Author's Note:
Hey everyone! 🌿
Apologies for the quiet spell—I came down with something recently and needed a bit of time to rest and recover. Thank you for your patience and kind support while I was away. I'm feeling much better now, and I'm excited to dive back into Aemon's journey with you all.
More chapters soon, and as always, thank you for reading. đź’™
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Darkness swallowed him whole.
A moment stretched into eternity—empty, weightless, endless.
Then—
A rush of air. A gasp.
Aemon's eyes snapped open.
He lay on his back, staring up at a sky unlike any he had ever seen. It was vast, endless, and eternal, yet it was not the sky of Westeros. The clouds were not white or grey but silver, shifting with a soft, ethereal glow, as though woven from something more than mist and air. Light seeped through them—warm yet cold, familiar yet utterly foreign.
The air was crisp, untouched by the scent of salt, smoke, or the staleness of men. It smelled… pure.
Slowly, he sat up.
A sea of green stretched endlessly before him—an untouched field of impossible beauty. The grass was taller than any he had ever seen, impossibly lush, bending without wind. Flowers bloomed in wild bursts of colour—violets as deep as dusk, reds as rich as blood, golds brighter than any crown. They glowed with an intensity that felt too real—more than real.
It was beautiful.
It was wrong.
His pulse quickened.
Where… am I?
This was not Dragonstone. This was not Westeros. It was not real—or at least, it should not be.
Was this a dream?
Aemon pushed himself to his feet, his boots pressing into the soft, strangely perfect earth. It felt solid, but at the same time… off. As if it weren't just land, but something older. Something watching.
Then, he saw it.
A tree.
Not just any tree.
A Weirwood tree.
It stood alone, towering over the field like a silent guardian. Its pale-white branches stretched toward the heavens, its deep crimson leaves rustling, though the air was utterly still. Its bark was smooth, untouched by time, but carved into its centre was a face.
It was watching him.
The solemn visage stared back, its bleeding-red eyes unblinking, knowing.
Aemon inhaled sharply. The Old Gods. The eyes of the past.
His body tensed. His skin prickled.
This was not a dream.
This was something else.
A whisper rode the air—soft, distant, but beckoning.
Aemon stiffened.
It was not a voice. Not truly. It was a presence. A feeling buried deep in his bones, in his blood.
His gut screamed turn back.
But something else—something deeper, something inevitable—called him forward.
His breath hitched.
Then—he walked.
The grass parted silently beneath his steps as if the world itself was holding its breath.
The closer he came, the stronger the whisper became. It was not words, not truly. It was an echo, a distant murmur of something long forgotten.
Aemon hesitated.
But he did not stop.
With slow, steady steps, he approached the weirwood.
And the moment his fingers brushed against its ancient, bone-white bark—
The world shifted.
Not a fall. Not a push.
A wrenching.
Something unseen tore him from existence, unravelling the very fabric of reality around him. Aemon didn't move—he was moved. Dragged through a space that wasn't space, through time that wasn't time.
For an eternity, there was nothing.
Then—
A rush of air.
Aemon gasped.
His vision blurred. His breath hitched. His feet found solid ground—but it felt wrong. The world had changed.
The air was thick—not just with mist, but with something older. Heavier. It clung to his skin, pressing against his chest with unseen weight. The sky above was veiled in an unnatural twilight, neither day nor night, as if the sun had abandoned this place long ago.
Shadows stretched unnaturally, flickering along the ground like they had a will of their own. The silence was suffocating.
And then—
He saw them.
Aemon's breath stilled.
Beings, unlike anything he had ever seen before.
They stood in the mist—small, silent figures, no larger than human children, yet unmistakably inhuman.
Their soft, rounded faces should have belonged to something fragile, something innocent. But their expressions… they were ancient. Their eyes—too large, too knowing—gleamed like polished emeralds in the dim light.
Their pale grey-green skin bore a texture like a tree bark, almost organic, veined with something dark and pulsing—something alive. Their limbs were long but delicate, their fingers unnaturally slender, their hands possessing only four digits each.
Their blood… dark indigo. Like the veins of a dying leaf.
Aemon knew what they were.
The Children of the Forest.
His heart pounded against his ribs. He had read of them, imagined them, but to see them here—to witness them as they once were—was something else entirely.
And yet, they did not see him.
Or if they did, they did not acknowledge him.
Some knelt in silent reverence before a towering weirwood tree, their fingers pressed against the pale, ancient bark, whispering in a language older than men. Others moved through the mist, leafing through worn stone tablets covered in glyphs, their eyes filled with solemn purpose.
They were preparing.
Aemon's skin prickled.
What was he seeing? Why was he here?
Then—movement.
Two of the Children dragged something across the forest floor.
No—someone.
Aemon's chest tightened.
A man.
Bound. Gagged. Struggling.
His eyes were wild with terror, his muffled screams breaking the unnatural silence. He fought against the vines that coiled around his arms and legs, living restraints that pulsed like veins.
Aemon's pulse thundered in his ears.
They dragged him toward the weirwood.
Toward the altar.
The tree loomed before them, its blood-red leaves trembling though no wind touched them. Its bark was smooth and white as bone, its roots twisting like the grasping fingers of something long buried.
Aemon took a step forward, instinct screaming at him to stop this—
But he couldn't.
He was not here. Not truly.
This was the past.
The Children bound the man to the trunk.
Tight. Unyielding.
The weirwood shuddered.
The man was bound to the altar, his arms forced back as the vines wrapped tighter around his wrists and chest. His breathing was ragged, his gaze darting wildly between the figures around him.
Then, one of the Children stepped forward.
A woman.
She was smaller than the others, but her presence was immense. There was an eerie beauty to her—her skin shimmered with the faint glow of the weirwood's light, her eyes luminous with purpose.
And in her hand—
A dagger.
Black as night. Cold as death.
Aemon's stomach twisted.
Dragonglass.
Pure. Cursed. A weapon meant to kill.
His breath came faster.
The bound man screamed into his gag, his eyes wide with frantic horror.
Aemon felt his hands tremble.
He knew what was coming.
The Children began to chant, a song without words, weaving through the mist like an unseen force. The air thickened, pressing down on Aemon's chest, on the world itself.
Then—
The cursed dragonglass plunged into the man's chest.
Aemon swore he heard it—not just the sickening crunch of bone, but something deeper. A sound not meant for mortal ears. A shudder ran through the weirwood as if the gods themselves recoiled.
The man arched violently.
A scream—one Aemon would never forget—ripped through the air.
His body twitched, his limbs seizing, his veins blackening beneath his skin.'
The chanting grew louder.
The weirwood shook.
Its crimson leaves rippled in unnatural waves, though no wind blew.
The carved face on the weirwood did not blink. Did not move. And yet—for the briefest moment, Aemon swore the red eyes darkened. Like the tree itself was grieving.
Then—
The man went still.
Aemon's breath hitched.
The silence was deafening.
Then—
His eyes opened.
Aemon's blood ran cold.
Blue.
Not the blue of the sky. Not the blue of the sea. But frozen. Piercing. Endless.
A blue so unnatural it burned.
The first White Walker.
The Night King was born.
The entire world exhaled.
The air plummeted into unnatural cold. The ground froze beneath the weirwood. The once-lush grass blackened, crumbling into frost.
Aemon's breath left his lips in a cloud of mist.
The Night King moved.
Not as a man. Not anymore.
Aemon could do nothing but watch as the being—no longer man, but something else entirely—slowly turned its frozen gaze upon the world.
His body was still—but there was something behind those eyes.
Something vast. Waiting. A presence that stretched beyond the veil of time.
The Night King did not blink. Did not breathe. Did not move.
And then—
A single twitch of his fingers. Small. Barely noticeable.
And yet, it sent a spear of ice through Aemon's chest.
The Children stepped back. Some lowered their heads in reverence. Others trembled.
The air was so cold it burned.
The cold wasn't just in the air—it sank into him. His breath left his lips in a thin mist, his fingertips burned as if frostbitten. His bones groaned under the weight of the unnatural chill, his very blood sluggish in his veins. This wasn't just cold.
This was death itself.
He wanted to step forward, to stop this, to scream.
But then—
Something pulled at him.
Hard.
The world lurched.
The mist, the weirwood, the ritual—it all faded.
Before Aemon could take a breath, he could fully comprehend what he had just witnessed—
The void swallowed him again.
Aemon tumbled through nothingness—weightless, formless, a mere fragment of thought adrift in a vast, endless abyss. There was no sound, no air, no light—only the cold.
It was not the cold of winter.
Not the chill of northern winds.
Not the biting frost of Dragonstone's shores.
This was a deeper cold—one that gnawed at the marrow of his bones, coiled around his very soul, and whispered of something far worse than death.
Then—
A shift.
Something dragged him through the void. Not through space. Not through time. Through something else entirely.
Then—
A rush of air.
Aemon gasped as the darkness peeled away, and suddenly—he saw.
Flashes.
Visions.
A world shattered.
A wall.
Not just any wall.
The Wall.
The last great barrier of men, a monument to an age-old war long forgotten. A shield of ice that had stood for thousands of years, unyielding against the wrath of winter, now shattered beyond repair.
Gone.
The Wall had fallen.
Where its towering presence had once loomed over the North, there was only devastation—a gaping, jagged wound where its centre had stood. Ice and rubble stretched for miles, the frozen carcass of a fallen titan.
Beyond it, the North was a desolation of white and shadow, swallowed by unnatural night. A graveyard of a world long lost.
The cold gnawed at his flesh, yet there was no wind. No warmth. No light.
Just silence.
Then—King's Landing.
Aemon's breath caught in his throat.
The capital of the Seven Kingdoms—a city that had once blazed with fire and ambition, where kings had risen and fallen—was nothing more than a corpse beneath the frost.
The Red Keep, once proud and towering, was a ruin of ice and jagged stone. Its grand towers lay in pieces, their shattered remains encased in layers of frozen death. The streets that had once pulsed with life were now nothing more than cold, empty graveyards.
Blackwater Bay was gone.
Not water. Not ice.
Just void, stretching endlessly into a frozen horizon.
There was no fire.
No smoke.
No screams.
Only stillness.
Then—Winterfell.
Or what remained of it.
The mighty stronghold of the North was a shadow of its former self.
Its halls—where kings and lords once feasted—had collapsed into frozen wreckage, swallowed by ice and time. Its proud towers stood broken, jagged ruins reaching desperately toward a sky that no longer bore the sun.
The banners of the Direwolf, once a symbol of resilience and strength, lay torn and buried beneath an abyss of white.
And the Godswood—once a place of silent wisdom, of whispers from the past—
Was dead.
The Weirwood, once proud and ancient, now stood blackened and twisted, its frozen branches brittle as a corpse's fingers. No faces remained carved in its bark. No Old Gods to watch over the fallen North.
Winter had come.
And it had never left.
Aemon could barely breathe.
He saw it all.
A Westeros swallowed by the cold.
The Riverlands.
The Reach.
Dorne.
The entire realm was gone.
The once-thriving lands of Westeros were now nothing more than a frozen wasteland, buried beneath an eternal storm. The seas, once vast and raging, were now solid ice, stretching beyond the horizon, where no ship would ever sail again.
There was no sun.
No warmth.
No life.
Just white.
Just grey.
An empire of ice and death.
Then—they came.
Aemon's pulse pounded in his ears.
A horde.
Not a thousand.
Not ten thousand
.
Not even a hundred thousand.
But millions.
A storm of the dead, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.
They did not march.
They flowed—a tide of ice, an unstoppable wave of hollow eyes and frozen flesh, moving in unearthly silence. Their soulless gazes burned with an unnatural glow, a cold fire that devoured everything in its path.
They did not breathe.
Did not hunger.
Did not fear.
A storm of oblivion, washing over the world.
And at their head—
A figure on a throne.
Aemon's blood turned to ice.
The Iron Throne.
But not as it should be.
No longer blackened steel, no longer a throne of kings forged in Dragonfire.
It had become a monument of frozen ruin. Ice had twisted its jagged edges, consuming it like a creeping disease, warping it into something cold, monstrous, eternal.
The air around it was dead, frozen solid as if nothing could exist here but silence and suffering.
And sitting upon it—
Aemon's breath hitched.
The Night King.
Still. Silent. Waiting.
His piercing blue gaze swept over his frozen kingdom. He did not move. Did not blink. Did not breathe.
He did not need to.
He had already won.
Aemon felt his limbs lock.
This wasn't just a nightmare.
It was the future.
A future where Westeros had fallen.
A future where the dead reigned.
A future where he had failed.
Then—
The Night King turned his head.
And looked directly at him.
Aemon's lungs seized.
He can see me.
A chill unlike anything he had felt before slammed into his chest, an invisible force constricting around him like an icy noose.
The Night King's face was unreadable—a mask of eternal cold. Yet in his ancient, deathly gaze, there was something else.
Recognition.
Then—
He smirked.
A slow, deliberate curl of the lips, unnatural and knowing.
Not amusement.
Not arrogance.
Something worse.
A secret.
A promise.
A fate already sealed.
Aemon's heart pounded.
No.
No, this wasn't possible.
This was a vision.
A memory of what had not yet come to pass.
He couldn't be here.
And yet—the Night King knew.
He was looking at him.
Seeing him.
And then—
His lips parted.
Aemon felt it before he heard it.
A pressure.
A weight.
The very air trembled.
The world seemed to shudder as if the mere act of him speaking would alter fate itself.
But he never heard the words.
The world lurched.
Darkness collapsed around him.
An invisible force wrenched him backwards—not just away, but out, beyond, through.
The abyss swallowed him whole.
And before he could even take a breath—
He was gone.