The Curtain dissolved, and the night air bled back into the city. Neon signs flickered, cars passed unknowingly just beyond the blood-soaked alley, and yet within Suguru Geto's sphere, silence lingered—an oppressive echo of the battle just ended.
Where Kishibe had stood, only a smear of blood and broken steel remained. The swarm feasted lazily on scraps of flesh before slinking back into Geto's sleeves, obedient, satisfied. Toji's worm burrowed into the ground, dragging cursed tools into its endless gullet.
Geto stood alone, touching the faint line carved into his ribs. The wound had already stopped bleeding, but the memory of that strike lingered like a weight. He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes.
"Stubborn old monkey," he murmured.
Kishibe had been cornered, hopelessly outnumbered. Yet in the moment of death, he had charged—not to win, but to spite inevitability itself. That laugh, that broken grin through blood, had not been fear. It had been defiance.
Is that what separates the strong from the weak?
Geto's gaze drifted upward, to the void beyond the city lights. He thought of Gojo.
Gojo, who had once been his other half. Gojo, who had walked through battles like a man out for a stroll in the sun. Gojo, who had touched something deeper than cursed energy itself.
The mindset of the strongest.
Sukuna had it, in his cruelty. Kashimo in his reckless joy. Gojo most of all, in that quiet smile of his.
Suguru remembered the shift in his best friend—when Toji had left him bleeding, when death brushed past his face. Gojo had not clung to life. He had let go of doubt, of fear, of identity. He had simply opened himself to cursed energy, and in doing so, he had transcended.
It wasn't about skill alone. It wasn't about numbers of curses, or weapons, or cults.
It was the detachment. The surrender of everything that chained lesser beings.
Gojo had once said it without malice: "I'm sorry, Amanai. I don't hate anyone. I can only feel the pleasantness of the world."
Suguru clenched his fists. That was why Gojo had stood above him. Why he had been the strongest. While Suguru carried burdens—his family of sorcerers, his hatred for monkeys, his grief for Mimiko and Nanako—Gojo had carried nothing. And in carrying nothing, he could bear infinity itself.
But Kishibe's last smile gnawed at him. The man had carried everything—fear, scars, regret—and still spat in the face of inevitability.
Two extremes. Both unshakable.
Suguru's lips curled into a thin smile.
"…Then I'll find my own path."
He would not erase his burdens like Gojo. Nor would he chain himself to raw defiance like Kishibe. He would devour both. Fear, will, burden, detachment—everything this world had to offer.
The swarm stirred as if answering his vow.
"Monkeys birth devils. Sorcerers cull curses. But I—" His voice hardened, echoing in the empty alley. "—I will stand above both. A king who bears the filth of the world, and makes it kneel."
Geto walked away, the neon light swallowing him. The Black Priest's empire would spread further, but for the first time since his exile into this world, his eyes burned not just with ambition—
but with the hunger to surpass even the strongest.