Chapter 3.3: The King and the Fox
Within the crimson-lit expanse of the innate domain, silence reigned. The echoes of Naruto's pained confusion had faded, leaving Sukuna alone on his throne of bone. Naruto's consciousness had receded, pulled back to the physical world to process the trauma and the terrible, seductive truth Sukuna had laid bare.
Sukuna leaned back, a low, rumbling chuckle escaping his lips. His posture was relaxed, four arms draped over the sides of the throne, but his eyes held a profound, ancient weariness. For the first time in a millennium, he felt something other than contempt or hedonistic pleasure. He felt… curiosity. A clinical, detached fascination with the experiment he had just set in motion.
His tone, meant for himself alone, softened. "To change…" he mused, flexing the fingers of one of his lower hands, the nails a sharp, polished purple. "I spoke the words, and in that moment, I believed them. To live a life not defined by the scorn of others, to find a path that was not pure, solitary destruction." He scoffed, a dry, humorless sound. "But what a foolish notion. A shark cannot wish to become a lamb. My very essence is to devour, to dominate, to stand atop the mountain of skulls and find the view… lacking."
He looked at the empty space where Naruto had stood. "I cannot change. My nature is immutable. But you, brat… you are different. You possess the same fire, the same rage born of solitude, the same desperate craving to be acknowledged. Yet it is twisted in you, tangled with this absurd, illogical sentimentality. This… capacity for connection."
A flicker of memory—Gojo's arrogant smile, Yuji's defiant eyes—passed through his mind. That connection was the one variable he had never truly understood, the one force that had led to his defeat.
"I have given you the strength to burn the world," Sukuna whispered to the empty domain. "And in return, you will give my strength the heart it never had. Perhaps that is the change I sought. Not to become soft myself, but to see what my power becomes when wielded by a fool who still believes in love." He let out a final, genuine laugh, the sound echoing with a strange mix of triumph and fatalism. "Let's see whose will breaks first, yours or the world's. Either way, it will be a magnificent spectacle."
He closed his eyes, preparing to cede the stage, to melt his consciousness into the boy's very soul and become the foundation of his power rather than the pilot.
But as he did, the world around him began to warp.
The crimson light of his domain wavered. The dry, skeletal floor began to grow damp, and the sound of dripping water echoed through the shrine. The oppressive silence was replaced by the low, guttural growl of something ancient and full of hate. The walls of the shrine seemed to dissolve, bleeding into a vast, dark, sewer-like chamber. Before Sukuna's throne, the ground gave way to murky water, and in the distance, a colossal set of bars rose from the depths, glowing with a malevolent orange light.
Behind those bars, a single, gigantic crimson eye, its pupil a venomous slit, snapped open.
"Who dares intrude upon this place?" a voice boomed, a sound like mountains grinding together, saturated with an eternity of rage.
Sukuna's eyes opened, his amusement returning in a flash. He stood, not with alarm, but with the arrogant curiosity of a king surveying a new piece of his territory. He stepped off his throne, the murky water barely reaching his ankles, and strode towards the colossal gate.
"So," Sukuna said, his normal, condescending tone returning like a whip crack. "This is the legendary Nine-Tailed Fox. I must say, I'm disappointed. I expected a demon, not a caged animal."
The eye narrowed, and a pair of massive, fanged lips peeled back in a snarl. "You reek of death and something… older. You are not the boy. You are a parasite."
Sukuna chuckled, stopping just before the gate. "Parasite? No. I am an upgrade. And you… you are a magnificent furnace." He gestured with one hand, a connoisseur evaluating a fine tool. "The sheer volume of your hatred. It's exquisite. It churns and boils, a perfect, self-sustaining reactor. Cursed energy is born from negative emotion, you see. And you, fox, are the most exquisite font of negativity I have ever encountered. You will make an excellent battery."
The rage behind the bars intensified, the water around Sukuna beginning to boil from the sheer heat of the fox's chakra. "Battery?! I am the Kyuubi no Kitsune! I am a force of nature! The boy is MY vessel, my jailer! His power is MINE to give!"
"Is it?" Sukuna replied, his smile widening. "You have sat in this cage for thirteen years, feeding him scraps of your power, poisoning his life with your presence. The villagers hate him because of you. His solitude is your creation. And yet, what have you done with it? Nothing. You have festered. You are a dull, blunted instrument of rage."
Sukuna placed a hand on one of the massive bars of the seal. It did not sizzle; instead, the orange chakra around it seemed to recoil, as if in the presence of something far more anathema.
"I, on the other hand, am a craftsman," Sukuna continued, his voice a low, dangerous purr. "I have taken the boy's suffering—the suffering you caused—and I have sharpened it into a blade that can cut the world. The hatred you leak is no longer just a poison. It is now fuel for my techniques. Your every snarl, every roar of frustration, will only make us stronger."
Kurama was stunned into a moment of silence. He, the great Nine-Tailed Fox, reduced to a power source for this arrogant intruder? "You are twisting him," Kurama growled, the fury returning tenfold. "His strength was in defying that hatred, in fighting against the loneliness. You are teaching him to embrace it. You will destroy him."
"I am freeing him," Sukuna corrected, his tone absolute. "You represent the cage he was born into. The curse he was forced to bear. I represent the freedom to burn that cage and everyone who built it. He has made his choice. You are now merely a relic of his past weakness."
With that, Sukuna turned his back on the gate. "The integration is almost complete. I will become a part of his very soul, the bedrock of his new existence. From now on, you will answer to him. And he… answers to me. So continue to hate, old fox. Hate with all your being. Your rage is the fuel that will light our new world on fire."
Sukuna's form began to dissolve, not vanishing, but breaking down into particles of pure, crimson cursed energy. The skeletal shrine dematerialized, its essence flowing like a river of blood into the very foundation of Naruto's mindscape.
The Nine-Tails watched, his teeth bared in a silent snarl, as the last of this terrifying entity faded away. He was alone again in his cage. But something had fundamentally changed. The murky water at his paws now had a faint, bloody tint. The air was heavy with an energy that felt sharp and cold, like a freshly honed blade.
He was no longer the only monster in the darkness. And he had the chilling realization that he was no longer the most dangerous one.