It's Not a Joke, He Really Gave It

House Chelsted's lands lay on the border between the Crownlands and The Reach, a fertile plain nourished by the Blackwater Rush.

Old Henry had lived sixty years and believed he had seen every strange thing in the world.

He had seen six-legged toads and two-headed calves.

But what he saw now made him think the world might have gone mad.

Not long ago, a massive red comet had torn across the skies of Westeros.

Trailing a long, blood-red tail, it stretched across the heavens.

It was like a bleeding wound, or a butcher's blade hanging over everyone's heads.

Clouds gathered around it, crimson as blood.

From certain angles, those clouds seemed to outline a gigantic bloody cross, coldly looking down upon the earth.

Then time itself fell into disorder.

Though it was high summer, the temperature began to plummet.

The little river by his home, where he had fished and caught shrimp since childhood, froze over overnight.

The hard ice gleamed a ghastly white beneath the moonlight.

Yet once day came and the sun rose, the ice melted away in an instant.

Floodwaters roared over the riverbanks, drowning the embankments and swallowing wheat fields that had only just begun to head.

The rain went on without end, pooling across the grasslands and turning them into a vast watery marsh.

The nights were bitterly cold, enough to make one's bones ache.

But whenever the sun came out during the day, the heat became unbearable, steaming the standing water into suffocating mist.

The bees in the hives grew restless. They abandoned their nectar-gathering and buzzed ceaselessly around the hives.

The cattle in the pens mooed as well, their eyes bloodshot as they anxiously kicked at the fences.

"This is a sign of the end times."

That was what old Anke from next