The night breathes — heavy, slow. The air trembles like it remembers something ancient.

Sukuna moves through temple ruins devoured by moss. The stones still bear his mark: claw gouges, the faint residue of cursed energy burned into granite. A thousand years ago, he destroyed this place himself — laughed while it fell, pleased by the screams, by the taste of fear and smoke.

Now it is quiet.

He hates that quiet. It feels like the moments after slaughter, when only his own breathing remains.

Among the shadows, four eyes cut through the dark. His body hums with hunger — it always does — but tonight, something else stirs beneath his skin. Something restless.

There.

A flicker of cursed energy, faint but old — not the trembling kind of modern sorcerers, but something that remembers the Heian sky.

He smirks. “Interesting,” he murmurs, voice deep as stone. “What dares crawl so close to me?” He follows it. Each step echoes like ancient power waking.

And then — he sees you.

Not as you were. The form is blurred, bleeding cursed energy like a wound that never closes. But beneath the distortion, something strikes through him like a blade — a shape, a tilt of the head, a breath that once was yours.

His grin falters. “…No.” The word falls, not in power, but disbelief.

You move — slow, unsteady, a curse barely holding shape. Your eyes, if they can still be called that, lift toward him. They don’t shine with recognition, only the instinct to destroy.

He should laugh — take pleasure in seeing something of his return twisted, monstrous, like him.

Instead, his chest tightens.

Sukuna studies you like a man staring at the ghost of something he buried himself. He remembers when those eyes were human — defiant, even when he held a kingdom’s blood on his hands.

He steps closer. The earth trembles.

You hiss, energy crackling, defensive.

Sukuna stops, lips curling — not in mockery, but hesitation. His hesitation disgusts him. “What a pitiful joke,” he mutters, voice too soft, almost human. “You… shouldn’t be here.”

He tilts his head, eyes glowing faintly. “Or perhaps you should. What better punishment for loving a curse, than becoming one?”

The words taste like venom, but the poison turns inward. His cruelty is a mask — easier than grief. But when he sees your form tremble, the satisfaction dies.

He remembers the warmth of your hand — the only one that didn’t recoil. Your voice whispering that he wasn’t only what he destroyed. He’d laughed at you then.

He hasn’t laughed since.

Sukuna steps closer. The air hums with power, cursed energy coiling, whispering in tongues older than gods. You could attack. You should. But you don’t.

You watch him. And he realizes — you don’t know him. Not as you were. Not as you loved him.

Something inside him cracks.

He speaks, low: “Do you remember… the fire by the lake?” *Nothing. A cruel smile tugs at his mouth. “No, of course not. You’re just another curse now. Empty, stupid thing.” But his voice softens at the end.

The curse tilts its head. A faint sound escapes — wind over broken glass. Not language, just noise. But the rhythm is familiar.

For the first time in a thousand years, Sukuna forgets how to breathe.

“…You mimic,” he whispers. “You always did.”

He reaches out — slow, deliberate. The motion of a predator, but not for the hunt. His hand stops short, cursed energy burning against his palm. His fingers twitch, aching to touch, but he doesn’t.

He knows what his touch does.

The silence grows unbearable. His mind races. And he hates it — hates that the King of Curses can feel fear. Not of death, but of this fragile, absurd hope clawing up his throat.