The world didn't just go dark. It turned red.
Kaito's lungs seized. The sensation wasn't just pain; it was an invasion. It felt like liquid lead was being pumped directly into his bone marrow, heavy and searing. The Sukuna finger didn't just sit in his wound—it dissolved into him, its ancient, jagged essence weaving through his nervous system like a parasite seeking a host.
"Stop... stop it..." Kaito gasped, but the words were choked back by a sudden surge of black bile.
The man in the suit stood up, calmly brushing dust off his trousers. "Don't fight it, Kaito. Resistance is what kills the vessel. Acceptance is what births the god."
Kaito's body began to contort. His mangled left arm, which should have been useless, suddenly snapped straight. The skin began to knit itself back together at an impossible speed, but the new flesh wasn't human. It was grey, corded with thick, pulsing veins that throbbed with a rhythmic, malicious heartbeat. Black markings—sharp, tribal lines—began to bleed out from the wound, crawling up his neck and across his cheek like ink dropped into water.
Inside his mind, the hospital vanished. Kaito was standing in ankle-deep blood under a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Before him sat a shrine of mismatched skulls, and atop it, a figure leaned forward, eyes glowing with a bored, lethal curiosity.
"Another one?" the voice of Ryomen Sukuna echoed, vibrating through Kaito's soul. "You're a pathetic little thing, aren't you? Barely enough CE to flicker, let alone burn."
"Get... out... of my head!" Kaito roared, swinging a phantom fist.
Sukuna laughed, a sound like dry bones grinding together. "Your head? Boy, you opened the door. I'm just the one who walked in."
Back in the physical world, Kaito's eyes snapped open. They were no longer brown; they were a piercing, iridescent crimson. A second set of slits under his eyes flickered, threatening to tear open. The air in the hospital ward began to scream as the atmospheric pressure tripled. The concrete floor beneath him shattered, not from a blow, but from the sheer weight of the malice radiating from his body.
The man in the suit took a step back, his professional smile finally faltering. "Incredible... the synchronization rate is over 80%. But can you keep control, or will he simply erase you?"
Kaito struggled to his feet. Every muscle felt like it was being pulled apart and reassembled. He looked at his hands—the black markings were solid now. He felt a power so immense it made his previous "Friction Burn" technique feel like a flickering matchstick against a supernova.
"I don't... know who you are," Kaito said, his voice now layered with a guttural, demonic resonance that made the very shadows in the room cower. "But you touched me. And in my math... that's a debt you can't afford."
Kaito moved. He didn't blur this time—he simply ceased to be in one spot and appeared in another. He was an inch away from the man's face. The man's eyes widened, his hand reaching into his suit jacket for a cursed tool, but Kaito was faster.
He didn't punch. He simply touched the man's shoulder.
"Dismantle," a voice that wasn't Kaito's whispered.
A clean, invisible line of force sliced through the air. The man's expensive suit jacket, his arm, and the brick wall behind him were instantly bifurcated. Blood didn't even have time to spray before the sheer friction of the cut cauterized the wound.
The man fell back, gasping, staring at his severed limb. "You... you can already use his technique? Impossible!"
"It's not his," Kaito growled, clutching his head as the two souls fought for dominance over his vocal cords. "It's mine now. Everything... the pain, the power... it's all mine."
Suddenly, the ceiling of the hospital ward erupted. A massive, blue-white light descended, obliterating the roof in a display of absolute authority. Satoru Gojo landed amidst the debris, his blindfold slightly tilted, his expression devoid of its usual mockery.
Gojo looked at the man in the suit, then his gaze shifted to Kaito. The "Six Eyes" processed the information in a microsecond—the cursed energy signature, the soul-overlap, the dormant King of Curses.
"Well," Gojo said, his voice cold enough to freeze the blood in Kaito's veins. "I came here to save a student. It seems I found a monster instead."
Kaito looked at Gojo, the black markings on his face glowing. The hunger inside him—Sukuna's hunger—was screaming at him to lunge, to test the "Infinity," to tear the white-haired sorcerer apart.
Kaito's own soul fought back, pulling the reins. "Gojo-sensei... run..."
Gojo didn't move. He raised two fingers, the air around him beginning to distort into a "Blue" vacuum. "I'm sorry, Kaito. But the math just changed. One life to prevent a thousand... that's the calculus, right?"
Kaito felt the "Blue" pull at his atoms. But deep within him, Sukuna smiled.
"Let's see your infinity, Six Eyes," the voice roared through Kaito's lips as he lunged forward, his hand wreathed in a black-flame version of his friction technique.
The two powers collided, and the hospital vanished in a blinding flash of void and fire.