The air in the void was heavy enough to crush thought itself.
Every breath felt like dragging smoke into his lungs, thick and bitter, as though the atmosphere itself was alive and watching.
The ground beneath him was not stone, nor soil, nor shadow—just an endless, faintly rippling surface that reflected the moon above like black glass. Each step sent slow, spreading circles outward, but no sound followed.
The moon wasn't the moon he remembered.
Its surface swirled with dark shapes—shapes that occasionally pressed forward, forming faces that screamed without sound before melting back into the cratered skin.
---
Footsteps.
They didn't belong to him.
They were lighter, quicker… and completely synchronized with his own.
Sora stopped.
The steps stopped.
---
"You still think you can leave?"
The voice came from behind.
He turned slowly.
---
The double stood at the edge of his reflection, as if the rippling surface were a border between worlds. His skin seemed thinner now, stretched over something moving beneath. Every time Sora blinked, his shape shifted slightly—taller, thinner, sometimes hunched like a predator, sometimes standing straight like a mirror.
"I told you," the double whispered. "I am what remains. You keep trying to escape, and the void will just take more from you."
Sora's fists clenched. "If you're me, then you know I'm not giving up."
The double's grin widened until it reached his ears. "Then you'll be fun to break."
---
The void rippled violently.
Suddenly, the double was inches from his face, movement so fast it was impossible to track. A palm strike shot toward Sora's chest—he twisted, cursed energy flaring in instinctive defense. The blow missed, but the force of it still knocked him back several meters.
He hit the ground—if it could even be called ground—hard, sending dark ripples skittering outward.
---
The double advanced without sound, each step making the moon above distort. "Here, your cursed energy doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the Moon's Grave."
As if to prove his words, Sora felt a cold tug inside his core, like invisible strings pulling his energy outward. His reserves bled away in tiny streams, drifting upward toward the moon.
---
No. He wouldn't let it.
Sora's hands lit with a sharp, focused burst of cursed energy, his breathing deepening. He didn't think—he moved.
A hook kick snapped toward the double's temple—caught.
The double spun him like a ragdoll, sending him tumbling through the void's reflection.
---
He landed on something solid—but it wasn't the same surface. The texture beneath him was slick, warm. He looked down and froze.
It was skin.
He was standing on a massive, pale hand protruding from the void's darkness, each finger the size of a tree trunk, its nails blackened and cracked.
The hand twitched.
---
The double's voice echoed from everywhere at once.
"This is where they put the things even curses fear."
All around him, more shapes emerged—limbs, faces, skeletal frames—all enormous, all embedded in the void like fossils in tar. Each one had a hole where their heart should be, and from those holes flowed silver threads toward the moon above.
The pull on his own cursed energy intensified.
---
A sudden strike cracked across his jaw—he hadn't even seen the double appear. Pain bloomed in his head, but before he could recover, another blow slammed into his ribs, sending a shockwave through his body.
"You're slow here," the double murmured almost lovingly. "You think you're fighting me. But you're fighting the grave itself."
---
Sora spat blood—black here, not red. "Then I'll fight both."
---
He moved without hesitation this time, forcing cursed energy to flare around him in sharp, jagged bursts, the way Gojo had taught him to disrupt binding techniques. The invisible strings pulling at him snapped one by one, the silver light scattering.
The double's grin twitched—just slightly.
Sora lunged, driving a palm strike into his copy's chest. The impact shattered the still surface beneath them, sending waves through the void that distorted the moon's reflection into something monstrous.
For the first time, the double stepped back.
---
From above, the moon's screaming faces turned toward them in unison.
The void trembled.
---
And then the ground opened beneath Sora, pulling him down into darkness so absolute it erased the shape of his own hands.