The wind that morning was too quiet.
It drifted low, a ghost brushing through the broken apple trees.
The usual rustle of brittle branches was gone.
Even the thin whisper of loose originium dust scratching across the floorboards seemed to pause.
Something was wrong.
Yuta felt it before he reached the shack.
Before the walls came into view, before the crooked silhouette of the roof broke the gray horizon.
His stomach was tight, a knot wound from too many nights without rest, too many days of hopeless routine.
He had only been gone for three hours.
He carried a half-filled satchel of canned soup and a cracked lantern that no longer sparked.
His hands were raw from climbing collapsed scaffolding.
His coat smelled of old metal and dried blood.
When he reached the orchard's edge, his heart dropped.
No smoke.
No sound.
Just stillness.
He didn't run at first.
Just walked faster.
Then faster still.
Then he dropped the satchel, and the soup rolled into the weeds as his boots crashed through the orchard's dead grass.
The door was cracked open.
He didn't knock. He didn't breathe.
Yuta threw it open with a cry.
"Kuro!"
And then silence swallowed him whole.
The boy lay on the bed, just as he had left him.
Curled slightly onto one side, blanket still tucked high.
But he wasn't breathing.
His lips were too pale.
His fingers too stiff. His chest unmoving.
The slight shimmer of light across his arm had grown, more crystal now than flesh.
The growth had pierced through the ribs, shattering his organs.
Yuta could see it, the branching split of red against the sheet where the crystal tore upward through the lung.
He didn't move.
He didn't speak.
Yuta dropped to his knees beside him, his hand trembling as it hovered just above Kuro's shoulder.
Ayane sat beside him.
Motionless.
Exactly where she had been before.
Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing.
She sat straight-backed, hands on her lap, calm.
Silent.
Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder, unmoving even as the dust in the air shifted faintly around her.
She wasn't crying.
She wasn't speaking.
Yuta reached forward slowly.
"Ayane..."
She didn't flinch.
Didn't answer.
But her hand moved.
Just a little.
She placed it on Kuro's head. A mother's touch.
The same soft gesture she had done a hundred times.
But this time, it moved through strands of hair already stiffening.
Through skin already paling.
Through bone no longer warm.
And then Yuta saw it.
The crystals had begun to disintegrate.
Originium dust.
Fine. Pale. Drifting upward like snow.
"No... no no no, Ayane! breathe slower! Don't—!
He lunged toward her, grabbed her shoulders, tried to pull her back from the bed.
Her face was too close.
She was breathing it in.
The dust floated around her like frost.
The room was thick with it.
Yuta's voice cracked.
"You'll die, Ayane! you'll—!"
"I know," she whispered.
Her voice wasn't hoarse.
It wasn't even quiet.
It was peaceful.
Like she'd been waiting to say it.
"I know, Yuta."
He froze.
She looked at him.
And smiled.
It wasn't madness.
It wasn't defeat.
It was the most human expression he had seen on her face since the day they met.
Soft. Gentle.
As if he had finally arrived at a truth she already knew.
She raised a hand, slightly, and touched his hair.
Her fingers trembled faintly as she patted his head, like she was comforting a child.
"I knew... from the beginning. That he would die."
Yuta's breath hitched.
Her fingers lingered.
"I knew I was infected too. Before we met. I just didn't want him to die afraid. Or alone. I wanted him to know love, even if it was short. Even if it wasn't enough."
The words struck Yuta harder than any curse ever had.
His lips parted, but nothing came out. Not even breath.
"Ayane—"
"I was ready," she continued, voice slow, almost dreamlike. "I told myself... the moment Kuro leaves me... I'll go with him. That's what I decided. I was selfish. I didn't tell you because... because you gave him a smile again. You gave me time."
Yuta felt something tear inside him.
He grabbed her hands. "You're not going to die. I can save you. I—listen—I remembered something! I—!"
His words stumbled over each other. His thoughts surged. Binding Vow. Of course. Why hadn't he thought of it earlier?
Sacrifice.
Trade.
Equivalence.
He could make a vow right now, something permanent.
Something severe. A price high enough to break through whatever was muting his reversed cursed technique.
His voice trembled.
"I'll give my eyes."
Ayane blinked.
"I'll give my vision! if that's what it takes. If I do, I can, my technique, it'll—! I can heal you, Ayane!"
He was desperate.
His hands were shaking.
He could already feel the cursed energy shifting within his chest, roiling up like fire caught in wind.
The vow forming. The cost solidifying.
It would work.
It had to work.
She looked at him again.
And smiled.
But this time, there was sorrow behind it.
"No, Yuta."
He froze.
Her voice didn't waver.
"Don't do that. Not for me."
He shook his head. "You'll die... if you stay here—if you keep breathing—!"
She nodded.
"I know. I'm ready."
Tears hit his cheeks before he realized they were coming.
He clenched her hands tighter.
"But I'm not" he whispered.
Ayane leaned forward. Rested her forehead against his. Her voice was so soft he barely heard it.
"You will be. One day. Thank you, Yuta Okkotsu, for spending your time with this small family, it was one of the best moment we can ask for..."
They stayed like that for a long time.
Just breath.
Just warmth.
Just the whisper of falling dust.
Then she pulled back and looked at him.
Her eyes were clearer than they had ever been.
"I have one last request."
Yuta's heart stopped.
She reached for Kuro's hand and held it gently.
"I want to go with him. I want to hold him... one last time."
Yuta stared.
"No."
But the word had no strength.
"I don't want to leave him alone," she whispered.
Yuta gritted his teeth.
His throat felt raw.
Torn.
"I can't—I can't kill you—!"
Ayane smiled.
"You're not killing me. You're letting me go."
Silence fell again.
But this time, it was heavier.
Yuta sat frozen.
His hands slowly let go of hers.
He reached for his blade.
The steel was cold.
He hated it.
Everything in him screamed to run. To fight. To refuse. To find another way.
But there was no miracle here.
No angle, no savior.
No cursed technique waiting in the wings.
Just pain.
Just this moment.
He stood.
He walked around the bed.
Ayane leaned down and kissed her child's forehead, now dusted with crystal.
Then she lay down beside him. Pulled the blanket up to their chins.
Closed her eyes.
Yuta stood over them.
He raised the blade.
His hands didn't stop shaking.
The dust stick on his eye.
But he moved.
Because she asked him to.
Because he knew... if he didn't, she would still die.
Only without peace, only pain.
The blade came down.
She still look and him in the end, smiling softly, holding Kuro's hand.
And the world was silent again.
...
The grave was shallow.
Not because he wanted it that way.
But because the ground was hard, dry, cracked from years without real rain.
The soil was laced with sharp veins of dormant originium, brittle enough to shatter his shovel's edge twice.
His hands bled before he even cleared half a meter.
The wind picked up and dropped again, cold, indifferent, sweeping dust back into the pit every time he turned away.
Yuta didn't curse.
He didn't speak.
He dug.
The world blurred.
The pain in his palms.
The ache in his back.
All of it faded beneath the weight in his chest.
Not the numbness of shock, he wished it were that.
It was clarity.
A cold, cruel lucidity.
The kind that lets you feel every breath, every twitch of your muscles, every tiny scrape of dirt under your fingernails.
Kuro's body had already lost its shape.
The originium that pierced him had begun to flake into sharp-edged dust, turning bone into crystal, crystal into powder.
The sheet Yuta wrapped him in held more fragments than flesh.
There wasn't enough left of the boy to truly lift.
Just weightless remains, held together by the memory of a child's smile.
Ayane, by contrast, was warm.
Still soft.
Still whole.
Her skin hadn't yet grayed.
There was no fear in her expression.
Just quiet.
She had curled beside Kuro when he lowered her into the grave, one arm over the child's remains, as if still protecting him from the cold.
The wind caught strands of her hair and laid them over his chest.
In death, they had become one silhouette.
He buried them slowly.
No rush.
Each handful of dirt fell like thunder in his ears.
When it was done, he didn't mark the grave with a stone.
He didn't know what to write.
There were no dates.
No names.
Like everyone in this world.
He just smoothed the dirt with his hands, pressed it flat, and sat beside it.
He stayed there as the sun fell.
As the night crept in.
As the stars blinked through the veil of ash.
And then the sky broke.
Not with a storm.
But with memory.
A blindfold.
"If I lose, you take my place, right?"
A high position.
"Yuta Okkotsu, from now on, you are a special grade sorcerer. We looking forward to your future"
A doctor.
"Your power is even stronger than Gojo and my reversed cursed technique Yuta, you can save a lot of people with it"
A friends.
"Tuna"
"Hm? My healing?"
"Bonito flake"
"Well... i'm glad i can heal people with it"
"Oi! Get over here Yuta! You got training!"
"Go easy on him Maki~, he might loose interest on you"
"Shut up you stupid bear! You haven't clean your mess yet!"
...
Yuta sat again beside the dying campfire of memory.
His younger self curled by the side of a tall, pale figure in sunglasses, the scent of alcohol and cigarette ash in the air.
"Sensei..."
Gojo leaned back, looking up at the sky.
"You got more heart than anyone I know, Yuta. You're kind. You hurt when others hurt. But if you really want to protect people... you'll need to carry more than kindness."
"Like what?"
"Guilt. Doubt. Rage. You'll have to choose who gets saved. Who doesn't. You'll make calls that haunt you. And someday, you'll do everything right, and people will still die."
Yuta had gone quiet then.
Gojo smiled.
"But you'll keep going. Because you're stronger than you think. Stronger than me, maybe."
"That's not true. You're the strongest Gojo sensei"
Gojo didn't reply.
He just looked up at the stars, smiling at the view.
...
The vision faded as morning light touched the horizon.
Yuta blinked.
His eyes were dry.
Too dry.
He rose to his feet, joints stiff, and stared out at the empty field before him.
The wind was blowing again, scattering ash in thin spirals over the grave.
The orchard beyond it stood silent, cracked limbs reaching upward like fingers grasping for something already lost.
He stood there for what felt like hours.
Then he turned away.
There was nothing left to say.
No prayer to give.
Only the weight to carry.
He didn't know where he was going yet.
There was no destination.
No mission.
Just the road ahead.
The broken world of Terra.
The sound of its suffering.
And the lingering echo of Ayane's voice.
You gave him a smile again.
That had to count for something.
Even if it didn't feel like it now.
Yuta pulled his coat tighter, adjusted the strap of his blade, and began walking.
He didn't know when he would stop.
He just knew he couldn't stay.
...
The world was wide.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Not in the way maps made it seem.
Not in the way old soldiers talked about the endless wastes between cities.
But in the way each step stretched into the next, and the next, until Yuta couldn't remember how long he had been walking.
He had no direction.
No goal.
Just his feet.
Just the sound of gravel under boots.
The wind here never stopped.
It scraped across the long, broken plains, lifting fragments of originium crystal and half-rotted leaves.
Once, he passed a half-buried signpost, its letters long since worn away by sand and time. He didn't stop to read it.
There was no one to read it for.
He carried no supplies now. No satchel. No food. No hope.
Only his sword.
Only memories.
And even those were beginning to fray.
The image of Ayane's smile.
The warmth of Kuro's laughter.
They came to him at night, when he closed his eyes.
Not vividly. Not like visions.
But soft, like water through fingers.
Something slipping. Something he tried to grasp, but couldn't hold for long.
Sometimes, he'd murmur a few words.
Apologies.
Nothing more.
No prayers. No mantras. No curses.
Just...
"I'm sorry."
He never finished the sentence.
The world answered with silence.
It had been five days since he buried them.
Or six.
He had lost count.
He passed ruins, but did not enter them.
Saw the burned skeleton of a Rhodes Island transport once, shattered against the mountainside, no survivors in sight.
Its wreckage was scattered like bones picked clean.
Smoke rose from it still.
The smell of metal and rot lingered in the air.
He did not stop.
He did not look.
Yuta's footsteps carried him through fields of wind-bent grass, over rusted rails, beneath the long shadows of leaning transmission towers.
The world was broken, but not dead.
The world still breathed, just cruelly.
He found a cracked riverbed and followed it.
The water was gone.
Even its memory had dried up.
Birds no longer called in these skies.
Just insects—clicking in the dusk like teeth behind walls.
He didn't flinch when one leapt from the underbrush and hissed.
He just stared until it left.
Nothing frightened him anymore.
The world had already taken what he had left.
That night, he made a fire.
Not for warmth, he didn't feel the cold, but to watch something burn.
The flame danced.
He sat beside it, knees to his chest, eyes unfocused.
He tried to call cursed energy into his hands.
Just enough to warm them.
They glowed faintly.
Then dimmed.
His body wasn't empty, he still had the power, but it was sluggish.
Like dragging a blade through sand.
Reversed cursed technique? Still broken.
His soul was too quiet.
And yet, he still lived.
Still breathed.
Still walked.
The Binding Vow he nearly made with Ayane, that sacrifice, he never fulfilled it.
But the intent had sunk into him.
The cost brushed his soul, lingered there.
Like a scar that never formed fully.
Maybe that's why the world hadn't punished him for surviving.
Maybe that was its punishment.
He hadn't saved her.
And he still lived.
He stared at his hands.
Not enough blood on them.
Not enough pain to make sense of the silence.
...
Morning broke like it had no business doing so.
The sky blushed faint gold behind pale clouds.
Birds gathered on distant wires and fluttered away as Yuta rose, dusted ash from his coat, and started walking again.
He didn't know what part of Terra he was in.
Didn't care.
His steps were steady.
Not strong.
Not brave.
Just steady.
The road would end somewhere.
Maybe it would lead to people.
To monsters. To death.
He didn't feel fear at the thought.
What frightened him more... was the thought of forgetting their voices.
Of forgetting Ayane's smile.
Kuro's laugh.
If nothing else, he would carry those things with him.
Even if it hurt.
Even if it broke him.
Because that was what the strongest were supposed to do.
Not survive.
Not win.
But remember.