The Wall loomed like a broken colossus, its once unbroken spine now fractured. A single massive section had collapsed—like a wound the land itself had been waiting to open.

  Gojo stood before it, snow gathering at his feet, white wind cutting across his coat. He exhaled slowly, watching his breath curl into the frigid air like smoke.

  "Only one section…" he muttered, tilting his head. "Of course. Nothing is ever easy in this world."

  The break had occurred behind the Night’s Fort, the oldest and most cursed of the Wall’s ancient castles. Of all the possible places, it had to be this one. Gojo’s eyes narrowed, his senses stretching outward. The cursed energy here was thick—older than bones, woven into the ice and stone like veins of pain.

  "This is where the Night’s King ruled," he thought aloud, walking forward.

  The Night’s Fort stood like the shadow of a forgotten memory. Its towers were crumbling, its halls sunken, and yet it breathed with something ancient and unnatural. Cursed energy pooled here, not wild and malevolent like in the south, but cold and precise—disciplined. Controlled. Bound.

  Gojo moved through the ruined halls, his boots echoing on stone slick with frost. Down he went, deeper into the bowels of the fortress, guided by that familiar tug of cursed energy, like a hound following the scent of a ghost.

  Eventually, he found it.

  The Black Gate.

  It stood massive and silent—an arch of black wood embedded into the icy wall, its center filled with a heavy door carved into the shape of a face. Its eyes were closed, lips sealed in stone slumber. Despite its silence, Gojo could feel the raw hum of power within.

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  "A cursed tool," he murmured, stepping closer.

  He reached out, letting his fingers hover just above the surface. The cursed energy was unlike anything else he’d felt in this world. It folded in on itself. It compressed space. He recognized the technique, or at least the intent behind it.

  "It moves people across space. A teleportation gate," he whispered. "One that only opens for those of Stark blood… or something bound to it."

  Gojo's lips curled into a half-smile. "I never had time to make one of these back home. No one could use limitless without the six eyes anyway"

  He didn’t hesitate.

  With a flick of his wrist and a sharp pulse of cursed energy, Gojo broke the Black Gate. The face split open with a groaning crack, and beyond it, darkness spilled like water. Not metaphorical darkness—true dark, the kind untouched by stars or fire.

  He stepped through.

  What lay beyond was not a cave. Not a crypt. Not a secret passage.

  It was a throne room.

  The chamber was massive, carved entirely into black stone and half-frozen over. A throne of ancient weirwood sat upon a dais, tangled with vines that had long since petrified. And slumped upon that throne was a skeleton, robed in crumbling furs, its bones etched with cursed energy like runes.

  Around him—glass candles.

  Thousands of them.

  Some burned with eerie flame. Some were cracked. All of them pulsed with ancient power.

  Gojo walked forward slowly, the cursed energy radiating from the skeleton pricking his skin.

  He looked down at the figure.

  This was no peaceful death. There was agony still lingering in the bones. The resentment clung like a shroud. Gojo could see the cause—a glass candle, lit and pulsing, stabbed straight through the skull.

  "Who were you?" Gojo whispered. "A king? A prisoner?"

  He could feel it. This man had once ruled. He had once burned with vision and power. And now, he was a conduit for pain. For memory. For a curse that spanned generations.

  Gojo reached for the candle.

  As his fingers closed around it and he pulled it free, the cursed energy screamed.

  And then the visions began. The visions of bran the builder.