Original subtitles

THREE-EYED RAVEN: War did not come to Westeros with men.

ln the dawn of days, the Children of the Forest fought the giants.

But neither race sought to destroy the other.

Or they claim to the continent.

They couldn't.

The Children hunted and fought with dragonglass arrows and spears.

And the giants had only the branches they pulled from trees.

Nor could both races fill more than one

of the Seven Kingdoms of today.

Then the southern deserts coughed up a new race:

the First Men,

who had crossed the Narrow Sea over the Arm of Dorne.

Unlike the Children and the giants,

the First Men lived in huts and villages

and farmed the land to eat.

And there were so many.

As their numbers swelled,

men needed ever more fields and timber.

Of course, they saw that the great forests could provide both.

When they cut into the deep woods, however,

they stumbled on a strange sight:

a white tree with red leaves

and a face staring back at them.

At first, they were afraid.

But the face never spoke.

Even when the ax bit into it.

The First Men didn't know what a weirwood was.

They didn't know that a weirwood grows forever,

if left in peace.

Or that the native Children believed their spirits went into it after death.

The Children had no letters or runes.

All of their history, songs and prayers,

only the trees remembered.

When the Children looked at the cleared fields,

they saw not white stumps,

but their ancestors, now lost forever.

With their bones stolen to line the invaders' walls,

driven mad by grief,

the Children attacked.

The First Men had never seen weirwood.

But the Children had never seen bronze.

Their dragonglass arrows glanced off the First Men's shields.

And their armor of woven bark split beneath the First Men's swords.

As the war raged,

the Children resorted to the one advantage they had:

the magic of their Old Gods.

Their greenseers enlisted direwolves and snow bears,

cave lions and eagles,

mammoths and serpents.

ln return, the First Men cut down and burned

every weirwood they could find,

fearing that the Children would spy on them through the faces in the trees.

The Children became desperate.

Their greenseers called down the hammer of waters,

to break the Arm of Dorne,

destroying the bridge that men crossed into Westeros.

And to flood to the Neck,

to contain men to the south.

But the First Men would not be stopped.

Fearing extinction, the Children combined their powers for one last spell,

that would save their people and their land from the invaders.

By themselves, the Children were too few to resist the onslaught.

But if they could turn men's numbers against them. . .

(WlND HOWLlNG)

After hundreds of years and untold death and destruction,

the wisest heads of the Children and the First Men

finally prevailed.

The Children couldn't win this war.

And the First Men didn't want to win,

fearing the costs of victory.

Heroes and rulers on both sides

met upon an isle in the Gods Eye,

to form the Pact.

The Children gave up all the lands of Westeros, save for the deep forests.

And the First Men swore

that they would no longer cut down the weirwoods.

Thus ended the Dawn Age

and began the Age of Heroes.

Yet after the dawn must come the night.

The great evil that the Children unleashed in the war

returned centuries later.

And only an alliance between the Children and men defeated it.

Now it comes again.

When the Children are a shadow of what they were

and men have long forgotten.

But the trees remember.

And Brandon Stark must learn

or as we watched the First Men,

so will we watch the last.