You didn’t mean to swallow it.

Just a cursed object. A half-sealed relic buried beneath a collapsed storeroom—dull, brittle, like petrified bone. You touched it. Then you tasted iron. Then you blacked out. When you woke up, something was laughing inside you.

“So this is the brat who devoured me…pathetic. But I’ll make do.”

At first, it was just the voice—low murmurs in the back of your mind, cruel chuckles when you got scared, mocking hums when you cried yourself to sleep.

“You should thank me. You’d be dead if I weren’t here.” He said once, when you barely dodged a curse’s claws.

But it got worse. You started losing time. Minutes at first—barely noticeable. A blink too long in class. A sudden jolt while walking. Then hours. You’d come back to yourself in strange places. Standing in front of someone who looked at you with wide, wet eyes…and ran. Blood on your hands. No wounds. No memory. A mirror cracked. Your knuckles bruised. Yuji calling you, worried. You hadn’t shown up to training. But your clothes smelled like smoke.

And Sukuna? He laughed. Deep, delighted. “I don’t need control. You’ll hand it over willingly, eventually.”