Wights

Sea Dragon Point Peninsula, Western Mountains, near the Mine Shantytown

"Kill them!"

"For our lord..."

"Long live B'lack!"

Amid the cries of the Bloodheart Clan warriors, the soldiers of House Flint formed a defensive formation. Although they were attacking uphill, their morale was high, for they had not only excellent equipment but also numbers far greater than the enemy's.

The Captain of the Guards, Arthur Stone, was an experienced knight and a veteran of the War of the Usurper. He also knew a great deal about military formations and training.

Although the current situation was unsuitable for a cavalry charge, Arthur Stone showed not the slightest panic, for he commanded a force of nearly three hundred.

The cavalry from Pasture Town had also reached the docks after Arthur Stone and his men wiped out the pirates. Under the cavalry's assault, the thirty-odd Clan Warriors were crushed in an instant.

After the battle, Arthur Stone, who commanded the operation, reorganized his forces. Although not one of the strange-looking Clan Warriors had been left alive, Arthur Stone and his men had old miners from the mine with them, and these men were equally familiar with the mountain's roads and paths.

Guided by these old miners, Arthur Stone chose a relatively gentle route. Since the entire force was to advance, he left some supplies aboard the ships. He also moved the two ballistae captured from the Ironborn pirates onto the transport ships to provide suppressing fire.

Moreover, to guard against a counterattack by the Clan Warriors, Arthur Stone left many sailors and soldiers there. He also imprisoned the captured Ironborn pirates in the holds of the transport ships.

"Ooh, ooh..."

Four or five of the fastest-charging Clan Warriors made strange cries as they rushed straight up to the House Flint soldiers' defensive line, only to encounter a tightly packed wall of shields.

These were all oak shields almost as tall as a man, braced at the very front of the formation by more than twenty burly soldiers. Behind them stood several rows of soldiers holding spears with hardened tips, while farther back, the mercenaries had already drawn their bows to the full.

Under Arthur Stone's command, the House Flint soldiers formed a simple infantry square. With ample men at their disposal, they soon wiped out the Clan Warriors charging down from the mountaintop.

"Advance!"

At Arthur Stone's command, the troops began moving toward the Mine Shantytown. Seen from afar, House Flint's force resembled a great beast, "swallowing" the fallen Clan Warriors one after another.

To prevent anyone from feigning death and launching a surprise attack, the House Flint soldiers struck finishing blows. The shields at the front smashed heads, and the spears in the middle stabbed again. After the main force passed, each Clan Warrior on the ground had several holes in his body.

The advance met little resistance. Although the Clan Warriors were as black as charcoal from head to toe, there were simply too few of them. Against House Flint's force of more than two hundred, the sixty-odd Clan Warriors accomplished nothing at all. Many of the mercenaries who had come along merely to go through the motions thought this assignment was very easy.

Since the Clan Warriors' deaths looked so strange, and there was nothing worth looting on them, no one paid any attention to these corpses that looked as though they carried a plague.

Yet Eddard saw all of this. After the force of Ironborn pirates was wiped out, he had remained in the hold where the prisoners were kept, observing "One-Eye" Billy's condition. Then he learned that the troops had engaged the Bloodheart Clan's forces.

Only then did Eddard hastily abandon his research, activate the Golden Eye, heighten his perception to its limit, and move directly here. Under his Golden Eye, these Clan Warriors were humanoid objects composed of a black substance. With their inexplicable sheen, they looked as though dragonglass had grown over them.

Some people in this world also called dragonglass-obsidian-"frostfire." In Eddard's fragmented memories of the television series from his previous life, the Others had been created by the Children of the Forest using dragonglass. Dragonglass was also one of the very few magical weapons capable of harming the Others.

The Glass Candle Eddard had previously possessed had itself been made from dragonglass by sorcerers during the era of the Valyrian Freehold. According to the conjectures of his companions in the Citadel's Society for the Study of Dragons and Magic, dragonglass was very likely the blood or secretion of some magical creature, which was also why it was connected to magic.

In certain obscure texts and the myths of other peoples, dragonglass was called the "blood of the gods." In those accounts, volcanoes erupted because gods were bleeding, and dragonglass was actually the scab formed when their blood cooled.

In fact, the former occupant of Eddard's body had been researching dragonglass all along. Or rather, all the maesters in the Society for the Study of Dragons and Magic had been studying it, because to them, dragonglass represented magic and the unknown.

Under the Golden Eye's scrutiny, these Bloodheart Clan warriors revealed their most fundamental state. They had been corroded by a substance resembling dragonglass, and the strange, pitch-black material had formed a bizarre equilibrium with their bodies.

If he had to describe it, it was like oily ink sealed inside a glass vessel. Moreover, the greatest problem was that the Clan Warriors whom the House Flint soldiers had judged "dead" were not truly dead. Instead, they had entered some even stranger state.

The black substance "flowed" out of the Clan Warriors' wounds and began gradually eating away at the bodies of the "dead." Realizing something was wrong, Eddard grew somewhat anxious. He kept scanning the crowd, hoping to give these men under his command some hint.

Unfortunately, although these men under Eddard were all believers in the Old Gods, their talent was so poor that he had no way to communicate with them while Skinchanging.

Meanwhile, the Clan Warriors' corpses on the ground continued undergoing some strange transformation, seemingly reaching a particular critical threshold. Although Eddard could not approach them, the feeling grew increasingly distinct. It was some kind of warning from the Golden Eye.

"Hmm..."

Just then, Eddard seemed to feel someone watching him. He shifted his perception in that direction, only to see someone even he had not expected. It was "Housecat" Bran, the youngest son of "Scar" Rickard.

At that moment, "Housecat" Bran was looking toward Eddard, a trace of confusion on his face, as though he sensed something watching him. As "Scar" Rickard's son, he had also been dragged onto the battlefield by his father. Since he was poor at close combat, he had been assigned directly to the archers' formation.

In Eddard's perception, Bran Flint's appearance also seemed to have undergone a slight change. At first, he had been no different from an ordinary northerner: a twisted creature composed of flame and bronze. Of course, those of House Flint's bloodline, such as "Scar" Rickard, also had eyes and vines growing on their bodies.

In Eddard's eyes, an organ resembling a human eye had appeared where "Housecat" Bran's head was, and its outline had become somewhat closer to a human face. Wisps of green light shone within this eye-like organ, and it was precisely this green light that allowed him to detect Eddard's presence.

This mysterious power shared the same origin as Eddard's Golden Eye and should also have been one of the Old Gods' powers. It seemed this rather timid cousin Eddard had acquired with his new identity had some talent too.

After noticing this anomaly, Eddard moved to "Housecat" Bran's position. He transformed his perception into something resembling tentacle-like organs and used them to establish contact with Bran. Immediately afterward, he conveyed a sense of danger and certain thoughts.

This was a method of communication Eddard had developed during this time. When he was within this strange, special space, his perception was unrestricted by time and space, so he had also been researching how to establish contact with the real world.

The current method was the means of contact Eddard had developed during this period. Since space did not exist here, he had thought of using perception to make contact.

Perception was a special kind of awareness akin to a sixth sense, inherently filled with uncertainty and distortion. After Eddard's soul merged with this body, it seemed to have undergone some strange change, which was also why his perception was so powerful.

Moreover, Eddard had discovered that his perception seemed to be the medium through which he communicated with all his powers. The Golden Eye's power and abilities had also developed from his perception.

After contact was established, a strange hallucination appeared in "Housecat" Bran's mind. For an instant, he felt as though he had entered another world. Everything around him twisted rapidly, and before long, he appeared in the shantytown near the mine pit.

By then, House Flint's troops had scattered in every direction, searching for Clan Warriors. "Housecat" Bran was like a spectator, with the people around him constantly passing by his side.

Just then, the Clan Warriors who had fallen behind the troops at the beginning and had already been deemed "dead" suddenly came "alive."

These creatures were terrifying, just like the wights in the ghost stories northern grandmothers told by the hearth. They drooled from their mouths, their bodies were broken, and their eyes were a deathly white. After coming "alive," these horrors immediately attacked the rear of the force.

Because the troops were too scattered, the wights soon killed all the soldiers straying outside the formation. Just as Captain of the Guards Arthur Stone finally managed to gather all the routed soldiers and destroy the wights, the remaining force encountered something utterly terrifying inside the mine pit.

In the end, some unknown being carried "Housecat" Bran by the head into the depths of the mine. There, some twisted, bizarre horror lurked within a pitch-black cavern.

"Ah... help... help me!"

This terrifying vision left "Housecat" Bran feeling as helpless as if he had fallen from a cliff. Especially at the end, the sensation of that dreadful being swallowing him whole was so real that, for a time, he believed he had truly died.

"Damn it, Bran! Are you..."

"Quick... run! There are wights!"

"Big Bear" Brandon flew into a rage when he heard his younger brother scream like a girl. But before he could finish cursing, "Housecat" Bran interrupted him with an even shriller cry. At the word "wights," all the House Flint soldiers shuddered instinctively.

The fear buried deep within the souls of the First Men seemed to have been drawn out by "Housecat" Bran's strange scream, and that same scream disrupted the rhythm of the troops' advance.

"What's going on? Halt!"

Noticing something was wrong, and after someone stepped on his foot, Captain of the Guards Arthur Stone roared. With his command, the already somewhat disordered troops gradually came to a stop.

"What in the world are you doing? Why did you suddenly stop?"

Faced with the furious Arthur Stone, "Housecat" Bran shakily pointed at the corpses lying behind the troops, as though he were looking at some monster from myth and legend.

"Hmm!"

When Arthur Stone saw his gesture, he could not quite make sense of it at first. Only after a subordinate beside him said a few words did he turn to "Housecat" Bran with an ashen face. Just as he was about to berate him, however-

Another subordinate touched Arthur Stone's right hand. Following the man's indication, Arthur saw "Scar" Rickard standing among the crowd with an embarrassed expression. He could only force down his anger and direct a few trusted men toward a corpse over there.

The soldiers who had been singled out felt somewhat helpless, but under Arthur Stone's orders, they dutifully approached the nearest corpse. After viciously driving their spears into the unfortunate fellow's body, they all looked provocatively at "Housecat" Bran, as though mocking his ignorance and cowardice.

"Ah..."

But just then, a soldier's agonized scream reached everyone's ears. They turned toward the sound and saw that a soldier standing relatively close to a corpse had been attacked by a "Clan Warrior."

As the scream rang out, the ruined corpses around them began to writhe eerily. Before long, the lifeless bodies of those Clan Warriors began moving toward the soldiers.

"Form ranks!"