kindred would share their doom and die this day.

The others had chosen to stay within their home, to sing, lament, and remember, awaiting whatever came. Leaf could not do the same. She had been born the last of a waning people. She had wandered the world and learned the Common Tongue, all to prepare the last greenseer for the Final Battle. That purpose had been taken from her, but Leaf had been born to witness the world. If Death came for them all, she would witness her own end.

Gathering her courage, the Last Singer left the protection of her home.

She stopped midstep.

Gone were the wind and cold, and in their place?

A vacuous silence.

There was no frost to nip at her skin, no moist earth to hush her steps. The cave just at her back now felt out of reach. Her ears discerned no sounds, her tongue no tastes, her nose no scents. And before her eyes stood a figure in the shape of a man.

"Good evening, young miss."

The sound reached her ears, and to her shock, Leaf recognized them as words, a greeting in the Common Tongue.

"Are you in need of anything?"

Daring to raise her gaze to the speaker, Leaf felt her vision blur. A sharp pain bloomed behind her eyes as she beheld a man unremarkable by any measure, dark of hair and slim of frame. His clothes did not glimmer with ill-gotten gains, nor were they adorned with the macabre remains of fallen foes. But the way the air moved–failed to move–about him, the way snow fled from his feet as he stood unstirring conjured feelings of a terrible stillness, a false peace forced upon the chaos of the natural world.

Then there were his eyes. Though the crow had a thousand and one to peer through time, their perception was that of a mortal man. How could they compare to those that held captive the very stars within their gaze?

Leaf looked upon the visage of the Great One and bit back bile as she fought for breath.

How? How had this being lived among the humans? How had they not realized what had stood in their midst? Had Brandon's get truly grown so blind? Or was it that blindness that compelled the Great One to live amongst them, unbothered and unseen?

The questions fled her mind as she recalled the Great One's own. A new fear overtook Leaf as she made sense of its words.

'Are you in need of anything?'

What was she to say? What answer could she possibly give when the fate of her people hung in the balance?

'Please, spare us.'

'Please, help us.'

'Save us.'

Desires centuries-old welled in her heart, but when she at last opened her mouth to speak, none passed her lips.

"Please," she whispered, beseeching the Great One with a voice raw and weary, "leave us be."

'Men have taken the world from us. It is no longer ours to live in. Leave us to our long dwindling.'

Leaf's vision turned bleary as she awaited the Great One's reply. The unfathomable being regarded her for the barest moment before turning away.

"Very well." It waved a hand before departing. "Then I wish you well."

The Last Singer remained silent and still as the Great One left the clearing, joined by another seemingly god-forged and god-touched. Only when the Great One disappeared did Leaf dare to collapse, falling to her knees as sound and sense returned to the world. With trembling hands clutching her cloak, Leaf did all she could to quiet her heart, unsure what she had done, whom she had spared or doomed. The songs were gone, the future mired with frightful uncertainty. And yet Leaf knew she would have made the same choice, however many times the Great One offered. The Last Singer only prayed she was strong enough to bear the consequences that were to follow.

TBC

Authors Summary:

I wanted to play around with the more mystical aspects of the asoiaf setting, a tricky thing to do when there's so much we do not know (hence what makes it mystical). Also wanted to illustrate how terrifying the Hunter must appear to those with the tiniest bit of magical insight.

Just some notes:

1. Those Who Sing the Song of Earth is the name the Children of the Forest gave themselves in the True Tongue.

2. *The Shattered arm of the Empty Lands alludes to the Arm of Dorne, a land bridge between Westeros and Essos shattered during the Children's war with the First Men.

Many thanks to KnightStar for his help.