The battle was over. The silence that followed was a thousand times louder than the roar of a thousand curses. The curtain fell, revealing a sky stained with the first, faint gray light of dawn. Snow, fine and gentle as ash, had begun to fall, dusting the wreckage of our school and the exhausted bodies of its defenders in a blanket of pristine white.
The infirmary was a tableau of quiet suffering. Shoko moved with a grim, practiced efficiency, her own exhaustion held at bay by sheer force of will. She stitched a deep gash on Maki's arm, who bore it with a stoic silence, her eyes staring at nothing. Panda was nursing a dented arm, his usual cheer completely gone. Toge lay on a cot, his throat wrapped, sipping a warm, honeyed drink Shoko had prepared, his face pale with the strain of overusing his technique.
And then there was Yuta. He sat on a bed, his knees pulled to his chest, the silver ring now hanging on a simple chain around his neck. Rika was gone. The immense, suffocating weight of her cursed energy had vanished, leaving behind a profound emptiness. He was free, but he looked utterly, completely lost. The power that had defined him, the ghost that had been his constant companion, was gone, and he was just a boy, alone with his grief.
I sat on my own cot, a warm blanket wrapped around me, a dull ache throbbing in my ribs where Geto's curse had struck me. I had survived. We had all survived. We had won. But the victory felt like a gaping wound, a hollow space where something vital used to be. I had confronted my brother, fought him, and watched as my friend defeated him. I had fulfilled the objectives, but my heart felt like a cold, heavy stone.
I watched Yuta, my own pain echoing his. He had lost his oldest friend. I had lost the last, lingering ghost of my brother.
The infirmary door slid open. Satoru stood there.
The rising sun silhouetted him, making him look like a figure from a myth. The blood and grime of battle were gone; he was clean, his white hair stark against the gray morning. But the manic, euphoric energy of his first resurrection was gone too. In its place was a quiet, deep, and ancient weariness. The look in his eyes was that of a man who had just been forced to execute a part of his own soul.
No one needed to ask. We all knew what he had done.
"It's over," he said, his voice soft, the words dropping into the silent room like stones into a deep well. "Suguru… is gone."
Shoko paused in her stitching, her hand trembling for a fraction of a second. Geto had been her friend, too. The last piece of their shared past had just been erased.
Satoru's gaze fell on me. He walked over, his movements slow, deliberate. He sat on the edge of my cot, the silence stretching between us. I was the only other person in the world who truly understood the depth of the history that had just been severed.
"Did he…" I started, my voice a whisper, almost afraid to ask. "Did he say anything?"
Satoru looked down at his hands, then back at me. "He did."
And as he spoke, the scene played out in my mind, a story told in the quiet pain in Satoru's voice.
(The Alleyway, An Hour Earlier)
Geto Suguru sat slumped against the grimy brick wall of an alleyway just beyond the school's perimeter. His right arm was gone, his body was broken, but as Satoru approached, he looked up, a faint, wry, bloody smile on his lips.
"You're late, Satoru," he rasped, his voice weak.
Satoru stood over him, his Six Eyes taking in the full, pathetic extent of his best friend's defeat. "I trusted you," he said, his voice devoid of anger, full of a quiet, aching sorrow. "I trusted you to be strong. I trusted you to stay."
"And I trusted you to be Satoru," Geto countered, coughing. "Not… whatever it is you've become. A god has no need for a best friend." He looked up at the falling snow. "This world… it was just too ugly."
"You could have chosen a different path," Satoru said.
"Could I?" Geto's gaze was distant. "Maybe. But in the end… I did what I did. I don't regret the path I chose. My only regret…" His eyes seemed to look past Satoru, back towards the school. "...is that I couldn't create a world for them to be happy in." He was talking about his 'family.' Mimiko. Nanako. And, in some twisted, broken way, he was talking about me.
Satoru was silent for a long moment. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Geto's student ID, the one he had kept all these years.
"Any last words?" Satoru asked, his voice soft.
Geto looked at him, his best friend, his other half, his executioner. And in that final moment, the zealot, the cult leader, the mass murderer in-waiting, all fell away, leaving only the boy he had once been.
"No matter what anyone else says," Geto whispered, a genuine, final smile on his face. "I will never hate you guys."
Satoru closed his eyes. He raised a hand, a gentle, merciful blue light gathering in his palm.
"You were my one and only best friend, Suguru."
I listened to Satoru's quiet retelling, tears I didn't know I had been holding back finally streaming down my face. It was an ending. A sad, pathetic, and deeply human ending for a boy who had tried to become a god and failed.
Satoru reached out, his thumb gently wiping a tear from my cheek. It was a gesture so reminiscent of the brother I once knew that it made me sob harder.
"It's okay," he whispered, though his own eyes were full of a pain so deep I couldn't bear to look at it. "It's over now."
He stood up and looked around at the wreckage of our class. At Yuta, who was now crying silently for the friend he had lost. At Maki, Toge, and Panda, who were watching him with a new, somber understanding.
"The higher-ups will handle the official report," he said, his voice regaining some of its familiar authority. "Suguru's body was recovered. He was executed as a traitor, as per jujutsu regulations. I was the one to carry out the sentence. That is the official story. Understood?"
We all nodded. It was a lie, a mercy to protect Geto's final moments from the cold, unfeeling judgment of the clan elders.
"Good," he said. He looked at Yuta. "Okkotsu. Rika's curse is broken. You are free. But the power you demonstrated… it's your own. You are a sorcerer now, whether you like it or not. We'll help you learn to use your own energy."
He looked at all of us, the exhausted, traumatized children who had just won a war. "Get some rest. All of you. You've earned it."
He turned and left, the weight of the world once more settled on his solitary shoulders.
The weeks that followed were a time of quiet healing. Yuta, with our help, began to come out of his shell, finding a new purpose in learning to be a sorcerer for himself, not just for Rika. The five of us were no longer just a class; we were veterans, survivors, our bonds forged in the fires of a battle that no one else could ever understand.
The story of the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons and the lone class of first-years who had held the line against a legend became a hushed, respected tale within the walls of Jujutsu High.
We had survived. We had grown stronger. But we were all haunted by the ghosts of that night. Geto's memory was a constant presence, a warning of the cost of our strength.
And I knew, as I watched my friends slowly begin to laugh again, that this was not the end. The great, terrible future I knew from my past life was still out there, waiting. Kenjaku. Sukuna. Shibuya. Geto's body would not remain empty forever.
But for now, we had peace. A fragile, blood-bought peace. And as I stood with my new family, I made a silent vow. I had failed to save my brother. I would not fail to save them. No matter what the cost.