He was a grieving mother, setting her son before the Heart Tree to let them freeze. The child was crying, though more weakly than he had a week ago. There had been almost no food, almost no milk for the babe, and he had been ever so small to begin with. She had given birth to him but a year ago, a year in which the winter had seemed no different than any other. She had been hungry then too, had feared death then too, but the hunger pangs had been nothing to the sharp stabbing in her guts she felt now.

The fear of death had been so impersonal and strange. She had seen so many others die, seen the boy's own father die, had suffered and bled and almost died herself a dozen times. But it was all at an end now and she could finally be at peace. She set the boy before the heart tree, raised her eyes to look upon its bleeding face, and let the tears freeze upon her cheeks as her babe's wailing finally stopped altogether.

He was a man, a warrior of Magnar Bers, kneeling and confessing his sins to the Heart Tree. They had been fighting for his whole life. First against men from the south fleeing the dragons, then against men from the North fleeing the winter, and then against their own people as the cold broke their villages in twain and turned decent men into beasts who knew nothing more than hunger. A few hundred still huddled in the shelter of the Greatkeep, living at the meager charity the Magnar dispensed, but he knew all too well the grain would not last till spring, and the people would turn on them as one man. Sometimes, as he stared out into the great white beyond from atop the battlements, he would think of leaping off to fly. He raised his eyes to look upon the face of the tree, but then he looked beyond to some awful thing just past the tree, some terrible white creature of frost and hate, who stepped into view and gutted the man where he stood upon the snow.

He was Magnar Brondyn Ulfsark, the last and least of the Magnars, leading the last of the men who lived, praying before a freestanding heart tree for wisdom, for guidance, for anything that would see them through winter. He had suffered so long and seen so many dead and he could not bear it. The wars, the dragons, the winters, the others, plague after plague that had all but wiped out this entire generation. And he had been helpless to stop it.

He was Magnar Ulfsark, the greatest of the Magnars of the new kingdom, praying in thanks before a heart tree for the deliverance that had been wrought. The winter snows had melted, the Others retreated behind a great Wall of ice, and peace had been brought along with spring, and all he could do was believe that the Old Gods of the Forest had saved them. It must have been the Old Gods that saved them, for no other force had remained that could have ever driven the Others back.

He was Bran, waking to life from his seat upon the tree. Every joint of his body felt stiff, and the dim light of the cave made it impossible to tell what time of day it was. Hodor sat not far off, slowly rocking and hodoring to himself.

Lord Brynden had died a few days ago. At least, so Bran assumed. He had been wrong before. The man's breathing had been so shallow to begin with, and neither he nor Bran spent many days in the waking world. But flies had gathered around his eyes and he slumped ever further into the embrace of the roots of the tree. Little brown lines crept up along his neck, and a foul smell had started to fill the chamber.

"Bran! You're awake." Meera stumbled into the cave and smiled. In the dim light of the cave it was hard to make out any specific features, but he could feel her presence on a deeper level, in the same manner he could feel Summer or the children or the ravens of the cave. She was tired, he could tell, and anxious, but still possessed a gleam of hope. "I've been hoping I would catch you awake for… some time now."

"How long has it been?" His voice - his real voice - felt strange and dry in his throat. He felt the impulse to drink something, to eat something, but he was neither hungry nor thirsty. "How long has it been."

She shook her head. "I don't know. Well, I don't know how long it's been since you were last awake, but it's been something like a week since I've seen you. Days are hard to track now. The sun only comes up for a few hours and even then it's weak and red and the clouds choke out what little light there is. If I'm even up and about to see it. Jojen has-"

"Jojen can speak for himself," Jojen said, coming in and shaking off the snow. Jojen's face had become a little more than skin stretched tight over bone, with deep hollows filling with shadow every time he turned his head. His former self-serious confidence had all but vanished and Bran was afraid to ask the reason. "Meera and I were out scouting."

"I know," Bran said, and felt a little guilty. "Summer was-"

"Yes, yes," Jojen said, his voice touched with a bit of annoyance. "We know. You'll also know that the Others have gone south then?"

He had not, but he did not say as much. There were so many times and places that required his attention these days, he could not remember half of what had happened in the last week. But he sensed that anything he said would only make Jojen more frustrated and despondent. But still, he had to ask. "Do you think you can go home then?"

"It's no use," Meera said. "It's too far and too cold. We're better off hunting in the ice. There are fish in some of the lakes, and deer if you know where to look. Elk too. It's better than relying on nuts and paste."

"Doesn't matter much either way," Jojen said. "There's nothing we can do in the south. Everything's happened as we expected and whatever happens next won't be our choice."

Bran nodded weakly as though he understood, but he really did not. "Lord Brynden's dead," he said, just for the sake of saying something. "I can still feel his presence after a fashion, but he's… he's moved on. I am sorry that his body remains here, I know it must… smell." He felt awful for treating the old man so callously, but he had never truly known him well, either.

Meera and Jojen exchanged a look. "We talked to the Children about that," she said. "They said the tree will take him in time. Just like all the other Greenseers."

Just like me, Bran thought, but he did not think it. He had spent a lifetime over the last week, looking through the eyes of heart trees, listening to the thoughts of Greenseers. He felt old already, as though a hundred years had passed in just a few days. It all ran together. What was old and what was new?

"The North is… ready, I think." His confidence surprised him. "My brother Jon and Stannis have come to terms. They've got my sisters and almost all of the North behind them. They've fought the others once, I think. Or maybe twice." A lady had been crying over a letter in front of a heart tree just a few days ago.

"They can't win," Jojen said, settling down on a rock and looking down. "You know that better than anyone now."

"I know. But it gives us more time."

"Time." Jojen said, and shook his head.

"Don't mind him." Meera said. "He's never lived through a winter before, so now that it's finally come he thinks his life is over."

Bran did not reply. He had felt his life over before, when he had first woken to find his legs missing. But now he had wings and a million things to do and none of them seemed to matter. The days stretched on and he tried and tried to reach his family, but it never worked. The Greenseers in his dreams scolded him, pushed him, pleaded with him, and he felt tired constantly, felt as though he needed to eat or sleep or drink or bathe, even though he knew he was past such things now.

"Have you seen anything in your dreams?" Meera said with a hint of desperation in her voice. "Did Lord Brynden say anything to you?"

He had said plenty, both before and after he died. Not much of it had helped. "I went all the way to the start, the very beginning. The coming of the First Men, the wars, the Hammer of the Waters, and then the Others and the alliance against them."

"...and what did you learn? What did they do to stop the Others? What was their plan?"

"Fight. Run. Hope someone else finds a solution," he said. "Same as us." He did not know what he had expected. If even Lord Brynden had not seen any hope in a hundred years, what had Bran hoped to find? The ancient peoples that had lived through the long night had been too hungry and desperate to have any real knowledge of what was happening to them. It was only much later that the stories and records had been compiled into something useful, and even after lifetimes of effort most of those had been severely incomplete. Old Nan's stories had been half made up out of her own head, but they had as much truth in them as any of his visions of the past.

"What did you expect?" Jojen said, scowling. "You should have known better than to think the answers lay in the past."

"I just thought…"

"You know what you have to do." Jojen said. "He told you months ago."

Bran sighed. "I know."

"You're trying to find another way," Jojen said, "Don't. It will only make things harder."

Bran felt an angry twisting in his chest. Jojen thought he could order everyone about. Jojen thought he was in charge. Bran could feel Hodor's mind close by, could jump into his skin as easily as breathing. Bran could bring Summer in from outside. Then he'd -

"Bran." Meera put a hand on his shoulder. "We're all tired from our travels. Please."

Bran closed his eyes and willed himself not to be angry. A part of him wanted to stay mad, to punish Jojen for being such a miserable, controlling… But he knew it was pointless. He knew why Jojen felt the way he did. He could not even say Jojen was wrong. As much as he hated himself for it he found himself agreeing with him more and more every day.

Time passed. He fell in and out of dreaming, flying between past and present. He was a raven, he was a dog, he was a tree. He would wake sometimes and stare at Hodor or Meera mutely, until he realized he was staring at them in the waking world and they could see him. Was this what it had been like for Lord Brynden? He had not remembered his lover or his brothers by the end. Bran saw his brothers and sisters often, but always in the past. Sometimes father or mother or he himself stood there with them. All in the past, and nothing like the present.

He went farther back, as far as he could go.

He was Harwin, simple Harwin, a warrior of the Elk tribe who had set out with his kin to seek the legendary children of the forest. He knelt before the weeping tree and sank within himself, wishing only for death to take him. Hundreds of miles and dozens of friends left dead in the snow and he had not even grief left to him. His brother, his sister, his dog, his sword, all had fallen on the way, and in the end what had he found? Another of the weeping trees of the Children, but no sign of the Children themselves.

He had not found the Children, but the Others had found him. One of them stalked at the edge of his vision even now, pale and fair and lifeless, with skin like snow and eyes painfully, unnaturally bright. It bore a leaf-thin sword of crystal, and wore translucent armor, and walked atop the snow as light as air. He could not find it in himself to be sad, could not even find it in himself to hate them, not any more. For so many weeks they had been his only companion in the white expanse. They could have killed him days ago, as they had killed some of his friends at the beginning, but they had stopped attacking his party months ago. Perhaps they had known all along how fruitless his journey was, perhaps some sadistic part of them enjoyed watching him plunge ever onward, starving and freezing and crying.

"What is it you want?" He called out. "Why must you kill us? What path forward can you offer us?"

The Other tilted its head as if considering the question and then lifted its shoulders ever so slightly, as though it were shrugging. Gods. He wanted to scream. He had fought in his days as a man. Killed, even, but never without a purpose. Every killer he had met in all his life had been the same. Death had always been a means to an ends. Bears and wolves killed to eat, men killed for fur, or to steal from their fellow man, or to win glory. Even old evil Kell had found pleasure of a sort in the act. They all had reasons, but the Others did not.

The Other had come closer now, walking lightly atop the snow and studying him where he knelt. There were more of them coming out of the woods, dozens of them, as many as he had ever seen in one place.

"Why do you bring the cold?" Harwin asked. "Is there aught we can offer you to bring back the Dawn?" He knew the words were pointless even as he said them. What reasoning could be made with the Others?

The other tilted its head as if confused by his question. "We do not bring the cold, the cold brings us."

The Other's voice was high and soft like that of a child, and Harwin shuddered to hear it. Why had they chosen now to speak to him? Why… but no, that did not matter. He had come so far, and his journey had been so fruitless. He could not help but grasp for some sense of purpose. If he found some answer, even one that he carried to his grave, that would be enough. "What does that m-mean?" He said, his teeth chattering in spite of his best efforts.

"You left us in the cold to die, and the cold gave us life." the Other said. "It moves us and we move with it."

None of it made any sense. Harwin had left many to die, but never by choice, and the Other did not bear the face of any he knew. What did the Other mean by accusing him like this? He grit his teeth. He had not come this far to play at riddles. He would have answers "But why?" He repeated stupidly. "Why does the cold advance? Why do you kill? Why do you spare me when you have killed so many?"

"Why does the sun rise, or the tide come in?" It said. "It is our nature. Heat, life, these things are abhorrent. But you and yours are but an amusement of ours, a stone against which we hone our blades. Soon those born of fire will come, and then war will begin in earnest. We have only spared you, because your-"

Something in his mind came unstuck and he remembered the stories that had come out of the far south, long before everything went cold. "Dragons," he said. "The Dragons. This is some war between your gods, between the - between cold and heat. Between life and death, yes?"

The Other frowned, the motion coming across more practiced than genuine. "The Night and the Dawn are not men and do not war. We who are born of them and of men, we servants of the cold and heat… we war, because it is the nature of men to war, and the nature of cold and heat to be opposed."

Whatever flicker of hope that had remained in Harwin died out. The Dragons were no different from the Others. The stories that had come out of the South had been of plague and fire and death. If these powers were to war with one another there would be nothing and no one left. But he had never had any more than a fool's hope when he began. It had been a hope so small that he could not even find it in himself to cry, now that it had been dashed to pieces. He shivered. For him at least death would come soon, and he thanked all the gods for that. The air around them had become so cold it ached in his lungs whenever he breathed. He wanted to lie down and sleep, and wake again in the realm of the gods.

And yet, and yet, he had to try once more, before death took him. He had to try once more, if he was to face his fathers in death.

"Form a pact with us," He said, "Form a pact with us as my ancestors forged a pact with the Children. We can pay you tribute, we can fight in your wars, we can… If you can keep us alive in spite of the cold, we could…" His voice trailed off. What could the Others want? The Others stared at him impassively without speaking, and Harwin felt they must think him the king of fools. Harwin laughed in spite of everything. What had he been thinking?

A moment passed. Living longer had become unbearable to Harwin. He looked up. Kill me. He wanted to say, but the words did not come. They merely stood still as if carved from ice. At last one of them spoke.

"We had not considered this," it said, a quiet laugh playing on the air. "Such a uniquely human notion. We would speak to you more on this matter, but your heat is fading. There are some of the Children near here, and we will send you to them."

The dream faded. Harwin had walked away from that tree, Bran knew, and become the first human greenseer. He had forged the pact of ice, the pact that had led to the raising of the Wall and the order of the Night's Watch. He was not sure of the details. Harwin's memory was somewhere in the tempest of whispering voices, but it was impossible to discern anything specific from him. Some form of pact had been struck, some form of pact that had been acceptable to the Others.

He was Bran again, sitting in the tree in the near-dark of the cave. The others were all there, silent and sleeping. Was it night? Did that matter?

"You were seeing the dream of the Last Hero again." Jojen's voice caught Bran by surprise. He had not been asleep after all. Bran could barely make out his face in the near-dark, but the scant light there was cast deep shadows on his face. His skin was stretched thin over his skull, and his wide, serious eyes were wider and more alert than ever. Had they run out of food? Bran feared what would follow if that happened. Old Nan had told him stories of the Skagosi cannibals. The idea of waking up to simply find Hodor or Meera or Jojen missing was… He could not afford to think such dark thoughts.

"Yes," he said. "I was."

"Good," Jojen said. "So you know what you have to say."

No, Bran wanted to say. The dreams were only memories, not answers. The notion had been to make a new pact with the Others, but what pact was there to make? So little survived from that time. Even the memories were tangled, hazy, and unclear. There was something in the oaths of the Night's Watch, something in how the Wall had been raised, and ever greenseer who had ever died had had some sort of theory. All their voices argued night and day, whispering, always whispering.

"I know what I'm going to say," he said. Jojen wouldn't accept any other answer.

"Good," Jojen said again. "Good."

Days passed. Or weeks, perhaps, Bran could not tell the difference. He sought the Others. He could walk in many skins at once now, a dozen birds and hounds and hares. There were not so many animals upon the land as there should have been, and what few there were had taken shelter beneath the snow in their dens, hiding from the sudden bitter cold that bore down upon them. Even with Bran driving them from their dens and nests to hunt, it was slow going. But still, with so many minds bound to his will, it was not hard to find the Others. The wolves and dogs could practically taste their approach on the wind, a sudden terror that Bran could feel as sharp as the cold itself.

He did not approach immediately. Was he afraid? He supposed he must be. Perhaps it was just the animals who were afraid, and Bran who felt it. Perhaps he really was afraid too, despite the remoteness of the Others from his physical form. There had been a time when he had dreamed of being a hero like Aemon the Dragonknight, but now that he found himself walking in the footsteps of the Last Hero, he could only fear that he had not been ready, that he would never be ready. And yet how could he justify delaying, when a thousand more men of the North died every day? He had seen them while flying, bands of men and women and children, mothers carrying children that had already frozen to death, fathers who were starving themselves to try and keep their family fed. He knew the pain they felt, he knew that if anyone had the power to save them, it was him, and yet, and yet…

In the end he never found his courage but went on to approach them anyway. The agony of standing on the edge became too much, and there was nothing he could do but go forward. He walked in the body of a shadowcat, the most powerful and regal beast he had been able to find this far south of the Wall's remains. The ice and the sleet clouded all sight further than a few dozen feet, but he could sense the center of the storm easily enough. A huge towering undead giant stumbled out of the gloom, but it ignored Bran and kept marching sleepily forward. There were other wights too, smaller ones. Men and deer and horses. Bran wondered if the Others felt as choosy about their servants and he did.

Did they not approach because he was a beast? Did they only hate men and their kind? But no, that could not be it. There were other shadowcats here in the host, beasts that had been killed and made into wights that marched along with the rest, and besides, all the myths spoke of the Others being the enemies of all the living. If they had not killed his body yet, it must be because the Others were aware of Bran's presence, aware of him and accepting him as a diplomat.

Bran's shadowcat stopped and sat. If the Others meant to hold court with him, he would wait for them.

He felt them before he saw them. The air had been frost itself, but soon a wind cut through him that felt like a wave of cold water. Bran mewled into the air with pain, closing his eyes against the wind. But then all at once the wind stopped, and he could feel the heat of the sun.

The Others stood around him, tall and fair and beautiful, with weapons and armor of crystal. Some looked old or young or male or female but all were cold and impassive, and Bran's terror deepened. Not that he would die in this body, he had accepted that as a near certainty, but that what he attempted to do next might succeed.

He looked into the eyes of ice, and reached out with his third eye. The process felt natural now, easier than reaching out with his arm, but as his mind touched the mind of the Other, it suddenly felt as though icy water had filled his veins, and every one of Bran's dozen bodies shuddered at once.

"Reform the pact with me." he willed the thoughts into his head, strong as he could muster. "Forge the pact as you did with the Last Hero. Let us…" his thoughts became muddled. He could feel the displeasure of the Other, the contempt. This was not how it had been supposed to go. The thought of Lord Brynden had been that the Others were creatures of cold logic and reason, that an offer that had brokered peace with them ten thousand years ago could broker peace again. Lord Brynden had thought that if only he had been a stronger greenseer, that he might be able to do it himself, but Bran knew now that the plan had been hopeless from the start.

The pact was broken. The Others' thoughts were as clear as crystal. The pact we made with the men was made to be broken, and has now been paid in full. We march south to end our enemies once and for all, and we will reap the harvest of men that was promised to us.

He was even more hopeless than the Last Hero had been, then. Humanity had no hope but to fight. But even that was a faint flame. The wights would swell in number and quality as they swept south, and there would be new Others too, if the lore Lord Brynden had found was true. Jon had failed to break them at the first chance, and now it seemed they could not. Hope was dead. He wanted to retreat from the body of the shadowcat, retreat from everything, and live whatever meagre life he could in the cave with the last of the Children.

No. He couldn't fail! He couldn't fail, and he couldn't give up. The First Hero hadn't. Bran had felt his doubt with his own mind, and felt him overcome it. He had to find something, anything that could help him save the world.

"Before the first Long Night," he thought, "There was a time before the first Long Night. A time before you came south bringing death. What made you go to war in the first place? What stopped you from… waging war earlier?"

The Others did not react immediately. Bran could feel their confusion as though it was his own. He could sense, too, that they wished to kill him and refuse to answer. But Bran was not like Harwin the Last Hero. Bran was a greenseer, young and strong and bearing the remembrance of ten thousand years of greenseers behind him. "You will answer me," he thought, willing them to listen, to obey. "You will reveal to me what it is that made you hate life."

The minds of the Others strained against his. They did not want to answer, did not want even to think about answering. Bran felt like a spike of stone was being slowly pushed through his head, but he had to get an answer. He had to find a solution better than Harwin had found, better than Lord Brynden could have imagined.

We… simply did not desire to go south, before, The thoughts of the Others at last settled on this. Before the splitting of the moon, we were few in number, and Ice did not move us. But the moon split and now Ice moves us, grows our numbers.

The splitting of the moon? Bran remembered there had been some old story about that, but he could not place it. "Why did the moon split?" He mind was a flame. "How could that be undone? How could…"

That was the work of your kind, sorcerer. You would know better than we. We smell his stink upon you twice over.

Bran tried to collect his thoughts, tried to venture one more question. Who? What? When? What smell? But suddenly there was a new sensation in his mind, a third force, beside his own and the voice of the Others, a black something at the back of his mind, a mind of its own that was watching him, hating him. For a moment he could see it, not with the eyes of the shadowcat, but with the eye of his spirit. Something had attached itself to him, a thing with a thousand eyes, each more terrible and watchful than the last. The Others, terrible as they were, suddenly seemed a more distant and lesser threat.

Do not interfere, child.

The thought hit him like a hammer, and suddenly he was gone, out of the mind of the shadowcat. His mind tumbled, fragmented, shattered between a dozen minds, with no part of himself strong enough to find the center again… how long he tumbled like this, he did not know, but with great effort and agony he was able to find his center again, find the heartree's roots in the cave where his true body dwelled.

...And as he came back, a host of new pains assaulted him. Heat, chills, and sweat. A hoarse throat. He panted like a dog, and looked up to see all his friends around him, eyes full of fear.

"You saw the Others." Jojen was not asking.

Bran tried to say yes, but could not find his voice, so he nodded instead.

"You were screaming for hours just before now," Meera said. "So I guess that means…"

Bran wanted to cry. What did that mean? He did not know.

Jojen scowled and went off to the corner of the cage to sit in the dark. "He's failed," he said, with an air of finality. "The Others will kill everyone else, and then us, last of all."

"Jojen!" Meera hissed, but Bran wondered if he might be right. Still he supposed it did not matter much. So long as he lived, he would fight, like the Last Hero Harwin had done. He would be a hero like those out of songs, even if there were no one left alive to sing of him. He thought of the many-eyed thing and shivered. He could feel its touch still, feel it watching him. But he could watch it in return.

"I… failed," Bran said glumly, finding his voice at last. "But there's more we can do. Things have changed."