An old man with completely white hair and gnarled hands sat in his study, surrounded by books, scrolls, and ancient artifacts. He read carefully from a dusty volume, while snow fell slow and steady beyond the window.
From time to time he would look up to see how the flakes accumulated on the windowsill. In one of those pauses, with a sigh, he murmured:
—It seems they're almost crossing... —as if talking to himself, or perhaps to someone who wasn't there.
He bent over the pages again, though his fingers drummed on the wood with impatience. The fire crackled behind him, and the twilight light tinted the study's shadows with amber.
A while later, as if following a presentiment, he looked up again. The snow now fell denser, faster... and then he saw her.
At the window.
Tall, slender, dressed in a long black tunic and a hooded cloak. Her face, hidden under a black mask that fitted her head, revealed only her eyes: one white, opaque; the other dark and deep.
The white was not natural. It was not a blessing or ancient power. It was the memory of a brutal wound, a burn or blow that, long ago, had taken her sight and left her gaze frozen in time.
She had appeared there without making the slightest sound. More than silence itself.
The old man's hands stopped. A chill ran down his spine, but he didn't look away. His body reacted with a slight start, but he didn't seem frightened.
—You're here already... —he murmured, as he carefully closed the book.
He took his wine cup and drank a long sip, almost trembling. The glass clinked as he set it back on the table.
—Come in —he said, with a grave, contained voice.
She obeyed without words. The window opened as if by itself, and the figure crossed the threshold, so silent that not even the floor's wood complained under her weight. The fire in the fireplace shrank upon feeling her presence.
The old man watched her as she advanced, with a feverish gleam in his eyes that shone in the firelight.
—Always so silent... —he commented, with a hint of reverence and a ghost of a smile.
He knew —and it still amazed him— that she was alive. The idea that her body had resisted that horror still seemed unreal to him. He understood why she hid every corner of her body: not out of vanity, but because the scars spoke too much, and some wounds, though closed, still hurt more than silence.
No one said anything. She just unhooked from her back an elongated package, wrapped in brown cloth, and placed it on the table with an almost solemn delicacy.
The old man remained motionless for an instant, as if savoring the wait, containing an emotion too big for his words. Then, with a broken sigh, he slid his fingers over the cloth.
He began to unwrap the package, and with each knot he loosened, the air in the room became denser, more electric, as if charged with storm.
When the cloth fell completely, what emerged was a sword.
The pommel was blackened, deformed and burned, as if it had been torn from hell itself. But the blade... the blade was intact. Not only intact, but sharper than ever. And most disturbing was its color: an impossible green, bright, deep, a green he had seen before and would never forget.
The old man leaned his face toward the blade to look at it more closely, and it was then that his reflection appeared on the steel.
A small face, aged, marked by a great scar that crossed his cheek like lightning. A face that for years had been famous in the world, now hidden under the weight of decades and the shadows of his study. Eyes that, despite time and losses, still shone with malice and intelligence.
—Azor Ahai... —he whispered to himself, without looking away.
It was as if all the battles, all the betrayals and losses had been only prologue to this moment.
With a trembling hand, he barely touched the blade with his fingertips. It responded with a slight gleam, as if it understood.
A bitter, twisted and triumphant smile drew on his face. And in a whisper that was lost among the shadows of the study, he pronounced:
—Finally, after so long... we can dream of spring.