The Ice Sword struck the human, but instead of the expected smooth feeling of cutting flesh, it shattered into countless fragments with a crisp "ping—" sound. At the same time, a warmth came from below the White Walker's chest, a warm little thing broke through the protection of the ice armor and entered from the lower abdomen, stubbornly squeezing into its actually useless internal organs, and in the next second, it became scorching hot, as if burning its soul!
What's going on?
As a weapon that relies on magic to exist, how could it just shatter? Even if it collided with the best steel sword in the world, it shouldn't have even a single crack or chip. As for that thing that pierced its body, as one born in the Land of Always Winter with surging magic within itself, it shouldn't feel the slightest bit of pain even if boiling lava was poured on it, unless...
As the magic maintaining its existence was disturbed and dissipated, the White Walker could no longer think. It threw away the Ice Sword, which was left with only a hilt, and futilely covered its lower abdomen, as if trying to cover the continuously draining magic back into place. Pale blue blood sprayed from the wound, hissing around the dagger. It stretched out two skeletal pale hands to pull out the dagger, but as soon as its fingers touched the obsidian, they began to smoke and dissipate. Finally, having no way to deal with the foreign object piercing its body, it let out an unwilling shriek, knelt powerlessly on the ground, and made no further movement.
...
Aegon slumped in the snow, staring blankly as the kneeling White Walker's body rapidly shrank. The first thing to shatter and fall off was a layer of armor of unknown material covering it. Then the exposed pale flesh also began to become blurred and viscous like pus, melting and dripping like a snowman in the sun. After a few dozen seconds, the White Walker was left with only a milky white glass-like skeleton, crystal clear like a jade carving, shining with clear light... However, even this last evidence of the White Walker's existence was slowly melting. Finally, only the Dragon Crystal dagger remained. Surrounded by water vapor, it seemed to be undergoing some miraculous change. Water vapor in the air condensed into layers of frost flowers on its incredibly cold surface. The originally dark and short weapon quickly turned snow-white, blending with the accumulated snow on the ground, making it impossible to find without careful observation.
It wasn't until half a minute later that Aegon was surprised to find he wasn't dead.
The hand holding the sword was sore and numb, the web of his hand was split open and bleeding. The enemy's strength was so terrifying that even if the steel sword hadn't broken, he would never have been able to hold it after one blow. He used his other hand to touch the spot on his shoulder where the White Walker had struck him. A slit was cut in the outer fur coat, but the clothes underneath were not damaged, let alone the expected hideous wound or gushing blood. He thought about it for a moment in confusion, and a strong sense of relief instantly filled his chest.
His survival was entirely due to good luck.
The moment before, when he was in a life-and-death confrontation with the White Walker, he had decided to perish together. No matter how he looked at it, his Dragonglass dagger and the White Walker's ice crystal longsword would hit each other at the same time, and with the White Walker's immense strength, capable of throwing a sword through a tree, his entire upper body might even be cut off... But he won. He won because his dagger struck the opponent one-tenth of a second, perhaps one-hundredth of a second, earlier than the White Walker's Ice Sword.
The final result brought about by this slight lead was: the White Walker's Ice Sword, at the moment it was about to cut through his outer coat and kill him, turned into an ordinary object, a true "ice" sword. Thus, the moment it struck him and bore the stress, it shattered into pieces like a thin piece of ordinary ice, turning into ice shards all over the ground.
If he had been half a beat slower, he would now be slowly waiting to die in a pool of blood; if the White Walker had known that he held an Dragonglass dagger and had been strictly on guard, he might have been cut into several pieces... But there are no ifs for what has passed. He won, winning under a series of coincidences, winning under the opponent's carelessness.
The fear of almost losing his life arrived late. A feeling of panic, almost causing incontinence, came from between his legs. If he hadn't emptied his bladder before, Aegon suspected he would have wet his pants. A twitching weakness came from his legs, and he couldn't get up for a while.
...
Over there, the fallen Gared let out a short, groan-like sound. Aegon shivered in surprise, scrambled to pick up the Dragonglass dagger covered in a thin layer of frost, and gripped the steel sword that was only half-length—these should be enough to deal with wights without magic, right?
"Gared," he said tentatively. He had originally wanted to ask if he was dead, but felt it was a stupid question just before saying it, so he changed it to: "Are you still alive?"
The fallen man groaned again. Although it wasn't clear what it was, it was clearly a short sentence with intonation. Aegon breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down on the ground.
With the life threat gone, his ability to think returned. He remembered: In the original plot, after Jon Snow killed a White Walker, all the wights converted by that White Walker instantly fell apart into rotten broken bones. Since this White Walker was now dead, the people it killed wouldn't be able to turn into wights anymore, right?
He turned his head and another thing confirmed his guess: the wight horse ridden by the White Walker had also fallen to the ground and turned back into a dead horse. Now that he thought about it, this change probably happened at the same time the White Walker's weapon lost its magic enhancement, which was the moment the Dragonglass dagger pierced the White Walker. It was just that he was in a state of desperate, high concentration just now and didn't notice it immediately.
With great effort, he stood up again. His intuition told him there wouldn't be a second White Walker nearby, but his reason told him intuition was the most unreliable. He decided to leave as soon as possible. Aegon held the broken sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, cautiously approaching Gared.
The old soldier's face was pale, his lips were frozen purple, but his eyes still had spirit; he was clearly alive.
"Cold..."
Aegon looked around. His horse had run off. Fortunately, when Gared was preparing to kill the horse earlier, he had unloaded all the luggage and equipment, so blankets, clothing, and other items weren't taken away. He quickly set up a simple ground bed to keep his teammate warm.
Fortunately, after examining the wound, Aegon discovered that the injury on Gared's chest was not severe because the White Walker's weapon was exceptionally sharp and he had rescued him in time, not giving it time to deliver a second blow. The wound area was very small, and its location was far from the heart, so it did not cause irreversible heavy bleeding. Even more miraculously, the bleeding on the surface of the wound had already clotted, and the surrounding skin showed clear signs of frostbite...
Although the low temperature brought by the ice magic on the White Walker's weapon temporarily kept Gared out of mortal danger, it would severely affect healing and recovery afterward. He must receive good treatment as soon as possible.
Aegon looked up at the Wall in the distance, whose gray-blue outline was now vaguely visible, and knew that this time he probably wouldn't be able to escape.
—