Chapter 51: Into The Darkness

The Red Keep, King's Landing – Brynden's Chambers, 226 AC

The night had cast its shadow over King's Landing like a mourning veil. The hearthfire in Brynden Rivers' private quarters had long since dulled to embers, its last flickers dimly lighting the rich silks and velvet of the room. The heavy curtains muted the sound of wind against the walls. All was still.

In the grand bed carved from black oak, Brynden Rivers lay entangled in Shiera Seastar's embrace. The lovers were as bare as their bond, cloaked only by the warmth of fur blankets. Shiera's long silver-gold hair spilled across the pillows like moonlight caught in silk. Her breath was slow and soft. She slept easily, without fear.

But not him.

Brynden stirred, then stiffened, as if gripped by unseen chains. His lone eye fluttered beneath its lid, twitching. He did not wake.

Instead, he flew.

He was no longer a man. His limbs were light, his body hollow. Wings flapped against a bitter wind. Snow screamed around him in an endless storm, and beneath, a land of white and shadow spread beyond sight. A void of winter.

He knew he was a raven. A great black raven. Yet not like any other—he had three eyes, and through the third, he saw things the others could not.

He soared through the blizzard, and the storm parted for him. He did not guide himself. Something else drew him forward.

And then he saw them.

They emerged from the whiteness like wraiths from another world—tall, gaunt beings of cold beauty and terrible purpose. Their flesh shimmered like snow-packed alabaster, and their eyes burned an unnatural shade of blue, bright and terrible as stars against the black of night. Their hair was pale silver, moving in slow strands as though underwater.

Their armor reflected the world around them, not metal, but something older—like the surface of a frozen lake, rippling with faint light. In their hands they bore swords as thin as ice, forged from moonlight and mystery, glowing with a ghostly blue fire.

Some rode half-rotten horses, their flesh clinging to bone like wet parchment. Others mounted enormous ice spiders, their legs clicking and skittering across frost-rimed ground.

And behind them came death.

Legions of the undead marched in silence. Men and women, children and elders, now no more than frozen husks with blackened flesh and eyes of nothing. Undead giants, their flesh half-torn, followed with trees for clubs. Packs of feral beasts, wolves and bears, snarled in silence, their breath like steam rising from the crypts of hell.

Brynden's raven-body shuddered mid-flight.

He wanted to flee. To look away. To wake.

But he could not. Not yet.

They turned toward him.

As if they saw him.

The tallest of the white demons—eyes like cold suns, a crown of icicle horns upon his head—raised a hand.

And then everything went dark.

The Red Keep, Just Before Dawn

Brynden awoke gasping, his chest heaving, covered in sweat. His eye darted about the room like a cornered animal. The fire was dead. Cold air crept under the doors. Shiera stirred beside him, then lifted her head.

"Brynden?" she murmured, her voice still husky from sleep. "What is it? What happened?"

He looked at her, at the one woman who knew him most. Her face was beautiful even in worry. But he could not tell her. Not now.

"Just a dream," he lied, brushing back his silver hair with a trembling hand. "A bad one. They come now and then."

Shiera narrowed her eyes, the way she always did when she saw through him. She said nothing more. Instead, she pulled him back down beside her, resting his head against her bare chest, her fingers sliding through his hair with idle tenderness.

She soon fell back asleep.

But Brynden did not.

His eye stared up at the canopy above, his body motionless, while his mind screamed in silence.

That was no dream.

That was a warning.

In the far north, beyond the end of the world, something was stirring. White demons, ancient and cold, were on the move. A war unlike any the realm had ever known was coming.

And only he had seen it.