They sensed its approach.

The snow had not halted its advance. Neither had the dead. Even the old magics had failed to slow its stride.

From atop a lonely hill within the sunless realm, the wraiths had gathered–hundreds strong–led by warriors able to recall a world before the race of Men. United in grim purpose, they had beseeched the Dark Mother for salvation and succor.

She had answered.

The Heart of Winter had pulsed with a terrible power, and sorcery meant to beckon a second Long Night coalesced within the Lands of Always Winter. Towering curtains of ice arose from the earth, blurring the horizon and obscuring the sky. The air filled with frost, turning every breath into a poison that sapped warmth and life from the living, and silence blanketed the land, stilled by a cold that froze time itself in place.

The wraiths imbibed the blessing of the Dark Mother. Power coursed through their pale, pulseless limbs, and translucent blades formed in their hands, forged from the suspended frost.

Standing in silence, they awaited the enemy.

They did not wait long.

A figure took shape against the darkness, heralded by the sound of crunching ice and measured steps. The trespasser wore the guise of a man, traversing the snow at an unhurried pace. In one hand, it held a canvased sword; in the other, a strange weapon of twisted timber and steel.

With quiet disregard, the trespasser passed into the realm of the Dark Mother and stood within the beating Heart of Winter. It studied the wraiths with bright, curious eyes, offering wordless challenge.

The warriors met its gaze and surged forth, compelled by a primal, animal fear. They assailed the enemy from every direction, descending the hill like wind-swept ships atop a calm sea.

The trespasser awaited their approach.

At the head of the vanguard, a warrior overtook the rest, intent on driving its blade and body through the enemy.

A clothed sword met the tip of a spear, and a shrill cry sundered the silence.

Ice blessed by the Dark Mother grated against the trespasser's blade, pouring forth an unearthly cold meant to shatter steel. But the canvased blade weathered the onslaught with frightful ease, rending the spear as if it were silk, and the wraith fell, cleaved in two. It did not shatter, as though vanquished by obsidian or fire, instead dying as a man would, its eyes dimmed and body stilled.

The trespasser denied the warrior its rest, kicking its severed torso into its kin. The wraith struck by the impact managed to recover, only for the enemy to raise its strange weapon and fire a searing bolt through the air, piercing the corpse to produce another.

With a sound like thunder, more bolts flew from the weapon, staggering the surrounding wraiths. The trespasser swept its blade once more, and the vanguard fell.

Surrounded by a ring of bodies, the trespasser at last broke its stride. Though waist-deep in snow, warring against the land itself in the midst of battle, the monster outpaced its prey.

Four warriors were needed to contend with its speed, thrice more to match its strength. The trespasser moved without tiring, never allowing its enemies to bring their numbers to bear. It forced the wraiths to give chase, and more fell with each exchange.

Spears of ice rained down from the sky as more warriors joined the fray. Yet, every attempt to catch the trespasser unaware proved fruitless as it evaded every spear and lance, seemingly knowing where they would fall.

Finally, a spear struck and shattered the trespasser's strange weapon. A wraith, believing it disarmed–vulnerable–charged forth. The monster answered by conjuring a mass of steel within its hand and forming a fist.

The wraith fell to the ground, headless.

The battle raged on like a dark dance, and more wraiths were lost. All the while, the trespasser remained unscathed, promising a defeat slow but certain.

Then a warrior, ancient even by the measure of its people, drove the enemy back. It battled the trespasser, evading and deflecting the canvased blade with speed and skill beyond the measure of mortal man. Even then, it was not the monster's equal.

The trespasser severed the warrior's arm. As others rushed to its defense, the ancient being feigned retreat, and with its remaining hand, drove its spear through its own kin, burying the blade within the side of its foe.

The old warrior died for its efforts, but its spear remained embedded within the trespasser, and those who remained watched transfixed as paleblood pulsed from the wound, hissing as it landed upon the snow.

The tide turned. The warriors renewed their efforts, and though they continued to die, none faltered or fled. The wraiths fought on, clinging and grasping at the trespasser even as they fell, sacrificing their eternal lives so that others might strike down the enemy.

Slowly, swords bit into flesh and spears found their marks. A myriad of wounds marred the trespasser, a bloody tapestry bought with the lives of brave, desperate souls. Even then, it fought on, heedless of its wounds.

Then, at last, a sword driven through its knee forced the monster to stagger. In that single moment, the survivors cried out to the Dark Mother. As if hearing their call, the land itself shifted. A torrent of ice surged forth, crashing into the trespasser like a wall of stone, piercing its frame and lifting it aloft. The ice continued to rise, forming a glacial spire that assailed the sky.

A new mountain arose from the Lands of Always Winter. The trespasser–unlike any being within the Dark Mother's domain, who has threatened her children like no other–hung impaled and motionless upon its jagged peak.

Silence reclaimed the land. The remaining warriors–less than half of the gathered host–fell to their knees, beset by an exhaustion that should not have ailed bodies that required neither sleep nor rest. Victory had been achieved, though at an immeasurable cost. Wordless prayers were offered to the Dark Mother–prayers that were disrupted by a terrible sound.

As one, the wraiths raised their heads, and faces incapable of horror beheld a hand rising against the darkness. A fist fell upon the spire, and a deafening crack split the air, shaking the ground below. The fist rose again, and the terrible sound rang out again and again until the lance shattered.

The monster fell.

It crashed gracelessly upon the snow, a tangled mass of blood and broken limbs. Yet the trespasser rose, right arm severed at the elbow, the left dangling from strands of sinew. Its chest had been reduced to a gaping hole, pierced by the great spire. What little remained displayed the base of an exposed rib, where scraps of a lung drifted like a tattered rag.

There was not enough left of its body to raise a wight. Yet the trespasser stood all the same. And when it lifted the severed stump of its arm and remaining hand, a clap sounded through the air.

"Impressive."

Though the monster's face lay in ruin, the wraiths heard its words, carved into their minds like glyphs, branded upon their still-beating hearts.

"Strength to match a Pthumerian descendant. Arcana to rival an elder," the trespasser mused again, its words ponderous and bordering praise, "It seems I was right to come here."

A wraith, the one nearest the monster, sensed the shift in the air. Driven by instinct, it rose and charged, blade raised in desperate defiance of the inevitable.

It was not given the chance to approach.

The trespasser raised what remained of its arm, and a gaping fissure formed in place of its hand, sundering the fabric of the Waking World. Dark, writhing tendrils spewed forth from the ether, striking the wraith with a force that reduced it to dust.

The warrior died, and the tendrils withdrew, but the fissure remained. Reality buckled under the strain and the very air shattered, forming spider-like cracks that distorted the monster's visage. The wraiths could only watch as the innumerable wounds that marred its body fractured, splintered, and fell from its form like shards of glass.

Piece by piece, reason, causality, and the underpinnings of natural law fell at the feet of the trespasser, replaced by a reality fashioned from its whims and will. It stood unharmed and whole, as though never wounded. Its weapons rested in its hands, and a tall figure in the shape of a woman stood at its side.

A new presence, vacuous yet suffocating, pervaded the land. Against the great curtains of frost that blotted out the sky, a blood-tinged moon formed behind the Hunter, hovering just overhead, eclipsing the sunless realm in its boundless shadow.

In that moment, the children of the Dark Mother, who had never known the mind of mortal men, learned of hope through its absence. Doom reflected in the starlight eyes of a being beyond their reach, one who saw them only as prey.

Swords and spears fell from their hands, and the trespasser– the Hunter –stepped forth, heedless of their despair.

"Come, let us continue," it urged as cloth unfurled from its blade, and the sword gleamed with an ethereal glow, "The Night is still yet young."

TBC

Chapter Summary:

White Walker #1: D-did we do it? Did we beat the Moon Presence?

White Walker #2: My guy…that's the tutorial boss.

Author's Notes:

Heard some of you were missing our favorite cuttlefish.

I confess I've taken a lot every artistic liberty with this chapter. The books don't give us too much to go on regarding the Others/White Walkers. Not what their society looks like, nevermind their social structure. What we know is that they're weak to dragonglass/obsidian and accept human sacrifices (i.e. Craster's infant sons). Not the best look.
Regardless, I highly doubt they would call themselves 'the Others' anymore than they'd call their patron god 'the Great Other,' hence the references to 'warriors,' 'wraiths,' and 'the Dark Mother.' I am partial to the depiction of the Others by Marc Simonetti, that of beautiful, otherworldly, and alien beings, which are inherently hostile and incompatible with warm-blooded lifeforms.

Therefore, in Cyril's eyes, they gotta go.

Admittedly, I took some liberties on the Bloodborne side of things as well. Here, I wanted to illustrate a clash beyond anything canonically seen in ASOIAF. The purpose of this little interlude was to 'horrify the horror,' and show the sheer futility of fighting a fully-realized Hunter, nevermind one that has ascended to eldritch godhood, able to turn dreams into reality with only a thought.

Lastly, I also wanted the scene to also be somewhat grounded and restrained despite the momentous implications of the battle. Case in point, Cyril demonstrated only ONE of his many arcane hunter's tools with the tendrils. He also isn't exploiting his enemies' natural weakness to fire with the Boom Hammer. Why? Because he simply doesn't need the advantage. Even with the Holy Moonlight Sword, which likely has the same affinity as the Other's ice weapons, he knows the power gap is one they could never hope to bridge.

Listed some of the Hunter's arsenal used in this chapter below.

Fist of Gratia:

"A chunk of iron fitted with finger holes. The hulking hunter woman Simple Gratia, ever hopeless when handling hunter firearms, preferred to knock the lights out of beasts with this hunk of iron, which incidentally caused heavy stagger. Gratia was a fearsome hunter, and to onlookers, her unrelenting pummelling appeared oddly heroic. No wonder this weapon later assumed her name."

Augur of Ebrietas:

"Remnant of the eldritch Truth encountered at Byrgenwerth. Use phantasms, the invertebrates known to be the augurs of the Great Ones, to partially summon abandoned Ebrietas. The initial encounter marked the start of an inquiry into the cosmos from within the old labyrinth, and led to the establishment of the Choir."

Cyril also alludes to the Pthumerians, an ancient race of humanoids that succeeded the Great Ones but preceded humanity, to whom Luca might be vaguely related (as in he's their prince).

Final Notes: Getting busy again. Wanted to get this out for you guys. Writing when I can.

As always, many thanks to KnightStar.