The impact was brutal. Drogon, wounded, crashed into the Red Keep, blasting open a crater of stone, dust, and dying fire. The whole world seemed to shatter.
Inside the ruined throne room, Daenerys and Jon lay badly hurt among fallen columns, shattered ceiling, and fractured ice. Drogon, near the entrance, breathed with effort, steam rising from his nostrils. He was aliveâbut just barely.
Daenerys opened her eyes in the frost and dust. She crawled to a cracked wall, her leg bleeding, barely able to move it. Across the hall, Jon was stirring too, staggering and dazed.
The hall was freezing, but beside the throne, a single brazier still burned. Its coals flickered stubbornly, as if surviving out of pride. Seeing Daenerys crawling, Jon limped to her and helped her to the warmth of the brazier.
The brazierâs fire gave off just enough heat to melt the snow falling through the broken ceiling. Around the flames, a puddle of warm water had formedâthe only refuge from the cruel cold invading every corner of the ruined hall.
Their breath came uneven, forming white clouds. The silence was tense. The world was collapsing around them.
Then a sound cut through the stillness: the sharp crack of ice. One by one, the torches went out, as if something was devouring them.
The wights had arrived.
They entered in a line, through doors opened by the collapse. Drogon, weak but defiant, lifted his head. With a wounded roar, he unleashed a column of fire that incinerated all the enemies. But the effort was too much. The flames died, and his body trembled. He couldnât go on.
When the fire faded and the smoke cleared, only one figure remained standing among the scorched remains. Unmoving. Unharmed. Unshaken.
And then, he appeared.
The Night King walked across the rubble of stone and fire like an ancient god. Ice formed in his wake. The cold grew so intense it made even stone groan. His presence stole the breath from the air and made bones tremble.
But Jon saw his chance. Drogonâs fire had wiped out all the wights with the Night King, leaving him alone in the hall. No guards. No protection. It was now or never. Gripping Longclaw, Jon charged with all the resolve he had left. His Valyrian steel sword glimmered in the frozen gloom.
With a slow, fluid motionâlike a frozen riverâthe Night King drew his ice blade. Jon surged forward, a roar of rage in his throat. Their first clash was like a lightning bolt trapped between fire and frost: violent, absolute.
The whole hall shook. The clash of steel and ice wasnât just noiseâit was elemental. The brazierâs flames flared wildly, and the frozen walls groaned with a deep lament, as if even stone felt fear.
The Night King struck with surgical precisionâhis style ancient, perfect, unreadable. Every blow carried the weight of centuries. Jon fought back, retreating step by step, blocking with his whole body, muscles straining. He knew he couldnât win by strengthâhe had to survive with rhythm, heart, and fury.
They leapt over debris, spun between columns. The King was fastâfaster than seemed possible. His blade whistled through the air, trailing frost, slicing even the breath from Jonâs lips.
Jon rolled beneath a vertical slash that couldâve split stone, and countered with a series of diagonal strikes, trying to unbalance him. But the King never lost balance. He retreated with supernatural grace, his cloak flowing like solid shadow. Every thrust from Jon was deflected, every feint read, every attempt denied.
Once, Jon managed to graze his arm. Just a scratch. But the strike from Longclaw left a white crack in the armor. The King looked at the wound with mild curiosity⊠not emotion. Just the look of someone watching a gnat bite before dying.
The temperature kept dropping. Frost creaked beneath them. The walls wept ice. Jon pantedânot from fear, but from effort. His arm ached. The swordâs grip slipped in his frozen fingers. The cold didnât come from the roomâit came from the King.
Then the King pushed him back with a wave of freezing force. He didnât touch Jon. Just raised an open handâand Jon flew into a wall. He dropped to his knees. Coughed blood. Ice clung to his skin. His vision blurred. But he stood. He always stood.
With a roar of raw instinct, he charged again. This time the King stood still. Waiting. And when their blades met, the blast of energy froze the air around them. Only the sound of their swords filled the world.
Jon started adapting. He couldnât match the Kingâs precisionâbut he could endure it. He moved with less force and more strategy. He read the movement. He waited for angles. He knew one wrong step meant death. Still, he found rhythm. A strike. Another. A dodge. A counter. He fought not like a knightâbut like a wolf against a storm.
For one endless instant, they fought as equals. Ice against Valyrian steel. Ancient against mortal. The King raised his blade overheadâand Jon anticipated it. He spun on his right foot and slashed Longclaw in a desperate diagonal arc.
Longclaw pierced the ice monarchâs chest.
The world stopped.
The Valyrian steel had sunk deep, cutting through the icy armor like paper. The Night King stood still, his blue eyes locked on Jon. Frost sparks fell from the wound like burning snowflakes.
Daenerys lifted herself from the throne, her violet eyes glowing bright.
Jon pushed the blade in deeper. The King didnât move. The frost sparks intensified.
And then, slowly, the Night King looked down at the sword buried in his chest. No expression. No pain. No surprise. Just cold indifference, as if glancing at a leaf on his shoulder.
A supernatural chill traveled down the blade, freezing Jonâs hand to the bone. With a strangled cry of pain and horror, he let go. The Night King, calm to the point of cruelty, pulled the sword from his body and tossed it aside like a mild inconvenience.
The wound in his chest sealed shut with a crunch of reforming ice.
Jon realized in horror the terrible truth: the Night King wasnât like the other wights. While Valyrian steel could destroy any wight or ice general on contact, this ancient being had power far beyond any mortal weapon. He was something more. Something absolute. It would take a greater power to defeat him. Something mystical, perhaps.
The Night King raised his sword for the final blow. Jon was defenseless, his hand frozen, unable to fight. This was the end.
In that eternal second, Jon remembered the cave with Ygritte, the snow falling over the Wall, his fatherâs eyes before the journey. All of it felt distant, unrealâas if it had never belonged to him. The cold wasnât just killing himâit was erasing him.
But a dragonglass arrow whistled from the shadows, striking the Kingâs armor. Then another. Arya had appeared from a side entrance, shooting with precision from cover. The arrows didnât destroy himâbut they staggered him, long enough for Jon to retreat and recover his weapon.
Jon backed away to Daenerys, confused, uncertain what to do next. But the battle wasnât over.
Like a relentless nightmare, more wights began pouring in. Dozens, flooding through the throne room doors, following the same path as before. Their footsteps sounded like bones cracking beneath ice. Countless, unstoppable death.
Arya pushed into the hall, trying to stop them. She fired dragonglass arrow after arrowâeach one hitting its mark. Each arrow shattered a wight in crystalline death. But there were too many. Far too many. Her quiver emptied fast.
When Arya ran out of arrows and wights kept coming, Drogonâseeing the death tide closing inâgathered his last strength. With a roar torn from the depths of his soul, he rose. His wings, broken and bleeding, stretched once more. The great dragon inhaled deep, his chest straining with the effort.
A column of golden fire burst from his jawsâbrighter and fiercer than ever. It engulfed all the remaining wights, disintegrating them in a blast of light and heat that swept the hall clean. All but one. The Night King stood untouched amid the flamesâimmune to dragonfire, a statue of eternal ice. But the effort broke Drogon. He collapsed, gasping, his body convulsing as the last breath of fire left his lips.
The air filled with dense smoke and blistering steam. The flames cast a thick curtain over everythingâno one could see more than a few feet ahead. Jon squinted through the haze. Arya covered her mouth, coughing on the acrid smoke. Daenerys, from the throne, could only see blurry shadows moving through the gloom.
As the smoke cleared, reality returned. The Night King stood beside Drogon, watching the fallen dragon with his usual cold indifference. He moved while Drogon was weak, coming close. Jon tried to runâArya raised her bowâbut no arrows, and too far. Nothing could stop him. It was too late.
With dreadful calm, the Night King raised his sword over the dragonâs neck. Drogon lifted his head one last timeâhis golden eyes meeting Daenerysâ across the hall.
âNO!â Daenerysâ scream tore through the hallâa cry that split the air itself.
The ice sword sank slowly into Drogonâs neck. The dragon let out a final soundâpart roar, part sigh. His eyes dimmed. The great beast that had once ruled the skies lay still⊠forever.
Daenerys collapsed onto the throne, her tears freezing before they could fall. Jon and Arya stood frozen. Silent witnesses to a soul-crushing execution.
No one spoke. Only the Night King remainedâstill standing. Unbeaten. Inhuman.
Drogon had fallen, Jon was wounded, Daenerys broken⊠and yet, the worst was still to come.