Walls of ice erupted from the ground, enclosing Wright within them. In less than a breath, a massive structure of solid ice had completely sealed him inside.
Seeing that his attack had landed, the Night King didn't pay any further attention to it and turned to support other battles.
However, the figure frozen inside the ice, still in a running posture, was Wright's real body. The ice that encased him was both an attack and a protective measure. Once frozen, he was shielded from further assaults. Using his magic to resist the cold, Wright seized the opportunity to analyze the battlefield.
Due to the Night King's immortal nature, their two previous direct encounters had ended without a decisive outcome. Wright had deliberately held back his strength, intending to lure the Night King into a pre-arranged trap as part of his plan.
But so far, the battle had only expanded in scale. No matter what Wright tried, the Night King refused to move far from his current position.
The wight army required no logistics or supplies, while the human coalition had already retreated south. Why was the Night King lingering here? Could it be because of that carriage?
At this thought, Wright increased his body temperature with magic, discreetly melting a small opening in the ice before slipping out.
His other clones were still fighting in the distance. After glancing toward the direction of the carriage, Wright hid behind the ice wall and fully unleashed his magic perception.
In his focused magical vision, the sky and ground turned gray, while magical entities appeared in colors corresponding to their magic types. The carriage flickered with a faint red glow—indicative of vampire blood magic.
But that alone shouldn't warrant this level of attention from the Night King. There had to be something else inside.
Gripping his greatsword, Wright activated his invisibility and dashed toward the carriage.
"I've been discovered!"
As Wright sprinted invisibly to within ten meters of the carriage, crimson footprints appeared in the mud beneath him.
The dozen high-ranking vampires standing guard immediately scattered in all directions while simultaneously hurling dozens of magic spheres toward the footprints.
Now that he was this close, turning back was no longer an option—he had to see what was inside.
"Roar!" Wright raised his left arm and conjured a magical shield, bracing himself against the bombardment.
As the blood-red explosion dissipated, an equally crimson slash of sword energy shot out from the mist, cleaving through the back of the carriage.
The carriage's exterior was destroyed, but neither the vampires nor Wright moved. The vampires' hesitation was unclear, but Wright was frozen in shock at what he saw inside.
"Hah… hah… What the hell is this?!"
Since the vampires weren't attacking, Wright took the opportunity to grab a few magic restoration potions from his belt and gulp them down.
Being able to withstand an assault from a dozen Blood Knights proved that this was his true body. The Night King, who had been watching from afar, instantly rushed over to the carriage as well.
For the third time, the two faced each other in their real forms.
The clones still fighting elsewhere were either being destroyed by their counterparts or dissipating as their magic was depleted. Soon enough, only Wright and the Night King remained, standing across from each other in front of the shattered carriage.
Inside, bound by thick iron chains, sat a man.
He wore no clothes, his heavily muscled frame clearly visible even while seated. His fingers bore razor-sharp claws, and his long black hair hung over his face, obscuring his features.
At first glance, he appeared human—he had a humanoid body, limbs, and head. But his pale, nearly translucent skin revealed his veins beneath the surface, and his back bore two malformed, asymmetrical wings.
Sensing Wright's gaze, the man slowly lifted his head.
"Wri…ght…?" The hoarse, stuttering voice sounded as if it hadn't been used in years.
"You recognize me?" Wright chuckled and turned to the Night King. This thing was clearly some kind of vampire. Given how many he had slain, it was no surprise that some among them might recognize him.
Yet something didn't add up. Despite its monstrous appearance, the creature's magical aura was incredibly weak—completely inconsistent with its grotesque form. And if the Night King had dedicated such heavy forces to escort it onto the battlefield, it was undoubtedly something dangerous.
Wright pointed his greatsword at the carriage. "Night King, tell me what this thing is, and I swear on my honor I'll grant you a clean death!"
Unfazed, the Night King raised his ice spear and aimed it at Wright. "Akhon qhishra epon ba'both!"
"Goddamn it, asking you was a waste of time!"
Realizing the Night King wouldn't back down, Wright adjusted his stance, gripping his greatsword with both hands. He would have to alter his plans—crippling the Night King first would give him a chance to investigate properly.
However, as soon as the Night King noticed Wright's shift in posture, it suddenly turned and cast a spell toward the chained man in the carriage.
"What are you doing?!"
Wright instinctively shouted, knowing the Night King had no reason to kill the captive.
The spell wasn't an attack. As soon as it hit the man, he absorbed it instantly.
"Ugh~~"
With a final scream, the man's body suddenly swelled, his torso expanding into a massive, blood-red flesh sphere. The surface of the sphere was covered in bulging veins, its flesh writhing continuously, while an ominous red glow pulsed from within.
At that moment, Wright realized—the man himself was the weapon. The Night King had activated him.
The man's body continued to swell, his chains and limbs sinking into the growing mass, his head slowly being engulfed by the rising flesh.
"Wright, kill me!" His voice had already distorted beyond recognition. Wright could only hear incoherent cries before the man's head vanished completely. The swelling mass burst through the carriage, transforming into a monstrous sphere of flesh, nearly three meters in diameter.
Its stretched flesh turned semi-transparent, crisscrossed by taut veins. The red glow within began to flicker violently.
"Holy shit! A bomb!" Wright shouted, kicking a chunk of mud toward the Night King before turning to flee at full speed.
To Wright, there was no mistaking it—this thing was a living bomb with devastating power. No wonder the White Walkers had brought it to the battlefield. Just one of these could obliterate Harrenhal.
The chunk of mud he had kicked was frozen solid mid-air and rolled to a stop at the Night King's feet. Yet, the Night King did not give chase. Instead, he stepped closer to the flesh sphere, placing a hand on its surface and channeling more magic into it.
Glancing back as he ran, Wright saw the Night King still fueling the sphere with magic and hastened his pace.
On the battlefield, some of the fallen humans had already risen as wights, mindlessly gathering under the White Walkers' command. Others, who had been stabbed through the heart with dragonglass by their comrades, lay motionless, unable to be resurrected.
Now, these "humans" began to bleed, streams of blood seeping from their bodies and rising into the air, forming crimson lines that raced toward the sphere. The sphere absorbed them greedily.
Perhaps due to the rushed activation or insufficient blood, the sphere wasn't just drawing from fallen humans. Wright noticed that vampires, realizing the danger, were fleeing in every direction, trying to escape the sphere's reach—while the White Walkers stood motionless.
Boom!
A vampire, nearly a hundred meters from the sphere, suddenly exploded into a mist of blood. Instead of dispersing in the wind, the blood shot straight toward the sphere.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
All across the battlefield, vampires were detonating, their bodies reduced to blood mist, absorbed by the growing sphere.
Odahviing had followed Wright back, plunging into the waters of the God's Eye to wash away the blood and bone fragments clinging to its scales.
"So that's what the 'Holy Son' is for!" Joffrey remarked, standing atop a towering tree, having already fled the battlefield in the chaos. He watched the pulsating red sphere in the distance.
Beside him, the second head on his shoulder—Lancel—spoke in agreement. "We risked everything to seize the Holy Son, someone with immense talent. I thought the Night King kept him close to teach him magic… I never imagined he was locked up, meant to be used as a one-time weapon."
"The Night King keeps many secrets from us," Joffrey said, his anger flashing momentarily before vanishing. "But it's just as well that the Holy Son is gone! Now, as long as I find a way to kill Craster, I'll become the ruler of the vampires! Hahaha!"
Lancel remained silent, keeping his gaze on the increasingly restless sphere. He knew many shared Joffrey's ambitions. Yet, with the vampires' bloodline suppression, those who harbored such thoughts would collapse under Craster's presence before they could even think of making a move.
---
With so much blood gathered, the resulting explosion was unimaginable. Wright halted beneath the walls of Harrenhal. "This should be far enough!"
The massive sphere crushed the remains of the carriage beneath it. After absorbing every drop of blood from the battlefield, its writhing slowed. The outer flesh darkened, and the pulsating red light flickered less frequently.
Wright and Renly mounted their dragons once more, circling high in the sky, waiting for the ultimate explosion.
"Wright, I don't think it's going to explode!" Renly called out from his dragon, looking down at the now-motionless sphere.
"This thing looks more like an egg!" Wright shouted back. From his experience, nothing that hatched from a flesh egg was ever easy to deal with.
"Can we destroy it before it hatches?" Renly asked.
"It's too late!" Wright's voice had barely faded when the sphere underwent another transformation.
A surge of powerful magic erupted from it. Massive amounts of energy from another world poured into this one, stirring the latent magic in the air. An invisible shockwave, unseen to the naked eye, radiated outward from the sphere, spreading in all directions.
"Renly! Let's fly higher!"
Odahviing and Peytvahaaz flapped their wings fiercely, ascending beneath the clouds.
Wright was all too familiar with this level of magical disturbance. The last time he had felt something like this was when he first summoned Odahviing on the Valyrian Peninsula—when the dragon tore through the fabric of space to enter this world.
The retreating human army felt an invisible wall of air pass through their bodies. Their warhorses reared and neighed in terror, while the mages shuddered as a bone-chilling cold swept over them, accompanied by the echoing screams of countless tormented souls.
The magical ripple spread beyond King's Landing, past Storm's End, and continued to radiate outward. Mages in Tyrosh, Volantis, and even as far as Yi Ti and Asshai felt its impact.
---
Among the retreating forces, Jon, pushing a wheelchair, noticed something was wrong with his brother.
"Bran! What's happening to you?"
"I...!" Bran, seated in the wheelchair, turned deathly purple, clutching his throat as if he were suffocating.
Jon thought something had lodged in Bran's throat and was about to lift him when Bran raised a trembling hand to stop him.
Bran slowly loosened his grip, his face gradually regaining color. "A great evil has descended. We... we cannot stop it."
Jon turned to the north, his expression grim. "That magical disturbance just now... it was as powerful as Odahviing."
"Jon! There's no escape!" Bran—or rather, the Three-Eyed Raven—was consumed by terror. For centuries, he had remained composed, but now, his greensight had failed him.
Anyone tied to that evil presence was completely invisible to his foresight. Moments ago, he had glimpsed the future of a Gold Cloak guarding him—a vision of the man happily carrying his daughter through a field. Now, there was only darkness.
Jon saw the unfocused look in Bran's eyes and suddenly recalled something. "Wright told me the Others were weapons created by the Children of the Forest. Right now, they and the Green Men are gathered at the Isle of Faces in the Gods Eye. They might know how to stop this!"
Bran, still trying to use his magic to contact the Children, found himself met with silence. Normally, reaching out through weirwoods would let him connect with any nearby Children with ease, but now, his power was met with nothingness.
Suppressing his panic, Bran lifted his gaze to Jon. "Take me there. Our only hope lies with the Children and the Green Men."
Jon patted his brother's shoulder and turned to the Gold Cloaks beside him. "Lance, Rickard, take two squads and find us a couple of fishing boats. We're escorting the Three-Eyed Raven to the Isle of Faces."
---
A three-meter-tall sphere of flesh trembled from within as something inside began to stir. The grotesque mass stretched upward, morphing into an oval shape five meters tall.
At the top, the membrane of flesh thinned, revealing a humanoid figure flexing its limbs within.
Squelch!
The creature inside tore through the flesh with ease, unleashing a torrent of blood that rained down upon the surrounding wagons.
Drenched in the crimson downpour, the humanoid monstrosity pulled itself free, stepping onto the muddy ground. It stood five meters tall, its obsidian-black skin devoid of any external flesh. The Night King knelt on one knee at its feet.
The entity wore a black skirted armor, its musculature exposed, hardened like iron. Its legs bent in an unnatural, reverse-jointed manner, ending in cloven hooves adorned with massive claws. From the back of its head, two twisted horns curled around either side of its face.
Ignoring the dragons circling overhead, it swept its ice-blue gaze across the battlefield. Its lipless mouth parted slightly, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. Raising its arm, it reached into the ruptured flesh cocoon and pulled forth a five-meter-long, nightmarish black warhammer.
This was the God of Schemes, the Harvester of Souls, the Lord of Domination, the Master of Cruelty—he who sought to claim all mortal souls. The creator of vampires. The devious ruler of Coldharbour.
A blood-forged projection of the Daedric Prince, Molag Bal.
Wright felt his stomach drop.
He had read that Daedric Princes could not easily breach the barriers between worlds, but even this flesh-forged avatar of a god was beyond anything he could face.
Renly, struggling to keep Peytvahaaz steady, called out anxiously, "It's a Daedric Prince! What do we do? We can't win! Should we retreat?"
But Wright, like Odahviing, remained fixated on the towering monstrosity below.
The two dragons circled above. After a long moment, Wright finally turned to Renly. "Catch!"
Bloodskal Blade spun through the air. Renly barely managed to grab hold of the massive greatsword.
Clutching the hilt tightly, his face twisted with anger and worry. "What are you planning?! Don't be reckless! What the hell are you trying to do? I can help you!"
His voice grew louder, his expression more frantic.
But Wright's tone remained calm. "If I don't come back, give that sword to Sauron."