Chapter 438

The Wall still stood, making this southward campaign of the Others a desperate, almost hopeless gamble cloaked in the illusion of opportunity.

In the shadows several hundred meters away, the new Chief Priest of the Great Cold God stood, observing the captured castle and the seemingly endless wight army pouring into it. The screams of the living echoed through the air—their cries for mercy and final shrieks of agony. Yet, the priest’s mood was heavy.

He had inherited nearly half of the Night King’s magical power, as well as the pivotal role of being the central hub for the magic network binding all the Cold God’s priests together. However, what he had not inherited was the ability to communicate with the Cold God.

That wasn’t entirely accurate. In truth, the new Chief Priest wasn’t sure if the Night King had ever truly been able to “actively communicate” with their divine master. After his ascension, the Chief Priest had briefly sensed the presence of a higher, unfathomable entity—a fleeting connection during which he received a single, final command: abandon the Gift and the Wall, and head south.

He hadn’t understood the reasoning behind the order, but attempts to question it were met with silence. The presence vanished, and since then, he had been unable to sense the Cold God at all.

Was it simply a matter of distance from the magical rift at the Gorge disrupting the connection? Or had the Cold God truly abandoned them, leaving them to march southward in a final, destructive blaze of glory, expending the last of their usefulness in a chaotic strike against humanity?

The Chief Priest didn’t know. And there was no one left to ask.
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Marching southward past the unyielding defenses of the Night’s Watch seemed tactically sound, but it presented a fatal flaw: the priests’ every action consumed energy.

Maintaining their frigid body temperatures, forming and repairing their enchanted ice weapons and armor, casting spells to assist their forces, and converting fallen foes into wights—all these required active effort and energy. They were not perpetual motion machines, and their wights were not mindless hordes from a zombie apocalypse, infinitely growing with no resource limitations. Every gain came at a cost.
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A day and a night after their retreat from Crown’s Rest, the surviving priests and their undead horde reached the nearest Northern stronghold and winter settlement: Last Hearth, the seat of House Umber.

For the first time in days, the priests felt a brief moment of relief. The castle’s defenses were laughably inadequate, its preparations minimal. The surrounding winter village was still partially inhabited, and the garrison’s countermeasures were pitiful: a few flaming pitch barrels and meager stocks of frozen fire arrows, entirely insufficient compared to wildfire. Once the wights breached the walls and swarmed the fortress, the soldiers—bearing the roaring giant sigil of House Umber on their shields—resorted to ordinary steel weapons in their desperate resistance.

The battle quickly turned into the first decisive victory since the Others crossed the Gorge. Over four thousand people—Umber soldiers, civilians from the surrounding region, and members of House Umber itself—were slaughtered, while the wights lost fewer than a thousand in the assault.

Moreover, the corpses within Last Hearth were free of the peculiar fire-aligned magical residue that had plagued the bodies in Crown’s Rest.

For the first time in days, there was good news. But was this truly a victory? The Chief Priest doubted it, for he now faced an unprecedented dilemma: he lacked the magical reserves to convert the slain into wights.
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The Cold God’s priests had spent over five years preparing for this war. Contrary to human mockery that they had simply “walked for seven seasons,” their time in the Far North was spent amassing and preparing their forces. The greatest challenge had been the scarcity of suitable corpses.

Despite the countless creatures that had lived and died beyond the Wall, only a fraction could be transformed into wights. The reasons were twofold: corpses had to be both worthy of revival and capable of being revived.

Small creatures required less magic to animate but were hardly worth the effort; every wight demanded focus and control from its creator, and a priest’s control limit ranged from thousands to tens of thousands. Therefore, only bodies with combat value—such as those of giants, humans, and large predators—were prioritized. Animals lacking sharp teeth or claws, birds unable to fly, and most herbivores were excluded.

Even with a clear list of candidates, not all could be converted. The wights relied on their physical bodies to function, which meant only fresh or well-preserved corpses could be reanimated. Cremated remains or skeletons stripped bare by scavengers were useless. These limitations explained why, even after years of effort, the Night King and his priests had only managed to raise a mere hundred thousand wights.
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In Last Hearth, the situation was tragically ironic. The priests now had an abundance of pristine, battle-ready corpses but lacked the magic to reanimate them.

The further south they marched, the weaker the influence of the Cold God became. While their magic replenished at full strength in the Far North and at a fraction of that rate south of the Gorge, their recovery rate at Crown’s Rest had been reduced to half of even that diminished level. Here, at Last Hearth, it was a meager tenth.

The Chief Priest calculated grimly that if they marched two or three more days further south, the magical energy trickling from the Gorge would halve again. At that point, their ability to sustain their cold temperatures—critical to their survival—would falter. When the magic stored within their bodies was depleted, they would begin to consume their own physical forms to stay alive.

Crossing that threshold, they wouldn’t need to fear human blades or dragonfire. They would simply waste away into nothing.
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The Chief Priest’s mind raced. Was there a way to turn the tide?

The Night’s Watch was pursuing them with a precision and ferocity that bordered on mockery; ten thousand wights were fleeing from a force of fewer than five thousand. Worse, the dragons had returned. Together, the two forces were invincible.

Yet, a kernel of hope remained. If the dragons and the Watch could somehow be separated, they might be defeated piecemeal. A decisive victory in the north, away from the draining influence of the South, could buy the priests time to recover their power. Once restored, they could resume their campaign against the unprepared heartlands of the North or even take another shot at breaching the Wall.

“We’ll rest here and regain our strength,” the Chief Priest declared in a voice like cracking ice. “When the black-cloaked men catch up, we’ll move again. Have each priest choose the strongest and best-equipped corpses to reanimate, leaving the rest behind. As for me, I will reserve all my power for the coming battle.”

It was a gamble, but it was all they had left.