Gojo could feel it.

  A great blizzard was forming across the northern sky—its cursed energy vast and monstrous, swirling in ancient patterns he had never seen before. Not even during the golden age of jujutsu sorcery had anything reached this scale.

  “Too big,” he muttered. “Not a puppet user. This is something else.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  The center of the blizzard was exactly where the Moon Shard cursed tool lay—deep within the Lands of Always Winter. A storm of blood, ice, and memory.

  Gojo didn’t hesitate.

  With a flick of his fingers, he cast Simple Domain, wrapping himself in a protective shell, honed to catch any sudden ambush. And within it, Conversion began to hum, burning cursed energy to keep his body warm, his lungs from freezing. Every breath was laced with willpower.

  He stepped into the blizzard.

  The snow howled like an animal—like it remembered every death, every sacrifice poured into the land. The air grew colder, and colder still, until it no longer flowed around him. It sank, heavy and slow, like water flooding the world.

  Gojo trudged forward.

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  His breath turned to needles. His skin numbed beneath layers of energy. His lungs filled with ice each time he inhaled. Without Conversion, he would’ve died minutes ago. No mortal could survive this.

  Even his cursed energy was being drained, thinned by the atmosphere. He reinforced his body again and kept moving.

  Then—gravity began to fail.

  The ground swayed. He floated. The world twisted. Liquid oxygen rose into the air like reverse rain, floating toward the sky, pulled by something unseen.

  Gojo looked up.

  The Winter Moon hovered above the world—massive, pale, and full of hunger.

  And beneath it, pulsing with unnatural light, was the Moon Shard.

  Weirwood roots—thousands of them—snaked through the snow and earth, dripping blood into the shard like veins feeding a heart. A cursed tool so ancient, so alien, it seemed to bend the rules of existence itself. Time didn’t move here. Gravity didn’t obey. Even cursed energy felt fragile.

  Gojo didn’t care.

  He raised his hand and focused. Red—his repulsion cursed technique—exploded from his palm with a thunderous crack. The sky warped. The earth split.

  The cursed technique hit the Moon Shard—

  And vanished.

  As if it never existed.

  Gojo’s eyes widened. “It… absorbs cursed energy?”

  His jaw tightened.

  He turned to the weirwood trees—the endless forest of faces and roots, all feeding this abomination. With a snarl, he lunged forward and began to tear them down. Each strike of Conversion ignited like lightning, severing roots, vaporizing bark, setting the red sap aflame.

  The blood flow slowed.

  The storm began to hiss in protest.

  And then—the Moon Shard moved.

  It opened an eye.

  Not a metaphor. Not a trick of the wind or madness.

  A massive, lidless eye cracked open within the shard—glowing with impossible color, deep as the void between stars. It stared directly at him.

  Gojo froze.

  Whatever this thing was… it was awake now.

  And it had seen him.