The Stronghammer - CH - 97

The news of undead spiders spread like wildfire through the colonies of the Land Beyond the Wall.

At first, no one believed it.

In the Stark Colony, nestled deep in the valleys north of the Frostfangs, Cregan Stark’s steward, Ser Hallan Reed, snorted in disbelief as he read the raven’s letter aloud to the gathered captains.

“Undead spiders,” he scoffed, tossing the scroll onto the longtable. “What next? Ghostly giants? Singing snow?”

Laughter rippled through the room, but not everyone smiled.

“They say the news came from the Stormrage Colony,” said Maester Thallos, his face pale and drawn. “And that the creature fought after being beheaded.”

“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t trust it,” Ser Hallan said. “Stormrage greed. They want us to believe the land is cursed, so we pack up and leave. More gold for them. More land.”

Lord Cregan, seated at the head of the table, remained silent, his fingers steepled.

“Speak freely, my lord,” said Hallan. “You knew the Crown Prince of Stormrage once.”

“I know him still,” Cregan said. “And I trust his word. But I also trust my eyes… and I haven’t seen one of these monsters.”

“But you believe Aemond Targaryen?” another captain asked.

Cregan’s eyes narrowed. “I believe Aemond wants to believe it’s not real. That doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

Meanwhile, in the Targaryen Colony, Prince Aemond stood before a growing crowd in the hall of their stronghold. Snow-dusted miners, hardened rangers, and even a few of the Northerners pressed in, all demanding answers.

“Another hunting party vanished!” a woman shouted. “You said it was wolves last time. Then wildlings. What now, ghosts?”

“I saw it,” hissed one of the returned scouts. “It wasn’t no man. It had blue eyes. No soul. Just… cold.”

Aemond raised his hand. “Quiet!”

The room fell still.

“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “We don’t know what’s out there. But we’ve seen things that don’t bleed like men. And don’t die like men. The Cold Ones the wildlings fear… they may not be myths after all.”

There was a heavy silence.

Then came the whispers.

The Stormrage brought this.

They mined too deep. Stirred something dark.

Why did they come here? Why now?

Even in the Stark Colony, where men once mocked the tales, there was unease. Wildlings came south in droves—entire clans dragging their sick and children, fleeing the north like it was fire. But they were fleeing cold.

They told chilling stories around the fires, of figures with glowing eyes, of entire clans turned to ice, of whispers in the snow.

One old wildling woman, half-blind and shaking with fever, cried out:

“He waits for the fire.
The fire that flies.
The fire that melts all things.
He waits for it to fall.
Then the Wall shall fall with it.”

Aemond stood at the gate of his colony’s watchtower, staring out across the snow-blind landscape. Vermithor rested in the courtyard below, wings folded tight like a coiled storm. The dragon’s heat melted the snow where he lay, but even Vermithor stirred uncomfortably at night, as if sensing something approaching.

“They’re after him,” said Commander Arrek, Aemond’s second-in-command, stepping beside him. “Vermithor.”

Aemond turned slowly. “You believe that?”

Arrek nodded grimly. “The old tales say the Cold Ones hate fire. But it’s more than that. It’s like… they need it. As if they’ve waited for centuries… for a flame strong enough to pierce the world.”

“You think they want him to destroy the Wall,” Aemond whispered.

“I think they want him to break it, Your Grace.”

More ravens arrived in the days that followed.

One from Bear Island—“Wildlings taking refuge on the western coast. Speaking of death with eyes like stars.”

One from the Frostfang slopes—“Miners found frozen solid with weapons still in hand. No wounds. Just… cold.”

Even the Night’s Watch sent word—“Abandoned camps. Silence in the woods. No birds. No wind. Only fear.”

And finally, a message from Castle Black:

The Cold Ones are rising.
We must prepare.
Or we will fall.

And still… still the other colonies muttered:

Stormrage’s fault.

Stormrage gold brought this.

But no one asked why the Cold Ones had waited for so long—why they had not risen before, in all the long ages since the Wall was raised.

Because deep within the Land of Always Winter, the Night King stood beneath the ancient black ice, unmoving, unblinking.

His eyes glowed.

He felt the fire.

He felt Vermithor.

And he smiled.



The sky above the Land Beyond the Wall split with fire and shadow.

Cannibal, the ancient black-scaled dragon with eyes like burning coals, roared as he soared through the clouds, his massive wings beating thunder into the heavens. Snow whipped in spirals from his passage, and the forests below trembled under his shadow.

Upon his back, cloaked in a fur-lined mantle, sat Robert Stronghammer, Emperor of Stormrage, his face solemn and unmoved by the biting wind. He was no longer the hot-headed teenager who once thought every problem could be silenced with a swing of his warhammer. Time had taught him to wield patience like a second blade.

Still, as he gazed over the bleak landscape, he could feel the tension in his bones.

“This war,” he murmured to himself, “will not be remembered for its glory… but for its consequence.”

Behind him, far behind, came the ships—galleons of black and gold, bearing the banners of Stormrage, filled with soldiers, mages, healers, and supplies. But Robert could not wait for them. Hardhome needed him now.

Cannibal descended like a thunderbolt from the sky.

The Stormrage Colony at Hardhome erupted into chaos. Wildlings screamed and ran for cover. Many had only heard stories of dragons—death on wings, their elders called them. Cannibal was the largest dragon seen in the North, a creature as old as Valyria’s doom, and perhaps more fearsome.

He landed just beyond the fortified gates, the snow melting around him into steam. His claws cracked the frozen earth. His eyes glowed like twin furnaces.

Then the men of the colony saw the figure dismounting.

A tall man, broad-shouldered, with silver in his beard and the mark of a warrior carved deep into his brow. He wore no crown, yet none mistook him for anything but a king.

Robert Stronghammer had arrived.

As he stepped forward into the courtyard, the Stormrage soldiers dropped to one knee in the snow. Swords drawn and held downward in salute. The tamed wildlings, those who had seen their lives improve under the Empire’s guidance, knelt beside them. Some looked on in awe. Others in fear. But none dared stand.

“Rise,” Robert’s voice thundered across the compound. “You kneel to no tyrant. I come to shield you… not to rule you.”

Commander Jorek, leader of the Stormrage Colony, stepped forward. He was a grizzled veteran with one arm, the other lost in a raid months before. He saluted with his good arm and bowed his head low.

“Your Grace,” Jorek said, “you honor us.”

“Not honor,” Robert replied. “Necessity.”

Jorek led the Emperor through the icy corridors of the fortress, bypassing bustling mess halls and the massive dragon stables, until they reached a chamber carved directly into the cliffside, warmed by glowing firestones from the deep mountains. It was the most secure and comfortable place in all of Hardhome.

Two guards opened the heavy stone doors.

Inside, maps covered the table. Candles flickered across parchments inked with wildling migration paths, Cold One sightings, and patrol reports. On the far wall, a crude painting of the Night King—drawn by a refugee wildling child—watched with icy blue eyes.

Robert set his hammer down beside the table and studied the maps in silence.

“You’ve seen them?” he asked.

Jorek nodded grimly. “Only once, Your Grace. A single scout returned alive. Said the snow fell silent around them… and their eyes were not of men.”

Robert reached down and picked up a piece of obsidian, a chunk of dragonglass harvested from the Frostfangs.

“The First Men used this. And the Last Hero, if the tales are true. Has it worked?”

Jorak hesitated. “We haven’t had the chance to test it, Emperor. The creatures do not attack like men. They disappear. They strike without sound. And the men who see them… they don’t come back the same.”

Robert turned and stared into the hearth fire.

“Then we make them remember why fire is feared.”

He turned to Jorek. “Send ravens to every colony—Targaryen, Stark. I want every commander aware of what we face. No more petty suspicions. We fight as one… or we die alone.”

Jorek bowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Robert looked out the frost-covered window. Cannibal still loomed outside, coiled like a serpent.

“Prepare for war,” he said. “And dig deeper. Find the legends. I want every tale about the Last Hero and his fight. Anything about how he won. We cannot win this with dragons and steel alone.”

Jorek nodded again and saluted. “It will be done, my Emperor.”

Robert placed a firm hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Let them fear the cold. We will bring the fire.”


The sound of hammers striking steel echoed deep within the stone-forged belly of the Stormrage Colony’s fortress. Sparks flared in bursts as Emperor Robert Stronghammer, stripped to his waist, labored over his warhammer, sweat mingling with soot on his hardened face. The forge glowed orange behind him, reflecting in his eyes like twin fires.

He held the dragonglass shards—black, jagged, and sharp as betrayal. Carefully, methodically, he began embedding the shards along the head and flanges of his legendary hammer.

“If steel scatter like glass before them,” he muttered, “then let the darkness of Valyria do the talking.”

A blacksmith approached hesitantly. “Your Grace, we could do this for you—”

Robert didn’t even look up.

“No one touches my hammer but me.”

The blacksmith wisely stepped back.

Just then, the heavy doors burst open with a rush of snow-laden wind, and a scout stumbled in, panting, half-frozen.

“Your Grace—the woods… the woods are moving!”

Robert turned, his knuckles white as he tightened his grip on the haft of the reforged warhammer.

“What woods?”

“The north ridge, near the third hunting trail. Thousands, I… I couldn’t count. Wolves, bears, men—dead ones. Marching. All of them… dead, yet walking. Eyes like ice.”

The forge went silent.

Robert nodded slowly, then turned to the wall and strapped on his furs, his armor, and his weapon.

Outside, the sky was already darkening—not from twilight, but from the unnatural cold that now bled through the mountains.

Robert stepped into the courtyard where Cannibal waited, nostrils steaming, tail thrashing. The dragon, massive even among its kin, bent its head low. Their eyes met.

And that was enough.

They didn’t speak—but they understood.

“Fly,” Robert whispered. “Burn everything that moves.”

Cannibal roared, shaking snow from the cliffs.

With one powerful leap, the black beast soared into the sky, Robert mounted on his back. The wind cut like knives, but Robert held fast, his mind focused.

Below, he saw them.

A river of death, crawling toward the fortress. Bears with ribs exposed. Wolves with no eyes. Men with torn faces and shattered limbs, yet they walked as though alive.

And at their head—two figures.

The White Walkers.

They walked side by side, tall and pale as frost, their armor glimmering like frozen glass. As Cannibal approached, Robert leaned low and gave the signal.

The black fire that Cannibal breathed was no ordinary flame. It was ancient, a twisted evolution of Valyrian fire, darker and hotter, born in the deepest parts of the dragon’s belly.

It spilled down like night turned liquid, devouring the dead by the hundreds.

But then—

The two Walkers raised their arms. From the snow around them, spears of ice formed, long and jagged.

They hurled the spears with terrifying speed.

Cannibal rolled in the air, dodging narrowly. One spear grazed his wing. The dragon howled, his flight unstable for a moment.

Robert felt it in his bones. One clean hit… and Cannibal would fall.

“If he dies,” he whispered, “they’ll take him.”

And with the dragon's death, the balance of the world would tilt.

You must leave, Robert thought. You know this is not your fight.

Cannibal understood. The dragon circled once, low and reluctant, then—after Robert leapt from his saddle onto the snow-crusted rocks below—Cannibal roared in agony and fury, and wheeled away into the sky, vanishing into the clouds.

The White Walkers turned to watch the dragon depart.

When they looked back, Robert Stronghammer was waiting.

He stood atop the frost-hardened ridge, steam rising from his breath. His warhammer glinted with obsidian spikes, dark and hungry. His breath was slow, measured.

The dead around him still burned. But the two Walkers walked unharmed through the flames, the snow beneath their feet frosting over fire itself.

Robert raised his hammer and rested it on his shoulder.

“You come for my people,” he said. “But you’ve found their wall.”

The Walkers did not speak.

One raised its blade, long and thin, like glass pulled from the heart of winter.

The other raised its spear, and the wind screamed.

Robert charged.