The sea was a gray mirror that morning, broken only by the wings of gulls and the hiss of waves against the jagged rocks beneath Eastwatch's wall. Salt spray clung to the stones, forever damp, forever cold. Jon Snow stood atop the battlements, black cloak snapping in the wind. He had been Lord Commander for ten years now, though at times it felt as though the title belonged to some other man. A boy who had once thought honor meant something. A boy who had been stabbed by his brothers, died, and risen again.
Now the Wall was broken, the Watch scattered, and honor had been ground into dust.
"Storm's coming, Lord Commander," muttered Tormund Giantsbane, spitting over the wall. His red beard whipped about in the wind like a flag of fire. He had grown broader with age, belly thick with mead, but his arms still looked like tree trunks. "Smell it on the wind. Salt and fury."
Jon said nothing. His eyes traced the horizon where sea and sky blurred into one endless gray. He had smelled the storm too. For weeks now, the tides had been restless, black with strange fish. Sometimes they washed ashore with eyes like polished obsidian, their bellies burned from within. The brothers whispered about it at night, though never loud enough for the wind to carry their fears.
"Storms don't bother me," Tormund went on. "But the men are rattled. They say the sea's cursed. Dead fish, dying gulls. No seals in weeks."
Jon turned his face toward him. "You believe it cursed?"
The wildling shrugged. "I believe the sea's always hungry. But aye, there's something wrong with it. Makes a man's teeth ache, standing too close. Even the wolves won't drink from the tidepools anymore."
Ghost padded silently along the wall behind them, pale as the snows of Winterfell. His red eyes caught the morning light like two coals. He had grown slower, older, but still walked with the grace of something half-wild, half-spirit. The men gave him wide berth. Even after all these years, some still muttered of demons when they saw him.
A horn blew from the watchtower, thin and lonely. One long note. A ship.
Jon leaned forward, squinting into the fog. A dark shape moved against the horizon, sails drooping, hull riding low in the water.
"Another trader from Gulltown, mayhaps," said Tormund. "Though what fool comes this far for salt cod?"
Jon's hand tightened on Longclaw's hilt. "That ship's too fine for codfish."
By the time the vessel docked, the rain had begun. A soft drizzle at first, though the clouds promised worse. Jon descended to the yard with Dolorous Edd at his side.
"She'll sink if she sits any lower," Edd muttered, squinting at the ship. "Bet you half my boots she's stuffed with rocks instead of grain. Wouldn't be the strangest cargo we've had."
Jon said nothing. He had learned long ago that Edd's misery was its own sort of comfort.
The gangplank clattered down. Out stepped a woman cloaked in sea-green wool, hood drawn against the rain. Her hair shone silver in the wet, though not the silver of age. Beneath the hood, her eyes were a clear violet.
Jon stiffened. Targaryen eyes. Or Valyrian.
"Lady Elenya Velaryon," she announced, voice smooth as silk yet carrying over the rain. "Of Driftmark. I seek audience with the Lord Commander."
"You've found him," Jon said.
She studied him with unnerving calm. "Then I have sailed far indeed."
The hall of Eastwatch was no grand place — a damp chamber of stone and timber, with smoke curling from a hearth that never quite drove the chill away. Jon sat at the high seat, though he had never grown used to it. Tormund leaned against a beam, while Edd slouched near the fire. A dozen black brothers lingered at the edges, their faces drawn from hunger and long winters.
Lady Elenya stood tall, her cloak dripping seawater onto the rushes. "Driftmark is not what it was," she began. "House Velaryon bleeds still from the wars, from dragons lost and lords slain. Yet our blood remains. Valyrian blood. I carry it."
Jon studied her. "Valyrian blood brings no armies, my lady. Nor food for my men."
"It brings knowledge," she countered swiftly. "The sea speaks again. You've seen it, haven't you? Dead fish, black eyes, the smell of fire beneath the waves."
Edd shifted uneasily. "I preferred when visitors spoke of trade."
Elenya ignored him. "My grandsire told tales of Valyria, of shadows that lingered after the Doom. Not all perished in the fire. Some things endured, half-born, crawling from the molten stone. They whispered in dreams, waiting. I believe they stir again."
Her violet eyes found Jon's. "You've seen it too, haven't you?"
Jon thought of the patrol two nights past. Brother Jeren, found face-down on the shingle, skin blackened from within as though fire had eaten him alive. The smell of smoke clung to the corpse, though no fire had touched it. And when they buried him, the tide bubbled like boiling water.
"Yes," Jon admitted.
The hall fell silent. The rain pattered against the roof, steady as a drum.
"Then we are too late," Elenya whispered.
That night, the storm broke. Rain lashed the walls in sheets, and thunder rolled like giants at war. Jon walked the battlements alone, Ghost at his side. The sea churned black, waves clawing hungrily at the rocks.
"Lord Commander!" A shout from the tower. A brother pointed, voice lost in the wind.
Jon saw it then — something moving in the surf. A shape, half-hidden by rain and spray, dragging itself up the rocks. For a heartbeat, he thought it a man. Then the lightning flashed.
Its skin was cracked like burned stone, glowing red in the fissures. Eyes like pits of fire. A mouth that opened too wide, filled with smoke.
The creature screeched, a sound like tearing metal. Brothers shouted, arrows loosed, but the thing clambered on, faster than any man.
"Hold!" Jon roared, drawing Longclaw. The steel sang as he leapt from the wall, landing hard on the wet stone. Ghost lunged at the thing's throat, teeth sinking deep, but smoke burst from the wound, forcing the direwolf back.
Jon swung. Longclaw bit through the creature's chest, black blood hissing as it touched the rain. The thing writhed, claws raking sparks off stone. He hacked again, and again, until the head came free.
The body dissolved into ash and smoke, carried away on the wind. Only the stench remained — burning stone and something fouler, like blood left too long in the sun.
Jon staggered back, chest heaving. Ghost snarled beside him, ears flat.
From the wall above, brothers stared wide-eyed. Tormund bellowed curses into the storm.
And Lady Elenya stood in the rain, face pale but resolute.
"They've come," she whispered.
By dawn, the sea was calm again, as if mocking them. The corpse was gone. Only the scars on the stone remained, blackened fissures where the creature had clawed.
Jon stood with Tormund, Edd, and Elenya in the hall, the air heavy with smoke from the hearth.
"What in the seven hells was it?" Tormund demanded. "Not wight, not Other. Too hot for ice, too foul for man."
Edd's face was drawn. "Whatever it was, it bled fire. That's not a thing I care to see again."
Elenya raised her chin. "Shadow-forged. Born of Valyria's ruin. I told you they stir."
Jon's hand rested on Longclaw's pommel. He felt the weight of it more than ever. "If one can come, more will follow."
"Aye," Tormund said darkly. "And I'm not keen on finding out how many."
Jon looked from one face to the next — Tormund, stubborn and loyal; Edd, weary but steadfast; Elenya, proud and secretive. Then to Ghost, whose red eyes never left him.
The Wall had fallen. The North had bled. The dead had risen and been beaten back. Yet now, when men dreamed of peace, a new darkness had stirred — not of ice, but of fire and shadow.
Jon Snow had died once for his watch. He wondered if he would die again.
The Red Keep had never seemed so restless. Its stones sweated in the heat, its shadows whispered like the mouths of traitors. By day, the sun baked the courtyards and gleamed upon the gilded towers, yet by night the halls turned cold, haunted by silence broken only by the drip of fountains or the scrape of a rat across the floor. Tyrion Lannister knew both faces of the keep well, and trusted neither.
From the solar of Maegor's Holdfast, he looked out across Blackwater Bay. The sea shimmered beneath the dying sun, a molten shield hammered flat upon the horizon. Ships came and went, cogs laden with spice, war galleys from Dorne, lean skiffs ferrying goods upriver toward the markets of Flea Bottom. Yet all Tyrion could see were daggers in the water, sails that might one day be filled with enemy wind.
"The city is a beast with a thousand throats," he muttered, sipping his wine. "One must learn which throats to cut, and which to feed."
"You sound like Father." Bran Stark's voice was quiet, soft as parchment, though his eyes when they turned to him were not those of any boy. They were pale and distant, like pools of frozen river water where something stirred far below.
Tyrion winced at the comparison. "Best not to liken me to Lord Tywin in any company, boy. Ghosts are poor friends." He drained his cup, then poured another. The boy made no move to drink. Bran hardly ever did, these days.
Instead he sat slouched in his wheeled chair, his hand resting on the carved armrest as though it anchored him to this world. The maesters had fashioned the chair of oak and bronze, but Tyrion had seen how little Bran needed it. The boy scarcely moved, yet he seemed to drift in ways that could not be measured by wheel or leg.
"You saw again," Tyrion said, lowering his voice. "Tell me."
Bran's gaze flicked toward the window. For a moment, Tyrion thought he would say nothing, as he had so many times before, leaving him to stew in his wine and his worry. But tonight the boy whispered: "Shadows, moving in the smoke of the sea. They wear faces like men, but their flesh is fire. One holds a crown, but not of gold. It burns."
Tyrion felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze off the bay. "Comforting," he said, with a half-hearted smile. "And this crown of flames belongs to…?"
"I do not know," Bran admitted. "But he waits. South. Far south, in the black ruin where dragons burned and died. And he stirs."
Tyrion turned back to his cup, though the taste of wine had gone to ash. Bran's riddles chilled him more than wildfire ever could. The boy spoke of Valyria as though it were no more distant than the Kingsroad. He spoke of fire-crowned shadows as though they were breathing down their necks.
And perhaps they were.
Elsewhere in the Red Keep, whispers had already begun to coil like smoke.
Ser Maeric Frey, bastard of the Crossing, moved through the halls with a fox's smile and a rat's caution. He wore no sigil openly, but the stink of the Twins clung to him—the furtive pride, the ambition of a brood too long despised. In the company of wine-merchants, he was a buyer of casks; among sailors, he posed as a man with cargo to sell; with courtiers, he bowed too deeply and laughed too quickly. Yet all the while his ears were sharp, and his tongue sharper still.
It was through such shadows that he came upon the boy and the Imp. He had no need to press his ear to the door. The guards outside Bran's chamber thought him a harmless supplicant, a hanger-on too low to matter. Few in King's Landing had learned yet that bastards could be more dangerous than kings.
"…crown of flames," Bran was whispering, his voice like the flutter of wings. "He comes, and with him comes ruin."
The Frey bastard's pulse quickened. A crown of flames, rising from the ashes of Valyria? His gut told him this mattered. In the game of thrones, the smallest secret was worth more than a fortress.
By the time Bran's words faltered into silence, Ser Maeric was already moving down the corridor, his boots soft upon the rushes, his mind turning like a mill wheel.
This was the blade he had been waiting for.
In the throne room that evening, King Aegon's court gathered for a feast that was more shadow than splendor. Gold chandeliers dripped light upon half-empty tables, where lords and ladies murmured over trenchers of spiced duck and sour red wine. The realm had grown weary of war, weary of famine, weary of false kings and broken queens. Now every toast rang hollow.
Tyrion sat low upon the dais, his short legs dangling from the chair. To his left, Bran's wheeled seat stood silent, the boy watching with eyes that saw more than they ought.
The Frey bastard moved among the lesser lords, his smile broad, his goblet never empty. He spoke of river tolls, of bandit raids near the Trident, of ships lost at sea. Yet with each word, he wove his web tighter. When a drunk knight mocked him as "the spawn of Walder's whore," he only laughed, bowing low, as if scorn were a gift.
Only when the knight staggered away did Ser Maeric whisper to his companion, a lean man with a scarred cheek: "The wolf-children think their throne unshakable. We shall see how long it stands when shadows crown new kings."
Later, in Tyrion's chambers, the air smelled of parchment and smoke. The Imp hunched over a sheaf of scrolls, his quill scratching. His mind buzzed with Bran's words, though he buried them beneath the drudgery of accounts and bannermen's reports.
The boy broke the silence. "The Frey listens."
Tyrion looked up sharply. "What?"
"In the hallways. In the walls. He listens. He will take what I saw and twist it."
Tyrion set his quill aside. "Seven hells. Are you certain?"
Bran's gaze did not waver. "Certain as winter."
The dwarf cursed under his breath. A bastard Frey, ears too sharp, hands too eager. Walder's get had ever been vipers, and this one was no different. Secrets were meat and drink to such men, and they'd sell both for a crown they could never wear.
"We'll need to be quicker, then," Tyrion said. "If fire rises from Valyria, best we learn how to quench it before Frey pisses it across half the realm."
He poured himself another cup. His hands were steady, though his thoughts were not. The game was shifting again, and Tyrion Lannister hated few things more than being a move behind.
But already, outside the walls of the Red Keep, the first threads of Maeric Frey's plot were being spun. In the backrooms of taverns near the Mud Gate, in the smoky dens of Fishmonger's Square, whispers spread like a fever. A bastard's coin could buy many tongues, and more knives.
By the time the moon had risen high above King's Landing, a dozen ears had heard of "a crown of flames rising in the south." By the time dawn broke, two dozen more would.
And in the alleys of Flea Bottom, rumors burned faster than wildfire.
Jon Snow
The sea was too quiet.
Jon walked the outer wall of Eastwatch with Ghost padding at his side, the direwolf's white coat faint as moonlight in the gloom. The tide whispered against the stone like a dying man sucking for air, and beyond it stretched only the blackness of the Shivering Sea. No gull cried, no wave broke. The night was soundless, as if the world itself held its breath.
"It feels wrong," Elenya said, her cloak snapping in the wind. She moved like a shadow against the fire-baskets, her pale hair bound in braids, her hand close to the hilt of her sword. "The sea does not sleep, not even here."
Jon nodded. He had felt it all day, that weight in the air, a silence more dreadful than battle. The men felt it too. Brothers of the Watch muttered of shapes glimpsed in the surf, dark bodies that slithered beneath the foam. Others swore they heard voices when the waves struck stone, whispers in tongues older than the Wall.
A horn sounded once, low and uncertain, from the western tower. Jon stiffened. Ghost's ears pricked, his red eyes burning. The direwolf growled, low in his throat.
"Not wildlings," Jon said. He could hear the horn's tone—the note of fear, not warning. "Something else."
Another sound followed, faint and thin. A raven's wings. The black bird fluttered down, landing crooked on the parapet before Jon. Its feathers were ragged, its beak clotted with blood. A scrap of parchment hung from its leg, torn and stained red.
Jon reached for it, but the raven croaked once, horribly human, before collapsing dead upon the stone. The parchment clung to its leg in tatters, words lost to blood. Only three remained clear: beware the sea.
Bran Stark
He dreamed of fire.
The weirwood roots coiled about him like the arms of a mother, pale and cold. He felt his body stiffen in King's Landing, yet his mind flew beyond walls and stones, past sky and storm.
Bran soared above rivers of ash. Once, men had called this land Valyria, seat of dragonlords, cradle of fire and glory. Now it was ruin. Towers jutted like broken teeth, molten rivers carved wounds across the land, and the air itself seemed to bleed smoke.
From the shadows they came. Not dragons, not men—things twisted, their bodies half-flesh, half-shadow, with scales black as obsidian. Their eyes burned like molten glass, and from their mouths spilled whispers that made the dead stir.
Ships rocked upon a blackened shore, crewed by hooded figures. Their hulls were charred wood, their sails ragged as shrouds. In their holds, Bran glimpsed shards of obsidian that bled smoke as though the stone itself were aflame.
He heard a voice—distant, yet thunderous. "The doom was never fire alone. It was hunger. And hunger does not die."
Bran tried to wake, but the roots held him fast. His eyes rolled white, and he saw a raven flying over the sea, winging toward the Wall, toward Eastwatch. Beneath the bird, black shapes stirred in the water.
Jon Snow
The horn's second blast split the silence. Then the third.
Shadows broke the surface of the sea. First a ripple, then a swell, then black figures rising, taller than men, armored in scales that glistened like wet stone. Their faces were formless, half smoke, half steel, and in their hands they bore swords of obsidian that dripped with cold flame.
"Form ranks!" Jon bellowed, drawing Longclaw. The brothers scrambled to the wall's edge, torches raised, bows nocked, spears leveled. Fear shone in their eyes. Some whispered prayers, others curses.
The first creature came climbing the stone like a spider, claws sinking into mortar. An arrow struck it square in the chest, but the shaft burned to ash against its hide. Another climbed behind it, and another still, until the wall seemed to crawl with them.
One brother swung his sword. Steel passed through the shadow as if through smoke. The creature's hand closed around his throat, and with a twist it dragged him screaming into the sea below.
"Fire!" Jon roared. "Use fire!"
A torch swung, and the creature shrieked like tearing iron, its form unraveling in smoke. The men's courage flared, if only for a heartbeat.
Jon met one face-to-face. The thing's eyes glowed like molten glass. It raised its obsidian blade, and Jon lifted Longclaw to meet it. Steel rang—and the shadow screamed. Smoke bled from its wound, the very air sizzling where the Valyrian steel had cut. Longclaw burned hot in Jon's hands, but he held fast, driving the blade deeper until the creature collapsed in a shriek of black mist.
Ghost leapt at another, his white fur stained with shadow, his teeth tearing smoke as if it were flesh. Elenya was beside Jon, her sword flashing in the firelight as she struck at another, driving her torch into its face.
Still they came. The sea vomited them forth.
Bran Stark
Through the raven's eyes he saw Jon.
Bran circled above Eastwatch, black wings beating against the storm. He saw the Wall crawling with shadows, saw Jon's sword gleam as it cut through smoke and fire. He felt the heat of Longclaw's bite, the way it drank the essence of the shadows.
The creatures hissed Jon's name. "The false son. The last flame. Kill him."
Bran's voice broke through the vision, whispering across leagues of storm and snow. "The blood of the dragon burns the dark away…"
The raven cried it aloud, a voice not its own, echoing over the battlefield. Jon turned his head, as if he heard. For a heartbeat their eyes met—raven and man, brother and brother.
Then Bran saw deeper. In the black sea, more shadows stirred, vast and terrible. He saw sails of charred wood, carrying the curse of Valyria across the waves. He saw Frey banners in the Riverlands, knives in the dark, betrayal blooming like rot.
He screamed, but no sound left his lips.
Maeric Frey
At Riverrun, the fire burned low.
Maeric Frey sat in the hall, his face half-shadow in the torchlight, his fingers drumming on the table. The spy knelt before him, whispering Bran's broken prophecy. "…a last flame rises in the North. If it dies, the realm is ours."
Maeric's lips curved. "Then the boy speaks true. If this Jon Snow falls, the realm falls with him. And we, the sons of the Crossing, will rise."
He thought of his uncles, dead at the Twins. He thought of the Red Wedding, of how the Freys were spat upon by lords and smallfolk alike. The time for patience had passed.
Letters would be sent by dawn—to Bolton men still nursing grudges, to Reachmen discontent under Tyrell rule, even to the princes of Dorne who longed for vengeance. Alliances forged not by honor, but by knives in the dark.
"Let the North bleed," Maeric said. "Let the Wall crumble. The Freys will inherit the ruin."
Jon Snow
The battle raged until the stars were drowned by stormclouds.
Jon fought until his arms were numb, until Longclaw's edge was black with smoke and blood that was not blood. Brothers fell screaming into the waves. Others burned shadows with fire, their torches guttering in the wind.
Elenya stumbled, a creature's claw raking her arm. Jon's sword cut it down before it struck again, and for an instant her eyes met his, fierce and shining even through fear.
"Stay with me," Jon said.
"I will not leave you," she answered.
At last the shadows faltered. The tallest of them, a knight wrought of smoke and flame, rose above the wall. Jon faced it, Ghost snarling at his side. Longclaw met its obsidian blade, and the clash rang like thunder.
They struggled, steel against shadow, until Jon drove the sword through its chest. The creature's scream split the night. It collapsed in a storm of black mist, its dying words a hiss in Jon's ear: "We are but the first. The sea will vomit the rest."
Then silence.
The sea rolled back into darkness. The wall was slick with blood and smoke. Half the Watch lay dead. The rest stood shaking, their faces pale, their eyes fixed on Jon. Not as Lord Commander, not as a bastard, but as the man who had stood against the dark and not faltered.
Ghost pressed close to him. Elenya laid a hand upon his shoulder. Jon looked to the sea, where no waves broke, and knew the battle was not won—only begun.
Bran Stark
He woke trembling in King's Landing, his breath ragged, his body cold as stone. Tyrion bent over him, eyes sharp, mouth set.
"What did you see?"
Bran's lips moved, his voice a whisper. "It has begun. The doom walks. If Jon falls, so falls the realm."
Tyrion's face darkened. "Then gods help us all."
But already the Frey spy was gone, riding swift to Riverrun with Bran's words twisted on his tongue.
And in the deep places of the sea, shadows stirred, hungry still
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