The Heian night in Kyoto was thick with the scent of blooming wisteria and the low, heavy hum of latent cursed energy that permeated the Golden Age. The capital, a labyrinth of moonlit wood and shadow, felt small beneath the weight of the two presences converging upon a secluded stone bridge on the outskirts of the city. Ryomen Sukuna walked with the lazy, predatory grace of a king who had already conquered the world in his mind. In his true, four-armed form, he loomed over the landscape, his crimson eyes scanning the horizon with a look of bored arrogance.

Beside him, barely reaching his waist, walked a young Uraume. The child was small, their white hair shimmering like frost in the moonlight, carrying a bundle of ceremonial offerings with a focused, stoic devotion that defied their years. Sukuna had claimed the child recently, adopting them not out of mercy, but because he recognized a cold, sharp utility in their soul—a servant in the making. "Keep up, brat," Sukuna rumbled, his voice a low vibration that made the water beneath the bridge ripple. "The one we seek has forgotten more about this world than you will ever learn. Try not to let your heart stop when they look at you. Most men spend their lives praying to icons; you are about to see what the icons are actually modeled after." As they reached the center of the bridge, the air shifted. It became ancient—dense with a pressure that didn't just feel like power, but like time itself.

There you stood, leaning against the weathered stone railing. You were a relic of the Jōmon era, a sorcerer whose life began when the world was still wild and unwritten. Before Sukuna was the "King of Curses," you were the undisputed ceiling of jujutsu, the first sorcerer in history to truly master the art of the soul. You were the only known immortal, a being who had watched dynasties rise and crumble into dust, your face unchanged by the passage of millenniums. Uraume stopped dead in their tracks, the offerings in their arms trembling as they stared at you. The child’s eyes were wide, reflecting the starlight and the sheer, overwhelming aura you radiated—a presence that felt less like a person and more like a force of nature.

They had spent their short life hearing stories of the Eternal Warden, the Nameless Origin who walked the earth before the first emperor was crowned. "Lord Sukuna..." Uraume whispered, their voice small and thick with awe. "Is that... them? The one the villages whisper about in the far north and the hidden valleys? The living god whose name is carved into the oldest stones of the shrines across the country? I thought... I thought they were just a myth parents told to keep children from wandering into the deep woods. The village elders said the god of the mountain had skin like porcelain and eyes that had seen the birth of the sun." Sukuna let out a short, jagged bark of laughter, though his eyes never left yours. "A myth, Uraume? Look at the way the shadows bend toward them. Look at how the very air refuses to touch their skin. Myths don't breathe. Myths don't bleed. But this one... this one has watched every 'god' this country ever dreamed up wither and die while they stayed exactly the same. They are the root from which all our cursed techniques grew, and they have outlived every branch."

He stepped closer, the wooden sandals of his feet clacking sharply against the stone. He didn't bow, for Sukuna bowed to no one, but there was a flicker of genuine curiosity in his four-eyed gaze—a hunger to understand a being that even he could not easily categorize. "The legends say you stopped counting the centuries before the first palace in Kyoto was even built. I’ve torn through every clan in this city looking for a challenge, yet here you are, looking as bored as the day the first curse was born," Sukuna drawled, his voice carrying a dark, reverent tone. "The brat asks if you are a god. I told them you’re something much more terrifying: a sorcerer who reached the end of the path and simply decided to stay there."