So, at first, this job? Looked like a walk in the park. Just another creepy spirit poking around Minami-Yokohama, squatting in the skeleton of Fukuda Industrial Nursery. The place used to crank out little sorcerers for the war effort, back before everything went to hell. Now, it's just a haunted dump with a bad rep—vanishings, screams, bodies tangled up in thorns. The usual nightmare fuel.
Gojo's smile, though? Way too smug for comfort. Dude handed them the mission slip like he was giving out Halloween candy.
"Treat this one as... special training," he said, all casual, blindfold grinning like he knows the punchline to a joke nobody else gets.
So here they are: Akashi, Yuji, Nobara, Megumi. Standing in front of a gate that's more rust than metal, the air buzzing with curse energy—like static that just won't quit. Vibes? All wrong. Not, like, end-of-the-world wrong, but weirdly familiar. Like the place remembers something ugly and wants you to forget it.
Yuji squints up at those busted windows. "Is it just me, or is this place staring at us?"
Akashi, sounding miles away, goes, "That's because it is."
Nobara—eye roll and all—shoots him a look. "Dude, what does that even mean?"
No answer. Akashi just pushes ahead, brushing the iron gate. Under his collar, the Spiral Brand gives this slow, pulsing throb—faint, but there, like a heartbeat that refuses to quit.
Inside the Nursery
They Stepped through the door and booooom—instant chill. The kind that sinks into your bones. The air's thick, heavy with old energy—like the walls themselves are crying. Sorrow baked right into the concrete.
Doesn't take long to find the first corpse. Hanging from the rafters, wrapped up in thorny wire. Camellia flower poking out of its mouth, vivid red, like some twisted Valentine.
Megumi mutters, "No way this is a standard curse. This is on purpose. Some ritual crap."
Nobara gets real quiet. "Those thorns... they look like mine."
Akashi leans in, inspecting the dead guy. Spiral scratched into the skin, barely visible—but there. Not just a curse. A signature.
"This is a message," he murmurs.
Before anyone can say "let's get out of here," the damn floor cracks open and swallows them whole.
Belowground: The Trial Room
They hit the ground in a ring of black stone. Thorns everywhere, curling up the walls. Dead center: a huge symbol a spiral, but it's flipped, all twisted up with the flowers that are burning red on the floor. Standing there far away, waiting, The masked spirit, That armored up and draped in vines.
"Welcome, Spiral," it hisses. "And welcome, Red Thorn."
Up goes its hand.
Nobara screams, blood spraying from her shoulder—thorns ripping out of her own curse energy. Like her Straw Doll Technique got hijacked and turned inside out.
She gasps, crumpling. "That's... that's my technique?"
Akashi catches her, teeth grinding. The spirit's got some kind of copycat curse—flipping her own power back at her.
Yuji and Megumi charged at frontline, fists flying, but the thorns just blocked them, twisting and learning their moves on the fly.
Akashi pulls Nobara behind him, Spiral Brand flaring like it's about to catch fire. He doesn't shout. Doesn't even talk. Just listening it because the curse is babbling, mimicking Nobara's voice in broken bits.
Then he drops a single word—so deep it barely makes a sound, but you feel it in your bones:
"Yūgen."
Everything freezes.
The thorns twist, then crumple in on themselves, sucking inward like something just yanked their plug. Masked spirit stumbles, spitting out half-words, totally losing it.
"You can't deny your name, Spiral!"
Akashi moves in, slow and steady, aura swirling like smoke off dry ice.
"I'm not denying anything," he growled. "I'm making my own."
He steps in and a Muay Thai elbow, clean and brutal that shatters the mask. No face underneath the Mask it's Just a black lotus, weeping red tears.
Megumi seals the floor with his shadow hounds.
Yuji, never one to skip a finish, punches straight through the spirit's chest.
Nobara, voice all fire and ice, curses the last thorns that's obliterates them with her Straw Doll Nail.
And just like that a long silence. Creepy, echoing, but, you know, better than screaming.
Later That Night
They stumbled out into the night. Nobara's clutching her shoulder, limping a little, but she's got that stubborn fire in her eyes.
She glances at Akashi. "That word you used back there. What was it?"
He looks up, like he's searching for something in the stars. "Something the Veil taught me. Means 'hidden grace,' or something like that."
She nods. Quiet, but grateful.
"Thanks. For covering me."
He gives her a sideways look—just a flicker. "You're not someone I'd let fall. Period."
Way off in the shadows, Gojo hangs back, arms folded like a smug scarecrow.
"They made it," he mutters, more to himself than anyone else. "Spiral's waking up. Thorn's blooming too. Damn, I love being right."