The beast's body crumpled with a sickening, visceral crunch—its mass folding in on itself like paper in a sandstorm, contorted against the strange blend of sand and painted meadow.
Subaru blinked.
No scream.
No tension.
Not even a flinch.
There was no pain to register. No impact to brace for. It had just—
happened.
He'd died. Again.
Not with fanfare.
Not with meaning.
As if the world had simply pressed reset before he could process the loss.
And yet—
He stood.
Breathing.
Present.
Returned.
Not to the beginning, thankfully. Closer. A mercy, maybe. Or a joke to whatever divine being is having a kick out of his torment.
"…Huh."
His voice came out thin. Fragile. Lost beneath the air.
Then—
CRACK.
The ground trembled.
Fractures webbed outward beneath his feet like splintering glass. And from the ruptures, they came.
First, one.
Then three.
Then an eruption.
Mabeasts—bear-shaped, grotesque—exploded from beneath the soil. Petals of every color imaginable and gritty sand launched skyward as the horde burst forth in a flood of snarls and red-eyed hunger.
Ten.
Twenty.
Hundreds.
Their growls tore through the still air like thunder chasing lightning.
Subaru flinched back a half-step.
His breath caught.
"…Right," he muttered. "Those things…"
He'd been so wrapped in the haze of return—of not dying again—that he'd forgotten.
Forgotten the onslaught. The horde that had torn him to shreds moments ago.
His legs moved before his mind caught up.
He turned—low—sprinting across the mixed terrain with everything he had.
Don't think.
Don't stop.
The pounding of paws behind him was deafening—wild, uncoordinated, desperate.
But this time…
He was different.
Faster.
His legs surged with cursed energy, each step sharper, more responsive. The terrain no longer tripped him. His footfalls felt sure. Deliberate. Deadly.
He had a head start.
Or at least he thought he did...
"Um—?"
The air darkened.
Moonlight dimmed.
He glanced up.
A beast was airborne—massive, mid-leap—plummeting toward him like a meteor made of teeth and rage.
Instinct screamed.
Subaru dropped low, legs compressing, cursed energy snapping through his thighs.
Then—
BOOM—!!
The mabeast slammed down behind him, sand erupting into a shockwave. It crashed into two others, flipping wildly. A chaotic tangle of fur and limbs through the sand.
Subaru didn't look back.
"Yeah, okay, these things… definitely suicidal."
He was learning. Fast.
This wasn't like the sandworm that had swallowed him whole in an instant. No warning. No resistance. Just death.
But this time—
He had cursed energy.
He had options.
He veered right—toward the dunes, away from the Watchtower's cold, distant silhouette. Not ideal, but better than being dogpiled in open space.
He needed a route.
An exit.
A plan.
His eyes scanned the horizon—until—
"Ghh—!"
One lunged from the side.
He pivoted, dipped, and used its skull as a springboard—planting a foot on its head and launching himself upward.
Wind screamed past his ears.
His landing was rough—a rolling crouch across the sand—but his forward momentum never stopped.
They were everywhere.
Flanking.
Corralling.
Herding him from every direction imaginable.
"Shit—!"
A claw swiped.
Too fast.
Sliced against his reinforcement, not enough to draw blood, but simply jarring. Enough to spin him, stagger his footing as he was launched back.
He gritted his teeth, straightening mid-slide, and tore back into a sprint.
Too many.
Too fast.
Even with cursed reinforcement, he couldn't take all of them—not at once.
Focus.
If he could get above them—just high enough—he might spot a path. A gap. Something. Anything that didn't involve him getting eaten alive by mabeasts.
He crouched, cursed energy flooding into his legs.
Muscles tensed.
Timing—everything.
He bent.
Prepared to leap—
But then—
A flicker made him hesitate.
White.
His eyes caught it at the edge of vision. A glint—sharp and wrong.
His heart clenched.
A memory surfaced.
The flash that occurred just a second before his death.
He dropped the jump instinctively—instead twisting his body backward in a violent, unnatural arch.
SWOOOSH—!!
Air split open.
A white projectile screamed overhead—missing by inches. It kissed his cheek with its power, leaving a gash that oozed crimson down one side of his face.
Then—
impact.
FWWOOOOOM—!!!
The ground behind him detonated.
A column of sand, blood, and pulverized meat blasted skyward.
The nearest mabeasts? Gone. Eviscerated. Their bodies didn't fall. They had no time to.
They were simply removed.
Like they had no right to exist.
Subaru didn't stop to process.
Didn't breathe.
He ran.
Straight into the fresh crater, weaving through the carnage—through the haze of gore and steam. Chunks of meat splattered against his legs. His chest burned, ribs flaring with each ragged breath.
"Fuck, man… You've gotta be—"
White.
A flash—so blinding it didn't even feel real.
Subaru's jaw clenched tight as he threw himself to the side, launching into the air just before the blast reached him. A split-second later, the ground beneath him ceased to exist.
The white projectile struck.
A concussive boom swallowed the desert in raw violence. The sand where he'd stood was gone, vaporized. The shockwave caught Subaru mid-air and flung him further like a ragdoll.
Cursed energy surged through his limbs. He twisted mid-flight, chest toward the distant Watchtower—miles away now, yet still the center of this chaos.
White.
He didn't think. He merely braced, a natural response at this point after everything that's happened.
"—!!"
Subaru threw up his arms in a crossed guard, cursed energy hardening around them like armor.
Impact.
The blast struck.
And the sound—it wasn't just sound anymore. It was pressure. Raw force. It roared louder than his heartbeat in his ears, louder than his thoughts.
And yet—
He was still alive.
For a moment, Subaru believed he'd managed to block it. That somehow, he'd intercepted the overwhelming blast in time.
But then—
"Ah… hkh—!"
Warmth. Then cold. Then a wet gurgle filled his throat.
He stumbled as he landed, feet dragging, sliding through sand.
His vision swam.
Slowly, he looked down.
There was nothing.
His forearms—gone, completely blown off at the elbow. And beneath his chest—
A perfect hole. The size of a basketball. Boring straight through his torso.
"Gurhkk… guhr…"
He fell.
Knees hit first, then his body tipped forward like a falling statue. His cheek hit the sand with a dull thud, eyes dimming, lips still twitching with words he couldn't finish.
I'll get through this…
By myself…
I'll prove to the world that I…
That Natsuki Subaru…
Ain't pathetic…
Then—darkness.
——————————————————————
GASP—!
His body moved before thought caught up. He pivoted hard and burst into a sprint—faster this time, already accelerating before the mabeasts could breach the surface.
And just like before—
They did.
Dozens erupted from the earth, snarling, frothing, claws gleaming in the pale light. But Subaru was already gone. The distance widened.
"God, I get it—I reek of miasma, but it's literally everywhere! This is rigged!"
He clenched his jaw and kept running.
His thoughts churned, desperate to stitch together anything resembling a plan.
"Okay, okay—someone's sniping me with white-hot death beams from the Watchtower, miles off. And the only reason I'm not paste already is dumb-uck. So…"
He flinched—remembering his shredded arms, the gaping hole in his chest.
"…Yeah. Not even gonna try blocking that again."
A stone ridge jutted out in the distance—jagged, uneven, tall enough for cover. Subaru veered toward it, sliding behind with a grunt. Sand scraped his back as he hit the ground, letting out a breath.
Maybe a minute. That's all he had. Maybe.
He pressed his fingers to his temples, forcing focus.
"What else can I even do...? Up close, whatever that white projectile is, is literally unavoidable, even at range I have to get lucky. This is goddamn impossible…"
A groan slipped out as he clutched his head.
Then—his eyes sharpened.
"Well then—experiment time."
He vaulted to his feet, cursed energy crackling like electricity down his spine. He turned and took off—sprinting wide, away from the cover and straight toward the pack.
"I can return by—!"
Miasma swirled.
The air answered.
It fed him.
He felt it—an unstable surge. Brief. Volatile. Addictive.
His body could hold together maybe four times. Any more, and it'd rip him apart from the inside.
"I can return by—!"
He said it again. Every time was a dice roll. Every time, a hair-trigger from oblivion.
Cursed energy exploded around him—a storm of seething violet. The ground cracked beneath his heels.
Every mabeast turned toward him in unison. Dozens of eyes. Bloodshot. Starving.
"I can return by—!"
The words stuck.
Perfect.
That meant someone was listening.
This at least told him that whatever's been shooting at him is at least sentient enough to comprehend words, and has absurd senses.
White.
Again, it came.
Subaru threw his hand forward to intercept—
FWOOSH—!!
"URGHH—!"
The force struck him like a battering ram. His cursed armor absorbed most of it—but the rest wrecked his insides. Bones splintered. Muscle tore. But he stayed upright.
He looked to his hand—smoking, blackened, fingers burned nearly to the bone.
But he'd blocked it.
Staggering back, he blinked as the energy faded—and something glinted in the dust.
A single, silver-thin needle.
He stared.
"…A needle? That's what carved a hole clean through me?"
Absurd. But not all that surprising.
He'd seen Gojo crush stone with a finger flick.
This was just the same brand of god-tier precision.
And whoever was pulling the trigger—
They still had him locked.
The mabeasts surged again. Dozens. Rabid. Relentless.
But as they closed—
FWOOM—!!
Another white shot carved through the horde, vaporizing everything in a curtain of red mist.
Subaru dropped low, diving through the bloody cloud and crawling back to cover.
His breath came in sharp bursts. Cursed energy spat and flared across his battered arms.
His hand—charred nearly through.
But he grit his teeth.
"Whew… fuck… okay. Now what?"
His gaze swept across the desert.
Nothing—nothing—then—
A shimmer.
A subtle ripple in space—like heat against stone. Wavering. Faint. But real.
"…Could that be where I came from?"
He rose, cautious.
"It's gotta be something. Maybe it'll pull me out. Even if it just resets me way back to the start… beats taking another shot to the gut or having my head popped like a melon!"
Then—
THUD-!
THUD-!
THUD-!
The beasts finally arrived to where he was hiding.
No more time.
Cursed energy flared—wild and unstable. Purple lightning spiderwebbed around his body. Subaru bent low, his legs coiled tight underneath him.
Then—
BOOM—!
He launched.
The rock formation behind him exploded from the recoil.
In a flash, he cleared a hundred meters, hurling toward the ripple.
Even Subaru blinked at the speed.
"Urghk—?!"
The ripple infront of him warped wide.
Space twisted, bent—
Then fractured.
Subaru didn't pass through.
He fell.
Reality shattered like brittle glass.
The stars spiraled.
The sky folded inward.
Then—
Nothing.
No light.
No sound.
No sensation.
Only a voice.
Distant. Familiar.
A whisper—
Before the darkness swallowed him whole.
——————————————————————
"...et… up…"
A voice. Faint—muffled, as though submerged beneath water and wind.
"Hey, get up—wanna forehead flick?"
Subaru jolted upright like a spring-loaded trap, breath catching in his throat, eyes wide and glassy with panic.
His forehead stopped inches from colliding with a poised, bandaged face—held in place by a shimmering film of empty space.
Infinity.
Had it not been active, he would've slammed straight into Gojo's head.
"...Gojo?"
Subaru rasped, blinking through the fog clouding his vision.
He staggered upright, joints stiff, and finally took stock of his surroundings—or rather, the lack thereof.
Darkness.
Endless, formless, smothering black in every direction. No horizon. No texture. Not even stars.
A void that swallowed the concept of place.
Subaru's shoulders rose and fell with each unsteady breath as he tried to ground himself in the only familiar presence nearby.
Gojo Satoru. White hair glowing faintly against the black. Bandages remained, draped over his eyes. Still tall. Still cocky. Still him.
"The one and only."
Gojo replied casually, as if they were chatting over lunch and not in an interdimensional abyss. He scratched the back of his head and glanced around, squinting like the dark offended him.
"Though… not gonna lie, I'm a little confused how I ended up here with you considering I was just in a sandstorm. But hey, weird days happen."
He straightened up with a relaxed stretch, peering into the shadows like they might part if he stared hard enough.
"Spooky place though. So, what exactly are you doing here, Subaru?"
Subaru didn't respond. Not immediately.
Instead, he rose with deliberate slowness, brushing sand from his shirt—His breath was shallow. His eyes distant. The kind of silence that wasn't just exhaustion—but calculation.
"Doesn't matter.." he murmured.
Gojo arched a brow. His smile slipped, just a bit.
"So Emilia was telling the truth, eh?" he said, voice dipping lower. "You've been off lately. More than usual."
There was no accusation in his tone. Just a quiet observation layered with something uncharacteristically soft.
Concern.
"Y'know… even if I'm your teacher, I'm still your friend, idiot." Gojo added, grin returning—though tempered. "So, I'm gonna help get us out of… wherever the hell this emo liminal nightmare is."
Subaru looked at him with a strange expression. For the briefest second, something flickered behind his eyes before he shook it off and asked what was one of the first things on Subaru's mind.
"Can't you just teleport us?" he asked flatly.
Gojo snorted. "Teleportation?" He crossed his arms, the gesture exaggerated. "It's more like manipulating the space-time continuum at the molecular level through the Limitless, but yeah, same ballpark I guess."
He waved the thought away like it bored him.
"Anyway, two problems. One—I need a spatial anchor. A location to aim for. And that's usually not an issue considering my brain power, but…" He turned in a slow circle. "I got nothing. No landmarks, no coordinates, nada."
"And two?"
Gojo tilted his head, the bandages shifting slightly over his face.
"I need a mental lock on where I'm going. A concept. A thread to pull me through the spacial mess."
His words echoed oddly in the void—like sound traveled slower here.
"But right now?" Gojo shrugged. "Feels like someone took that thread, then took some scissors and snipped it halfway."
Subaru's lips thinned. He looked down at his hands—shaking faintly. Fingers twitching with energy that still hadn't quite settled since the last return.
"So in a less fancy, sciency way... we're stuck." He said, deadpanning.
They walked, in total silence.
And walked...
"Soooo.." Gojo said after a long stretch of silence, voice light. "How's my favorite student been since that mess at the mansion?"
The question lingered like smoke. Subaru didn't answer at first.
Instead, he just walked. Mechanical. Measured. Tension anchored in his shoulders like he carried weight no one else could see.
What do you think...? I've lost everything. My power. My reason. My pride.
"...Fine."
The lie was smooth. Practiced. Automatic.
Gojo didn't buy it.
"Ah. Well—hm?"
He stopped mid-sentence, head snapping forward. His body tensed. One hand lifted to halt Subaru beside him.
He sniffed the air, nostrils twitching faintly.
Then his voice dropped.
"...Either someone's having one hell of a barbecue… or that's the smell of burning flesh."
"Burning…?" Subaru muttered, brow furrowed.
Gojo crouched slightly and squinted at the space ahead. There, the path split—a fork in the road.
To the left, the smoke grew stronger. Acrid. Charred.
To the right, an invisible pressure crushed against their lungs—malice, almost physical in its presence.
Neither path promised salvation.
Gojo's grin returned like a reflex.
"Welp. Left it is!"
He declared, already stepping toward the stench.
Subaru's hand snapped out and caught his sleeve.
"Hell no.."
Gojo turned, puzzled.
"If we're trying to get out of here.." Subaru growled, "why would we walk toward the burning corpse pile?"
Gojo frowned. Then sighed with melodramatic resignation.
"Mmm… you do have a point… urghhh, fine.."
He spun on a heel like a sulking child, circling around and beginning down the right path instead.
——————————————————————
They walked. And walked.
And with every step forward, the pressure in the air thickened.
At first, it was just a faint, metallic tinge on the back of the tongue——the strange, unpleasant taste of copper and damp earth. But as they sank deeper into the ruins, the stone walls appeared to sweat.
"It's… quiet." Subaru muttered.
His voice sounded flat, swallowed instantly by the damp, heavy atmosphere. He wiped a hand across his forehead. It was cold, but his skin was slick with sweat. His heart was beating with a strange, erratic rhythm, fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Why is it so hot in here? No... it's not hot. It's freezing. Why am I sweating?
Beside him, Satoru Gojo didn't answer.
Normally, Gojo would have filled the silence with some mindless, self-indulgent chatter, or perhaps a complaint about the dirt ruining his shoes. But he was silent. His head was tilted slightly upward, his sky-blue eyes—hidden behind the grey fabric of his bandages—twitching rapidly beneath the cloth.
To Gojo, the tunnel was not silent. It was screaming.
Through the Six Eyes, the miasma was an infinite, chaotic swarm of microscopic, jagged needles. Every single particle of the purple haze was packed with information
But, it wasn't the clean, logical data of the physical world. It was a dense, toxic slurry of pure, unadulterated malice. It was the conceptual manifestation of hatred, despair, and insanity.
With every breath, the Six Eyes absorbed this data, trying to analyze it, categorize it, and filter it.
A sharp, white-hot needle of pain jabbed directly behind Gojo's left temple. He winced, his hand instinctively rising to press against his forehead. It was a sensation he had never experienced in his life to such a degree. An intense headache. The supercomputer of his brain was beginning to lag, choked by the sheer volume of spiritual poison pouring through his brain.
"Satoru?" Subaru asked, his voice tighter now. He didn't look back at Gojo. He couldn't. His neck felt stiff, as if the muscles had turned to wood. "You okay?"
"Fine," Gojo said. The word was too short. Too clipped. "The air is just... heavy."
"Ah, so… I'm not the only one, huh?" Subaru muttered, his eyes narrowing as he stared into the gloom ahead.
In the darkness, the shadows between the stones seemed to twitch. Subaru blinked, shaking his head. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw a pale, severed hand reaching out from a crack in the wall.
It's an illusion…
Subaru told himself, his chest tightening.
His breathing grew shallower. The air felt thin and lacking of oxygen.
Every inhalation felt like inhaling wet, heavy wool.
Why is he walking so close behind me?
The thought popped into Subaru's mind, sudden and unbidden. It was a ugly, oily little thought.
He's towering over me. He's always towering over me. He's watching the back of my neck. Is he waiting for me to trip? Is he waiting for me to show how pathetic I am so he can laugh at me?
Subaru's fists clenched in his pockets. No. Satoru wouldn't do that.
He's my friend. He's... he's Gojo-sensei.
But he doesn't even care about you. He's just using you because he has nowhere else to go. He's a parasite.
"Hey, Subaru——" Gojo called out.
Subaru flinched, his shoulders jerking violently. He forced himself to keep walking, his posture stiff and unnatural.
"What?"
"You're dragging your feet." Gojo said.
Through the fog of his overloading brain, Gojo's perception of Subaru was warping. The boy's constant trembling, the ragged sound of his breathing, the faint smell of the Witch's scent radiating from his body——it was irritating.
Why is he always so weak?
Gojo's mind spun.
I'm pushing through a literal mental assault to keep him safe, and he's just... shuffling along. He's a liability. Why am I carrying his weight? He's just a whiny brat who keeps looking at me like I owe him something.
"I'm not dragging my feet," Subaru spat, his tone unexpectedly sharp. "I'm walking. If you're in such a rush, go around me."
"I would," Gojo replied, his voice dropping into a dry, humorless register. "But you'd probably trip over a pebble and die if I wasn't watching your back. It's exhausting, honestly."
Subaru stopped.
The physical sensation of his heart slamming against his ribs was deafening.
He turned his head slightly. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated, the whites webbed with thin red lines.
"Exhausting?" Subaru whispered. "If it's so exhausting, why don't you just leave? Nobody asked you to come here."
"I came here because you ran off like a child throwing a tantrum." Gojo said, stepping closer.
He didn't realize it, but his Cursed Energy was starting to leak. The blue sparks of his power flickered erratically around his shoulders, reacting to the agitation in his mind. The ambient temperature in the tunnel plummeted, their breath forming white plumes in the air.
"I didn't throw a tantrum!" Subaru shouted, his voice cracking. He turned fully to face Gojo, his face contorted in a mask of raw, defensive fury. "I left because I actually have things to do! I don't have the luxury of sitting around pretending everything is fine while my friends are in danger!"
"And what exactly can you do?" Gojo sneered.
The headache behind his eyes flared violently, a white-hot spike of agony that shattered his remaining self-control.
Those words, all they did was feed his deepest, most buried fear: the fear of being useless, the fear of being a fake.
"You're weak, Subaru," Gojo said, his voice dripping with a cruel, condescending pity that cut deeper than any blade. "You're a normal human. With no talent. You're just a speck of dust. If I wasn't here, you'd be dead in five minutes. You need me. And it kills you, doesn't it? Knowing that you're entirely, utterly dependent on a 'fake' like me."
"Shut up..." Subaru growled.
The shadows behind him began to pool, the dark tendrils of the Authority of Pride reacting to his soaring blood pressure and the raw, unadulterated hatred pooling in his stomach.
"What did you say?" Gojo asked, his brow furrowing as he took another step forward, his towering frame completely blotting out the light from the tunnel ahead.
"I said shut up!" Subaru screamed, the sound tearing at his throat.
The shadows did not rise to shield Subaru.
The Authority of Pride appeared as a writhing nest of black, thorny brambles, beating with the frantic, poisoned pulse of his heart. They leapt up from the dank stone floor, tearing through the sandy mist with a dry hiss like a thousand angry serpents.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Subaru screamed, his voice a raw, bleeding scrape.
The black spikes lunged.
With the automatic barrier of infinity, Gojo would have been untouchable. But the supercomputer of Gojo's brain had seized up under the oppressiveness of the miasma. The Six Eyes were screaming, processing a million error messages every second.
The automated barrier was down, flickering like a dying light bulb.
The black spikes cut a clean red line across Gojo's cheek.
Gojo didn't even flinch. He didn't seem to be aware of the pain at all. But the sight of his own blood, dripping on the purple-stained ground, was the last straw of his sanity.
A high-pitched metallic ringing filled Gojo's ears.
Gojo lunged with a guttural animal snarl.
There was no grace in the way he moved. It was pure speed, physics-defying and frightening. In a fraction of a second the distance between them vanished.
Gojo's fist, laced with jagged, unstable pulses of blue cursed energy, slammed directly into Subaru's sternum.
The sound of Subaru's ribs breaking was sickeningly loud in the narrow stone tunnel. The blow didn't just stagger him back but threw him through the air.
Subaru slammed into the stone wall of the passage with a sickening thud, his spine cracking and a shower of loose pebbles and dirt raining down on his head.
He dropped to the ground in a wet gasp of choking as he coughed up a thick gush of dark red blood. But the pain didn't bring him to his senses. The miasma, feeding on the trauma, transmuted agony into a blinding ecstacy of hate.
Look at him ... he wants to kill you. He'd always wanted to do that.
"Is that… all you've got?" Subaru wheezed, pulling himself to his knees.
He hates you because you see through him, because you know what an empty, pathetic fraud he is.
His left arm hung broken in three places, useless. Blood poured from his nose, his eyes, his mouth, painting his face with a ghastly, crimson mask.
But his one good eye was wide, manic, laughing defiance at Gojo. "You're a fucking monster, Gojo!"
"Shut up," Gojo whispered.
He spoke tonelessly. The fabric of his blindfold slid down his face, exposing his eyes fully.
They shone with a horrifying luminescent blue. They were bloodshot and wide and utterly devoid of humanity.
Gojo shot out his hand, pinching his fingers together. The air around them began to scream, and at his fingertips, a localised gravity well took shape, and a small condensed spark of crimson light sparked.
"Red." Gojo muttered.
Subaru thrust out his right arm, filling it with all of his remaining soul in the Authority of Pride.
"Prove me right, you gaping piece of shit!"
Between them, a vast towering wave of black thorns shot up from the ground, a writhing defensive wall of pure shadow.
But it didn't matter
A red spark shot from Gojo's fingertip.
The repelling force of Red exploded outward, the force of a missile strike. The shockwave was deafening, a roaring gale of pure kinetic energy that vaporised the purple mist and broke Subaru's shadow wall into harmless black dust.
The tunnel ceiling creaked, ancient stone cracking into a spiderweb of great fissures, dust and rubble pouring down.
The explosion hit Subaru Square.
He was thrown back through the dust, his body scraping violently on the jagged stone floor until he came to rest in a crumpled, unnatural heap.
The tunnel was silent, thick and suffocating, save for the sound of Gojo's ragged shallow breathing.
Gojo was standing in the middle of the clearing, arm still raised. The red sparks went out of his fingers. The wind faded, and the purple miasma started to seep back slowly, pooling around his boots like cold, silent water.
Slowly the manic frenzy in Gojo's mind started to stutter. The noise quieted down, and the blinding rage subsided enough for a chilling reality to creep through the cracks of his sanity.
Gojo blinked. His ears stopped ringing, and the heavy, dripping silence of the cave took over.
He looked at his hand. It trembled.
Then he looked over the clearing.
The dust settled, and Subaru lay sprawled on the dirt. His clothes were torn, his body broken and twisted.
His chest was caved in, rising and falling in shallow, desperate, wet hitches.
"Subaru...?" whispered Gojo.
The word sounded odd on his lips. The miasma still pressed heavy on his mind, still whispered, but the sight of the boy's shattered form sent a spike of cold, raw panic straight through his chest.
Gojo stumbled forward, his legs trembling.
He fell to his knees in the dirt beside Subaru, his hands raised over the boy's body, at a complete loss.
"Subaru, hey... stop it. Stop playing around..." Gojo muttered, his voice cracking, the arrogant, cold facade completely shattering.
Subaru said nothing. He could not.
His lungs were full of blood. Each breath was a wet bubbling struggle. He raised his head a little, his vision pitch black, but he felt the cool presence of Gojo kneeling next to him.
With the last of his strength, Subaru extended. His bloodied fingers weakly grasped Gojo's sleeve, leaving a red smear on the white fabric.
The madness of the miasma was fading with the shadow of death looming over them, leaving only a cold, heartbreaking clarity.
The question never got completed.
The light in Subaru's eyes flickered, dimmed and finally faded out. His hand slipped from Gojo's sleeve and fell limp into the cold, purple-stained dirt.
Gojo stood frozen.
The Six Eyes, burning hot, looked at the body in front of him. "No…" Gojo whispered.
He took Subaru by the shoulders and shook him. "No no no! Subaru, wake up! I didn't... I didn't mean...!"
But there was no reply. His arms tightened about a body that was growing cold with alarming rapidity.
The realisation hit Gojo like a gut punch. The whispers of the miasma came back, louder now, laughing at him, mocking his despair.
You killed him . The only one who truly knew you. The only one who held you close to this world. You have murdered him.
Gojo threw his head back and let out a raw, agonised scream, a sound of pure, unadulterated despair that echoed endlessly through the dark, weeping throat of the earth.
Unbeknownst to Gojo, in the dark, a heavy and familiar shadow started to gather around Subaru's body.
From the void a cold, loving hand of darkness reached out and wrapped itself around Subaru's soul and gently pulled him back, away from the blood, away from the death.
Right back to the beginning.