I...Where am I? The first time I came to my senses, confusion filled me.
Everything was dark. I tried to move, but it felt like my body was paralyzed, utterly unresponsive to my commands. I struggled again and again, before a wave of exhaustion slammed into me, sending me back into unconsciousness.
The second time I woke, fragments began to surface in my mind. Memories.
I died...didn't I?
Faces flickered through my head, all blurry, some more distinct than others. Words echoed, many of them familiar. Was that the language I used to speak?
I recalled being with...friends? Family? People I knew. Was i going home, or somewhere else? I remembered lights flashing by, and the distinct sound of water, maybe? Despite the chaos, I remained calm at the end. No fear. No dread. Just...calm.
Then the lights surged, growing blindingly bright, and everything else simply vanished. That was the last I remembered.
Before I knew it, my mind emptied, going blank once more.
My third awakening came with a profound sense of hunger.
I'd believed this void I found myself in would not have such needs, yet this was the most intense hunger I'd ever known; something was deeply wrong.
It felt like I was dying from starvation, and I refused to die again? I tried to move but remained paralyzed.
As the hunger worsened, I sensed it: there was something here with me. I didn't know what I was, but maybe it could help satisfy this need.
I tried to reach out to it, but I remained still. However, whatever it was, it felt different...like a person but not...it felt more like energy. And maybe as such, I could just take it.
And with that thought, I did. I simply...absorbed it. The energy completely vanished from the void, and the hunger was gone. For the third time, everything went black.
The fourth time I awoke, I saw light for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
It began as a harsh, distant glare that relentlessly grew, expanding until a jolt of cold air struck my skin. I tried to speak, to utter a word, but all that escaped my throat was a loud, involuntary cry. That's when I felt something holding me. Someone.
I thrashed my arms and legs, and to my surprise, I could finally move them, though a peculiar feeling clung to my arms. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the sudden brightness, I opened them fully and saw faces. They looked like giants looming over me.
And with that sight, a chilling clarity washed over me. I had been reborn.
As my sight sharpened, I was them clearly: all women, of various ages, some with wrinkles that spoke of years. They all shared the same stark black hair and distinct slanted eyes. Asians? But where? Yet what truly startled me, were their expressions.
Fear. Horror.
Those were the emotions I saw on their faces.
"Is the baby okay? Is he okay?" a weak voice called out. I didn't recognize the language, but if this was Asia, maybe it was Chinese or Japanese? Still the undeniable tremor of worry in her tone was perfectly clear.
The woman who was holding me, the oldest looking of them all, looked up to see who I assumed to be my mother, and her face twisted from fear to anger.
"With which devil did you lay?" she spat venomously. I didn't understand what she said, but her accusatory rage was clear.
"W-what? I d-don't understand," my mother stammered, still unseen by me, and I by her.
"See for yourself," the old woman growled, and I was abruptly shoved into my mother's arms, and at last, I saw her face. And she mine.
Her features were unassuming: slanted dark eyes, a delicate nose, and a small mouth. Long dark brown hair framed a face pale and damp with the effort of childbirth as she looked down at me.
Our eyes met.
Her initial confusion quickly dissolved, replaced by the same abject fear that had already gripped every other person in that room.
"H-how? How could this happen?" My mother's voice, laced with terror, trembled as she looked back at the elder woman.
"It's obvious, you must have slept with the devil," the elder sneered back, her voice dripping with venom. Something was clearly amiss, and it all revolved around my appearance.
"No!" My mother's voice rose in a desperate cry. "You knew my husband before he died! You know I never slept with anyone else!" She answered with raw vehemence.
Silence stretched, heavy and cold, before the older woman finally replied, her tone now frigid. "Out of respect we have for your deceased husband and for the history you have with us, we'll grant you time to recuperate. But once you do, you are henceforth banished from here. We will not risk drawing the ire of any deity or spirit." Her tone held a finality as if some ultimatum had been given.
Tears welled in my mother's eyes, her face a mask of utter devastation. I tried to reach out to offer some form of comfort, but as my left arm lifted, a second one mirrored its movements.
An extra arm on my left side
My eyes flew wide. My mother's eyes mirrored my shock, and for a brief second, I saw reflection in them.
A grotesque, malformed face stared back. The right side was covered in bonelike ridges. My hair was an unnatural red-pink color. Where I knew only two arms should be, there were four.
And in her eyes, I saw my own.
Four crimson-red eyes stared back at me.
Some time later
The weeks following my rebirth blurred into one another.
News of my grotesque appearance spread like a plague through the village, and the other villagers quickly began to shun my mother. They gave her only the bare minimum—just enough food to keep us both alive until she had recovered from the birth.
Once she had regained enough strength to walk, they wasted no time in casting us out, leaving us to fend for ourselves. It was only by sheer luck that I had been born at the start of spring; a winter birth would have surely been our death sentence.
My mother walked for days, a weary pilgrimage through endless forests and open fields. We survived on whatever the land offered and drank from any river or lake she could find.
Every time my mother fed me, she looked at me with pure hate. I couldn't begrudge her that; after all, I was the reason she had been shunned and exiled from her home. Still, the constant hostility deeply saddened me. I could recall some faint echoes of a mother's love from my previous life, but nothing concrete enough to hold on to.
We continued like this for almost two weeks until we finally stumbled upon a small, abandoned shrine hidden deep in a forest. For the first few days, my mother was terrified, likely fearing we would be discovered. But after a week passed with no one coming, and then a second, her fear slowly faded. In its place, the familiar hateful glare returned.
Month after month, she learned to survive. Her fishing skills sharpened, and she would sometimes return with a bird she had managed to kill.
A year blurred by, bringing with it my first winter in this new life. Food became scarce, yet my mother continued to feed me whatever she could, sometimes even sacrificing from her own meager portion.
Even though I knew she loathed me, that act of care sparked a gratefulness in me that I couldn't ignore.
Years later
I learned to walk at the age of one, yet I still struggled to maintain my balance. By two, I was capable of speech, but I never spoke a single word. My mother never talked to me, and her language was still a mystery to me.
It wasn't until I was three years old that I finally learned my name.
"Sukuna."
My mother spoke it for the first time in my life, using it to command me to gather wood. She didn't even say a full sentence—just my name, followed by a pointed finger towards the logs outside.
I didn't know its meaning, yet I immediately liked it. It sounded strong. It sounded powerful. And it gave me a clearer idea of where I might be. This was likely Japan, or at least ancient Japan, given the complete lack of modern technology and paved roads.
Once I could walk without issue, I began contributing to our daily survival. I started setting traps in the forest surrounding our shrine. For some reason, my body was unnaturally stronger than that of any normal child my age.
I'd discovered this by the ease with which I once lifted a heavy log, an errand my mother had sent me on. Another time, I fell from a tree while trying to climb it, yet emerged with nothing more than a small bruise.
My four arms allowed me to dig traps with ease, and my four eyes could spot even the faintest of tracks. Soon, by the age of four, I was bringing more food back to the shrine than my mother was.
It was at the age of five that I had my first encounter with what could only be called an evil spirit.
I was out hunting, as usual. I'd been gone for hours, and the sun was already well past midday when I heard it: the sound of dry leaves and branches crunching underfoot. By the sound alone, I knew it was a large animal. I crept slowly toward the noise, and as I reached a small clearing, I saw something that defied belief.
It looked like a wolf in its general shape, but everything else was grotesquely wrong. Instead of fur, it had purple, deformed skin. Six eyes dotted its head, and its mouth was a horrific mess of four mandibles. It was chewing on something, and as my gaze dropped, I saw a half-eaten human body lying at its feet. The face and arms were gone, the stomach was split open with its innards spilling out, and only the legs remained.
I tried to back away, slow and silent, but one of my arms brushed against a dry leaf. In an instant, its six eyes were fixed on me. It charged without warning.
I barely managed to roll to the side as it crashed into the ground behind me. As I spun around, it was already leaping again, forcing me into a desperate, continuous retreat.
My unusual strength meant nothing against this monster. It wouldn't be enough to defeat this thing, or even to escape it. It continued to lunge, a relentless predator, and all I could do was dodge as fast as my small body would allow.
I thought I could tire it out, but my plan was a fool's hope. On one of its charges, its flesh twisted, and a grotesque tail burst forth, hitting me mid-dodge and slamming me into a tree. I was down. The creature turned, its six eyes fixed on me, and pounced one last time.
Despair seized me, but with it came something else.
Something new. Something from within me.
I felt it surge, reach out and—
"Dismantle"
I swiped my hand.
A faint, growing line appeared, bisecting the wolf-like monster perfectly. It hung there for a moment before splitting exactly in half. I sat in stunned silence, trying to process the impossible, until I noticed the halves begin to fade away, disappearing into nothing.
After that first encounter, I began running into these creatures—these evil spirits—more and more frequently. They, like the one that nearly killed me, would vanish into thin air after I destroyed them. Though none were as formidable as that wolf-like monster, I took no chances, killing them all with the same energy that now seemed to reside within me.
I realized this power was tied directly to my emotions. While I could use it almost effortlessly, it seemed to require a small spark of emotion to activate, and I found a negative one worked best.
I never told my mother about the evil spirits. For one, I still hadn't learned Japanese, or this ancient version of it. Secondly, it seemed she couldn't see them. But most importantly, I feared she might truly believe I was a demon and try to kill me. A part of me wanted to believe she wouldn't, but after years of her looking at me with nothing but hatred, I wasn't so sure.
By the time I turned six, my life was a cycle of predictable tasks: hunt or fish, dispatch any evil spirits that got too near the shrine, return to eat, shower —at least once a week— sleep, and do it all over again.
But everything changed that winter.
But that winter, everything changed.
Mother fell ill.
One day, her body simply grew too weak, her temperature spiking uncontrollably. She lay bedridden for two agonizing weeks. I maintained my routine, always bringing back water and meat to make her soup, but her sickness was too powerful.
Her heartbeat was erratic, either racing too fast or slowing to a crawl, never finding a steady rhythm.
She was going to die.
I sat beside her. She was awake, a rare occurrence and likely her last. So I decided to speak, using the only language I could remember.
"You weren't the best mom," I began. Her eyes went wide with a sudden, fresh fear, likely believing me to be a demon for speaking in a "demonic" tongue. Yet I continued. "But you weren't the worst either. You could've left me to die, and no one would've blamed you. You could have easily abandoned me here as a baby and returned to your village, or found another one nearby."
I remembered something from when I was two. She would make trips to a nearby village, leaving in the morning with fish and herbs and returning in the evening with coal and small pots.
"But you stayed," I continued. "For reasons I'll never understand, you stayed. You fed me and you clothed me." The clothes were just rags, but it was still something. "Maybe you had no one else. Maybe I reminded you of your husband." I doubted that, but it was a possibility. "Or maybe, deep down, you held a tiny bit of love for me. In the end, I guess it doesn't matter."
Her expression had gone from fear to confusion, and I didn't know why. Perhaps it was the tone of my voice, or the fact that no curse came with my words. "I just wanted to say, before you pass away... thank you." I bowed my head slightly and gently pressed a small kiss to her forehead.
Her eyes widened in surprise, then quickly softened into profound sadness. Tears welled up in her eyes before she turned away from me. I didn't know why she did it, but I couldn't help but feel a sharp pang of rejection. It was in that moment I realized that all I had ever wanted was for her to acknowledge me, just once. But I had said what I needed to say, even if she couldn't understand the words.
Two days later, my mother passed away. I dug a grave for her behind the shrine.
And for the first time in this new life, I truly felt alone.