What it means that Bran was touched by the Night King

Potential Spoilers Below

“A marked man - TWOT”

  

“He lurched another step, and the floor gave way beneath him. Desperately he flung out his hands; with a jolt, the right hand caught hold of a rough edge. He dangled into pitch-blackness. The fall beneath his boots might be a few spans into a basement, or a mile for all he could tell. He could latch bands of Air to the jagged rim of the hole above his head to help pull himself out, except... Somehow, Sammael had sensed the relatively small amount of saidin used in the sword. There had been a delay before the lightnings struck, but he could not say how long he had taken killing the Trollocs. A minute? Seconds?

Myrddraal leading Trollocs

With a heave, he swung his left arm up, trying to catch the edge of the hole. Pain no longer buffered by the Void stabbed through his side like a dagger going in. Spots danced in his vision. Worse, his right hand slipped on crumbling stone, and he could feel his fingers weakening. He was going to have to...

A hand grabbed his right wrist. “You are a fool,” a man’s deep voice said. “Count yourself lucky I don’t care to see you die today.” The hand began drawing him up. “Are you going to help?” the voice demanded. “I don’t intend to carry you on my shoulders, or kill Sammael for you.”

Shaking off his shock, Rand reached up and grabbed the rim of the hole, pulling despite the agony of his side. Despite the agony, he managed to acquire the Void again, too, and seize saidin. He did not channel, but he wanted to be ready.

His head and shoulders came above the floor, and he could see the other man, a big fellow little older than he, with hair black as the night and a coat black as an Asha’man’s. Rand had never seen him before. At least he was not one of the Forsaken; those faces he knew. He thought he did, anyway. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Asha'man

The Forsaken

Still heaving, the man barked a laugh. “Just say I’m a wanderer passing through. Do you really want to talk now?”

Saving his breath, Rand struggled upward, getting his chest over the lip, his waist. Abruptly he realized that a glow bathed the floor around them like the glow of a full moon.

Twisting to look over his shoulder, he saw Mashadar. Not a tendril, but a shining silvergray wave rolling out of one of the balconies, arching over their heads. Descending.

Without a thought, his free hand rose, and balefire shot upward, a bar of liquid white fire slicing across the wave sinking toward them. Dimly he was aware of another bar of pale solid fire rising from the other man’s hand that was not clasping his, a bar slashing the opposite way from his. The two touched.”

“Head ringing like a struck gong, Rand convulsed, saidin and the Void shattering. Everything was doubled in his eyes, the balconies, the chunks of stone lying about the floor. There seemed to be a pair of the other man overlapping one another, each clutching his head between two hands.

Blinking, Rand searched for Mashadar. The wave of shining mist was gone; a glow remained in the balconies above, but dimming, receding, as Rand’s eyes began to clear. Even mindless Mashadar fled balefire, it seemed.

Unsteadily, he got to his feet and offered a hand. “I think we best move quickly. What happened there?”

The other man pushed himself up with a grimace at Rand’s proffered hand. He was easily as tall as Rand, rare except among the Aiel. “I don’t know what happened,” he snarled. “Run, if you want to live.” He suited his own words immediately, dashing toward a row of open arches. Not in the nearest wall. Mashadar had come from that one.

Aiel

Fumbling for the Void, Rand limped after him as fast as he could, but before they were completely across the floor, the lightnings fell again, a storm of silver arrows. The two of them darted through the archways pursued by the thunder of walls and floor collapsing behind them, by clouds of dust and a hail of stones. Shoulders hunched and an arm across his face, Rand ran coughing through a broad room where trembling arches supported the ceiling and bits of stone rained down.

He burst out into a street before he knew it, stumbling three steps before stopping. The pain in his side made him want to bend over, but he thought his legs might give way if he did. His wounded foot throbbed; it seemed a year ago that that red wire of Fire and Air had stabbed his heel. His rescuer stood watching him; covered with dust head to toe, the fellow managed to look a king.”

“A marked man - ASOIAF”

Where the Wanderer who marked Rand was there in the flesh; Bran was marked in his weirwood dream similar to Tel’aran’rhiod in TWOT.  Also note that the Wanderer was described as “the fellow manged to look a king”.  To me this is why Bran is marked by the Night King. 

The Night King grabbed Bran's right wrist

The Night King grabbed Bran's right wrist

The Wanderer tells Rand to “Run, if you want to live.” This is exactly what they did and why they did it.

In TWOT whatever happens in Tel’aran’rhiod happens in the real world and vice versa.

Death delivered in the real world

Equals death in the weirwood dream

“What the mark means - TWOT”

“Rand did not want to look toward the left side of the room. The fireplace was there. The stones that formed floor, hearth and columns were warped, as if they had been melted by an extreme heat. At the edges of his vision, they seemed to shift and change. The angles and proportions of the room were wrong. Just as they had been when he’d come here, long ago.

Something was different this time, however. Something about the colors. Many of the stones were black, as if they’d been burned, and cracks laced them. Distant red light glowed from within, as if they had cores of molten lava. There had once been a table here, hadn’t there? Polished and of fine wood, its ordinary lines a discomforting contrast to the distorted angles of the stones?

The table was gone, but two chairs sat before the fireplace, high backed and facing the flames, obscuring whomever might be sitting in them. Rand forced himself to walk forward, his boots clicking on stones that burned. He felt no heat, either from them or the fire. His breath caught and his heart pounded as he approached those chairs. He feared what he would find.

He rounded them. A man sat in the chair on the left. Tall and youthful, he had a square face and ancient blue eyes that reflected the hearthfire, turning his irises almost purple. The other chair was empty. Rand walked to it and sat down, calming his heart and watching the dancing flames. He had seen this man before in visions, not unlike the ones that appeared when he thought of Mat or Perrin.”

“The colors did not appear on this thought of his friends. That was odd, but somehow not unexpected. The visions he’d seen of the man in the other chair were different from the ones involving Perrin and Mat. They were more visceral, somehow, more real. At times during those visions, Rand had felt almost as if he could reach out and touch this man. He’d been afraid of what would happen if he did.

He had met the man only once. At Shadar Logoth. The stranger had saved Rand’s life, and Rand had often wondered who he had been. Now, in this place, Rand finally knew.

“You are dead,” Rand whispered. “I killed you.”

The man didn’t look from the fire as he laughed. It was a rough, low-throated laugh that held little true mirth. Once, Rand had known this man only as Ba’alzamon—a name for the Dark One—and had foolishly thought that in killing him, he had defeated the Shadow for good.

Representation of the Dark One

“I watched you die,” Rand said. “I stabbed you through the chest with Callandor. Isha—”

Callandor

“That is not my name,” the man interrupted, still watching the flames. “I am known as Moridin, now.”

Moridin - translated to death in the Old Tongue

“The name is irrelevant,” Rand said angrily. “You are dead, and this is just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” Moridin said, chuckling. “Yes.” The man was clad in a black coat and trousers, the darkness relieved only by red embroidery on the sleeves.

Moridin finally looked at him. Flames from the fire cast bright red and orange light across his angular face and unblinking eyes. “Why do you always whine that way? Just a dream. Do you not know that many dreams are more truthful than the waking world?”

“You are dead,” Rand repeated stubbornly.

“So are you. I watched you die, you know. Lashing out in a tempest, creating an entire mountain to mark your cairn. So arrogant.”

Lews Therin had—upon discovering that he’d killed all that he loved—drawn upon the One Power and destroyed himself, creating Dragonmount in the process. Mention of this event always brought on howls of grief and anger in Rand’s mind.

Lews Therin

Dragonmount

But this time, there was silence.

Moridin turned back to watch the heatless flames. To the side, in the stones of the fireplace, Rand saw movement. Flickering bits of shadow, just barely visible through the cracks in the stones. The red-hot heat shone behind, like rock turned molten, and those shadows moved, frantic. Just faintly, Rand could hear scratching. Rats, he realized. There were rats behind the stones, being consumed by the terrible heat trapped on the other side. Their claws scratched, pushing through the cracks, as they tried to escape their burning.

Some of those tiny hands seemed almost human.

Just a dream, Rand told himself forcefully. Just a dream. But he knew the truth of what Moridin had said. Rand’s enemy still lived. Light! How many of the others had returned as well? Anger made him grip the armrest of the chair. Perhaps he should have been terrified, but he had stopped running from this creature and his master long ago. Rand had no room left for fear. In fact, it should be Moridin who feared, for the last time they had met, Rand had killed him.

“How?” Rand demanded.

“Long ago, I promised you that the Great Lord could restore your lost love. Do you not think that he can easily recover one who serves him?”

Another name for the Dark One was Lord of the Grave. Yes, it was true, even if Rand wished he could deny it. Why should he be surprised to see his enemies return, when the Dark One could restore the dead to life?

“We are all reborn,” Moridin continued, “spun back into the Pattern time and time again. Death is no barrier to my master save for those who have known balefire. They are beyond his grasp. It is a wonder we can remember them.”

So, some of the others really were dead. Balefire was the key. But how had Moridin gotten into Rand’s dreams? Rand set wards each night. He glanced at Moridin, noticing something odd about the man’s eyes. Small black specks floated about in the whites, crossing back and forth like bits of ash blown on a leisurely wind.

“The Great Lord can grant you sanity, you know,” Moridin said.

“Your last gift of sanity brought me no comfort,” Rand said, surprising himself with the words. That had been Lews Therin’s memory, not his own. Yet Lews Therin was gone from his mind. Oddly, Rand felt more stable—somehow—here in this place where all else appeared fluid. The pieces of himself fit together better. Not perfectly, of course, but better than they had in recent memory.

Moridin snorted softly, but said nothing. Rand turned back to the flames, watching them twist and flicker. They formed shapes, like the clouds, but these were headless bodies, skeletal, backs arching in pain, writhing for a moment in fire, spasming, before flashing into nothing.

Rand watched that fire for a time, thinking. One might have thought that they were two old friends, enjoying the warmth of a winter hearth. Except that the flames gave no heat, and Rand would someday kill this man again. Or die at his hands.

Moridin tapped his fingers on the chair. “Why have you come here?”

Come here? Rand thought, with shock. Hadn’t Moridin brought him?

“I feel so tired,” Moridin continued, closing his eyes. “Is that you, or is it me? I could throttle Semirhage for what she did.”

Semirhage

Rand frowned. Was Moridin mad? Ishamael had certainly seemed crazy, at the end.

“It is not time for us to fight,” Moridin said, waving a hand at Rand. “Go. Leave me in peace. I do not know what would happen to us if we killed one another. The Great Lord will have you soon enough. His victory is assured.”

“He has failed before and will fail again,” Rand said. “I will defeat him.”

Moridin laughed again, the same heartless laugh as before. “Perhaps you will,” he said. “But do you think that matters? Consider it. The Wheel turns, time and time again. Over and over the Ages turn, and men fight the Great Lord. But someday, he will win, and when he does, the Wheel will stop.

“That is why his victory is assured. I think it will be this Age, but if not, then in another. When you are victorious, it only leads to another battle. When he is victorious, all things will end. Can you not see that there is no hope for you?”

“Is that what made you turn to his side?” Rand asked. “You were always so full of thoughts, Elan. Your logic destroyed you, didn’t it?”

“There is no path to victory,” Moridin said. “The only path is to follow the Great Lord and rule for a time before all things end. The others are fools. They look for grand rewards in the eternities, but there will be no eternities. Only the now, the last days.”

He laughed again, and this time there was joy in it. True pleasure.

Rand stood. Moridin eyed him warily, but did not get up.

“There is a way to win, Moridin,” Rand said. “I mean to kill him. Slay the Dark One. Let the Wheel turn without his constant taint.”

Moridin gave no reaction. He was still staring at the flames. “We are connected,” Moridin finally said. “That is how you came here, I suspect, though I do not understand our bond myself. I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement.”

Rand felt a flash of anger, but fought it down. He would not be goaded. “We shall see.”

He reached for the One Power. It was distant, far away. Rand seized it, and felt himself yanked away, as if on a line of saidin. The room vanished, and so did the One Power, as Rand entered a deep blackness.”

“What the mark means - ASOIAF”

So, if the pattern holds true between the two books series the marks will mean the same thing with some things being flipped 180 degrees.  IMO one of the flips is a representation of this quote: In fact, it should be Moridin who feared, for the last time they had met, Rand had killed him.  Before the old three-eyed crow died he told Bran “The Time has come for you to become me”.  I believe the position of the three-eyed crow to be similar to a position like a General in an army.  If one General retires or dies another steps in to take his place.  The flip comes because it was the Night King who killed the three-eyed crow and by virtue of the position you could place Bran’s name there now.  So, in essence he did kill Bran the last time they met.   

Bran looking upon his own face

This also means that Bran and the Night King are connected and since he can see and track Bran the reverse should also hold true.  I don’t think he knows this yet but when he does I believe he will make several attempts to try and reason with him in the world of dreams/visions.

“Rand would be helpless - TWOT”

“I will leave orders for the Aes Sedai and Asha’man, Aviendha. Ituralde leads our troops, but you command our channelers at Shayol Ghul. You must keep the enemy from entering the cavern after me. You are my spear in this battle. If they reach me while I am in the cavern, I will be helpless. What I must do will take all of me—all of my concentration, every scrap of power I have. I’ll be like a babe lying in the wilderness, defenseless against the beasts.”

“And how is this different from how you usually are, Rand al’Thor?” she asked.

He laughed. It felt good to be able to both see and feel that smile. “I thought you said this wasn’t a time for levity.”

“Someone must keep you humble,” Aviendha said. “It would not do for you to think yourself something grand, simply because you save the world.” He laughed again, leading her up to the tent where Min was. Nynaeve and Moiraine waited there, too, one with annoyance on her face, the other serenity. Nynaeve looked very odd with her hair not long enough to braid. Today, she’d pulled it up and pinned it back.”

Moiraine

“Bran is helpless - ASOIAF”

Where Rand tells Aviendha that  “I’ll be like a babe lying in the wilderness, defenseless against the beasts”; Bran himself is just as helpless when the White Walkers and Wights enter the cave of the three-eyed crow.  Bran doesn’t ask but Meera is his Aviendha.

Meera crying because she can't pull Bran any further

The wilderness

Helpless

The beasts

“How Rand enters cavern - TWOT”

“The cavern was a set of jaws, slowly tightening on its prey. Rand’s head brushed the tip of a stalactite, and Nynaeve crouched down, looking upward and cursing softly.

“No,” Rand said, stopping. “I will not come to you on my knees, Shai’tan.”

The cavern rumbled. The cavern’s dark reaches seemed to press inward, pushing against Rand. He stood motionless. It was as if he were a stuck gear, and the rest of the machine strained to keep turning the hands on the clock. He held firm.

The rocks trembled, then retreated. Rand stepped forward, and released a breath as the pressure lessened.”

“How Bran enters cavern - ASOIAF”

“The light dwindled again. Small as she was, the child-who-was-not-a-child moved quickly when she wanted. As Hodor thumped after her, something crunched beneath his feet. His halt was so sudden that Meera and Jojen almost slammed into his back.

Hodor

Jojen

“Bones,” said Bran. “It’s bones.” The floor of the passage was littered with the bones of birds and beasts. But there were other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

Children of the Forest

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

“Do we have to cross?” Bran asked, as the Reeds came sliding down behind him. The prospect frightened him. If Hodor slipped on that narrow bridge, they would fall and fall.

“No, boy,” the child said. “Behind you.” She lifted her torch higher, and the light seemed to shift and change. One moment the flames burned orange and yellow, filling the cavern with a ruddy glow; then all the colors faded, leaving only black and white. Behind them Meera gasped. Hodor turned.”

Note:  (In the books) Where Rand was able to use his will to force the cavern to open to accommodate his walking in standing upright the reverse is said of Bran as Hodor had to make the descent on his arse.

“Rand is full of emotion - TWOT”

“He wanted so badly to protect them, the people who believed in him. Their deaths, and the danger they faced, were an enormous weight upon him. How could a man just ... let go? Wasn’t that letting go of responsibility?

Or was it giving the responsibility to them?

Rand squeezed his eyes shut, thinking of all those who had died for him. Of Egwene, whom he had sworn to himself to protect.

You fool. Her voice in his head. Fond, but sharp.

“Egwene?”

Am I not allowed to be a hero, too?

“It’s not that . .

You march to your death. Yet you forbid anyone else from doing so?

“I . . ”

Let go, Rand. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.

You have embraced your death. Embrace mine.

Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Why?

“I’ve failed.”

No. Not yet you haven’t.

The Dark One flayed him. He huddled before that vast nothingness, unable to move. He screamed in agony.

And then, he let go.

He let go of the guilt. He let go of the shame for having not saved Egwene and all the others. He let go of the need to protect her, to protect all of them.

He let them be heroes.”

“Bran is without emotion - ASOIAF”

Rand could not let go of his emotion when it came to those he cared about and were dying for him.  Bran on the other hand seems to be completely emotionless.  It appears that he has already “let go”.  It seems that in ASOIAF the opposite will be true and most likely it will be Bran who eventually tells them that the sacrifices that they make are their choices and their responsibilities.

“Rand pieces it together - TWOT”

“Rand faced the Dark One in that place that was not, surrounded by all time and nothing at the same time. His body still stood in the cave of Shayol Ghul, locked into that moment of battle against Moridin, but his soul was here.

He existed in this place that was not, this place outside of the Pattern, this place where evil was born. He looked into it, and he knew it. The Dark One was not a being, but a force—an essence as wide as the universe itself, which Rand could now see in complete detail. Planets, stars in their multitudes, like the motes above a bonfire.”

The Wheel of Time
Notice the spiral pattern - it represents the great seven-spoked cosmic loom that weaves the Great Pattern, using the lives of people as threads

“A pitiful object. Suddenly, Rand felt as if he were holding not one of the primal forces of existence, but a squirming thing from the mud of the sheep pens.

YOU REALLY ARE NOTHING, Rand said, knowing the Dark Ones secrets completely. YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE GIVEN ME REST AS YOU PROMISED, FATHER OF LIES. YOU WOULD HAVE ENSLAVED ME AS YOU WOULD HAVE ENSLAVED THE OTHERS. YOU CANNOT GIVE OBLIVION. REST IS NOT YOURS. ONLY TORMENT.”

“The Dark One trembled in his grip.

YOU HORRIBLE, PITIFUL MITE, Rand said.

Rand was dying. His lifeblood flowed from him, and beyond that, the amount of the Powers he held would soon burn him away.

He held the Dark One in his hand. He began to squeeze, then stopped.

He knew all secrets. He could see what the Dark One had done. And Light, Rand understood. Much of what the Dark One had shown him was lies.

But the vision Rand himself had created—the one without the Dark One—was truth. If he did as he wished, he would leave men no better than the Dark One himself.

What a fool I have been.

Rand yelled, thrusting the Dark One back through the pit from where it had come. Rand pushed his arms to the side, grabbing twin pillars of saidar and saidin with his mind, coated with the True Power drawn through Moridin, who knelt on the floor, eyes open, so much power coursing through him he couldn’t even move.

Rand hurled the Powers forward with his mind and braided them together. Saidin and saidar at once, the True Power surrounding them and forming a shield on the Bore.

He wove something majestic, a pattern of interlaced saidar and saidin in their pure forms. Not Fire, not Spirit, not Water, not Earth, not Air. Purity. Light itself. This didn’t repair, it didn’t patch, it forged anew.

With this new form of the Power, Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.

He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.

It never had been.”

“When Bran pieces it together - ASOIAF”

When Bran finally pieces everything together he will come to a similar conclusion as does Rand; the COTF would enslave both mankind as well as the Others?  He will learn that everything that they have been saying are nothing more than lies.

He is still trying to put everything together

I believe that the Bran’s enemy will not truly be the Night King but the Children of the Forest that are enthroned in the weirwood trees in the cave of the three-eyed crow.  It is they who I believe are the source of all the visions that have given in the name of religion to get men to destroy themselves as well as have them remove the Others from the board for good measure while they are at it.

Is this not a White Walker representation of the Wheel of Time?
It is using the lives of dead people as its threads

“Why the COTF are doing what they are doing - ASOIAF”

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

Leaf

“Gone down into the earth,” she answered. “Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well. It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.”

“As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. “Hodor,” Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.”

So Bran found a chamber full of singers (Children of the Forest) who were enthroned like Brynden.  What does that mean?  I believe that they are also greenseers but somehow they have shielded themselves from the gaze of “The Last Greenseer” Brynden, the three-eyed crow.

So if this is the case what is their goal?  I believe Maester Luwin summed it up best while dying when he said “White Harbor . . . the Umbers . . . I do not know . . . war everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor, and winter coming . . . such folly, such black mad folly . . .”  I believe that this is their way of fighting back and killing the way Bran said men would behave if fighting eradication.  I believe that they have been using religions and visions to get men to fight each other.  In my opinion it seems to be working as right now men are fighting each other in the name of their “gods” to the point it is about to start a world war.

Will Bran do something similar with Dawn now in the hands of the Night King as Rand did with Moridin?

Could what Jon Snow discovered in the cave be a representation of this quote: Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.  Will it have something to do with how Bran stops the COTF greenseers?

Is the man sitting in the chair an astronaut?
He appears to be sitting in a chair surrounded by the planetary bodies.

The Wheel of Time representation again

These guys sort of look like spacemen.
What if man came from the stars and made this their home

What I believe to be the "Big Lie"

In an Entertainment Weekly interview the actor Isaac Hempstead Wright, who plays Bran, was quoted as saying: "Bran really at this stage is not the Three-Eyed Raven," Wright said. "He’s got the title but hasn’t had thousands of years of sitting in a cave looking through time. Somebody put in front of him a massive encyclopedia of all of time and he’s only opened page one. He can look stuff up but doesn’t have this all-knowing all-seeing capability just yet.”

To me the line about not having had thousands of years sitting in a cave looking through time is speaking of the COTF that Bran discovered in the cave of the three-eyed crow while exploring as Hodor.  If not that then he is speaking of traveling back thousands of years into the past and living out his life to learn all he needs for the upcoming “Great War”. 

“The drawbacks from the touch - TWOT”

“Moridin turned back to Rand, another knife in his left hand. Rand raised Callandor to strike Moridin down.

Moridin dropped his sword, and stabbed his own right hand with the knife. Rand twitched suddenly, and Callandor dropped from his grip as if his hand somehow hurt from Moridin’s attack.

The glow emanating from the blade winked out, and the crystalline blade rang as it hit the ground.”

“Moridin scooped Callandor up off the floor. It burst alight with the One Power.

Rand stumbled away, holding his aching hand to his chest. Moridin laughed, raising the weapon high. “You are mine, Lews Therin. You are finally mine! I . . .” He trailed off, then looked up at the sword, perhaps in awe. “It can amplify the True Power. A True Power sa’angreal? How? Why?” He laughed louder.

A maelstrom churned about them.

“Channeling the True Power is death here, Elan!” Rand yelled. “It will burn you to a cinder!”

“It is oblivion!” Moridin yelled. “I will know that release, Lews Therin.

I will take you with me.”

The sword’s glow turned a violent crimson. Rand could feel the power emanating from Moridin as he drew in the True Power.

This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Min had figured it out. Callandor had such flaws, such incredible flaws. Created so that a man using it needed women to control him, created so that if Rand used it, others could take control of him ...”

“The drawbacks from the touch - ASOIAF”

This is the perfect place for a 180-degree shift.  In ASOIAF we will see the Night King attempt to strike down Bran like he did with the previous three-eyed crow.  Will we see Bran, knowing of the connection like Moridin did in TWOT, stab at his own hand and rendering the Night King helpless and do what Rand ultimately did to Moridin in TWOT (Game of Thrones style)?

“Endgame - TWOT”

“Rand slipped on his blood.

He couldn’t see. He carried something. Something heavy. A body. He stumbled up the tunnel.

Closing, he thought. It’s closing The ceiling lowered like a shutting jaw, stone grinding against stone. With a gasp, Rand reached open air as the rocks slammed down behind him, locking together like clenched teeth.

Rand tripped. The body in his arms was so heavy. He slipped to the ground.

He could . . . see, just faintly. A figure kneeling down beside him. “Yes,” a woman whispered. He did not recognize the voice. “Yes, that’s good. That is what you need to do.”

He blinked, his vision fuzzy. Was that Aiel clothing? An old woman, with gray hair? Her form retreated, and Rand reached toward her, not wanting to be alone. Wanting to explain himself. “I see the answer now,” he whispered. “I asked the Aelfinn the wrong question. To choose is our fate. If you have no choice, then you aren’t a man at all. You’re a puppet . . .” Shouting.

Rand felt heavy. He plunged into unconsciousness.”

“I’ve tried everything,” a voice whispered. Damer Flinn’s voice. “Nothing changes what is happening. He—”

“It’s not fair,” Nynaeve whispered. “Why should he die, when the other one gets better?”

“Rand al’Thor—just Rand al’Thor—woke in a dark tent by himself. Someone had left a candle burning beside his pallet.

He breathed deeply, stretching. He felt as if he’d just slept long and deep. Shouldn’t he be hurting? Stiff? Aching? He felt none of that.

He reached to his side and felt no wounds there.”

“No wounds. For the first time in a long while, there was no pain. He almost didn’t know what to make of it.

Then he looked down and saw that the hand prodding his side was his own left hand. He laughed, holding it up before him. A mirror, he thought.

I need a mirror.

He found one beyond the next partition of the tent. Apparently, he’d been left completely alone. He held up the candle, looking into the small mirror. Moridin’s face looked back at him.

Rand touched his face, feeling it. In his right eye hung a single saa, black, shaped like the dragon’s fang. It didn’t move.”

“Moridin, he thought. He’s being cremated with full honors as the Dragon Reborn.”

“The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had finally begun to put forth buds.

The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was an ending.”

Note: Rand in the body of Moridin walks away from it all as a new man.

“Endgame - ASOIAF”

Bran acting instinctively does what comes to him as naturally as breathing.  He reaches out with his mind and then everything goes black.  When he awakens he breathes deeply and he stretches.  Wait his legs moved; but how could that be.  He stands and almost doesn’t know what to make of it.  He walks over to a pool of standing water and peers at his reflection, his eyes are blue and he is wearing armor; he laughs to himself.  He turns around and see’s his old body; an old shriveled up old man enshrined in the Winterfell Weirwood tree; dead and lifeless.  “Father always said the weirwood was the heart of Winterfell,” he said  his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake.  He would have to get used to that.  “Does that mean that Winterfell is dead?”, he felt a sadness at that thought for this had been his home for so long.  Bran dies yet again in the crypts of Winterfell and this time I believe he gets his humanity back.

He wonders where Jon, being the new three-eyed crow, would make his home.  See The time has come for you to become me for more on that theory.  Would he take up residence in the Winterfell Weirwood tree or would he choose another?  He reaches out with his mind and tells all the Others to return to the Land of Always Winter, the fight is over.  Being the Night King now he wouldn’t have to explain himself.  Like every house in the Seven Kingdoms the Others are no better than the leader of its House.  He would try and make them better.  But even he would not live forever but he was leaving the world in good hands in his cousin; no Jon would always be his brother.  They would no doubt speak in the years to come but for now “It was his turn to become me!” 

Winterfell seen from the air - Weirwood tree on right

Land of Always Winter

The Night King uses a secret back entrance that he, as Bran, had had built all those years ago when the Crypts were first built.  When he reaches the exit, he knew winter would be receding; men would now experience “A Dream of Spring”.

The quote – To choose is our fate.  If you have no choice, then you aren’t a man at all.  You’re a puppet…  Shouting – Is that what the Others felt?  Were they just puppets to be controlled and they were simply trying to cut their strings?  Well Bran had banished the COTF for now but they could come again one day; but that is a story for another to tell.

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the ideas of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.