The woman never gave her name.
They rode by night, the dragon above them casting vast shadows across the forest canopy. By day, they camped in shallow hollows or caves worn into the bones of the North. Her presence unnerved the land—trees bent from her passing, frost melted where she stepped, and even Ghostclaw gave her wary distance.
Cregan asked her once if the dragon had a name. She only replied, "He forgot it long ago. Names are for the living."
Still, she spoke when she chose to. Of fire and magic, of lost pacts and stolen thrones, of a time before dragons and direwolves had gone to sleep.
"You think the Night's Watch stands at the edge of the world," she said one dusk. "But the world doesn't end at the Wall. It begins again. Wilder, older. It remembers things your kind forgot."
They reached the Gorge of Echoes on the fourth night—a cleft of stone said to sing in the wind, and tonight, it wept.
Cregan held the scroll tight. It pulsed faintly, warm through the cold leather of his gloves.
[Questline Progressed: The Breach Beyond the Wall]
Location Reached: Gorge of Echoes
Triggering Ritual Memory...
The air thickened. The stars blinked. And sound dropped into silence.
A circle of stones shimmered ahead, unseen to normal eyes. She stepped into it.
"Place your blade in the center," she commanded.
He obeyed. Frostfang glowed where it touched the ground, casting no shadow.
She drew a second scroll—not flame-sealed, but bone-bound. She spoke in a language that tasted like blood and snow.
[Simulation Initiated – Oath of the Forgotten Flame]
You kneel, hand on your sword. The woman stands opposite. The dragon circles overhead, a ghost of firelight on leathery wings.
She speaks: "Do you swear to carry the burden, knowing it may cost you name, honor, life?"
"I swear," Cregan says.
"Do you swear to bind not just your blade, but your soul, to the Pact, until the breach is sealed or death takes you?"
"I swear."
A wind rushes through the circle. Snow lifts and dances. The ground quakes faintly.
[Simulation Complete]
Trait Gained: Flame-Oathed – Pact magic now runs through your veins. Fire no longer harms you, but neither will it obey without price.
Knowledge Gained: The Breach is a tear in time as well as space. The thing beyond it is not dead. Merely waiting.
He rose slowly. His eyes glowed faintly blue.
The woman stepped back, nodded once. "You are now part of the old world again. It will notice."
They camped that night beneath the arch of two fallen trees, the dragon coiled near, eyes ever watchful.
Cregan could not sleep. Not from fear. From clarity. The scroll burned against his ribs like a second heartbeat.
In dreams, the sword whispered.
Beyond the Wall, something stirred. Something ancient.
And now it knew his name.