Lo Quen thought to himself, Just as I suspected.
Qyburn and Marwyn's conjecture had been confirmed.
He fixed his gaze on Bloodraven, whose presence had grown even weaker, and spoke in a low, steady voice. "Then I suppose… I already know what I should call you now…"
Brynden Rivers's body suddenly convulsed. He hacked up large mouthfuls of thick, dark-red blood.
His single blood-red eye dimmed further, as though it might go out at any moment.
"You… have guessed my true identity…" he rasped. "That's right… I am not Brynden Rivers. The real Brynden Rivers perished long ago during the long process of fusion. Perhaps my thoughts are still influenced by fragments of his lingering memories, but the core of 'my' consciousness has endured for tens of thousands of years. To call me an 'Old God'… would not be an exaggeration…"
He gasped for breath, a trace of curiosity unexpectedly surfacing in his expression. "Still… I am very curious. How did you… figure it out?"
Lo Quen's eyes were sharp and unblinking. "After death, a soul should disperse. Yet through certain powerful forms of magic, a soul can be made to linger in this world for a very long time. When I saw the dead forcibly bound and turned into wights under the Cold God's control, heard how the followers of the Lord of Light 'revived' the dead, and personally witnessed my Maesters using necromancy to manipulate corpses, I understood something."
"The so-called miracles are, at their core, not fundamentally different from these 'blasphemous' techniques. And those called gods may simply be… mortals who possess greater power and far older knowledge."
He paused, his tone growing firmer. "The reason you have survived from antiquity to the present is nothing more than the use of some powerful magical vessel to contain your core consciousness or fragments of your soul, allowing your will to persist. But time is the most merciless blade. Endless ages grind away everything, including emotions and memories. In the end, you become less than human, losing the humanity you once had."
"And you, through symbiosis between a greenseer and the weirwood, have likely found the best possible way to preserve your 'sense of self.' Am I wrong? You beings revered as 'gods' are, in essence, nothing more than a group of people from ancient times who gained magical knowledge from black stones that fell from the heavens and used it to prolong your own existence. You are still… human. This world has no gods."
Bloodraven froze when he heard this revelation.
After a long silence, he finally spoke, his expression empty. "You are clever. Clever beyond what I imagined. Yes, your conclusion… is largely correct. We so-called gods are merely the fortunate ones… or rather, those chosen by fate."
His voice drifted, as though pulled into distant memories. "In what remains of my recollections, I was born in the forests of Mossovy in the far east. Later, on a plain in the southern Grey Waste, we discovered… a black stone that had fallen from the heavens. From that moment on, the fate of all of us changed."
"We gained immense magical power and became the supreme sorcerers of that era. Calling us gods would not have been an exaggeration. We obtained extraordinarily long lives and could even wield magic capable of reshaping the land itself…"
Lo Quen caught the key word at once. "We?"
Bloodraven gave a slight nod. "I was not the only one who found the black stone. There were seven of us in total. Each of us… was a leader of great authority or power within our respective tribes at the time."
Lo Quen immediately pressed him. "Why did it have to be leaders?"
"You have seen the black stone yourself. You should be able to feel the vast, primal power contained within it," Bloodraven explained. "Without specific rituals, a black stone merely releases magic slowly, nourishing its surroundings. But if you know how, if you perform a blood sacrifice… you can truly awaken it and receive unimaginable power in return."
Lo Quen's eyes flickered as he looked at the Old God fused with the tree roots. "Like the power you wield now? The skinchanger's control over living beings, and the prophetic Green Vision?"
The Old God nodded weakly once more. "The seven of us each carried out blood sacrifices involving large numbers of our own people. Through the black stones, we gained different domains of power. We discovered that the greater the scale of the sacrifice, and the more 'valuable' the lives offered, the stronger and more distinctive the power we received."
At last, Lo Quen understood. "So the so-called Lord of Light and the Cold God were also among those seven."
Bloodraven nodded. "They came from Yi Ti. They were siblings, and also husband and wife. They led tens of thousands of Yi Ti people to the Grey Waste and carried out an unprecedented ritual before the black stone, slaughtering countless Yi Ti lives. In the end, they obtained power surpassing all of ours. The power you now know as ice and fire."
Lo Quen frowned. "Then why have they spent the past ten thousand years locked in constant conflict? If their power comes from the same source, what are they fighting for?"
The Old God let out an eerie chuckle. "Human greed is limitless. Even lovers once bound together can give rise to suspicion and ambition once they possess power great enough to rule fate itself. The brother sought to seize the core power held by his sister. And at her weakest moment… just after she had given birth… he killed her."
"So, on her deathbed, his sister hurled the most venomous curse she could, triggering a backlash from the Black Stone's power… In the end, they perished together. After they died, the magic of ice and fire inherited the strongest obsessions and will they carried at the moment of death, drifting through the world on their own.
The sister's ice magic, steeped in hatred for life and betrayal, gathered in the Land of Always Winter and forged countless servants…
And the brother's fire magic, filled with boundless ambition and a thirst for control, drew innumerable followers as well. Their essence kept searching for suitable vessels, reincarnating into their descendants and igniting cycle after cycle of conflict without end.
Their fate became a malignant curse, replayed again and again across the world. The wars they set off felt like destiny itself, endlessly tearing the world apart…"
Lo Quen frowned and challenged him. "That's not right. As far as I know, Yi Ti's ancient faith speaks of the Lion of Night and the Maiden-Made-of-Light, symbols of darkness and light, not as you describe it, with the sister as ice and the brother as fire."
The Old God shook his head slowly. "Too many details have been worn away from my failing memory… But I still remember a saying: behind light lies darkness, and the true nature of darkness is light. Names are only symbols and interpretations given by those who came later. However history chooses to record that time, the heart of what I am telling you, the nature of their power and the relationship between them, does not change…"
...
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