Cold.
It was a cold that pierced through iron armor and seeped into the marrow, as if The Seven had frozen the very breath of The North into jagged ice.
Will the ranger curled beneath the rotting roots of a spruce tree, his fingernails digging into the leaf mold.
The stench of decay and frozen soil filled his nostrils.
His teeth had long since stopped chattering—perhaps they had shattered during his frantic flight, just like Ser Waymar Royce’s exquisitely decorated longsword.
Just hours ago, they had been trudging under a murky sky.
Crows circled above their heads, as though confirming the ominous rumors that plagued the forest.
The young knight had walked at the front, his silver-gray cloak sweeping across the snow.
Ser Waymar Royce was a knight and a noble, but now, like Will, the young noble was a ranger of the Night’s Watch.
“Keep moving,” Ser Waymar said as he stepped around a fallen branch, his voice sounding like an iron spoon scraping against a clay bowl.
“We’re not out here to count squirrel tracks.” Gared trailed at the rear of the party, his worn leather gloves gripping a torch tight.
The flame stretched long in the howling cold wind, casting flickers across Gared’s face.
They were scouting for signs of Wildlings, just like any other ranger patrol.
Once they reached a sufficiently deep part of the forest, the three of them split up, heading in three different directions.
Riding on horseback, Will suddenly pulled to a stop.
Not far away, obvious signs of Wildling activity stood out sharply against the snow.
Will dismounted, drew his longsword, and walked toward a nearby depression.
Any place capable of sheltering from the wind and snow was bound to be a Wildling stronghold.
He scrambled up the sloped edge and carefully peeked over the top.
“By The Seven…” The gasp caught in his throat, instantly condensing into a cloud of white mist.
In all his time since joining the Night’s Watch, he had never seen a sight like this: severed limbs were arranged in a bizarre, circular totem on the snow, dark red ice crystals stained with blood glittering like cursed runes.
Will stumbled backward, only to bump into a complete corpse—a Wildling girl, her chest impaled by a sharp spire of ice, hanging from a dead tree.
Her frozen face stared straight at him with an empty smile.
“Caw—!” A shrill shriek tore through the freezing air.
It came not from Will, but from an ominous crow perched above his head.
Terror flooded him like ice water poured over his head.
Scrambling on all fours, Will threw himself toward his mount, a single thought dominating his mind: *Flee this hellish place!* Wildlings roaming beyond the Wall were dangerous enough, but what truly struck absolute terror into his heart were the legendary horrors that existed only in grandmothers’ scary stories.
The scrawny horse strained with all its might through the deep snow.
Will pressed himself flat against the horse’s back, icy dread coiling around his spine like a venomous snake.
He did not even dare to look back, deathly afraid that in the very next second, a corpse emanating the chill of death would silently appear on the saddle behind him.
He finally burst back to the place where he had parted ways with Gared and Ser Waymar, incoherently describing the scene he had witnessed—the brutally mutilated Wildling corpses.
Will’s words were naturally met with skepticism—or more accurately, the other two rangers simply didn’t care about “dead Wildlings.” On this harsh wasteland, Wildlings frozen or starved to death were as common as dry twigs in the forest.
What truly stirred them was Will’s description of the corpses’ bizarre and horrifying states of death.
The three ultimately decided to go and investigate.
Yet when they arrived at the campsite where Will had spotted the bodies, the scattered limbs and remains had vanished without a trace, as though swallowed by the snow itself.
Though Ser Waymar held fast to his knightly code, his gaze toward Will could not help but carry a hint of distrust and impatience.
Perhaps Will hadn’t lied—a pile of ashes still faintly venting wisps of gray smoke proved that this had indeed been a Wildling camp.
Gared, far more experienced, seemed to sense something.
He suddenly dropped to one knee, his hands eagerly digging into the thick blanket of snow on the ground.
Soon, he unearthed a chunk of meat or tissue that was firmly locked in hard ice, yet still gleamed a striking, dark red.
“What is this?” Ser Waymar felt the anomaly as well, but before his words could finish, he saw Gared snap his head up.
Every drop of blood had drained from the man’s face, leaving behind only a ghastly white seized by absolute terror!
“Ahhh—!!!” A heart-wrenching scream suddenly erupted through the silent forest!
Will, who had already walked a bit farther out, trembled all over.
His instincts as a ranger overwhelmed his fear.
He instantly drew the longsword at his waist, turned, and sprinted back toward the direction of the scream.
The frightened horses had already neighed and bolted in panic, far beyond Will’s reach to catch.
From ahead came the sound of hurried footsteps and heavy panting—Gared, holding a longsword of his own, was running for his life toward him!
In the next moment, a sight unfolded that made Will’s blood run cold.
A figure appeared silently behind Gared.
It possessed dead-white skin, and its eyes burned like ghost fires of pale blue deep within ancient ice.
It moved without a sound, as if weightless, its feet not even breaking through the crust of the snow.
A hand, pale as withered bone yet extraordinarily powerful, shot out like lightning and seized Gared by his hair!
Gared didn’t even have time to harbor a thought of resistance; his face was frozen in pure, petrified terror.
A blade formed of pure ice swept gracefully and lethally across Gared’s neck, accompanied by a faint sound like shattering crystal.
*Thump.* Gared’s head rolled onto the snow at Will’s feet, those eyes still frozen in pre-death horror, staring lifelessly at the gray sky.
Will felt his legs give out, and his whole body collapsed into the cold snow.
He did not even possess the courage to glance at his former companion’s head resting before him.
The instinct for survival lashed at him like a whip.
He scrambled up on hands and knees, letting out unformed whimpers from his throat, and stumbled blindly into the deepest, darkest depths of the forest, fleeing for his life.
Until now.
Will lay curled in a shallow pit formed by intertwining tree roots, like a beast driven into a corner by a hunter.
He used his hands, which had almost lost all feeling to the cold, to cover his mouth tightly.
Every weak breath he exhaled turned to white mist as he desperately suppressed the surging terror in his throat and the chattering of his teeth from the cold and trembling.
He kept his eyes shut tight in the endless darkness and biting frost, praying in vain to any gods who might hear—praying that the horror born from ancient ice had already passed over him, a meaningless ant.