The monastery is built into stone.
It does not creak.
It does not groan.
It simply endures.
Adam walks its halls like a ghost. He catalogues relics no one believes in—scrolls that hum, masks that twitch, bones that whisper. The monks call him "the quiet one." They don't know about the Sutra.
It's stitched into his back.
Not tattooed.
Stitched.
Threaded with cursed ink that pulses when he dreams.
Tonight, the dream is louder.
He stands in a battlefield of ash. A man with silver hair laughs as the sky splits. A boy with four eyes grins as gods scream. Adam stands between them, holding a scroll that bleeds.
He wakes gasping.
The Sutra is glowing.
A new verse has written itself:
"The king returns when silence reigns."
Adam doesn't know what it means.
But the air feels heavier.
The Fragment
In the deepest vault of the monastery, a relic begins to stir.
It's a shard of obsidian, wrapped in cloth that bleeds. Adam found it years ago. It never spoke. Until now.
He enters the vault.
The shard hums.
The cloth unwraps itself.
Inside is a symbol—jagged, cruel, familiar.
Sukuna's mark.
Adam touches it.
The Sutra screams.
His vision blurs.
He sees a child—Riku—drawing the same symbol in blood.
He sees a boy—Sora—laughing as space bends.
He sees himself.
Not as Adam.
As something older.
The Awakening
The shard pulses.
A voice speaks.
Not aloud.
Inside him.
"You are the archivist. But you were more."
"Who are you?" Adam whispers.
"I am the hunger. I am the king. I am the curse you buried."
Sukuna.
But not the Sukuna of legend.
This one is quieter.
Sharper.
Bound.
"You stitched me into flesh. Now the Reaper comes. And you must remember."
Adam falls to his knees.
The Sutra burns.
The monks rush in.
They see the shard.
They see Adam glowing.
They scream.
But Adam doesn't hear them.
He hears the Sutra.
"The silence is coming."
"And memory is rebellion."