The men of the Night's Watch hesitated. After all, not all of them were criminals. The Ranger who had spoken up earlier, for instance, had been a devout hedge knight before coming to the Wall, so he could not ignore these women's pleas.
They had dealt with the Wildlings for years and knew all too well how cruel life Beyond the Wall could be. Without men to protect them, these women would likely face a fate worse than death at the hands of Wildling tribes or beneath the claws of wild beasts.
At that moment, everyone's gaze, including those of the women, instinctively turned to Viserys. This mysterious Dragonlord's power and attitude would decide everything that happened next.
Viserys was crouching beside Benjen's "corpse," his purple eyes fixed on the obsidian dagger in his chest as he carefully sensed the condition of his body.
There was no heartbeat, no breathing, and his body heat was rapidly fading.
Yet at the spot where the dagger had pierced him, a cold, evil energy was trying to spread deeper into Benjen's body through his veins and nerves.
This energy was steeped in death, yet it eerily maintained a limited degree of "vitality," preventing his body from dying completely. Viserys began to suspect something. This resembled the way Benjen Stark had become half-human, half-wight in the original story.
But if he remembered correctly, the Children of the Forest had transformed him in the original story. He had never expected the same plot to unfold again at this point in time, in this way.
Was it a coincidence, or was it truly inevitable? As for this obsidian dagger, it looked like the kind used to transform the Night's King. It probably carried some sort of curse.
*The reason Benjen was half-human, half-wight in the original