Among the many corpses dressed in gray and black linen, the Flaming Heart cloak covering the body of Ser Clatton Song stood out especially. Dany spotted it at a glance among the hundreds and thousands of stretchers.
"Stannis didn't even deal with the bodies of his own men?" she asked with a frown.
"He left in a hurry, but he didn't forget Ser Song. Before he departed, he asked me to help cremate the body." At this point, Jon's expression became somewhat strange as he looked at Dany.
"Did you forget? Ser Song went to heaven. Or did you forget to call upon the Stranger to guide his soul?" he asked.
Dany froze for a moment before realizing what he meant. When Ser Clatton Song voluntarily dragged the Night King down with him in mutual destruction, he had asked her for an indulgence scroll.
At that time, she truly didn't have a scroll on her.
So she had entered the Stranger state and split off a strand of consciousness to wait for his soul in the world of death.
The result had been utterly unfortunate. The stone tower room still had plenty of space left. Song, Richard, and the Night King had not been crushed to death. Then the forbidden spell appeared, and the Dragon Queen had to focus all her strength on dealing with the Cold God.
Dany felt embarrassed.
Jon had been paying attention to her expression the whole time and immediately understood. Ser Clatton Song had died for nothing.
"Well, this really is…" He glanced back at the stretcher covered by the Flaming Heart cloak, his eyes full of pity and sympathy. "Stannis and the red priestess refused to hold a funeral for him because they believed he would go to heaven. When his soul truly arrives before R'hllor, I'm afraid…"
Dany was filled with guilt. Back then she really should have…
She made up her mind. From now on, wherever she went, she would carry several indulgence scrolls with her just like she carried gold dragons.
"Don't worry. He won't go to R'hllor's hell," the large crow perched atop the stable's wooden door said calmly.
Dany looked at the crow with anticipation. "Did you intervene?"
"I knew nothing about this, and at the time I was busy suppressing the will of the Cold God. How could I have had the time?" the crow shook its head and reminded her, "Ser Song does not believe in R'hllor."
"He's a Flaming Heart knight, so how could he—"
Dany's words stopped abruptly.
She suddenly understood what Bran meant.
At the time, Song had seen the Prince of Prophecy and the red priestess die in battle. The First God King was defeated. R'hllor fled, and the sun was covered by darkness. Because of that, he felt the Lord of Light was not very reliable and believed the Mother of the Seven Kingdoms was more real and more powerful.
What did that mean?
It meant he no longer had faith in R'hllor.
"Well, that's really…" Dany walked to Song's corpse with a strange expression, placing her hand on his chest. The next moment, she entered the Stranger state.
Color vanished. Gray Winterfell lay silent like a ghostly realm. A figure wandered in circles at the city gate like a senile old man.
"Fight the Others, go to heaven. Fight the Others, go to heaven…"
The undead stared blankly, muttering the same sentence over and over.
The short, sturdy body, the bald head, the Flaming Heart cloak. It was unmistakably Ser Clatton Song.
Just as Bran had expected, he had lost his faith in R'hllor, yet his devotion to the Seven was not strong enough to ascend to heaven. Thus he could only dissipate between heaven and earth.
However, when Ser Song died, he carried a deep obsession.
If obsession cannot be fulfilled, it turns into resentment. Resentment nourishes vengeful spirits.
If Dany left him here unattended, Winterfell would be haunted within a few years.
Of course, being an undead spirit in Winterfell was dangerous. Not dangerous for people, but dangerous for the spirit itself.
Jon, Bran, Arya, and Sansa could all deal with it.
"What is she doing? She's been holding her hand on a corpse for almost half an hour," Ygritte stomped her feet and complained. "It's freezing out here. The sooner we burn the bodies, the sooner we can go back to bed. I didn't sleep well last night."
The great crow stared steadily at Song's corpse with its red eyes, silent and motionless.
Jon looked around. The men carrying the bodies were all gathered in the training ground behind the gate. Their faces were flushed red from the cold, and impatience showed in their expressions.
"You should carry the bodies out first and stack the pyres. Once the dragons—"
"Woooong~~~~"
Before Jon could finish speaking, a golden light tore through the dark night sky and descended from above. Within the sacred pillar of light, faint mist-like particles could be seen. A divine general clad in golden armor slowly descended along the beam.
Everyone's eyes widened.
The golden-armored figure's face and attire were far too familiar. They could not help crying out in shock.
"Ser Richard! It's Ser Richard! He… he descended from heaven!"
"Whoosh~~~~"
The holy golden light descended onto Ser Song's corpse. The divine general within the beam touched the body, and both the figure and the light instantly poured into it.
"Ugh—ah!"
Under the astonished yet oddly unsurprised gazes of the crowd, Ser Song's body on the stretcher twitched a few times. He groaned and slowly woke up.
"Is this heaven? It's so beautiful."
Song gazed at the dazzling ice-crystal dome above, completely mesmerized.
"Ahh!"
He suddenly cried out. A large furry face had suddenly leaned in close to him. The distance was too short and the face too ugly, instantly shattering his fantasy of heaven.
Tormund touched Song's gradually warming cheek. "He's really alive? Amazing!"
"Red Heart Knight, this is Winterfell. Didn't you go to heaven?" the wildling asked curiously.
"Winterfell?" Song looked around in confusion. "Didn't I die?"
Suddenly, terror spread across his face.
"Ahhh! I died! I died miserably. I froze to death in the ice. I went to a terrifying world. That wasn't heaven. It was R'hllor's hell! Why didn't I go to heaven? Your Majesty the Queen, you—"
Dany hurriedly interrupted his "nonsense" and said sternly,
"After you died, you went to the Stranger's realm of death. That was not R'hllor's hell. As for why you didn't go to heaven…"
"Alas, the great cause is not yet accomplished. How can one rest in peace?"
"What do you mean?" Ser Song asked blankly.
"The Night King is not dead yet. Your mission is not complete."
Then the Dragon Queen grew solemn and roughly recounted the latter half of the Battle of Winterfell, letting Song understand the severity of the current situation.
In the end she comforted him, saying, "Although you did not go to heaven, like Ser Richard, you have obtained a Silver Holy Cloth bestowed by the Seven Gods."
Song felt somewhat better, but he still muttered, "The Silver Holy Cloth doesn't sound as good as the Golden Holy Cloth."
Pope Dany said seriously, "The power of the Holy Cloth comes from faith in the Seven Gods. As long as you are devout enough, it is common for a Bronze Holy Cloth to shatter a Golden one. Yours is Silver."
There were only twelve sets of Golden Holy Cloths in total, so of course they could not be handed out casually.
Moreover, she was not wrong. Aside from the difference in color, Song's Silver Holy Cloth was no weaker than Richard's Golden Holy Cloth.
Tormund rubbed his hands together and grinned ingratiatingly. "Your Majesty, could you give me a Holy Cloth too? I fought the wights as well. In the Battle of Winterfell the day before yesterday, I killed 146 wights and even half an Other!"
"I can send you to heaven. Would you like that?" Dany asked with amusement.
"If I can come back from heaven and get a Holy Cloth as a bonus, then I'm willing!" Tormund declared righteously, patting his chest.
"You don't believe in the Seven Gods. Without their divine power, you can't activate a Holy Cloth." Dany shook her head.
Tormund looked conflicted. His faith in the Old Gods had never brought any tangible benefits, while the Seven Gods…
"Your Majesty, could you bring my younger brother back to life? He was only fifteen!" A young wildling in his early twenties came before the Dragon Queen and knelt down to beg.
"Your Majesty, please have mercy on my two children. The eldest is only three years old. They cannot live without their father!" a northern woman cried.
"Your Majesty, my mother…"
In a short while, thirty or forty northerners had gathered in front of Dany, all kneeling and pleading for the resurrection of their loved ones.
"They have already gone to heaven, whether it is the heaven of the Seven Gods or the heaven of the Old Gods. That is the best destination.
Would it not be better to let them enjoy sunshine and wine in heaven? What good would resurrection do? What joy is there in life, and what suffering is there in death?" Dany advised loudly.
Aside from the immense cost of resurrection, the defects after being revived were already clearly displayed in the Knight of the Pockmarked Face.
She could still control a small number of resurrected people. But if too many flawed resurrected ones appeared and formed a humanoid race in which yin and yang spiritual essences coexisted within their bodies, the situation would truly become impossible to manage.
After much effort from Dany to console them, and after she voluntarily offered to serve as the priest for the cremation ceremony, she finally persuaded those northerners who missed their loved ones to return.
That night, after the cremation ceremony ended, the Dragon Queen rode the black dragon away from Winterfell and flew north.
Winterfell's main keep, the Stark eldest daughter's bedroom.
"Jeyne, no, close the door, close the door, I'm sorry, Jeyne…" Sansa clutched the feather quilt tightly with both hands, like someone falling off a cliff grasping the last vine.
Theon crouched by the bedside, gently wiping the hot sweat from Sansa's face and forehead with a damp towel.
"She's been like this the whole time?" Arya asked from the foot of the bed, frowning.
"She was fine before. After going downstairs to see Jeyne's body, she's been having nightmares ever since," Theon sighed softly.
"What exactly happened back then?" Jon asked.
"Sansa was terrified. When the white frost fell, I carried her and ran. She kept shouting to close the door. As soon as we entered the crypt, the guards inside locked the main gate. Jeyne was left behind."
Theon's expression dimmed, his face filled with sorrow and guilt. "When we finally calmed down, we realized Jeyne had been shut outside. Her pleading and crying sounded as if it came from another world."
"She always does things she later regrets, and afterward she always regrets them. But what use is regret?" Bran said coldly.
In this bedroom, aside from the dead Robb and Rickon in the Vale, the Stark siblings were gathered together.
Theon counted as well, since he was Ned's foster son and therefore their sworn brother.
If Ned were still alive and saw this "warm" family reunion scene in the room, he would surely smile in the afterlife.
"Bran…" Sansa suddenly opened her eyes. Her beautiful eyes, filled with fear, instantly locked onto the large raven perched on the railing at the foot of the bed. "You finally came to see me."
"I really did not want to see you," Bran said calmly.
"You hate me?" Sansa brushed away Theon's towel, struggled to sit up, and stared straight into the raven's eyes. Her voice was hoarse as she asked, "Where does your resentment toward me come from?"
Theon glanced back and forth between Sansa and the big raven several times, wanting to speak but stopping himself.
Arya's expression remained wooden.
Jon quickly stepped in to smooth things over and said gently, "Sansa, you're overthinking it. Bran didn't mean anything else. He ..."
"Jon, be quiet. I want Bran to say it himself," Sansa said in a low voice, suppressing her anger.
Bran was silent for a moment before saying helplessly, "You are my sister. I love you just as I love Arya and Jon. But you have done, are doing, and will do too many foolish things. I have reason not to like you."
(End of Chapter)
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