Castle Black
It began at the Wall, beneath skies of ash-gray and snow-bleached stone. Lord Commander Brynden Rivers, cloaked in the black of the Night's Watch and the years of his penance, stood astride a pale horse as a thousand sworn brothers assembled before him. They came from Eastwatch, from the Shadow Tower, from the cold, bitter halls of Castle Black.
Among them stood the last of the Raven's Teeth—his ever-loyal guard, aged but unbowed. Their eyes met his, and no words were needed. They had followed him to the Wall, and now, beyond it.
Dark Sister hissed free from its scabbard, a blade of Valyrian steel sharp as shadow and legend. Brynden raised it to the wind-swept sky.
"Brothers," he called, "we go not for glory, nor gold, nor peace. We go for the realm of men. We go for the living."
The black tide of men began to move, torches flickering, steel and wood rattling as they marched into the haunted woods beyond the Wall, into the unknown North.
Beyond The Wall. Some moons later...
Snow fell like ashes from a broken sky, thick and endless, cloaking the land in death's silence. Brynden Rivers lay half-buried in a drift, face pale and torn, blood frozen to his white hair and beard. His breath came shallow. The wind screamed like a mourning mother.
He stirred.
Pain lanced through him. He dragged himself upright, using Dark Sister like a cane, teeth gritted. Around him lay ruin.
A field of corpses.
His sworn brothers—the proud, the fearful, the brave—lay scattered like leaves after a storm. Their bodies were torn, bones splintered, black cloaks soaked red. Some had been stabbed with crude, jagged wood. Others mauled as if by claws. More were mere husks, their flesh eaten by the cold or something far worse.
Only three remained—silent, grim-faced brothers encircled around him. One bore a broken spear, another a shattered sword, and the third a torch nearly spent. They stood guard, backs to Brynden, eyes fixed on the shifting white beyond.
And then the Others came.
Silent as moonlight on snow.
Two of them drifted forward—pale warriors with eyes like frozen stars and swords of shimmering ice. The brothers met them, steel to steel. But mortal weapons meant nothing.
One sword shattered on impact. Another brother's torch flickered out with a hiss. All three were dead in moments—cut, impaled, and frozen where they stood.
Only Brynden remained.
And now, he approached—the tall, regal Other, garbed in pale armor that seemed to glisten with the frost of a thousand winters. His face was smooth and inhuman, eerily beautiful, his gaze empty and eternal.
In his hand, the ice blade gleamed with blue fire.
Brynden gripped Dark Sister.
He remembered the vision—seen long ago through a raven's eyes. He had known this day would come, when power and prophecy meant nothing. Only the sword.
The Other swung.
Brynden met the blow, and steel screamed. But Dark Sister did not break.
Valyrian steel, forged in dragonfire, sang its answer.
They clashed again. And again. The sound echoed in the still forest like thunder cracking over ice. Brynden moved like a man half his age, blade flashing, teeth bared. He fought not for victory, but for remembrance.
Steel rang, snow flew, and the wind swallowed all sound.
And then—
Silence.
The snows drifted. The trees stood witness. The wind howled, and the world went on.
No one ever saw Lord Commander Brynden Rivers again.
Some say he died that day, swallowed by the cold and the dark, fighting alone where no songs would reach. Others whisper he did not die, but was taken—changed—and lives still beneath the roots of the world, half-dead, half-alive, watching.
The black brothers called it the Last Watch.
The wildlings tell tales of a pale-eyed sorcerer in the woods who speaks with ravens. And some men in black still swear that when the wind howls just so, you can hear the voice of Bloodraven, calling out from the snow.
But none can say for sure.
His fate, like the snow beyond the Wall, is lost to history.