Mahito didn't notice the shift at first.
One moment, he was walking the sewers. The same familiar scent of rot and rust. The stale breath of something forgotten by the city above. He had just been heading to his usual hideout, somewhere deeper within the sewers, but not that far away.
He was just slowly moving. Letting the silence wash over him.
Then it changed.
No warning. No ripple. Just a step, and sunlight.
The air warmed around him, soft wind brushing across his skin like fingers. Beneath his feet, the grit of dirty concrete was gone, replaced by the give of sand. His toes sank in slightly, the grains hot, fine, and dry.
He stopped walking.
Slowly, he looked up.
The tunnel had disappeared. He now stood on the edge of a perfect tropical island, right on the beach sands.
Sunlight poured down from a sky too blue to be real. Palm trees swayed gently at the edges of the shoreline. Waves rolled in slow, glassy arcs, washing against the sand with a sound too calm to be natural.
It wasn't real. It was designed.
Mahito's eyes narrowed.
'A domain... Dagon's domain at that...'
But it wasn't just that, he would've noticed it ahead of time if it had been.
The domain's barrier was also engulfed in something else, another sort of force field that hid it. Mahito recognised the work immediately. Clean seams. No spiritual turbulence. The barrier was perfect.
'Kenjaku...'
He turned his head, and sure enough, found the ancient sorcerer lounging beneath the shade of a tree that didn't quite cast shadows the way it should.
Kenjaku sat on a smooth, moss-covered rock, arms loosely crossed behind his head, one leg bent casually over the other. His smile was wide, as always, and still didn't mean anything good.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked, not bothering to rise. "Dagon's technique has a certain charm to it."
Mahito didn't answer. Instead, he tilted his head, let his expression slacken just slightly.
Kenjaku didn't seem to mind it.
"I thought you might appreciate a change of scenery," he continued. "The sewers can't be good for your posture."
Mahito blinked slowly.
"Where... here...?"
Kenjaku sat up a little straighter.
"For you? Treat this as a training space. Controlled. Private. I want to test something."
Mahito rocked on his heels.
"You... testin'... me?"
Kenjaku gave a light chuckle.
"I've been thinking about your technique. Its potential. You've shown ingenuity in how you use it, which I appreciate. But I'd like to see more. Something closer to your limit."
Mahito scratched his chin with a curled finger.
"Wanna... see how I break things...?"
He kept his childish facade, smiling innocently as he spoke.
Kenjaku smiled wider.
"No. I want to see how you grow."
From the water's edge, two other figures began to emerge.
Dagon floated half-submerged in the surf, still in cursed womb form. Breathing quietly and watching with his beady eyes.
But it was the figure walking across the beach that held Mahito's attention.
Hanami.
She moved like the tide. Silent. Purposeful. The sand didn't slow her.
Her body was tall and covered in tan bark-like flesh, black lines etched across her entire form like cracked stone.
Where her eyes should have been, she had branching wooden tendrils. Her mouth was exposed, with inhumanly perfect teeth shining in the sunlight; her expression was unreadable, locked in place like a statue carved in irritation.
Two jagged black lines ran down the front of her face like lightning scars.
A large, blooming flower rested on her left shoulder, its petals slightly quivering in the breeze. Her left arm, covered by a white cloth, ended in black bark with bone-white fingers, while her right hand was bare, with black fingers on tan bark.
She wore loose, black pants tied at the waist with a white sash. Her posture was relaxed, but her cursed energy was buried deep. Rooted. Steady.
"I volunteered her, since Jogo is still out of commission..." Kenjaku said casually.
Hanami didn't speak.
"Think of it as a spar. No killing. No Domains. No audience… aside from us, of course."
Mahito glanced at the short table resting beside the tree. Jogo's head was neatly placed upon it, still severed; he was recovering, gathering cursed energy to heal himself fully in one go. For now, the volcanic curse was quiet, one eye half-open, watching.
Dagon gurgled softly. Kenjaku raised an eyebrow.
"I also wanted to ask you something," he added. "About your last encounter."
Mahito didn't speak.
"With Sukuna's vessel."
There was a pause. Then Mahito shrugged.
"Sukuna... no care. No... fun."
"Yuji?"
Mahito's mouth twitched.
"Yu... ji... weak. Maybe... potential."
Kenjaku's eyes lit faintly.
"I look forward to seeing what you steer him towards."
Mahito said nothing. Kenjaku raised a hand lazily.
"Go on then. Show us something."
Mahito turned and walked forward. The sand shifted under his feet, warm and fine. The sun beat down above, but it felt wrong. The wind brushed past, but never quite touched him.
It was all too perfect.
He stopped ten meters from Hanami. She tilted her head once, slightly.
Mahito's skin rippled. His shoulders loosened. Flesh beneath the surface began to shift.
His smile vanished.
Mahito took a slow breath.
The sand was still beneath his feet. The air was still warm. Nothing changed on the surface.
But the ground twitched. He felt the vibrations within the sand, his enhanced senses tuned to his surroundings perfectly.
Roots exploded from the sand.
They came fast and narrow at first, fewer in number, sharper, more precise.
Mahito ducked and twisted, letting his ribs slide apart as one root grazed through the empty space in his chest. He rolled forward, spine bending sideways as another whipped over his shoulder.
He sprang up low, letting a blade form at his wrist, and slashed through a root trying to wrap around his leg.
It vanished instantly. Not torn. Not destroyed.
Unmade.
'Illusions... turned real. But still cursed constructs. Not actual wood.'
It was just like he remembered them, it just felt odd seeing them in person.
More roots burst out of the sand, blowing up a cloud of dust. The roots were slower and thicker. There were dozens. A full wave blooming out of the dunes.
Hanami was sacrificing speed for area control. Trying to pin him. Crush him under the weight of those roots.
Mahito let his body flatten like a sheet of paper, easily slipping in between the roots as he then snapped out his arms, turning them into long whips.
He spun, twisting like a drill, carving through roots and clearing space around him. The moment his feet touched sand, he reshaped and leapt, arms splitting into wings mid-air.
He immediately took flight, trying to get a better, birds-eye view of the battlefield. But when looking at the vanishing cloud of dust, he saw nothing other than sand and broken roots.
He immediately turned around, looking into and searching the sky.
He caught a glimpse of Hanami, drifting above the battlefield.
Held aloft by a single larger wooden ball, floating in mid-air right underneath the sun, making it difficult for Mahito to stare at her.
Then came more wooden balls. Small orbs the size of melons, floating behind her, forming in a ring.
One launched. Then another.
They moved fast, faster than Mahito remembered them being.
Each sprouting sharp branches mid-flight like javelins. The first missed him by centimetres. The second grazed his side and disintegrated.
Mahito grunted. He felt the dull pain, despite not actually receiving any injuries. His soul was safe, but his body was being battered.
The third hit his arm. The branch pierced straight through. It also managed to break his wings and destabilise his flight. Yet, he still clung to the air.
He looked down at the damage.
The ball that had just passed through him burst into fragments a second later, causing countless little wooden tendrils to explode outwards and pierce his body further.
He finally dropped, his wings carrying his broken form no longer.
Mahito hit the sand hard, and another cloud of dust formed.
He rolled. Came up on one knee, already reshaping his badly damaged body into a more human form.
Despite the pain he felt, Mahito still hadn't been injured.
Hanami dropped with him, silent and still composed.
'She feels a lot stronger in person than in the show...' Mahito couldn't help but smile inwardly. He was having fun!
And the fun was only intensifying as he prepared to stand up.