North of the Wall, in the Lands of Always Winter.
This was a forbidden realm for life, where even time seemed frozen.
Deep within a forgotten valley, a tall figure stood as motionless as an ice sculpture before a cave entrance protected by ancient magic.
The Night's King.
His eyes, burning with eerie blue flames, stared unblinkingly into the depths of the cave.
He had kept watch here for a very long time.
He could sense the ancient, powerful consciousness within the cave weakening day by day.
Like an oil lamp nearly spent, it could go out at any moment.
The Night's King was waiting.
He would remain here, preventing the Three-Eyed Raven from leaving to seek a new body to inhabit.
He needed only to wait for the instant that lamp finally went out.
Then he would raze this place, reducing the old monster who had lurked here for a thousand years, his last refuge, and those irritating Children of the Forest to cold dust!
Yet at that very moment-
The expression on the Night's King's ice-carved face suddenly changed.
He jerked his head up, and for the first time, something resembling confusion appeared in his eerie blue eyes.
That consciousness...
Had vanished.
It had not weakened. It had not gone out.
It had simply disappeared.
As though a sun that had burned for a thousand years had been erased from the sky in an instant, without warning.
That ancient will... had abruptly and utterly vanished from his perception, leaving no trace.
The Night's King slowly turned.
For the first time, his gaze left the cave entrance he had watched over through countless days and nights and turned toward the distant South.
Across the endless ice fields, across the Haunted Forest.
At last, it settled upon the immense white