MELISANDRE

Before dawn, Melisandre keeps vigil by ever-burning fires, praying to see Stannis’s path but instead glimpsing ominous visions: eyeless faces, skulls, and Jon Snow surrounded by death. She seeks the grey girl on a dying horse and senses a wooden, corpse-white face with red eyes and a boy with a wolf’s face, unsettling portents she cannot dismiss.

She reflects on Devan Seaworth’s service and her diminished but still potent tools, then summons the wildling believed to be Rattleshirt. Warning him to keep his bone armor to support the glamor, she predicts rangers returning “with their blind and bloody eyes,” naming the Weeper’s signature. A horn announces rangers’ return.

Outside the Wall, Jon Snow and black brothers find three rangers’ severed, eyeless heads on spears: Black Jack Bulwer, Hairy Hal, and Garth Greyfeather. Jon orders the heads burned and speaks with Melisandre, who warns that a heavier blow will fall at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, though timing is unclear. Jon leads her back through Castle Black as men press for news.

In Melisandre’s chambers, the wildling in bones demands horses and spearwives to rescue the grey girl, whom Melisandre claims is Jon’s sister. Jon refuses to trust Rattleshirt and threatens his life if he leaves without leave. Melisandre then dismisses Devan and speaks a word over her ruby; the glamor falls, revealing the man as Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall.

Melisandre explains the sorcery—glamors woven from light and anchored by relics like bones—and reminds Jon she saved Mance from Stannis’s fire by substituting Rattleshirt. She argues that Mance, owing his life and with his son held, can do what the Watch cannot: lead spearwives to retrieve the grey girl while Jon keeps his vows. She presents Mance as Arya’s deliverance, a gift of the Lord of Light.