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Aeron returned to the cave entrance.
He had not returned for comfort. Nor for answers.
No… he already got the answer.
His violet eyes, narrowed as he stared into the mouth of the cave. His shadows writhed, uneasy, drawn tight to his dark cloak.
He muttered to himself, a truth falling into place like the final piece of a long puzzle.
"The old man… he's the last one."
His voice was cold, dry as dead leaves.
"Not counting the Night King, who serves the Great Other… of course he's an Apostle. The ice has its sword. Fire had Beric Dondarrion. But you…"
He stepped forward, boots crunching on ancient bones.
"…you are neither flame nor frost, he serves the old gods."
****
The cave's heart remained unchanged: still damp, still dark, still drowning in the breath of the weirwood roots overhead. Ravens rustled quietly above, black beads for eyes, watching.
Aeron stood before The Three-Eyed Raven once more, as he sat in his gnarled throne, half man, half tree. But there was something different now about him, as if he knew this was coming. As if he had always known.
Footsteps echoed behind Aeron.
Vaydris of Asshai stepped forward, his armor singing softly with shadow. No words passed from his lips, he simply knelt and laid something on the cold stone floor between them.
It was a corpse burnt beyond recognition. Twisted and blackened, its limbs warped, its armor fused into its flesh. The air stank of ash and ruin.
Aeron did not look at Vaydris. His gaze never left the old man in the roots.
He spoke plainly, but there was steel behind every word, the weight of a final judgment.
"This was a champion of R'hllor. One of the many champions of the gods I've killed."
A pause.
"Are you one of them?"
His violet eyes gleamed, not with light, but menace quiet, immense, and absolute. His voice was the voice of graves.
The old man did not flinch. He looked at the body… then at Aeron.
And nodded.
"I am."
Silence surged through the cave like a wave. Even the ravens seemed to hold their breath.
But the Three-Eyed Raven continued, voice calm, the slow voice of the earth itself.
"Though I do not stand against you, nor ever shall. I could not defeat you, in battle, nor with the magic I wield."
Aeron's shadows pulsed outward slightly, claws half-formed in the dark.
The old man raised one weathered hand not in defense, but in gesture, in explanation.
"The gifts I bear… they are not meant for war. The old gods do not hunger for conquest. My power lies in sight..in memory.."
He looked up at the twisted ceiling of roots, as though he could see through them to the sky above.
"I exist not to end lives, but to guard time itself. The past. The present. The thread of what is yet to come. I remember what others would forget. I watch the river, so it does not break its banks."
Aeron watched him in silence.
The words hung in the air, neither threat nor plea.
"So what do you think I'm going to do now?" Aeron asked at last. "Can you see?"
The old man smiled faintly, sadly.
"I know that you have do it, and you will."
The flames from the torches danced behind Aeron. Vaydris stood silently, unmoving, waiting for a command.
The Shadow Monarch stepped forward once, the light glinting off his gauntlets, his shadows coiling like smoke.
"You are still someone on my list." He looked down at the scorched corpse again. "You carry the same mark as them."
The old man nodded again, slow as the passing of ages.
"I know."
Aeron's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I can't take risks."
Another beat of silence.
Then Aeron turned, his cloak sweeping the floor behind him.
"I should kill you."
The old man said nothing. He only closed his eyes, as if he had already seen the outcome years ago.
Aeron's violet eyes narrowed.
'The system did say I must slay all eight Apostles to obtain the Black Heart…'
His gaze lingered on the frail, half-rotted figure tangled in the weirwood's roots.
'Even if this one doesn't seem much of a threat.'
Aeron took a step forward, his boots brushing away old moss. He opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to question the old man, to weigh some last thing before judgment fell.
But the greenseer spoke first.
"I've already chosen another," he said, voice hoarse and cold, as though he had waited for this moment across centuries. "A certain boy. Once I die it will be passed on, all that was mine. My sight. My burden."
His gaze, pale and distant, found Aeron's.
"So do what you must."
Aeron frowned slightly. The violet in his eyes gleamed faintly, as though the power beneath his skin stirred with restrained violence.
The old man added, slower this time, with something more fragile in his voice.
"You may be the only one who can stop what is coming. And you have the freedom to do whatever you desire. To save the world of men or to destroy it."
For a moment, something unreadable passed through Aeron's face.
He clenched his fist, and with it, the greatsword answered.
It emerged from the shadows around him long, jagged, and terrible. Forged of blackened metal and edged with flickering dark fire. "You just made this harder for me," Aeron muttered, stepping forward.
The roots hissed as if they could feel the heat of his blade.
The old man closed his eyes.
"I have seen it all… even this."
Aeron stood closer to him now, sword raised. His voice got quieter. Something closer to reverence.
"You can rest now."
And then he swung.
No hesitation. No flourish.
Just a clean, precise strike.
Too fast for pain. Too exact for resistance.
The head of the last greenseer fell from his shoulders in silence, landing with a soft thud among the roots of the tree. His body slumped forward, lifeless at last after lifetimes of seeing.
The flames of Aeron's blade burned away the weirwood's tendrils as they reached toward the corpse, as if mourning. Blackened ash crumbled to the floor.
Then came the voice.
Not from the cave but from the void within his mind.
[You have leveled up!]
[You have defeated the Apostle of the Old Gods.]
[You have vanquished 7 / 8 Apostles.]
Aeron stood motionless, staring at the severed head resting against the base of the tree.
"The only one among them I didn't want to kill…" he murmured.
His voice carried no sorrow. Just the weight of necessity.
He sighed, low and slow, then turned from the throne of roots and shadow. His black cloak swept behind him.
****
CASTLE BLACK -
The wind howled atop the Wall, as it always did a cold, gnawing thing that bit through furs and steel alike. But below, at Castle Black's main yard, there was movement. Tension. Anticipation.
Jon Snow stood beside the stables, his cloak whipped by the wind, Ghost at his side. The direwolf's eyes glowed faintly. Jon's own eyes were fixed beyond the gate, toward the treeline of the haunted forest.
And then hooves.
The distant thunder of them grew louder, frantic and unsteady. A moment later, the gates of Castle Black groaned open as the rangers rode in.
Six men on half-dead horses, their faces pale with frost and terror. One rider fell from his saddle before his horse had stopped. Another gripped his reins as if to steady his very soul.
Jon stepped forward immediately, calm but sharp-eyes. "What happened?" he demanded.
The lead rider, a grizzled ranger dismounted with a stagger and dropped to one knee, not in fealty but sheer exhaustion. His face was smeared with soot, his lips cracked and blue.
"That..." he panted. "We… we saw it. Gods be good..we saw it."
"Saw what?" Jon asked, though the answer was already beginning to take shape in his thoughts.
Another ranger young, wide-eyed, his helmet missing stumbled forward, his voice cracking as he spoke.
"There was fire," he said, almost in disbelief. "But no torch lit it. It came from a man."
"Darkness, too," another rasped behind him. "Shadows moving on their own… screaming. We heard screaming, but there were no mouths. And then the wolf gods, that wolf a great dark beast with eyes like the abyss. It tore through the wind like...like.."
He stopped, trembling. The words failed him.
The ranger looked up at Jon now, sweat beading his brow despite the chill. "We watched from a distance. We dared not go closer, they fought and half of the forest was gone.."
The men murmured among themselves, some crossing themselves, others too shaken to speak at all.
Jon said nothing for a moment, his jaw tight.
Then, with a quiet breath, he gave a faint smile wry, knowing, tinged with both relief and dread.
"It was Aeron, wasn't it."
Another ranger, a newer recruit chimed in between ragged breaths, eyes wild. "He's a monster… a bloody demon out of old tales!"
Jon turned sharply, his gaze cold as the Wall itself.
"Careful now," he said, quiet but firm. "That monster is your king."
/-\
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