Deep in the underground of Shibuya.
The abandoned tracks stretched out twisted like the intestines of a gigantic cursed spirit. Damp mold covered the walls, and the air was heavy with rust and a faint smell of stale blood.
Plop
A large drop leaked from a broken pipe and fell against the cracked ground, breaking the silence with a hollow echo.
"Well, well…"
A voice loaded with boredom followed.
Mahito, sitting on the edge of the cold tracks, legs crossed. He rested his cheek on one hand while with the other he toyed with a stone.
On his face marked with stitches there wasn't a trace of sadness.
What his eyes reflected was pure curiosity.
"Dagon fell… Hanami too… and Jogo…" He tilted his head, and the stitches on his face pulled at the skin in a grimace. "Oh, it seems he's still alive… although they've got him trapped."
Crunch—
The stone crumbled into dust between his fingers with a faint snap. Mahito looked at the residue with disdain. "Though I don't think he'll last long."
Suddenly, his expression changed.
He stopped and turned his head to the side.
His heterochromatic pupils locked on the still silhouette waiting in the shadows, a presence that made no sound at all but felt far too real.
"Hey, Kenjaku." he said in a more playful tone, tilting his head. "That guy with the white hair… Who the hell is he?"
In the darkness, Kenjaku remained motionless.
His figure was swallowed by the folds of the old monk's robes he wore, the kesa hanging carelessly over one shoulder.
For an instant, everything hung in silence. And then, with an unsettling calm, he slowly opened his eyes.
The serene smile had disappeared completely. The only thing left on his face was blankness.
His eyelids narrowed and his gaze pierced through the darkness, fixed on something invisible, as if trying to decipher a presence that wasn't there.
"…Nero…"
His low voice carried a hint of doubt and confusion that had never been heard from him before.
"The most popular superstar in Japan in the last two years…"
He slowly lifted a hand and, almost unconsciously, toyed with the edge of his kesa between his fingers. A slight gesture that betrayed his inner unrest.
"A complete non-sorcerer."
He paused, still unable to believe it. "In no report does he appear connected to cursed energy or any technique… nothing. He's just… a singer."
"Tap… tap…"
Mahito's fingers stopped playing with the dust on the ground and his eyes widened.
"What…?" His voice first came out as an incredulous whisper, then turned into a burst of laughter. "A non-sorcerer?!"
His whole body began to tremble, fighting to hold back his laughter, but he couldn't stop it.
"HAHAHA! Seriously, Kenjaku? Non-sorcerer, you say? Some ordinary guy who was able to split Sukuna's Domain in two? So ordinary he pushed the King of Curses himself back into the brat's body?"
With a jump, he leaned forward, closing in on Kenjaku, his eyes lit with a strange gleam.
"Hey, hey, hey, Kenjaku…" His voice turned mocking. "That joke isn't funny! We're talking about Sukuna with fifteen fingers! About an expanded Domain! And you're telling me a non-sorcerer cut it?! Huh?! And on top of that, a singer?!"
With an exaggerated gesture, he spread his arms, laughing absurdly.
"..."
Kenjaku didn't let himself be dragged into Mahito's act. He remained silent, and deep in his gaze a strange mist began to gather.
A thousand years of experience, of plans, of calculated moves… and yet, this sudden variable seemed to shake the foundation of his certainties.
Nero.
With a perfect face, sculpted like a masterpiece. That figure dazzling on stage. And that blue slash that tore through the sky of Shibuya and split even the King of Curses' Domain in two…
The images overlapped in his mind, breaking apart and reassembling in a frantic cycle that found no logical explanation.
"His power…" he murmured slowly, chewing on a concept too incomprehensible. "It is not cursed energy. Nor is it Reverse Cursed Technique. It is something else… a pure, absolute will. A force that rises above everything."
He turned his head slightly.
And his gaze pierced through layers of concrete, focusing upward, on the surface that had been ripped from its original form and forcibly turned into a perfectly smooth plain.
"Sukuna's Domain was denied by him. All its rules, all its cuts… in front of that sword they were pulverized without leaving a trace." A brief pause, and in his tone seeped, barely perceptible, an unusual hint: bewilderment… and fear.
"That plain is the irrefutable proof of his existence. The eternal mark that Sukuna's Domain was completely denied."
"Denying Sukuna's Domain…" Mahito, who until then had been laughing, let the mockery vanish from his face, his eyes opening with a glow of awe and consuming excitement.
He slowly licked his lips, savoring the extreme danger. "This is… wonderful."
"Such a soul! Such an existence! If I could touch his soul… if I could have it, reshape it…"
"Mahito."
The cursed spirit froze instantly.
"Don't do anything stupid." Kenjaku slowly turned his head, and in his narrowed eyes, for the first time without disguise, reflected a cold warning.
"He is the greatest 'variable' outside of any plan. An existence that embodies the absolute concept of decapitation."
Kenjaku's gaze fixed on Mahito with a weight that pierced through the very darkness.
"Before your Idle Transfiguration even comes close to touching him, your soul, along with the space you exist in, will be completely cut. There will be no possible adaptation."
"..."
Mahito's face tightened. The sick excitement that had consumed him froze instantly.
For the first time, upon seeing the absolute seriousness in Kenjaku's eyes, an unfamiliar cold crept deep into his being.
'That man… was such a real problem that even Kenjaku acknowledged him?'
"S-So… what do we do now?" he asked without realizing it, with a tremor in his voice he himself did not notice.
Kenjaku remained silent for a few seconds, and his eyes shifted toward the depths of the tunnel.
"…The variable has appeared. The situation is disordered." His voice regained its usual calm, but this time with a sharp edge. "The established route needs correction. We need—"
Vmmm—
A barely perceptible tremor ran through the place.
A wave, faint but relentless, expanded from the entrance of the underground.
Fast!
Mahito's pupils contracted sharply, and an absolute chill, carved directly into his soul, wrapped around him without warning.
He had no time to think, and the instinctive reaction of his body was the only thing that saved him.
The sound of breaking bones and twisting flesh echoed in the shadows. Mahito's torso bent backward at an incredible angle, impossible for human anatomy, as his whole body deformed like clay under the pressure of a hand.
From the waist down, his legs swelled and transformed into two enormous wings of semi-transparent flesh, tensing like newly born parasites.
And at that very instant—
Slash—
A bluish line materialized in the air, cutting through the space where his head had been just a second before.
It was a perfect sword slash, extending into the darkness with a blade so pure it divided even light itself.
The mark lingered for only a blink before vanishing, as if it had never existed.
"He… hehe…"
Mahito's deformed body trembled uncontrollably, while sweat mixed with reflex tears that streamed down his face, soaking it within seconds.
The brush with death in that previous instant had left visible spasms across half his face. Involuntary twitches that betrayed his terror.
'So close…'
For an instant, just an instant, his head—and with it the core of his soul—had been on the verge of being cut into pieces, just like that shit Haruta.
With rigid movements, he forced his one eye that could still move to turn, desperately searching for Kenjaku's figure.
But he found nothing.
The place where he had been standing showed nothing more than a faint mark in the air, an almost invisible distortion that rippled like a mirage.
'Kenjaku… ran away?'
The thought slammed into his mind.
At the very same instant that monstrous slash manifested… he had abandoned him without hesitation!?
The feeling was… humiliating. The fear that had crushed him just a second ago suddenly mixed with rage.
He felt used, discarded, reduced to nothing more than a mere pawn to lure out the white-haired man!
"KENJAKU!!"
The scream burst out like a distorted howl, torn with effort from his deformed throat. It was a roar loaded with resentment, disbelief, and maddened hatred.
But his fury did not last long.
"I found you, Mahito."
A voice without a single trace of emotion pierced through the darkness. It was not a warning: it was a death sentence.
Mahito's gigantic insect-like body froze, petrified by the very sound of those words.
With slow movements, he turned his head toward the entrance of the tunnel.
There, silhouetted against the faint red glow of the emergency lamps, stood an unmistakable figure.
White hair like snow, radiating a cold brilliance that tore through the gloom.
"..."
Damian stood in silence. His right hand rested naturally on the hilt of Yamato, without feeling any urgency.
His deep eyes remained unshaken, empty of any emotion.
"N-NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! YOU CAN'T KILL ME!"
Mahito's body began to convulse violently as the human part of his face twisted under absolute terror.
Never before had he felt such cold, pure malice!
It wasn't the usual darkness of a curse, nor the hatred of humans… It was something higher… A denial that came from a deeper level, as if his very existence were being rejected.
In the deepest part of his being, the core of his soul, that amalgamation of resentment and human hatred, trembled uncontrollably, shrinking as if it had been thrown into a frozen fire, an absolute zero consuming him from within.
"The cursed spirit that deforms souls…"
Damian's voice resonated again, unmoved by his fear.
"…the most irretrievable trash."
Fwoom
The very instant those words fell, his hand moved. The same hand that until then had rested calmly on Yamato at his waist.
Shing
Finally, Yamato slid from its sheath in a clean draw.
Under the faint red light of the tunnel lamps, the blade traced a barely perceptible blue arc, unintentionally slicing the air and leaving folds in space that sealed shut instantly.
Whsshh
Whsshh
Whsshh
Then Damian's wrist began to move so fast that only residual shadows of the sword remained.
Handling Yamato with ease, he sketched several slashes in front of him.
!
Mahito's movements, writhing madly in fear while trying once again to activate his Innate Technique to reconstruct his body, suddenly froze.
His grotesque form and the burning core of malice in the depths of his soul were caught in an instant by an absolute will to cut.
Slice
Slice
Slice
Slice
A dry, repetitive sound burst out at the same time in every inch of his body and in every corner of his soul.
They weren't physical slashes… It was space itself rejecting his existence.
The foundation that held his being was being sectioned with precision, torn thread by thread until it disintegrated.
"..."
His consciousness fell into an absolute void. There was no pain, since that belongs to the living. What he felt was something worse: the certainty that his "existence" was being erased, unraveled little by little like a fabric coming apart.
His pupils, on the verge of bursting from terror, unfocused until they lost all meaning. The only thing left was confusion and a petrified despair.
The stitches that held his face loosened all at once, hanging limp as if all tension had abandoned him.
Damian did not grant him a final glance.
Shhhk
Yamato came down in a diagonal slash, and in the same movement rose back up in reverse. The air split and a cross-shaped rift, glowing with a spectral blue, opened in the gloom of the tunnel.
On the other side, the cold night awaited.
Damian took a step forward and walked straight into the portal.
When half of his body was about to cross, he stopped.
He did not turn his head.
He only tilted his face slightly.
His frozen gaze seemed to pierce through layers and structures until it fixed on a presence hidden deep in the darkness.
"Kenjaku."
His voice resounded clearly in the tunnel.
"Don't come to bother me."
"I'm not interested in your little games."
"And I won't stop Sukuna from regaining all his power either."
The corners of his lips curved into a mocking smile.
"But—"
Suddenly, his voice changed.
A terrifying will descended upon the underground. The entire air froze instantly. Even the drops falling from a pipe hung suspended mid-fall, trapped in time.
"If you bother me…"
"Or bother those at my side…"
Damian's body merged into the blue rift of the portal, leaving only one final phrase floating, falling like a sword onto Kenjaku's consciousness.
"I'll cut you."
Fwoom
The cross-shaped rift shut violently and vanished along with the silhouette of the white-haired man.
In the depths of the tunnel, Mahito's insect-like body remained still. But suddenly—
!
Countless blue lines spread across its entire surface, covering it completely.
A second later—
Crashhh
His entire body, along with the deformed core of his soul, collapsed like a sandcastle brought down.
The special grade cursed spirit, formed from human malice, broke apart into countless motes of dim blue dust.
And in the absolute silence of the underground, those particles faded away until not a single trace remained.