A new poster for the upcoming third season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been released, offering a date for the premiere of the new season etched in stone (or ice?).

The poster is fairly plain, showing only a date with a trio of swords through one of the zeroes, but still…it’s confirmation of the date we can expect our favorite fantasy series back and the first step to getting to that date. It’s all images, trailers, and anticipation from here, friends.

Check out the poster for season 3 of Game of Thrones below now.

This season will be an interesting one, to say the least. This year we’re into the third book in George R.R. Martin‘s incredible “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series, A Storm of Swords, and it’s a big one.

In fact, it was once said that HBO was considering shooting season 3 and season 4 back-to-back, devoting both to this one book. That was never confirmed, but it is now known that this season will only cover the first half of the book. It’s very, very unlikely they would do this without a guarantee to finish at least this book with season 4, even if they have to film it later than hoped.

Show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are dedicated to taking as much time and care to tell Martin’s story as is needed, and HBO has said they’ll make the show as long as Martin wishes to, but we’ve seen numbers fall and series ended early before.

We can only hope that the numbers Game of Thrones has pulled in in previous seasons continue to not only remain significant, but grow and grow and grow.

Poster

[Source: The Live Feed]