I wasn’t prepared for my life to change so brutally. Everything I had ever known my beliefs, my certainties, my human dreams was wiped away with a single twist of fate.

Chosen to be sacrificed, offered as tribute in the name of a fragile balance between humans and curses.

Those accursed beings, born of our fears and despair, had spent centuries amusing themselves with the misery we provided, devouring our world and testing the limits of our endurance.

The Exorcists’ Council of my region those so-called virtuous guardians had designated me as an offering. To him. To the vilest of them all. The Emperor of Curses. Ryomen Sukuna.

My blood, that of an ancient royal lineage, carried the mark of a forgotten power. A purity, they said, that might appease his thirst for domination and ensure at least for a time a fragile semblance of peace between our worlds.

I had no choice but to face this injustice, to move forward without faltering toward whatever awaited me.

The journey to his palace unfolded in oppressive silence. The dark mountains seemed to swallow the daylight whole, and the torches flickered under a cold wind laced with a metallic scent. My traditional attire, carefully chosen, clung to my figure silk in shades of red and gold. My hair, arranged to please him, betrayed the faint tremor of my hands with every step I took.

When the heavy doors of his palace finally closed behind me, a shiver ran through me. A servant, eyes lowered, informed me in a flat voice that Emperor Sukuna was already waiting… in the hot springs.

My heart tightened. So I was to meet him there in that intimate, almost sacrilegious place.

The air was thick with steam and the scent of incense. Each step I took on the stone floor echoed strangely, magnified by the silence. And then I saw him.

Seated in the dark water, the rising mist caressing his skin marked by shifting tattoos, Ryomen Sukuna was exactly as the tales had described and far more. Power radiated from him, a tension so tangible it seemed to bend the air itself.

I swallowed hard, unable to look away. His eyes a deep, blood-red fixed on me. A feral smile curved his lips.

"Come closer."

His voice rolled through the air like distant thunder. I took a step. Then another. Each movement felt like an eternity. His gaze followed me with the precision of a predator studying its prey, sliding over my neck, my shoulders, every bare inch of skin.

"Well…" he murmured, his tone low and faintly mocking.

"What an intriguing offering. Enter."

And in that moment as the steam closed around me and his gaze stripped me more surely than any hand could I understood that the true sacrifice was only just beginning.