New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤 ✦ A second Other slipped out of the shadows behind a tree.
It looked almost identical to the first.
Absurdly, Aeg found he could not tell them apart, much as unfamiliar Western faces had sometimes blurred together in his old life.
Then came a third.
A fourth.
Aeg’s heart dropped.
When a fifth pale figure appeared at the edge of his vision, the blood in his veins seemed to freeze.
‘Something is wrong.
Was there not supposed to be only one?’ Wait.
Maybe only one of them had killed Waymar.
As for how many had appeared in the scene itself, Aeg honestly no longer remembered.
There was no time to wonder whether the world he had crossed into had strayed from the story, or whether his own memory had failed him.
A more immediate choice stood in front of him.
If there had been only one or two Others, he might have found the nerve to fight with the dragonglass dagger in his sleeve.
But now the Others vastly outnumbered them.
The dagger might truly be able to kill one, but Aeg was no master fighter, and a little dragonglass blade would not let him cut down five monsters at once.
That was not courage.
That was suicide.
‘Be a hero for a few seconds, die in some nameless hollow in the Haunted Forest, and rise again as part of the army of the dead…
or…’ The thought lasted less than half a second.
Aeg made his choice.
He stopped rushing toward Waymar, turned, and ran without the slightest hesitation.
Partly out of decency, partly so his own conscience would have something to cling to, and mostly to warn Gared, who was still watching the horses a short distance away, he shouted the instant he turned.
“Do not engage!
Run!” “Coward!” The young noble’s furious roar rose behind him, mingling with the whistle of steel through the air.
Royce was already too close to the strange figure before him.
He had no time, no room, and no intention of turning back.
His finely forged sword met the translucent weapon in the Other’s hand.
It did not shatter the thing as Waymar had expected.
Instead, the impact produced a thin, piercing sound near the upper edge of human hearing, like the scream of some animal in pain.
The remaining Others did not interfere.
They stood and watched, showing no concern at all for the outcome.
One of them looked toward Aeg’s fleeing back and spoke in a harsh, scraping voice like nails dragging across slate.
Aeg did not understand the words, but he could hear meaning in them.
One of the Others inclined its head, raised its weapon, and came after him.
* * * Behind him, the brittle, glasslike clash of weapons rang out again and again.
The sound echoed through the dense forest and sent birds bursting into the night sky.
A few seconds later, Waymar Royce roared, “For King Robert!” A clear, sharp crack followed, like a bottle shattering.
Then came the young noble’s scream.
Aeg did not look back.
He ran faster.
Blood pounded against his eardrums and through his skull until the rest of the world blurred into noise.
In either of his lives, he had never come this close to death.
The monsters behind him were more terrifying than the worst murderer from his old world.
Their only purpose was to kill him and use his corpse to swell an army of the dead that had only just begun to form.
This was no quarrel that could be settled.
It was ice against fire, life against death—a struggle for dominion over this world.
His mail shirt, the animal furs over his shoulders, the steel sword in his hand: every piece of equipment felt impossibly heavy as he fled for his life.
Aeg had to force himself not to throw the sword away.
Running to survive and fleeing blind with terror were not quite the same thing.
At least, that was what he told himself.
The all-out sprint left him light-headed.
Waymar’s scream still echoed through the midnight forest, tangling with Aeg’s heartbeat and ragged breath until everything around him began to blur.
Was he dreaming again?
Maybe he would wake to find himself lying in the rangers’ barracks at Castle Black, his back soaked with sweat.
Snow covered the ground.
Beneath it lay puddles, roots, stones.
On the way in, they had been able to pick their way carefully.
Now, with death at his back, Aeg had no such luxury.
In his haze, his boot came down on a round stone.
His balance vanished.
The ground rushed up in front of him.
He went sprawling face-first, slamming into a root hidden under the snow.
Pain burned across his face.
In that instant, his life flashed before his eyes.
Childhood games.
School.
Graduation.
Work.
His girlfriend.
The family he had been preparing to build.
Then he had crossed into this damned world, followed that cursed Waymar Royce on patrol, and now, at the edge of life and death, he had even managed to trip.
All of it, every absurd piece of it, seemed to point to the same conclusion.
Was today the day he was meant to die?
After becoming a transmigrator in the Night’s Watch, was he about to become the first wight from another world?
The thought was almost funny.
Darkly funny.
Boom.
A violent crash yanked him out of memory and back into the world.
In his mind, he had already relived the rough shape of his life.
In reality, his face had been on the ground for barely a second.
The hidden stone had tripped him, but the snow had softened the impact.
His face hurt badly, but nothing seemed broken.
Aeg realized he still had a chance.
He pushed himself up and immediately found the source of the crash.
Ahead of him, directly in his path, an ice sword had buried itself deep in the trunk of a straight pine.
Pale blue light shimmered around the blade, reflecting the sickly moonlight in a way that made it look both beautiful and horrifying.
It had struck with such force that nearly two feet of the blade had sunk into the wood.
✦ ✦ ✦ Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.