Chapter 7: The First Long Night and the Rise of Kings
The Gathering Gloom (Circa 8,000 BC)
Centuries had flowed like quiet rivers since I, Arthur Leywin, had been branded the "Master of Fate." The Isle of Faces, my personal sanctuary and the beating heart of the Old Gods' power, had transformed. Not visibly, not to mortal eyes, but within its aetheric core, it was a living fortress. Using my Djinn-attuned Aether, I'd woven intricate defenses: layers of aetheric reinforcement made the weirwood bark as hard as forged steel, and shimmering, invisible ice barriers formed by my elemental deviant could flash into lethal reality at a thought. Within its hidden depths, I'd carved expansive caverns, libraries of forgotten knowledge from my old world, stored not on brittle scrolls, but as vibrant, pulsing aetheric memories, preserved by the Old Gods themselves. This was my redoubt, my command center for a war yet to come.
My training with the Children of the Forest had intensified. Leaf, with her ancient wisdom and obsidian eyes, taught me the subtle nuances of this world's primal magic – how to feel the song of the earth, how to imbue their dragonglass weapons with the essence of burning light, making them deadly not just to wights, but to the Others themselves. In return, I refined their already potent abilities, showing them how to channel more 'mana' (as I still thought of it) and how to communicate across vast distances through the weirwood network, allowing for faster coordination against the encroaching darkness.
The insidious influence of the Great Other was no longer a distant whisper. The winters grew longer, biting deeper into the land. Summers were short, plagued by strange blights. The sun, once a warm friend, became a pale, distant memory. My Asuran senses, honed by millennia and my unique Djinn heritage, screamed of the deepening imbalance. This wasn't merely extreme weather; it was a fundamental shift, a creeping decay emanating from the heart of the frozen North. Tales of horrors from beyond the edge of known lands began to reach the First Men – silent, pale figures, armies of the dead, chilling whispers of a night that would never end. Fear, cold and primal, was a disease spreading faster than any plague.
I had spent centuries subtly guiding the First Men. My goal wasn't conquest, but cohesion. Their strength in numbers, their resilience, their sheer stubborn will to survive – these were resources that would be crucial. Through their reverence for the Old Gods, I influenced their dreams, planting visions of unity, of shared purpose, of the importance of watchfulness in the North. I pushed them towards alliances, towards peace. The Children occasionally emerged, their small figures a source of both fear and wonder, to broker truces and share their knowledge of dragonglass – its deadly effectiveness against the creatures of the cold. The Great Pact, forged on the Isle of Faces, was the culmination of these efforts, a fragile alliance between two disparate races, united by the shadow of a common foe.
The Long Night Descends: A World in Twilight
Then, it descended. Not with a sudden crash, but with an inexorable, suffocating creep. The First Long Night. The sun vanished entirely, replaced by a perpetual, starless twilight. The cold wasn't just a physical sensation; it was a living entity, an entity of despair. Water froze solid in moments, breath plumed into frozen fog, and the very ground seemed to crack under its unholy touch.
And from the vast, frozen wastes of the uttermost North, they came. A tide of death, an army of the resurrected: the wights. Their eyes glowed with an eerie, cerulean luminescence, their decaying bodies animated by a malevolent, borrowed magic. At their vanguard marched the Others, tall, spectral figures of living ice, their bodies shimmering with an ethereal cold, their crystal blades whistling through the frigid air.
But at their head, a figure of absolute stillness, a void of anti-life, stood the Night King.
My Asuran eyes, accustomed to seeing the very flow of aether, saw him as a vortex of corrupted stillness, a twisted mirror of life itself. His chest, where the obsidian shard had been plunged centuries ago by the desperate Children, pulsed with a sickening, vibrant cold, the animating force for his entire horde. He was the abomination, the Children's terrible mistake, and he embodied everything I had ever fought against.
The war that followed was unlike any I had ever witnessed. It was a war against death itself. The combined forces of the First Men, armed with crude bronze, and the Children, wielding sharpened dragonglass and ancient magic, fought with a desperate, primal fury. They were strong, brave, but the sheer, relentless, unending tide of the dead threatened to overwhelm them. I moved through the chaos, a phantom of battle, mostly unseen, an avenging angel of Aether.
I unleashed aetheric blasts that didn't just break the wights, but dissolved them, their icy forms exploding into nothing more than dust and vapor. My fire and lightning deviants, infused with raw Aether, burned away swathes of the dead, incinerating them utterly, leaving no corpse for the Night King to reanimate. But my true focus was always on the Others. Their crystalline blades, sharp enough to cleave bone, shattered against my Asuran skin, which I had reinforced with countless layers of aetheric intent. Each clash was a symphony of cold and pure energy.
The Master vs. The Abomination
Finally, I confronted him, the Night King himself. His presence was an oppressive weight, a physical manifestation of absolute cold and death. He wielded a shard of pure ice, a blade that crackled with chilling energy, aimed directly at my heart. His ancient, unblinking eyes, like chips of a glacier, locked onto mine, burning with a hatred forged in desperation and born of twisted magic.
Our battle was a dance of cosmic forces. His ice magic sought to freeze my very blood, to still my Asuran heart, to turn my very essence into an extension of his cold domain. I countered with torrents of pure, blazing aether-fire, not just to burn him, but to unravel the corrupted aether that animated his being, to sever its connection to the dark shard within him. He moved with a supernatural speed, his icy form flickering as he dodged, parried, and attacked.
I used aetheric gravity to pin him, to crush him, but he simply shattered into a thousand icy fragments, only to reform instantaneously, a nightmare of living ice. I realized then: direct destruction was not enough. His essence was bound to that obsidian shard, a conduit for the primal cold magic that fueled his existence. To truly defeat him, I had to strike at the very heart of his corruption.
With a desperate, internal roar, a surge of pure aetheric intent and raw power, I focused everything into my armored fist. As his ice blade lunged, I dodged, a blur of motion, my hand plunging deep into his chest. It was like striking solid ice, impossibly cold and resistant. But beneath the frigid surface, I felt it – the corrupted obsidian shard, pulsating with his vile magic, the source of his monstrous power. With a primal scream of concentrated aether, I unleashed a focused blast of aetheric decay directly into the shard, not to explode it, but to unravel its very structure, to sever its connection to the Night King's animating essence at a molecular level.
A shriek, cold and desolate, unlike any sound I had ever heard, tore through the perpetual twilight, echoing across the frozen battlefields. The Night King froze, his icy eyes widening in silent horror as the corrupted obsidian within his chest fractured, then disintegrated into dust. His body, suddenly devoid of its animating force, crumbled, dissolving into nothing more than mist and melting ice, leaving behind only the profound, sudden warmth of returning life.
With his fall, the Others faltered, their spectral forms cracking and dissipating like mist in the sun. The wights collapsed, their eyes dimming, becoming mere lifeless corpses once more. The Long Night, after a generation of endless darkness, finally began to recede. A faint, distant light appeared on the horizon, growing steadily brighter. The first rays of the true sun, weak but undeniable, broke through the perpetual clouds, casting long, triumphant shadows across the battlefield, heralding the end of the longest night.
The Dawn of Kingdoms: An Architect's Legacy
The victory was hard-won, the cost immense. The land was scarred, countless lives were lost, but the Great Other had been repelled. From the ashes of that epochal battle, a new era began. The First Men and the Children, now united in a profound understanding of their shared vulnerability, sought to prevent its return. Guided by the Old Gods' deep wisdom and my subtle, unseen influence, the idea of a massive, insurmountable barrier against the unknown horrors of the far North took root.
I became the unseen architect. While they provided the labor, the rudimentary tools, and the sheer mortal will, I provided the impossible. Using my absolute command of aetheric shaping, gravity, and elemental ice, I reinforced the foundations of the Wall, not just with mundane ice and stone, but with a complex weave of permanent aetheric wards, designed to repel and nullify the magic of the Others should they ever rise again. The Children, in their own powerful contribution, added their ancient runes, carved deep into the ice, further sealing the barrier with their primal magic. This was the true magic of the Wall, a secret known only to me, the Old Gods, and a handful of the eldest Children. It was a monument to unity, to fear, and to a promise.
As the Wall rose, so too did the kingdoms of men begin to truly solidify. Among the First Men, one individual stood out with a peculiar brilliance: Bran the Builder. He possessed a curious, almost intuitive grasp of engineering, a genius for stone and timber, and a deep, inherent respect for the ancient magic of the land. I observed him closely, occasionally feeding him subtle insights through powerful dreams, inspiring his followers with visions of grand structures and unyielding strongholds. He was a first disciple in a way, unknowingly guided by the Master of Fate. Under his visionary leadership, the mighty stronghold of Winterfell began to take shape, a fortress designed to withstand the harsh northern elements and the whispers of cold. With its construction, the line of the Kings of Winter was established, their purpose inherently tied to vigilance against the threats from beyond the Wall.
My own sanctuary on the Isle of Faces, now widely known as the Gods Eye Sanctuary, became a true marvel. Using my full command of aetheric manipulation, gravity, and elemental shaping, I constructed a grand, hidden castle within the island. It wasn't built of conventional stone or wood, but of living weirwood, its very structure reinforced and infused with shimmering Aether. Its halls hummed with ancient magic, its defenses subtle but impenetrable, its vast, hidden libraries filled with the cumulative knowledge of my old world, stored as vibrant aetheric memories, forever preserved by the Old Gods.
The Great Other had been defeated, but not utterly destroyed. I could still feel its lingering presence, its cold stain on the farthest, most desolate reaches of the world. My task was far from over. I was the Master of Fate, and my destiny was inextricably bound to Westeros, to guide its nascent kingdoms, to watch over the Wall, and to wait for the day the Long Night might stir again.