The scouting party had been wandering the Ghost Forest for days.
No birds. No beasts. Not even the rustle of leaves — only an unnatural stillness that hung heavy in the air, as if every living thing had either fled… or hidden.
Lynn's unease grew with every step.
That warmth in his veins was changing — no longer comforting but burning, urgent. It was warning him. Something was coming.
He spoke to Gared several times, urging caution, suggesting they change course or double the watch. But Ser Waymar Royce dismissed it all with the smugness of a young lord.
"New recruit's nerves," he said. "Follow orders."
Even Gared, decades in the Watch, had to obey the knight's command — and most of the party agreed. Only Gared and the ranger Will traded uneasy looks after hearing Lynn's tone.
That night, they camped on a wind-sheltered slope, building low snow walls to stave off the freezing gusts.
The fire gave off a weak, smoky glow — too small to warm the bones, too fickle to comfort the heart.
Lynn took the first watch, leaning against the pale trunk of a weirwood. His eyes were closed, but his senses were wide open.
Then, suddenly — he smelled it.
A cold unlike anything living — cold drenched in death and malice, drifting closer from the forest's depths.
His eyes snapped open, golden pupils flashing once in the dark.
"On guard!" he barked, blade already in his hand.
Almost at once, something stirred in the shadows across the camp.
Faint blue lights — first two… then ten… then dozens — flickered in the darkness. Eyes.
Ghostly. Icy. Watching.
And then came the sound — the crunch of frozen snow beneath dragging feet.
"Wights! Wights in the trees!" a sentry screamed.
Chaos exploded through the camp. Tents ripped open, men stumbled for weapons. Out in the dark, figures lurched forward — once men, once beasts, now corpses that walked, their eyes burning with blue flame and their skin pale as frostbitten flesh.
"Gods… the legends are true!" someone gasped, voice breaking.
"For the Watch!" shouted Ser Waymar Royce, drawing his sword and charging first into the fray.
His noble pride refused to retreat.
"Use fire!" roared Gared, snatching a burning branch from the campfire and swinging it at the nearest wight. Others followed suit — the flames drove the dead back, just enough to hold a line.
Lynn's short sword cut through a charging corpse. Its arm came off easily, bones brittle and dry — but the thing didn't stop. It clawed with its other hand until he took its head clean off.
For a heartbeat, he felt relief. Then the temperature plunged.
The flames bent low, strangled by an unseen force. Frost crept over the ground, turning breath to fog.
Across the clearing, something was coming.
A rider emerged from the wight horde — tall, thin, clad in black ice. Its steed was skeletal, hooves crunching snow like bones breaking. In its hand, an impossibly clear sword shimmered with killing cold.
A White Walker.
The ancient enemy of men and Children of the Forest — a creature out of myth, now alive before their eyes.
Its frost-blue gaze swept over the battlefield, and the air seemed to freeze in place.
One ranger lifted his sword to meet it — the steel shattered on the first strike. In a blink, his body froze solid, skin turning glass-clear, before shattering into glittering shards with a soft crack.
Lynn felt his blood ignite.
Not with heat — with fire. Lava. Fury. His heartbeat thundered like a forge.
His eyes burned gold, pupils narrowing to slits. Across the icy expanse, the White Walker turned, sensing him.
Something alien — something wrong — stirred in the creature's icy awareness. It felt the foreign power inside Lynn and hated it.
The undead horse screamed, breaking into a charge straight for him.
"Lynn! Run!" Gared shouted.
They had sworn vows. He had not. He didn't owe the Watch his death.
But Lynn did not run.
He threw aside his useless iron sword. Against such an enemy, steel was nothing.
All he had left — was himself.
The White Walker's blade of crystal ice came down, silent and sure.
Lynn roared.
It wasn't human. It was something older, something deep — a dragon's bellow from another age. The sound ripped through the trees like thunder, shaking snow from branches, shaking fear from men's hearts.
Black fire erupted across his arms, licking the air with hungry, unnatural heat.
He met the blow head-on. His fist struck the shining blade — and the sound that followed was agony itself, like ice thrown into a furnace. The White Walker's sword flared white, then began to melt.
Shock flickered across its frozen face. It tried to retreat — too late.
Lynn lunged forward, grabbing the dissolving blade with one burning hand. The black flame raced up the steel into the creature's arm, devouring it inch by inch.
With his other hand, he slammed his fist into its chest.
Crack!
The ice armor shattered. Lynn tore free a glowing fragment — a shard of blue crystal, pulsing faintly in his palm.
Then, with a sound like breaking glass, the White Walker and its horse exploded into a storm of blue shards that whirled once before vanishing into the wind.
Around them, every wight collapsed. Blue lights died out all at once, and silence reclaimed the forest.
Only Lynn stood — surrounded by corpses and drifting ash, the last traces of his fire coiling back into smoke around his arms.
The others were gone. Most cut down, frozen, or lost in the chaos. Even Ser Waymar lay shattered among the dead.
In Lynn's hand, the blue crystal flickered — soft, steady, alive. Its cold glow danced against the fading embers of his black flame.
Then the power left him. The heat drained away, leaving exhaustion like ice in his veins.
The last thing he felt was the hard ground meeting his knees. His vision dimmed, the forest melted into black.
And then there was nothing.