CHAPTER 2: CURSE OF FAITHFULNESS

The moonlight hung pale over the ruins of an old temple—broken stone pillars jutting out like the bones of a forgotten god. Inside the shattered remnants, Sukuna sat upon a crumbled throne of corpses and cursed talismans, bathed in flickering torchlight. The night was still. The wind, frozen.

Uraume knelt before him, eyes low, hands placed formally against the blood-slick floor.

"You've regained it all," she said softly, reverently. "Your power. Your vessel. Everything is as you desired."

Sukuna didn't respond immediately.

His crimson eyes looked down at his hands—the markings returned in full, cursed energy flowing through his veins like a god resurrected. His body pulsed with a hatred older than the stone beneath him. Power, true and undiluted, now his to command.

He raised his gaze.

"Uraume," he said.

Her name. A quiet word, yet it made the torches flicker.

She looked up, smiling faintly. "Yes, my lord?"

"You've served me… diligently."

She nodded. "For centuries."

"You've sacrificed, obeyed, slaughtered, and preserved me when the world turned against my memory."

A silence stretched. There was no pride in his voice, no warmth. Just acknowledgment, cold and absolute.

"That's why I have to kill you."

The stillness shattered.

Uraume blinked, smile fading. "…What?"

Sukuna rose slowly, every motion rippling with divine menace. The temple trembled as his cursed energy flowed outward like a blooming black sun.

"I've no more need for shadows," he said. "No more need for loyalty. No more need for chains."

Uraume stood, panic flickering in her expression for the first time in centuries. "But—my lord, I—"

He was already in front of her.

His hand pierced her abdomen like a knife through silk.

She gasped, eyes wide, blood dripping from her lips as she looked up at him. "Wh… why…?"

He leaned closer, expression untouched by emotion. "Because devotion is weakness."

And with that, he pulled upward—his cursed technique obliterating her from within. Her body twisted, broke, and shattered into cursed ash. No ceremony. No mourning.

Just a life erased.

Sukuna stood alone in the temple ruins now.

The King had no subjects. Only victims.

And Shinjuku awaited his wrath.