The sky above Moat Cailin had become a new kind of throne room, and its ceiling was a storm of wings and fire. Eight dragons, a living constellation of Valyrian wrath, circled their solitary prey.
Below, two armies—Ninety thousand strong in the south, fifty thousand in the north—held their collective breath, their war forgotten as they became spectators to a battle of gods and monsters.
Prince Edric Stark, the Ice Dragon of the North, hovered in the epicenter of the storm. His crystalline wings, each beat a silent crackle of absolute cold, held him aloft. His articulated tail of ice swayed gently, a rudder in the turbulent air. In his hand, the Night King's blade hummed, not with heat, but with its very absence, sucking the warmth from the air around it.
Opposite him, the Targaryen heirs formed a semi-circle of death. At its heart was the new King, Aegon, his face a mask of grief and fury, his hands clenched on the reins of the mighty Vhagar. To his right were his siblings: Viserys, Jaehaerys, and Alysanne, each astride their own younger, fiercer dragons.
To his left were the children of Maegor, Rhaenys and Rhaegon, their faces grim mirrors of their father's brutal legacy. Six riders, six wills forged in fire, and two riderless dragons—Balerion and Starfyre—who now answered the call of the Dragon Horn, their primal loyalty bound to the new King.
"You have slain my father and my uncle," Aegon's voice, amplified by a whisper of wind magic, was raw with pain. "You have disgraced my house. The North will burn for your sins, starting with you!"
Edric's response was not a word, but an action. He closed his eyes for a single, focused second. The already chill air of the North plummeted. It was not a natural cold; it was a magical suppression, a fundamental rewriting of the atmosphere.
A thick, biting frost began to form on the dragons' wings, a crystalline sheath that glittered menacingly in the sun. The air grew heavy, sluggish, as if the world itself was freezing.
The dragons roared, a chorus of discomfort and rage. Their wings, now laden with magical ice, required twice the effort to beat. Their movements became labored, their legendary agility stolen by the encroaching frost.
"He's changing the battlefield!" Jaehaerys shouted, his dragon struggling to maintain its altitude. "Do not let him dictate the terms! fire, now!"
The six riders acted as one. With practiced ease, they each conjured bows of pure, shimmering flame. Nocking arrows made of concentrated fire, they unleashed a volley of sixty incandescent projectiles. The arrows flew true, a rain of miniature suns designed to melt Edric where he hovered.
Edric met the assault with a storm of his own. He spun in the air, his ice wings flaring out like a shield. The fire arrows struck the crystalline surface and exploded in bursts of steam, their heat insufficient to pierce the magically dense ice.
At the same time, he thrust his free hand forward. The very moisture in the air, already condensing from his aura of cold, answered his call. A thousand spears of black ice, each as long as a man, materialized from nothingness and shot towards the dragons, a silent, lethal counter-barrage.
The riders were forced to break formation, their dragons banking sharply to avoid the deadly projectiles. A younger dragon, ridden by Rhaenys, shrieked as a spear glanced off its flank, leaving a deep, smoking wound where absolute cold met superheated scales. The ranged exchange was a stalemate, but it had served Edric's purpose: it had scattered them.
"He is too strong to fight from a distance!" Viserys yelled, his voice tight with frustration. "We must overwhelm him! All of us, at once!"
But before they could coordinate, Edric escalated his assault. He descended slightly, plunging into the thick cloud of steam their clashing magic had created. Then, he unleashed the full fury of the Northern winds.
He began to spin, his ice wings beating a furious, rhythmic cadence. The air around him responded, churning, the wind picking up speed until it became a howling vortex. He was the eye of a nascent tornado, a maelstrom of his own making. Then, he fed his Ice Magic into the whirlwind.
"Blizzard," he commanded, the single word cutting through the gale.
The tornado erupted. It was no longer just wind; it was a catastrophic vortex of razor-sharp ice shards, a grinding tempest that filled the sky.
The Targaryens were caught completely off guard. Their dragons, already struggling with the cold, were battered by the hurricane-force winds and shredded by the blizzard's icy teeth.
Visibility dropped to zero. Riders screamed commands that were stolen by the wind. Dragons roared in pain and confusion, their powerful wings useless against the sheer force of the storm.
It was chaos, a perfect, calculated chaos designed to shatter their greatest advantage: their coordination.
Through the swirling blizzard, Edric became a phantom, a predator in his natural element. He saw his first targets: Maegor's children, Rhaegon and Rhaenys.
Like their father, they were proud and reckless, and they charged blindly through the storm, hoping to find him with brute force.
Rhaegon's dragon burst through the wall of ice and wind, its jaws snapping, only to be met by a force even more primal.
Edric had conjured a squadron of ten giant ice eagles, each a perfect, solid construct with wings of sharpened frost. The eagles slammed into the dragon, their weight and numbers overwhelming it.
As the beast faltered, its rider distracted, Edric shot past, his Ice Blade a blur of motion. The blade slid through the gap in Rhaegon's helm, and the young prince died instantly, his body frozen solid before it even began to fall from his saddle.
His sister, Rhaenys, saw him fall and let out a scream of rage. She spurred her dragon directly at Edric, a torrent of fire erupting from the beast's maw.
Edric didn't dodge. He flew straight into the flames, his Ice Blade held before him like a lance. The blade did not melt; it parted the fire, the absolute cold creating a tunnel through the inferno. He emerged from the other side, unscathed, and plunged the blade deep into the dragon's neck.
The beast convulsed, its fire dying in its throat, and plummeted from the sky, its rider still screaming as they fell.
Two were down. The blizzard began to subside, revealing the Targaryens' tattered formation. Alysanne and Jaehaerys, ever the strategists, had managed to climb above the worst of the storm. They saw their cousins fall and immediately moved to enact a pincer attack.
"Together, sister!" Jaehaerys cried, and their two dragons dove from opposite sides, attempting to trap Edric between two streams of fire.
Edric looked from one to the other, his mind a cold, clear engine of war. He met Jaehaerys's charge first. Instead of a weapon, he conjured a wall. A massive, fifty-foot-thick wall of opaque ice materialized directly in the dragon's path.
Jaehaerys, unable to stop his dive, slammed head-first into the construct with a sickening crunch of bone and scale. The dragon, stunned and with its neck broken, fell lifelessly from the sky.
Jaehaerys, his leg shattered in the impact, was still trying to untangle himself from his saddle as he fell to his death.
Alysanne saw her brother die and faltered, her attack wavering for a fatal second. It was all the opening Edric needed. He shot towards her, his speed inhuman. He didn't use a grand spell or a clever trick. He simply flew faster than her dragon could react. He reached her side, his Ice Blade cleaving through her dragon's wing, then through her own torso in a single, brutal pass.
Four were dead. The Northern army below roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph. They had seen their prince become a god, tearing dragons from the sky.
Now only two riders remained: Viserys, and the new King, Aegon. They hovered near each other, their faces pale with shock and terror. The five remaining dragons—Vhagar, Balerion, Starfyre, and two of the younger beasts—circled them protectively. Their confident invasion had turned into a desperate fight for survival.
"We cannot win this," Viserys stammered, his dragon shifting nervously beneath him. "Aegon, we must retreat! We can burn the North another day!"
Aegon's eyes, wild with grief, were fixed on Edric. "Retreat?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "He has killed our family! He has slaughtered our kin! There is no retreat. There is only vengeance!"
He raised his Dragon Horn again, not to summon, but to command. He blew a long, sorrowful note, and the five dragons answered. They formed a spearhead, Vhagar and Balerion at the tips, and charged. It was a final, desperate gambit: five streams of dragon fire, all focused on one point.
Edric saw the apocalypse coming. He knew no shield, not even his Rho Aias, could withstand the combined fire of five dragons, including the two most powerful beasts in the world. He had to meet it.
He flew forward, his Ice Blade held in a two-handed grip. He poured every last drop of his remaining magical reserve into the weapon. The blade began to glow, the air around it distorting, the cold becoming so intense it was a physical presence.
The dragons breathed fire. A colossal wave of black, bronze, silver, and gold flame surged towards him, a tsunami of heat that would vaporize a mountain.
Edric met it with a single, piercing cry that echoed the shriek of a winter storm. He thrust his blade forward, and the weapon transformed. It elongated, thickened, and became a colossal, spiraling drill of pure, absolute-zero ice.
He did not block the fire. He pierced it.
The ice drill slammed into the center of the fiery wave. For a moment, the two forces met in a cataclysmic explosion of energy that lit up the sky. Then, the impossible happened. The ice drill, sustained by Edric's indomitable will, began to push through. It carved a perfect, frozen tunnel through the heart of the dragon fire.
Edric flew through the tunnel, the world around him a roaring inferno, yet his path was one of silent, perfect cold. He emerged from the other side, directly in front of the shocked Targaryen princes.
Viserys was his first target. The prince stared, his mouth agape, as Edric's drill, still spinning, slammed into his dragon's chest. The beast was obliterated, shattering into a million frozen pieces. Viserys himself was caught in the impact, his body instantly flash-frozen and then atomized by the force.
Then, there was only Aegon. The young King, astride the mighty Vhagar, stared in abject horror. He had thrown everything he had at this monster, and it was not enough.
Edric let the ice drill dissipate, his Ice Blade returning to its normal size. He hovered before the last Targaryen king, his crystalline wings beating slowly.
Aegon drew his own Valyrian sword, a desperate, final act of defiance. "For my father!" he screamed, and urged Vhagar forward.
The ancient dragon, wounded and weary, obeyed. She lunged, her great jaws, large enough to swallow a horse whole, snapping at the Ice Prince.
Edric was faster. He shot upward, over Vhagar's head, and landed silently on the dragon's broad, scaled back. Aegon twisted, swinging his sword, but Edric was already moving. He ran down the length of Vhagar's spine, his boots finding purchase on the ancient scales.
He reached the base of Aegon's neck and stopped. The King turned, his face a mess of tears and fury.
"You are no man," Aegon choked out. "You are a demon."
"No," Edric Stark said, his voice quiet and cold, the sound barely audible over the wind. "I am the North."
He plunged the Ice Blade into the back of Aegon's neck. The last Targaryen King died without a sound.
With its rider dead, Vhagar let out a mournful roar and began to descend, no longer a creature of war but a grieving beast. The remaining dragons, their riders gone, their alpha-commands silenced, scattered in confusion and fear, flying away from the battlefield, leaderless and broken.
Edric Stark stood alone on Vhagar's back as the dragon glided gently toward the ground. He looked down at the Targaryen army. They were a shattered, leaderless mob, staring up in silent terror at the man who had just single-handedly dismantled their entire dynasty.
The war was over. The dragons were broken. Winter had come, and it had consumed the fire.