Beside her Ghost comes to attention.
When the man decides to show himself Sansa has just come out of the crypts where she has left the handful remaining children of Winterfell.
All the surrounding area had become quiet, too quiet, and that is the main reason for Sansa's stillness. The way how even the frozen white winds silenced their unforgiving howling when faced with the existence of this man was not normal.
He looked healthy. When it has been perhaps a year since anyone was able to eat for two days in a row. Besides the Others, the endless darkness and cold, the Long Night had brought along hunger for the living.
He was unlike the Others but Sansa didn't know the purpose of this creature and that made him dangerous. This other was neither a white walker, a giant or one of the children of the forest. This entity belonged to an entirely different class.
He had magic, powerful magic.
You could see it from the way he looked, with a crimson silk shirt that showed his muscled chest despite the freezing, howling blizzard that was ever present and always baying for any warmth it could steal, to the way his deep black hair looked as if it was absorbing the night they were standing in. It could be understood from the way how this creature was radiating heat to the way the unnatural colour of his eyes.
Eyes which were watching Sansa with boredom. With the surety of knowing Sansa everything she has done and will do, and being certain that he had the power to halt if it didn't please him.
That wouldn't do.
After surviving the King's landing, surviving Joffrey, Cersei, Baelish and Ramsay and fighting against the Night King and this endless winter for years and spitefully clinging to life with her fingertips Sansa would be damned if she got killed in her castle because she was predictable.
Not when she hadn't taken vengeance upon that bastard and his walkers.
Ghost's massive body is crouching in front of her ready to pounce, lips drawn back in a silent snarl to reveal deathly sharp teeth.
The savage beast inside her chest that has been snarling since Arya, her little sister, her last sibling, perished at the hands of white walkers finally stops and pays attention to something other than destroying each and any walker that could reach.
Sansa relaxes whatever pitiful amount of muscles has been left from hunger and readies herself.
Sansa is not a warrior like her elder brothers had been. Robb and Jon had both the authority, charisma, power and skill in sword to be able to lead an army successfully. They were both accomplished warriors. She is not a talented marksman like Brandon nor she can wave and pick through enemy lines like Arya. She doesn't have Rickon's gift with spears either but that is okay.
Sansa has got her mind which has been sharpened by years of imprisonment and torture, a pair of hands that have been badly torn while dealing with blades and bows; years of experience of war, of fighting against foes well-nigh impossible to kill. Above all, she has her silent protector, Jon's last gift, and her last family, with her.
"Your highness" there is a sarcastic tone to his melodious voice that makes Sansa's jaw clench.
"You will show respect!" Sansa does not raise her voice. She doesn't need to raise it to show either authority or the warning that comes from it.
"Will I?" There is a dangerous tilt in the voice under disinterest and boredom.
"You will respect the Queen of North and Lady of Winterfell." She might not be something in the eyes of this entity nor does he have to show any regard to her as Sansa but the position of Winter Queen was different.
It was a position her family had carried for thousands of years. Even in their starved, bartered and bruised condition, her people had shown reverence to the last Stark. They had put their trust and hopes in this crown. She would not let anyone alive or dead, human or other show discourtesy to this crown, not when it was the last hour of its existence.
"Hmmm…" There was a fliting light in his eyes she couldn't name. Then the words out of his mouth made her put those thoughts aside.
"Do you want Dawn?"
Sansa doesn't know how this entity got inside Winterfell's walls not when they are about to be breached by rotten death that has been endlessly crashing against the colossal, monolithic leaden walls of Winterfell, unending wights that destroy and decimate and torment the living without knowing fatigue or hunger. She only gives a damn about the words coming out of his mouth.
"Is that not what we all want?"
There is a sarcastic tilt to the man's mouth. "I have asked the same question to other people, other Kings and Queens. They have all said the same thing but at the end of it none of them was willing to pay the necessary price for it."
Here the look in his eyes makes Sansa freeze. It is Ancient and Sancrosant, it makes her feel like a little girl facing the heart tree for the first time.
"From the five, Brandon has built, only his home still stands. It has been some time since that Targaryen girl lost two of her dragons to ice and death and fled Westeros in the back of the last one." His tone is uncaring like he is not aware of the horrifying news he delivered. " The white walkers created great ıcebergs that have already carried more than half of their army across the narrow sea. Lorath, Pentos and Bravos have succumbed under their cursed feet. There is a handful of survivors from the Three daughters, half of the Empire of Yi-Ti has already been ravaged."
"What do you want?" Sansa asks with the same sharp tone she demanded respect, there is a snarl to it, sharp-clawed and ready to tear apart, the wrath of a wounded wolf, backed into a corner.
"What are you willing to give for the victory of life, Sansa of House Stark?" the man asks his unnatural eyes shining in the darkness of the Long Night. " What are you willing to sacrifice?" his voice layered with a thousand different other voices reaching through his mouth. "Oh, the last descendant of Heroes?"
Sansa looks at the entity and thinks about dawn, of brothers willing to fight against the monsters under her bed, of brothers bringing miscellaneous things as gifts and keepsakes, of lemon cakes and petty fights and finds her answer very easily. "Anything, everything."
"We heard you Brandon's blood. We heard you Queen of North. you will burn, burn with the old gods you worshipped and spark a fire bright and warm enough to chase the wights and their undead commanders, and when you have finished burning the world will go back to years ago before House of Stark crumbled at the south."
There is a cascade of voices echoing through his mouth "Your siblings and parents are going to awaken with the knowledge of what is coming, but you won't be there either in their lives or their memories. Your soul will burn and crumble from the moment it was first created." then the atmosphere returned to the silence the entity had brought.
For a single moment, there is a knife digging at her heart, a chuckle escapes her throat her eyes burning. It has been years since she last had hope, and even longer years since someone dangled it in front of her eyes and then snatched it away.
Sansa first takes a deep breath and gives a single sharp nod to this man.
The man turns and moves without saying a single thing, Sansa after him and her ever-loyal shadow, Ghost, beside her. It doesn't take them too much time to reach Godswood than the Heart tree. They have collected women and men on their way, curious about who this stranger is and why their queen is following him but there are no questions asked.
"Strip." The man stops before the heart tree and beacons her. Her cloak goes first, then her blade and silver cuirass and it doesn't take much time to strip out of the Stark grey and white dress from her half-starved body. Her red hair is hanging limply behind her, the only thing sheltering her from both the cold and the gazes of her people.
Ghost's warm body is there with her every step of the way and he is there again when she strides past to man and stands in front of the Heart tree her ancestors have been worshipping for several millennia.
She can feel the anger of her gods through the Heart tree of her back, she can feel Ghost's unwillingness and anguish and her own emotions becoming a noose around her will.
Before long the man is there with a wreath made of winter roses and weirwood leaves and put it on her head, and then he is stepping back and talks in a language foreign to her but makes the old gods wrathful.
In the end, there is heat and fire and agony she has never even dreamed of.
And that is how the last Stark dies.
That is how the line of Winter monarchs comes to end.
The Queen of Winter gives her last breath with her gods on her back, her last family in her arms, her crown in her head and the desperate hope for victory in her very soul.