Jake tried to count the days. Really tried.
"Day... twelve? Thirteen? Does it even matter?"
It didn't. Time was meaningless when you were dead.
The horde had been marching for what felt like weeks. Always north. Always deeper into the frozen wasteland. The landscape changed slowly. The ice got thicker. The wind got colder. The sky seemed darker, even though there was no day or night cycle Jake could detect.
"We're going somewhere. Ice-daddy has a destination."
Jake had been watching Kazhor more carefully. The White Walker moved with purpose. Not wandering. Not patrolling. Moving toward something specific.
"Bet it's the big boss. The Night King. From the show."
Jake's foggy memory tried to recall what he'd seen in those fifteen minutes on his phone. Ice zombies. White Walkers. Rangers dying. Something about a king? He wasn't sure.
"Wish I'd watched more. Or paid attention in those office discussions. Everyone was always talking about it."
But he hadn't. And now he was here. In the world. Knowing almost nothing.
"Great life choices, Jake. Really stellar."
The horde stopped.
It was the middle of what Jake thought of as "day," though the gray sky looked the same as always. Kazhor stood motionless, head tilted slightly.
Then Jake felt it. That pulling sensation. The invisible strings attached to his limbs.
But this time, something was different.
SIT.
The command came. Simple. Direct.
The other wights collapsed into sitting positions immediately. Like puppets with cut strings.
Jake's body started to obey. His knees began to bend.
"Wait. Wait, can I... can I fight it?"
He tried. Tried to keep his legs straight. Tried to resist the command.
His body shook. Muscles spasmed. The wight body wanted to obey. Needed to obey.
But Jake pushed back. Used that 0.4% control. All of it. Focused entirely on one thing: Stay standing.
His legs trembled. Locked. Fought against the command.
For three seconds, he stayed upright.
Then his knees buckled and he collapsed into a sitting position with the others.
"Damn it."
But... three seconds. He'd resisted for three seconds.
"That's something. That's progress."
The thought was immediately followed by terror: "What if Kazhor noticed?"
Jake forced his face into that blank, mindless expression. Stared at nothing. Let his jaw hang slack.
Kazhor stood thirty feet away, looking away. He didn't turn around. Didn't seem to notice anything wrong.
"Safe. Okay. Safe."
But Jake filed the information away. He could resist commands. Barely. For a few seconds. But he could resist.
"More control means more resistance. More points means more control. Therefore: Get. More. Points."
The logic was simple. The execution would be hard.
They sat there for hours.
Jake didn't know why. The wights just sat. Motionless. Empty.
Jake tried to use the time productively.
"Okay. Inventory check. What do I know? What can I do?"
What he knew:
He was in Game of Thrones (probably)
He was a wight (definitely)
He needed 1,000 EP to evolve (system said so)
He had 4 EP (long way to go)
Every 10 EP gave 1% more control
White Walkers controlled wights (obvious)
Kazhor was taking them somewhere north (concerning)
What he could do:
Twitch his fingers (barely useful)
Think through heavy fog (somewhat useful)
Resist commands for 3 seconds (mostly useless)
Pretend to be mindless (currently keeping him alive)
"Not a great list. But it's what I've got."
His thoughts were interrupted by movement.
Kazhor turned. His ice-blue eyes swept over the sitting wights. Then, without warning, he began walking. Not north this time. East. Perpendicular to their previous path.
FOLLOW.
The wights stood as one and followed.
Jake's body obeyed instantly. No chance to resist. The command was too strong, too simple.
"Guess sitting time is over."
They walked for another day. Maybe two.
Then Jake saw something that made his dead blood run cold.
Well, if he had blood anymore.
Ahead, rising from the ice like a frozen mountain, was a structure.
Not natural. Definitely not natural.
It looked like a fortress. Or a palace. Carved entirely from ice and stone. Massive. Ancient. Impossibly tall spires reaching toward the gray sky. Everything gleamed with frost and freezing mist.
"Oh. Oh no. That's... that's not good."
And standing in front of the fortress, waiting, was another White Walker.
Taller than Kazhor. More ornate armor. Crown-like ice formations on its head. It stood with an aura of authority that even Jake could feel from a distance.
"That's... that's the boss. Has to be. Kazhor's boss."
Kazhor approached the tall White Walker. The wight horde stopped automatically, standing in formation behind their master.
Jake watched, trying to stay perfectly still.
The two White Walkers faced each other.
Then the taller one spoke.
The sound made Jake's frozen blood freeze further. If that was possible.
It wasn't words. Not human words. It was like ice cracking. Like glaciers splitting. Like the sound of winter itself given voice. A series of clicks and cracks and sharp, crystalline sounds that hurt to hear.
Kazhor responded in the same language. More ice-cracking sounds. Alien. Wrong. The language of things that shouldn't exist.
They spoke back and forth. Jake couldn't understand a single sound. It was completely inhuman. Each word sounded like breaking glass mixed with splintering ice.
But he could see the body language. Kazhor's posture was different. Slightly bowed. Deferential.
The taller White Walker was definitely in charge.
They spoke for what felt like an hour. The sounds echoed off the ice, making Jake's dead ears ring. Each syllable felt like needles of cold piercing his skull.
Then the tall White Walker made a gesture, turned, and walked back toward the fortress. His footsteps made no sound on the snow.
Kazhor stood there for a moment. Then turned and led the horde away. South this time. Away from the fortress.
Jake's foggy mind worked overtime.
"Okay. So. They have a language. I can't understand it. It sounds like... like the world ending. And there's definitely a hierarchy. Ice-daddy reports to ice-grandpa. Ice-grandpa lives in the scary ice palace."
He tried to remember if anyone in the show had spoken the White Walker language. He didn't think so. The rangers had just died. No conversation.
"Great. Another thing I don't know. Can't understand the language. Can't communicate even if I wanted to."
Not that he wanted to. Communicating with Kazhor seemed like a great way to get destroyed.
"Need to stay hidden. Need to stay quiet. Need to survive."
They marched south for days.
Jake used the time to observe. To learn. To figure out how this all worked.
The wights never stopped unless commanded. Never rested. Never needed anything. They were perfect soldiers. Mindless. Tireless. Obedient.
Kazhor controlled them with simple commands. Move. Stop. Kill. Sit. Stand. Nothing complex. The wights couldn't handle complex instructions anyway.
Except Jake.
"I can understand complex stuff. Once I get more control, I could... what? Disobey? Run?"
The thought was appealing. And terrifying.
"If I run and get caught, I'm done. Destroyed. But if I stay, I'm stuck in this horde forever. Grinding rabbits for scraps of EP."
It was a problem for future Jake. Current Jake needed to focus on survival.
On what Jake thought might be day sixteen, the horde encountered something new.
A dead elk. Frozen solid. Lying in the snow.
STOP.
The horde stopped.
Kazhor approached the elk. Examined it with those burning blue eyes. Then raised his hand over the corpse.
Frost spread from Kazhor's palm. Blue light glowed, brighter than the dim glow of the wights' eyes. The air grew even colder, if that was possible. Jake could see his own frozen breath, a useless remnant of being alive.
The elk's eyes snapped open. Glowing blue.
It stood up. Jerky. Uncoordinated. Dead. Just like the wights.
Another undead servant.
But Kazhor didn't just leave it to shamble with the horde.
The White Walker stepped forward and, with fluid grace, mounted the elk. Sat astride it like a horse. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The elk stood steady under his weight. Didn't buck. Didn't react. Just stood there, obedient.
MARCH.
The command came.
The wights began moving. And Kazhor rode ahead of them on the undead elk, leading the horde from above.
Jake's foggy mind processed this new information.
"He's... riding it. Using it like a horse. So White Walkers don't just control wights. They use them. Tools. Transportation. Weapons."
It made sense in a horrible way. Why walk when you could ride? Why command from the ground when you could command from above?
"We're not soldiers to them. We're... we're equipment. Horses. Swords. Shields. Things to be used."
The thought was dehumanizing. Degrading.
But also useful.
"Which means... which means as long as I'm useful, I'm kept around. The moment I'm not useful or I'm broken, I'm discarded."
It was another piece of information. Another rule to survive by.
"Stay useful. Stay functional. Don't break."
The elk shambled forward with an awkward gait, carrying Kazhor. The horde followed behind.
And Jake shambled with them, just another tool in the White Walker's arsenal.
They made camp again. Or whatever the wight equivalent was. They just... stopped.
Kazhor dismounted the elk. The undead animal stood motionless, waiting for the next command.
Jake stood with the other wights, perfectly still. But his mind was racing.
"Okay. So. Facts: Kazhor has a boss. The boss lives in an ice fortress. There are probably more White Walkers. They speak an ice language I can't understand. They can raise dead things. They use undead as mounts. They control us completely."
He tried to move his hand. Concentrated. His fingers twitched.
"Still only 0.4% control. Not enough. Not nearly enough."
He needed more EP. Needed to hunt. But he couldn't hunt while Kazhor was watching. Couldn't move independently. Couldn't do anything.
"Stuck. Completely stuck."
The frustration was overwhelming. He was conscious. Aware. But trapped in a body that wouldn't obey him.
"This is hell. Actual hell. Knowing what you need to do but being unable to do it."
A wight near him tilted over and fell face-first into the snow. It didn't get up. Didn't move. Just lay there until the command came and it stood back up.
Mindless. Empty. Nothing inside.
"That could be me. That should be me. I'm supposed to be like that."
But he wasn't. He was aware. Trapped. And slowly going insane.
"Need points. Need control. Need to figure out how to hunt without getting caught."
The frozen wasteland offered no answers.
Only silence. Only cold. Only the endless march of the dead.
And ahead, Kazhor sat motionless on his undead elk, staring ahead.