Chapter Text
Ser Waymar Royce was on his knees.
His longsword had shivered and shattered into a hundred brittle pieces, each shard scattering like a rain of hungry needles. He was bleeding from his eyes and cheek, his fingers, and his throat. The snow was cold on his bent knees. He heard them walking closer, slowly, mockingly. He heard the deathly silence and the cold butchery of his brothers. He could almost feel their icy blades.
He felt a presence in front of him, silent and cold.
Waymar waited for his end, yet it did not come. He opened his ruined eyes and faintly saw, through blood, the watcher looking away. South, the thing stared and south, they all turned to look.
He felt his life ebbing away.
Cold. Why is it so cold? The dying knight thought to himself. Winter in the Mountains of Vale had been harsh, and half a year in the Night’s Watch had given him time to know the snow. This was different, the cold chill of death.
As his vision blurred, he heard them screeching in anger or fear. Waymar closed his eyes. As he lay dying in the white snow, blemished by his blood, he felt warm. It felt like his mother’s embrace.
Faintly, at the back of his mind, he heard the sound of gentle wind and flowing waters. He remembered stone, the mountains, and the rocky hills of the Vale. He remembered the old weirwood tree in Runestone and how its bleeding eyes seemed to peer at him.
Once, as a child, he had been unnerved but never admitted it. Now, he found comfort in it. Are the Old Gods here? Waymar thought to himself, gurgling out a bloodied chuckle. In his mind’s eye, he saw a bear charging with a pack of wolves. A pair of daggers stealing away the night. A wraith, obscured by smoke, hunting monsters. A hummingbird chirped in a garden of bright flowers and an eagle flew over a land of sand, the sun at its back. A great hulking beast stalked the wild lands and fire danced around dragons.
He saw an old clearing of trees and stone and rivers, and a figure with seven faces, a beast of the sea and a beast of fire. The clearing was soon filled with new arrivals. Doves and eagles and owls, wolves and ravens and bears. Coins glimmered, a hunter snarled, a lady smiled and a twin-tailed comet burnt above.
Ser Waymar Royce died with a shivered gasp, an audience to something greater.