The black line in the air vanished, snapping reality shut with a soundless pop.
Yami Sukehiro took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, the ember glowing like a baleful star. "Huh. Weird."
"Captain! What was that? Who was that guy?" Asta shouted, pointing at the empty space with the manic energy of a dog that had just seen a ghost. His anti-magic was still humming, a comforting static in a world that had just felt profoundly wrong.
Yami shrugged, exhaling a plume of smoke. "Someone else who doesn't play by the rules, I guess." He turned his gaze on his squad, a stern look replacing his usual nonchalance. "This thing, whatever it was, it wasn't from our world. That much is obvious. Stay sharp. This is probably just the start."
Yuno, having regained his connection to mana, simply stared at the spot, his expression colder and more calculating than ever. Another rival. Another benchmark to surpass. The world had just gotten infinitely bigger, and with it, the climb to become Wizard King felt steeper.
Noelle clutched her wand, her royal composure rattled. Magic could be countered. It could be overpowered. But to be unwritten… that was a violation.
The sky over Shibuya was bleeding.
Not blood. Ink. Thick, oily droplets of black fell in a silent drizzle, striking the pavement and buildings with a hiss. They didn't leave stains; they left holes. Tiny, perfect circles of nothing where concrete or glass used to be. The air grew heavy, thick with the smell of ozone and old, forgotten books.
Panic was a slow-rolling wave. People stared up, phones in hand, capturing the impossible sight.
On a rooftop overlooking the scramble crossing, the impossible was business as usual.
"Sensei, what is that?" Yuji Itadori asked, pointing up at the weeping sky. He felt a deep, primal wrongness radiating from it, a malevolence that made the Cursed Spirits he hunted feel like pests.
Beside him, Megumi Fushiguro's hands were already forming a shadow puppet. "It feels like a barrier, but… it's hollow. There's no Cursed Energy."
Gojo Satoru, blindfold firmly in place, had his head tilted back. The lazy smile was gone from his lips. Moments ago, he'd been trapped in a featureless void, staring through a slash in reality at a group of magic-wielding foreigners. Now he was back, but the world he'd returned to was sick.
"It's not a barrier," he said, his voice unusually serious. "It's a redaction."
His Six Eyes were feeding him an incomprehensible stream of information. He could see the very flow of Cursed Energy across the city being… siphoned. The invisible, emotional river that fed all their powers was being drained into the inky sky.
From the heart of the ink storm, something descended. It was a cluster of beings, a walking collage of censored documents. Each one was humanoid, formed from swirling, animated text that had been furiously scribbled out with black ink. Where their hearts should be, a single, glowing character pulsed: [Error].
They were Redactors. Scribes of the Void.
One of them pointed a finger made of shifting, redacted paragraphs at a nearby building.
A single word shot from its fingertip, solidifying in the air: [Collapse]
The forty-story skyscraper didn't explode. It didn't crumble. It simply obeyed. With a groan of protesting steel, the entire structure folded in on itself as if its foundational integrity had just been editorially removed from existence.
"Right," Gojo said, his smile finally returning, sharp and dangerous. "New cursed spirits. Let's get to work."
He vanished, reappearing directly in the path of the lead Redactor.
The creature tilted its head, processing the impossible concentration of Cursed Energy before it. It raised a hand, and a new word formed, aimed directly at Gojo's heart.
[Stillness]
The word traveled through the air, a command aimed at existence itself.
It hit the invisible wall of Infinity and stopped.
Gojo watched, fascinated, as the letters of the word began to stretch, like text on a rubber band, getting infinitely closer but never arriving. The space before him was a broken ruler; distance had lost its meaning.
"Cute trick," he chirped. "My turn."
He raised his own finger, a pinprick of impossible gravity forming at the tip. "Cursed Technique Reversal: Red."
The blast of repulsive force, pure positive energy, slammed into the Redactor. It tore through the swirling text, blowing a clean hole through its chest.
But the creature didn't die. The ink simply swirled back, sealing the wound. It was made of rules, not matter.
Another Redactor targeted Megumi. It shot the word [Unmade] at his Divine Dog, which howled as it began to dissolve into hazy shadows. Yuji moved to intercept, but a third scribe simply wrote [Bound] in the air before him, and his muscles locked, his body refusing to obey his commands.
Gojo's smile tightened. These things were a hassle. They didn't fight with power, but with permissions.
And then, a new voice spoke, low and contemptuous, not from Yuji's mouth but from a new one that had split open on his cheek.
"Pathetic. All of you."
Ryomen Sukuna was awake, and he was amused. His crimson eye swiveled from Gojo to the Redactors, a flicker of genuine curiosity in its depths.
"You, blindfolded one," the mouth on the cheek sneered. "You thrash about with your little absolutes, but you don't even understand the nature of your opponent's technique. You're trying to erase a pen with an eraser."
Gojo paused, a brow arching beneath his blindfold. "Oh? And you have a better idea, I suppose?"
"I do not have 'ideas,'" Sukuna's voice rasped, dripping with ancient arrogance. "I am a definition."
The Redactors seemed to sense the immense Cursed Energy, the true king now observing them. Several of them turned, raising their hands to unmake him.
They all shot a single, unified command at Yuji's body: [DELETE]
The word hung in the air, a final verdict.
Sukuna laughed. A deep, guttural sound of pure malice and delight. The cursed markings flowed across Yuji's skin as he momentarily seized control. He raised a single finger, not to unleash a technique, but to correct them.
"You dare attempt to edit me?" Sukuna's voice boomed from Yuji's mouth. "You are the footnote. I am the text."
He spoke one word, carving it over their command with his own inimitable Cursed Energy.
"Cleave."
It wasn't a shout. It wasn't a spell. It was an edit.
The [DELETE] command fractured. A million invisible cuts, originating from Sukuna's will, appeared not on the Redactors' bodies, but within the very source code of their existence.
The inky scribes froze. Then, they fell apart, their constituent text and redactions scattering like dead leaves, their power completely and utterly dismantled. The ink bleeding from the sky evaporated, leaving a clean, mundane blue in its wake.
Sukuna's markings receded, the eye and mouth on Yuji's face sealing shut. Yuji gasped, falling to one knee, the sudden exertion draining him.
Gojo stood perfectly still, the playful energy gone, replaced by a chillingly sharp focus. He had felt it. For a split second, he understood. Sukuna hadn't overpowered them. He had hijacked their technique. He'd written his own law over theirs.
This wasn't just a battle of Cursed Energy anymore.
A faint, chiming sound, audible only to him, echoed in his mind. A pane of translucent blue light flickered into existence before his Six Eyes, text scrolling rapidly.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[King of Curses has demonstrated native Edit-Class authority.]
[Synchronizing user Satoru Gojo to the Gate network.]
[Welcome, User. Your world has been marked for review.]
Gojo's lips slowly curled into a wide, manic grin. This was getting very, very interesting.