[Chapter Size: 3500 Words.]

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Third Person POV

Beyond the Wall, 298 AC.

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Things in Ártica continued to operate as usual. However, the news that the king had gone to fight in the North against the White Walkers, along with Mance Rayder and many tribes of the free folk, was the main topic among everyone in the kingdom in the coming days as the news spread.

As for Jon, the king, he had established his daily activities. He made a point of spending part of the day with his family, since his queens were about to give birth — at least three of them. He also continued to spend much of his time making more Valyrian steel with Eragon, checking on the army’s training, supervising the construction of the new forges, and the progress of the fortress at Dragon Mountain. There, he also spent time with the dragons themselves, who were getting bigger and bigger.

Jaehaerys had already been chosen by two dragons. These dragons had been moved to the castle in recent days and Brandon would be next.

Brandon continued to have dreams inside the minds of animals stronger than before, none of his brothers had such aptitude as he did so far, but as long as he didn’t show up in unknown places outside of Ártica, it was all right. He kept practicing with himself and the other children, his skinchanging powers with care and supervision.

At the end of a day, Jon was at the foot of Dragon Mountain, surrounded by his dragons, when a raven reached him. Jon took the scroll tied to its leg, while reading the message delivered by the bird.

The letter said they had found the White Walkers, who were advancing through the west, heading south.

Jon absorbed the information in silence, as he watched the bird fly away. Then, he said goodbye to the dragons and mounted Eragon, for the place was far from the city. With the dragon’s roars fading behind, a little saddened by Jon’s departure, Eragon took off, slicing through the skies of the kingdom.

Jon arrived at the castle some time later, landing in the gardens where he found Hiyori sitting, with a few guards at a distance watching the sunset from there.

“My husband,” she said upon seeing him land and getting off the dragon as he approached her, she, in turn, rising from the bench and touching her swollen belly.

“What are you doing here alone?” he asked as he got closer.

“I wanted to get a bit of fresh air… and I ended up coming alone,” she replied, smiling softly.

Jon kissed her forehead and caressed her belly, checking how the baby was. He wouldn’t be a baby born now along with the others, since among his wives who had gotten pregnant, Hiyori had been the last to conceive — except for Seryna. She had a fertility issue, but had been healed by Jon a month earlier, and she became pregnant soon after.

“All right. Would you like to come inside with me?” he asked, offering his arm.

“Yes, please. I’d love to join you,” she replied, wrapping her arm around his.

Together, they walked across the courtyard. Jon dined with his family that night and asked for Hiyori to spend the night with him.

After spending some time with his children after dinner, Jon went to his room. There, he began checking the situation in the south. His birds — his eyes in the sky — were already flying over areas many kilometers away from Ártica.

While the glow of the aurora, reflected on the crystals at night, colored the sky above the kingdom, his eyes were on the south now. He located the area where other wargs were monitoring the movement of the White Walkers, while the birds flew over the region. Four birds were under his control simultaneously, observing the distant hills. Through their eyes, Jon saw the White Walkers marching, with precision even from kilometers away, in the midst of darkness.

“Where are they going?” Jon murmured.

He had never seen the White Walkers so close to the Wall as they were now. They advanced in a straight line, as if searching for a specific place. There was no pause in their movement.

Jon then went to his desk and opened a map on his writing table. He checked the route outlined by the scouts along the enemy’s path. They really had never come this far south — at least, not in any previous records Ártica had mapped.

His eyes went further down the map until they stopped at a fortress just a few hours away.

“Craster…” Jon whispered.

How could Jon forget that man? When Jon crossed the Wall and began his journey beyond it, nearly ten years ago, Craster had traded a map of the region for a few iron swords. Which ended in a huge swindle, since the map was fake. Even though the swords exchanged weren’t of much value, Jon still felt deceived.

He never went after revenge — it wasn’t worth it. But now… now the White Walkers seemed to be going exactly there. That made Jon narrow his eyes.

“Why would they be going there? Why an isolated fortress? There are only two White Walkers and a group of undead with them. What is happening here?” Jon murmured, until he was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, as he approached.

Hiyori entered the room, intending to spend the night with her husband.

“You look beautiful,” Jon commented, seeing her in a finely crafted dress, a fabric typical of her land with Yi-Ti patterns. She wore earrings with green jade stones and a necklace he himself had given her, and her scent of Sakura soon filled the room. This was the kind of tree Jon was also cultivating in the kingdom, and he had a space in the garden just for Yi-Ti vegetation with a koi carp pond — something Hiyori enjoyed appreciating.

“Thank you, husband. Am I interrupting you?” she asked, seeing him putting away the map.

“No. It’s something I’ll deal with later,” Jon replied, as he guided her to the bed, sharing his moment with her, this night.

A few hours later, Hiyori slept under a thin blanket. Jon was no longer in bed. He wore only pants while observing the map again near the window, mentally connected with his surveillance animals.

The White Walkers had finally arrived at Craster’s fortress.

“I need to get closer…” he murmured, beginning to search for animals in the area he could use as a bond. He found a small rodent in the trees, searching for some food that night.

Jon forced his way into the rodent’s mind and began to observe through its eyes. On the ground, he watched as the two White Walkers advanced, leaving the undead behind. Now, they were alone in the forest. Jon followed them through the animal.

In the end, he discovered that the Walkers weren’t heading exactly to Craster’s fortress — as he had imagined — but to something nearby. For a moment, he thought they might be heading toward the Wall…

But then he heard a sound.

A baby’s cry.

Through the eyes of the small creature, he saw the two White Walkers approaching a newborn, as it appeared, placed on some sort of altar in the middle of the forest. The rodent’s — and Jon’s — eyes revealed their surprise.

Someone had left that baby there. Clearly, as an offering to the Walkers.

Jon watched, in disbelief, as the Walkers picked the baby up in their arms. The crying stopped the moment the first one touched the child. They turned and began to head back the same way they had come, carrying the baby with them.

“It can’t be…” Jon murmured, in disbelief.

“Something’s wrong!” He heard Hiyori call out, clearly his comment had been loud enough to wake his wife.

She looked at her husband, still half-asleep, but noticed that Jon didn’t respond. He was motionless, fixated on what he saw through the animal’s eyes.

The rodent continued to observe from behind some trees in the forest, watching the White Walkers grow distant, until they vanished among the trees.

Jon sighed deeply. That baby had been taken by the White Walkers. It had been left there on purpose — as an offering. And the White Walkers were there precisely because of it.

So many questions arose, and he didn’t even know where to begin. The White Walkers’ path was a mystery he still couldn’t solve.

Hiyori watched as Jon stood up and put on his cloak.

“Did something happen, Jon?” she asked, a little concerned.

“Our enemies… they took a child in the south. I’ll have to look into this. I’ll be back soon. I need to speak with Leaf. After all, she and her sisters created these creatures…” Jon replied seriously.

He approached his wife, kissed her forehead and murmured, “I’ll be back soon. I’m sorry.”

Hiyori just nodded and replied, “Just come back quickly.”

Jon left the room. He spoke with some royal guards and headed for the sacred grove. Some accompanied him as he walked through the silent streets of Ártica, still in the early hours of the morning.

Leaf greeted him surprised, waking up to the king’s presence.

“King Jon…” she greeted, surprised.

“We need to talk,” Jon said.

They went together to one of the streams that ran through the grove. The water there flowed directly from the Great Sacred Tree that nourished all of Ártica.

“That baby… they’re being used to create new White Walkers,” Leaf murmured.

“And you’re only telling me this now?” Jon asked, with a sharp tone, clearly irritated.

“It’s not like we had full awareness of it, Jon. We created them to fight the First Men, in a war we waged millennia ago. But we didn’t know how dangerous they would become… nor what they were truly capable of. And as you can see now, we deeply regret having created them. It was an act of desperation,” Leaf replied, with sorrow.

“So they’re more dangerous than we imagined. And now they’re taking human babies to transform them? That’s… horrible,” Jon murmured.

“I don’t know exactly how they do it. And I also don’t know what you intend to do. But… you’re going after them, aren’t you?” Leaf asked, seeing the look of anger in the king’s eyes.

“Obviously,” Jon responded.

“But Jon… if the baby already has blue eyes… it’s no longer human. You’ll have to destroy it,” Leaf said with regret.

Jon didn’t like hearing those words, but he knew she was right. Any creature with those eyes… was no longer what it once was.

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’ll check what really happened there. Then… we’ll go after the White Walkers,” Jon said, before leaving the sacred grove and returning to his room to sleep with his wife.

The next morning, Jon simply left a letter about what was happening for his ministers and departed with Eragon, flying south, leaving Ártica behind.

He advanced at high speed, using all of his dragon’s agility, flying over the frozen lands until finally approaching Craster’s fortress. But this time, Jon would take a different path — he didn’t want to be spotted by anyone.

Jon landed and scanned the entire region, detecting all nearby animals. He could only do this in person, not through the animals he usually controlled from a distance. So, he began absorbing all available memories in the environment to understand what had happened there.

Quickly, he began receiving hundreds of memories into his mind and started organizing all of it as it entered his brain. Which made him realize instantly that this didn’t happen just that one night, as he had imagined. On many occasions — sometimes every week, other times after moons — Craster personally brought a child to the forest and left it at that altar.

Jon now approached the place, seeing that the White Walkers’ footprints were still fresh in the snow.

His birds flew toward the fortress, and some guards didn’t even care about their presence. The birds perched on the windows and observed the interior: there was a group of women and even children, but all of them female in the place, while one of them cried a lot, with the older ones trying to comfort her. Craster was in the courtyard with his men at that moment.

“My baby! He killed my baby!” she exclaimed, and the others gave her support.

“Now that I remember, he’s famous among the free folk. They say he sleeps with his own daughters… and granddaughters,” Jon murmured, disgusted.

He could even understand the marriages between siblings of House Targaryen, since he would be a hypocrite to say he wouldn’t agree himself… but having relations with one’s own descendants? That was intolerable even by the most permissive standards.

It wasn’t hard to understand what was happening there. It wasn’t that the women couldn’t give birth to boys. Jon remembered clearly: the baby left at the altar had a male organ between his legs and his mother wept for his loss there, a young woman surrounded by other women.

That meant all of Craster’s male children were being handed over to the White Walkers.

“That bastard…” Jon growled.

He had immediately decided what to do. But he wouldn’t use Eragon. He was too close to the Wall and didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he now had a dragon. At the very least, he wanted to keep it a secret from the south for as long as possible.

He returned to meet Eragon and flew quickly to Ártica. As soon as he arrived, he called for an urgent meeting with the council, still early that morning. When he revealed what he had discovered, everyone was horrified.

“I’d heard of that bastard in my tribe, before coming to the kingdom…” Kiera murmured, holding herself back from spitting on the Senate floor. But her disgust was evident at the mention of Craster.

“That bastard sleeps with his own daughters?!” Thor exclaimed — everything had a limit.

“He’s worse than we thought… He’s willingly giving his sons to White Walkers… It’s a direct affront to our gods!” said another minister, outraged.

“What do you plan to do?” Ducken asked Jon.

“I see no other choice but to execute him. Do you all agree with that?” Jon asked, looking into the eyes of each person present.

No one there objected.

“Shall I prepare our men?” Ducken, the military minister, asked.

“We won’t need many. But I want to put our basilisk squad into action,” Jon said to the general.

“My king… we’ve only managed to train one hundred Wargs with the basilisks so far. They’re the only ones who can fully control the animal without suffering from its venom…” Ducken informed him.

“I know that… but a hundred is more than enough. Basilisks are fast and the best creatures for traveling in that kind of terrain. They run in a unique way, crossing obstacles with ease. Rocks, trees… nothing stops them when they’re at high speed.”

Jon adjusted a few more things with his ministers and then returned to the castle. He had lunch with his family and said he would be away for two days. Obviously, he didn’t allow Ygritte or Seryna to accompany him — both were pregnant and, although they were wives who always rushed into danger at his side, he preferred that, for now, they remained safe.

After a brief explanation, his children asked what kind of adventure their father would face.

Jon only smiled and, without going into detail, went to the military area. There, the hundred men were already gathered — equipped with armor made of eldenmetal, and some also with full sets of Valyrian steel armor, given to a few of them like Jon, who had his own.

The basilisks were also all ready. Their saddles were adjusted for the riders, with extra space to carry supplies like tents and food, essential for the journey.

Jon would also ride. He wanted to experience seeing them in action personally. One of the largest basilisks, which he had chosen from among all the trained ones, was already waiting for him with the saddle adjusted by his men. Ghost was at his side, as always, even if he didn’t ride — his wolf would accompany him.

“I wish to join you as well, my king,” said Ducken, the military minister, observing the hundred men and the animals prepared to follow their leader.

“You want to come?” Jon asked, looking directly at him.

“A horse would only slow me down, my king… But I would love to join, like in the old days,” Ducken replied.

“Then that’s no problem,” Jon said, smiling. He then brought over another basilisk — taking control of it, leading it toward them, while Ducken looked surprised.

“I’ve just taken control of him, so that you can command him. Are you still willing to come with me, minister of war… or should I say, first general of Ártica?” Jon teased.

Ducken still seemed a bit stunned, but he nodded. He truly wanted to take part in that mission.

And so, Jon, Ducken, and the hundred men mounted their basilisks, forming a fierce line that was about to advance beyond the borders of Ártica. The group began to run along the edge of the kingdom, heading toward one of the main gates.

The giants who guarded the gates — assisted by dwarves — were already aware of the king’s departure. Upon seeing the group approach, they began to open the enormous gates with a rumble. They needed the combined strength of several of them to move the heavy structure.

With the gates open, Jon and the others advanced at high speed. Everyone on the walls watched the impressive squad of giant lizards — the basilisks — racing toward the south, leaving Ártica behind.

Quickly, the lizards began running across the treacherous terrain, with no road to guide them. But the basilisks didn’t need one. As long as they weren’t in rocky areas with deep cliffs, nothing would stop them. They moved with agility, ignoring trees, snow, and small obstacles.

Meanwhile, a day later, the White Walkers continued their path through the north. They were not prepared for what would come next.

As they advanced, they began to be caught off guard by an attack from above. A hidden group fired arrows of dragonglass. One of the arrows struck one of the Walkers squarely, and he turned to ice and shattered on the ground.

The other, who was carrying the baby in his arms, reacted quickly. He sought shelter, looking for a place where he could hide. Meanwhile, the wights that accompanied him advanced on the attacking group, which fired dragonglass-reinforced arrows without hesitation.

But it was nothing more than a massacre.

All the men could shoot with precision, being a group of powerful archers — no wonder they didn’t hit the White Walker with the baby and eliminated the group of dead swiftly, with just two or three arrows for each creature.

The remaining White Walker was cornered. The basilisks began to surround him, with men ready to fire arrows while the creature, staying alert but confused, tried to figure out what those living beings wanted with him.

None of them attacked.

Jon then personally advanced toward the enemy, with Blackfyre in hand, freshly drawn from its sheath.

Seeing the challenge, the White Walker placed the baby on the ground, facing Jon. And then, the battle began.

All the soldiers of Ártica watched closely, in silence, as their king faced the creature directly.

Jon quickly gained the upper hand — faster, more precise, even surprising Ducken, who observed everything attentively, amazed by the way the king moved.

The next moment, Jon delivered a fatal blow, splitting the creature in half. Instantly, the frozen body of the Walker shattered into crystals that evaporated as they touched the ground.

Jon sheathed Blackfyre and walked up to the baby, carefully picking him up in his arms.

“How is he, my king?” Ducken approached, concerned as he saw the child in Jon’s hands.

“Blue eyes… as cold as the White Walkers’…” Jon murmured, disappointed. The child didn’t cry. He was eerily calm. And Jon already knew why.

“He’s already begun the transformation…” Ducken added.

That was no longer a baby, even if his skin was still warm — it was cooling, and they would’ve completed the transformation wherever they were taking the boy.

Even so… it was no longer human. The cold eyes, as if full of hatred for living beings, stared into Jon’s.

And he couldn’t let that live.

“My king… you know what has to be done, right?” Ducken asked, sorrowfully.

Jon nodded slowly, his eyes heavy.

“All right,” he replied with a dark tone, loaded with anger — anger for that sin committed against a newborn.

In that moment, he hated Craster more than any enemy.

“Do it,” Jon said.

He didn’t want to see it, but he couldn’t carry that burden alone either.

He handed the baby to Ducken, and a few soldiers from Ártica silently approached.

Jon heard, just a few seconds later, the muffled sound of a cry…

And then, the dry crack of shattering crystal.

Glass… exploding.

Silence.

Jon mounted his basilisk, his gaze distant and dark. Ghost howled beside him, feeling the rage boiling inside the king.

“We go south. We’re going to destroy Craster,” he said, his voice filled with fury.

The group immediately began to move, leaving behind only shattered crystals and the cremated bodies of the dead.

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Author here:

Not everything is beautiful.

————-Nexts Chapters —————-

Chapter 261 – The Faceless Man.

Chapter 266 – The Assassin in Winterfell.

Chapter 276 – The Daily Life of the Royal Family of Arctic.

Chapter 285 – The Challenges in the Courtyard of Winterfell 01.

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