Death, as it happened, was less an ending and more a cosmic inconvenience with delusions of profundity.
Harry Potter stood in a place that might have been fog or might have been the idea of fog, or might have been what fog dreamed about when it slept. He was taller than he remembered—shoulders broader, jaw stronger, as if death had finally let him grow into the man he'd been meant to be before dark magic and destiny had other ideas.
His hand went to his forehead. The scar was gone. Just smooth skin where prophecy had carved itself in lightning and left him to sort out the mess.
"Okay," said a voice to his left, American and annoyed in equal measure. "This is officially the weirdest thing that's happened to me, and I once fought a giant scorpion in the Smithsonian."
Harry turned. A young man about his age stood there—or floated there, or *existed* there in that purposeful way that suggested he hadn't quite figured out the local physics yet. Dark hair, lean build, athletic in that specifically American way where people did sports for *fun*. His eyes were green as deep water, and he was absolutely soaked, seawater dripping from his clothes onto nothing and going nowhere.
"You're wet," Harry observed.
"You're British," the young man countered. "We've all got problems."
They studied each other with the particular wariness of people who'd learned that mysterious strangers in mystical realms were about sixty-forty odds of trying to either help you or murder you, and those were generous estimates.
"Percy Jackson." The young man offered a dripping hand. "Son of Poseidon. Just got killed by a Titan king who found my one vulnerable spot, which seemed pretty final until—" He gestured vaguely at the infinite non-space around them. "—whatever this is happened."
Harry shook his hand. The water was cold and real. "Harry Potter. Defeated a Dark Lord. Master of the Deathly Hallows. Died in a forest. Turns out 'Master of Death' is less of a job title and more of a cruel joke."
"Master of Death?" Percy's eyebrows climbed. "How's that working out?"
"I'm dead and having a chat with a dripping American in what appears to be the metaphysical equivalent of a waiting room, so spectacularly poorly."
"Fair assessment."
There was a pause. Around them, the mist moved in ways that mist shouldn't move, and the starlight pulsed with rhythms that might have been heartbeats or might have been the universe breathing.
Percy wrung out his shirt, which accomplished exactly nothing. "So. Death. Not really what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Fields of Asphodel? Judgment? My dad showing up to give me the 'I'm disappointed but not surprised' speech?" Percy looked around. "Not... this."
"How'd you die?" Harry asked.
"Heroically. Stupidly. The Curse of Achilles made me invulnerable everywhere except one spot. Kronos found it." Percy's jaw tightened. "I was winning, and then I wasn't. You?"
"Sacrificial magic. Had to let the Dark Lord kill me to destroy part of his soul that was lodged in my head. It made sense at the time."
"Did it work?"
"I assume so, given that I'm here and not there."
They stood in silence for a moment, two dead heroes in the space between, and something passed between them—recognition. The specific understanding of people who'd spent their lives fighting things that most people didn't believe in, saving people who'd never know, being the ones who stood in the gap because someone had to.
Then the universe *giggled*.
Not laughed. Giggled. Like a child who'd just done something they absolutely shouldn't have and was delighted about it.
Reality didn't bend so much as it had a seizure. The mist convulsed, the starlight did a backflip, and suddenly there was a *presence* with them that was less a being and more a cosmic event that had gotten bored with being cosmic and decided to get weird about it.
It appeared first as a man in a tuxedo made of galaxies and bad decisions. Then as a rubber chicken wearing a top hat. Then as Jim Carrey's face, all teeth and manic energy, grinning like chaos incarnate.
**"GENTLEMEN!"** it boomed, in a voice that came from everywhere and nowhere and possibly from inside their own existential dread. **"Welcome to DEATH! Temporary death! Death with an asterisk! Death: The Home Game! You're both WINNERS! Congratulations!"**
It exploded into confetti that reformed as streamers that spelled out "YOU'RE DEAD!" in cheerful letters.
Harry's jaw set in that particular British way that suggested he was about to be aggressively polite at something. "I'm sorry, *what*?"
**"Dead! Deceased! Departed! Bought the farm! Kicked the bucket! Shuffled off the mortal coil!"** The being cartwheeled through impossible space, its form flickering between a game show host, a cosmic horror, and a very enthusiastic insurance salesman. **"But here's the thing—and this is the EXCITING part—you don't have to STAY dead! How would you like to NOT be dead? Show of hands!"**
Percy looked at Harry. Harry looked at Percy.
"Is this normal for you?" Percy asked.
"I once had a conversation with the personification of Death at King's Cross Station," Harry replied. "This is somehow worse."
**"WORSE? WORSE?!"** The being was suddenly between them, an arm around each of their shoulders, its face cycling through expressions too fast to follow. **"This is OPPORTUNITY! This is ADVENTURE! This is—"** It paused dramatically. **"—Door Number Two!"**
Three doors appeared in the void. One glowed with soft golden light and had a sign reading "Eternal Rest—All Welcome." One was made of shadows and whispers. The third was painted with crude stick figures of ice zombies and had "ADVENTURE!" scrawled across it in crayon.
**"Door One!"** The being gestured like a circus ringmaster. **"Paradise! Reward! Peace! Reunion with loved ones! Very nice, very touching, very BORING! Door Two! Reincarnation roulette! Could be anything! Could be a butterfly! Could be a tax attorney! Nobody knows! Door Three—"** It grinned impossibly wide. **"—HEROES NEEDED! ICE ZOMBIES! DRAGONS! POLITICAL INTRIGUE! And you get to be TWINS!"**
"Twins," Harry repeated slowly, in that tone that suggested he was waiting for the punchline.
"Ice zombies," Percy added. "You're trying to sell us on ice zombies."
**"Not JUST ice zombies!"** The being bounced. **"Also: medieval politics! Backstabbing! Literal and metaphorical backstabbing! A king who's drunk! A queen who's terrifying! Winters that last for years! It's got EVERYTHING!"**
"Sounds dreadful," Harry said.
"Sounds familiar," Percy said.
They looked at each other again.
"You fought gods?" Harry asked.
"Titans, gods, the occasional primordial force of chaos. You?"
"Dark wizards, mostly. One particularly persistent one. Also a basilisk. And Dementors. And—it's a long list."
"Same."
**"THIS!"** The being shouted. **"THIS is why you're PERFECT! You're already dead! You already saved your worlds! You know how it works! And this OTHER world—"** It leaned in conspiratorially, its form settling into something almost serious. **"—needs you. Desperately. Winter is coming, boys, and winter is HUNGRY."**
"What's the catch?" Percy asked, crossing his arms. "There's always a catch. I've dealt with enough gods to know there's always a catch."
**"Catch! Tiny catch! Microscopic catch!"** The being held up fingers barely apart. **"You'll be born as babies! Can't avoid that, biology is VERY strict about the baby thing! Your memories will return slowly, over years, because having the memories of killing Dark Lords when you're teething is traumatic for everyone involved! And—"** It paused. **"—you'll be born to a family that's what we in the cosmic business call 'extremely dysfunctional.'"**
"How dysfunctional?" Harry asked carefully.
**"Your father will be a drunk king who won his throne with a war hammer! Your mother will be beautiful and terrifying and having an affair with her twin brother!"**
"Christ," Percy muttered.
"Bloody hell," Harry said.
**"RIGHT?! It's AMAZING! It's like a soap opera but with more murder and occasional dragons! Well, rumors of dragons. Dragons are tricky."**
"Why us?" Harry asked, and his voice was quiet now, serious. "Why not let us rest? We've earned it, haven't we?"
The being's form stilled. For just a moment, something ancient and kind looked through the chaos, something that might have been sad or might have been proud or might have been both.
**"Because you already died once for your worlds,"** it said softly. **"Because you know what it costs. Because when the darkness comes—and it IS coming—you'll know exactly what to do. You'll stand in the gap. Because that's who you are."**
Then the manic energy snapped back. **"PLUS you get MAGIC POWERS! Your old magic! Different from their magic! It'll confuse everyone! It's great!"**
"Will we remember each other?" Percy asked. "This conversation?"
**"Eventually. Memories are funny things. They hide in dreams. In the way your hand reaches for something that isn't there. In déjà vu. You'll find each other. You always do."**
Harry looked at Percy. Percy looked at Harry.
"I'm tired of fighting," Harry admitted.
"Me too," Percy said.
"But I'm not very good at resting."
"Same."
"And if there are people who need saving—"
"—we're not really the type to say no."
They stood there, two dead heroes in the space between stories, and made a choice.
"Together," Harry said. Not a question.
"Together," Percy agreed. "But no prophecies. No manipulative mentor figures. No destiny bullshit. We do this our way."
**"DEAL! SOLD! AGREED! SIGNED IN TRIPLICATE!"** The being exploded into fireworks. **"Oh this is going to be GLORIOUS! I'm going to need popcorn! Do they have popcorn in medieval fantasy worlds? Probably not! I'll bring my own!"**
"Wait—" Percy started.
But the mist was rising, thick and final, and Harry felt himself coming apart like sugar dissolving in tea. The last solid thing he felt was Percy's hand gripping his, both of them holding on for just a moment more.
"See you on the other side, Potter."
"See you there, Jackson."
Then there was nothing, and nothing, and nothing.
And then there was everything at once—light and sound and the shocking cold of air and the absolute *injustice* of being born, which was somehow worse than dying had been.
And somewhere in the space between spaces, a cosmic entity settled in with popcorn (stolen from a universe three doors down) and dimmed the lights.
"Showtime," it said to itself, and smiled.
---
**King's Landing, 284 AC**
The screaming had been going on for seven hours, which was six hours longer than Robert Baratheon's attention span and one hour longer than his patience.
"How much longer?!" he roared, pacing outside the birthing chamber like a caged bear in a crown. He was drunk—Robert was always drunk—but this was specific drunk. Nervous drunk. The kind where you drink because something important is happening and nobody will let you hit it with a hammer. "Jon! For the love of the gods, she's been at it since dawn!"
Jon Arryn, Hand of the King and professional keeper of royal disasters, stood with his hands folded, gray-haired and dignified and completely unruffled. He'd served as Hand to three kings now. Nothing rattled Jon Arryn.
"The maesters report that all is progressing well, Your Grace," he said calmly. "First births often take considerable time."
"Time! It's not *time*, it's *forever*!" Robert took another pull from his wineskin. "She sounds like someone's murdering her! Like they're killing her with—with—" He gestured wildly. "—with murder things!"
"Very articulate, Your Grace."
"I'm articulate! I'm *very* articulate! I'm the most articulate king in—" He paused. "What was I saying?"
"Your wife is in labor."
"Right! Yes! That!" Robert resumed pacing. "Why does it take so long? Why can't it just—" He made a popping gesture. "—happen?"
"Biology, Your Grace, is not known for its convenience."
Then the door opened.
A midwife emerged, her face caught in that expression people get when they've seen something they can't quite explain and aren't sure if it's wonderful or concerning. She curtseyed quickly.
"Your Grace. The Queen has been delivered. Two sons. Healthy. Strong." She paused. "Twins."
The silence that followed was so complete you could hear the torches crackling.
Robert's face went through a journey. Confusion. Comprehension. Disbelief. Then pure, unbridled, explosive joy.
"TWINS?!" His voice could have knocked down walls. "JON! TWINS! TWO BOYS!" He seized the Hand by the shoulders, lifting him slightly off the ground. "The gods love me! The gods actually, genuinely, specifically love ME! I've got TWO sons! TWO HEIRS!"
His laugh was enormous, thunderous. "WINE! BRING ALL THE WINE! We're having a feast! The biggest feast! Every lord in the Keep! The realm has princes! TWO princes! The succession is SET!"
He was already bellowing orders, calling for musicians, for roasted boar, for wine from the Arbor. Jon Arryn smiled slightly—the small, knowing smile of a man who'd spent decades managing Baratheons.
"Shall we see them, Your Grace?"
"See them? SEE THEM? We'll see them and then we'll DRINK!"
---
Inside the birthing chamber, Cersei Lannister lay against silk pillows that were significantly less comfortable than silk pillows ought to be when one had just performed what felt like a particularly violent form of magic without any of the fun parts.
Her golden hair was plastered to her head with sweat. Her famous green eyes—green as wildfire, green as poison—were exhausted but alert, because Cersei Lannister was never not calculating, not even immediately post-childbirth.
Two bundles lay in her arms, wrapped in soft linen, both squalling with healthy lungs.
Both with hair as black as Robert's beard, as black as the night, as black as her plans unraveling.
She stared at them, and ice crystallized in her chest.
She'd been *prepared* for one. One dark-haired child, one concession to Robert's blood, one trueborn heir to shut up the realm. And then she'd planned to fill the nursery with golden-haired babies who would be Jaime's in truth if not in name.
But *two*. Two black-haired boys who would always be Robert's, who would stand as permanent proof of her marriage, who she could never explain away or undo.
"Remarkable," murmured Grand Maester Pycelle, leaning over them with his ancient, watery eyes. "Such strong Baratheon coloring. The seed is strong indeed. Though the eyes..." He peered closer. "Most unusual."
One baby—the quieter one—had stopped crying. He was staring up at her with eyes that were impossibly green, bright as emeralds, bright as her own but *different*. Clearer. Almost glowing in the candlelight.
The other was still fussing, but when she adjusted her hold, he opened his eyes: sea-green, like ocean water catching sunlight, beautiful and strange and wrong for either house.
"I've never seen such coloring in Baratheon or Lannister lines," Pycelle continued, fascinated. "Perhaps a throwback to some distant—"
The door exploded inward—because Robert Baratheon had never met a door that couldn't be improved by being crashed through—and the King strode in with Jon Arryn following like a sensible shadow.
"CERSEI! Where are my boys? Where are my SONS?"
He filled the room, enormous in his stained leathers, smelling of wine and sweat and victory. But his face—gods help her—his face was soft with wonder.
Despite everything, despite Robert, despite this marriage that was a beautiful prison, Cersei felt something twist in her chest as she looked at the babies. They were *hers*. Born of her body. Real in a way nothing else in this pit of vipers was real.
"Gods," Robert breathed, and for once he didn't sound drunk. "Cersei. Look what you did."
He reached down with his massive hands—hands that had killed Rhaegar Targaryen, that had crushed the rubies from his breastplate—and picked up the quieter baby with shocking gentleness.
The tiny infant's hand immediately wrapped around Robert's finger.
"Ha! Look at that grip! Jon, feel this!" Robert's grin was huge. "This one's going to be a warrior! Strong as his father!"
Jon Arryn stepped closer, his wise old eyes studying the babies with an expression Cersei didn't quite like. He was *thinking*. Calculating. She saw him look at the black hair, at the strange eyes, at the way they looked like Robert but also... didn't.
"Have you chosen names, Your Grace?" Jon asked, looking between Robert and Cersei with careful neutrality.
Robert turned to her, and in a gesture rare enough to be noteworthy, waited.
"The Queen should name her children."
Cersei looked at the twins. Names. She should give them Lannister names—Tywin, Gerion, Loren. Assert her house, claim them as lions despite their dark hair.
But the names came from somewhere else. Somewhere deep and unexplained.
"Hadrian," she said, looking at the baby in Robert's arms, the one with emerald eyes that seemed to see too much. "For the elder. Though they came so close together, I'm not certain which is truly first."
"And Perseus," she continued, looking at the baby still in her arms, the one with sea-green eyes and a stubborn set to his tiny jaw. "For the younger."
"Hadrian and Perseus Baratheon," Robert pronounced, his voice taking on that kingly weight he used so rarely. "Princes of the Seven Kingdoms. My sons. My *heirs*."
He was already moving on, calling for wine, for celebrations. "Jon, we feast tonight! Every lord in the city! We'll drink until the sun comes up! I have SONS!"
And then he was gone, sweeping out with Jon Arryn in tow, his attention span exhausted but his joy genuine.
The wet nurses came and went. The maesters examined, pronounced the babies healthy, and withdrew. Eventually, Cersei was left alone with the twins.
She studied them in the flickering candlelight.
Hadrian—emerald-eyed Hadrian—had a serious cast to his features even in sleep. He looked like he was already thinking, already planning. Perseus looked wild somehow, restless, his little face set in determination or defiance.
"You will be lions," she whispered to them, fierce and final. "Whatever color your hair, whatever blood runs truest. You're *mine*. I'll make you into lions, and the realm will remember your names."
Neither baby stirred.
But in the depths of their sleeping minds, things moved like fish beneath ice.
Hadrian dreamed of a cupboard under stairs, of lightning and screaming, of a castle made of magic, of dying in a forest because it was right.
Perseus dreamed of a blue birthday cake, of water that answered when he called, of dying to save a city, of a sword that was a pen.
They were newborns. They understood nothing.
But two souls remembered being someone else, and memories were patient.
They'd already waited through death.
A few years were nothing.
---
In the place where the world ended and the cold began, where ice was not merely frozen water but the substance of eternity itself, something stirred.
The Land of Always Winter was not a place that living things understood. It existed outside of time in the way that mortals measured it—no sun, no seasons, only the endless white and the patient hunger. Here, the cold was a thing alive, and it dreamed dreams of silence.
The Night King stood on a precipice of frozen stone, watching the southern lands with eyes that were blue as frozen flame. He did not breathe. He had not breathed in eight thousand years. Breathing was for things that lived, and he was something else entirely—something older than death, older than the Wall, older than the memory of green things.
Around him, the dead stood in patient rows. Some were fresh, with the meat still on their bones. Others were ancient, held together by ice and will and the cold's terrible purpose. They did not move. They did not need to. They could wait forever. They would wait forever, if necessary.
The Night King had been waiting for a very long time.
He remembered—in the way that ice remembers the shape of water—when the world had been warm. When men had fought each other for land and gold and the petty things that warm blood valued. He had been a man once, though the memory was distant as a dream, cold as a stone at the bottom of a frozen lake.
The Children of the Forest had made him. Had *unmade* him. Had taken a man and poured ice into his heart and made him into something that could fight the First Men. But the Children had been fools. They had made something they couldn't unmake, couldn't control, couldn't stop.
And he had waited. Patient as winter. Cold as death.
The Wall had gone up, raised by Brandon the Builder with magic he'd learned from the Children, reinforced with spells that burned like sunlight. The Night King could *feel* it, even from here—a line of fire across the world, holding him back, keeping him bound to the frozen lands.
But walls crumbled. Magic faded. Everything warm died, given time.
He had waited eight thousand years. He could wait eight thousand more.
Except—
The Night King's head tilted, an almost human gesture that looked wrong on something so perfectly still.
Something had changed.
He felt it like a crack in ice, like the first hint of spring that shouldn't exist. Two lights had been born in the warm lands. Two flames that burned with fire that was *wrong*, that didn't belong to this world.
The song of ice and fire had been a simple thing. One melody, one prophesied hero, one champion of light that would one day rise to face the darkness. The Night King had seen it in his visions—a boy with dark hair and gray eyes, born of ice and fire, born of death and duty. The song had been clear.
But now—
Now there were *two* lights. Two flames where there should have been one. Twin stars burning in the tapestry of fate, bright and foreign and impossible.
The Night King reached out with senses that were not quite sight, not quite hearing, not quite anything that living things would understand. He felt the world as ice felt it—as currents of heat and cold, as patterns of life and death.
The two flames burned in the south, in the warm lands where the Usurper King sat on his stolen throne. Newborn. Helpless. But already they were *wrong*. Their fire was not the fire of this world. It tasted of other places, other magics, other *deaths*.
Around him, the wights stirred for the first time in years. They felt their master's attention shift, felt his focus narrow to two points of heat in the distant south.
The Night King raised one hand—pale as snow, cold as eternity—and the dead grew still again.
Two champions. Two lights. Two flames that did not belong.
It changed nothing. It changed *everything*.
Winter was still coming. Winter always came.
But now, perhaps, it would have to come faster.
The Night King turned to the south, and for the first time in a thousand years, he began to move with purpose. Behind him, the army of the dead began to wake.
---
Brynden Rivers—who had been Bloodraven, who had been the King's Hand, who had been a bastard son of a king—hung in the roots of the weirwood tree and dreamed.
He had been dreaming for fifty years. Sixty? Time moved strangely when you were mostly tree. The roots had grown through him, around him, into him. They pierced his skin, fed on his blood, shared their visions. He was more wood than man now, more vision than flesh.
The Children of the Forest tended him like gardeners tended an ancient tree. Leaf pressed moss to his lips, gave him water. He could barely taste it. Taste was for the living.
But he could *see*. Gods, how he could see.
The weirwood network spread across the North like veins, like a vast nervous system of the land itself. Every heart tree was a window, an eye, a doorway into the past and present and the dreams of future that might be. He saw through them all—a thousand eyes, a thousand perspectives, watching the wheel of time turn.
He had been watching for the Prince That Was Promised. The song of ice and fire. The champion who would stand against the darkness when it returned—and oh, it was returning. The Night King was stirring. The Long Night was coming again, patient and cold and inevitable.
For years, Brynden had watched the visions unfold. He had seen the shape of it—a boy with Stark blood and Targaryen blood, born of duty and honor, raised in the frozen North. The song was clear. The path was set.
Jon Snow. Ned Stark's bastard. The hidden prince. The song had sung itself around him like a prophecy made flesh.
But now—
Brynden's remaining eye snapped open—the other had been lost to a Blackfyre blade a hundred years ago, though sometimes he forgot. The roots shifted around him, responding to his distress.
The song had *changed*.
He plunged his consciousness into the visions, into the vast tapestry of time that spread before him like a great weaving. He saw Jon Snow's thread—still there, still strong, still crucial. But now—
Now there were two *other* threads. Two lights that had been woven into the pattern where they hadn't been before. They burned brighter than Jon Snow's thread, burned with colors he didn't recognize, with fire that tasted wrong.
Twins. Born in King's Landing. Sons of the Usurper King.
Brynden pushed deeper into the vision, forcing his consciousness along the threads of fate. He saw them—two babies with black hair and strange eyes, one green as emeralds, one green as the sea. They looked like normal children.
But when he looked *deeper*, when he pushed past the flesh to the soul beneath—
The visions fractured.
He saw a boy with a lightning scar, dying in a forest with love as his weapon. He saw another boy, falling into darkness with a sword in his hand. He saw magic that wasn't the magic of ice and fire—different flavors, different rules, different *worlds*.
Impossible.
The threads tangled. Where Jon Snow's path had been clear, now it split and twisted around these two new lights. The prophecy was *changing*. The song was being rewritten even as it played.
"What are you?" Brynden whispered through lips that were half bark.
The vision showed him flashes: the twins growing, learning to walk, learning to speak. One with the careful precision of someone who'd been trained in magic, the other with the instinctive confidence of someone who'd been born to it. They didn't belong here. They were *foreign*, like threads from another tapestry woven into this one.
And they were *powerful*. Even as babies, even with their memories sleeping, they blazed in his vision like stars.
Leaf appeared beside him, small and ancient, her cat-eyes reflecting the dim light of the cave.
"You see them," she said. It wasn't a question.
"I see them," Brynden agreed, his voice like wind through dead leaves. "But I don't understand them. They're not... they're not *from* here. Not from this world. Not from this song."
"The song changes," Leaf said simply. "It always changes. This is the nature of songs—they are sung, and in the singing, they become new."
"But these two—" Brynden struggled against the roots, trying to sit forward, trying to see more clearly. "They'll change everything. The prophecy, the champion, the war against the darkness—"
"Perhaps," Leaf said. "Or perhaps they are the reason the song had to change. Perhaps the darkness is stronger than we knew. Perhaps one champion was never going to be enough."
Brynden fell back into the visions, watching the threads spin out into possible futures. In some, the twins died young—killed by disease, by politics, by the thousand things that killed children in this harsh world. In others, they lived, and their presence rippled through time like stones thrown into still water.
In the futures where they lived, everything changed.
The war with the dead came differently. The throne games played out in new patterns. Jon Snow's destiny shifted, adapted, reformed around these two new stars.
"Three lights," Brynden murmured. "Where there should have been one, now there are three. The song of ice and fire has become something else entirely."
"The song of ice and fire and *other*," Leaf agreed. "Foreign magic. Foreign fire. They burn with flames from beyond the edges of the world."
Brynden Rivers closed his eye and let the visions wash over him. Fifty years he'd been in this cave, watching and waiting and guiding what he could. He'd been preparing for the Long Night, for the return of the darkness, for the moment when the champion would need to rise.
But the game had changed. The rules had shifted.
And for the first time in half a century, Brynden Rivers didn't know what came next.
"I must watch them," he said finally. "Guide them, if I can. They're too important, too powerful, too *strange* to leave unwatched."
"You cannot reach them," Leaf said gently. "They are too far south. No weirwoods grow in King's Landing. You cannot see them through the trees."
"Then I'll find another way." Brynden's jaw set with the stubborn determination that had made him a Hand of the King, that had let him hang in roots for fifty years without going mad. "I didn't spend a lifetime becoming the Three-Eyed Raven just to be blind now."
Leaf said nothing. She simply pressed more moss to his lips and withdrew into the shadows.
Alone again—as alone as one could be while merged with a vast network of ancient magic—Brynden Rivers returned to his dreaming.
Three lights now, where there should have been one.
The song was changing.
Winter was still coming.
But perhaps, just perhaps, the spring that followed would be different than anyone expected.
---
On the edge of the known world, where the map ran out and the shadows grew long, Melisandre of Asshai knelt before her flames.
The temple was empty save for her. She preferred it that way. Other priests of R'hllor were noisy, political, concerned with coin and converts. Melisandre cared only for the visions, for the voice of her god in the flames, for the great war that was coming.
The fire burned in a great bronze brazier, fed with rare woods and oils. She had been staring into it for hours—days, perhaps. Time moved strangely when the god spoke.
She was hunting for Azor Ahai.
The Prince That Was Promised. The warrior of light who would draw the flaming sword and stand against the darkness when the stars bled and the cold breath of winter froze the seas. She had seen glimpses of him for years—a great hero, wreathed in smoke and salt, reborn to fight the coming Long Night.
The prophecy was clear. The visions were certain.
Except tonight, the flames showed her something impossible.
Melisandre's red eyes widened as the visions shifted, changed, reformed into something new.
She saw a birth in a castle of red stone. A woman with golden hair screaming. And two babies—two boys with black hair and eyes that burned with light that was not quite fire, not quite anything she recognized.
The flames showed her one baby: emerald-eyed, serious, burning with magic that tasted of sacrifice and love and death defeated.
Then the flames showed her the other: sea-eyed, wild, burning with magic that tasted of ocean depths and divine blood and wars against titans.
*Two* lights. Two warriors. Two princes.
"No," Melisandre whispered. "The prophecy speaks of one. Azor Ahai reborn. The Prince That Was Promised. One hero, one champion, one—"
But the flames didn't lie. They never lied, though they could be difficult to interpret.
She watched the visions unfold. The twins growing, learning, their strange foreign magic waking within them. Magic that wasn't the magic of R'hllor, wasn't the red god's gift, but something *other*. Something from beyond the edges of the world.
And yet—
And yet they would fight the darkness. The flames were clear on that point. When the Long Night came, when the dead walked and winter breathed its frozen breath across the world, these two would stand against it.
Not one Azor Ahai. Two. Twin flames in the darkness.
"Perhaps," Melisandre said slowly, speaking to the fire as she always did, "one flame was never going to be enough. Perhaps the darkness is stronger this time. Perhaps the prophecy had to change."
The flames crackled, and she felt the touch of her god's presence—warm as summer, bright as noon, alive in a way that nothing else was.
*Two flames for the long night. Two swords for the darkness. Two princes for the dawn.*
Melisandre sat back, her red robes pooling around her. She was old—older than she looked, older than anyone knew. She had served R'hllor for more years than she cared to count, had hunted for Azor Ahai across continents and decades.
And now, when she'd finally found him—found *them*—they were babies in a castle across the world, burning with magic that didn't belong to her god.
"I must go to them," she said. "I must find them, guide them, prepare them for what's coming."
But even as she said it, she knew it was impossible. They were too young, too far away, too protected by castles and kings. She couldn't simply walk into King's Landing and claim the sons of Robert Baratheon for the Lord of Light.
Not yet.
But soon. When they were older. When the signs became clear.
When winter finally came.
Melisandre of Asshai rose from her flames, her shadow dancing against the temple walls, and began to plan.
Two lights had been born into the world.
And one red priestess would make certain they were ready when the darkness came for them all.
---
In three places—the frozen lands beyond the Wall, the cave of the Last Greenseer, and the shadow city of Asshai—three watchers had seen the same thing.
The song had changed.
Where there should have been one champion, now there were two.
The game was afoot.
And in King's Landing, two babies slept in their cradles, unaware that ice and fire and prophecy were already weaving themselves around their tiny lives.
The story was beginning.
And like all the best stories, it would be written in blood and fire and the choices of those who refused to surrender to fate.
---
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