The silence that followed Satoru's declaration was heavier than any scream. The air in the moonlit courtyard was thick with the scent of blood and the ozone tang of impossible power. The three of us—the broken, the reborn, and the medical miracle—stood frozen in a tableau of shared trauma.
Geto was the first to find his voice, and when he did, it was a strained, hollow thing. "Satoru… you need to get to the infirmary. Both of you." He looked from Satoru's blood-soaked but pristine uniform to my own small, trembling form. "We need to regroup. Assess the situation."
"The situation is simple," Satoru said, his voice devoid of its usual warmth. It was a high, clear, and terrifyingly detached sound, like wind chimes made of glass. "A man tried to kill us. He killed Riko. I'm going to kill him back."
He spoke of killing with the same casual air he might use to order a crepe. This new Satoru was a stranger, remade in the crucible of his own death. The boy who had left for the mission was gone, replaced by a being that wore his face but shared none of his familiar recklessness. This was something colder, sharper, more absolute.
"Don't be an idiot!" Shoko snapped, her professionalism finally giving way to raw fear and frustration. She took a step forward, her hands clenched into fists. "You both literally just came back from the dead! You have no idea what that kind of strain does to a body, to a soul! And you," she whirled on me, her voice softening slightly but still laced with urgency, "are a six-year-old who just regenerated a fatal wound. You belong in a bed, hooked up to every monitor I own."
Satoru just smiled, a slight, unreadable tilt of his lips. "I've never felt better, Shoko." He turned his gaze, now holding the chilling clarity of the Six Eyes untempered by any human emotion, towards Geto. "Suguru."
The use of his given name, so stark and direct, made Geto flinch.
"Take Aki to Shoko," Satoru commanded. It wasn't a request. It was an order from a different plane of existence. The implicit partnership of "The Strongest" had dissolved; Satoru was now a singular entity, giving instructions to those left behind. "Keep her safe until I'm back."
The words were a twisting knife in the already gaping wound of Geto's failure. He was being relegated to babysitting duty while Satoru went to finish a fight that he, by all rights, should have been a part of. He was no longer the other half of the equation. He was just a variable that had been solved for and set aside.
Geto opened his mouth to argue, to protest, to say something that would bridge the suddenly vast chasm that had opened between them. But no words came. What could he say? He had failed. He had been defeated. Satoru had died and clawed his way back to godhood. All Geto had done was watch a young girl die. He simply nodded, a slow, jerky movement of his head.
Satisfied, Satoru gave me one last look. It was a complex, unreadable expression—a flicker of the brotherly pride from before, mixed with a chillingly profound guilt and a terrifying, newfound detachment. He saw me not just as his sister, but as living proof of his own fallibility. He had let me get hurt. It would never happen again. Not because he would be a better protector, but because he would become so strong that no one would ever be able to get close to him again.
Then, without another word, he vanished. There was no teleportation effect, no ripple in the air. He just… ceased to be there.
The silence he left behind was a crushing weight.
"Come on," Shoko said softly, her voice now gentle. She put a hand on Geto's shoulder, trying to rouse him from his stupor. "Let's go."
Geto looked down at me, his hollow eyes finally focusing. He saw me shivering, not from the cold, but from the aftershocks of a miracle my small body was never meant to perform. Slowly, as if moving through deep water, he knelt down and gently scooped me into his arms.
The walk to the infirmary was the longest of my life. Geto carried me, his steps unsteady. Every jostle sent a phantom ache through my newly mended torso. Shoko walked beside us, her silence a heavy shroud. We were a procession of ghosts, haunting the grounds of our own failure.
I leaned my head against Geto's shoulder. I could feel the tremors running through his body. I could feel the cold despair radiating from him like a curse. He was in shock, his mind replaying the horrors of the last hour.
"How?" he finally whispered, his voice so quiet I could barely hear it. He was talking to me. "How did you do it, Aki?"
How could I explain? The System? The desperate, paradoxical math of the soul? The will of a 28-year-old man in a 6-year-old's body refusing to die a second time?
"I didn't want to die," I mumbled against his uniform, the childishly simple answer feeling more true than any complex explanation. "So I… held on. To a warm spark."
He didn't press further. He just held me a little tighter, a protective gesture that felt heartbreakingly futile. He couldn't protect Riko. He couldn't help Satoru. All he could do was carry the last surviving piece of the mission back to safety.
"It wasn't your fault, Suguru-nii," I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
A shudder went through his entire body. He didn't reply. He didn't need to. I knew what he was thinking. 'But I am one of the strongest. If I couldn't protect her, what is the point of this strength? What is the point of protecting a world of non-sorcerers who create the very curses that we fight, while we sacrifice children like her?' I was witnessing the birth of the questions that would one day lead him to ruin. And just like before, I was helpless to stop it.
Satoru Gojo walked through the crowded streets of Shinjuku like a phantom. He was invisible, his presence masked by a subtle application of his technique, but his perception was anything but.
His newly reborn Six Eyes, amplified by his mastery of Reverse Cursed Technique, saw the world as a symphony of raw data. He saw the cursed energy clinging to the non-sorcerers around him like a film of grime. He saw the flow of their emotions, the faint traces of their souls. He saw everything with a terrifying, beautiful, and utterly alienating clarity. He felt a euphoric, manic energy coursing through him. He had touched the core of the world, died, and been reborn as its master. He was no longer just Gojo Satoru. He was a living phenomenon.
He wasn't searching for Toji's Cursed Energy. He was searching for its absence. A hole in the weave of the world. And soon enough, he found it.
Toji Fushiguro was standing outside the building of the Star Religious Association, having just collected his payment. He was lighting a cigarette, the very picture of a man whose work for the day was done. He looked up as Satoru approached, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing his features for the first time. He'd checked the body. He'd made sure.
"You're alive?" Toji asked, his voice flat, but unable to hide his disbelief. "How?"
Satoru's lips pulled back into a wide, feral grin. "I figured it out on the brink of death," he said, his voice buzzing with manic energy. "The core of Cursed Energy. Reverse Cursed Technique. I bet you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Toji took a drag from his cigarette, his eyes narrowing. The boy in front of him was not the same one he'd killed an hour ago. The arrogance was still there, but it was no longer the flimsy shield of a privileged youth. It was the absolute, unshakable confidence of a natural disaster.
"Doesn't matter," Toji grunted, dropping his cigarette and pulling the Inverted Spear of Heaven from his inventory curse. "I'll just kill you again."
"You can try," Satoru said, his grin widening.
The fight was nothing like their first encounter. Toji was still impossibly fast, his movements a blur of deadly efficiency. But Satoru was faster. He didn't just dodge; he was already where Toji wasn't going to be. His use of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue was no longer a clumsy blast but a precise, targeted weapon, warping space around Toji, pulling him off balance, crushing the ground beneath his feet.
Toji, for the first time, was on the defensive. He managed to get close, lunging with the Inverted Spear, but Satoru was ready. Instead of letting it nullify his technique, he did something new. He held up a hand, and from his palm erupted a brilliant, violent crimson light.
Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.
A blast of pure repulsive force, the opposite of Blue's attraction, slammed into Toji. It was a power he had never seen, an application that shouldn't be possible. He was sent flying, crashing through the wall of a building across the street.
He emerged from the rubble, bruised but not broken, a look of grim understanding on his face. He was outmatched.
"So you've got new tricks," Toji said, spitting a mouthful of blood.
"I've had a lot of time to think," Satoru replied, floating gently in the air above him. He held up two fingers, a sphere of swirling blue energy appearing at the tip of one, a sphere of crackling red energy at the tip of the other. "My whole life, I've just been using the 'stop' function of my technique. The convergent, attracting power of Blue. And now I've learned how to use the divergent, repulsive power of Red."
He brought his hands together, the two opposing forces merging with a sound that tore at the fabric of reality.
"What do you think happens when you smash two different kinds of infinity together?" Satoru asked, his voice filled with a terrible, gleeful curiosity.
A small, unstable sphere of shimmering purple energy pulsed between his hands. It was an imaginary mass, a paradox given form.
Hollow Technique: Purple.
Toji's eyes widened. He knew, with the absolute certainty of a lifelong hunter, that he could not dodge what was coming. It was not an attack he could block, a force he could withstand. It was simply… the end.
In his final moment, his thoughts drifted. Not of money, not of the Gojo clan, but of a small boy with spiky black hair. Megumi…
The blast of purple energy erased him, taking a huge chunk of the city block with it.
Satoru Gojo floated in the center of the devastation he had wrought, the manic energy slowly receding, leaving behind a cold, hollow calm. He had won. He had avenged them. He had proven he was The Strongest.
But as he looked at the empty space where his enemy had been, he felt no satisfaction. He only felt the phantom weight of a small, bleeding child in his arms, and the chilling realization that all the power in the world hadn't been enough to protect her.