Bran: Deepening Greensight in the Godswood
Sap from the weirwood dripped from Bran's fingertips, spreading dark red marks on the frozen ground. His consciousness had long since left his wheelchair, like a wisp of smoke coiling around the stone walls of the cellar passage, reaching the ancient mural even before Illyrio's team. In his Greensight, the rock painting's colors were more vivid than in reality: the dragonglass spears in the first men's hands glowed with orange-red flames, and within the luminous crystals embedded by the Children of the Forest, dark red patterns flowed, similar to Daenerys's dragonblood.
"ice core... needs to be pierced by dual forces..." Bran's lips silently moved, his consciousness suddenly yanked back by the cold aura of the ice wight guards. He saw three bodies beneath ice armor, not the decaying flesh of ordinary wights, but solidified ice marrow. Each ice bone was carved with runes to suppress fire—a "gift" from the cold god to the Night King, specifically to guard the passage.
"Illyrio... the runes fear weirwood fire..." Bran tried to probe his consciousness back into the passage but was repelled by a cold resistance, blood foam mixed with ice crystals overflowing from his throat. Lyra quickly wrapped his hand in animal hide, only to find he was clutching a small weirwood shard in his palm, engraved with miniature spiral patterns: "Take this... into the passage... press it against the ice armor of the ice guards..." His voice was as light as the cold wind, "Their runes... will be dispersed by the power of the weirwood."
As Lyra took the shard and rushed towards the cellar entrance, Bran's Greensight had already drifted high into the sky—Drogon's right wing was still bleeding, yet he stubbornly circled above the Night King's ice throne, Viserion's ice breath weaving a frost net behind him. "Wait a little longer... Drogon's dragonflame will burn through the Ice Dragon's reins..." Bran closed his eyes, casting his last shred of consciousness towards Illyrio inside the passage, like a warm light, gently landing on the back of his hand gripping the dragonblood crystal.
Illyrio: Deconstructing Weaknesses Before the Mural
The faint orange glow of the tinder flickered on the rock wall. Illyrio's fingertips traced the patterns of the "luminous crystals" in the mural, suddenly recalling his experience in the Dragonstone caves—at that time, he had found similar crystal fragments in rock crevices. When Daenerys's dragonblood dripped onto them, the fragments briefly glowed red. "It's not congealed dragonblood, but first men's crystal imbued with dragonblood." He suddenly spoke, his voice echoing slightly in the passage.
Arya leaned in for a closer look, noticing that the ochre-red lines on the crystal's edge matched the patterns on Illyrio's dragonblood vial at his waist: "So we need dragonblood, dragonglass, and this crystal simultaneously?" Illyrio nodded, pulling out the dragonblood vial from his embrace and pouring a drop of blood onto the crystal pattern on the rock wall—as soon as the dark red blood bead touched the mural, the pattern glowed faintly, revealing small characters hidden beneath: "Dual fire quenches the core, bloodline breaks the ice."
"Dual fire is dragonflame and weirwood fire, bloodline is the blood of the Targaryen." Illyrio's eyes suddenly cleared. He remembered Bran's previous hint of "dragonblood mixed with wildfire," and then felt the weirwood shards in his embrace: "The previous wildfire only had dragonblood; now it needs to be mixed with weirwood shards to complete the 'dual fire'." He immediately had Kaya open the earthenware jar and scatter the weirwood shards he carried into it. The mixture instantly glowed orange-red, and a hint of warmth emerged in the chilling passage.
"My lord, the ice guards are only ten paces from us!" Bane's voice was tense, and the flint knife spun in his hand, its blade reflecting the increasingly close shadows of the ice guards. Illyrio quickly sealed the earthenware jar and tucked the dragonblood crystal into Arya's dagger sheath: "Later, I'll throw the wildfire, and you'll scrape the dragonblood crystal with your dagger, letting the crystal's light guide the wildfire—this way, the wildfire can stick to the ice armor and burn, without being extinguished by the cold."
Arya: The Undercurrent Logic of Tactical Coordination
Arya's grip on the dagger tightened slightly, her fingertips feeling the warmth of the dragonblood crystal in the sheath. She suddenly remembered the "borrowing strength" technique Syrio taught her while practicing swordsmanship in Winterfell—to deal with stronger enemies, one must find the gaps in their points of force. At this moment, the whooshing sound of the ice guards' ice axes was clearly audible. Following Illyrio's instructions, she slid to her left, her gaze fixed on the neck seam of the outermost ice guard—the ice armor there, due to its movement, had a gap wider by half a finger than before.
"Kaya, throw to the front left!" No sooner had Illyrio's shout fallen than a jar of dragonblood wildfire mixed with weirwood shards was thrown towards the chest of the left ice guard. Arya immediately drew her dagger and scraped the dragonblood crystal with the blade. With a crisp "clink," sparks flew onto the wildfire, and an orange-red flame instantly ignited, spreading like a sticky net on the ice armor, creeping along the ice seam towards the neck.
The ice guard roared, swinging its axe at the source of the wildfire, its neck seam completely exposed. Arya seized the opportunity to pounce, but did not stab directly at the neck seam—she remembered Illyrio saying, "There are runes in the ice marrow; stabbing the neck only incapacitates it; to kill it completely, you must destroy the runes." So, she changed the direction of her dagger, following the seam burned open by the wildfire, and stabbed into the ice guard's shoulder blade (the location with the densest runes).
"Well done!" Seeing this, Illyrio immediately threw another jar of wildfire at the middle ice guard, the faint glow of the dragonblood crystal particularly noticeable in the flames. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the faint light at the end of the passage suddenly brighten—Drogon's dragonflame was illuminating the ice layer, and Bran's "surprise attack timing" had arrived.
Illyrio: Tactical Moves Before the Finale
When Drogon's roar echoed through the passage's cracks, the last ice guard had already turned into ice shards. Illyrio bent down to pick up a fragment of dragonblood crystal from the ground and found that, upon contact with the ice shards, the crystal had congealed into tiny red light patterns—this was a signal that "the crystal can absorb the cold god's power," and it also meant that the Night King's ice core would be suppressed by the crystal's power.
"Bane, you take two men and stay here. Pile the ice shards into a barrier." Illyrio distributed the remaining weirwood shards to them. "If you see ice mist surging from outside the passage, light the wood shards—weirwood fire can block the cold and buy us time." He then turned to Kaya: "You follow behind Arya and me, using the remaining wildfire to clear the wights at the passage exit, don't let them block our path to the ice throne."
After setting up the tactics, Illyrio touched the dragonblood vial in his embrace. The warmth of the vial reminded him of Daenerys when she was injured on Dragonstone—at that time, she had smiled and said, "dragonblood can burn away evil," and now it had become the key to breaking the deadlock. He looked up at the end of the passage; Drogon's dragonflame had already stained the ice layer at the exit orange-red, and the outline of the Night King's ice throne was faintly visible.
"Let's go." Illyrio took the first step, gripping the dragonglass short-blade tighter in his hand. Arya followed at his side, the dragonblood crystal on her dagger faintly glowing. Kaya carried the earthenware jar, her footsteps as light as a shadow. The cold in the passage grew heavier and heavier, yet it could not suppress the determination in the eyes of the three—Illyrio knew that as long as they followed the mural's revelation, using dragonblood, dragonglass, and the dragonblood crystal simultaneously to stab the Night King's ice core, Winterfell's desperate situation would find a turning point. And the key to all of this lay in his every next step.