The world seemed to hold its breath. The air in the clearing was thick with the scent of pine, torch smoke, and a hate so profound it was a physical presence. The curses Geto had summoned writhed in the shadows, half-formed things of teeth and despair, their collective killing intent a low hum that vibrated in my bones. The villagers, moments ago a self-righteous mob, were now a herd of terrified animals, their faces pale and slack-jawed in the flickering torchlight.
And in the center of it all stood Geto Suguru, his hand raised, ready to pass a sentence of death on them all. His eyes, when they finally focused on me, were two black holes of resolved despair. The surprise of my appearance was a flicker, a momentary glitch in his newfound, terrible certainty, before it was swallowed by a wave of something else entirely.
"Aki," he breathed, his voice a ghost of his former self. "What are you doing here? You should not be here."
His first reaction wasn't anger at my interference. It was a deep, instinctual horror that I was witnessing this. That my innocence, which he had once tried to preserve, was being tainted by the filth of the world he was about to cleanse.
"I came for you," I said, my own voice sounding small but unnaturally steady in the dead silence. I took a step forward, then another, walking directly into the center of the standoff. I paid no mind to the whimpering villagers or the simmering curses. My entire world, in that moment, had narrowed to the broken boy in the Jujutsu High uniform. "I'm not letting you do this."
"You don't understand," he said, his voice hardening. He gestured with his free hand to the villagers, then to the wooden cage where Mimiko and Nanako huddled together, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. "Look at them, Aki! Look at this ugliness. This is what we fight for. This is what we die for. This is what Haibara died for! We spill our blood, we swallow their poison, and this is our reward. They torment those who are different, those who are like us. They are a plague."
His voice rose, no longer speaking to me, but to the uncaring sky, a sermon for a god who wasn't listening. "I've seen it a thousand times now. Their weakness, their fear… it breeds this malice. It is a cycle that will never end so long as they exist. But I can end it. I can create a world where no sorcerer ever has to cry again. A world for us, and us alone."
He was preaching the gospel of Yuki Tsukumo, the words she had planted in the fertile soil of his grief now blooming into a thorny, monstrous tree. He truly believed it. He was not a villain in his own mind; he was a savior.
"And what about this world?" I asked, my voice cutting through his zealous tirade. I stopped just a few feet from him. "The one we have now? The one with Shoko-neechan in it? The one with Satoru-nii?" I saw him flinch at Satoru's name. "The one with me in it? If you do this, if you become a mass murderer, you can never come back to that world. You can never come back to us."
My voice cracked, the emotion I'd been holding back finally breaking through. "Is that what Haibara would have wanted? For you to throw everything away? To become something he wouldn't even recognize?"
"Haibara is dead because of them!" he roared, the curses behind him surging in response to his rage. "His ideals, his smile, they meant nothing! They were consumed by this world! I will not let that happen to anyone else. I will not let it happen to you!"
He looked at me, and his expression was one of profound, agonizing pain. He saw this act not as a betrayal of us, but as the ultimate protection for me and others like me. He was going to burn down the infected world so that we could live freely in the ashes.
My heart ached with a terrible understanding. Logic wouldn't work. Morality wouldn't work. His pain was a fortress, his new ideology its impenetrable walls. I couldn't tear down the fortress. But maybe, just maybe, I could convince him to walk out of it, just for a moment.
"Then don't do it for them," I pleaded, taking another step closer, my hand outstretched. "Forget them. They don't matter. Look." I pointed to the cage. "Look at them. Mimiko and Nanako. They matter. They need help. Not a massacre performed in their name. Not more death."
I turned my gaze to the crude wooden cage, at the heavy iron lock holding it shut. I focused, my Stygian Eyes seeing the single, absolute point of death on the lock's mechanism. It was a simple, non-living object, easy to affect. I raised a finger, channeling a minuscule thread of my power.
"Black."
The word was a whisper, a breath of Nothingness. The lock didn't break or shatter. It simply ceased to exist. With a soft groan, the cage door swung open.
The villagers gasped. Geto stared, his eyes wide. I had just demonstrated, with quiet, undeniable power, that I was not just a child pleading. I was a sorcerer making a stand.
Mimiko and Nanako looked at their open door, then at me, then at Geto, their fear mixed with a dawning, fragile hope.
"You don't have to save these villagers," I said, my eyes locking with Geto's, trying to pour every ounce of our shared history, of my desperate love for him, into my gaze. "You don't have to kill them either. Just… walk away. Walk away with them. Walk away with me. Please, Suguru-nii"
He was caught. The clean, righteous fury of his decision was now muddied. His grand, philosophical statement had been interrupted by a real, tangible choice. To kill these worthless humans would now mean doing it in front of me—the little sister he still felt a desperate, protective urge towards. To force me to witness the slaughter. It was a line he hadn't anticipated having to cross.
He looked at the hateful, terrified faces of the villagers. He looked at the two small, abused girls, now free from their cage. He looked at me, my crimson eyes with tear pleading with him.
The Cursed Spirits behind him wavered, their forms flickering as his resolve fractured. He held the fate of this entire village in the palm of his hand, and he wrestled with it for an eternity that lasted maybe ten seconds.
Finally, with a shuddering breath that sounded like a building collapsing, he lowered his hand.
The curses behind him dissolved back into his shadow, their hungry hum fading into silence. The villagers whimpered in confused relief.
Geto walked past me to the cage. He knelt down, his expression softening as he looked at the twin girls. "It's alright now," he said, his voice gentle once more. "You're safe." He held out his hands, and after a moment of hesitation, they took them, their small fingers wrapping around his.
He stood up and turned to me, his face a mask of sorrowful decision. "Come, Aki."
The four of us—Geto, the fallen savior; Mimiko and Nanako, the rescued children; and I, the child who had just rewritten the future—turned our backs on the village. We walked away in silence, leaving the stunned, hateful non-sorcerers to their miserable lives, untouched but forever haunted.
This was a victory, but it felt like a funeral. I had stopped the massacre. But I hadn't saved my brother.
We walked for hours, deep into the silent, moonlit forest. Geto found a small, abandoned shrine where we could rest. He conjured a small, warm-bodied curse to act as a blanket for the twins, who had quickly fallen into an exhausted sleep.
I sat on the shrine's wooden steps, watching him. The adrenaline had faded, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness.
"I'm not going back, Aki," he said softly, not looking at me. He was staring up at the moon, his profile etched in silver and shadow. "You know that, don't you?"
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
"What I did… abandoning my post, taking them…" He glanced at the sleeping twins. "The higher-ups will brand me a traitor. A criminal. There's no place for me at Jujutsu High anymore."
"You didn't kill them," I whispered. "The villagers. You didn't cross that line."
"Today," he corrected, his voice hardening again. "I didn't cross it today, in front of you. But my path is set, Aki. I am going to create a world for sorcerers. It will be a long, difficult road. And it will require… unpleasant things." He finally looked at me, his eyes full of a terrible, sad finality. "It's not a road you can walk with me."
He was sending me away. Of course he was. He was still trying to protect me, even as he was embracing a path that would lead him to damnation.
"I'll have an auxiliary manager take you back to the school," he said, his tone business-like now, a defense against the emotion of the moment. "Tell them… tell them I went rogue. Tell them I took the girls and disappeared. Don't mention you were here. It will be safer for you."
He was giving me an alibi, severing my connection to his crime.
My System, for the first time since I arrived in the village, lit up in my mind.
[CRITICAL DIVERGENCE CONFIRMED.]
[Worldline has shifted from baseline canon.]
[New Quest Initiated: The Divided World]
[Objective: Navigate the consequences of Geto Suguru's altered defection.]
[NOTE: As a non-murderer (yet), Geto Suguru's classification will be 'Traitor and High-Risk Curse User,' not 'Special Grade Criminal.' His immediate execution order may be stayed in favor of capture. The future is now uncertain.]
I stared at him, my heart breaking. I had succeeded. I had changed his fate. I had prevented him from becoming an irredeemable mass murderer. But I had still lost him. He was still leaving.
He stood up and gently ruffled my hair, his touch a phantom of the brotherly affection he used to show so freely. "Be strong, Aki. Stronger than me. Stronger than Satoru. Don't let this world break you."
He turned and, with the two sleeping girls in his arms, melted into the darkness of the forest, leaving me alone on the steps of the forgotten shrine.
I had won. I had stared into the face of a fixed point in time and made it blink. But as I sat there, alone in the woods, with the knowledge that my brother was now my world's enemy, it felt less like a victory and more like I had simply chosen a different, more complicated way to be damned.
For clarification about her power:
White: The ultimate defense of non-existence. (basically gojo infinity)
Black: The ultimate offense of erasure. (basically gojo Purple)
Gray: The ultimate versatility of conceptual manifestation. (basically gojo Red)