Ice and Fire: Reign of the Dragon.

Chapter 467 The Battle of the Long Night (Part 11)

The dilapidated Black Castle was shrouded in deathly silence; even the howling north wind had ceased its wailing. The ruins of the Great Wall, like a dying behemoth, silently displayed its "glory" eroded by the apocalypse on the northern tundra.

After the White Walker army withdrew from Winterfell, they marched north, and the apocalyptic scenes they had witnessed when they marched south were almost nowhere to be seen. The human army didn't even have time to rest and had to keep an eye on the White Walker army as they withdrew from the North.

Jonial Vareses stood atop the crumbling ramparts of the Wall, gripping his Valyrian steel lance tightly. The relentless battle had blurred his vision, and his wounds were frozen numb. But now, he saw the eerie blue tide to the north, which had swallowed countless lives, slowly receding.

"They...are retreating?" His voice was hoarse, as if ice shards had scraped his throat.

Dan nodded heavily beside him. In their sight, the army of the dead that had once surged in like a tide was now slowly retreating northward, dragging its mutilated bodies. The ghouls with broken legs crawled on their paws, the ghoul bears without half their heads staggered and fell into snow pits, and even the most ferocious ghoul mammoths drooped their long trunks, letting ice crystals peel off their festering flesh. When the ice crystals disappeared, the corpses returned to being corpses.

Further away, in the thinning snow mist, several pale figures appeared and disappeared. The surviving White Walker riders rode ice spiders, their eerie blue eyes sweeping over the Wall one last time. They showed no anger, no resentment, but simply turned away in silence, as if drawn away by some unseen force.

“It seems we’ve won.” Dan’s breath froze in the air. “The power of the Song of Ice is waning.”

Jonial did not answer. His gaze was fixed on the direction in which the White Walkers had retreated, as if he could hardly believe that victory had come so easily.

A biting gust of wind suddenly swept across the city walls, dispersing the last snow mist. On the northern horizon, the retreating corpses, like a receding tide, gradually fell silent, as if the magic that had sustained their resurrection was dissipating.

“No.” Jonial’s voice trembled slightly. “I don’t believe the Long Night will end so simply until I see the White Walkers all dead.”

Just then, the long night ended, and the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, shining on the crumbling walls of the Great Wall. The ice, eroded by ice magic, suddenly emitted a faint "crackling" sound, and the eerie blue cracks on its surface began to slowly heal, even though the sunlight still had no warmth, and the sun remained deathly pale.

But this also proves one point.

The long night is over.

One of the surviving Night's Watchmen suddenly knelt down, his frostbitten cheek pressed against the city wall as it warmed up, and wailed like a child.

The dragon riders remained standing, and Igor placed a hand on his nephew's shoulder. He knew this was far from over, and his nephew was right; no one could guarantee the Long Night would truly end until they saw the last White Walker vanish.

Sunlight pierced through the long night that permeated the world.

On the high walls of Pentos, people cheered and celebrated the end of death. They shouted the names of the gods as if they had saved the mortal world.

The ghost grass that once devoured the entire Great Grass Sea, and even at one point swallowed most of Siessos, was withering at a visible rate. Those death grasses, as tall as a person, first lost their eerie blue luster, then their leaves curled and turned black, finally turning into falling ashes. The ruins of Vis Dothraki, enveloped by vines, once again revealed the stone statues of various peoples plundered by the Dothraki over the centuries.

Only the surviving mages knew that their saviors were not the gods, but the agents of the Song of Fire, who repelled the agents of the Song of Ice, causing the creators of these dead grasses to temporarily withdraw their attention.

The ravens, taking flight anew, traversed the Bone Mountains, where they saw the Shadowlands, now a desolate wasteland. The black mist of the Shadowlands hadn't dissipated; instead, it had grown even thicker. But the wandering shadow figures, the screaming fog, the translucent worms—all were frozen in place, then crumbled like sand sculptures. The entire continent was "dying"; trees had turned into black crystals, rivers had ceased flowing, and even the wind had stilled.

Only shadows and heat will forever remain on this polluted land.

Almost at the same time the White Walkers retreated from Winterfell, the Night Lions at the fifth fortress also began to crumble. The towering gates of the fifth fortress groaned under the weight of the onslaught in the cold wind.

Because the first four bases have already been captured.

Chai Qian leaned against the rune-covered doorpost, his bloodied fingers leaving dark red marks on the cold metal. His breastplate was pierced by an ice spear, the wound congealed with eerie, ghostly blue ice crystals, yet he still stubbornly refused to fall.

"Hahahaha." He suddenly threw his head back and laughed, the blood foam he spat out instantly freezing into red frost in the air. "That feels good! That's fucking good!"

A young servant knelt beside him, his trembling hands holding the last half-flask of strong liquor. The boy stared at the melting ice spear in the chest of the Fifth Grand Protector, his Adam's apple bobbing but unable to utter a word.

"Why the long face?" Chai Qian snatched the wine jug and took a big gulp, the amber liquid mixed with blood dripping from his chin. "Did you count? How many Night Lions did I kill?"

"Seventeen of them, the Grand Protector," the boy's voice trembled. "And that one who can fly."

"Bullshit!" Chai Qian slapped the boy on the shoulder. "There are clearly twenty-three! How dare you undercount my war merits? You deserve to be punished! Your punishment is to stay here and supervise the reconstruction after the dust settles."

The city walls suddenly trembled violently, and the old shrike priest, adorned with a crown of seven-colored feathers, stood atop the highest point of the crenellations. His withered lizard claws crushed his emerald heart, yet his song grew ever louder. Each syllable caused visible ripples in the air, as if celebrating the end of the long night.

"See that?" Chai Qian pointed his wine jug at the shrik priest, who had, at the cost of all his giant beasts and two-thirds of his army, had single-handedly helped the equally devastated Fifth Fortress defenders hold onto their last stronghold. "I told you, these scaly creatures are more formidable than that fool emperor's imperial guards."

His voice suddenly weakened. The attendant hurriedly supported the commander's slumping body, but only felt a bone-chilling coldness. The ice crystals had spread to his heart and were gradually freezing the Grand Protector of the Fifth Fortress.

“Listen, kid,” Chai Qian suddenly laughed, “go to the bottom of the cellar and throw that thing into the beacon fire to tell our allies that we have won.”

The voice seemed to freeze and gradually faded away.

he died.

Outside the city, the surviving Shrike warriors and the five-fortress garrison began cleaning the battlefield with obsidian weapons, an ancient ritual to prevent the corpses from being used by the White Walkers.

The long night seems to be over.

(End of this chapter)