Chapter Text
You were fresh out of middle school, having just survived the wildest final year of your life—one that included a top-secret government mission in the name of world peace. On paper, you were a civilian now—a regular first-year high schooler who should be worrying about math tests and gym class. You barely had time to breathe, let alone touch grass.
You decided to do just that. Sitting in a park, enjoying the fresh air, touching grass for the first time in what felt like a century. Life was finally giving you a break.
At least, that’s what you thought.
Next thing you know, everything goes dark. When you wake up, you’re tied to a chair in some mouldy, rank-smelling basement. You blink slowly, head pounding, trying to piece together how you went from a peaceful day outdoors to being kidnapped. Classic, right?
But there’s something inherently wrong about how calm you feel in this situation. The rational part of you knows that. You’re in a basement—dark, damp, with the smell of mould clinging to everything—but your mind, your body, feels unnervingly detached, almost docile. It doesn’t make sense.
Maybe it’s the hunger gnawing at you, or maybe it’s the drug they must have given you. You’ve been tied to a chair for who knows how long, and yet, you’re not panicking. Not even close. The fear feels too far away, like it’s someone else’s problem. Maybe it’s because, somewhere deep down, you’re used to this—being in impossible situations. Just last year, you’d taken down more than a few high-profile targets. And now? Now you’re in a basement with some guy who thinks he can outdo that.
You’d laugh if your tongue didn’t feel like a brick.
Across from you stands a man with scars on his forehead, droning on about something. Fingers? You squint at him, trying to focus, but the words slip off your mind like oil. Curses? What kind of evil mastermind nonsense is this? If your tongue wasn’t so heavy, you’d have some curses of your own to say. Instead, you sit there, half-listening as his monologue becomes nothing more than background noise.
The bleariness in your eyes intensifies, snapping you back to reality when he suddenly grabs your chin—hard. The sharp pressure jolts through the fog in your brain.
“You are a perfect vessel,” he says, his voice calm, controlled. “Born to contain something… divine.” His grip tightens, as if daring you to resist. “The vessel I created doesn’t even compare to what you are.”
Vessel? Divine? Oh great, this just got weirder.
A quiet alarm begins to stir somewhere deep inside, but your body is slow to catch up. Contain? Oh, great, here we go with the villain clichés. You try to wriggle free, but your muscles feel like lead. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you give silent kudos to your liver for at least trying to process whatever they drugged you with.
Before you can react, his other hand pries your jaw open, forcing something sharp and jagged down your throat. It scrapes against the delicate lining, the sensation vile and unnatural. Instinctively, your body tries to reject it, but his grip is too strong. You can’t even gag properly.
The taste floods your mouth—rancid, like spoiled meat left out in the sun. A flavour that festers on your tongue and lodges in your throat. You gag, desperate to spit it out, but his hand is relentless, pinning your mouth shut until you have no choice but to swallow.
It lodges in your stomach like a stone. And then… something strange. A pressure, expanding outward, like your body is making room for something foreign.
The man chuckles, amused, as he releases your jaw. “That, my dear, was a piece of Ryomen Sukuna,” he says, leaning in. “A finger, to be precise. Centuries old, soaked in curses and hate. Now, it’s part of you.”
Sukuna? Who in the hell is that? And why the hell are people so obsessed with shoving things down your throat today?
He watches your reaction, clearly enjoying your discomfort. “Don’t worry,” he continues, his voice low and taunting. “You’ll grow accustomed to it—eventually. The pain? Just your body adjusting. After all, it’s not every day you get to host the power of a king.”
Oh, a king now? Great, just what you needed—royalty in your gut.
But then it hits—something ancient, something wrong. It spreads like venom, crawling through your veins. More than just physical pain. It’s a presence, waking up inside you, and it’s not exactly friendly.
“Feel that?” he asks, voice oozing with satisfaction. “That’s Sukuna’s essence, merging with you. Soon enough, you’ll understand what it means to carry a curse of this magnitude.”
The pressure builds in your chest, expanding with each breath. Whatever that thing was, it’s rooting itself inside you, your body slumping against the chair as if accepting it. Panic finally flares, but your pulse remains disturbingly calm. No sweat, no racing heart—just the sickening sensation of something settling inside you, like a parasite claiming its host.
This isn’t real, you tell yourself.
Your vision begins to fade, the drug’s grip pulling you further into oblivion. The man’s voice fades too, quieter now, like he’s speaking to himself. And then there’s a laugh—deep, booming, inhuman.
Not his.
Something else.
And as everything goes black, that laugh echoes through your bones.
Yeah... this is going to be a problem.
You wake to a cracked white ceiling staring back at you. The soreness in your limbs tells you you’ve been out for a while. Every joint ache, and without looking, you can feel the bruises littering your body.
“Great. Bruised and drugged,” you mutter to yourself. Whoever this madman is, he better not have done anything worse.
“You’re awake.” A woman’s voice breaks through your fog. You turn your head to see a figure standing near the door, calm, composed. “You’re safe now, in the med bay of our school. You suffered some bruising and a fall, but nothing that can’t be fixed with rest.”
You want to ask her how you got here—what the injuries mean—but the exhaustion pulls at you again. Your eyelids droop, and this time, you don’t bother fighting it. Sleep swallows you whole.
Your dreams are rarely this vivid. You’re usually plagued by faceless shapes, blurred landscapes. But not this time.
This time, you’re standing inside a ribcage—no, a massive ribcage—like the bones of some ancient, long-dead creature, looming overhead like a grotesque cathedral. You can’t tell where the bones begin or end, but they’re slick, cold to the touch, and far too real. You blink, hoping the image will fade, but it doesn’t.
The air is thick, choking almost, with a scent of rot that clings to the inside of your lungs. Each breath you take feels harder than the last, like the very atmosphere is conspiring to suffocate you. Something deep inside gnaws at your gut, an overwhelming sense of wrongness that settles like an anchor in your chest.
Your mind rebels against it. This isn’t real. You repeat the thought like a mantra, trying to will yourself awake, but your body—your senses—betray you. You’re standing, very much awake, in this nightmare.
The footsteps come, slow and deliberate, reverberating through the hollow cage of bones. Each step echoes with a weight that seems to crawl inside your skin, rooting you to the spot. Your heart races, but your legs refuse to move, your body locked in place as a figure emerges from the shadows.
At first glance, he’s human—or something close enough—but the air around him twists unnaturally, bending under the weight of his presence. The longer you look, the more wrong he feels, like the very space around him is warping to accommodate something it shouldn’t.
Then his eyes—four of them—fix on yours, and it’s like being crushed under an invisible force. The weight of his gaze pins you in place, stealing the breath from your lungs. Your chest tightens, and your mind scrambles, desperate to make sense of what you're seeing.
"You look confused," he says, his voice unnervingly smooth, casual, as though the twisted nightmare you’re trapped in is nothing more than a game to him.
Panic claws at you, but there’s something else, something colder than fear. It’s primal, like your body instinctively knows that the man standing before you isn’t just powerful—he’s beyond comprehension. His presence doesn’t just distort the air; it warps the very reality around you.
"You feel it, don’t you?" he continues, a smug smile curling his lips, revealing teeth too sharp, too predatory to belong to anything human. "The part of you that’s no longer yours."
You don’t understand. But the moment the words leave his mouth, you feel it—a presence, deep inside you, foreign and insidious, expanding with each breath you take. It’s as though something alive is claiming space within you, a presence that isn’t yours.
Your hand instinctively moves to your stomach, but the sensation has already spread. There’s a tightness, a wrongness, like your body is being reshaped from the inside out. You try to shove it down, but with each inhale, the feeling grows stronger. You’re not alone in your own skin anymore.
"Don’t fight it," he murmurs, stepping closer, his voice laced with an almost bored amusement. "You’re too weak to."
You can feel his eyes on you, not as a predator assessing prey, but as a king looking down on something insignificant. His words carry no comfort, only the cold certainty that this is inevitable. Your struggle is irrelevant—a flicker of amusement in his otherwise detached arrogance.
Your legs give out, collapsing under the weight of the truth crashing into you. This isn’t just a dream, or a nightmare you can escape. It’s happening. Something is inside you, and there’s no stopping it. No fighting it. You are being claimed.
The last thing you hear is a low, deep laugh—booming, inhuman, echoing through the bones around you. It vibrates through the ground, through your body, and into the very core of your being. The sound isn’t just mocking; it’s possessive. Like a god amused by the futility of mortal resistance.
"This is just the beginning," he says, his voice echoing with a detached sense of finality. You are nothing more than a vessel.
An afterthought.