Chapter 432

“The wights have breached the outer walls in the east, south, and north. The fighting has already spread from the walls into the residential areas.” As the champions of Crown’s Rest’s archery tournament, master archers Anguy and Theon Greyjoy had naturally been assigned to Aegor’s side, entrusted with the critical task of taking down the Night King. However, with no sign of their target, their much-anticipated heroism was reduced to nothing more than ornamental frustration.

“If the Commander allows, perhaps the two of us can take the ‘Lightbringers’ and assist our brothers in arms where the fighting is most intense. At the very least, we could relieve some of their burden,” Theon suggested, clearly uneasy about their current idleness.

“Without my guidance, how do you plan to locate the Others?” Melisandre snapped, her tone calm but unable to fully conceal her urgency. She turned to Aegor, the prophesied Prince That Was Promised, with a somber expression. “Has R’hllor granted you any new revelations? Should I remain here to wait for the Night King to appear, or should I assist the defenders against the Others already within the town?”

Aegor inhaled deeply and avoided answering her question directly. Instead, he turned to other figures standing nearby. “Lord Beric, Thoros, I need each of you to lead a team and escort Anguy and Theon with the Lightbringers to reinforce the defenses within the town. Harvey,” he ordered one of his aides, “return to the inner keep and relay this command: tell Bran to use the ravens to guide all archers equipped with dragonsteel arrows toward the locations of the Others—if any of them have infiltrated Crown’s Rest!”

With the dire disparity in numbers between the defenders and the enemy, sending the Red Priestess to confront ordinary Others would only delay the inevitable and offer no meaningful gains. The only viable path forward was to stick to the original plan—find and eliminate the Night King.

“Melisandre, don’t you have any means of directly locating the Night King?” Aegor pressed.

“There are methods to actively search for living beings,” she admitted, “but they’re designed to detect the living and are ineffective in a sea of corpses. Furthermore…” Her voice dropped as she continued. “If the target’s magic is stronger than mine, they can easily conceal themselves or even reverse the spell to harm me.”

“What about baiting him out? Last time at Castle Black, your spell to bolster the flames drew an attack from the Others. Could you repeat that tactic—expose your position to lure the Night King into revealing himself?”

The suggestion was a dangerous one. Such a tactic required the volunteer to risk their life, and while Aegor himself could not wield magic, he trusted that Melisandre, as a devoted servant of R’hllor, would not see his proposal as an insult or a death sentence. If sacrificing herself could secure victory, she would embrace such a fate without hesitation.

“But how do I ensure the Night King targets me?” she asked. “And even if he does, I must survive the first attack to inform you of his location.”

“Shields!” Aegor barked, signaling the soldiers around him to form a wall of thick wooden shields. After a moment of reflection, he began brainstorming aloud. “You can’t just use any spell—you need to create a situation that the Night King perceives as a genuine threat. Tonight, the wights haven’t been recklessly throwing themselves into the flames, which means the Night King values his army. Could you cast a large-scale spell to annihilate a significant number of wights? That might provoke him into taking action.”

“Large-scale magic?” Melisandre shook her head with frustration, clearly exasperated by yet another naive suggestion. “Magic isn’t as simple as you think. Close-range spells are far easier to perform, but the difficulty and energy cost increase exponentially with distance. Wiping out dozens or even hundreds of wights is possible if I’m close to them—but at this distance? The best I could manage might kill a handful, and even that would hardly warrant the Night King’s attention.”

Aegor frowned. He had imagined something grandiose—raining meteors or engulfing the battlefield in a sea of fire—but this low-magic world couldn’t support such fantastical feats. He reluctantly set aside the idea and racked his brain for alternatives. Suddenly, inspiration struck.

“Do you remember what you did to my sword?” he asked.

Melisandre’s confused expression showed she didn’t follow. “What?”

“You enchanted it with dozens of powerful light spells without my consent. It nearly blinded me,” Aegor replied.

“Oh, that,” she said with a hint of amusement. “Have your eyes recovered?”

“They have. But you said dragonsteel is a superior magic conductor compared to ordinary steel. Could you enchant a Lightbringer arrowhead the same way, making it glow as brightly as possible?”

“Of course. With dragonsteel, the process would be even easier and more effective. What do you plan to do?”

“Enchant it. I’ll shoot it toward the Night King’s direction.”

“Blindly firing an enchanted arrow?” Melisandre raised an eyebrow, clearly baffled. “That’s a waste. You realize how few of those arrows we have left?”

For morale, Aegor had distributed twenty Lightbringer arrows among the Wall’s fortresses. Another twenty were consumed in the creation of dragonsteel bombs. Of the original seventy-seven arrows, only about thirty remained, most already allocated to the defenders. Aegor himself had just five. Melisandre’s frustration at his apparent recklessness was not unwarranted.

But Aegor wasn’t aiming to hit the Night King. His goal was to provoke him—showing off the power of dragonsteel and issuing a challenge might compel the Night King to retaliate and reveal himself.

“I’m the Commander and the Prince That Was Promised. Do as I say!” With no time to explain further, Aegor grabbed a purpleheart longbow and notched one of his precious dragonsteel arrows. He handed it to Melisandre. “Enchant it! I need it to shine brilliantly for as long as possible—until it hits the ground.”

Melisandre sighed but complied. She clasped the arrow, muttered a spell, and infused it with magic. Instantly, the arrowhead blazed with a blinding white light, so intense that the soldiers on the wall had to shield their eyes.

Aegor squinted against the glow, aimed toward the northwest, and released the arrow. It soared in an arc, blazing like a second sun, illuminating the wight horde below as it streaked through the sky.

The enchanted arrow struck deep into the undead ranks, its light cutting through the darkness like a beacon. The reaction was immediate. Soldiers on the wall erupted into cheers, convinced their Commander had performed a miracle. To them, the blazing arrow and the sudden resurgence of wildfire on the walls were no coincidence—it was a divine sign of hope.

Even as the cheers echoed, the Night King, deep within his army, finally stirred.