The Northern Host
Dawn rose blood-red over the frost-fields.
The banners of the wolf fluttered stiff and pale, crusted with ice.
Job rode at the head, Ghost pacing beside him, fur like smoke.
Behind them came five thousand souls some warriors, some simply tired men carrying spears as if they carried their own graves.
"They say the road to the South smells of burning bone," whispered young Umber.
"Aye," said Davos, "and we're the fools walking toward it."
At night, the cold sang.
Sometimes the soldiers heard voices in the wind the dead of Winterfell calling their names.
Job did not sleep, when he closed his eyes he saw fire, green and coiling, shaped like a lion's mane.
Althea rode a black horse. The air around her shimmered faintly, bending the snowflakes.
"They follow us," she murmured.
"Who?" Job asked.
"Not men. Memories."
She looked back. Behind the army, shadowy figures walked within the mist old Starks, crows, children of the forest echoes that refused to rest.
The march became a pilgrimage of ghosts.
King's Landing Reforged
Where Winter met ruin, the capital burned anew.
Lily stood upon the scorched walls, the wind heavy with ash.
Below, tens of thousands knelt the starved, the broken, the desperate.
"Rise," she commanded.
"The world called you ashes. I call you flame."
From the ruins of the pyres, her alchemists and priests dragged the blackened corpses of soldiers and drowned them in wildfire-green light.
When the smoke cleared, they moved their veins glowing faintly.
The Ash-Born were her answer to the North's ghosts.
Neither living nor dead kept alive by the fire's will.
Qyburn's surviving apprentices chanted in High Valyrian, their voices cracking.
The ground split, molten cracks spread across the streets like veins.
The city itself began to breathe.
Lily watched it with devotion and fear mingled.
"Let them come," she said. "I have made my own army of the damned."
The March South (Intercut)
The North
Snow melted into red mud as the wolves advanced.
Every mile south, the nights grew warmer, the ghosts louder.
The Weirwoods wept sap the color of emeralds.
The South
Fire spilled from the gates of the city, forming rivers of light.
The smallfolk sang hymns to the Queen of Ashes, believing her the mother of salvation.
The dragon's skull above the Keep cracked, releasing another hiss of green flame.
Dream and Omen
That night, both rulers dreamed the same dream.
Job stood upon an endless plain of snow, across from him, Lily upon molten rock.
Between them lay a single sword half frozen, half burning.
Althea's voice echoed:
"Break it, and the world dies. Join it, and the gods fade."
They woke in the same breath.
Lily whispered to the dark, "Then let the gods fade."
Job whispered to Althea, "Then we break the world."
The Convergence
Scouts returned to Winterfell's host ashen bodies found walking near the Trident.
Davos spat, "The dead walk again."
Job drew his sword; frost rimed its edge.
"Then we meet them halfway."
In the South, Lily watched her city pulse with green light.
The flames along the river rose higher, forming shapes of wings.
"The North marches," said a molten guard.
"Good," she answered. "So does fire."
She raised her hand. The Ash-Born began to move tens of thousands, silent, their eyes burning like candles in a storm.
Closing Image
From above, the realm glowed like a map of war
the North white, cold, spectral.
the South black, burning, alive.
Where the two colors met, lightning forked across the sky.
And in the space between, a raven flew its feathers half-ash, half-snow.
"The gods have no thrones left. Only battlefields."