A/N: I wonder what comes :o Hope you enjoyed this chapter and please leave a comment if you did! :)
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Year 300 AC
Hardhome, Beyond the Wall
The storm curtain tore apart, and Jon's heart seized.
Another dragon. Another dragon...made of ice. Not a beast of legend, not a tale to frighten children—a living nightmare of crystalline horror that made his own massive form seem like a slightly older brother. An ice dragon. Its scales weren't scales at all but sheets of living ice, each one catching and fracturing moonlight into a thousand razor edges. When it breathed, the air itself froze and fell as snow.
Atop its spine sat a White Walker unlike it's brethern. This one wore armor that seemed carved from a single glacier, and in its hand gleamed a blade longer than a man was tall—not the elegant swords its lesser kin carried, but something that looked torn from winter's own heart.
Gods be good.
The ice dragon's eyes found his. Not the burning blue of wights or even the cold stars of the Others. These were voids, patches of absolute nothing where eyes should be, as if someone had cut holes in the world itself. Looking into them made Jon's inner fire gutter like a candle in a gale.
"Forest," Jon managed to rasp, though his dragon throat mangled the word into something between speech and thunder. "Haunted Forest. All of you. Now!"
"We're not leavin' you to—" Val started.
The ice dragon roared.
Windows of ice high in Hardhome's ruins exploded inward. The sound wasn't just heard but felt, a vibration that turned Jon's bones to water. Blood poured from Grenn's nose. Pyp dropped to his knees, hands pressed to his ears. Even the retreating wights stumbled.
"GO!" Jon spread his wings, ignoring how his left one screamed protest where the Other's blade had found flesh. Purple blood spattered the snow as he launched himself upward. "I'll find you! GO!"
He didn't look back to see if they obeyed. All his focus narrowed to the monstrosity rising to meet him. The ice dragon moved with terrible grace, each wingbeat spawning blizzards. Where Jon's wings pushed air, this creature's seemed to pull at reality itself, leaving tears of absolute cold in their wake.
Jon offers up a wordless plea to the ancient deities as he prepares to face the frozen behemoth for direction. They collided a thousand feet over Hardhome, and Jon discovered what it was to do battle in a creature's native realm.
The ice dragon moved through the frozen air like it was swimming, each motion fluid and purposeful. Jon's wings beat desperately just to stay aloft, muscles already screaming from wounds and exhaustion. Where the ice dragon glided, he lurched. Where it danced, he stumbled through sky.
Too fast. How is something that size so bloody fast?
Jon tucked his wings and dove, aiming for the beast's exposed flank. The ice dragon simply wasn't there when he arrived. It had rolled aside with liquid grace, and Jon's claws raked nothing but frozen air. His momentum carried him past, wings fighting to arrest his descent before he slammed into the cliffs.
The ice dragon's tail caught him across the spine.
Jon had taken blows before from practice swords, from wildling axes, from the fists of his own sworn brothers. This was different. This was being struck by winter itself. Ice crystals erupted along his scales where the tail connected, spreading like plague-frost. His left wing seized mid-beat, sending him tumbling through a cloud bank.
Can't breathe. Can't—
He burst through the cloud's bottom, the ground rushing up fast. Jon spread his wings wide, fighting through the numbness, managing to pull out of the dive mere feet above the beach. Sand and corpses scattered in his wake.
Above, the ice dragon circled lazily, waiting.
It's toying with me. The realization stung worse than his wounds. Like a cat with a mouse.
The White Walker atop its spine hadn't even drawn that terrible blade. It sat motionless, watching Jon struggle with eyes like dying stars. Studying. Learning.
Jon climbed again, each wingbeat agony. Purple blood streamed from his earlier wounds, freezing solid before it could fall. His foreleg had gone completely numb. But he climbed, because what else was there? Run? Hide? Let this thing hunt down Val , Grenn and the others?
I am the sword in the darkness.
The words felt hollow. What good were Night's Watch vows when you'd face monstrosities that belonged in Old Nan's stories?
The ice dragon struck again, this time from below. Jon hadn't even seen it move—one moment it hung above him, the next its jaws snapped shut inches from his throat. He twisted desperately, feeling frozen teeth score furrows along his neck. His own jaws snapped back, catching nothing but tail-tip as the creature flowed away.
But he tasted something. Not blood but like licking the heart of a glacier, like swallowing starlight. The cold of it made his teeth ache down to the roots.
It bleeds. Whatever it bleeds, it can bleed.
They spiraled upward, two dragons locked in a vertical dance. Jon tried everything—feints, sudden reversals, using his smaller size to out maneuver the mythical beast. Nothing worked. The ice dragon moved like it had been born to these frozen skies, like the very air loved it and hated him.
Another pass. This time Jon's claw found purchase, tearing a gouge along the ice dragon's haunch. Frozen shards exploded outward, each one sharp as steel. They peppered Jon's face, leaving cuts that burned with supernatural cold.
The ice dragon's shriek made his earlier roar sound like a lullaby. Reality bent around that sound. Jon's vision fractured into prismatic fragments, each showing a different version of the battle where in one he was winning, in another he was already dead.
Focus. FOCUS.
The White Walker moved at last. That blade far too long, too bright, too real as it swept through the air. Jon felt it coming more than saw it, throwing himself into a desperate barrel roll. The weapon's edge passed close enough to shave scales from his belly, leaving a line of absolute cold that made his inner fire sputter.
Can't keep this up. Already slowing. Already—
The ice dragon's wing clipped his own, and suddenly Jon was spinning, the world a blur of storm and stone and sea. He slammed into the cliff face hard enough to crack granite, stars exploding across his vision. Rock rained down around him as he slid toward the beach, claws scrambling for purchase.
The ice dragon landed before him with insulting delicacy, not even breathing hard.
Get up. Get UP.
Jon forced himself to stand, legs shaking. Every breath felt like swallowing glass. The ice dragon approached slowly, savoring his weakness. Its rider raised that terrible blade for the killing stroke.
I will not yield!
Not rage. Something colder, harder. The same thing he'd felt when they'd murdered him in the snow. The same thing that had carried him through death and back.
I am a son of House Stark— and we do not not yield in battle.
The ice dragon lunged. Jon didn't dodge. Instead, he surged forward, accepting the crushing bite on his shoulder to get inside the creature's reach. His claws found the joint where wing met body, and he pulled.
The sound of tearing filled the world. Not the clean snap of breaking bone, but something worse, like ripping the sky itself. The ice dragon's wing came free in a shower of frozen starlight, its scream shattering every piece of ice for miles.
Jon should have pressed the advantage. Should have gone for the throat while the beast reeled. But the pain, gods, the pain of his own wounds, the exhaustion, the cold spreading through him like poison.
The ice dragon's remaining wing buffeted him, sending him tumbling across the frozen beach. He fetched up against the ruins of a longhouse, timber exploding into splinters. When he tried to stand, his legs buckled.
The ice dragon advanced on three legs, dragging its ruined side. Even maimed, it radiated terrible majesty. Its rider had been thrown clear but stood now, blade in hand, approaching from Jon's blind side.
Two enemies. No strength. No fire.
That last thought stopped him cold. He'd been trying to breathe flame for the last few minutes, throat working desperately, but nothing came. The well was empty, drained by that purple inferno earlier.
No. There's always something left. Always.
The copper taste brought her back—that phantom presence haunting the edges of memory. A woman's hands, gentle on fevered skin. A lullaby in a voice he'd never truly heard, only imagined in the space between sleep and waking. The scent of winter roses, faint as smoke.
Mother.
His wings faltered, the word burning hotter than dragonfire in his chest. All these years, she'd been a ghost-shaped hole, a name Lord Stark wouldn't speak, a grave that didn't exist. Now, with darkness eating at his vision and his blood painting the sky, her absence felt like another wound.
The wolf's blood runs true. His talons gouged furrows in the frozen earth, the same way his fingers had once gripped Longclaw's pommel through every battle, ice crystals forming between the joints, refusing to let go.
Jon's throat constricted, searching. Nothing. His chest cavity contracted, ribs pressing inward. Empty. He reached past muscle and bone, past the organs that no longer quite belonged to him, down into the marrow-deep place where his human heart had once beaten. There, a single coal glowing in the dark, small as a fiery star, hot enough to burn through what remained of him. He found his fire.
The ice dragon loomed over him. Its rider raised the blade.
Jon breathed.
Amethyst fire erupted not in a stream but a sphere, expanding outward like a small sun. It caught the ice dragon mid-lunge, caught its rider mid-strike. For a heartbeat, they hung frozen in that terrible light—beast and Other outlined in violet flame.
Then they were gone.
Not burned. Not melted. Simply erased, as if they had never existed at all. The violet fire winked out, leaving only afterimages and the taste of copper and starlight.
Jon tried to stand. The beach tilted wildly, sky and ground switching places. His wings—when had he spread them?—caught air by instinct alone, lifting him into unsteady flight.
Find them. Find Val and Grenn and... find...
The forest wheeled below him, a carpet of snow-laden trees. His vision tunneled, darkness creeping in from the edges. Still he flew, driven by will alone, searching for—
There.
A cluster of figures between the trees, faces turned skyward. Val's honey hair. Grenn's bulk. Safety. Home. Pack.
Jon's wings folded mid-beat.
The last thing he knew was falling, the ground rushing up to claim him, and thinking with odd clarity: At least the snow will be soft.
Then darkness, complete and merciful, swallowed him whole.
----------------------------------------------------
Val's boots punched through the snow crust as another roar split the sky. The sound rolled down from the storm clouds like an avalanche, making her teeth ache. She didn't look up. Looking up meant seeing Jon, locked in battle with a nightmare that shouldn't exist fighting for his and their lives.
"Keep movin'!" she barked at the cluster of Free Folk stumbling through the trees. An old woman had fallen to her knees, weeping for grandchildren lost in Hardhome. Val hauled her upright. "Cry when we're south. Move now, or we all join 'em."
Grenn crashed through the undergrowth beside her, his black cloak snagged and torn. Blood ran from his nose where the ice dragon's roar had burst something inside. "How many we lose?"
"Too many." Val didn't elaborate. Half their number, maybe more. Bodies left in the snow, trampled in the panic when the wights came pouring down those cliffs like a gray tide. "Where's yer crow brother?"
"Pyp's herding stragglers on the east side. Toregg's with him." Grenn wiped blood with the back of his hand, smearing it across his cheek. "Seven hells, Val. That thing up there—"
Another impact shook the ground. Snow cascaded from the pine branches, and somewhere behind them, trees cracked and fell. The battle had moved inland, two monsters tearing pieces from the sky.
Val forced herself to keep walking, to keep pushing the survivors forward. But her ears strained for every sound—the snap of wings, the shriek of that ice-thing, Jon's deeper roar. Each clash sent tremors through her chest.
A child who couldn't be more than six winters tugged at her sleeve. "The dragon's gonna eat us?"
"No." Val crouched, meeting the boy's wide eyes. His mother was probably among the dead. "That dragon's Jon Snow. He's fightin' for us."
The boy's face scrunched. "Lord Crow's a dragon?"
"Aye. And he's buyin' us time, so we run." She stood, raising her voice. "All of you! South and west, follow the ridge line. Don't stop for nothin'!"
They stumbled on through the entrance of the Haunted Forest, a ragged line of survivors. Free Folk who'd survived Mance, survived the march to the Wall only to meet their end at the hands of the dead. Val's jaw clenched. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Jon Snow had promised them safety, promised them—
Movement in the trees ahead. Val's hand flew to her knife, but it was only Pyp, leading another group of survivors. The crow looked like he'd aged ten years in the last hour.
"Wights," he gasped. "Maybe a few hundred, circling from the west. They're trying to cut us off."
"Shit." Val scanned the treeline. They had what—three thousand people? Four? Most too weak or wounded to fight. "How far behind?"
"Minutes. Maybe less."
Toregg appeared, dragging a man with a mangled leg. "We can't outrun 'em. Not carryin' wounded."
Val's mind raced. The forest pressed close here, funneling them toward a narrow valley. Good for defense, death if they were flanked. Above, the storm had gone quiet. No more roars, no more impacts. The silence felt wrong.
"Here," she decided. "We hold here, right bloody now. Grenn, drag every sword-swingin' fool up that ridge. Spears up front, chuckers behind 'em. Pyp, Toregg haul the rest past that tight bit. If we don't break, they might."
Val's fingers found the leather pouch at her hip as she found three shards left, each no bigger than her thumb. She scanned the ragged line of defenders. Maybe two dozen fighters clutched proper dragonglass blades. The rest made do with bronze, bone and fire, hacking at corpses that kept crawling forward even after losing limbs.
The wights came through the trees like wolves, silent and purposeful. No battle cries, no hesitation. Just dead things that moved with terrible focus.
"Spears!" Grenn's voice cracked like a whip. "Hold the line!"
The first wave hit their makeshift defense hard. Val watched a wight that was once a woman—judging by the long hair—take three spears through the chest and keep coming. Its fingers found a fighter's throat before someone took its head off with an axe.
"The heads!" Val shouted. "Take the heads or burn 'em!"
She shoved the last of the children through the gap, then turned back. The line was buckling. Too many wights, too few fighters. A crow went down screaming, a dead child gnawing at his face.
Her blade sank into the little corpse's eye, wrenched sideways, yanked out. The creature still twitched until she crushed its head to fragments. Her sole lifted wet with ancient gore.
"There!" Pyp pointed. "More comin' from the east!"
Val's heart sank. Another dozen wights shambled from the trees, these ones fresher looking like the Free Folk who'd died in the Hardhome retreat, still wearing their furs. She recognized faces. Halleck, who'd shared his last piece of salted meat with her son. Della, who'd sung the old songs so beautifully.
Now they were nothing but weapons aimed at the living.
The defensive line shattered. Fighters scrambled back, some tripping over bodies, others simply running. Val grabbed a fallen spear, set her feet. If this was where she died, she'd die like a spearwife, not fleeing like southern sheep.
Then—silence.
The wights stopped mid-stride. Every one of them, frozen like they'd heard some distant command. Their blue eyes dimmed, flickered, went dark. Bodies collapsed like cut strings, truly dead at last.
"What in the seven bloody hells?" Grenn lowered his sword, panting.
Val knew. She felt it in her bones, in the way the wind shifted. "The battle's over." She didn't know how she knew, but she did. "One of 'em won."
"Please be Jon," Pyp whispered. "Please, please be Jon."
They stood among the twice-dead, waiting. The forest held its breath. Even the wind had stilled. Then a sound like thunder was heard, growing closer. Wings.
"There!" A child pointed skyward.
The dragon burst through the canopy, and Val's chest loosened. Black scales, massive wings—Jon. He lived. They'd won. Around her, people began to weep with relief, some falling to their knees.
"He did it," Grenn laughed, actually laughed. "The bloody bastard actually did it!"
But something was wrong. The dragon flew too low, wings beating erratically. As it passed overhead, Val saw the wounds—great tears in the membrane of his wings, scales missing in sheets, purple blood painting his flanks.
"Jon!" The name tore from her throat.
The dragon's head turned toward them, those red eyes finding hers across the distance. For a heartbeat, she saw recognition there. Saw him, not the monster.
Then purple fire erupted across his body. A haunting light that seemed to come from within, outlining every scale, every wound. The dragon's roar became a scream became—
"No!"
The fire consumed him, ate him from inside out. Wings folded, dissolved. That massive body contracted, collapsed, shaped itself into...a man.
Naked and falling.
Val ran before thought. Branches tore at her face, roots caught her feet. She could hear others behind with Grenn shouting and Pyp cursing but all that mattered was the figure plummeting through the canopy.
The crack of impact guided her. A pine, ancient and tall, now split nearly in half. Its trunk had caught him, cradled him in splintered wood fifty feet up.
Val climbed. Her hands found purchase on rough bark, hauling herself up with strength born of desperation. Sap stuck to her palms. A branch snapped under her weight, nearly sending her tumbling, but she caught herself and kept climbing.
There. Caught in the fork where the trunk split, looking like a broken doll. Not moving. Not breathing that she could see.
She reached him just as Grenn arrived at the base of the tree. "Is he...?"
Val pressed her ear to Jon's chest. Nothing. Nothing. Then—the faintest flutter. A heartbeat, weak but there.
"Alive!" She had to swallow past the tightness in her throat. "He's alive! Get rope!"
They got him down slow, careful. Toregg climbed up to help her ease Jon's body through the branches while Grenn and Pyp rigged a sling below. Every glimpse of him made her stomach clench. Frost burns covered his chest and arms, the skin angry red and blistered. Wounds that should have been on a dragon marked his human flesh with deep gouges along his ribs, punctures in his shoulder.
"Easy," she murmured, though Jon couldn't hear. "Easy now."
When they finally had him on the ground, wrapped in cloaks, Val took stock. He breathed, but shallow. His skin burned with fever. Blood seeped through the makeshift bandages they'd torn from their own clothes.
"We need to move," Pyp said quietly. "If there are more of those things, we need to be elsewhere."
"I know." Val stood, decision made. "Grenn, Toregg—you'll carry him. Take turns. Pyp, scout ahead. Find us shelter for the night. Something defensible."
She looked down at Jon's face, too pale except where the burns mottled it red. He'd saved them. Thrown himself at monsters from nightmares so they could escape. The least they could do was get him somewhere safe.
"South," she commanded, and they moved, carrying their broken dragon gently through the snow.