LOS ANGELES—Shedding light on the much-rumored events of the upcoming eighth and final season, a newly released teaser for the wildly popular HBO series of Game Of Thrones that aired Monday centered around the image of a cackling, power-mad George R.R. Martin burning the completed manuscript of Winds Of Winter. “This season is finally going to give fans much-needed confirmation that George R.R. Martin will, in fact, finish his long-awaited sixth novel in the A Song Of Ice And Fire series, only to rip it apart and feed it into a blazing fire, page by page,” said fan Bennett Mills, recounting the incredible attention to detail evident in the brief, barely legible glimpses of dialogue between Arya and Sansa Stark right before the pages were engulfed by flames. “This completely changes my expectations. I’m such a huge fan that I’m pretty much game for whatever they have in store—and, honestly, the trailer is packed full of hints about the crazed tyrannical author bringing about swift and crushing destruction this season. It was a pretty blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment, so you might have to watch it a couple times to catch the part where he feeds the final 400 pages into an industrial paper shredder. It happens fast, but it’s instantly recognizable to any true fan of the show.” At press time, Game Of Thrones fans were attempting to decode the meaning of the opening shot of the trailer, which showed Martin stuffing the first three pages of the manuscript in his mouth before urinating on the rest.

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