"By what right do you, wild and proud,
Demand my knee upon the ground?
Blood of First Men, godswood's own,
Raise your steel—let fate be shown.
Savage clashes with the wolf,
Blade to blade, no mercy shown.
Till the dragon claimed the sky—
Remember this, remember well…
So he spoke, so he spoke,
The wildling wandering wild and free.
Dragonfire scoured all to ash,
Ash that weeps on fields so vast,
No more giants' drums resound.
Dragonfire scoured all to ash,
Ash that weeps on fields so vast,
No more wildling horns shall sound."
Rhaegon hummed the newly composed tune softly. Lord Commander Jason Lannister, ever the lover of music, had penned "Dragonfire Beneath the Wall" after the one-sided battle, moved by the spectacle.
Rhaegor didn't care much for it—unlike his betrothed, Daenyra, who adored music, fine cuisine, and embroidery, he had little interest in melodies. Instruments were his worst subject. Still, he couldn't deny the pleasure of hearing a song glorifying his own deeds.
The moment Starsong appeared, victory was assured. The wildlings lacked the ranged weapons to threaten a dragon of her size, and her flames ravaged their ranks. Thousands burned. More crucially, she slaughtered the giants they'd brought south of the Wall. The mammoth cavalry, upon which Sylas the Cruel and Sorgan had pinned their hopes, proved utterly useless. Instead, the panicked mammoths trampled their own, shattering what little order remained.
The Night's Watch riders and northern heavy cavalry seized the moment, charging as the infantry advanced to crush the wildling host. Of the fifty thousand who crossed the Wall, none escaped death or capture. Lord Cregan personally oversaw the sorting of prisoners—their leaders executed, the rest condemned to mines and logging camps.
"That is where they belong."
Such were the Stark's words.
The Watch piled the wildlings' skulls beyond the Wall, grim warnings to those still hiding in the mountains.
Before leaving the North, Rhaegor ventured past the Wall.
Starsong, like her predecessors, stubbornly refused to fly over it—as though something lurked beyond. Not a threat, perhaps, but something that unsettled her. And so, Rhaegor traveled with Rhaegon, Lord Cregan, thirty northern horsemen, and twenty rangers led by Lord Commander Jason himself, deep into the Haunted Forest.
It was the last place in Westeros where two ancient weirwoods still stood side by side. Once teeming with wildling tribes and patrolled by rangers, the forest now lay eerily quiet after the war.
Thunk.
An arrow buried itself in a shadowcat's throat. The beast let out a final, ghastly shriek before collapsing.
Rhaegon lowered his bow, shivering. "It's supposed to be summer—why is it so cursed cold?"
Two Black Brothers dragged the sleek-furred carcass back to camp.
"The North has no summer, Rhaegon of Kaon," Lord Cregan said flatly.
The rangers knew these woods well. Their camp stood where a once-friendly wildling clan had thrived—before Sylas absorbed them. They'd felled oaks, built longhouses, foraged berries, even tilled the land.
All gone now.
"Wildlings remain wildlings," Cregan had muttered upon arrival. "They scorn order, and in doing so, forsake civilization."
Rhaegor agreed.
Lord Commander Jason eagerly skinned the shadowcat, his blade flashing. "Prince Rhaegor, I'll have this tanned and sent to Prince Draezell as a cloak." His voice carried nostalgia. The northern winters had reshaped the once-flamboyant Lion of the Rock. Now, Jason Lannister was broader, harder—his golden hair shorn for practicality, his beard long and gilded like a balding lion's mane. Scars and wrinkles marked his face, and defeat had tempered his pride.
"My thanks, Lord Commander," Rhaegor said. "My father will appreciate it."
"I'm the one who owes him," Jason sighed. "Were it not for his supplies to Eastwatch, more would've starved."
"Enough," Lord Cregan interrupted their exchange, his voice as steady as winter's grip. "Time grows short, Prince Rhaegor. Where exactly do you intend to go?"
His tone was calm, but the unspoken warning hung heavy in the air: Beyond the Wall, even in summer, is no place for men. Blizzards could descend without warning, freezing the unprepared where they stood. Cregan had no desire to lose good men to a prince's whim.
Not everyone shared Rhaegor's fire-blooded resilience.
Nor did they all wear steel forged for the deepest cold.
"Lord Stark. Lord Commander." Rhaegor met Cregan's gaze, then Jason's. Rhaegon, sensing the gravity of the moment, slipped away to join Aelaryon and Albin outside, where they hummed Dragonfire Beneath the Wall and watched the cavalry prepare camp.
"Do you know of the Song of Ice and Fire?"
Cregan's face darkened. Jason's jaw tightened.
Both knew the prophecy—though in fragments, passed down through different lines. The Starks whispered of the Long Night in crypts beneath Winterfell, where ancient Kings of Winter had made preparations even their descendants didn't understand. The Night's Watch kept its own records, brittle scrolls Jason had once dismissed as nursemaids' tales... until the Long Winter came. Until he saw giants and mammoths with his own eyes. Until he wore the shadowcat pelt on his back.
What if the legends are true?
"Prince Draezell told you?" Cregan finally said, each word measured. "Of course. He would tell his heir."
"He spoke of the prophecy. And of your pact." Rhaegor fought to keep the fervor from his voice, but the lift in his tone betrayed him. "House Vaelarys comes for the final movement of the Song. It is our duty to see it completed."
"And ours." Cregan rose, hand over his heart as if reciting an oath older than stone. "Our ancestors erred in ages long forgotten. So we stand watch. Winter is coming. Eight thousand years ago. Eight thousand years hence."
A sigh cut through the vow.
"Yet the Long Night has faded from memory. The Night King forgot its terrors and dug up old secrets. And men forgot his folly—the horrors that once walked the world."
Cregan spoke of things Draezell had withheld, of knowledge even Jason couldn't find in the Watch's archives.
"As a boy, I thought them just Old Nan's stories. Until I dreamed of the Wall falling. Of blue-eyed monsters riding ice spiders and dead steeds, of frost dragons like lizard-lions sweeping south to slaughter all in their path. I dreamed Stark ancestors opening their blue eyes. Of fires guttering out. Of ice sealing the world in silence."
His voice dropped to a whisper. "My grandfather didn't believe. Nor my father. Nor my uncle. I doubt my great-grandsire did either. But I did. So I sought your father."
Rhaegor matched Cregan's words to his father's teachings, to the prophecies etched in his blood. The fire in him could no longer be contained. He stood, facing both men.
Jason Lannister barked a laugh. "Lord Stark, as Lord Commander, I share your caution. But—" He looked down at his black-enameled steel, his smile turning wry. "I am only one man. My successor may not believe as I do. You know the Watch's fate in peacetime: fewer knights, more thieves, poachers, and bastards. The Wall will weaken. It's inevitable."
He leaned in, though his rangers—all Westermen, all loyal—were out of earshot. "Your prince defeated us. So the Watch gained thousands of trained warriors. But when peace endures? We'll rot. Our replacements? A handful of northmen and Vale knights, drowned in rapers and cutpurses. The Watch will fall."
"I understand, Lord Commander." Rhaegor understood all too well. He'd seen it in his own calculations with Draezell: peace was precious, but stagnation bred vulnerability.
So too with the Wall.
Yet the realm needed this respite. The people deserved it.
"So, Prince Rhaegor, Lord Stark—speak as if I'm not here." Jason spread his hands, but his golden eyes burned. "But know this: A Lannister pays his debts. If the legends prove true, my house will not stand aside. I'll send a letter to my son. Or his heir. They'll understand."
His gaze turned north, as if piercing the very ice.
"They must."
A fist struck his breastplate. "That is the lion's duty. And his pride."
"Let us hope." Cregan's reply was flatter than the frozen plains. Not from ingratitude, but from refusal to hinge fate on another's word.
Not even Prince Draezell's.
"Prince Rhaegor," Cregan's voice cut through the stillness like a blade through snow, "I wish to renew the Pact of Ice and Fire with you."
Rhaegor nodded slowly, the pieces falling into place. His father's designs became clear—if the prophecy of the Prince Who Was Promised held true, and if fire resided in the blood of Targaryens and Vaelaryses, then ice could only mean one thing:
The blood of House Stark.
The prophesied prince would likely be a union of both.
It was simple.
"My son—should I have one of suitable age—shall wed the blood of the wolf," Rhaegor declared, echoing the ancient vow.
"The pact is made," Cregan raised his hand, his voice solemn. "Witnessed by the Old Gods."
A new covenant was sealed.
Rhaegor's line would carry the blood of winter, fulfilling the prophecy.
Let it be enough.
---
Night swallowed the world whole.
In his dreams, Rhaegor found himself standing in the heart of an endless Haunted Forest, before a gargantuan weirwood, its branches twisting like gnarled fingers.
A three-eyed raven perched among the crimson leaves.
"Caw! Caw! Why does the prince not come?"
"But you will do, caw, caw!"
The raven's screech pierced the air—
—and Rhaegor's vision split.
He saw roots stretching endlessly north, veins of the earth pulsing with forgotten power.
He saw a curtain of light, vast enough to drown the sky.
He saw rows of blue eyes, slitted and stirring.
He saw the Heart of Winter itself, beating like a star frozen in time.
Tears burned down Rhaegor's cheeks.
"Caw! Remember the vow, caw! Heir of fire! Caw! Tell the prince—our payment comes in fifteen years! Caw! May it please him!"
"CAW!"
A final shriek—
—then silence.