The world shifted.
One moment, Sukuna had been relishing the sensation of dominance, his cursed energy boiling over like a storm threatening to split the heavens. The next, he was dragged—ripped violently through something unseen. His surroundings twisted into a whirlpool of black, red, and white light, so chaotic that even his senses faltered.
When the distortion spat him out, Sukuna stumbled forward, catching himself against cold brick. The smell hit him first—damp concrete, the reek of oil, faint coppery traces of blood. His body ached in ways he despised. It wasn't injury, but disorientation, something foreign gnawing at his equilibrium.
A low growl escaped his throat. "Tch… what trick is this?"
His vision sharpened slowly. He was standing in a narrow alleyway, shadows stretching long under flickering neon. The city around him buzzed with a life unlike his own world—roaring engines, blaring horns, voices carrying curses in English. Tall, jagged skyscrapers pierced the sky. Dirty rain pooled in potholes, reflecting a giant sign: GOTHAM CITY.
Sukuna straightened, running a clawed hand over his face, frustration bubbling beneath his calm exterior. Something was wrong. His cursed energy was intact—he could feel it thrumming, coiled in every muscle—but the world itself felt… alien. The flow of power, the weight of the air, even the whispers of life around him carried a strange frequency.
Inside, a faint voice struggled.
"Where… where are we…?" Yuji's soul scratched against the cage Sukuna had forced him into. Weak, muffled, like a drowning child under an ocean.
Sukuna's lip curled in a cruel smirk. So, the brat still lingers. He slammed Yuji's consciousness back down, chains rattling in the depths of their shared vessel.
"Quiet. You'll speak when I allow it."
Yuji's protests vanished, leaving only silence. Control was absolute—deliciously so.
Sukuna exhaled, his four eyes flicking across the alley. The city's heartbeat thudded against his senses. A thousand footsteps. A thousand heartbeats. Fear, despair, anger—all ripe flavors in the cursed energy spectrum. Except… it wasn't cursed energy at all. Not exactly. Something different pulsed through this world. Mutated. Strange.
He stepped out of the alley and onto the street.
The people here were weak. He could tell at a glance. Dirty coats, hoods pulled tight against the drizzle, shoulders hunched in fear. Gotham, it seemed, was a city rotting from its core—yet thriving in its misery. His grin widened. This place suits me.
Two men at the corner whispered frantically as he passed.
"Yo, look at his tattoos, man… face all inked up."
"Nah, that ain't ink. That's—hell, I don't even know. Let's just keep movin'."
Sukuna ignored them, though their fear tasted sweet. His attention was elsewhere—on the strange hum that coursed through Gotham. Like invisible threads of power strung through its bones. Not curses, but… something parallel.
He muttered, "If this is sorcery, it's a crude imitation."
A siren wailed in the distance. Tires screeched. Gunshots rang out—short bursts, then silence. This was no different from the dens of human filth he had seen in his own world.
_____
Sukuna stood at the mouth of the street, rain streaking down his vessel's flesh, soaking into the thin shirt clinging to every muscle. Gotham breathed around him like a diseased beast—smog choking its lungs, rats scattering in the filth of the alleys, humans trudging past with eyes hollow and downcast, each of them dragging despair like a corpse on their backs.
He inhaled slowly, savoring it.
This wasn't cursed energy. His instincts roared at the difference. It was thicker, congealed, threaded with some alien current that didn't belong to his world. But beneath that strangeness lay a familiar stench: hopelessness, rage, envy, and misery. All the filth humanity exhaled into existence. And Gotham—ah, Gotham overflowed with it.
A low chuckle reverberated from his throat, cruel and sharp.
"Hmph. What a delightful cesspool. A world made for me."
He crouched, pressing his palm flat against the cracked, rain-slick concrete. His cursed energy surged outward in a ripple, unseen to mortal eyes, yet the city felt it. Rats froze mid-scurrying, their tiny hearts hammering. A drunk collapsed against a wall, clutching his chest in sudden nausea. The air thickened, heavy, pressing down with an unseen hand.
Sukuna's lips pulled into a feral grin.
Yes. It was working.
He whispered a command, low and venomous.
"Come to me."
The world responded.
Invisible threads snapped loose from the darkness—emanations of dread, resentment, and hatred, coiling out of the broken city like smoke torn from a dying fire. They slithered to him, drawn into his waiting form, flooding into his core. At first, the taste was heavy and sluggish, resisting him, like mud forced through a narrow funnel. But the resistance only sharpened his hunger.
The flow quickened.
Power crawled through his veins, his muscles tightening as if reforged. His skin thrummed under the storm, tattoos burning faintly red across the vessel's flesh, pulsing in rhythm with the beating heart of Gotham's despair.
The energy wasn't pure cursed energy—no, it was stranger, more grotesque, tainted by this world's twisted fabric. But Sukuna bent it to his will, molding the alien current as easily as clay. The more it fought, the more violently he consumed it, forcing it into the pathways of his body until it broke.
Sparks of backlash crackled across his arm, blistering the skin, but his regeneration erased the wounds before they could even register as pain. Every scar, every tear only widened his grin. Pain was a language he had long since mastered; now it was simply punctuation for his ecstasy.
The city trembled with him. Somewhere, a fight broke out between thugs. Screams carried across the alley. Sirens wailed. Every flicker of violence, every ounce of fear, every drop of human despair became fuel, streaming into him in torrents.
He could taste the flavors of it all.
The despair of addicts rotting in their stupor.
The rage of a husband beating his wife behind locked doors.
The gnawing paranoia of criminals waiting for the Bat's shadow.
The hopeless resignation of citizens who knew no dawn would cleanse Gotham's night.
Each emotion bled into him, heavy and intoxicating. It was not simply sustenance—it was worship. The city itself was bowing, pouring its filth into his hands like an offering to its new god.
Sukuna tilted his head back, letting the rain wash across his vessel's face, his four eyes burning with crimson light. His grin split wider, teeth gleaming like blades.
The sigils across his body pulsed brighter, lines glowing faintly beneath his skin. The air stank of ozone and iron. Cracks spread in the concrete where his palm pressed, veins of red light seeping outward like a spider's web.
Gotham howled, and Sukuna drank it in.
The rain fell harder, drumming against him, but nothing could wash away the corruption he had claimed. This city, this rotting carcass of humanity, would be the perfect altar. And he would consume every shadow it had to offer until it bent, screaming, beneath his heel.