Pacing back and forth in a dim room, Uraume was chewing on their fingers until their teeth crunched through bone.
Prominent veins bulged across their face in a mask of incandescent rage as the entire room coated over in a layer of deathly, biting frost.
With a shuddering breath, Uraume stopped, dropping heavily to their knees before a makeshift shrine crafted entirely from brilliant blue crystal ice. At the exact center rested the Prison Realm.
"Lord Sukuna, I am sincerely sorry. I have failed to find a method to free you once again..." They pressed their forehead against the frozen floor, trembling in an agony of shame, not daring to lift their head.
"But I refuse to give up. I am positive I will find a way to free you, even at the cost of my life!" Uraume gritted their teeth so hard the bone cracked, only for reverse cursed technique to instantly seal the damage. They stood, aggressively dusting off their kimono and narrowing their eyes into dangerous slits.
"That damn Kenjaku... I'll tear him to pieces the moment I get my hands on him."
Two whole months without Lord Sukuna, all because of a weak rat like him...
The temperature around Uraume dropped toward absolute zero before they forced a tight, suffocating calm over themselves.
No matter. Kenjaku will have to show his face eventually if that stupid plan of his is to succeed. I'll just kill him then.
———————————————————
Back at Jujutsu High, Yuji sat with his back pressed hard against the concrete wall, his face buried entirely in his hands. Ever since the Shibuya Incident, his waking hours were split between two torturous extremes: tirelessly hunting curses until his muscles locked up, or sitting alone on the exact same bench near the training grounds, rotting under the weight of his sensei's death.
"You doing alright?" Nobara asked softly, dropping onto the bench beside him.
She could see the bruised, hollow shadows beneath his eyes from a total lack of sleep, though she didn't bother commenting on it. It wasn't like she was getting any meaningful rest herself. Ever since the death of the strongest, every surviving sorcerer had been driven to the absolute brink, desperately fighting back the surging tide of curse users and high-grade spirits born from the lingering, apocalyptic negativity of Shibuya.
"Yeah, I'm fine..." Yuji muttered, dragging a hand down his face as he let out a heavy, tired sigh.
"I just wish things didn't end up this way... That Gojo-sensei didn't have to die to that monster..."
"Yeah, I get ya," Nobara replied, her voice uncharacteristically subdued. "As annoying as the guy was, Gojo-sensei was stupidly strong, way stronger than any of us. But even he lost to Sukuna. And to make things worse, that white-haired freak and that other one, Geto, I think Nanami called him, are completely loose. I honestly don't know what they expect us to do. Best-case scenario? We all die mutually trying to drag them down with us and leave whatever's left for the next generation to piece back together."
She tossed a cold metal soda can toward him. Yuji caught it automatically, his blank gaze fixed entirely on the condensation sliding down the chilled surface.
"I'll handle everything," Yuji whispered, the words carrying a terrifying finality. "Or at the very least, I'll do my best to make sure Sukuna dies the next time I face him."
"Yuji. You shouldn't set out to fight with a mindset that involves throwing your life away. Even Gojo-sensei said that much..." Nobara hesitated, her jaw tightening. "Although... I'm starting to fear that exact mindset might be the only counter to power like that."
"And I thought I was the emo one," Megumi said flatly, stepping out from the walkway with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
Maki, Yuta, and Todo trailed close behind him.
"You still are," Nobara retorted without missing a beat, earning a quiet scoff from Megumi.
"You holding up alright, brother?" Todo asked, stepping forward to deliver a heavy, grounding smack to Yuji's shoulder.
"Heh. Yeah. Thanks, you guys, for checking up on me," Yuji managed a small smile, though it stopped dead at his eyes.
"Have you acclimated to your new strength?" Yuta asked gently.
Yuji nodded, raising a hand. A few heavy drops of dark blood materialized over his palm, obeying his mental command with absolute fluidity.
"Yeah. Those Death Painting Wombs were disgusting to swallow, but... I need all the strength I can get my hands on."
"I'll be heading off to the Zenin clan soon to scavenge whatever cursed tools we can salvage," Maki said, leaning an arm casually on Yuta's shoulder as he stood resting his hand on his sword's hilt. "I hate to say it, but for now, we're going to be leaning heavily on Yuta and Yuji."
"I'll keep combing the grid for Geto, too," Yuta added. "I beat him before. Doing it again shouldn't be too much trouble."
"You confident you can track him?" Megumi glanced over.
"Not entirely. But I have to try and stop whatever he's setting into motion."
"Well, I wish you guys good luck," Yuji said, standing abruptly. He cracked open the soda and downed it in a few hurried swallows. "I'm going to go clear out a few more curses before I turn in."
And with that, he vanished into the night in a brutal, silent burst of speed.
Sigh. "That guy is definitely running himself into the ground," Nobara muttered, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
"Yeah. But I can't really blame him," Megumi said quietly, his gaze fixed on the empty space where Yuji had just stood. "He's got the weight of the world on his plate, especially with all these other sorcerers pointing fingers, blaming him and Gojo for letting Sukuna loose."
"Was he always such a dramatic showoff?" Maki raised an eyebrow.
"Pretty much," Megumi sighed. "At least nowadays."
"Must be rough."
———————————————————
Time bled forward. Exactly two and a half months after the death of Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age, ten colossal barriers materialized in an unbroken line straight down the spine of Japan.
Every available sorcerer was mobilized instantly, dispatched across the country to contain the anomaly, only to find themselves thrust into a nightmare swarming with newly awakened sorcerers and ancient, bloodthirsty executioners.
BANG!
A civilian-turned-sorcerer was violently crushed into a bloody paste against the asphalt as a young man with sharp blue hair landed atop the wreckage, resting a heavy, reddish-brown Nyoi Staff across his shoulder.
"Damn it. Nobody in this shithole seems to know where Sukuna is," Kashimo muttered, sucking his teeth in deep irritation as small, volatile arcs of blue electricity snapped across his skin. He glanced down at the small, floating creature hovering by his ear.
"How many points is that now?"
"Hajime Kashimo. Current score: 15 points."
"Tch. These modern sorcerers can't all be this pathetic, right?"
———————————————————
BOOOM!
A roaring, high-output column of crimson energy instantly obliterated three curse users into a cloud of red mist as Ryu Ishigori sat unamused on a shattered concrete barrier, casually combing his immaculate pompadour.
"Man... this Kenjaku guy promised me a gourmet meal. All I'm getting is fast-food trash."
He glanced up, watching a woman with pink hair crush another unfortunate player with violently warped space as she vaulted across the sky.
"Should I make a move and start stacking points? Nah. That old man's barrier trick is a bit too volatile. Too many unknown variables for a fight of this caliber. I can afford to sit back and watch the show a little longer."
Landing soundlessly on the perimeter, Yuji stared up at the towering, light-bending perimeter of a Culling Game colony.
Beside him stood Megumi. The rest of their allies had already deployed to the other nine colonies, scattering across the country to rescue civilians, lock down the borders, and hunt down Kenjaku before the death game consumed everything.
"You look terrifyingly wired, Yuji," Megumi noted, eyeing his posture.
"Ha. Yeah. Something in my gut is telling me this is where it all ends," Yuji said, his voice flat and steady. "Do or die, you know?"
"Let's stick to the 'do' part and skip the dying."
"You could say that again."
Without another word, they stepped across the threshold, their bodies passing through the shimmering membrane before vanishing entirely from the outside world.
In a violent, disorienting rush of wind, Yuji materialized high above a ruined cityscape, gravity instantly grabbing hold of him as he plummeted toward the concrete.
FWOOSH!
A razor-sharp shriek tore through the air. A player with aircraft-wing hair plummeted straight toward him at terminal velocity, aiming to slice him in half.
Yuji didn't even blink.
In a microsecond blur of acceleration, Yuji snapped his hand forward, his palm crashing brutally into the player's face with bone-rattling force.
"H-Huh!?" she choked out, her eyes flying wide in sheer terror as Yuji seized her skull.
Using her momentum, Yuji twisted violently mid-air, redirecting her trajectory downward and hurling her at maximum velocity straight into an oncoming building. She slammed through the concrete wall with a deafening crash, colliding squarely with a male player whose head resembled a helicopter rotor.
"I literally just dropped in, and people are already in a rush to kill me," Yuji muttered.
Kicking off thin air with a concussive snap of cursed energy, Yuji propelled himself toward an adjacent skyscraper, his boots hissing as he scraped down the glass facade before landing cleanly on the street below.
"Now... let's see which one of these freaks has the answers I'm looking for."
———————————————————
Deep inside a quarantined sector of one of the ten colonies, Uraume walked through a dead, silent street, clutching the Prison Realm tightly against their chest.
Half the colony had already been systematically scoured and flash-frozen into a sprawling, lifeless graveyard. Their search for Kenjaku had yielded nothing so far, turning their inner fury into a volatile, freezing pressure.
"Just a little bit longer, Lord Sukuna. I promise you... I will not fail," Uraume whispered to the cube.
Suddenly, they stopped dead in their tracks. Their head snapped toward a massive, towering skyscraper a block away. With a vicious flick of their wrist, a torrent of frost erupted from their fingertips, flash-freezing the entire high-rise inside and out in less than a second.
"Uraume. Current score: 53 points."
"Tch. Keep hiding, Kenjaku! I can't wait to tear your brain apart!" Uraume shouted into the empty freezing air, unleashing another massive wave of glacial ice that pulverized the surrounding ruins into powder.
———————————————————
"Hmm. This isn't nearly as entertaining as I hoped."
Inside the absolute darkness of the Prison Realm, Ryomen Sukuna lay draped across a throne of piled skulls, letting out a lazy, jaw-cracking yawn.
"Uraume's mostly running around swatting flies. I'm way too impatient to sit here and wait for that scheming freak to finish playing board games. Spending centuries rotting in the dirt plotting grand designs, definitely not my style."
He had already figured out the systemic workaround to tear the Prison Realm apart from the inside, but he had deliberately stayed put, listening through the walls to Uraume's frantic, bloodthirsty rants outside.
"Screw it. I'm bored. Let's go tear this miserable world apart and figure out how to cross over to the next one."
Outside the cube, Uraume was walking through another frozen, ghost-town square, still trying to calculate a way to breach the neighboring colony borders.
CRACK!
Uraume froze.
The Prison Realm trembled violently in their arms. Deep, jagged black fractures spiderwebbed instantly across its ancient stone surface. Instinct screaming, Uraume dropped the cube and vaulted backward dozens of yards.
BANG!
The Prison Realm detonated from within.
A cataclysmic shockwave tore outward, shaking the entire colony and rattling the earth far beyond the exterior barriers like a magnitude-9 earthquake.
A thick cloud of dust and cursed energy billowed into the freezing sky. As it cleared, a tall, tattooed figure stood amidst the crater, lazily rolling his shoulders and popping his neck.
"Ah. That box was way more cramped than I remember," Sukuna muttered, a feral, blood-soaked grin spreading across his face.
Whoosh.
Uraume hit the ground in front of him, their eyes shining with absolute, tearful reverence.
"L-Lord Sukuna... You're free!" They slammed their forehead against the frozen ground, unable to tear their gaze away from his boots.
"Yeah. Though honestly, it wasn't anything special."
Sukuna stepped forward, casually dropping a heavy hand onto Uraume's head to ruffle their white hair. Uraume froze, stunned into breathless disbelief for a fraction of a second before melting into the touch, a look of pure, manic euphoria washing over their face.
"Tell me," Sukuna purred, his eyes scanning the shattered horizon of the barrier game. "How far along are these little Culling Games of ours?"
"It's been two and a half months, my Lord! I tried every method I could find to break the seal, but my power wasn't enough..."
"Don't worry about it," Sukuna cut them off, his grin widening into something predatory. "I got bored staring at the walls of that box. I think I'm going to go cause some absolute hell. Want to tag along?"
Uraume's smile mirrored his own, cold, sharp, and utterly devoted.
"It would be the ultimate honor, my Lord."
"Alright. Let's go then."
In a motion so fast it tore the surrounding air apart, Sukuna hoisted Uraume over his shoulder and vanished into a blinding streak of crimson and black, leaving behind a cratered wasteland where the King of Curses had finally regained freedom.