Chapter 54: The Winter Crusade
The world was a perfect, silent, well-oiled machine. For twenty years after the Great Work in Essos, Krosis-Krif reigned over an age of unparalleled peace and order. The democracies he had established were stable and prosperous, their commerce managed by his Iron Bank, their souls tended by his Hands. The Dragon's Tithe proceeded on schedule, a sustainable harvest that provided him with exquisite, if predictable, sustenance. His victory was absolute. His system was flawless. And the eternal, silent perfection of it all was a maddening, soul-crushing torment.
He was a god trapped in a game he had already won. The human mind at his core, the cunning, ruthless gamer that had driven his ascent, was atrophying in the endless quiet. Larys Strong was long dead, and no other mortal had proven clever enough to be an interesting conversationalist. The Targaryens were perfect, placid shepherds. The world was a finished book, and he was doomed to read it over and over for eternity.
In his boredom, his vast consciousness began to search not for flaws in his system, but for anything that lay outside of it. His senses drifted north, past the orderly fields of the Riverlands, past the grim stoicism of the North, up to the great, ice-carved edifice of the Wall. And for the first time, he truly looked beyond it.
He sensed… a void. A presence that was an absence. A power built not on life, faith, or order, but on its polar opposite. He felt a vast, ancient, and deeply intelligent consciousness, but it was a consciousness of cold, of silence, of entropy. It was a will dedicated to the cessation of all things, to the heat death of the world, to the ultimate, final disorder of undeath. The Others. The White Walkers.
They were not just another enemy. They were the antithesis to his entire existence. He was a god of systems, of life, of sustainable order. They were the embodiment of systemic collapse, of undeath, of absolute chaos. They were a bug in the code of reality itself. A grand, final, magnificent untidiness.
And in that moment, Krosis-Krif felt a sensation he had not felt in decades. A genuine, thrilling spark of interest. He had found a new game. A final boss. A worthy opponent whose defeat would be the ultimate expression of his own divine philosophy. The Great Work was not yet complete. The board had one last, fascinating piece to be cleared.
His will, dormant for so long, surged forth. It was time to give his quiet, peaceful world a new and glorious purpose.
The proclamation came without warning, a trumpet call of divine will that shattered the placid quiet of the long peace. It entered every mind in the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Districts of Essos.
"MY PEOPLE. MY FLOCK. YOU HAVE LIVED FOR A GENERATION IN THE PEACE OF MY ORDER," the voice of the god began, its power a familiar, awesome weight. "BUT I HAVE SHOWN YOU THIS PEACE TO PREPARE YOU. I HAVE GIVEN YOU THIS STRENGTH FOR A REASON. FOR A SHADOW LINGERS AT THE NORTHERN EDGE OF THE WORLD."
Images, stark and terrifying, flooded their minds. They saw a blizzard that was not made of snow, but of shrieking despair. They saw eyes like blue stars burning in the dark. They saw legions of the dead, their flesh sloughing from their bones, marching in perfect, silent ranks. They saw a figure of elegant, sculpted ice on a dead, skeletal horse, its presence a vortex of absolute cold.
"IT IS THE GREAT ENEMY. THE ULTIMATE DISORDER. A SILENCE THAT IS NOT OF PEACE, BUT OF THE GRAVE. A COLD THAT IS NOT OF WINTER, BUT OF OBLIVION. IT IS THE FLAW IN CREATION, AND IT MUST BE CORRECTED."
"I PROCLAIM THE SECOND GREAT WORK. THE WINTER CRUSADE. YOU, MY PEOPLE, WILL ONCE AGAIN BE THE INSTRUMENTS OF MY WILL. YOU WILL MARCH NORTH. YOU WILL BE THE FIRE THAT ERASES THE GREAT COLD. YOU WILL BE THE LIFE THAT CONQUERS THE UNDEATH. YOU WILL CARRY MY ORDER INTO THE LANDS OF ETERNAL ICE AND PERMANENTLY EXTINGUISH THIS THREAT TO ALL LIVING THINGS."
The command was absolute. The mission was clear. A holy war against the enemies of life itself.
In the great hall of Winterfell, the grandson of Cregan Stark, Lord Cregan II, gathered his bannermen. The lords of the North, men as hard and grey as their own castles, were stunned.
"To the Wall?" bellowed the Greatjon Umber's heir, a giant of a man. "He wants us to march an army beyond the Wall to fight children's stories? Grumpkins and snarks? The god has finally gone mad from boredom!"
"The Free Folk will never let a southern army cross their lands," Lord Karstark added. "They do not kneel."
Lord Cregan Stark slammed his gauntleted fist on the great stone table, silencing the room. "Are you fools?" he roared, his eyes blazing with a cold fire. "Have you forgotten the age you live in? The god who speaks in our minds is not talking about the Free Folk." He lowered his voice, the ancient fear of his bloodline palpable. "He is talking about the Others. The White Walkers. The stories our grandmothers told us are true. The Long Night is coming again."
"A fairy tale to frighten children," Umber grumbled, though with less conviction.
"Is a dragon who devours gods and builds temples overnight not a fairy tale?" Cregan countered. "We live in an age of legends made real, my lords. And the god of the south has just declared war on the ancient god of winter. We are the shield that stands between the two. We must prepare. Winter is not coming. It is already here."
In King's Landing, the war council convened, its members now aged, their children and grandchildren taking their places beside them. King Viserys II listened to the decree with a heavy heart, while his brother Jacaerys, his face a mask of grim acceptance, began to study maps of the North.
"This is not Essos," Jacaerys stated, his finger tracing the line of the Wall. "There are no great cities to liberate. There are no slaves to convert. This is a war against the elements themselves. Against an enemy that does not fear death, for it is death."
An old maester, an expert in the arcane, shuffled forward. "The old texts, Your Grace, they speak of the Others. They say common steel shatters against their ice armor. Iron is useless." He looked up, his eyes wide. "Only two things are said to harm them. Fire… and dragonglass."
"We have no dragonfire to spare," Viserys said immediately. "The Tithe dragons are too young, too precious to risk in such a war."
It was the High Priestess Ellyn, her hair now white as snow but her eyes as clear and powerful as ever, who answered. "We do not need dragonfire, Your Grace," she said, her voice resonating with absolute faith. "The Blessed carry the fire of the Great Order within them. Their divine light is the light of life and creation. It is the antithesis of the Great Other's cold. Against an enemy of undeath, my Hands will not just be soldiers. They will be the only weapon that truly matters."
The path forward was clear. This would not be a war of swords and spears. It would be a war of divine energies, a clash of fundamental forces, with the souls of the Blessed as the tip of the spear.
Beyond the Wall, in the heart of the Frostfangs, a great gathering of the Free Folk had been called. The King-Beyond-the-Wall, a formidable warrior named Raymun Redbeard, stood on a high rock, addressing the chieftains of a hundred clans.
"The crows are shitting themselves," a Thenn magnar growled. "They say an army of a million southrons is marching for the Wall. An army led by their strange, silent god."
"Let them come," Raymun Redbeard laughed, a booming sound that echoed off the ice. "The cold will be their master. The winter will be their grave. We have stood against a dozen southern kings. We will stand against this one."
But an old wise woman, a woodswitch from a haunted forest, shook her head, her eyes clouded with visions. "This is not a southern king, Raymun," she whispered, her voice like the rustling of dead leaves. "This is the god who silenced the world. And he is not coming for us." She pointed a trembling finger south, then a shaking finger north. "He is coming for the shadows that hunt us in the dark. He is coming for the true enemy. We are not the wall he means to conquer. We are merely the weeds in the field where two gods are about to go to war."
The Free Folk fell silent, a new and terrible understanding dawning. They were caught between the coming fire and the endless ice.
The Winter Crusade mustered at Winterfell. It was the greatest army ever assembled, a legion of all the peoples of the new world order. The hard infantry of the North stood side-by-side with the knights of the Vale. The legions of the Freed from Pentos and Myr marched next to the converted sellswords who now fought for a god instead of gold. At its heart were the fifty thousand Blessed, the core of the army, their eyes glowing with a soft light that seemed to hold the cold at bay.
The army began its final march north, from Winterfell to the Wall. Jacaerys Velaryon, the old, tired prince, commanded the vast host. Ellyn the Weaver walked at the head of her saints, her expression one of serene and terrible purpose.
As they marched, Jace fell into step beside her. "Are your saints prepared for the cold, Lady Ellyn?" he asked, his breath misting before him. "This is a different kind of enemy. It does not feel fear. It has no soul to convert."
Ellyn looked ahead, at the shimmering ice-blue line of the Wall that was just becoming visible on the horizon. "It is the Great Untidiness, my prince," she replied, her voice filled with a faith that was as absolute and as cold as the ice itself. "It is the final error in the god's perfect creation." She looked at him, her eyes glowing softly. "And he has given us the singular honor of being the brooms that will sweep it clean from the world, forever."
The Grand Army of the Great Order marched on, a river of life and order flowing into a land of death and chaos. They were an army of the living, on a holy crusade to fight a war against the very concept of winter, to bring a final, perfect, and terrifying order to the last untidy corner of the world.