The swarm slumbered, digesting what was left of Kishibe. The alley was empty now, but Geto did not leave. He lingered in the dark, his robes dragging against wet pavement, his mind drowning in echoes.
He should have felt triumphant. One more opponent erased. One more step toward empire.
But the old man's last grin gnawed at him. A man with nothing left but scars had still chosen to face death head-on. He had not begged. He had not broken.
Geto shut his eyes. Why does that bother me?
The silence gave him an answer—
but it wasn't his.
He saw Riko Amanai's smile, bright and fleeting, just before the bullet tore her skull apart. He saw the mourners at the school. Not mourning, but cheering. Celebrating.
He saw the village he had slaughtered afterward, the blood soaking the dirt, the children's screams. He had told himself it was justice. That it was necessary. But deep down, he knew—
it had been despair given teeth.
"You failed to save her," he whispered to himself. His voice shook, though no one could hear it. "You failed them all."
The curses stirred faintly at the edge of his cursed energy, like vultures sensing the cracks in his spirit.
He remembered Gojo's face. Back then, Gojo had grown stronger, untouchable. Gojo had let go of burdens and become the strongest. But Suguru—he had clung to them. He had carried every dead face with him until the weight broke him.
That was his divergence. That was his downfall.
"Monkeys…" The word slipped out bitterly. "They birth fear, they birth devils, they laugh at our suffering… And still I bled for them. I swallowed filth for them."
His hand trembled. He pressed it against his temple, nails digging into flesh.
Why did I keep fighting for them back then?
The answer was a ghost. Two small figures. Mimiko and Nanako, clutching his sleeves, their eyes wide with the only kind of trust he still recognized. They had looked at him as family. They had given him a reason to keep walking, even after he had become a monster.
And yet, even with them—his heart had stayed cracked open.
Gojo had found freedom in nothingness. Kishibe had found strength in defiance. Suguru had found only chains.
For a moment, he almost hated himself more than the monkeys.
Then, slowly, his breath steadied. His fists unclenched.
"…No," he muttered, voice cold and calm again. "This burden is my strength. Their corpses are my foundation. Every failure, every grief, every betrayal—I will forge them into the empire I was denied."
His swarm coiled back around him like a crown of shadows.
"Let Gojo float in his pleasantness. Let Kishibe grin at death. I will not surrender my pain. I will weaponize it. I will carve my kingdom out of it."
He walked into the neon glow, robes heavy with the weight of ghosts.
The Black Priest was no longer simply building an empire.
He was building a mausoleum—for every failure, every monkey, every smile that had died because he wasn't strong enough.
And this world would drown in it.