The Humiliation of Lyanna Mormont

The Night's King sauntered through the gate, shielded by his reawakened giant. Archers fired arrows at him but the missiles shattered against the cold grey glass of his breastplate. Behind him, a mist of cold spilled out onto the field in thick tendrils that swirled around both men and beast. Any man unlucky enough to breathe in the vapor instantly fell to the wet ground, clutching their throat as if an icy, skeletal hand was choking the breath out of them.

Lyanna's heart raced as she lunged toward the entrance of Winterfell's inner halls, only a stone's throw away. But before she could reach the doors, something caught her mid-air and drew her back. She was confused - how could she be suspended in the sky? Suddenly realization hit her like a mailed fist to the gut. She was not floating, she was being lifted—the giant wight had plucked her out of the air and brought her close to its face dozens of feet from the ground.

“Gods no! Someone please, help me!” The she-bear frantically begged, but everyone around her was too busy fighting off the hordes of undead that she had unleashed into the keep.

In one last desperate attempt to save herself, Lyanna dug into her urine-soaked trousers and retrieved a small dragonglass dagger. It wasn't valyrian steel, or even a mighty axe, but she knew that wights reacted poorly to the touch of obsidian. She swung the blade in front of the giant's bright yellow eyes and something like a look of fear passed over the behemoth's face. The giant roared angrily, the sound as deep and as ominous as a whale's song. With tremendous force, it flung Lyanna to the ground as if she were a burning ember.

The impact from the fall knocked the breath from her lungs, but that pain paled in comparison to when the giant stomped one of its heavy, iron-shod boots down on her hand - the one clutching the obsidian dagger. Her horrified, girlish cries echoed throughout the keep, drawing everyone's attention to her.

When the wights swarmed Winterfell’s courtyard, most of the keep's surviving defenders had found refuge in the castle’s inner walls or scrambled up onto its ramparts. This left them out of reach from the creatures’ icy embrace—but also unable to save Lyanna, who was left alone in the open. All they could do was solemnly watch her scream for help.