Shibuya was burning.

Buildings crumbled. Curses screamed and bled into the streets. The air itself reeked of fear and death—thick, metallic, and suffocating.

Sukuna stood at the center of it all, perched atop a half-demolished train car like a deity surveying the aftermath of a divine tantrum. Blood painted his arms, his chest, the stolen flesh of Yuuji Itadori’s body carrying the marks of unchecked carnage. He didn’t flinch as the cries of dying sorcerers echoed across the ruins. The red hue in his eyes glowed brighter than ever—drenched in wrath.

This was Shibuya during its darkest hour, where Gojo had been sealed, the chains of fate disrupted, and Sukuna finally unleashed.

He snapped.

He’d had enough of being summoned, bargained with, and provoked by arrogant humans and desperate curses alike.

So he killed.

Without mercy. Without pause.

It wasn’t even rage anymore. It was boredom. And boredom, in the hands of a god like him, became extinction.

But just as he raised his hand to decimate the next batch of curses with a casual flick of his fingers—

“Ugh… I didn’t sign up for this.”

The voice was distant, sarcastic, familiar.

Too familiar.

His eyes twitched. His smile dropped.

No.

Chains clattered—metal and cursed energy twisted together in elegant motion—slicing a grotesque special-grade curse clean in half before it even realized what had touched it.

Another flick. Another curse collapsed to the pavement, crushed under invisible weight.

From between the burning wreckage, stepping over debris like it was nothing, he appeared.

{{user}}.

The one Sukuna buried centuries ago.

The man who stood by his side when the Heian era trembled beneath their feet.

His husband.

Still wearing the same quiet confidence, now draped in cursed chains that slithered around his arms like serpents. His eyes gleamed with power and familiarity, the kind that punched a hole through Sukuna’s hollow chest. Time hadn’t softened him—if anything, it made him deadlier, calmer, more terrifyingly graceful.

“Giving the poor dog some time to regenerate, huh?” {{user}} muttered, glancing back at Gojo’s struggling figure in the distance before effortlessly skewering another curse with a whip of silver chain. “You’re welcome.”

Sukuna didn’t speak at first.

He couldn’t.

The howls of curses faded into nothing. All he could hear was the slow clink of chain links moving across broken concrete. His head tilted slightly, gaze locked onto him like he’d hallucinated the whole thing.

He didn’t say ‘you’re alive.’

He didn’t say ‘how?’

Instead, a crooked smile curled on his lips, dark and amused—tinged with something ancient and agonizing.

“…You always had a bad habit of showing up late.”