Beyond the Wall, deep within the Haunted Forest.
The bitter wind screamed through the towering sentinel trees, whipping up clouds of swirling snow. It had been falling for a long time, piling thick drifts along the forest paths and weighing down the low pine branches, until the world was reduced to nothing but cold whites and dull grays.
Jon Snow gripped Ygritte's wrist tightly as they struggled forward through the deep snow, stumbling with every step. White Walker followed close behind them, its blood-red eyes sweeping the dark forest with constant vigilance.
As night drew near, they found a cave with a hot spring inside.
"Ser Alliser…"
Sitting deep within the cave, Jon looked back toward the entrance, despair filling his eyes.
Ygritte sat beside him, her expression solemn. "That old crow is done for. You saw it yourself. That thing wasn't human. It was the Others."
When she clearly spoke the ancient word "Others," Jon felt the air around them drop several degrees.
Others.
The figures from Old Nan's strange bedtime tales at Winterfell, stories so wild they were hard to tell from truth. The terrifying beings said to have brought death and endless winter during the Long Night thousands of years ago.
Jon had always believed they were nothing more than stories meant to frighten children, until he had seen one with his own eyes, together with Ser Alliser and Ygritte. He had only managed to escape because Ser Alliser had held it back at the cost of his life.
The legends were real. Was the Long Night truly coming again?
As fear closed in on him, a faint rustling sound came from beside him.
Jon turned his head instinctively, heat rushing to his face.
Ygritte was briskly undoing her heavy fur cloak and the layers of leather beneath it.
"Hey, little crow!"
Seeing Jon immediately look away, the tips of his ears burning red, Ygritte let out a laugh. "So you really are a fledgling who's never tasted a woman. What, too scared to look at me now?"
Her words left Jon flustered and irritated. He snapped his head back around, ready to retort, only for his gaze to collide with Ygritte as she slipped out of her final layer and prepared to jump into the hot spring.
His mind buzzed blankly. He turned away again at once, his heart hammering in his chest.
Ygritte jumped into the hot spring without a care. Warm water wrapped around her chilled body. She looked over at Jon on the shore and teased him again.
"Get in and wash up. The water's nice and hot. Don't act like a woman. We've still got a long way to go, and you can't stay filthy."
When she saw that he still hadn't moved, Ygritte stood up from the spring.
She walked straight to the edge, ignoring the biting wind against her exposed skin, grabbed Jon by his clothes, and yanked hard. "Get down here! You stupid crow. Do you want to freeze to death?"
"No! Ygritte! Let go!"
Jon panicked, struggling desperately to break free.
They grappled and shoved each other at the edge of the spring. In the struggle, Jon's hand inevitably brushed against Ygritte's warm skin, the sensation sending a jolt through his entire body.
In the chaos, Ygritte's foot slipped. She cried out as she fell backward, instinctively grabbing hold of Jon.
"Ah!"
Caught off guard, Jon went down with her, and the two of them tumbled onto the icy snow.
They rolled together in a tangled mess. Acting on instinct and years of training, Jon twisted sharply and flipped over, pinning Ygritte beneath him.
Almost by reflex, he drew the longsword from his waist, raised it high, and aimed it straight at Ygritte's chest.
Ygritte lay on her back in the freezing snow, showing no fear at all. Instead, she lifted her full chest toward the cold steel, her eyes defiant.
"Go on, crow boy! Use that sword and stab straight through my heart. Kill me!"
Jon's arm trembled, frozen in place.
As he struggled with himself, a flash of cunning passed through Ygritte's eyes. One hand shot out like a snake, grabbing Jon.
"You… what are you grabbing?!"
Jon stiffened as if struck by lightning, his body locking up so suddenly that the longsword in his hand nearly slipped free.
Ygritte broke into a wild, feral grin. "I can tell there's no fire on the sword in your hand, but you've got plenty of it right here!"
The last shred of reason vanished from Jon's mind.
With a low growl, he hurled the longsword far away, then bent down and tangled with Ygritte in a frenzy.
Ghost quietly padded off to a distance, crouching low as he stood guard for the man and woman locked together at the edge of desperation.
The next morning, the wind and snow finally eased.
Jon opened his eyes to see Ygritte already dressed. She sat beside the hot spring, using a dagger to shave thin slices from a rock-hard strip of jerky.
"Are you all right?"
Jon sat up. Memories of the madness from the night before surfaced, and heat crept back into his face.
Ygritte turned her head and shot him a scornful look, chewing as she spoke through the jerky. "Hmph. I'm not some dainty southern Lady who falls apart at the slightest touch. What's that little bit to make a fuss over? Eat something."
She tossed the sliced jerky to Jon.
Jon caught it, gave an awkward smile, then grew serious. "We need to leave as soon as possible. Head south. Beyond the Wall is too dangerous now. The Others have appeared."
At his words, Ygritte's chewing slowed.
A trace of worry flickered through her eyes as she thought of Mance Rayder and his massive Free Folk host. When she had been captured, Mance was already marching on the Wall, preparing for a full advance south.
With the Others closing in, the Free Folk army would face utter annihilation.
She was worried about her people's fate.
But when she looked at Jon again, her expression turned complicated, then firm.
She shook her head. "I'll take you to Hardhome. It used to be a coastal settlement, long ago, before it was destroyed and abandoned. No one lives there now, but there should still be wrecked ships left behind by smugglers. They're rotten beyond belief, but maybe one will still float. It might get you past the Wall."
Jon froze.
He wanted desperately for Ygritte to come with him, far away from Beyond the Wall.
But when he saw the attachment to her people in her eyes, and the stubborn resolve unique to the Free Folk, he knew she would never abandon her kin or her freedom.
Returning to Mance Rayder's army was the path she was bound to take.
After a long hesitation, Jon finally nodded, burying his reluctance and longing deep in his heart.
"Alright. Take me to Hardhome."
He stood, brushed the snow from his clothes, and called to Ghost.
Man and wolf set out once more, beginning another arduous journey toward the harbor said to be cursed.
Several days later, amid biting winds and ever-deepening snow, they finally reached Hardhome.
The sight before them was even more desolate than Jon had imagined.
Calling it a port felt wrong. It was more like a forgotten graveyard of ruins.
Broken walls clung to the frozen shoreline. Collapsed stone houses, shattered beams, twisted ship hulls lay scattered in silence.
Long ago, Hardhome had been a trading settlement of the Free Folk. But on some night more than three hundred years before Aegon's Landing, a mysterious disaster struck. The entire settlement burned, and every inhabitant perished.
Since then, no one had returned to rebuild it.
In the original story, after the Free Folk army was defeated by Stannis Baratheon and the Night's Watch at the Battle of Castle Black, Mother Mole led thousands of Free Folk to Hardhome. Later, Jon Snow sent Cotter Pyke to escort them south of the Wall.
Ygritte led Jon Snow and Ghost to a small cove that offered some shelter from the wind.
The ice here was thinner, waves crashing against floating slabs along the shore.
A pitifully ruined boat lay half-buried in snow and ash. The hull leaned crookedly, its planks blackened and rotten, split with cracks and overgrown with moss. The mast had snapped long ago, leaving only a bare stump.
"There," Ygritte said, pointing at it. "That's the one."
"It looks completely rotten, but maybe it'll still float. Should be enough for you to follow the coast south."
To the Free Folk, everything beyond the Wall was simply "the south."
Jon examined the boat. It was worse than he'd expected, but with effort, it might still be patched together.
He gave a bitter smile. "It'll barely get me past the Wall. If I want to reach the real south, I'll need a bigger ship."
Ygritte shrugged, sticking out her tongue. "South is south. At least it's warmer on the other side of the Wall."
She stepped in front of Jon, her fiery red hair whipping in the cold wind, her gaze suddenly solemn.
"Jon Snow, remember this. My name is Ygritte, born of the fire's kiss!"
Jon looked at her hair, still vivid as flame even in the bitter cold, and felt something stir. He asked on purpose, "Born of the fire's kiss? Does that mean you were born because flames kissed you?"
Ygritte answered by punching him squarely, without holding back.
"You stupid crow! The Free Folk believe red hair is a sign of good fortune. Anyone born with red hair is called 'born of the fire's kiss.' Got it?"
She planted her hands on her hips, pride plain in her stance.
Jon rubbed his aching arm, yet a sincere smile spread across his face.
"Alright, Ygritte, girl born of fire's kiss. You really did bring me luck."
Without her, he would never have found this place.
Hearing his words, Ygritte's face brightened into a radiant smile as well.
Their gazes met, and the sorrow of parting, mixed with the lingering warmth from the night before, surged up all at once. Unable to hold back any longer, they stepped forward and embraced tightly.
They lingered there for a long while, until Ghost let out a low, urging whine.
At last, it was time to part.
Jon made a few quick repairs to the boat, then dragged the battered little craft down to the water's edge. Ygritte helped him push it into the bitterly cold sea.
The boat rocked violently, letting out a strained groan as if protesting the load, but in the end, it stayed afloat.
Jon lifted Ghost and carefully set Ghost into the boat. The direwolf sniffed uneasily at the damp, rotting planks, then lay down obediently.
Jon took one last, long look at Ygritte on the shore. A thousand words clogged his throat, but in the end, only one made it out.
"Take care, Ygritte."
"You too, crow boy. Don't drown out there!"
Ygritte waved, forcing a smile.
Jon hesitated no longer. Grasping the two rough oars, he began to row with all his strength. The harbor current seemed almost helpful, quickly carrying the small boat away from the shore and toward the more open sea.
The distance was not far, yet the boat swayed violently.
Jon kept rowing, but his eyes never left the fiery figure on the shore.
Ygritte stood between the gray-black ruins and the pure white snow, waving hard in his direction. Her figure grew smaller and smaller, blurring in Jon's vision.
Driven by the current, the boat drifted farther from the coast and gradually disappeared into the thick sea fog. When it had floated more than a thousand feet away, the figure on shore was nothing more than an indistinct speck.
Then, without warning, something changed.
Ygritte, still watching the direction of Jon's boat, suddenly froze, the smile on her face stiffening.
She caught an impossibly faint rustling sound from the dense, lifeless forest behind her.
In an instant, it felt as though the blood in Ygritte's veins had turned to ice.
She spun around sharply.
At the edge of the forest, like a massive black curtain, figures emerged in complete silence.
They were riding horses…
No. Those were not living horses at all.
What had once been powerful mounts were now nothing more than rotting sinew clinging to bleached skeletons.
Mounted atop these dead steeds were taller beings.
The Others.
Among the group of Others knights stood an even more striking figure.
She rode an enormous dead direwolf, far larger than any normal beast.
The woman on the wolf's back possessed a beauty that was both breathtaking and deeply unsettling, enough to chill the soul. Her skin was pale and translucent like moonlight, her eyes like blue stars, fixed coldly on Ygritte, who stood frozen in shock upon the shore.