Night draped the valley in a shroud of silence, broken only by the pale moonlight filtering through the canopy to dapple the thick carpet of fallen leaves. The ridges were dense with timber, the hills rolling gently down to the riverbed where the brush grew thin and sparse.
A shrike called out—once, twice—a sharp, lonely sound in the dark.
Hidden in the foothills, cavalrymen tightened their reins. The cold wind of the North froze the breath in their throats, silencing any last whispers of encouragement.
Below them, the Lannister column wound its way into the valley of the Tumblestone. Thirteen hundred men, a snake of steel and noise.
The clatter of hooves and the jingle of mail rose through the night air. Men laughed, curses were shouted, and whips cracked over the backs of horses splashing through the shallow stream. They were loud, confident, and utterly blind.
Awooooooooooooooo!
The Greatjon's warhorn shattered the night, a deep, mournful bellow from the opposite ridge.
It was answered instantly. From the east and west, the horns of Mallister and Frey joined the chorus—shrill notes of vengeance. And from the narrow northern mouth of the valley, crooked like an elbow, came the horn of Lord Karstark. It was a low, thundering dirge that seemed to mourn the dead before they had even fallen.
The four notes merged into a dark symphony of doom.
In the valley below, panic erupted. Horses reared, kicking at the air. Men shouted in confusion.
Then the arrows fell.
From the branches where Robb had hidden them, the archers loosed their shafts. The Whispering Wood seemed to exhale a breath it had been holding for hours, a long hiss that ended in the wet thud of iron piercing meat. The valley floor filled with the screams of dying men and horses.
"Winterfell!"
On the ridges, warriors raised their lances, shaking off the mud and leaves that had camouflaged their steel.
Robb Stark, the Young Wolf, spurred his horse past his mother. "Winterfell!" he screamed, his voice cracking with the fury of youth, and led the vanguard in a thunderous charge down the slope.
Opposite him, the Greatjon's heavy cavalry burst from the shadows of the trees. They formed an endless line of steel, crashing down the hill like a landslide. From the darkness, they looked like a thousand silver fireflies, burning with cold, deadly intent.
Aldric was slower. His mount, Blitz, was strong but lacked the explosive speed of a destrier. By the time he broke into the valley, the first wave of Northern steel had already smashed into the Westermen.
Robb's trap was perfect. The Northern cavalry pressed in from all four sides, squeezing the Lannisters into a crushing embrace. There was no room to maneuver, no space for the famed Lannister charge to build momentum.
The moonlight was dim, the fighting chaotic. Aldric discarded his long lance before it had even tasted blood. It was a disposable thing, four meters of brittle ash meant to shatter on impact. In this press, it was useless.
He reached to Blitz's flank and unhooked his personal weapon—a short lance, two and a half meters of carefully selected hickory, tough and flexible. The tip was patterned steel, hand-forged by Aldric himself.
"For the North!"
He plunged into the melee.
His longer reach and immense strength made him a reaper in a field of wheat. A Western knight charged him, lance lowered, but Aldric knocked the point aside with a brutal sweep of his shaft. As the horses passed, he thrust. The patterned steel punched through the knight's gorget, sending him tumbling into the mud.
Behind him, the Silver Hand scouts finished the job with ruthless efficiency.
The valley echoed with the snap of breaking spears, the ring of sword on shield.
"Casterly Rock!"
"Winterfell!"
"Tully! For Riverrun and House Tully!"
Iron boots splashed in bloody water. Swords hacked at oak shields. Arrows hissed like vipers. A thousand horses screamed in unison. Men cursed, begged for mercy, or died with a gurgle.
The acoustics of the valley warped the sound, but through the din, Aldric heard a familiar voice.
"To me! To me!"
It was Robb. Beside him, the Grey Wind howled, a sound of primal terror. The direwolf was a blur of motion, tearing throats and hamstrings, sending horses into a frenzy.
Aldric spurred Blitz toward the voice.
Suddenly, a massive impact slammed into him. He was thrown from the saddle, hitting the soft, muddy earth with a bone-jarring thud.
Before he could recover, a weight pressed him down. A knight in a crimson surcoat was on top of him, a dagger flashing in the moonlight, seeking the eye-slit of his helm.
Aldric didn't panic. He bucked his hips, using his superior strength to throw the man off. He scrambled up, straddled the knight, and drove a gauntleted fist into the man's face.
Crunch.
The visor crumpled inward, taking the face bone with it. The knight went limp.
Aldric grabbed his short lance and remounted Blitz. He had to get to Robb.
But from the direction of the fighting, another voice roared over the din—mature, arrogant, and filled with rage.
"Robb Stark! Robb Stark! Come and face me!"
Jaime Lannister.
Aldric's blood ran cold. Damn it!
He kicked Blitz into a gallop. Through the press, he saw him. The Golden Lion. Jaime Lannister was a whirlwind of death, cutting a path straight toward the Young Wolf. He rode not like a man fleeing a trap, but like a train seeking to derail the Northern command.
Three Northern guards rode to intercept him.
The first lost a hand and fell screaming.
The second had his skull split to the teeth.
The third caught Jaime's sword in his neck, the blade biting halfway through.
Jaime abandoned the stuck sword. He drew a dagger and spurred his horse, intent on finishing the charge with nothing but six inches of steel.
But a Northern cavalryman—Daryn Hornwood, perhaps?—grabbed Jaime's reins, dragging the horse down. The Golden Lion fell, and a dozen armored men piled onto him, burying him under a mountain of Northern steel.
The battle was effectively over. The Lannister charge had been the last gasp of a dying beast.
Aldric pulled up. The threat to Robb was gone. His eyes fell on the three guards Jaime had butchered.
Two were dead—one headless, one nearly decapitated. But the first... the one who lost his hand... he was still moving.
The soldier lay in the mud, clutching the stump of his arm. Blood pumped rhythmically between his fingers. His other hand gripped his severed limb as if he could reattach it by sheer will. He looked at Aldric with eyes full of despair, choking on bloody froth.
Internal injuries, likely from the fall. And bleeding out fast.
Aldric dismounted. He couldn't walk away.
"It's okay," he muttered to himself, psyching himself up. "I got this."
Eddie and the Silver Hand arrived, covered in gore but moving with disciplined grace. They formed a perimeter around their commander.
Aldric knelt in the bloody slush. He pressed one hand firmly over the stump, the other on the soldier's abdomen. He composed his face into a mask of solemn piety.
"Brothers," he shouted to the gathering men, "pray with me to the Light!"
He channeled the spell. Holy Light.
Golden radiance erupted from his palms. Under the warm glow, the soldier's stump sealed shut. Color flooded back into his pale face.
But something was wrong.
Aldric tried to cut the flow, but the power surged. It wasn't just his mana anymore. It was like a dam breaking.
His body became a riverbed for a flash flood of Light. It roared through him, infinite and terrifying, ignoring his will.
Golden light crawled up his arms, consuming him. A pillar of pure, blinding radiance shot into the night sky, turning the dark valley into noon.
Pain tore through him. His soul felt untethered, ripped from his flesh.
He was floating in a deep, blue void.
Far below, a multicolored planet spun in the darkness. Around him, stars burned like cold gems.
It wasn't Earth. He knew that instantly by the shape of the continents.
He waited. He knew he hadn't been pulled here for nothing.
A shape materialized. It looked like a tangram puzzle made of golden light, shifting and rotating. But it flickered and buzzed like a bad signal.
A sound, like wind chimes in a storm, echoed in his mind.
"I am Naaru... shhh... Naaru... O'murl..."
The voice was fragmented, broken by static.
Aldric didn't care about names. "Did you bring me here?!" he screamed into the void. "Send me back! I want to go home!"
"...Shadow is consuming... shhh... need to sow seeds of Light... shhh... resist the Shadow to save the world... then you can return home..."
"Save the world?" Aldric laughed, a bitter, angry sound. "Go to hell! What does this world have to do with me? I'm a mercenary!"
"Beacon interfered with... only by resolving the extinction crisis... shhh... can you return... Light Resonance Crystal... shhh... will guide you..."
The golden geometric being exploded. Shards of light scattered like meteors, tracing parabolic arcs before converging on Aldric.
They condensed into a single, tiny crystal, no bigger than a fingernail. It pulsed with liquid gold light.
Aldric felt a wave of helplessness. He reached out, his hand trembling.
The moment his fingers brushed the crystal, gravity returned with a vengeance. A massive force yanked him down, hurling him back toward the blue planet.
He gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He was back. The Whispering Wood. He was slumped against a weirwood tree, his body feeling as if it had been hollowed out.
Kevin stood over him, sword drawn, guarding his teacher with fierce loyalty.
"Kevin..." Aldric croaked, his voice like dry leaves. "Is the battle over?"
Kevin spun around, his face lighting up. "Teacher! You're awake! It's over. We won."
"Good... help me up."
Aldric reached out a hand. It felt heavy, lifeless.
"Teacher!" Kevin froze, staring at Aldric's face. "Your eyes! There's... gold smoke coming out of them!"
Aldric blinked, confused. He pulled his dagger and looked at his reflection in the steel.
For a heartbeat, golden mist swirled within his pupils. Then, it dissipated, leaving only his own dark eyes staring back.
A hundred yards away, the battle's grim cleanup continued.
"Left! Now!" Kevin shouted, leading his squad through the carnage.
He blocked a desperate chop from a mounted Lannister knight with his round shield. His archer put a shaft into the knight's horse, causing it to stumble. Before the knight could recover, a spearman thrust upward, piercing his belly.
Kevin stepped in, decapitating the fallen man with a clean stroke. He flicked the blood from his blade and moved to the next.
The "Swan Formation"—a wedge designed for chaos—worked perfectly in the confined space. The Lannisters, trapped by trees and corpses, were picked apart.
On the fringes, Martha and the female medical corps dragged the wounded away.
"Martha! Martha!"
Two girls struggled with a heavy knight in crimson armor.
"This one... his breastplate has a long-haired cat on it!"
Martha finished bandaging a Karstark rider and ran over. She glanced at the golden lion rampant.
"That's a lion," she said, remembering Rennel's lessons. "That's a Lannister."
The Karstark rider she had just saved groaned, "Aye... he's a knight... ransom..."
Martha didn't let him finish. She drew her belt knife and slashed the unconscious knight's throat.
"Next time you see that sigil," she told the girls coolly, "just put a knife in it. Don't waste time dragging dead weight."
"Yes, Captain!"
The girls dropped the bleeding corpse and ran to find the next body.
Martha wiped her blade. "What were you saying?" she asked the Karstark man.
The rider shook his head, pale. "Nothing... nothing at all."
Then, he looked up. "What in the Seven Hells is that?"
Martha turned.
From the southeast corner of the valley, a pillar of warm, golden light erupted into the sky, chasing away the shadows of the Whispering Wood. It was holy, terrifying, and undeniably real.
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