Mance Rayder had run away.

  He had fled, not like a king, but like a father who had just watched his children burn. Not from cowardice—he had faced worse, colder things before—but from the undeniable truth that nothing he could’ve done, nothing any of them could’ve done, would’ve changed what happened on that killing field.

  Even fifty thousand spears wouldn’t have saved them.

  The monster—no, the man, if Ygritte was to be believed—had torn through five thousand Free Folk like waves against stone. Cursed red light had spilled across the snow, turning bodies to ash, collapsing the sky into a single bloody line. The smell was what Mance would remember longest. Not just blood or fire—but the stink of death that refused to be natural. Twisted. Cold. Wrong.

  And the cannibalism.

  By the Old Gods and the New, the cannibalism.

  He had watched that thing bite into the fingers of a screaming warg, felt the cursed pressure spike like thunder before another explosion lit up the snowfield. Men boiled from the inside. Skin burst. Eyes melted in skulls. It wasn’t war—it was punishment. And the sword the beast carried tore through shields and bone like silk, the metal screaming each time it met resistance. A song of carnage.

  Mance had led his people to that fate.

  For a dream.

  He remembered the first time he had seen The Gift from atop the Wall, through a slit in the stone tower of Castle Black. Rolling green fields stretching endlessly, rivers that didn’t freeze in winter, forests thick with game. A land that didn’t try to kill you. That’s what haunted him at night. The thought that his people could live, not just survive. That the children could grow strong and the mothers could stop burying their sons. That he could put down the sword and pick up the plow.

  It had come to him in dreams, so vivid they felt more like memories. He had seen his son running through tall grass. His woman laughing in the sun. He had heard birds.

  And when Jeor Mormont came, it felt like those dreams stepping into the waking world.

  The Lord Commander had brought no chains. No swords. Only an offer. Peace between the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk, in the face of a greater evil—one that defied flame and steel both. A leader of the white walkers, he had said, or something worse. Something old. Twisted by death and time and some curse older than the Wall itself.

  “He walks like a man,” Jeor had said, “but cannot be killed like one.”

  Mormont had looked tired. Not the tired of age, but the weight of too many funerals, too many lies. He said that creature couldn’t be burned. That it had survived a stab through the heart. That it was alone now, with no army. Vulnerable.

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  Hope had stirred in Mance’s chest.

  And then came the gesture. Jeor had opened the gate—just a crack—and let some of Mance’s people through. Just a few, but enough to prove he was serious. They had food, shelter, safety.

  Just like Mance's dreams.

  It had felt right.

  Even now, in the ruin, he remembered that feeling like a warm fire on his skin. He had imagined it so clearly—the alliance, the unity of crows and Free Folk. Together, they would defeat the monster. And afterward, peace. No more white walkers. No more starving. No more red snow.

  So when Ygritte came to him, eyes wet with fear, begging him to reconsider, Mance had held his ground.

  “He’s not your enemy,” she had said. “He’s saved me more than once.”

  But Mance had already made his choice.

  “If he dies,” he said, “then he dies. For the Free Folk.”

  He hadn’t known he was marching them to a slaughter.

  Now, Jeor Mormont was dead. The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch had been the first to charge when Gojo turned toward them. Maybe he thought valor could buy a miracle. Maybe he thought that if he died first, others might live.

  But he died all the same. Screaming. Vanished in a wave of red light.

  The alliance shattered in a heartbeat. The black brothers fled, what few remained. The Free Folk screamed and broke into chaos, trampled under their own. Mothers throwing children over their shoulders. Fathers torn apart trying to shield their clans. Even the Thenns ran.

  And Mance Rayder—King-Beyond-the-Wall—ran too.

  He had thought there would be some grand final duel. Maybe he’d look the beast in the eye. Maybe he’d die with a sword in his hand. Instead, he crawled through the mud and snow, dragging a wounded man behind him, until even the screams were gone.

  He didn’t know where Ygritte was. He feared the worst.

  Now, the survivors—what few of them remained—were scattered, hiding, broken. And the Gate was closed. The Watch would never trust them again. The truce was dust. The dream was dead.

  The Free Folk were on the wrong side of the Wall.

  Again.

  Mance sat in a circle of stones, staring at the fire as if it might answer him. Around him, silent faces. No songs. No stories. Just the stink of blood and guilt.

  A girl sat with her knees to her chest. She had lost her entire family in the charge. She hadn’t spoken since.

  A boy was praying to the Old Gods, though no one answered.

  The wind howled above them.

  “What now?” someone whispered. “Where do we go?”

  Mance didn’t answer. He didn’t know. The Lands of Always Winter were behind them. The Wall before them. The nightmare somewhere in between.

  He didn’t even know if Gojo still followed them. Maybe he had left. Maybe he was deeper in the woods. Maybe he was crying somewhere, too.

  Because in those final seconds, when Mance had turned back—just once, just for a heartbeat—he had seen something strange.

  Gojo standing over the fallen. A thousand corpses around him. His body soaked in blood and firelight. And he was not smiling. He looked… sad.

  It was a look Mance recognized. He’d seen it on the faces of kings before the fall.

  Not madness.

  Grief.

  And that, more than the slaughter, more than the cursed lights or the cannibalism, terrified Mance the most.

  Because if that thing could feel grief…

  Then maybe he wasn’t a monster at all.

  Maybe he was doing something none of them could understand. Something bigger than armies and alliances.

  But even so—no one could follow him now.

  No one who had seen what Mance had seen.

  The Free Folk were trapped. And they were leaderless. And the wrong side of the Wall had never felt colder.