The Nightfort was the oldest and largest of the castles on the Wall, a sprawling ruin of black stone and shadowed history. It lay west of Castle Black, and while a fit ranger could make the trip in a few days, the expedition traveled by dog-sled, their hounds panting in the freezing air, their movements swift even as the stars began to pale in the pre-dawn sky.
Eddard Karstark led the advance. He had split his force: Karas Snow's team had already departed for the Shadow Tower to breach the Wall at Skull Bridge, while he took the Nightfort for his own. It was the most desolate, despairing place on the entire expanse of the Wall, a fortress heavy with the echoes of a thousand years of madness.
The stories were endless: The Night King, who had supposedly married an Other and sacrificed to dark gods; the Rat Cook, who had served an Andal King a pie made of his own son; and Mad Axe, the brother who had wandered these halls barefoot, murdering his kin in the pitch dark.
Listening to such legends before embarking on a mission of this magnitude was enough to turn a man's blood to slush.
Eddard tried to focus on the mission, his gaze sweeping over the ruined courtyard. It was choked with snow, with only a few skeletal, frost-blackened branches of weirwood stubborn enough to remain standing.
"Sam," Eddard said, his voice cutting through the howl of the wind. "Where is the passage? Night is ending. If we aren't through the Wall by noon, we lose the light."
Samwell Tarly, shivering inside his thick furs, scratched his scalp through his cap. "Lord Eddard, there is a well in the kitchens. It leads down into the deeps, to the Black Gate. That is the only way."
Eddard jumped down from his mount, Heartbreaker resting heavy at his side. He signaled his Winter Guard—the elite Northmen he had brought from the Westerlands campaign. They moved with a disciplined, rhythmic efficiency that put the old Night's Watch to shame. They cleared the snow, broke the heavy, frozen door of the main hall, and moved into the kitchen ruins.
The kitchen was a cavernous, ruined space. Eddard ignored the shadows and focused on the center of the floor, where a stone well sat, covered by centuries of ice and debris.
"Dig," Eddard commanded.
The soldiers worked with a brutal, relentless pace. Within an hour, they had cleared the stone mouth of the well. Eddard looked down. The shaft was deep, spiraling into the dark, and it felt like a cold, hungry throat.
"Karas, take twenty men and descend," Eddard ordered. "Secure the tunnel. If you find the gate, do not try to open it unless you have the password. We aren't here to fight the Wall."
While the men descended, Eddard took a moment to stand in the quiet of the ruin. He felt a flicker of something... a sense of being watched. He touched his chest, where the dragonglass shards were kept, and felt the familiar hum of the system.
The Others aren't just in the forest, he realized. They are beneath us.
As the sun began to bleed over the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the snow, the descent began. The "Wormways" were narrow, cramped, and smelled of centuries of stale, trapped air. Eddard went last, his eyes scanning the walls for traps. He was a King, a Regent, and a Wizard, but here, he was just a man entering a tomb.
The passage eventually opened into a massive, cavernous chamber at the base of the Wall. In the center stood the Black Gate, a door of weirwood, white as bone, with a face carved into the wood. The face was ancient, its eyes long-closed, its mouth a hollow circle of eternal sorrow.
Eddard stepped forward, the torchlight dancing on the white wood.
"I am the sword in the darkness," Eddard whispered, reciting the old words he had learned from Jon.
The weirwood face groaned, its mouth opening to reveal a dark, cavernous passage leading north, into the Ghost Shadow Forest.
"Move," Eddard commanded, his hand tightening on Heartbreaker.
They emerged on the other side of the Wall, into a world that felt fundamentally wrong. The air here was not just cold; it was predatory. The trees of the Ghost Shadow Forest stood like frozen sentinels, their branches reaching out like skeletal fingers.
The Nightfort was behind them. The world of men was a memory. Ahead lay the ritual site, the altar, and the Others.
"Check your gear," Eddard whispered to his hundred guards. "Check your obsidian. We are in their domain now. If you see blue eyes, you don't talk, you don't pray, and you don't hesitate. You strike."
They melted into the forest, moving in a silent, disciplined line. Eddard took the lead, his senses expanded by the System, his mind warging into Blackfeather, who circled high above, watching the white shadows coalesce in the distance.
The hunt had truly begun.
[System Notification: Operation 'Nightfort' complete.]
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.