Entering

The North, Sea Dragon Point Peninsula, House Flint's mine.

"Hah!"

"Scar" Rickard roared and slammed his battle-axe into a wight's head. Half its skull flew off beneath the blow.

Disgusting slime and dried, hardened rotten flesh splattered through the air. Under such a powerful attack, the terrifying monster was sent flying like a sandbag.

It was also the last wight on the battlefield. When the wights of the Bloodheart Clan attacked, House Flint's soldiers had panicked somewhat, and some of the mercenaries and hastily conscripted hunters had nearly thrown down their weapons and fled.

Fortunately, House Flint's guards and town watch were normally trained by Arthur Stone. At his command, the soldiers at the rear raised their shields in time, firmly holding the disordered force in place.

Arthur Stone had considered this problem when arranging the formation. Almost all the men on the outside of the infantry square had been trained by him personally.

After stopping the troops from breaking, Arthur Stone kept encouraging the soldiers and helping those attacked by the wights. Only after he personally led three of his men in tearing a wight to pieces did House Flint's soldiers fully recover.

Then, under the shouted commands of guard captain Arthur Stone and "Scar" Rickard, the soldiers gradually forgot their initial terror and began following their officers' orders to attack.

Throughout this, the castle guards served as an unshakable anchor. They were the ones who stopped the fleeing men, and they were also the ones holding off the wights at the front.

In the eyes of southerners, northerners were all reckless brutes who feared no death. Although the armies of the North had generally missed many crucial battles throughout Westeros's history because of the distances involved, no ruler would underestimate the North's role in the Seven Kingdoms.

These fearless northerners were simply too good at fighting. During the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war under the former rule of House Targaryen, the Winter Wolf Army, led by northern forces, had thrashed nearly all the major southern armies in turn. Although fewer than one in ten of its men survived the fighting, such achievements were more than enough to prove northern valor.

Perhaps House Flint's soldiers had feared these beings at first, but as time passed, they forgot their fear of the wights. Some of the bolder mercenaries even called them "puppets."

Most importantly, there were simply too few of these wights. An ambush might have achieved something, but now, against a densely packed infantry square, even the most powerful humanoid individual could only be ground to dust.

"Whew..."

"Hahaha, Bran, how did you notice these disgusting things? Thank goodness you spotted them in time, or those bastards would've stabbed us up the arse!"

"Hahaha..."

After chopping the last wight into several pieces, "Scar" Rickard spoke to his younger son, who stood nearby. His somewhat crude joke drew a burst of laughter from everyone around him.

"I... I..."

Faced with the heartfelt gratitude in everyone's eyes, "Housecat" Bran was at a loss, even forgetting how to answer "Scar" Rickard.

But with the battle over, a question confronted them: should they keep moving forward? And what about the miners-had they all been killed?

After ordering the troops to rest where they were, Arthur Stone and "Scar" Rickard gathered for a small, impromptu war council. As members of House Flint's bloodline, "Housecat" Bran and "Big Bear" Brandon joined them.

"Bran, I hope you can tell me exactly what else you saw. Besides corpses turning into these monsters, were there any other... uh... terrifying things?"

As a devout follower of the Seven, Arthur Stone had always believed in the Seven alone. But over time, some of the things he had seen and heard in the North had gradually changed certain firmly held ideas in his mind.

Northerners had quite a reputation in the six southern kingdoms. According to some tales, they could transform into all kinds of animals at night. Arthur Stone had not believed this at first. Only after witnessing it himself had he believed the tale.

"I... I also saw some terrifying black smoke in the mine. There seemed to be something even more terrible inside. I think we have to deal with it as soon as possible, because that..."

As "Housecat" Bran spoke, his words suddenly faltered. Then everyone around him witnessed an exceedingly bizarre sight: everything around them twisted under the influence of some unknown force.

In that instant, they seemed to have crossed into some terrifying place. There appeared to be no constraints of time or space here, and everything around them was a hazy gray.

While they were still bewildered, a terrifying howl arose in that space. With it, their surroundings seemed to change once more. After a series of strange distortions, the four of them arrived in the shantytown near the mine.

At first, these were still ordinary wooden shacks. "Housecat" Bran, his father, and his brother were very familiar with this place. But under the influence of some strange power, everything changed.

Black, twisted matter gradually began replacing the wooden structures. That substance was a black without any sheen, a black so deep it was disturbing, so deep it made their hearts quail, as though even their souls might be swallowed into it.

Thump, thump, thump...

Amid rhythmic pounding, several naked female Clan Warriors performed a bizarre dance around a strange pillar of dragonglass. Their bodies were entirely black, and the scale-like things on their skin glimmered with tiny points of light in that space, like fireflies in the night.

Behind the dancing women were several miners with their hands bound. Dense wounds covered their bodies beneath their ragged, coarse hemp clothes. They looked utterly listless, and their eyes were vacant, as though something had taken their souls.

Just then, a tall man who blended completely into the darkness suddenly emerged from behind the dragonglass pillar. He held a huge battle-axe that still seemed to be dripping blood.

Crack...

Amid sounds like shattering glass, Arthur Stone and the other three felt their consciousness blur again. Everything around them began to grow indistinct. After an unknown amount of time, "Housecat" Bran woke first. Once he had roused the others, all their faces bore expressions of disbelief. Clearly, what they had just seen had shocked all four of them.

"We have to act quickly, everyone. The enemy may already be slaughtering our people. Our lord said that a collapsed mine can be rebuilt, but once people die, we can never get them back!"

"Housecat" Bran spoke forcefully, his tone carrying something seemingly unshakable. When Arthur Stone looked at him, it was as though he were facing Eddard.

Arthur Stone's guess was actually correct, for Eddard had indeed skinchanged into "Housecat" Bran's body at that moment. In this place without the constraints of time and space, Eddard's perception allowed him to skinchange into others whenever and wherever he wished.

While his men fought, Eddard had been experimenting with his Skinchanging ability. After repeated attempts, he had thought of a simpler, more effective method: interference with consciousness.

According to the understanding on Blue Star, the human brain had three modes of operation. Each handled different problems and was affected by various factors. The first was sensory activity, the second psychological activity, and the third thought activity.

When Eddard used his powerful perception, he could indirectly influence these three modes of brain activity and thereby achieve control. In traditional Skinchanger thinking, Skinchangers sought absolute control over the bodies of their targets.

Although this method could resolve many problems once and for all, such absolute control met with fierce resistance from the original owner's soul. A single careless mistake could lead to failure.

Eddard's improvement was gentler. He combined certain fragments of the future foreseen through the Golden Eye into an exceptionally realistic illusion, causing the other person to unconsciously act in accordance with his visions.

"Housecat" Bran's current state was the result of Eddard using his full power. Under Eddard's influence, the four of them had seen the illusion clearly, while "Housecat" Bran had boldly voiced the thoughts in his mind. After the calamity of the wights they had just experienced, everyone instinctively agreed with him.

"Move out!"

As waves of blurriness swept over him, Eddard's perception seemed to weaken somewhat further. Yet he felt deeply gratified, for his main objective had been achieved. His territory was already a poor, remote place. If he lost these hundred-odd able-bodied young adults as well, many of his plans would have to wait a long time before they could be completed.

Watching his men advance, Eddard also began moving toward the shantytown halfway up the mountainside. The Bloodheart Clan warriors had yet to notice their plan's failure. Many of them were still hiding behind the houses, seemingly preparing to ambush House Flint's soldiers.

Eddard's perception repeatedly searched the area, but he found none of House Flint's miners. It seemed they had probably been taken into those mysterious Blackstone Ruins. The Golden Eye's ability was truly powerful. It was by probing the corpses of those Clan Warriors with his perception that Eddard had found clues about the Blackstone Ruins.

The future was elusive, but the past could be uncovered by peering into souls. This ability of Eddard's closely resembled the Greenseers' ability recorded in the Citadel's notes. Or rather, his ability might very well have originated from a certain Greenseer.

In these ambushing Bloodheart Clan warriors, Eddard saw many chaotic pasts. Those images, sped up thousands or tens of thousands of times, were truly terrifying. One careless mistake could crash an ordinary person's brain, yet Eddard's Golden Eye still sifted out the fragments of the past he needed from those chaotic images.

After finding the entrance to the Blackstone Ruins, Eddard's perception drifted toward the passage. It lay in the middle section of the mine tunnel and seemed to have been burned open by some terrifying flame, for scorch marks covered it, and some of the feldspar and dragonglass had been burned into glassy aggregates.

Seeing this terrifying power, Eddard felt a flicker of fear at what might have happened. Fortunately, what he sensed from the Bloodheart Clan warriors outside indicated that this place had only formed after seven Clan Warriors were sacrificed. It had happened after their sacrificial ritual the previous night. Once the ritual ended, waves of scorching black smoke had poured straight out of the mine. When men were sent down to investigate the following morning, this passage had appeared.

These Bloodheart Clan warriors and minor leaders might have been too low-ranking, for Eddard could find no corresponding power or ritual in them at all. They only knew that everything had been done by Bel, the Magnar of their Bloodheart Clan.

In the ancient tongue of the First Men, Magnar meant "great lord." Many First Men clan chiefs used this title for themselves. Bel's origins and rise were extraordinary, as though he had been using cheats. In the eyes of many Bloodheart Clan warriors, he was a godlike being.

The passage was extremely spacious, roughly three times as wide as House Flint's mine tunnel. Eddard was exceedingly cautious, for in his fragmented memories from Blue Star, the North had possessed no supernatural powers beyond the Children of the Forest and the Greenseers. Or rather, in the television series, only two factions on humanity's side had displayed supernatural powers.

One consisted of the Children of the Forest and the Greenseers, who represented the Old Gods. The other consisted of priests of the Lord of Light, a mainstream faith from Essos-particularly a certain red-haired, heart-faced beauty dressed in red robes. Eddard remembered her so vividly not because she was always showing off her body, but because of her terrifying magic, like a painted skin. A ravishing beauty had suddenly turned into a dreadful, withered corpse-like being. Eddard reckoned he would not forget it even in the lifetime after his next.

Unknown things and powers were always the most terrifying, because Eddard had no way to assess the risks. But for the sake of the hundred-odd able-bodied young adults under him, he could only steel himself and press on. At worst, he would use the power in his left hand or his right.