Reiji found himself standing in the dim, cavernous basement of the hospital. Though the space was enormous, its size was swallowed by a heavy veil of darkness, pierced only by the irregular flicker of dying fluorescent lights. Each flash carved ghostly shapes across the walls. He stared at the entrance, chest heaving, half-expecting someone to come bursting through it.
But no one came.
For a long, breathless moment, he stood frozen in the oppressive silence, the air thick with dust and an unspoken tension.
'I don't know anything about him… I need to fight cautiously. Just hold him off until Shoko brings the others.'
Almost automatically, his stance shifted; shoulders lower, weight balanced… as if his body recognized an unseen enemy before his mind did.
Then, without warning, the concrete ceiling above him exploded downward, the entire roof of the basement collapsing in a violent cascade of debris.
***************************************************************************
Shoko was running faster than she ever had in her life.
She was still inside the barrier, or whatever this thing was. Supposedly a domain, though unlike any domain she had ever studied. Its nature was impossible to decipher, its influence subtle yet suffocating. The air felt thick, like she was moving through someone else's will.
Between desperate breaths, her thoughts kept circling back to Reiji.
He was fighting again. Another overwhelming, ancient sorcerer at that.
'He'll be fine… he's survived much worse…'
She tried to reassure herself, but her pulse betrayed her anxiety.
Then, abruptly, the pressure in the air shifted. The faint, lingering suppression vanished. She had crossed the boundary and was finally outside the barrier's influence.
Still panting, she slowed, scanning her surroundings. Her vision wavered slightly from exertion.
That was when she heard it.
A nearby commotion.
Specifically, the unmistakable sound of Gojo Satoru loudly and creatively stringing together insults.
Oddly… his cursing carried actual frustration. Almost sincerity. That alone sent a chill down her spine.
Geto stood beside him, calm-faced as always, yet a thin line of sweat trailed down his temple. He looked anything but composed.
'What now…?' Shoko wondered nervously as she approached.
As she got closer, she noticed the visible scorch marks across Gojo's hands, the faint smoke rising from his fingertips as he shook them out. His expression was restless—agitated, even.
Geto spotted her first.
"Shoko?!" he breathed out, half in shock, half in relief.
"What the hell were you doing?" he demanded, the roughness in his voice unable to hide the worry beneath it.
Gojo glanced her way and clicked his tongue irritably.
"Oh, nothing much. Just taking a small break, you know?" she said, trying to play it off casually, though she couldn't hide the unsteady rhythm of her breathing. Still, she was genuinely relieved to see them both alive and in one piece.
"Anyway," Shoko continued, "Reiji's dealing with some new ancient sorcerer, apparently. You two should get in there and help him."
Geto exhaled a long, exhausted sigh, far heavier than she expected.
"Yeah… about that, Shoko. We can't."
Her eyes narrowed instantly.
If Gojo and Geto couldn't enter, Reiji was trapped alone against that monster. A fight like that only had one kind of ending.
Gojo's frustration finally boiled over.
"This barrier is seriously pissing me off."
Geto nodded grimly.
"It isn't ordinary. It resembles a domain, but the conditions have been specifically tailored to exclude me and Gojo. Something like this… no one in the modern era should be capable of it."
A rare frown creased Shoko's face.
"What? Then what are we supposed to do? Reiji's stuck in there with that guy."
Geto rubbed his cheek anxiously.
"Even Gojo's Six Eyes can't make sense of its structure. It's like the entire barrier is built from rules that shouldn't exist."
Shoko swallowed, disbelief creeping into her voice.
"You're telling me that muscle-headed tribal sorcerer set up something this intricate?"
"No."
Gojo's voice cut through the air like a blade; quiet and unnervingly calm.
"This barrier doesn't belong to him."
*************************************************************************
Dust slowly settled around Reiji as he steadied his breath, planting his feet amid the ruin of collapsed concrete. The ceiling had fallen in violent sheets, leaving a jagged crater open to the derelict upper floors. A faint tremor ran through the ground… it was definitely not random.
Someone was coming.
And then, from the settling haze, M'Khoro emerged.
The towering sorcerer strode through the debris with the calm certainty of a hunter cornering his prey. His frame was carved from muscle, and the bone ornaments lining his hair rattled subtly with each step.
He stopped only a few meters from Reiji as he attached his axe to his waist.
For a heartbeat, neither spoke. Their eyes locked as the air thickened with a tension neither of them fully understood. The lights flickered overhead, stuttering as if afraid to illuminate the scene.
Reiji's grip tightened as Akame flared with renewed intensity.
His opponent stood too still; eerily composed.
Finally, M'Khoro broke the silence.
"You carry his blood," he said, voice cold and steady as stone.
Reiji's jaw clenched.
He could feel something old and hateful radiating from the man before him.
M'Khoro continued.
"Your ancestor annihilated my entire clan. He butchered them in a single night… not out of necessity, nor for victory or glory, but to prove his own ideals." His eyes sharpened to a predatory glare.
"To prove that blood is superior to bone."
A heavy pause followed as the accusation settled in.
M'Khoro stepped forward, his shadow stretching across the broken floor.
"I stood against him."
His voice was steady, but beneath it trembled a rage sharpened by centuries.
"And he beat me until I could no longer rise. He left me alive solely to remember; that blood eclipses bone… and that I am lesser."
His fingers curled into fists.
"I swore on that day," he whispered, "that I would hunt the progenitor down to his last descendant."
Reiji's chest burned with a confusing mixture of anger and disbelief.
"What are you talking about?" he snapped. "I don't know anything about this. I don't even know who the hell he was!"
M'Khoro's expression didn't change.
Reiji took a step forward, and shouted.
"Why do I have to face the consequences of something I didn't do?"
For the first time, a crack appeared in the stoic mask; a faint flicker of contempt.
"It doesn't matter," M'Khoro said quietly. "Your blood remembers."
And then he charged.
The concrete split beneath his feet as the massive sorcerer lunged forward with terrifying speed. Instinct overtook Reiji; he shifted into a defensive stance and barely dodged the first blow.
M'Khoro's fist slammed into the floor, sending a shockwave ripping across the room. Shards of concrete exploded outward. Reiji leapt back and lashed out with his whips, Akame's cursed energy seared through his skull as the blades cut through air.
The weapon grazed M'Khoro's shoulder.
But M'Khoro didn't flinch.
He simply straightened, rolling his shoulder as if loosening a stiff joint.
He lunged again.
Reiji parried, sparks erupting as their strength collided. M'Khoro's raw physical power was monstrous… every blow felt like it could obliterate bone. Reiji slid across the floor, boots carving trails through dust and rubble as he struggled to stay upright.
M'Khoro swung his arm in a wide arc.
Reiji ducked, feeling the air split above him, and countered. His whips coiled as he struck across M'Khoro's ribs, cursed energy erupting in a bright flare.
M'Khoro stumbled a half-step.
Reiji seized the moment.
"Cursed Technique Reversal…" he muttered.
His veins glowed bright crimson. The air vibrated around him, warping from the sudden surge.
A spiraling torrent of glowing plasma burst from his fists, condensing into a superheated strike. His blow landed clean… straight through M'Khoro's chest.
The eruption of energy hurled the giant backward, slamming him into a shattered pillar hard enough to crack it through the middle. Blood splattered across the ground in molten arcs.
For a moment, just a moment, Reiji thought it was enough.
But then M'Khoro stood back up.
His injuries sizzled with a faint, unsettling glow. Bone fragments shifted beneath his skin, rearranging themselves like ivory stitching. The wounds closed almost immediately under his monstrous RCT.
Reiji's stomach dropped.
M'Khoro rolled his neck, expression once again eerily calm.
Then he advanced.
What followed was a brutal exchange.
M'Khoro overwhelmed him with sheer physicality; grabbing Reiji by the collar and throwing him across the room. Reiji crashed into the far wall, the impact knocking the air from his lungs. Before he could stand, M'Khoro was already there, lifting him by the throat and slamming him into the ground.
Reiji coughed violently, blood splattering from his lips.
Still, he forced himself upright and freed himself from the giants grip.
Akame trembled, as if reacting to his refusal to fall.
He parried a downward strike, pivoted, and delivered a sharp kick to M'Khoro's knee. The larger man staggered just enough. Reiji surged forward, unleashing a rapid flurry of lashes, each one laced with controlled cursed energy.
Akame hummed as Reiji's output suddenly improved, the strikes carving through flesh and bone.
M'Khoro snarled as Reiji landed several devastating hits in succession, driving him back and carving deep crimson wounds across his torso.
Reiji's breathing was ragged, but he didn't stop.
A final spinning slash sent M'Khoro crashing into the debris, the floor cracking beneath him.
The ancient sorcerer was truly hurt for once.
Blood dripped down his chest in thick rivulets.
His expression darkened.
Slowly, deliberately, he gripped the axe at his waist.
The bone weapon pulsed.
Once. Twice.
And then it shifted.
The blade cracked apart, its edges folding and bending like living bone. Segments slid over one another, reshaping into a long-handled crescent shovel; sleek, ceremonial, deadly. Its inner edge pulsed with cursed energy.
M'Khoro spun it at once, the air humming as the weapon extended.
Reiji barely had time to brace.
M'Khoro moved with renewed savagery. The blade cleaved through the air with terrifying weight, moving at speeds it should not have been capable of. Each strike shook the ground. Reiji barely blocked the first and dodged the next, but the third hit him full-force across the side.
Pain exploded through his ribs.
He was flung sideways and crashed hard, wheezing as blood filled his mouth.
M'Khoro approached him slowly, like an executioner ready to complete his duty.
Reiji tried to rise as Akame trembled desperately. But his limbs felt heavy, unresponsive, and his side had been cleaved open.
M'Khoro raised his weapon, ready to finish it.
Then—
A shimmer appeared a few meters away.
Subtle at first, like heat rising from distant desert. Then it twisted, bending the air around it at impossible angles. The flicker sharpened into a thin, bright line… shimmering like cracked glass.
M'Khoro froze.
Reiji blinked through blurred vision.
'What… is that?'
The line widened into a rift; jagged, glass-like. It was as though reality itself were splintering open. A low, twisted hum filled the basement, uneven and uncomfortable.
And then something stepped out.
It was tall and angular. Its form gleamed like a translucent crystal, refracting dim light into broken patterns across the floor. Joints rotated with stuttering, unnatural movements, as if the creature were built from shards of shattered mirrors trying to imitate a body.
Its presence carried a pressure unlike cursed energy, colder, heavier, like the embodiment of a fear no one could ever hope to outrun.
Reiji's breath hitched.
M'Khoro… went pale.
His voice trembled as he whispered something under his breath.
The glass-like being turned its faceted head toward towering sorceror.
It raised one elongated hand and pointed like splintered glass.
A broken, echoing voice slipped out.
"…f-fracture…"
The totem tied at M'Khoro's waist; carved bone etched with ancient patterns burst open immediately.
A howl erupted.
Not a real sound, yet it felt like hundreds of thousands of sealed spirits were being released. Their extreme agony flooded the room like a storm of cold wind.
M'Khoro gasped, stumbling backward.
He dropped his weapon.
His knees buckled.
He looked… shattered. Not physically, but as though something sacred… something essential, had been ripped from him.
Reiji stared, confused and horrified.
'Does he know this thing?'
His RCT activated instinctively.
'And why… is it terrifying him this much?'
The Rift Weaver tilted its head sharply.
Its glassy fingers folded inward, as if satisfied.
Then, without acknowledging either sorcerer any further, it stepped back into the shimmering rift. The crack in reality sealed behind it with a crystalline snap.
Silence followed.
M'Khoro remained kneeling. His eyes were utterly hollow now.
Reiji… bruised, bloodied and barely standing, simply watched the man in stunned silence.