The weeks following the arrival of Nobara Kugisaki were a whirlwind of intensive training. Satoru, in his own chaotic way, was forging us into a cohesive unit. The three first-years, under the watchful eyes of us second-years, were growing at an astonishing rate. Yuji was slowly learning to channel his immense Cursed Energy, Megumi was refining his Shikigami control, and Nobara's Straw Doll Technique was becoming brutally efficient. A fragile, loud, and deeply dysfunctional sense of normalcy had settled over Jujutsu High.
It was a lie, of course. A beautiful, temporary lie.
The truth arrived on a sweltering Friday afternoon in July. Satoru called an emergency meeting with the second-years.
"Got a last-minute business trip," he announced, though his tone lacked its usual carefree lilt. "The higher-ups are sending me to Europe for a few days. Something about a rogue curse user faction." He looked directly at me, his expression serious behind his blindfold. "It's a snipe hunt. They want me out of the country."
My blood ran cold. I knew what this meant. The elders, terrified of the Sukuna situation and resentful of Satoru's control, were creating an opening.
"Keep an eye on them," he said, his voice a low murmur only I could hear. "Especially Yuji. Don't trust any mission reports that come in while I'm gone. Don't trust the higher-ups. If something feels wrong, pull them out. Promise me, Aki."
"I promise," I whispered, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach.
He vanished, and the protective aura of "The Strongest" left with him. Jujutsu High had never felt so vulnerable.
Two days later, the trap was sprung.
An alert Klaxon blared through the school. A mission dispatch. I met Megumi, Yuji, and Nobara at the main briefing room. Standing there was not Principal Yaga, but a grim-faced Ijichi Kiyotaka.
"A Cursed Womb has manifested at the Eishu Juvenile Detention Center, West Tokyo," Ijichi explained, his voice tense. "Based on our initial readings, five inmates remain inside. The manifestation has been classified as a potential Special Grade."
A potential Special Grade. A mission that would normally require Satoru himself, or at the very least a team of Grade 1 sorcerers. And they were sending three first-years.
"Where are the other teachers?" I asked, my voice sharp.
Ijichi wouldn't meet my eyes. "They're… occupied on other missions. Gojo-sensei is overseas. Yaga-sensei has instructed that the first-year team be dispatched to assess and, if possible, evacuate the survivors." He then looked at me. "Gojo Aki, you are to accompany them as second-year supervisor and provide backup."
I saw the truth of it instantly. This was the higher-ups' play. They were sending Satoru's precious students—the vessel of Sukuna, the heir to the Ten Shadows, the last scion of the Zen'in clan, and me, Satoru's monstrous sister—into a meat grinder, hoping the problem would solve itself. My promise to Satoru echoed in my mind. If something feels wrong, pull them out.
Something felt catastrophically wrong.
========
The air outside the detention center was heavy and stagnant, the summer humidity doing nothing to mask the overwhelming miasma of death. The building loomed before us, a concrete tomb silent beneath the afternoon sun.
"This is bad," I said, the moment we stepped out of the car. My Stygian Eyes were seeing the Cursed Energy around the building not as a simple aura, but as a roiling, cancerous tumor. It was chaotic, unstable, and far, far more powerful than the initial report suggested. "The energy signature is a lie. This isn't a potential Special Grade. It's a fully matured one, and it's still growing."
"We have to wait for Gojo-sensei to get back," Megumi agreed instantly, his own senses screaming at him. "Going in there now is suicide."
But then a woman appeared, sobbing, begging us to save her son, one of the inmates trapped inside. Yuji's face hardened. Nobara's expression became grimly determined.
"I can't just stand by and let people die," Yuji said, his voice shaking but resolute.
"There's a monster in there," Megumi argued. "And we're not heroes. We're Jujutsu Sorcerers."
"Then what's the point?!" Yuji shot back. "I don't want to live a life where I have to regret the people I chose not to save!"
This was the core of Yuji Itadori. His reckless, beautiful, and utterly uncompromising empathy. I knew, in that moment, that there was no stopping him. My promise to Satoru clashed with the reality of the situation. Pulling them out meant abandoning those inside to a horrifying death.
I made a choice. "Fine," I said, my voice cutting through their argument. "We go in. But we do this my way." I turned to them, my crimson eyes hard as diamonds. "Yuji, Nobara, your job is survivor extraction only. You locate them, you protect them. Megumi, you and your shikigami will be our escape route. You will find a path out and keep it open. I will run point and deal with any direct threats. We do not engage the primary target. We find the survivors and we get out. Am I clear?"
They all nodded, their expressions grim. We were going in.
The air inside the Eishu Juvenile Detention Center was a rancid cocktail of decay, fear, and the overwhelming pressure of a mature Cursed Womb. The moment the steel door slammed shut behind us, the world twisted. We were no longer in a building; we were in a stomach. The walls were pulsing, fleshy membranes, and the corridors were a labyrinth of grotesque, vein-covered pipes that seemed to rearrange themselves with a wet, squelching sound, designed to confuse and separate us.
"The door's gone!" Nobara yelled.
"Don't panic," I said, my Stygian Eyes scanning the grotesque environment. The domain was a maze, designed to confuse and separate. But even a maze has seams. "The structure is unstable. I can see the weak points. Follow me. Stay close."
We moved as a unit, a small island of four in a hostile, living sea. The initial curses were weak, but numerous, and the environment itself was our enemy. A pipe would burst, spraying a corrosive fluid, or the floor would suddenly become a grasping, fleshy maw. Yuji, Nobara, and Megumi fought with a desperate synergy, their teamwork the only thing keeping us from being overwhelmed.
We found the survivors—or what was left of them—in a large, cavernous chamber. And there, squatting over the mangled bodies, was the master of this domain. It was a Special Grade, a hulking, vaguely humanoid thing with far too many limbs and a head that was just a cluster of mismatched, weeping eyes. It radiated a power so vast and so malevolent it made the air thick and hard to breathe.
It saw us and smiled, a gesture that split its face in a dozen different places. Before I could shout a warning, it moved with a speed that defied its bulk. Its target was Yuji.
The attack was a blur of motion. Yuji, reacting with pure instinct, brought his Slaughter Demon blade up to block. But the curse wasn't aiming for the blade. A secondary, whip-like appendage shot out from its torso, and with a sickening thwack, Yuji's left hand, severed cleanly at the wrist, went flying.
"YUJI!" Nobara screamed.
The curse cackled, its attention shifting. It saw Nobara, momentarily frozen in horror, as the weaker target. A swirling portal of darkness opened in the floor beneath her feet.
"NOBARA!" Megumi yelled, but he was too far away, pinned down by another of the creature's limbs.
I acted. My promise to Satoru, my own desperate need to prevent another tragedy, burned away all hesitation. My plan was in shambles, my friends were being torn apart. It was time to stop playing by their rules and start playing by mine.
"Megumi!" I roared, my voice ringing with an authority that made even the Special Grade pause. "Get Yuji and Nobara! There's a weak point in the domain wall behind you to the left! Get them out of here, now!"
Megumi looked at me, his eyes wide with panic. "Aki, what are you doing?! We have to fight it together!"
"That's an order, Megumi!" I snapped, my gaze locked on the monster. "Go! I will finish this."
He saw the absolute, unshakeable certainty in my eyes and knew this was not a debate. He grabbed the stunned Nobara and the bleeding Yuji and began to retreat. The curse, seeing its prey escaping, let out a shriek of rage and charged, not at the fleeing students, but at me, the one who had dared to stand in its way.
I met its charge, not with fear, but with a cold, absolute calm. I was a prodigy, but I was not Satoru Gojo. I could not overwhelm this creature with raw power. But I didn't have to fight it on its terms. I could force it to fight on mine.
I brought my hands together, the fingers of my right hand interlacing with my left. "Domain Expansion."
The world did not shatter. The air did not crackle. It was a far more insidious and profound change. A bubble of serene, bleak reality began to expand outwards from my body. The fleshy, grotesque walls of the Womb's domain did not break; they corroded, dissolving like sugar in water wherever they touched the edge of my influence.
This was my Incomplete Domain. I couldn't yet overwrite all of reality, but I could carve out my own sacred territory within it.
The sky inside my expanding bubble of influence turned a deep, starless twilight. The ground of pulsing flesh was replaced by a vast, silent field of crimson spider lilies, their petals the color of my own Stygian Eyes. Behind me, a single, ancient weeping cherry blossom tree materialized, its petals falling in an endless, silent cascade.
Garden of Sinner. ("Kara no Kyoukai" (空の境界)
(note: i know is "Boundary of Emptiness" but "The Garden of Sinners," is a more evocative and thematic for me)
The Special Grade skidded to a halt, letting out a confused, enraged screech. It was no longer in its home. It was in mine. The cost of this gambit was astronomical. I felt my Cursed Energy reserves plummeting, the strain of maintaining even a partial domain a crushing weight on my soul. But it didn't matter. Here, I was the absolute.
The curse lashed out with its remaining appendages, a flurry of deadly strikes. I didn't move. My eyes were closed. My perception was no longer limited to sight. I was the Garden, and the Garden was me. I was aware of every line of death, every conceptual flaw, every possible end point of the creature before me. My will was the blade.
I focused on the concept of its attacking limbs. Sever.
The appendages, poised to rip me to shreds, simply fell apart in mid-air, dissolving into harmless black dust before they could even reach me. The curse stared at its own dissolving limbs in abject terror. This was not jujutsu as it understood it. This was an unmaking.
"It's over," I whispered, my voice trembling with the sheer effort of it all. I opened my crimson eyes and looked at the monster. I focused all of my will, all of my domain's absolute authority, on the core of its being, the primary point of death that shone like a dying star in my perception. End.
The Special Grade Cursed Womb didn't even have time to scream. Its entire, massive form collapsed in on itself, folding into that single point of finality before vanishing in a silent, swirling puff of ash.
My Incomplete Domain, its purpose served and my energy utterly spent, shattered like a broken mirror. The last vestiges of the Cursed Womb's domain dissolved with it, and we were suddenly back in the mundane, concrete reality of the detention center. I collapsed to my knees, panting, my body screaming in protest, my Cursed Energy reserves almost completely empty.
I had won. I had saved them.
And in doing so, I had just made the single greatest mistake of my life.
From the hallway where Megumi was helping his friends escape, a new wave of Cursed Energy erupted. It was an ancient, tidal wave of power so profound it made the Special Grade I had just killed feel like a flickering candle. It was the cold and utterly malevolent presence of the King of Curses.
No, I thought, my blood turning to ice. Why now? Yuji wasn't in danger!
Yuji's body strode back into the chamber, but it was not Yuji. The black markings were emblazoned on his skin, and four crimson eyes regarded the scene with a bored, arrogant curiosity. Sukuna.
"Well, that was quite a light show," Sukuna's voice rumbled. He looked at the spot where the curse had been, then his gaze fell upon me, kneeling and exhausted. "A domain of conceptual cessation. The power to unmake. And from a mere child." He tilted his head, a slow, predatory grin spreading across Yuji's face. "I felt that, you know. In my soul. A little flicker of your abyss, touching mine. Who dares to play in my presence?"
He had emerged not out of necessity, but out of pure, arrogant indignation. My power had called to his.
"Get out of him, Sukuna," I growled, forcing myself to my feet.
"The vessel is weak. He cannot contain my curiosity," Sukuna replied. "Show me more, death-girl. Show me the limits of your pale imitation of the cut."
He lunged. It was not a fight. It was a dissection. I was running on empty, my movements sluggish. I used a desperate White to phase through a brutal punch that shattered the concrete wall behind me. I used a clever Gray to manifest the concept of 'slipping' directly under his feet, causing him to stumble for a fraction of a second. I used a final, sputtering ember of my power to cast a pinpoint Black that erased one of his Cursed Energy slashes just before it could hit me.
I was surviving. But he was just playing.
"Intangibility. Conceptual interference. Erasure," he mused, cataloging my abilities with the detached interest of a connoisseur. "A fascinating little arsenal. But you are exhausted. Your power is a candle, and mine is the sun."
He felt Yuji's consciousness fighting back, a desperate struggle for control. Sukuna's grin widened. "Your vessel is calling for you. How boring." He looked at me, then seemed to come to a decision. "I'm growing tired of this game. And I believe it's time to teach the boy a lesson about making deals with devils."
He plunged his hand into Yuji's chest.
My eyes widened in horror.
With a wet, tearing sound, he ripped out Yuji's still-beating heart. "If you want your body back so badly, little sorcerer, you can have it," he laughed, crushing the heart in his fist. "Let's see how long you last without this."
The black markings receded. He was Yuji again. He looked down at the gaping, bloody hole in his chest, an expression of dazed confusion on his face. He collapsed just as Megumi and Nobara, horrified, rushed back into the room.
Yuji looked at Megumi, a weak, bloody smile on his lips. "Live a long life, Fushiguro," he choked out. He looked past him, at me. "Sorry, senpai… looks like I still… need saving…"
His eyes fluttered closed. His life force, which I saw so clearly, was extinguished.
I stood there, panting, exhausted, my victory now a bitter, meaningless prelude to a far greater tragedy. I had been useful. I had been powerful. I had saved my friends. But in doing so, my very power had provoked the king.
Yuji Itadori was dead. And this time, it felt entirely like my fault.