Each day began the same.
Wake up. Destroy a white walker shikigami. Find its weirwood anchor. Swallow a cursed glass candle. Burn it. End the ritual.
Repeat.
It was a rhythm of violence and sickness. A cycle of salvation and corrosion.
Gojo stood atop a frozen ridge, Dark Sister sheathed at his hip, his body trembling faintly—not from the cold, but from what he'd just done. Again.
The taste of cursed energy lingered in his mouth like acid. He dropped to his knees and vomited into the snow.
The glass candle he’d just swallowed and unlit now lay cracked beneath his boot. Another enslaved soul freed. Another weirwood tree dying behind him, its roots twitching in the permafrost as the stolen energy dissipated.
Gojo wiped his mouth, then sat in silence. His chest rose and fell with quiet exhaustion.
“I should have seen it,” he thought.
He didn’t mean this.
He meant Geto.
Each time he swallowed a cursed object, each time that foreign energy clawed at his soul, he understood a little more. Understood how the sickness could grow inside someone. How it could whisper to them. Twist them.
“If I’d noticed sooner… If I’d said the right thing…”
Maybe Geto would still be by his side. Maybe they could've saved that world—together.
Gojo closed his eyes and exhaled. The weight of regret was heavier than any cursed energy.
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But there was no time to wallow. Not here. Not in this frozen hell.
Still, he helped where he could.
Craster’s remaining wives—those who had not fled or died—were given shelter among the more accepting free folk tribes. Gojo had brought supplies, warmth, protection. He kept a distance, especially from one particularly grabby woman who didn’t understand boundaries. But he made sure the children were fed. That the baby he had saved was alive. Smiling. Healthy.
Hope, however small, had to be nurtured.
One morning, while scouting beyond the hills, he ran into her again.
Ygritte.
Bow slung over her back, red hair tangled in the wind, her eyes wary and sharp.
“You again,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
Gojo smiled faintly. “Missed me?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “But you smell less like death this time.”
They walked together through the forest paths. Snow crunched beneath their boots. Gojo spoke slowly, explaining what he’d found. The trees that birthed monsters. The candles that bound souls. The rituals the old gods had kept secret in their roots.
Ygritte laughed at first. Shook her head. “Trees don’t give birth to ice demons. That’s mad.”
Gojo didn’t argue. He simply stopped by the next weirwood tree, peeled away the bark with a slow, precise slice of cursed energy, and exposed what hid beneath.
A man. Mummified. Mouth open in a silent scream. Glass shards embedded in his heart.
Ygritte stepped back, her bow falling from her hand.
She stared. Long and hard.
The old gods… had lied.
“I thought they were with us,” she whispered. “All those prayers. The bones. The blood. I thought… they were listening.”
Gojo didn’t answer. He simply wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in gently.
“They were listening,” he said softly. “But they weren’t good.”
She trembled. Then leaned into him.
“I don’t want to believe it.”
“I know.”
“I thought we were free.”
“You still are.”
Ygritte looked up at him, eyes glassy. “You gonna fix all this, you know? You keep killin’ demons and burnin’ gods… Maybe you are the last hero. The one from the tales.”
Gojo chuckled. “Never liked being called a hero. Just doing what has to be done.”
She gave him a crooked smile.
“Still. You fight like you’re from the stories.”
Gojo pulled back and gave her a gentle nod. “Be careful, Ygritte. These woods aren’t safe anymore.”
“They never were,” she said, then turned. “But maybe they’ll be better after you.”
Gojo watched her disappear into the trees, the red of her hair flashing like a flame in the snow.
He turned back to the weirwood, hand hovering over the cursed candle still glowing inside.
Time to set another soul free.
Time to keep moving.
