The waves gently hit the shore of Essos, a cruel and bittersweet contrast to the sinister sound of ice and wind they had grown accustomed to. The sea murmured its indifference, as if mocking their misery.
At the port, Daario Naharis awaited them. There were no embraces, no smiles, no words of comfort; just a resigned, bitter look that sealed a shared defeat. He asked nothing. They answered nothing either.
—Come —he said, his voice hollow, without warmth—. I'll give you refuge... for now.
And he led them through what remained of the city. The streets were deserted, the facades crumbling and the lamps extinguished. Everything smelled of dust and abandonment. Each step resonated like an echo in a world that no longer made sense.
Sansa walked with her head down, holding the child —the last legacy of Jon and Daenerys— against her chest. Tyrion, Davos and Sam flanked her, empty faces, oblivious to everything except the weight of their failure.
They were housed in a large and cold room, where old oil lamps projected long and deformed shadows on the walls. No one spoke. Words lacked meaning now. Silence weighed more than any scream, more than any tear.
Samwell sat apart and opened an ancient book he had brought with him, trying to find some crack of hope among the words of men dead for centuries. But even the letters seemed to look at him with contempt: a tangle of empty symbols, as useless as the promises of gods.
In Westeros, meanwhile, the White Walkers ruled, covering the world with an eternal winter. They were no longer legends, but the bitter architects of a new era of despair. The lands of men bent and broke before them, with no possible resistance.
In the room, the last candle flickered before surrendering to darkness. The light went out. With it, the last flame in their souls was extinguished.
They looked toward the black horizon, and understood that there were no heroes or songs left; that the night was dark and harbored real and eternal horrors. Each one understood, in silence, the bitter truth: the world they knew had died, and they were its wandering ghosts, lost in an endless exile, without purpose, without hope.
In the pulsating tension of this bifurcated world, there is a duality that cannot be ignored. On one side lies a dark domain, governed by eternal night and populated by figures of death and despair. In contrast, a kingdom of light shines, where the living still have the chance to dream under the sun, though their dreams are stained with uncertainty.
Here, two antagonistic forces coexist in a precarious balance: cold and frozen death facing life, burning and ephemeral. It is, in essence, a world of ice and fire.
Shadows covered the room. No one spoke. No one even dared to imagine a tomorrow that no longer belonged to them.
And in that silence —deep as an open grave— the final certainty was engraved: there were no heroes, no songs, no lessons learned; only ash, cold and a void that devoured any meaning. Every sacrifice was devoured, useless, irreparable. That even memory would be swallowed by night.
And in the silence, not even the wind dared to move.