A Cold God, Chapter 18

“Heart of Darkness, your presence is killing this world.”

That single warning would not leave me. The words of that small forest child repeated in the silence of my mind for days. I withdrew most of my consciousness from the avatar, letting the tall Icewalker drift into a stillness like sleep. By narrowing my focus, I let seconds stretch into years, sifting through every facet of my being to weigh the truth of what the child had said.

I looked north, to the endless winter that coiled at the top of the world. The wind there howled across plains of bare ice, and shards of my awareness glimmered in every snowflake. The storm churned ceaselessly, a lonely roar that had long frightened mortal folk. It had swallowed the Greenskins’ settlement before I could even wonder why they had built there, though they might have thrived in that harsh terrain a little longer if left alone. Their huts, their crude palisades—all consumed beneath a white squall that answered only to me. But, I suppose I’d been too consumed in my desire to annihilate them that I did not take even a brief moment to study them. I wondered if that was a mistake. I suppose it no longer mattered. But I hoped it wasn’t. 

Yet the child’s words gnawed at the edges of my thoughts. I turned my sight toward the scattered pockets of humanity, from the southern farmlands to the desert outposts, to the easternmost reaches of humanity that–even now–fought against legions of Greenskins. I looked and saw through all that was cold, though it wasn’t vision in the strictest sense. My eyes followed rivers that crept with new ice, watched days shorten by fractions. In the high mountains, snows lingered a few weeks longer each year. Valleys where spring once spread green growth now held frost until well past the solstice. It was slow, so gradual that none would notice for generations. But I could see the pattern. I could see it in every drifting flake, every drop of temperature. Little by little, the winter advanced. It would keep advancing until nothing was left unfrozen.

In time, my very presence would freeze and kill the world, turn its oceans solid and its atmosphere into a white haze.

In my mind, I traced out the years—ten thousand, then five thousand more—long centuries ticking away until the last living thing stood alone on a world drained of warmth. I pictured that final spark of life guttering beneath a sun too feeble to break the hold of my cold. No rage or malice fueled this outcome, no desire to exterminate. The simple fact of my presence shaped the land, turned it toward eternal ice. I held no illusions that I could stop it without some balancing force greater than any I had yet encountered. 

Fifteen thousand years is a long time, even for me. I let the thought settle as I surveyed the slow spread of frost across distant valleys and hills. My awareness stretched through the northern tundra, carried on the biting winds that rose from the ice. Every flake and swirl of snow whispered the same caution: too long a wait, and this world might pass a point of no return.

Some solution would have to be found—some means to steady the cold so it would not creep until it claimed the last inch of soil. I dwelled on that prospect, sifting through possibilities in the quiet chamber of my own mind. Perhaps I could hold the winter at bay by binding my essence to something or someone. Or maybe there was another power in these lands that could match my own, knitting warmth into the world where I brought only chill. If I failed, I would have to leave. I could drift into the outer dark, become a solitary winter adrift among the stars, where no breath nor life would mark the passing of time.

Such a fate hardly appealed to me. Yet the notion of letting entire continents freeze under my watch seemed worse by far. I knew I could live untold ages among the silent void, my consciousness scattered in endless cold. It would be a bleak existence, carried on faint starlight and silence. But if no other choice remained, then it would spare this planet my slow and certain grip. And for now, that slight hope was enough to keep searching.

So, exactly what could I do? Even compressing all of my ice and snow and frost into a tiny portion of the Northernmost part of the world still resulted in a temperature drop so drastic that it affected the rest of the planet anyway. Could I shunt portions of myself into the void and just keep them there? 

I tried and found that I couldn’t. My greater self remained whole and could not be diminished–only condensed. I suppose I had thousands of years to be creative and come up with something. 

Time flowed around me. My consciousness drifted back to the avatar’s resting form, slumped in a hidden chamber, its breath rising in slow gusts of frigid air. High above, the sun continued its path, steady and unchanging in the sky, while below it, a silent and growing winter marched forward at my side. 

Time pressed onward, indifferent to my concerns. Messengers rode out before dawn. They traveled with the knights who rode on the backs of great reptiles. They brought with them news for Queen Lysara: my people would send our own envoy to that gathering of rulers. I would attend in person, the Lion of Night, the Icewalker—those titles ringing hollow in my mind. As their hoofbeats faded into the distance, I considered the name I no longer recalled. I tried to pull it out of memory’s dark corners, but I found only shadows.

I remembered faces from my human years, the lines on a father’s brow, the cut of a friend’s grin. I remembered falling asleep in an old hut, wind rattling through the eaves, and the tang of woodsmoke in the air. I remembered many things; I even remembered the first movie I ever watched in the theaters. But my name—the simple word that once meant me—had vanished. In its place rose these other titles: Heart of Darkness, Great Other, Icewalker, and the Night’s King. I wore them the way one might wear a borrowed cloak—familiar, yet never truly mine.

The day after the messengers rode out, I walked alone among the reanimated dead. Their hollow gazes followed me, empty sockets turned as though tracking some distant light. They stood in quiet rows beneath trees heavy with frost, their limbs stiffened in poses from life now forgotten. I passed between their silent forms, boots crunching softly through frozen underbrush.

I drew a slow breath. My voice—my own voice—remained untamed. Even the smallest word carried with it the power of winter itself. A whisper, a murmur; no matter how faint, each utterance unraveled ice from my throat like thread pulled from a dark loom, freezing and splintering whatever it touched. Mastery of this power began with mastery over that voice. I would learn control, or else destroy everything I sought to protect.

I halted in a small clearing, where frost curled like glass across the earth. Around me stood skeletal figures—a wolf with ribs exposed to morning light, birds perched stiffly on bare branches, their feathers rimmed in ice. Each waited silently, lifeless eyes patient and unblinking. The air lay still, holding its breath.

I parted my lips, forcing a word forth from the cold quiet within. 

"Quiet," I whispered.

A ripple passed through the air like wind over water. Branches snapped brittle in a rush of cold. Ferns and mosses darkened, turning brittle and shattering to powder. The ground at my feet whitened, rimed with frost. My thralls swayed in place as though pushed gently by an unseen hand. Overhead, a cloud of startled birds fled silently, scattering toward distant trees.

I stood motionless, hands at my sides. The sun rose slowly, dimmed by layers of drifting mist. Again, I drew breath, slower now, pushing less power into my voice, threading the faintest of syllables past stiff lips.

"Stay," I murmured.

Again, ice bloomed outward, but softer, more slowly. The grasses curled but did not fully break. Branches trembled, ice forming along their edges in delicate silver needles. My thralls remained fixed, rigid and watchful. A deer, half-decayed and skeletal, tilted its head slightly, flakes of ice scattering like dust from its neck.

All morning, I spoke words of stillness and quiet. Each utterance came softer, each whisper more subdued. By midday, the clearing was covered in fine crystals of frost that shimmered beneath pale sunlight. But the trees still stood. The animals, both living and dead, waited motionless but unshattered.

Five days passed this way. Each dawn found me walking among my thralls, each sunrise brought new words to tame, spoken with careful deliberation. The forest around me endured my efforts, bent beneath icy whispers but not broken. Slowly—painfully—I learned the faintest murmur, the gentlest whisper, words so quiet they were barely more than breath. And finally, by the end of the fifth day, I spoke into the dusk without harm. Though, the words I could speak were so faint that no human being could possibly hear them without some form of hearing-aid. 

On the sixth day, I returned to the settlement. Word had arrived of visitors, and the tribe gathered near the gates to greet them. It was the same knights as before, though their company was smaller—fewer cloaks fluttering in the early wind, fewer armored shapes perched atop the broad-backed lizard mounts. At their head rode Captain Benjen Stark, his armor dulled by travel and dust.

The tribe’s folk parted in a slow hush, offering bowls of water and plates of smoked meat. The knights dismounted, handing off reins to young attendants who led the creatures away to be watered. A handful of the knights nodded in thanks, quietly marveling at the settlement’s bustle. Smoke curled from cooking fires, and the sun cast thin light across the dusty courtyard.

Captain Benjen Stark, helmet in the crook of his arm, followed the tribe’s elders to the Gathering Hall. Long beams supported a high roof of bound thatch, and wooden benches lined the walls. The captain stood near a table scattered with woven mats, cleared his throat, and unfurled a parchment sealed with Queen Lysara’s crest. His voice carried through the hush:

“Hear the word of Her Grace, Queen Lysara: the Council of Kings shall commence in two months’ time at Highgarden, seat of House Gardener. The Night’s King and his retinue are invited to join Her Majesty’s host on the journey to the South.”

He paused, letting the words settle among the assembled. The tribe’s elders exchanged glances, while the knights waited in the sudden silence. Outside, a faint wind stirred the settlement’s banners. Captain Benjen lowered the parchment, his gaze flicking toward where I stood. There was no further explanation needed—Highgarden, in two months. That was Queen Lysara’s message. 

Before my reanimated Greenskin could issue a reply, a piercing cry tore through the settlement. The people stirred in alarm, men and women dropping their tasks to move toward the source of the shriek. My avatar followed the sound, weaving past tethered beasts and startled guards until it found a small hut on the settlement’s edge. Outside its doorway, women huddled, hushed and tense, their attention fixed on the figure inside.

Kuva, a black-haired woman from our tribe, lay on a straw pallet, her face twisted as she clutched at the blankets beneath her. Thin rivulets of sweat glistened on her forehead. Around her, others knelt, hands pressed to her arms and shoulders, trying to steady her. She had delivered too soon, the child already silent in her grasp. Its limp form bore no movement, no breath.

I knelt, a tall shape in the cramped space. Kuva’s sobs caught in her throat, and the women flanking her glanced up, uncertain. The infant, a boy, lay unmoving on stained linens. His skin held a gray pallor, limbs slack and still. I reached out, scooping him into my arms. A faint hush fell over everyone gathered, as though the air itself waited.

Something within me stirred, a power beyond the simple reanimation of flesh. I pressed my fingertip to the child’s brow, closing my eyes. The hush deepened, broken only by the rasp of Kuva’s breathing. The child’s skin shifted, the color bleaching away until it was white as hoarfrost. In a moment that stretched impossibly long, the tiny form filled its lungs with a ragged, gasping breath.

When his eyes flicked open, they shone an impossible blue, bright as a glacier’s heart. The women around me drew back. One covered her mouth, another gripped Kuva’s hand. Outside, a sudden wind rustled through the settlement, stirring dust and scattering leaves. The newborn lay in my arms, silent yet unmistakably alive, though his skin remained pale as fresh snow.