The visions came in waves—unrelenting, drowning Gojo’s senses in forgotten time.

  He stood not in a cold, crumbling throne room now, but in a younger Westeros—one carved by flame and frost, where the sky was darker and the land still wept from the war between gods and men. Gojo wasn’t himself anymore. He saw through the eyes of a boy with dark hair, mud-streaked skin, and a spear of dragonglass clenched in hand.

  Bran the Builder.

  He watched Bran fight—furiously, desperately. White Walker shikigami fell under his spear, each one shattering like glass beneath obsidian. The wights swarmed from the forests, hollow-eyed and silent, relentless like cursed spirits summoned by grief itself. Gojo could feel Bran’s desperation, not just for himself—but for his family.

  He saw Bran’s sister swallowed in snow, his father impaled and made a wight. His mother, taken by a moon-pale walker and turned into something that should not have lived.

  Bran had cried for days in a cave, with only the wind for company. Gojo could feel the hollow ache in his chest, the silent scream.

  The sky had changed.

  The moon grew vast, unnatural, covering the sky like an eye. Night lasted for months. Fires died. Crops withered. Madness took hold in men’s hearts. It was the Long Night in truth—a blanket of eternal cold pulled tight across Westeros.

  Until one day…

  The moon retreated.

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  Not into the heavens, but north. Like a beast that had its fill.

  In the aftermath, Bran found them—the Children of the Forest.

  They were not friends. Not at first. But Bran, still a boy, demanded answers with blood on his spear and death behind his eyes. The Children, older than language, listened. They too had lost. The Long Night had not spared their kind.

  A pact was made.

  Not one of peace, but of necessity.

  From this pact, House Stark was born—half man, half myth. And in return, Bran learned green magic. The power to see, to shape, to build using weir wood trees.

  The Wall was his penance. His masterpiece.

  And his curse.

  Gojo watched Bran as he laid the foundations, as the Children taught him to twist roots and ice and blood into structure. But the magic needed sacrifice. That was the price. Every time the weirwood trees screamed, Bran screamed with them.

  They crucified people—living people—to those trees. Men. Women. Children. Then froze them into the Wall, binding the structure with their blood and suffering.

  Gojo’s stomach twisted.

  Bran tried to protest. Once. Twice. But every time he did, the moon would shift in the sky. The White Walkers would stir in the far north. The Children reminded him: this is the only way.

  The children told bran that blood is magic. And for the wall to stand it needed a source of constant blood flow.

  Thus bran created The First Night.

  When smallfolk married, their lords would bed the bride first—ensuring that noble blood, infused with green magic, would spread. These royal bastards, born of stolen nights and silence, were abandoned in nature where then the Children of the forest, sacrificed to the wall before they could speak. Others were sent to the Wall—told they had purpose, given black cloaks and empty oaths. There they would fight a war that was never meant to end. And their bloods would fuel the wall and its magic.

  If they ran?

  They were hunted. Executed. Their blood would be dripped into a weir wood tree.

  Bran hated himself. But he told himself it was worth it. That a thousand deaths were better than the return of the moon and the endless night.

  The Old Ways, they called it.

  Not tradition. Not heritage.

  A machine. Of magic. Of fear. Of endless blood.