Learning to use fire was the first step humanity took toward a grand future.
When fire drove back the dark night and repelled beasts, it marked humanity’s official rise to the absolute top of the planet’s food chain.
Wild beasts ought to fear fire, for a campfire lit in the night signified the presence of large, dangerous apex predators—humans.
Zhao Che flicked embers and burning wood from the campfires toward the encroaching wights almost by instinct—just as he had done when repelling wild animals.
Then, the unexpected happened: one of the wights caught fire, and the rest visibly shrank back, terrified of the flames.
“They’re afraid of fire!” Zhao Che roared, kicking and flicking more glowing coals from the scattered campfires into the air.
The coals that missed snuffed out quickly in the snow, but those that hit the wights instantly ignited their desiccated fur and sparse, tattered garments.
Clusters of flame erupted around the camp, turning several wights into bright, humanoid torches blazing in the pitch-black night.
The Jingsai horsemen spurred their mounts forward.
One swung his weapon, blasting away a wight wielding a sickle.
By now, Logan was the sole survivor of the ranger squad he had led out.
The reason he was still alive was simple: while the wights were pinning down his companions, Logan had squirmed away like a caterpillar across the snow.
Zhao Che rode up and thrust his horse-breaker spear straight between Logan’s wrists, its razor-sharp tip instantly slicing through the bound ropes.
“Go get your horse!” Zhao Che pointed toward where the horses were tethered, then yanked his reins and charged toward Guan Zimo.
…
The horse-breaker spear in Guan Zimo’s hand carved an arc of silver light through the air—like a silver dragon unleashed—hurled with the full force of her body.
The spearhead accurately pierced the White Walker standing in the treeline not far off.
The immense kinetic impact pinned its withered body along with several wights behind it firmly against a tree trunk.
No blood spilled, only liquid that instantly froze into ice shards upon leaving the wound.
Yet even more wights surged forward like a dark tide.
Hearing Zhao Che’s shout that the wights feared fire, everyone—including Guan Zimo—scrambled to find combustible branches to defend themselves, kindling a ring of modest fires around the camp’s perimeter.
Flaming wights thrashed wildly in the snow, emitting bloodcurdling shrieks, yet they did nothing to slow the advance of their undead brethren.
Having thrown her long polearm, Guan Zimo did not retreat.
Instead, she bolted back a few paces to her mount, her left hand darting behind the saddle.
With a sharp *clang*, a cold, gleaming three-pointed double-edged blade was in her grip.
In her hands, the weapon seemed to come alive, carving brilliant blossoms of silver through the dark.
A wight lashed out with a rusted iron chain as it lunged.
Guan Zimo flicked her wrist and brought her blade down in a vicious chop.
The razor edge cleaved through decayed bone with ease, and with a twisting tear of the side blades, she sheared the wight’s head clean off its shoulders.
Spinning into a sweeping arc, her blade dissolved into a silvery whirlwind once more, cleaving three or four surrounding wights in two.
Their severed limbs twitched uselessly on the snow, unable to immediately pose a threat.
“Will!” Guan Zimo barked sharply amidst the chaos, her voice piercing through the screeches and pounding hooves.
“Get those two Wildlings onto horses!
Move fast—don’t let them become monster food!” Nearby, Will was frantically slicing through the last few bonds.
Hearing her command, he dared not hesitate.
He yanked up the dazed Blackhand and Gryon, who had just been freed.
“Get up!” he growled, shoving both men onto a riderless warhorse before vaulting onto another and gripping the reins of both mounts tightly.
At that moment, a massive wight broke through the circle of fire, swinging a shattered battle-axe down toward Guan Zimo’s head.
The silver-armored heroine’s eyes narrowed.
She thrusted the shaft of her weapon upward, blocking the axe handle, and used the force to leap into the air.
Gripping the shaft with her legs, she drew herself up like a fully bent bow, and as she descended, her blade split the giant wight cleanly from crown to crotch.
Split in two, the wight collapsed with a heavy crash, but more wights surged endlessly behind it.
The fires on the ground were dying down.
Darkness was like a gape-jawed maw, slowly swallowing Guan Zimo and the Jingsai guards whole.
“Go!” Guan Zimo kicked a wight away and shouted over to Will.
She spurred her warhorse toward an unclosed gap in the horde, where the mounted Jingsai soldiers were frantically hacking at wights trying to drag them from their saddles.
Seeing Guan Zimo ride up, the Jingsai soldiers rallied with the remaining three captives, fighting their way toward the thinnest point in the wight horde.
…
Where…
is this place?
The violent jostling vanished instantly, replaced by an eerie sense of weightlessness.
Countless specks of blue light burst through the pitch-black void.
When his vision refocused, Shen Mo found himself standing not in the freezing snows of the North, but inside a mausoleum so grand it took his breath away.
There was no sky here—only an ink-black void above, dotted with billions of shimmering stars as though the entire cosmos had been compressed beneath this dome.
Beneath his feet lay a floor of translucent, pale jade that mirrored his reflection, sending golden ripples outward with every step he took.
Looming dragon-shaped stone pillars stood around the hall, their heads bowed low as if guarding an eternally burning blue flame at the center.
“The tomb of Shi Yanmo, the Soul Dragon…” Shen Mo murmured.
A tremor deep within his soul made him want to drop to his knees.
This was the legendary resting place of the Dragon Emperor’s eldest daughter—a sacred ground where time itself stood still.
“You have finally come.” A cool, ethereal voice echoed from the void, devoid of earthly heat, yet striking straight to the heart.
Shen Mo snapped his head up.
In front of the ethereal blue flame, an ethereal figure slowly coalesced.
It was a woman clad in an ancient dress embroidered with dragon motifs.
Her eyes were like twin bright moons in a night sky, though her face remained obscured.
Her body was intangible, woven from starlight and dragon-soul essence, encircled by faint azure dragon phantoms that flickered in and out of existence.
“Shi Yanmo…” Shen Mo spoke the name.
The woman nodded faintly and drifted closer, hovering before him.
“There is no need for formality,” Shi Yanmo said, a subtle tiredness in her voice.
“I am not here on my own account, but guided by Mother to wait for you.” “The Moon Empress?” Shen Mo’s heart skipped a beat, a grim foreboding rising within him.
“Mother caught sight of the threads of fate fraying,” Shi Yanmo raised her hand and tapped lightly at the empty air before them.
The still air twisted instantly, unfolding a vivid vision between them: a frigid night in the North, the last embers dying out, a tide of wights surging like a black tsunami.
Trapped in the center were Guan Zimo and the Jingsai guards who had set out with her.
The blade of Guan Zimo’s weapon was notched and chipped, and her warhorse had long since perished.
A ranger clad in the black of the Night’s Watch emerged from nowhere, desperately blocking lunging enemies with a broken sword, blood staining the white snow red.
The Jingsai soldiers fell one by one, only for their corpses to rise again moments later.
This was a prophecy—a prophecy on the brink of fulfillment.
“They cannot hold out much longer,” Shi Yanmo said in a low voice, the starlight in her eyes dimming.
“Whether their lives can be saved rests entirely on your choice…”