The battlefield stretched like a bloodstained tapestry beneath the twilight skies, snow painted red by the carnage. Gojo stood in its heart, the wind raking through his white hair. The armies of the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk had come united, a rare coalition bound by fear and rage—but not by truth. They saw Gojo as a monster. A White Walker. The Night's King.

  They didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand.

  He didn’t blame them.

  The wildlings came first—hundreds of them, wrapped in furs, their war cries echoing through the frostbitten woods. Mance Rayder led from the rear, cautious but determined. The Night’s Watch descended shortly after, with their banners of black and grim faces ready to put down the man they thought heralded the end of days. They were wrong, and Gojo had to make them see it.

  But he didn’t have time for words. Not anymore.

  With a slow exhale, Gojo raised his hand and clenched his fist.

  Cursed energy erupted around him, a ripple of raw, malignant force that blasted snow and dirt in every direction. The front line shattered as a wave of invisible force—Red—slammed into men and women alike, sending bodies flying like ragdolls. Screams pierced the night.

  Gojo didn’t relish it. He didn’t revel in it.

  He moved through them like a specter, precise and fluid. His fist shattered shields. His strikes broke bones. Arrows snapped against the curse energy that wreathed him like armor. He dodged spears with effortless grace, countered blades with pinpoint violence.

  But already, he could feel the energy waning. His current reserves were low—he had expended too much exorcising the weirwood-born shikigami across the far North. That last tree had taken more from him than he’d expected.

  He reached into his cloak and pulled out the last preserved finger of the Child of the Forest. Cold and brittle, it pulsed faintly with ancient, foreign cursed energy.

  Gojo grimaced and swallowed it whole.

  The taste was foul—sour, earthy, with something that seared his soul. He stumbled, coughing, body convulsing as two opposing cursed energies collided in his gut. The clash was immediate. His own cursed energy screamed in protest, but the violence of the interaction mimicked reversed cursed energy—just enough to replenish him.

  Power surged through him, raw and unstable. He steadied himself just as a massive shadow loomed.

  A giant—twenty feet tall—rushed him, wielding a log like a club. Gojo vaulted into the air and landed a spinning kick to the giant’s jaw, cursed energy exploding outward. The giant’s head snapped back. It staggered, then toppled with a crash that sent a tremor through the battlefield.

  From the woods, he felt them.

  Wargs.

  Not just beasts, but people bonded to the minds of animals. Men with animal eyes. Greenseers twisted by ancient magics. They came at him in desperation, not to kill but to bind, to hold him for Bloodraven’s schemes.

  One of them—a woman with crow-black eyes and snow-white hair—lunged at him, her hands wrapped in sickly green light. She snarled something in the Old Tongue and slashed at him with a cursed blade.

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  Gojo caught her wrist, twisted, and broke her arm.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  He drove his hand through her chest and tore free her fingers.

  He didn’t wait. He swallowed them whole.

  The cursed energy hit him harder this time. The warg’s bond to animals, her spiritual resonance, mixed violently with his own human cursed energy. He fell to one knee, blood leaking from his nose, his skin cracking with the clash. But the conversion took hold. His strength returned—more volatile than before, but full.

  They would call him a cannibal. They already did.

  Let them.

  He stood again. His aura burned blue and violet, swirling with rage and sorrow. More came at him—Free Folk, some weeping with rage. Brothers of the Watch, gritting their teeth through fear.

  He didn’t hold back now.

  Thirteen streaks of red light screamed from his fingers, each seeking a target, each an eruption of force. Tents exploded. Men were thrown into the air. Swords shattered. Bones snapped. The snow became mud, and the mud became red.

  A bear, controlled by a distant greenseer, charged. Gojo’s hand carved through it with precision. The cursed energy burned away the beast’s borrowed life.

  He could feel them watching. Bloodraven’s spies. The crows. The roots.

  The trees.

  He would burn them all.

  The carnage slowed. Fear was taking root. The armies began to retreat. Some cried out for mercy. Others threw down their weapons and fled.

  Gojo let them run.

  He stood alone amid the corpses, panting, his skin smoldering with cursed backlash. His stomach turned. The taste of blood and cursed flesh still lingered on his tongue.

  He hated this.

  He didn’t want to kill. He didn’t want to consume others.

  But the world was too broken for gentleness now.

  He turned his gaze skyward. The aurora shimmered across the night. So beautiful, and yet beneath it, so much death.

  Somewhere, far away, another weirwood tree pulsed with stolen life. Another soul trapped. Another prison to destroy.

  He would not stop.

  Not until the last candle was unlit.

  Not until the last root was burned.

  Not until no more children were bound to trees, their minds shattered by centuries of servitude.

  He was Gojo Satoru. The strongest.

  "He’s a cannibal!" someone screamed.

  Gojo bit into the hand. It tasted like rotted pine and burnt copper. His stomach churned. His soul screamed. But the cursed energy flooded his core. It clashed with his own, foreign and wild. The conversion began. His veins lit with unnatural power.

  He stood again, blood pouring from his mouth, eyes blazing.

  The earth cracked.

  Red erupted from his palm, thirteen spheres that zipped through the army like comets. Shield walls exploded. The snow turned red. Swords melted. Screams tore the sky.

  The survivors fled.

  He let them go.

  Breathing heavily, he staggered through the carnage. The air stank of burning flesh and blood. His vision swam. Children cried in the distance. Men moaned in agony. He walked among them, eyes low.

  He stopped by a young man with a crushed chest, gasping like a fish on land. Gojo knelt beside him.

  "I’m sorry," he whispered.

  The man spat blood. "You’re a demon."

  "Maybe."

  He stood again. His eyes found a group of wildlings huddled near a broken cart. A mother shielding her child. He turned away. They would live.

  Gojo reached the weirwood tree.

  Its face was twisted in pain. The red sap wept like blood. Inside the bark, the faint outline of a man pulsed with cursed life. No glass candle. Just raw suffering.

  He placed a hand on the tree. Closed his eyes.

  He remembered Geto. The pain in his friend's voice. The despair. Swallowing cursed objects had driven him to madness. And now Gojo walked the same road. Piece by piece, he was losing himself too.

  "I’m sorry I didn’t see your pain," he whispered to the memory.

  Then he stepped back and unleashed Red. The blast incinerated the trunk, the bound soul, and the surrounding snow. Smoke and splinters filled the air.

  When the light faded, only ashes remained.

  A sound cracked across the distance—the Wall groaning. Another fracture.

  Gojo turned and faced the battlefield. The dead lay in heaps. The snow was painted with violence. He had let the survivors flee, but it didn’t change what had happened. Hundreds dead. An army shattered.

  He wasn’t proud of it.

  He was tired.

  He knew Bloodraven had orchestrated this. Had turned men against him. Manipulated their fear. Their religion. Their pain. But Gojo couldn’t stop now.

  He had a mission.