CHAPTER 407: CHAPTER 407: THE GREAT WALL COLLAPSES

"What’s the word from the Skinchangers?" Lynd asked Sam in a low voice, looking at the catapult before him, now completely frozen.

"The ravens can’t go any further north. It’s too cold," Sam shouted back, wrapping his bulky body tightly in his clothes.

Lynd turned and walked over to a nearby observation platform. Braving the howling blizzard, he peered into the snow-shrouded landscape ahead, listening carefully to the faint, strange noises carried by the wind. After a moment, he turned to Sam and said, "Blow the horn! It’s time to fight."

Without hesitation, Sam took the horn from his waist and blew hard—but he did it wrong, and no sound came out. He tried again, hurriedly blowing several times, but still, no sound.

Unable to watch any longer, Stannis strode over, grabbed the horn from Sam’s hands, and put it to his lips. With a forceful blow, he produced a loud, clear, and lingering horn blast.

In the distance, heralds who heard the call also sounded their horns, passing the signal down the line. Meanwhile, the Night’s Watch lit bonfires along the Great Wall, offering a touch of warmth to the guards braving the blizzard.

All the Night’s Watchmen grabbed their weapons and took up their positions, ready for battle. The red priests prayed fervently, and balls of flame appeared, dancing on their weapons.

Soon after, Lynd took down his dragonbone bow, picked up a specially crafted dragonglass arrow, and, under the prayers of the red priests, the arrowhead became engulfed in holy fire—though it did not explode.

Suddenly, Lynd drew his bow and fired, sending the arrow soaring into the snow-laden sky.

A distant explosion followed almost immediately. Those with sharp eyes could vaguely see a ball of wights disintegrating midair, their bodies igniting. As the burning wights fell, the ground below and the ice walls of the Great Wall revealed swarms of wights—dense as ants in a jungle.

At the same time, the archers atop the Wall, armed with special dragonglass arrows, drew and loosed their bows. Their holy fire-wrapped arrows struck the wight balls hurled by the catapults. One after another, the wight balls burst apart from the explosive force of the dragonglass, and the holy flames consumed them, setting even more wights ablaze as they tumbled into the ranks below.

No one knew exactly which burning wight had stumbled into the traps set earlier in the isolation zone, but suddenly, plumes of fire erupted skyward, spreading rapidly. In moments, the flames merged into a solid wall of wildfire, devouring everything in their path. Any wight that came near was immediately set alight, and soon the isolation zone had become a sea of fire.

Yet even the raging inferno could not fully halt the wights. Though countless were set ablaze, many others avoided the fire and pressed on, scaling the ice wall with terrifying speed.

It wasn’t long before the Night’s Watchmen at the observation points could clearly see the climbers. They were all beast wights—some as large as shadowcats, others as small as squirrels and monkeys.

"Prepare the falling wood!" shouted one of the watchmen as he saw the flood of wights approaching. Then came the command, loud and clear: "Release!"

The pre-prepared logs were set alight and pushed through openings in the ice wall. Their spiked designs ensured they could still sweep across the surface as they fell, knocking wights off the wall.

As flaming logs rained down, countless wights who had nearly reached the top were swept off, crashing into the masses below and crushing even more as they rolled.

Although the burning logs cleared many of the climbing wights, plenty remained. The beast wights, adept climbers, managed to dodge the logs and reach the top, launching themselves at the human warriors.

The larger beast wights were manageable, but the squirrel-like ones, small and incredibly nimble, proved much harder to handle. They darted past defenses, leaping into the crowds and attacking the lower bodies of the humans. Chaos broke out atop the Wall, giving even more wights the chance to pour over the defenses.

However, it wasn’t long before the defenders realized that the small beast wights were weak attackers. They couldn’t penetrate armor—and not even thicker leather pants. As long as they avoided strikes to the eyes, the humans were in little real danger.

Unfortunately, the realization came a little too late. The chaos caused by the beast wights disrupted the archers, making it harder for them to intercept the incoming wight balls. As a result, several balls survived the barrage of holy fire dragonglass arrows and crashed down onto the Wall, releasing wights that attacked the surrounding defenders.

Still, having learned from previous assaults, the human warriors had developed a coordinated response. This time, they did not panic. They raised their shields and stood together, covering one another as they braced for the wights’ assault.

When the battle raged atop the Great Wall, Lynd had already taken to the skies. He was waiting for the opportunity Willas had mentioned, and at that moment, he also sensed that Deltos over at Westwatch-by-the-Bridge had been drawn into the fighting. It must have been an intense battle—otherwise, Deltos wouldn’t have been forced to continuously use his various innate powers.

Just like the battle raging below on the Wall, Lynd paid no attention to Deltos’ fight. Instead, he remained quietly suspended in the blizzard, waiting for Willas’ signal.

Time passed slowly, and the sky gradually darkened. The battle, which had started at noon, had been raging for several hours. The human warriors on the Wall had already been rotated several times—some replaced by reinforcements, others falling to the relentless attacks of the wights and White Walkers.

The top of the Wall was now piled with heaps of human corpses and the shattered remains of wights. Hidden among the wights, the White Walkers attempted to awaken the fallen human warriors to turn them against their own side, but they failed. Every human soldier was wearing dragonglass ornaments, and any reanimated corpse would immediately be struck down by the power of dragonglass. Moreover, the White Walkers attempting the resurrection would suffer severe backlash—on the battlefield, any backlash severe enough to cause an abnormal reaction often meant instant death. Many powerful White Walkers perished this way at the hands of human warriors.

Inside the Wall, a large number of wights had been catapulted over the battlements. Though their numbers were not massive—and most were smashed to pieces on impact—enough survived the fall to continue fighting. Some White Walkers had also crossed the Wall using this method.

However, their numbers were too small to pose any real threat to the large force of defenders stationed inside. The greater danger came from the wights themselves, who, even as they fell from the sky, served as deadly projectiles. Many soldiers were unable to dodge in time and were crushed to death.

Outside the Wall, chaotic magical energy surged in waves, as if driven by some unseen force. It battered the Wall continuously, suppressing all forms of flame. Ordinary fire and wildfire alike were nearly extinguished—and even R’hllor’s holy fire was reduced to mere flickering embers.

Masses of wights piled up against the Wall, creating a massive slope that made it easier for the horde to scale the defenses. Even the lumbering giant White Walkers, usually slow and clumsy, used the slope to charge the Wall and begin their climb. Behind them, hordes of White Walkers mounted on ice spiders surged forward.

Seeing this, Lynd, who had been conserving his strength until now, drew out his dragonbone bow, preparing to take down the giant White Walkers, whose threat loomed the largest.

"Let me do it!" Just as Lynd was about to act, Willas’ voice suddenly sounded in his ear. "Get ready—the moment is coming! Follow my lead when the time comes."

As soon as the words fell, the entire Wall erupted with a blinding silver-blue light. Before anyone could react, the light shifted instantly into a deep purple hue, bursting outward from within and forming a radiant screen that illuminated everything within several leagues.

Every White Walker and wight struck by the light was instantly reduced to ice crystals and dust. In a flash, the battlefield, moments ago a scene of chaos and bloodshed, fell silent and still.

Everyone stood frozen in place, staring in disbelief at the now-quiet battlefield, unsure of what to do next. But before anyone could regain their senses, the sound of a horn echoed from the north. The horn was not especially loud, but it carried across great distances—audible from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea all the way to the Shadow Tower.

Along with the horn came a tremor—no, more accurately, the Wall itself began to quake. Castles like Castle Black, Icemark, the Shadow Tower, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the Nightfort, and others shuddered violently and crumbled. The adjacent sections of the Wall collapsed with them. Guards stationed atop the walls plummeted to their deaths, crushed by falling ice and rubble.

By the time the horn’s echo faded, most of the Wall had collapsed, leaving only a few isolated stretches still standing. Where the walls had fallen, gaping breaches remained, and with them, the defenses of the Wall were utterly shattered.

Everything had happened so quickly. From the moment the Wall unleashed its deadly light, destroying the White Walkers and wights, to the sounding of the horn and the Wall’s collapse—only a few short minutes had passed.

Most people didn’t even realize what had happened before being buried under tons of ice and stone. Those who survived were left paralyzed by fear, collapsing onto the ground, utterly lost.

But this was no time for shock or hesitation. With the Wall’s defenses broken, a vast army of wights and White Walkers—some riding wight horses, bears, woolly mammoths, and others mounted atop ice spiders—began advancing under the cover of darkness and blizzard winds. From several leagues away, they would need no more than a dozen minutes to reach the ruins of the Wall.

Lynd could clearly sense the movements of the White Walkers in the distance and immediately issued orders to the Holy Sisters and the Silent Forest through the rune markings of the Nameless King.

Because Lynd had already stationed most of the Holy Sisters and Silent Monks at the base of the Wall beforehand, their losses were minimal. Upon receiving the command, they rushed straight to the breaches in the Wall to establish a defensive line. The God’s Chosen Legion followed close behind. Although many others had yet to recover from the shock of the Wall’s collapse, they instinctively fell in behind the God’s Chosen to set up their defenses. However, most of them were already terrified and demoralized; once battle resumed, there was a high risk of a complete rout.

Just as Lynd was considering how to rally their spirits, a surge of powerful energy erupted from Icemark. This force felt eerily similar to Euron’s power in the City of the Dead—foul, corrupt, and spreading rapidly. It seeped into the bodies of everyone present, save for the Holy Sisters, the Silent Monks, and the God’s Chosen Legion.

Lynd did not attempt to stop it. He could sense that the source of this dark power was the black oily stone that formed the Wall’s foundation—and that it was now under the control of Ella and Yara. They had wrested control of the Wall’s power source from Willas and were using it to transform the cowardly Night’s Watch, Free Folk, and other allied forces.

This power did more than simply erase fear; it instilled bloodlust and a thirst for battle. It even produced effects similar to those experienced after the Redemption Sept trials. Although these effects were not as potent as those granted to the Holy Sisters and Silent Men, they still allowed the soldiers to tap into extraordinary strength.

Before long, the army of White Walkers reached the collapsed sections of the Wall and began pouring through the breaches.

On the eastern side of the breach, the God’s Chosen Legion formed ranks, raising their shields and spears, with Holy Sisters and Silent Monks mixed among them to deal with the White Walkers that broke into their lines. On the western side, the human warriors, now pushed to the limits of their transformation by the black oil’s power, stood ready to defend.

As the White Walkers surged forward, the small catapults positioned behind the lines hurled all the remaining wildfire jars out beyond the breach, incinerating a portion of the oncoming wights and White Walkers.

Yet the chaotic magic swirling outside the Wall suppressed the wildfire’s strength, and many White Walkers pushed through the burning line, closing in for brutal close-quarters combat.

The specially designed shields of the God’s Chosen Legion held back the advancing wights, while the densely packed dragonglass spear formation turned the defense into a wall of deadly spikes. In mechanical precision, the soldiers thrust and withdrew their dragonglass-tipped spears, dispatching the wights one after another. Meanwhile, the White Walkers, mingling among the wights, easily dodged the spear thrusts and vaulted into the formation atop their ice spiders.

But just as they moved to break the line, Holy Sisters and Silent Men hidden within the ranks struck like assassins, driving Valyrian steel weapons into the White Walkers’ bodies and simultaneously slaying their spider mounts.

Compared to the disciplined, efficient defense of the God’s Chosen, the battle on the Night’s Watch, Free Folk, and support forces’ side was little more than raw, chaotic hand-to-hand combat. It was a brutal melee where survival hinged on stabbing the enemy’s vital points before succumbing oneself.

However, the human warriors infused with the black oil stone’s power had become something altogether different—creatures not unlike White Walkers or wights. They had shed all fear, retaining only an instinct for slaughter. Even their bodies had changed; unless their heads were severed, they would not die immediately, even if pierced through the heart. Instead, they could continue fighting for a long time, enduring until their blood ran dry.