Cor Unum - Chapter 25 - vampyr_sm - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

Chapter Text

Utter stillness. The type of silence that could only come from one thing, and one thing alone.

Death.

The longer you lay there, the easier it became to detect that darkness—the pure evil that swooped and curled in your chest. It wrapped its cold hands around you, long taloned fingers stroking along veins that throbbed in response. It curled and purred with absolute delight, acceptance of the very thing you offered it—your soul. Untethered and unbound, you let it consume you entirely.

There was no sound beneath the inky darkness that came with blood, not so much as a ripple as you sank down and down… until you reached the bottom. Your lungs ached with the lack of oxygen, yet you held your breath for a moment longer—let that ache spread until it burned at your throat, your nose, your eyes stinging when you looked up into the abyssal bloodbath you were submerged within.

Uraume had made true on the duty you had bestowed upon them. A bathing ritual fit for the cruellest of creatures, a creature such as yourself. The blood was as thin as water; healthy and young, pure and untouched by the harshness of the world. And yet it still clung to you like molasses, it buried itself in your hair and found itself in crevices of your body. It clung to you like a child would a mother.

Beneath the sea of blood, you could no longer feel Sukuna. You could only feel that coiling darkness in the deepest depths of your chest, how it relished in the depravity of the act you were committing. You waited with bated breath for it to settle and submit to your will, to let you have utter control of your body. It writhed and squirmed, and you could almost hear it hiss in your mind…

It grows still and silent.

Your shoulders relax just the slightest, in acceptance that you had wrangled the very thing that demanded the blood of the King of Curses. Your lungs burn furiously, and just as you part your lips to let the slickness of the blood pass into your mouth. That darkness inside explodes.

The blood pours past your lips, flooding your mouth until it’s forced down the back of your throat. You feel when it seeps into your very being, how it tangles with that intangible evil within, how they bleed into each other until they’re whole. It feels like you’re suffocating, drowning whilst this gloom in your body blossoms. Curling around your being until it’s you who is being cradled, how it pulls you into its shadows and submerges you entirely until you know nothing but what it is made of.

Pure evil.

It shackles you into place, forcing you back and it forward. It overtakes you entirely. The curse you had spoken of with Uraume in preparation for this very ritual— it backfired . You had wished for control over your own body, to harness whatever it was that Sukuna had gifted you through the binding vow. Instead, it’s you who is the one to be controlled. A puppet on strings as that coiling wickedness revels in the opportunity that is sure to come its way.

Your fingers slip away from the hold you had thought you had over yourself, unable to latch onto the slickness of the blood and devility of what took over your body. And as you slip away, you think you hear the low laugh of something in the recesses of your mind. A laugh so similar to that of the man you laid bare with many nights, but it isn’t his laugh. It’s different. Mangled and fractured, yet familiar.

You can’t quite grasp who it is, not with the weight of the blood in your throat and in your lungs, especially not with the pressure that builds behind your eyes. With each agonising second that passes by, you feel your hold loosen completely and then you’re plunged into an abyss like no other. It consumes you wholly, welcomes you and this evil within you with open arms.

And you can only let it happen.

…

Sukuna grazed a hand carelessly over the weapon before him. Your weapon. A sword designed to sever souls—what a brilliant thing to achieve and confine to something as simple as an oversized katana. It was still crusted with his blood, the white fur no doubt in need of a thorough clean if it were to be used with pride again.

His nostrils flared when his hand passed over it again and it pulled— actually pulled at his soul. How it yearned to rip him apart from the inside out, to puncture his heart and rip it out of its bony cage. He almost wanted it to try, to feel what it would be like if his heart was punctured by such a thing. It may not kill him straight away, not unless it cut him from crown to crotch, but it would still do irreversible damage. Damage that would leave him open and vulnerable.

And whilst that thought would have most men cowering in fear of the sword beneath his fingers. Sukuna smiles. Perhaps one day he would be at the end of this blade, in a real fight, where he would be forced to act and use his every ability in order to win, to survive. Now it’s the King of Curses who yearns for nothing more than to be torn apart and tested.

As his fingers raise to drag along the sharpened edge, Sukuna finds himself frozen in place. His body grows cold—no, his blood does. It tingles beneath his skin and floods his heart only to find the organ at a standstill. A hand presses itself against his chest, long fingers stretching across the muscles built there. It wasn’t anything like he had experienced in the recent events with you, it didn’t feel as though you were in mortal danger.

But you were in some sort of danger.

Sukuna doesn’t hesitate to rush through the temple, his mind locked onto a single thing; finding you. His footsteps are no different to the booming thunder outside, rattling the very frames he has to duck under to continue on his path. The pain in his chest grows stronger with each wide step, twisting and churning in his chest until it grows even too much to stop his upper lip from curling in visible discomfort.

There’s a smell in the air, a scent that Sukuna was happy to inhale and divulge—except, this smell was tainted. The tangy copper in the air was tinted with something sinister. A curse, he realises, and that thought has his stomach churning in a painful way so very new to Sukuna. He rounds the corner abruptly, the scent of death strong enough to hit him like it was a physical blow.

His head reels back, and all four eyes narrow quickly onto the undisturbed pool of blood. The pain in his chest twinges sharply, digging deeper and deeper. Sukuna can only dig the tip of his claws into the fat of his chest muscle, to claw uselessly at the flesh there whilst he stared blankly at the pool of blood. The blood you were no doubt submerged in.

“Master Sukuna?”

Sukuna turns his head sharply towards the voice, the movement fast enough to have Uraume minutely flinching at the abruptness of it.

“Master Sukuna—I was told to not inform you of this,” Uraume explains, their hands tucked neatly together across their stomach and it only draws his gaze downwards. The blood that soaked through their clothes, how it had turned the ends of their pearly white hair into a deep crimson.

“And what is 'this’?” He hisses again when that pain spasms in his chest, drawing his gaze back to the pool. There’s a buzz at the back of his mind the longer he stares, until it starts to materialise into a buzzing sound that only follows one thing; rot.

All four of his eyes snap to the side, and there’s a pile of bodies. Bodies upon bodies, small and fragile, bloodied and brutalised. It didn’t turn his stomach like it would with anyone with a conscience, instead it only made his stomach sink into the abyss that opened up in his chest at the realisation.

“A ritual, to cleanse.” Uraume provides, their fingers tighten on the blade in their hand when Sukuna grows still as the corpses he observes.

“To cleanse, or to seal.” Sukuna snarls, the words ripped from the depths of his chest as he stares at the bloody pool that has grown deathly still. “The blood she used is from the Kamo clan, and you didn’t think to inform her of what that blood can do?!”

To Uraume’s credit, they don’t crumble in terror as Sukuna whirls on them. His cursed energy flares until it’s suffocating, swirling and thrashing in his chest as he stares down at Uraume who lowers their gaze to the floor. “She was adamant on the ritual being completed.”

His fingers ache with how viciously they curl into fists, the anger that blossoms in his chest is unlike anything Sukuna has ever felt before. But he knew he wasn’t angry at Uraume, not entirely. He was furious with you. You didn’t tell him that you planned the blood ritual, you kept it from him in hopes of what, exactly? His mind raced with the anger that continued to build. Did you truly plan to kill him, just as you had promised all those months ago? Is this your way of securing his death and your victory?

The possibilities continue to swirl in his mind, the muscles on his grow taut with the restrain it takes to stop himself from wading through the blood and to pull you free. It was too late to stop it from happening, the ache he had felt in his chest was no longer there and instead replaced with a heavy feeling. But with each passing second, his mind urges him to take a single step forward towards the pool… when suddenly the blood ripples.

Sukuna grows as still as a stone statue when he watches the blood bubble and ripple, heated and disturbed—you were emerging. He could feel the sudden rise in cursed energy, how it reared its head in response to the energy that still continued to coil and churn in Sukuna’s very being. The blood explodes upwards, splashing along the floor at his feet with a steamed hiss at the coldness of the stone.

But Sukuna can’t take his eyes away from you. You who stands drenched head-to-toe in the blood of children. His skin crawls with an uneasy feeling when the blood on your skin starts to move, spreading thinner and thinner until it’s absorbed into your very body. Whatever you had done, whatever was in the makeup of an innocent child's cursed energy—it changed something about you.

With each step you take forward through the blood, wading through it as if it were just the hot water of the hotspring, he yearned to bathe you within those waters instead. You stop short of the step up to where he stands, and his heart turns into a weighted stone in his chest when he meets your gaze.

Your eyes. All four of them. Eyes that had stared back at him in his reflection, now stare directly up at him and Sukuna feels sick.

“What have you done?” is all he can say, a hand moving of its own accord to cup the side of your jaw and press his thumb dangerously close to one of the eyes that flutter at the closeness.

“The vow you had made with me, the very first. You wanted a weapon.” You blink, and those extra eyes are gone—closed for now, but it’s not the eyes Sukuna switches his attention to. It’s the cadence of your voice, how eerily similar it was to the day you had slaughtered an entire village out of anger. Dead and empty. “I will be that.”

Sukuna stays silent at your words, his eyebrows drawing together with each second you continue to stare up at him—so blank, occupied by something other than yourself. It has his chest aching, muscles constricting and the urge to bare his teeth in agony or disgust, he’s not sure which. But it doesn’t stop him from leaning forward, pressing his forehead down against your own until he’s forced to be eye-to-eye with you.

“You will always be more than that.” His words are a low whisper, a murmur on the wind and he watches as your eyes flutter against the warmth of his breath. “Always.”

And with that simple flutter of your eyelashes, he watches as those eyes retreat into your flesh until only scars remain and how you resurface from the depths of the water you were just submerged under. Your hand clamps itself around his wrist, keeping the hand cupping the side of your face securely in place. His fingers slide along the side of your face, past your ear to sink into your blood-drenched hair until he’s gripping you firmly enough to keep your forehead against his own.

“Never,” his words are a low growl, filled with barely restrained fury and something unspoken; worry. His hand shakes your head just slightly when he begins to speak again, as if to shake the seriousness of the situation into your mind. “Never do something like that without me again. You’re only still standing here because of our vow, their blood is designed to kill you.”

Distantly, Sukuna registers the absence of the icy chill that follows Uraume around, no doubt they had made themselves scarce in the wake of a private moment. He’s forced to suck in a breath when he bares his teeth again, this time in certain agony at the thoughts that burst to the front of his mind at your notable silence.

“I can’t—I will not lose you. Do you understand?” He shakes you again, forcing your eyes to meet his own when he pulls back just an inch to see the silver lining your eyes. Tears, something he had seen so often at the start of your life with him. They once filled him with joy, he found pleasure in your discomfort but now it only hurts him, like you had taken a knife to his stomach and gutted him like a fish. “Tell me you understand.”

The snarl of your name has your eyes blinking again, the waterline breaking to have tears rolling fresh tracks through the blood that had started to dry to your skin. “I understand.”

And it’s that whispered statement that solidifies it for Sukuna, his feelings for you that are often left unspoken. He can’t bring his tongue to form the words he’s sure most people are desperate to hear from someone special. So instead he leans forward once again, his lips brushing against your cheek to wipe away the bloody tear track with his lips. He continues to plant kiss after kiss against your face, his nose dragging up along the fullness of your cheek until he reaches your hairline.

There he lays the most delicate of kisses, right against your temple. He can feel you trembling against him, your fingernails digging into the flesh of his forearms where he holds you in place. With one last deep inhale of your scent that’s buried deep beneath the salt and metallic smell that sticks to your skin, he leans back to look at you.

“Come, you need to be cleaned.” His hand slips free from your hair, the back of his knuckles tracing down along your neck until his fingers find their natural resting place; atop your heart. “I prepared one for you, I know you like to be clean before sleeping.”

You nod your agreement, and Sukuna’s stomach knots at the dullness of your eyes when you meet his gaze when he steps back. He turns, and the sound of your wet footsteps follow behind him and with each step he takes, he feels the softness of his heart hide away behind an impenetrable wall—because what you had done was irreversible, and soon the binding vow he had made with you would come to fruition.

***

Hands roamed and groped. Grasping and pinching. They felt along the length of your calves, up along your thighs. They stroked in slow drags of claws against malleable flesh until those claws drew lines of crimson red, beading of blood only to be washed away by the pool of blood you were sitting in. Those same hands, slick with dark intentions slipped up along your stomach, dipping into your belly button before dragging a slow claw up and up until it pressed against your chest—against your heart.

It pressed and dug into your flesh, scratching and peeling back layers upon layers of stringy flesh until it found what it was searching for. The rhythmic beat of your heart doesn’t deter the probing hands, instead, it’s enticed by the movement. It slinks those long sharp fingers inwards, and strokes along the coronary artery and with each wet thump of your heart, the one who controls the heart is amused.

Amused, that you’d fall so easily for a binding vow that left you at a disadvantage.

Those same hands remove themselves from your chest cavity, instead trapezing their way up until they reach your face. They stroke slowly against your jawline, along the shell of your ears before finally sliding until they cover your eyes. With those hands so close to your nose, you could smell the scent that stuck to them; blood, rot but beneath it all, the very faint smell of citrus—such a fresh, odd smell in comparison to the others.

The blood falls away from your body, sluicing down until it meets the ground beneath your feet. Your eyes are forced to blink away at the sudden light, the hands that momentarily blinded you slip away. Through squinted eyes, you recognise the red sea around you.

Equinox flowers, thousands upon thousands of corpse flowers. Yet they do not ebb and flow as they once did the first time you had been here, instead, they lie dead and limp. Their bright red nothing but a dull crimson, the tips of their petals curled with rot and death. You glance up at the sky, the sun is no longer there and instead, there’s an endless expanse of black. No stars, no light. Nothing but an empty canvas.

Instinctively you turn around to find the Torii gate you knew to be here. The very one Sukuna had stood under when you had unknowingly pulled him into your subconscious the very first night you had spent with him in that temple.

But it’s not Sukuna who meets your gaze from beneath the gate. Instead, it’s a young boy. His hair is pink, flopping into his eyes just the slightest and his eyes are a delicate brown. He was a beautiful child, so youthful and full of life. The kindness in his eyes has you stumbling towards him, flowers crushed beneath your bare feet until you’re sprinting across the field towards the unknown boy.

With each bounding step, his features become clearer and clearer until you can see his lips moving, speaking the same word over and over—those eyes growing wide with fear until he’s screaming. Screaming for you to stop. Yet you can’t stop, you’re so close. So close to whoever this boy was, the one with the face of your soul-bearer, the face of your loved one. Your fingers are stretching out, willing for the pink-haired boy to reach out in turn but he remains stock still.

The air sings with a song you had grown far too familiar with, one you had been listening to intently since you were just a child. It sings and slices. And that boy before you vanishes with the world that tilts to the side, the Torii gate growing larger and larger until you’re left staring up at it. Staring, and unmoving. Unable to do anything but watch with unseeing eyes as a darkened figure crouches down next to you, assessing and watching until their head tilts to brush away long black hair from their face.

And you can only continue to stare at the scar along their forehead as they pick up your head from the ground.

…The bed beneath you is soaked. Your sweat seeps through your clothes and into the fresh cotton that Uraume had no doubt agonised over preparing for both yourself and Sukuna. Your skin is slick and hot, a warmth that couldn’t be chased away with something as simple as cold water. It was the warmth of the flames that resided within you, a fire that belonged not to you but to the man next to you.

You glance down at Sukuna, only to find him still peacefully sleeping. Sleeping, undisturbed and unaware that your mind was still reeling with the nightmare that had wraith-like fingers dragging along the now sweat-soaked skin of your back. Your skin crawls with the need to leave, to run from the curdling feeling in your stomach the longer you stare down at Sukuna’s slumbering form.

He looked so much like that young boy in your nightmare. Was it just another consequence of his soul bleeding into yours? You weren’t sure, it wasn’t the first time something similar had happened—you can remember vividly the nightmare of that frightened little boy you had endured after the acceptance of the secondary binding vow.

A crawling searing itch has you baring your teeth in silent agony, hissing under your breath when those long spindly fingers clamp down on the scar hidden beneath the large kimono you had been wrapped in before falling asleep. Your entire spine grows rigid with the shock of pain that ricochets down through your body, your toes only capable of painfully curling uselessly against the loose sheets you had been buried beneath.

Then it vanishes, like a whisper on the breeze and that brief moment of relief is enough to have you ripping yourself out of the bed. Your feet slip and stumble against the flooring, stinging as if you were stepping on the finest of needles. The movement towards the doors of the small bedroom has your head spinning, your lungs heaving unexpectedly with the effort it takes to drag yourself out of the bedroom.

In your frantic movements, you’re unaware of the four eyes that watch you slip through the doors and vanish into the temple.

Smooth wooden walls and painted brick slip by your fingers, your hands dragging, holding onto whatever you can with each staggered step you take. Out, out, out , it seemed to beg, screech and scream. Another convulsion of pain has your hand dragging down along the wall, wood and paper splitting beneath the pressure of the claws that unknowingly sit at the tip of your fingers.

Your mouth parts in a silent scream at the pain that wraps itself around your heart, squeezing and crushing all at once. Your lips tingle with the lack of blood, your tongue wet with the bloodied spittle that pools there with each agonisingly slow second that passes by with the unknown vice grip that holds your heart.

Then it’s gone, leaving behind the dizziness that has your eyes threatening to roll into the back of your head. Your ears feel hot, a flush of heated blood finding itself beneath the skin of your cheeks and along your neck, until it bleeds into the scar that felt as if it were on fire. You force yourself to continue walking, to drag your heavy feet until you are at the entrance of the temple.

Rain continues to pour from the sky, so unrelenting in the last few days that it had briefly passed your mind that the Gods were truly upset. But you don’t stop to think of the Gods as you pass through the large doors of the temple and out into the rain, your bare feet slip in the mud yet you keep yourself upright. You stay that way with each step you take, further and further away from the images of that boy, and the one who had held your head in their bare hands—Kenjaku.

Time slips by you like sand between your fingers, the rain cooled your heated flesh until another pang of pain shook its way through your body. You crumple this time to the pain, falling to your knees and your hands sinking into a puddle of muddied rainwater. Your eyes blur at the image staring back at you, streaked with mud and rain but beneath that, beneath it all is the face of something you recognised all too well.

A monster.

Two sets of eyes stare back at you, so wide with rage and bloodlust that you want to recoil from the ferocity of it. But you remain frozen in place, staring back at the reflection of a face you didn’t recognise, not anymore. You slash your hand through the muddied water, watching the face ripple and contort around the claws you had no control over.

The image wavers for a moment before it reforms, unchanged and angrier. Your fingers curl uselessly against the mud, sinking further into the ground with each heaving breath you take in an attempt to regain control.

Something slips through the mud, the rain battering against the ground around is loud but not as loud as a sound that was so out of place here, a chirping song that sounded like a bell ringing. Another shift until there are two socked feet at the edge of the puddle you had fallen down into, the white material is soaked and filthy yet it doesn’t bother the wearer as they crouch down closer.

“How sad.”

The voice is lilting, teasing in the way a young girl would be. It has your fingers curling harsher against the ground, uncaring for the snapping of your nails as you sharply look up to the one who had crawled from the very depths of your soul.

Masato tilts her head when you meet her gaze, eyes full of curiosity and malice as she beholds her creator on the floor. The bell-like chirping continues from somewhere behind her, and you take the moment to glance over the newly-born cursed spirit.

She was dressed differently from the last time you saw her. She was draped in a lovely white kimono, one that was dirtied at the edges with mud and blood. Her fingers were delicately curled around the wooden handle of a paper umbrella that protected her from the rain. It was a bright red, like blood that stood out against the inky blackness of the night sky above.

You pause when your eyes reach that umbrella, however. It was an umbrella of a specific make, one that came from a prefecture that specialised in such a craft. You’re only aware of such a thing because it was the singular nicety your father had displayed for your mother, he would always purchase her umbrellas from one prefecture.

“You were in Gifu.” You manage to get your tongue moving correctly, despite how heavy it feels in your mouth.

“I was.” Masato smiles cruelly, her head straightening up once she has a good look at you. “I watched you kill everyone in that village.”

“Kenjaku died there.” You mutter, your lips feel bruised and swollen when you speak. You blink blearily at Masato when her smile morphs into something sinister, at your words or the state of your health, you’re unsure. But it boils something inside of you, it has that fire churning in the depths of your soul—and Masato sees it.

“Kenjaku wanted me to give something to you.” She offers instead, and then she reaches around to her side. You anticipate a weapon, your muscles attempt to bunch together to push yourself up out of the mud but you remain still, paralysed as you can only watch. Masato fiddles with a small tie behind her back before something is dangling in front of your face.

Before you, she dangles a lone bamboo cage. Too small for any meaningful animal to reside within. Inside is a single cricket, a Bell Cricket. It continues to chime whilst in the hands of Masato. These types of crickets were only found in some places across Japan, you had been lucky enough to visit the temples as a child where they often meditated to the sounds of these crickets—they were said to be the voice of Buddha, as well as welcoming the death of life.

Masato had said this was a gift from Kenjaku, a gift of a cricket could mean a few things. It would be seen as a great gift, an honourable gift… if it weren’t Kenjaku who had ordered Masato to deliver the gift. Your mind whirls with the ideas that flutter through before you’re struck with another pang of liquid fire that shoots through your veins.

“I don’t—” You try to breathe your confusion, but the pain has your teeth gritted together and jaw clamping tight.

“For what it’s worth, I think you would’ve done fine without her intervention.” Masato, however, smiles at your misfortune as she places the cricket next to your hand in the mud. “But if she’s to succeed in her plan, you need to change.”

“What?”

The word is hardly past your lips before a cold hand has pressed itself flat against your chest. There’s no weapon in her hand, no claws that dig into your flesh but rather you can feel the coiled barbs of Masato’s cursed energy as it pulses through you.

It mingles with where it had once been created, its home within your soul but then it clashes, violently, with the other half—Sukuna’s half. It shreds and mangles itself with that piece of Sukuna, before it sinks deeper than that; it latches onto the binding vow. It wasn’t a thought that had ever crossed your mind, what it might feel like to have your soul severed into pieces and remoulded into a shape that didn’t fit the one you were born with.

You clasp a muddied hand onto the wrist of Masato, trying to pull her away from your body even if it were too late.

“No— ” you breathe, the pain that reverberates through you is almost mind-numbing, your eyes threaten to close and let you drift away into a dreamless sleep to free you from this pain. You can only call out a name, a plea for help, someone who surely would save you— “S-Sukuna. Please, please, stop.”

But your begging falls on deaf ears, Masato doesn’t let up until she can see the change take place. It comes first with the pain vanishing into thin air, the fire that ran in your blood is vanquished and replaced with only a thrum; one that demands revenge. Then it’s the rush of cursed energy, it pours and floods every part of your body until you can feel nothing but the raw power of it, how you could cleave mountains with just a thought.

Then—and only then, when your pain is gone and your strength renewed, do you pounce. Your hands clasp around Masato’s throat before she can react, not that she does. Her face is split in a wide grin, sharp teeth and bright eyes staring up at you. Expectant.

“I should’ve killed you the first time I saw you.” You snarl the words, teeth gritted hard enough to crack bone. Your hands curl tighter around the throat of the cursed spirit beneath you when she begins to laugh. “You’re nothing but a blight.”

“As are you.” She wheezes the words, delight lighting up her face when she catches the moment your eyes harden. And then you’re pulling with all your strength.

Her head comes off clean from her shoulders, the purple of her blood spraying and mixing with the mud. Your fingers continue to curl, to crush the skull in your hands—even when Masato, despite her beheading, continues to watch with all-seeing eyes as you succumb to the bloodthirst-like fury that overtook you.

Then those eyes are nothing but mush in your hands, rotten flesh and stringy purple blood that leaks down your forearms. It’s only as you’re tracking the blood do you see the dark claws at the tips of your fingers, the bands of tattoos that were similar to Sukuna’s own wrapped around your wrists.

You swipe a muddied thumb through the dirt that had plastered itself to you in your fall, only to reveal the single band that too marks Sukuna as something other, stronger. You trace the blood down along your forearms, and finally, you notice something.

Your mind, once loud with the agonising pain that rippled through, is silent.

Silent except for the single thought that sits at the forefront of your mind.

Kenjaku had organised this. Before her death, she had taken the time to seek out Masato and inform her of this plan that you were still trying to piece together. You want to bare your teeth at the blind faith and respect you had put into Kenjaku, how you had mourned her death and gave her body the dignity it deserved.

You felt nothing but the cold chill of betrayal that sat heavily on your shoulders and roiled in your gut. You wanted to rip and tear at the world, to feel their bones between your teeth—to hear their screams of agony when you killed their loved ones. It was the only thing that could soothe that raw feeling that blanketed you like an open wound, only would their suffering ease your own.

You’d kill them. You’d kill them all. Every last one of them, sorcerer or no, they would die at your hand until their blood sated you. You’ll cut them all down, grind them into dust and relish in their ultimate end. Mankind and cursed spirits alike would end with you, and you alone.

A call of your name has you glancing sharply over your shoulder, only to see Sukuna silhouetted by the slow-setting moon. He doesn’t flinch or react at the look on your face, doesn't so much blink when he takes in the purple blood that decorated your skin. Instead of chastising you or questioning you, he offers you a hand to help you up from the floor.

You take it, allowing him to pull you from the mud and turn you to face him and the ever-judging light of the moon above. His eyes immediately flit over your face, stopping to rest just momentarily to confirm that the two extra eyes were looking back at him in return. Then his gaze drops down to the hand he still held onto, staring blankly at the tattoo wrapped around your wrist.

With a slow released breath through his nose, he meets your gaze again. “What will you do?”

“I’m going to kill them.” Your hand slips free from his own, curling into a tight fist at your side when the next words that come from your mouth are nothing but a growl, “I’m tired of their games. They’ll pay for their insolence.”

“And how do you plan to execute this attack?” Sukuna keeps his gaze pinned downwards onto you, his body deathly still even with the pouring rain. His form is unmoving, unyielding and it makes something rear its head at the clear show of dominance.

“You once told me the Emperor’s castle would be heavily guarded.” You flex your fingers out at your side, those long claws glinting in the moonlight and you can feel the heavy thrum of cursed energy that pulses through your blood. “Something tells me they can no longer stop me.”

“You’ll die.” Sukuna snarls finally, his impenetrable facade crumbling almost immediately.

“Then you know what to do if I do fall in battle.” You meet his gaze with your words, and you watch how his nostrils flare and his lip threatens to curl into an awful sneer. He remembers the promise well—he would make the world bleed in your name if you were to never return to his side.

You watch then, as Sukuna shuts himself off from you. He stands taller, all four of his eyes scanning you from head to toe—nothing about it is seductive as it may have been once, instead, it’s purely analytical. He’s sizing you up as if he’s wondering if he should kill you, right here and now. So in return, you straighten your spine, square your shoulders and raise your chin just enough to dare him silently to try it.

Two of the hands left hanging by his sides curl into tight fists, the skin along his knuckles turning bone white with the effort to reign himself back in. The two across his chest are symbolic as much as they are to make himself look bigger than you, he’s hiding the very thing that’s bound to you. His heart. Something about that alone hurts you more than the hard look of promised death in his eye.

“Strike me down where I stand,” you near-enough snarl the words at him, yet he does not blanch at the tone you take with him. “Or stand by my side as the King of Curses.”

The ultimatum is enough to soften the edges of the blade he had honed himself to be, the look in his eye breaks just enough to see that emotion deep beneath. He truly cared for you, just as you did for him. He takes a step forward until he’s close enough to be pressed against you, the heat coming from the bareness of his chest burns at your face.

With him being this close, there’s no escape if he were to strike. His muscles shift when he brings up one of his loose arms, your own stomach coiling in preparation for a fight. You may not survive such a close encounter against Sukuna, but you could try your best to take him out with you if he dared to act on that still lingering bloodlust in the deep red of his eyes.

As his hand grows closer, you keep your gaze locked with his. The hand rising finally makes contact with your jaw, the pad of his thumb rolls over your cheek until it slips down over your chin, tucking itself against your windpipe before he wretches your head up to look him directly in the eye.

“This thing you’ve become… I see nothing but death and carnage in your eyes.” He murmurs, uncharacteristically low. His head tilts slightly, naturally leaning down and into you until his face is just a few tiny inches away. “If it’s a slaughter you want, a slaughter you shall get.”

Sukuna leans in that final inch, his lips are warm and smooth against your own. A soft, gentle kiss that one would give a lover, and perhaps that is what you and Sukuna were—lovers, albeit ones that were not destined for a long, peaceful life together but instead bloodshed.

The kiss is fleeting, a reminder of unspoken emotions between the two of you before he pulls back just slightly. His breath is warm against your slightly parted lips, and you wonder if he was going to try again to tell you that this path you were carving would end in only death. But instead, his nose nudges against your own. It’s a terribly intimate thing, and it’s enough to shake that fortification in your chest made of bubbling rage.

You immediately return the gesture, bumping the tip of your nose against the slight crook in his nose. Sukuna responds with a sharp exhale through his nose and it’s as if with that single breath, all his anger and contempt for the situation is exhaled from his body. He almost completely envelopes you, with the way he sweeps you up into his arms and tugs you into his body.

“Together, we will slay Gods and feast on their bones,” Sukuna speaks the words directly against the crown of your head, his arms bunching up enough that you’re nearly suffocating against his chest. “They will know our names and tremble in fear, I will make sure of it.”

“Then we leave within the hour. I won’t wait for another messenger.”

With that, Sukuna finally glances away from you and down towards the corpse of Masato. His eyes trace along the floor, the violet-coloured blood that continues to spill and soak into the ground beneath his feet. There’s a single bell-like chirp that has his eyes snapping to the side, and without further delay, he crouches down to grasp the small handle of the bamboo cage between two fingers.

He hoists it up before his face, coming face to face with the bell cricket that continues to chirp in his presence.

“You were given a bell cricket?” Sukuna enquiries, his bisected eyebrow raising in a mixture of amusem*nt and confusion.

“Paired with a message from Kenjaku it’d seem.” You lift your hand, palm up, in a silent request of Sukuna to hand over the cricket to you.

“And what does she have to say?” He lets the cricket fall into your hand, only to find its chirps fall silent the moment it connects with your palm.

“That she wished for me to change—” The words die on your tongue. Sukuna spoke of her in the present tense. Your eyebrows draw together and you glance away from the silent cricket to meet his gaze—and it’d seem he realised his slip of the tongue. “Why do you speak of her as if she was not beheaded before me?”

“Kenjaku has the ability to swap her body. Death is not a concept she’s familiar with, and likely never will be.”

He says it so easily, so bluntly as if it were common knowledge. You can’t stop the anger twitching at your face, the way your lip curls in threat to bare your teeth at the man before you. Sukuna however doesn’t look away, nor does he step away to stop you from swiping at him if you so wish to.

“You’re telling me she’s still alive? And she’s out there…?” Sukuna nods once in confirmation of your question. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never asked if it was a possibility. You were content with this new path you had started to make for yourself, I wouldn’t interfere.” You can tell from his tone alone that he was telling the truth; he didn’t want to get in your way with the goal you had set for yourself.

“It’s been weeks since, and she hasn’t returned. I thought—”

“You were naive to believe someone as cunning as Kenjaku was ever your friend. She only ever has herself in mind when she acts. She used you, as she used me.” Sukuna cuts you off before you can begin spiralling about the false friendship you had formed with Kenjaku, his tone growing cold and bitter. He was just as angry with Kenjaku’s apparent absence.

So as you stare up at Sukuna, his anger is as clear as the moon above. You settle back into his anger, letting it become your own. “Once the Emperor is dead, Kenjaku will be next.”

Instead of rebutting you, Sukuna’s lips spread into a grin that shows his sharpened canines. He looks elated with the idea of finally bringing down Kenjaku—if not for the fact Kenjaku had played him, but because you were hurt too.

“Then let’s not waste any more time. I’ve wanted the Emperor’s head as a trophy for a long time.”

It had taken a little over two days to travel from the small shrine you had claimed as your own to Heian-kyō; home of the Emperor and his palace. You had heard of its construction when your father was the Shogun, and how it had been slow going. And it seemed it still hadn’t expanded much since then, as you stand on the long stretch of road that leads up to the palace.

Sukuna remains stoic and silent at your side, two large arms crossed over his chest as he too observes the palace—or rather, the barriers they had put up around the grounds to protect the Emperor. You tilt your head away from the palace ahead, glancing up at the night sky to see the grey clouds with the promise of rain slowly begin to blot out the moon.

“If it’s true what you say of the Kamo’s technique, the rain will put us at an advantage.” You comment, and Sukuna only makes a noise of agreement in the back of his throat.

“Their blood will be the least of our problems. I sense more than just the Kamo’s beyond those barriers.”

“We’ll worry about what’s beyond them once we bring them down.” You offer, and Sukuna nods his head in agreement. The two loose arms are his side tightened around the weapons he had brought along, Hiten and Kamutoke. You had only brought the soul-severing blade, it sits at your hip and even sheathed you can feel the pull it has on your soul.

It takes only a single step forward before you stand at the very edge of one of the barriers erected around the palace. Your eyes scan along the invisible edge of it, listening to the way it hisses and buzzes. Sukuna is already at your side, all four of his eyes narrowed to observe the pure barrier between him and his trophy.

“Tengen has put in a lot of effort to keep out anyone who dared to trespass,” Sukuna says with a tone that says he’s less than pleased, no doubt convincing himself that he had been a fool to follow you to the capital.

You hum uncommittedly in response before you lift a hand. Your claws glint in the dimming moonlight, the single band of branded ink on display when you reach forward to lay a hand against the barrier. Immediately, it bites back at the pressure you put onto the barrier—it singes your skin, peeling it back layer by layer, and perhaps it would’ve worked on someone who didn’t have access to not one, but two reserves of cursed energy. Your skin mends itself just as quickly as it’s flayed by the barrier.

Your talon-like claws sink into the barrier, and it’s with that grip that you pour out the excess energy that had begun to pool in your hand. It makes the barrier before you light up as if it had been struck by lightning, it shimmers and sparks before it finally begins to fade away under your touch.

“Not enough, it’d seem.” Your hand falls back to your side, the skin fresh as if it were never touched in the first place.

Sukuna outwardly laughs, overjoyed, at the fact you had broken through within a matter of moments. “Now, they’ll come scattering like rats. Sniffing and itching to find who had dared to break their mighty barrier.”

“I’ve heard rats are opposed to fire.” You smile wider with the words that come from your lips, Sukuna matching it with how quickly he grasps your train of thought.

“Furnace.” You watch as he gathers his weapons into a single hand, seemingly needing all his other hands to be free to perform. The air tinges with the scent of sulphur, sticking to the back of your throat with the smoke that begins to form between his palms—and then it’s ignited, the fire much brighter, wilder, than you had seen when he last used this technique. “Open.”

His two hands spread wide, forcing the flames to grow with the distance before he starts to pull back one hand. The fire wraps itself around his fingers so effortlessly, as if he were twirling fine strands of silky material before it formed into a grand arrow made of flame. You don’t wait for him to release his arrow first, instead, you copy his movements.

Your own hands spread wide, fingers curled with flames as you stretch the fire and prime yourself ready to let loose the fiery flame arrow. Sukuna gives you an appraising sideways glance, a gleam in his eye that shines brighter when he pours more of his cursed energy into the arrow—before he lets it loose.

The twin flame arrows shoot through the sky like shooting stars, bisecting the night sky with two large streaks. It’s almost as if time becomes a slow churn, as you watch with fascination as those arrows suddenly merge together to form one. A deadly attack, made to hit its target and ensure no one survives.

And hit its target, it does. It explodes in a gigantic plume of fire, it roars and screams when it makes contact with the main building of the Emperor’s palace. Debris melts away before it can be flung from the site of the destruction, instead, you’re only left with the fluttering of ash that sticks to your skin and catches in your eyelashes.

Your stomach twists, but not with nerves—excitement. Elation. The fire had decimated your target in one fell swoop.

However, that elation is short-lived. As the grandiose wall of fire is extinguished as if a great wind had swept across the palace. Sukuna to your side stiffens, even if it’s minutely. You focus your gaze back to the palace, forcing that feeling in your chest to quieten down as it titters in delight at what’s to come.

From the ashes, come two large wings. They spread wide, their feathers a glittering white with dustings of ash that coat the back of them—as if they had been used as a shield. Your heart thunders in your chest, your fingers aching when they curl around the hilt of your sword.

You watch as those same wings flex, a single flap that sends a wave of dust skittering across the ruined structure of the palace. And with that wave comes the person who owns those wings. Their clothes are sullied too with the ash that fell upon them, yet you can see from here the regality of those fine fabrics.

This wasn’t just some curse, or someone who had been blessed with a cursed technique that let them sprout wings.

No. This was Emperor Kamo.

“You’d dare to strike a place of worship, a place for the deities themselves?” The Emperor comments across the distance, yet it’s as if his voice comes from all directions. It has the hairs raising along your arms, and your toes curling in anticipation for the fight to come. You were to fight a God themselves, it’d seem.

“You denied the chance to retaliate when we slaughtered your children.” Sukuna grins when the Emperor visibly seethes at the mention, those grand wings unable to stop themselves from arching up high in silent threat. “Why deny the inevitable? Come, fight me like I know your blood demands it.”

The Emperor begins to step over the debris at his feet, his wings flicking out once to rid the ash that had settled on them before they tuck neatly up against his back. Even with the cover of night, it’s as if those feathered wings absorb the light of the moon itself and glow beneath it. As he grows closer, you can see the finer details of his face.

He was young—younger than most Emperors. His hair is as dark as the night sky, it’s dishevelled atop his head with strands hanging low across his brow and brushing the tops of his shoulders. Your eyes dip to his own, and it’s no surprise to see he’s too glancing back at you in silent appraisal—sizing up his opponent, just as you are with him. His eyes shimmer a deep gold, an unnatural colour that must come from whatever is giving him those magnificent wings.

Then your eyes fall away from his and onto the thick black band of ink that bisects his bottom lip, and you follow its path down before it vanishes beneath the once-pristine kimono he’s wearing. The ink looked no different in appearance from the one that marred your own skin, yet you could sense it had an entirely different purpose to what yours was. Yours was a binding vow for shared power, whereas his was likely a binding vow that was bound to his cursed energy.

“As much as you may believe you’re the one I want to fight, Sukuna Ryomen.” The Emperor says his name as if it were a curse, his nose crinkling in disgust. “It’s not just you who has been deemed the Disgraced One.”

Sukuna visibly bristles at your side, his composure falling into visible anger so easily. His nose scrunches and his teeth are bared in a matter of seconds, his fingers curling dangerously tight around the weapons in both his hands.

“After all, it’s your wife who has two souls, has bathed in the blood of innocents and killed her own father without an ounce of regret. She’s disgraced her bloodline, just as you have disgraced her very being.” The Emperor comes to a slow stop, his hands dropping to his sides and from here you can see the way his fingers curl, how they grow visibly pinker…? —he was amassing cursed energy, your mind belatedly realises.

His hands clap together before you can retaliate, and you watch as the inked part of his skin suddenly changes shape. Blood pours from his now open skin, before it forms into that of an arrow. It flings itself through the air at breakneck speeds. Something swipes at your side, but you’re already falling backwards.

The blood had pierced directly through the flesh above your breast, not close enough to nick your heart but enough to have your body falling from the pain. Your eyes dart towards Sukuna’s, and he’s already there—trying to reach for you, but you’re falling and falling… somehow further away before you’re submerged in total darkness.

Yet, you know you’re not dead nor are you asleep. You can feel the icy touch of something slithering across your body, the way they coil and slither along your body. This kind of cold only came from something that had been devoid of the warmth from the sun—shadows.

Something grasps at you through the darkness, taking hold of your throat before you’re ripped forward. The air you suck in is like fire to your lungs, you hadn’t realised you were suffocating in those shadows. The hand at your throat is uncaring as it pulls you in, and then there’s a slice of something through your abdomen.

You blink away the stars in your eyes, your mind still reeling from whatever was doused in the blood of the Emperor—whatever was now making its way through your body, it had your limbs feeling heavier with each beat of your heart. There’s a face in front of your own, a sneer on the face of a man with pitch-black hair that hangs in front of his eyes. Eyes of green stare back at you, so eerily familiar—

Then you’re falling back with that same slick slice of flesh, your hand coming up to grasp at your stomach only to feel the outpouring of blood. You stumble back a step, glancing down to see your fingers spread wide. Your blood glistened in the moonlight, and you almost felt nauseated with whatever was starting to affect the colour of your blood—it was dark, almost black, like ink.

“How pathetic.” The man who held the katana, still wet with your blood, grins with his words. “This is the woman who had grown men pissing themselves out of fear?”

He laughs, and it has something in your chest squeezing so tightly. You take him in, the black hair that hung over his eyes, unkempt—not a Samurai then. Yet he holds himself as if he had formal training, his back is straight and his shoulders squared. His fingers remain rigid around the hilt of his blade as he swipes it through the air, an arc of your blood flinging off into the surrounding grass. He brings it up in a fluid motion, dragging it along the inner sleeve of his haori before sliding it back into its sheath. The movement has the chain-like necklace that was beneath his haori jingling like a set of bells.

“I heard you slaughtered legions. Had killed Lords before they could so much as make a move against you, and yet here you are… bleeding out, panting like some dog.” His head tilts with his words, and the moonlight paints his face in a clearer light—and you’re subject to seeing a scar that stretches from the left side of his jaw and up into his hairline.

You almost crumble beneath the memory that rushes at you through the nausea. You remember that scar, remember how it was given. A boy, not much older than sixteen, had been training with your father’s army and that was the result of his co*ckiness. You remember him, how he had shot you a glare so severe it would’ve scared even the Gods themselves. You knew then he had wanted to act out on the fact you were pitying him, you were only a child, and you wanted to reach out a hand for him. He snarled, ripping himself away from the situation before his fingers could tighten further around the blade and perhaps remove your head.

You never understood why the boy had hated you so much, you had only seen him a handful of times in your youth. Him and the dogs that often were nipping at his heels.

“You…” You breathe, the word feeling heavy on your tongue. The man before you widens his eyes, not in surprise but in unadulterated glee that you remembered.

He replies to your shock with a snicker, he takes a step forward and then another before widening his arms wide. “It’s been a long time, little sister.”

Little sister. The words have you stumbling a step back, letting your hand slide away from your still-bleeding stomach, a voice in the back of your mind whispers quietly about how the wound hasn’t healed yet. You shake your head to rid yourself of that voice, of the absurdity of the man before you.

“I don’t—” You finally meet his hardened gaze, baring your teeth in defiance. “I’ve never had any siblings.”

“I wish we weren’t family either. To be related to such a dishonourable monster, it makes me sick.” Your apparent brother sneers, looking down the length of his nose at you—and it’s only then, with that look in his eye that you see your father in him. “To be related to the thing that killed my mother—”

“I did no such thing!”

Yet he continues despite your rebuttal. “I hated you for it. I hated you for the attention father gave you, how he coddled you as if you were a fragile flower. All the while, he sent me off to his war camps—forced me to be part of his vassal and you got to stay home, biding your time before you killed Father and made a claim for his title.”

You see him now, truly. No longer a man who had been trained to be a swordsman, but rather a jealous little boy. A jealous little boy who had no true idea of what it was like to be traded off to the highest bidder to a man who had forced himself onto you night after night, in hopes of breeding you. He had no idea what it was like to live in a court as the daughter of the Shogun, how you had to keep your wits about you constantly to avoid your father's ire if you said one wrong word, how older men would look at a teenage girl with nothing but desire in their eye.

You may not have fought in a war or lived in the camps. But you had survived being a young woman in a man’s world—and you'd be damned if that survival were to end now.

“I see now why our father had sent you away, if you’re still this petty and childish as a grown man.” Your words do the trick, as your brother’s fury crumples his face and his hand dashes for the sword at his waist. Your fingers twitch at your sides, a familiar numbness that you had never wished to feel again tingles at your fingertips. It’d seem the Emperor’s blood held the ability to nullify cursed energy.

“How dare you!” Your brother bellows, his sword sings through the air as he pulls it free. “I’ll relish in beheading you, just as you did father. You impertinent whor*!”

Your body moves when he does, your fingers grasp tightly along the katana at your side before you swipe it upwards to meet his downward strike. It clashes loudly, just loud enough to drown out your brother's scream as he brings his sword back around in an attempt to slice at your exposed stomach.

The two of you fall into an intense dance of blades, his own fuelled heavily by his emotions and yours repelling each of his strikes. You can see the anger starting to blind him, how his mind questions how you had become skilled enough with a sword to keep up with his own. The pain in your upper chest and stomach had long faded into nothing but a dull throb, the adrenaline overpowering the pain that should be crippling you.

You can see on your brother's face that he realised you’re not succumbing to the pain, instead, you’re fighting against it. You swipe your sword up to clash with his once again, forcing you to fall inwards a step until you’re face to face with him; only the metal of your blades separating you. He opens his mouth to no doubt spit more venom at you, but he’s promptly shut down when you hook your foot around the back of his knee.

He falls to the ground with a harsh thud, his breath leaving him in a pained wheeze before you twist the katana in your hand and hold it in two hands, the tip pointed downwards—ready to pierce his heart.

Except you fail to notice how his hands had loosened on his sword, and instead they were clasped together in a hand sign you didn’t recognise. The shadows of the trees elongated, pooling across the floor before they started to form something larger than you had ever seen before. A deep guttural snarl had your heart stuttering in your chest, it was not the snarl of a dog, but something much bigger.

A singular large paw steps out from the shadows, then followed by a maw filled with razor-sharp teeth that drip with saliva. Those dogs you had seen in your childhood were tiny in comparison to the beast before you, its limbs were long enough to rival that of a human. It gives one more snarl, a bark-like growl and then it’s launching from the shadows. It moves faster than you can with the Emperor’s blood still compromising your cursed energy.

It collides with you. Hard. You’re sent flying backwards, trees falling from the force of two bodies flying through them. You tumble with the beast atop you, your back slammed painfully into the ground. Those paw-like talons grasp at your ribcage, crushing it beneath a grip that shouldn’t belong to a dog. But you have no choice except to ignore the fact the beast was crushing you, your hand is empty of your blade, likely having been lost when you were thrown back.

The overgrown dog starts to snap its jaw in your face, being kept at bay only by the hands you press against its chest. You can’t feel any of your cursed energy, not even a slither. It pushes harder against you until you can hear the bones in your arms starting to grind in protest, and then it collapses onto you with a jaw of teeth opened wide.

It clamps the hinge of its jaw down around your shoulder, elongated canines sink into the meat of your shoulder as if it were nothing. And perhaps you were nothing in comparison to such a beast. It sinks deeper into the scarred flesh that had been unable to mend after the attack from Sukuna—and then it pulls its head back viciously. And with it, your arm.

That same thick almost-black blood spews from the now open wound, it stains the white chest fur of the wolf as it tightens its jaw around the arm before it swallows it down. The dog above you reels its head back, releasing a howl that vibrates the floor beneath you before it dips its head back down to face you. It pulls back its lips, revealing blood-stained fangs before it roars in your face. It widens its jaw once again, this time with the intent of clamping down around your head and tearing it free from your remaining shoulder.

You press a hand against its throat, a futile attempt to stop it from lurching forward. But it seems you wouldn’t need to attempt, as it stops just inches from your face… something wet drips against your face, dripping into the cracks of your lips and immediately you can taste the copper of it. The dog above you remains frozen in place, blood pooling against its tongue before trickling down onto you. It seems confused, lost, almost as if it doesn’t understand what’s happening just yet.

The ground grows colder around you, and you catch sight of the shadows elongating at your sides. It was trying to retreat. So you lash a hand out, uncaring at how its teeth scrape against your forearm as you reach into its mouth… down its throat, and curling those sharpened claws that had refused to retract since your ritual bathing. You tear apart its insides before you grasp a hold of the beating heart of the shadow-made dog.

You snatch back your arm, ripping the heart from the throat of the dog and it only falls limp atop of you. It doesn’t fade into shadow. It seems they can die, and remain dead. With a shove, it falls to the side, and you take a second to just suck in a heavy breath. Your lungs cry out at the pain of forcing them to expand, the beast had certainly crushed your ribs before it ripped off your arm.

The reminder has you glancing at your missing arm. It showed no signs of healing, yet the blood had come to a slow stop. There was the faintest of tingling along the bone, and that was all you needed to know you weren’t going to die due to the loss of a limb. So you push yourself up off the floor, holding the heart of the dog in one hand. You debate throwing it to the side, to let the wild animals that live in these forests have at it. But you stop, gazing at the heart.

It looked so different to your late husbands, larger yet more lean. It was made for the beast that lay dead at your feet. Something rumbles in your stomach, a hunger that didn’t belong to you but whatever had slithered its way to the forefront of your mind the moment you dipped beneath the blood bath. It feels natural to part your lips and sink your teeth into the meaty muscle of the heart, to rip and tear at it until it sits heavy in your stomach.

With an unexpected meal, you can feel that buzz at your missing shoulder intensify. The skin bubbling and weaving together albeit slowly, but healing nonetheless. The Emperor’s blood was still active in your body, but it wasn’t as potent as it should’ve been and with every pump of your heart, it continued to be washed out until nothing remained.

You raise your eyes to look along the stretch of destruction before you, and at the very end of it stands your brother. He’s nothing more than a blip in the distance, yet you can see the towering forms that stand next to him. More of the shadow creatures, it’d seem. But now you have seen they can die, and they can be consumed… you feared them no longer.

Each step feels slow, your body readjusting to the lighter part of your body. But it becomes easier, your weight redistributing as your arm continues to reform until you can feel the chilled night air stinging your newly formed skin. Your fingers flex, the tips of your fingers aching as new claw-like nails are forced to grow bigger and stronger. Something clicks in the back of your mind, and it’s enough of a sign to tell you the door to your cursed energy has been reopened.

The air shifts quickly, and even with the distance still spanning long between yourself and your brother, you can tell he’s come to the realisation that you are back in control of your own cursed energy. Something shoots through the air directly at you, its shadowed figure cutting through the space between you and your brother. It grows larger the closer it grows, and it’s only when it slips through a stream of moonlight do you see what it actually is.

A giant snake… you smile at its rapid approach.

You shift one foot back, bending your knees just slightly and raise both of your hands as if you were to grapple with the snake the second it came close enough. Except, you use that stance to bolster your cursed energy—and it roars to life around you, it expands like a grand fire around you, coating you in a protective shield which appears too quickly for the snake to divert from.

It collides with a sickening crunch. Blood, guts and skin are shredded the moment it comes into contact with the cursed energy that surrounds you. The snake's body isn’t cleanly sliced down the centre, instead, it’s as if it had hit a solid wall with the force it was going at. The sound of its destruction is loud, just loud enough for your brother to miss the sound of your feet shifting in the slick dirt path. You reappear directly before him, your stance still lowered—too low for him to react.

Your fist collides with his stomach, hard. This time it’s his turn to be flung backwards into the treeline, yet you’re unable to pursue him. The air around you flexes and bends beneath something. Your head snaps upwards, and you find the moon has been blotted out by something very large that was rapidly falling from the sky above you.

You move to take a step forward, but a startling guttural roar has your eyes snapping to meet hazel-coloured eyes—a tiger. A tiger stands in the way of your brother, blocking you from following after him. It was much larger than you had seen in illustrations on scrolls, no doubt due to your brother's cursed energy. It roars again, followed by a hiss that has something primal in your stomach flinching back in fear.

And it’s with those valuable seconds that had been swallowed whole by the big cat before you that the mass above you is too close to avoid. You grit your teeth, baring your own fangs in return at the tiger that swipes a large paw at the air. You raise a single hand up into the air, swallowing down the fear that had come from the tiger before you and bolstering yourself against the tidal wave of realisation that you may die, here and now.

The entirety of your arm burns with the rush of cursed energy that builds at the tips of your fingers, two of them pointed directly up into the sky—you can hear the thing now that was falling from the sky, an exotic sound that you had never heard before but had heard tales of from the mainland of China; an elephant was falling from the sky.

You pour more cursed energy into your arm, your mouth parting before you release a scream that comes with the peeling of the skin along your arm. The cursed energy you had built up explodes—it shoots up into the air in a straight line, like a gigantic blade. It slices through the air at the expense of your arm, the elephant above you lands with a heavy thump on either side of your body.

Cleanly severed in half.

The shadow-born tiger before you has no time to stop your advance, the boom of your cursed energy enough to shred at its very being until it was nothing but a mist that sprayed across your front. You appeared before your brother, his own body moving on the reflexes he had honed as a warrior. His sword is brought up to slice at you, to rid you of the hand that had reached out in hopes of grasping at his face.

Instead, time snaps and ripples. The blade freezes the moment it comes in contact with your wrist, your brother still wide-eyed and staring directly at you… yet his eyes were unseeing, unseeing of how quickly you were moving and blind to what was to come. Your fingers dip down, grasping instead at the sword that would’ve landed a solid blow against your arm.

At the tips of your fingers, the blade vibrates under the pressure of your cursed energy. Fracturing in slow motion before your very eyes, you can see the clean slices that came with Sukuna’s own cursed technique webbing from your fingers… and then time snaps back into place.

The blade snaps with a glass-like fragility, the shards shooting in different directions and your brother visibly blanches at the display of effortless power. He may have been your shadow during the chaos you had caused, but he had never come face to face with a monster as refined as yourself.

“I understand now why father had never mentioned you. Why you were never around.” You watch his face crumple in a mixture of anger and grief, the words striking truer than any sword ever could. “He was ashamed to have a son such as yourself, blessed with shadows and yet leashed by the Emperor.”

Your brother strikes again, withdrawing the partially shattered blade from your hand. Your own blood curls in thickened black tendrils around your wrist, and in that moment of distraction where your eyes flicker to glance at your oddly-coloured blood. He strikes. The shattered end of his blade is thrust through the palm of your hand, a clean strike out the other side of your hand.

It’s a strange manoeuvre, one you can’t quite wrap your head around until you hear a rush of wind behind you. The air grows dense with static energy, like a lightning strike about to hit. Your toes curl in anticipation for the next hit, one you knew would either end with your life being snuffed out or close to. Except that lightning strike never comes, instead your entire body lurches forward with the force of whatever had swooped down behind you.

The thing behind you caws loudly in your ear, but the sound is drowned out by the ringing in your ears at the blossoming pain in your chest. You bring up your free hand to your chest, the tips of your fingers glide along something wet and metallic that protrudes from your chest cavity. It’s only with a foreign tug of your very soul that the reality of the situation settles in.

You’ve been impaled on your own sword.

Whatever shadow-made beast your brother had formed pushes forward again. The blade of your sword pushes further into your chest until you can feel the fur of the hilt pressing against your back. That same sticky black substance continues to spill from the edges of the wound, and it wouldn’t take a person skilled with medical knowledge to know the amount of blood pouring from your chest only meant one thing. Your heart was damaged, and it was pumping harder to try and compensate.

“You speak of father as if you knew him, as if you knew what it meant to be a soldier in his army. You were nothing more than a broodmare to him, nothing more than a woman who forgot where her place was.” Your brother sneers in your face, his own skin splattered with your black blood.

“You have no idea the things I endured.” Your words are heavy even when you try to force them out with conviction, your tongue grows wetter with each futile pump of your heart. “What I had survived to be where I am today. It would’ve killed you ten times over.”

The man before you seems ready to spit more venom, his face crumpling in anger that looks so much like your father. It almost hurt to look at. Yet you push on, your fingers curling downwards onto the blade still embedded in the palm of your hand until you cup the blade albeit awkwardly, the shattered metal skewering your flesh further.

“I gave my life for this, I won’t allow you to get in the way now. Not when I’m so close.”

And then you pull.

Your body falls forward with the motion, and your brother falls towards you. His lips parted wordlessly, a wet squelch followed by the telltale sound of flesh being sliced open. You can feel the way his lungs expand painfully against your chest, how his body tries to fight against the sword now buried in his own chest—but it’s no good, it was already latching onto his soul.

The blade stuck in your hand falls free finally, his arms going limp at his sides yet you can tell he still clings to life with each painful breath. The shadows that remained under his control melt away into nothing but puddles on the floor, bleeding back into the overarching shadows of the trees. You press your body further forward, forcing your brother to take a stumbling step back but he doesn’t succumb to falling to his back.

Instead, he lowers down onto his knees, taking you with him. It’s all you can do to wrap your arms around his shoulders, holding him to your chest to ensure he didn’t free himself from the death you had given him.

“I wish you stood by my side for this,” you whisper against his shoulder, his head tilted to the side uselessly as his soul is leached from his very body. “I would’ve killed for that kind of love.”

A hand presses itself against your back, just beneath the sword protruding from your back. It lacks any strength, instead, it just holds you close. Your brother sucks in a wet breath, his lungs rattling with the signs that he had just moments left. “Will I see Mother again?”

He sounded so much like the little boy you had known all those years ago, when his dogs were just mere pups and his smile was as gentle as a wind breeze. He sounded like your brother, not the guard dog the Emperor had moulded him into. It shatters whatever slither of your soul that withstood the ritual, crushing it down until all that remained was the inky abyssal darkness that threatened to consume you whole.

“...No.”

You don’t hesitate to unhinge your jaw, sinking your canine-like teeth into the flesh of his throat. Your brother convulses painfully at the pressure, his hand tightening on the back of your ruined kimono before finally, a scream breaks past the tightness of his throat. You clamp down harder, securing your grip on his throat before ripping your head back.

It’s instantaneous, the way his life is wiped away with that movement. His head lops backwards, hanging on by threaded muscles and pulsing veins that try fruitlessly to withstand the damage. The thing within you sings in glee at the blood that coats your tongue, and it’s that burst of euphoric madness that has you lurching forward again to take another bite, and then another.

Time slips past you, like sand between your fingers and it isn’t until you’re kneeling over nothing but a pile of flesh and bone that you realise you were lost to the darkness that swelled in joy at the feast you had provided it. Your fingers curl, something squishy between your fingers and as you glance down, you find not a chunk of flesh in your hands. But a brain. Part of a brain, it had been ripped apart—by you, by your teeth.

It falls from your hands with a wet slap on the ground, and you fall with it. Your hands slip against the blood and viscera, yet you can only stare down at the mess you had made of your older brother—you didn’t even know his name. Something inside of you snaps at the realisation of what had happened, how you had slipped so easily beneath the dark waters of your tainted soul.

You scream then. Not out of fear, or disgust. But out of agony. You claw at the ground, the pain of your nails snapping against the hard ground is nothing compared to the vice-like grip this thing had on your chest. Your eyes burn furiously with the tears that leave clear marks through the blood that sullied your face, yet you can’t reign in your emotions. You scream, and scream.

You press your hand against that invisible pain in your chest. Only to find your fingers slipping against the cold metal of the necklace your brother had worn beneath his kimono, now resting against your chest.

“Allow me to help you.”

The voice startles you enough to silence your screams, and it’s then you feel the presence of something behind you. You turn to glance over your shoulder, and you see the familiar face of the Tengu you had met so many moons ago. It tilts its head at you, bird-like in manner yet it’s the face of a man who stares back at you even with the red skin.

“Come, the Emperor knows already of the death of his loyal dog.” The Tengu speaks again in your mind, it extends one hand out towards you and you can only think to take it. It aids you back to your feet, the black wings behind its back ruffle with the movement. “May I ask why you mourn the death of this man?”

“I don’t.” You clear your throat, the burning there has you wincing minutely. “I mourn the life I could’ve had, if we were both loved.”

The Tengu nods its head slowly once in acceptance of your words, even if it doesn’t quite understand the concept of love itself. It flourishes its grand wings, angling one backwards and perhaps it was the pain that had blinded you to the secondary presence in the area. You come face to face with something much larger than the Tengu, even larger than Sukuna himself.

A great white dragon stares directly at you. It moves with an otherworldly grace, the long body waves in the air as if it were suspended beneath water. You find your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, unable to find the words to express the raw awe you feel at the presence of such a beast sitting before you.

“He wishes to help you, as you helped him.” You glance back towards the Tengu when you hear a flap of his grand wings, only to find he had withdrawn two katanas that were much too big to be wielded by a human. “Climb atop his back, he will take you to where you need to go.”

You step towards the dragon, slowly, the bloodied chain-like necklace belonging to your brother jingles at your chest. The dragon continues to twist its body in the air like a serpent before lowering its clawed hands to the ground, those talons anchoring it to the floor. It remains still as you approach, brushing the tips of your fingers along those shimmering white scales. You can feel the heat beneath that touch, hotter than any fire you have ever encountered. It doesn’t flinch nor protest as you climb up onto its back, letting your fingers wrap around the hardened spine that spikes from its back.

And with you secured on its back, it shoots into the sky, followed by the thundering flaps of the Tengu to your side.

…

Sukuna’s body heaves with a heavy breath.

His teeth were bared, nose scrunched in nothing short of unbridled fury. The blood that crusted his chest had come to a stop some time ago, yet the pain within still lingered. He felt it, the moment your soul was cleaved in half. He knew you still lived yet a part of you had suffered the blow, something that would never recover—but he knew you were approaching, could feel the immense pressure that came with unleashed cursed energy.

He sweeps his eyes over the crowd before him. All of them were the Emperor’s own personal army, men who had sworn their lives away the moment the Emperor came into power. Their regal armour glinted in the firelight that continued to grow and spread across the capital, the screams of the innocent had soon died out to the insatiable roar of those flames.

The bodies that littered the floor at his feet were in the hundreds. Hundreds of men who had rushed towards the King of Curses and learned that he was not willing to have that title stripped away by the likes of a simpleton. Sukuna tightens his grip on Kamutoke tightens, the lingering lightning still buzzing at the tips of his fingers from the previous strike that had taken out the most easterly portion of the army that had come to a standstill before him.

The Emperor stood at the back of it all, those pure white wings spread wide in a stance that only bled dominance. The Emperor had not struck again since the single attack that had sent you sinking into the shadows, instead opting to allow the grunts of his army to do the hard work—even if it were for nothing, Sukuna hadn't so much as broken a sweat.

“It would seem you’re outnumbered!” The Emperor’s voice boomed over the distance between himself and Sukuna, those large wings spreading impossibly wider. “Yield, or lose your head.”

“You speak tall words for a man hiding behind his army.” Sukuna can’t stop the manic grin that spreads across his face with his words, baring his bloodstained teeth. His chest shakes with the laugh that bubbles up from the depths of his soul, his blood singing with the adrenaline from such a fight. “But it’s no matter, they’re merely just in the way.”

Sukuna raises his hand once again into the air, Kamutoke gripped tightly and that buzz of lightning builds in the air again. The army before him tenses, all shifting their katanas into position, spears pointed through the gaps as if they were expecting him to charge forward. He laughs again, a single condescending sound before he pulls his arm down abruptly with the guidance of Kamutoke.

Yet, it’s not lightning that descends from the sky. It’s something much worse, more disastrous.

The army before him explodes—nothing more than a fine mist that’s sent skittering across the ruined palace, and you stand in the epicentre of it all.

The hair on the back of his neck stands on end at the sudden influx of cursed energy, all four of his eyes narrowed towards where you stand several feet in front of him, your hands clasped together in what he knows to be your domain.

Yet no barrier wraps around the occupants sucked into your domain, it’s wide open— like his own. His chest swells in pride, that laugh bubbling in his throat again as he bellows with bloodlust-fueled joy. The Emperor had even reeled back at the sudden appearance, even more when he realised you had trapped him in your domain too.

That bloody mist you had created the men who had been unlucky to be caught in your fall begins to slow in its descent before it stills in the air. Sukuna can feel his lungs seize at the feeling of your cursed energy taking hold of the area before it’s flooded with water... No, not water. Blood, gallons upon gallons of blood rises from the ground itself and buries the feet of those who remain standing.

But something feels different with the way your cursed energy wraps around his body, not constricting him and holding him hostage but rather protecting him from what you were about to unleash. You straighten back up in the middle of the field, eyes doing a single sweep of the men that were stuck with wide eyes staring at you…

And then they too, explode. A simultaneous explosion of bodies. Popped as if they were nothing but bags of water. He hears you snarl —actually snarl—at the fact the Emperor still stands before you, his army mostly depleted from your last attack.

Sukuna flicks his eyes away from you to survey what had stopped the sure hit of your domain, only to find a single samurai down on one knee, an arm raised as if he were ready to withdraw his blade. Immediately, Sukuna frowns in distaste. There was only one man who had the understanding of simple domains on such a level that it was considered forbidden to even talk about it—Sadatsuna Ashiya.

Sadatsuna had taken the hit, it seemed, his skin was covered in slashes and his stance was sloppy compared to how it should be yet he still stood. The simple domain had extended considerably, covering not only the Emperor and a portion of soldiers… but also two other figures who he knew you were honing in on with every harsh breath you sucked in.

He recognised the first figure the moment she appeared. Hair as white as snow and eyes that portrayed far too much knowledge and experience than the body she had. Tengen —the one who had put up the barrier around the palace in the first place, and no doubt was here to construct another at a moment's notice.

But the second… their cursed energy was muddy, cloaked and hidden away as if they were a wolf in sheep's clothing. And that made Sukuna stand up straighter when he realised who was standing next to the Emperor and Tengen. Kenjaku. Hidden in a new body, one that smelled familiar, one that seems to be angering you beyond words with how your entire body shakes with the restraint you hold yourself to.

That anger seemed to guide your next movements, as you drew your shoulders back and strengthened your spine. He could see your lips moving from here, yet those words were muffled—whispered, hidden from your opponents. You were chanting. Whatever was about to happen would be devastating, Sukuna clasped his lower set of hands together and extended them outwards before doing the same with the upper set.

The hollow wicker basket formed around his body just in time to hear you breathe the words ‘twin meteors’.

And the world froze, time upending and thrown off-kilter with the ferocity of your attack as you extended a single hand out towards the samurai who had dared to stop you from getting what you wanted. The slash that came down with the arc of your arm was unlike his own, far too large and violent that it made Sukuna’s breath hitch in his throat.

His own slices and slashes were designed to cut through different objects, depending on whether they were teeming with cursed energy or not. But this slash… it disregarded all of that, it had only a single goal—to slash everything before it.

No, you weren’t aiming for the samurai or his simple domain. You knew it would be nullified, and so you aimed for the space he occupied. The very piece of existence that tethered him to this world… and bisected the world itself with a single slash.

The backlash of such a technique had the surrounding area decimated. The fire that had raged on was wiped out with the gust of wind that blew back even Sukuna a singular step despite the technique he had deployed to protect himself. His eyes blink, slowly, trying his hardest to understand what exactly he was staring at.

There was a gaping hole in the floor, the darkness just a testament to how deep it truly went.

Sadatsuna was no longer there. He was wiped from the face of the earth as if he never really existed. The surrounding men that had been originally protected by Sadatsuna are nothing more than severed limbs, some still standing in place as if their bodies were still trying to understand what had befallen them.

Something shimmers and then shatters out of his peripheral vision, and Sukuna glances over in time to see Tengen come back into view. She was forced down onto her knees, the hexagonal design of her barrier shattering from the attack — it withstood the brunt of the attack, but it still did the damage needed to Tengen to force her down. Blood trickled from her nose, even her hair had turned a rich red from the blood that no doubt spilt from her ears.

His eyes naturally drifted to the figure next to Tengen, the flimsy layer of silk that had shrouded Kenjaku’s face had been blown back from your attack revealing the face of Lord Fujiwara but with the crude scar across his forehead. Sukuna knows you killed Fujiwara that day in the village, and you returned without Kenjaku’s body. Had Kenjaku planned this all along? The lack of surprise or fear on their face is telling enough.

The Emperor unfurls his wings once again, having curled them to protect himself from the blast and his body was untouched, the blood that had hardened on his wings slips off like water. Immediately, Sukuna watches as your eyes snap towards the Emperor and all you do is raise a single hand, a singular finger pointed in his direction.

“I’m tired of your games, you’ve hidden in the shadows for far too long.” You twist the arm you hold up, crooking your finger in a come hither motion. “Come, I’ve always wanted to kill a God.”

Sukuna snickers at the affronted expression on the Emperor’s face, the visage of unrivalled strength slinking off of the Emperor’s skin with each second that passes by. The Emperor had truly believed you would be killed by whoever had sucked you through those shadows, Sukuna almost felt jealous at the knowledge that you had fought the very thing he had wanted to face himself for so long… and if you were standing, they were not. He would get another chance to fight the Ten Shadows, he’ll make sure of it.

In the silent standoff with the Emperor, it seemed you had left your side open to a brave soldier who had rushed forward with his sword bathed in flames—Sukuna lurches forward, intent on stopping them before they can lay a hand on you… except something large falls from the sky, and crushes the soldier beneath a taloned hand.

The dragon roars in triumphant victory, its long body coiling to protect your blindsides. Sukuna can no longer see you behind the great wall of shimmering white scales and whilst that would’ve unnerved him once before, now he knows you are more than capable of being the weapon he had vowed you’d become.

***

You don’t bristle at the stare the Emperor levels you with, the sneer that could make a grown man cry. Instead, you let your lips curve upwards into a knowing smirk—you unnerved him, perhaps more so than Sukuna. You were an anomaly, something that had been created from the very darkness that Sukuna lived and breathed. You were the woman who had bathed in the blood of his children, had killed his mother with your own sword and sent him the head as a reminder.

Disgraced One. It didn’t come close to the true nature of what kind of monster you were, and would become.

The Emperor finally cracks, and that black band of tattoo on his face shifts shape. It expands down along his throat, disappearing far down beneath his dishevelled kimono. His wings widen as he straightens his shoulders, but they seem larger than before. Thicker, longer—but it wasn’t his wings that were growing, it was a wave of blood behind him that was mimicking the shape of the wings.

His wings suddenly curl forward, a single hard flap that has the wave of blood behind him flying forward at breakneck speeds. Your eyes widen at the amount of blood coming your way, you can only duck down below the slash of blood that whooshes over your head before colliding hard with the dragon that had landed to protect you. There’s no immediate sound of flesh being ripped apart, and you don’t have to look behind you to know the dragon withstood the attack as it rumbles with a less-than-pleased sound.

You take the break between the large wave of blood and the next attack to dart forward, and you can feel a pulse of similar energy behind you as Sukuna begins to descend upon the remaining forces that continue to pour infinitely from the mostly decimated castle. The Emperor brings his hands in front of him, open palms facing each other as a large orb of blood begins to pool there.

His hands suddenly clap together, before something flies directly towards you once again. This time, you were prepared for the arrow and jump. Two taloned feet grasp at your shoulders, a heavy flap of large black wings has you thrown forward on a clear trajectory towards the Emperor who only grows more enraged at the sight of the Tengu.

As your feet connect with the floor, you bolster your cursed energy to soften the landing before charging for the Emperor once again. You swipe your hand out to your side, only to have your fingers wrap around a katana that had been left standing in the wake of a samurai’s death. The Emperor, seemingly unperturbed by the fact you were closing the distance, gathers the blood once again between his hands.

This time, it’s not an arrow that comes forth from his hands but a katana of his own. It solidifies into a dark red, almost like it was made of a precious gem but even you know that it would not break so easily. He meets your swipe upwards with his own sword, teeth bared in an effort to hold his own against the force of cursed energy you had thrown into your blade.

A foot slams against your stomach, sending you flying backwards from the force of it before the Emperor takes to the skies himself. His wings glitter with light, feathers floating free from the force as he spreads his wings wide. He pulls his sword back into a stance as if he were to skewer you on the end of it—and then he swoops forward. His wings fold backwards against his back to streamline, his speed picking up rapidly so that you only have a split second to bring your borrowed sword up.

It clashes with a sound that has your teeth set on edge, the hardened blood remains unshattered whilst your own sword shows the faintest of cracks that would only grow if you continued to take hits like that head-on. You strike out with one hand, your hand colliding against the slither of skin of his chest that had exposed itself during his descent. The skin is hot beneath your touch, the blood that had been pouring from his self-inflicted wounds wraps itself around your wrist, intent on holding you in place as he goes to strike his finishing blow.

The Emperor meets your gaze head-on, the smirk on his face evident enough that he truly believed you had acted impulsively. Except, his self-assured smile slips from his face when he comes face-to-face with four eyes and a grin that would put Sukuna’s to shame.

“Tell me, do the Gods possess hearts?” You don’t give him a chance to answer, no chance to escape when your fingers curl harshly against that slither of flesh until you’re sinking past thick muscle and brushing against bone. The Emperor roars in pain, his skin cracking with precious light the more you dig deeper into his chest.

And then you find it, the thrum of his heart pulsing against the tips of your fingers. You keep your eyes locked with the Emperor before you grasp ahold of his heart, leaning in closer to feel the last rattle of his dying breath escape his lips… then you tug with all your strength. You pull the heart free from his body, and the Emperor’s grip on the sword slips before it turns into liquid once more.

He stumbles back a step, a pale hand brushing against the gaping hole in his chest. The flesh upon his bones continues to crack as if he were made of fine glass, the lighting pouring out of him dimming even the moonlight that washed over the entirety of the capital.

“What have you done?” The Emperor’s words are whispered, hushed by the strain of the missing organ in his chest. It continues to beat away in your hand, writhing and pulsing with the final quakes of life. “Foolish girl.”

The light pouring from his skin continues to brighten and brighten until you’re forced to take a step back, one arm coming up to shield your eyes from the blinding light—his eyes are wide, glowing with that otherworldly light that soon takes over every inch of his body before it explodes.

Something wraps around your body, pulling you away from the explosion of heavenly light that bathes the battlefield as if the sun had risen. Sukuna easily curls you into his chest, letting his back take the brunt of the light that burned away at the flesh on his back until it was nothing more than stringed flesh. You can hear his pained breathing against your ear, his entire body curled around you as if you were worth more than his own well-being— his own life.

“Whatever you just did, has made everything much more complicated,” Sukuna murmurs into your ear. His breath whooshes out of him with a heavy sigh when you feel the warmth of his cursed energy flooding his veins, healing him. “I always knew she existed, that she hid in a vessel.”

All four of his arms finally let up on the hold he had you in, allowing you to glance past the thickness of his arms to look backwards—to see a figure hovering in the air, two large wings beating softly whilst they bathed in the light that seemed to pour from their very being. That was no longer the Emperor, but rather the God who had shed the flesh of their mortal body and had come to ensure death was delivered swiftly.

“What is that?” You whisper, intent on keeping your voice low lest you draw the attention of the godlike figure who was starting to regain their awareness. Their hands curling repeatedly, testing the body they had transformed into.

“A myth. A whispered story to scare heretics.” Sukuna adjusts his body slightly, rolling back his shoulders to ensure he has recovered fully from the blast. “They call her Angel.”

“Is that why everyone obeyed the Emperor so blindly?” Your fingers curl painfully into the palm of your hands, the heart that was once held in your hand had crumbled into nothing but ash the moment light had exploded from the Emperor’s body. “Why my Father was manipulated into my attempted murder.”

You wanted this Angel dead. You wanted the heavens to weep at the display of such a prominent figure dead and mangled, by your hands no less. She had sentenced you to a life of suffering and death, her hand the one who had written the decree that you were to be assassinated in your own home. She had been the one to capture you in the mountains, you remember her wings well. You wanted to tear them from her back.

“She’s not immortal.” Sukuna levels you with a look, a promise with his next words. “She will die.”

You take that brief moment of Angel still figuring out how to move her mortal body, and lean towards Sukuna. You press your forehead to his own, relishing in the different texture between his skin and the secondary face. His eyebrows draw together, a hand coming up to cradle the side of your face as if it were second nature to do so. Perhaps it was at this point. Your own hand is tiny against his cheek, your fingers stroking delicately along the black line of his jaw tattoo.

“Remember your promise to me.” Your nose crinkles with the emotion behind your words, the anguish that chokes you. “Make the world bleed.”

“The world.” Sukuna’s own voice is hushed, barely a whisper and with being so close, you can hear that crackle of emotion in his voice. You can’t help but smile brokenly at him, nodding even with your foreheads pressed so tightly together.

Sukuna shifts one arm, and there’s something pressed against your hand. You open your eyes just enough to glance downwards only to find him pressing a weapon in your hand—the trident you had used once upon a time to shred Sugawara’s shield. He turns his head slightly, pressing his nose harshly into your cheek as he speaks.

“Use it. It’s yours as much as it is mine.”

Instinctively, your fingers curl around the handle of Hiten — flying heaven. A fitting name, you thought, to use against one of the heavenly beings that this weapon must’ve been created to ensure they could be killed. You had no choice but to use this weapon. You couldn’t recall withdrawing the sword from your chest when it skewered your heart, but you knew that it was no doubt lost in the forest along with the remains of your brother.

As if he could read your thoughts, Sukuna flicks his gaze down towards your chest. The wound was still there, oozing the same black substance instead of your blood and you can see the concern painted as clear as the moon above on Sukuna’s face.

“My heart was severed, the vow is keeping me alive for now.” You keep your voice low, eyes drifting past Sukuna’s shoulder in time to see Angel touching the tips of her toes on the floor finally. There would be mere seconds before she unleashed herself.

Sukuna instinctively lifts a hand to place against your chest, but you push it back down with your free hand. You only have to shake your head and furrow your eyebrows to tell him to not worry about your heart for now. He reluctantly drops his hand back down, large fingers curling painfully around the sole remaining weapon in his hand… then he nods, in acceptance of your wish.

With one final silent exchange with Sukuna, his eyes never once leaving yours, you push yourself away from him. Your feet crunch against the ruins of the palace beneath you, the ash sticking against the blood that had dried to your skin. Immediately, Angel’s head turns until she meets your gaze directly.

Her hair was long, silken and flowing as if she were beneath water, it shifts elegantly with the movement. A shining glint draws your upper eyes for a moment to the top of her head where a halo glows brightly, thrumming as if it were matching the beat of her heart. Her eyes are an unnatural shade of gold, like two endless depths of riches and treasures.

She doesn’t break her eyes away from you even when Sukuna rises to his full height, drawing his shoulders back and chin high as he stares down a God as if she were an ant to him. Instead, she turns to face you both slowly, her hand curling in the air at her side until a long katana materialises from the light itself.

“Abomination.” Angel snarls, her voice as smooth as silk yet as sharp as any blade. “I will see that God’s will is executed.”

“As I once told the Emperor’s mother; I welcome you to try your best.”

The Angel blinks at you, a barely there frown on her face before she swings. The katana is much longer than anything you had ever used, much too large for a human to use so easily. She swings it up into the air and in a downward strike with a trail of light—you jump out of the way, faintly realising Sukuna is doing the exact same thing.

The floor is bisected where you and Sukuna had once stood, the katana leaving a freshly scorched mark on the floor before Angel swings it back around in an attempt to follow the path you had taken. You can feel the heat of the blade chasing you, hotter than any fire you had used—but it wasn’t fire that chased you, it was pure divine light.

A sudden flux of cursed energy has you hastily glancing back at the sword still swinging in a trajectory after you, and you can only watch with wide eyes when the sword’s light grows. The width and length grow in size, your chest twinges painfully when you’re forced to pour out your cursed energy to give you a split-second gap to escape the blade that would cut you in half.

You’re thrown upwards into the air from the burst of cursed energy, your body burns painfully under the burnout after using your domain expansion followed by the attack that seemed to slice the world itself. You could feel it, deep in the pit of your stomach, you were going to run out eventually—you were going to die if you didn’t end this quickly.

Angel’s katana seems to diminish in size when you dodge out of the way of the attack, returning to the elongated katana with only a dim shimmer of the light that resided within. You notice then, when the light dims, there’s a rushing blur of something behind Angel.

Sukuna.

He was sprinting at full speed towards Angel’s back, his face set into something so stony and cold that it almost startles you. He looked beyond murderous, he looked determined. Determined to ensure the head of the angelic figure who was still unaware of his approach would come loose from her shoulders.

It’s only a slight flick of his upper eyes to meet your own do you realise what he wishes to do. You twist your body painfully in the air, reaching out a single hand towards Angel who bolsters her body as if she’s preparing for a long-range attack from you. Her wings tucked in tight to her back, her arms coming up to form an ‘X’ to protect her chest and face…

Your outstretched hand curls tightly into a fist, and you can only grit your teeth to stop the scream that threatens to burst up through your throat. It feels like your entire body is being shredded apart, your veins run almost empty of cursed energy and yet you pull on that tiny amount of power anyway. You let it wrap around your body… and reappear directly in front of Angel just as Sukuna arrives behind her.

Two of his fists are thrown forward, both connecting directly with Angel’s back and this time you do yell as you draw your own arm back. Your fist connects painfully with her face as she’s thrown forward by Sukuna’s punch, and the contact of skin-on-skin has the skin along your knuckles blistering.

It’s easy to fall into a rhythm with Sukuna, your soul so deeply intertwined with his own that your own punches fall in time with his own. You push past the pain that blossoms in your hands, how your skin continues to strip away in peels of flesh until there’s nothing but raw bone. Angel flares her wings in an attempt to fly up and out of the onslaught of punches, except Sukuna outmatches her in every aspect.

Sukuna grabs harshly ahold of her wings, taking a firm grip along the bone buried beneath once-pristine feathers. Angel starts to scramble more fervently with the grip Sukuna has on her wings, and you take the chance to gather those last remaining dregs of your cursed energy. Your arm is pulled back quickly, and you lean into the feeling of the world coming to a slow stop following the pull on your energy.

Your fist makes direct contact with her stomach, the world snapping back with the release of your innate technique. Her body lurches forward from the punch alone, but her body completely folds forward with the delay of the black sparks that shoot up your arm as well as wrapping around her body. Her blood sprays from her mouth, splattering against you and burning through your very clothes and skin alike.

You push through the pain of her very blood peeling back the layers of your skin, uncaring for the feeling of your flesh slinking off of your face. You throw every last drop into that punch, allowing Sukuna to do the one thing Angel had been afraid of happening.

Sukuna grins victoriously before he plants a single foot against Angel’s back, and pulls on the two wings still flapping violently in his grasp. They tear from her back like wet paper, the flesh connecting to her back comes out in long strips and chunks of bone. Angel screams a scream that pierces your chest and has your ears ringing painfully.

The two wings come free, and Sukuna holds them up into the air with a vicious smile on his face. His own skin had been damaged by Angel’s blood, but it was healing the moment it was being sluiced away. He meets your gaze over Angel’s slumped-over form, and he almost looks like he’s about to say something before Angel’s body explodes in blinding light.

There’s no avoiding it this time.

Your body is thrown backwards from the force of it, the light slices and cuts as if it were a physical thing. It buries itself deep into your bones and wraps itself around your soul until you can feel it starting to disintegrate under Angel’s cursed energy. Yet you find your feet against the ground, willing the dwindling flames of your cursed energy to curl around you in an attempt to stave off the worst of the blast—it works, for the most part. Except you can feel your cursed energy succumbing to Angel’s innate technique, it continues to shrink away until you’re stripped bare of all your cursed energy.

The light vanishes just as quickly as it had appeared, immediately your eyes snap to Sukuna who had been thrown several metres away. His own skin was flayed and sizzling, the skin around his mouth and cheek had been cleanly sliced off. His teeth bare themselves despite the blood that drips from the open wound, it’s a terrifying look on the face of a man-made monster. But even from here, you can see the realisation settling into his chest that his own cursed energy had been reduced to near zero—he wasn’t healing from his wounds either.

Angel is no longer where you had seen her last, instead, she’s once again in the air—and her wings had returned, except they weren’t made of anything materialistic. They were made of pure golden light, shimmering and glinting as if they were made of actual gold. Tendrils of light flit through the air around her, floating as if she were the sun itself. Her eyes are locked on Sukuna however, coming to the realisation that this could be her only chance to kill Sukuna and he would be powerless to stop it.

That light around her starts to suddenly flood her hand, curling and gathering until it starts to materialise something from thin air… but it’s not a sword. It’s a trumpet. That alone has your eyebrows furrowing together in confusion until you feel the flood of cursed energy that has your very bones aching under the pressure. It had to be a cursed tool of some type, something that triggered a grand technique that she could only use sparingly… and she was readying to use it on Sukuna.

You glance down quickly, scouring for the weapon that Sukuna had handed you. It hadn’t been thrown too far, and you’re able to grab it without arousing suspicion from Angel as she brings the trumpet up her mouth. Sukuna remains frozen in place, no doubt the effect of being hit directly by Angel’s cursed energy drained him much more than he anticipated. You watch as he still puts his hands out in front of him, bracing himself for what was to come.

The sky above you lights up with a giant symbol that spans across the entirety of the night sky, the moon nothing but a blotted-out white dot in the distance. Seconds. You had mere seconds. This was unlike anything you had ever seen or read about, nothing like what Sukuna had shown you. It was a technique to end all things, to eliminate true evil. Your heart strains in your chest as you pull your arm back quickly, clenching your fingers around the hilt of Hiten.

The movement has your muscles tearing, blood boiling beneath your skin and blistering with the remnants of Angel’s cursed energy but it doesn’t stop you. Not as you grit your teeth, ignoring the metallic taste of your blood that stains your teeth and thickens your tongue. Not as you plant your feet against the ground and throw the trident-shaped weapon with every last drop of your strength.

It soars through the air like an arrow, but it’s not quick enough—the skies open up with the sounding of the trumpet, and that symbol in the sky suddenly vanishes before it concentrates into a singular beam that shoots down from above at a breakneck speed. Your throat burns excruciatingly at the scream that tears from the depths of your gut, and you can only watch as Sukuna’s knees buckle under the pressure of the beam of light.

He was going to die. He was going to die, and it would be all your fault. You had dragged him here tonight, you had brought him along with no back-up. That alone has you moving, sprinting through the rubble that cuts at the soles of your feet and rips at the kimono that hung barely by tatters. You run, each bounding step has your muscles protesting and your heart lurching in your chest with the final ragged beats it provides in an attempt to keep you alive—just for a moment longer.

Sukuna meets your eyes through the beam of light, and he looks distraught at the closing distance. His skin was almost completely burnt away, the bone of his cheekbones poking through and the lids of his eyes were torn away but that didn’t stop you. Didn’t stop you as you reached into that beam of light, letting it sear at your very flesh and bones… as you shoved Sukuna out of the light.

His hand brushes against your arm, the tips of his fingers uselessly grabbing at the skin that raises and peels away under the burning light. He falls free from the technique, and it’s you who takes his place.

The pain is unlike anything you have ever experienced. It burns at your very being, it tears at the binds that hold you to this plane of existence. You think you can hear someone screaming, a distant sound that’s buried beneath the sound of bubbling flesh and the ringing in your ears. You can only keep your eyes locked with Sukuna’s as his face crumbles in distress, his burned hands curling against the ground in an attempt to wretch himself forward—to enter the light too, but he can’t find the strength to do so.

Something distantly impacts the ground behind you, yet the light from above doesn’t falter. The smaller angels that had come forth with the light don’t let up on the amount of cursed energy they need to pour into the technique to eradicate the one they’ve deemed the disgraced one.

Sukuna yells over the ringing in your ears, a pained sound that has your eyes drifting down as much as they can with the lack of flesh holding them in place… only to see his skin was still sizzling, still cracking and splintering away as if he was beneath the beam of light with you. You think you can feel tears forming in your waterline before they’re burned away too, he was still dying.

You can feel it, deep down, that binding vow that ties your very soul to his. You were going to kill him, and all of this would’ve been for nothing. And so, you reach inwards. You brush your fingers against that binding vow and see Sukuna visibly lurch forward, his head snapping back up to meet your eyes with a look that could only be described as agonised heartbreak.

“Don’t you dare—!”

“It’s okay,” you breathe the words as best you can with the bones of your body being disintegrated, your lungs exposed to the burning light. A weak smile spreads on your face, the feeling that washes over you is different to the pain. It’s a warmth you hadn’t felt in years, not since the time your mother was alive. You lean into it, letting acceptance wash over you from head to toe. “I love–”

…

Sukuna can only roar in agony, a rageful mourning sound that had never erupted from his chest before. He can feel the binding vow snapping in his chest, recoiling painfully at the absence you leave behind—you had nestled into a part of his very being, had made a home for yourself in his soul. And now it was gone.

It happens far too quickly for him to stop, even as he gets his feet back beneath him and makes staggeringly quick steps towards where your body was being held by the light. There’s no stopping the moment a binding vow is broken, especially one that had been broken unwillingly—you knew of the consequences of such a thing, how it always lashed back with a punishment fitting for the vow broken.

Your skin is peeled back completely, your bones snapping and bending under the pressure of the light. He can’t even see your face anymore, the shade of your eyes washed out and replaced with pure white. He watches in something that feels like horror as the tattoos on your body that had once bound you to him start to push out of your skin—until loose bands of black metal are wrapped around your wrists and ankles.

The light from above suddenly distinguishes itself, the moon washing over the battlefield in a dull light that allows him to watch the moment the punishment for breaking the binding vow hits.

Wings begin to spread from where your eyes once were, they spread until there are four of them. Your skin washes out as it’s stripped of all colour and blemishes, as if you had absorbed the light that had tried to eviscerate you. You’re glowing with that light. And your mouth that had stuck on those final words he had yearned to hear you say, snaps closed until he can only see your bared teeth.

Your body continues to strip away in slithers until there’s something standing before him that looks nothing like you. It contorted until it stood taller, large hands flexing wide and there’s a singular click that has his head snapping up to see in time as a grand wheel snaps into place behind your—its head. Suddenly this thing lurches forward towards Sukuna, reaching out with a large hand that dwarfed even his own.

Except it never reaches him, instead those smaller angelical figures that had appeared with Angel’s technique had fluttered down and changed with a flash of light into large chains. They wrapped around the monster—curse?—and held it in place, as it roared and glowed with unnatural light. It buckled beneath those chains, a knee slamming into the ground so hard that it rattled the world around him… and then it began to vanish, sinking down into the ink-like shadows that had appeared from nowhere.

And then it was gone.

As were you.

Sukuna takes a step forward, and then another until he stands in the place where that thing had disappeared—and where you had once been. There’s not even a trace of you, not so much as a scorch mark on the ground. It was like you hadn’t even existed, but that gaping hole in his chest told him otherwise. You were real, you had existed and now you were gone.

Your death alone was one of the single most painful things Sukuna would ever experience, and yet it hardly held a flame to the pain he felt in the realisation that after everything, after every single thing you had endured and overcome… it was all for nothing—it wasn’t enough.

He collapses onto his knees in the pile of ash where you had been, his fingernails curling against the ground as if he could pry it open and pull you free from wherever that thing had vanished. Death and grief had never been a concept Sukuna understood in life, had never felt the need to go through the motions of accepting someone's death. People died all the time, often by his hand… and yet, as he kneels here, he can’t find it within himself to be capable of moving on—to accept you were gone.

His eyes sting with the tears that fill his vision, only a few slipping free and burning at the exposed nerves and muscles of his face that had yet to heal from the few seconds he had been submerged under that light. He was angry—angry that you had pushed him out of the way and given your life for his. How dare you leave him to face the world alone? How dare you.

There’s a wet shuddering breath exhaled to his right, and Sukuna glances over to find Angel. Still alive. Still breathing. Unlike you. It has his grief turning into red-hot fury in a matter of seconds, his hands curl into fists at his side and he still can’t feel the cursed energy that had flowed through his body for so long. But that doesn’t stop him from approaching Angel.

The wingless Angel turns her head weakly to glance at Sukuna. Hiten remains buried in her chest, the middle prong nestled deeply in her chest. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but enough to mortally damage her. You hadn’t missed, you were so close to succeeding in killing the thing that had nearly killed him.

Angel wheezes a wet blood-filled sound as Sukuna bends down just enough to wrap his fingers around her throat before holding her up. Her skin was ashen, greyed and lifeless, yet she was still here. Still breathing. Angel makes no noise or sound of protest as Sukuna’s hand tightens around her throat, the tips of his fingers easily meeting each other before he twists and pulls. Hard.

The body falls with a thump to the ground, and then a second heavy thump of Angel’s head meeting the floor. Dead, and yet it didn’t ease the pain that spread through his chest in the wake of your death.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, or when Uraume had appeared. But he walks away with Uraume there, their own face pale and pained at the loss Sukuna was suffering. He had won the battle, he had beaten so many of the Emperor’s best sorcerers—yet why does it feel as though he had been struck with a killing blow?

Something shifts in the rubble on the path, and Sukuna stops only to lift his head and glance—and it’s Kenjaku who looks back at him. The face of the man they occupied looks grave, pallid and it conflicts with the anger Sukuna should be feeling towards Kenjaku. He should act on the bloody fury that roars in his mind to sink his fingers into that false face, to sink his teeth into flesh and tear free the cursed brain he knows to lurk beneath.

But he doesn’t. He continues to take steps further and further away from your final resting place. He knows he doesn’t need to act now on his rage, he knows that would not be enough to satisfy the promise he had made to you only a few hours ago.

You had asked for him to make the world bleed, and so he will.

He’ll make it bleed and suffer, for you.