His eyes stung first, then his throat — each breath scraping in hot and dry. Ahead of him, the whole district glowed.
Ren didn't stop running, but the scale of the place caught up with his thoughts and slowed them to a crawl. Skyscrapers lay sheared in half, steel bones bent and folded flat like they weighed nothing. The road under his feet wasn't road anymore. It was black glass, split open over veins of magma.
His hand found his hip out of habit, and that was the problem.
Nightfall was still there.
A Special Grade cursed tool didn't hide well, not from anything strong enough to matter in a place like this. Ren unclipped the sheath without breaking stride. The System interface flickered open at the edge of his vision, a faint blue grid, and the katana dropped into it and vanished, sheath and all.
The weight on his hip disappeared. So did the low cursed hum it always gave off. Now there was nothing on him but his own hand. Nothing to sense. Nothing to find.
He hit the base of a collapsed overpass and climbed, boots finding purchase on warped, half-melted rebar, and dragged himself flat against the top of it.
Through the smoke, he saw it.
The meteorite dominated the whole center of the district, easily the size of a city block, jagged and black and still glowing faint orange along its seams where it had torn through the sky and gouged straight into the earth. The ground around it had liquefied and re-hardened into twisted glass. Steam hissed up from the cracks.
Perched near the base of it, half-buried in rubble: Jogo. Or what was left of him. No legs. No left arm, the rest of him black and cracking like a dying coal.
Ren's eyes swept the wreckage, cataloguing what remained.
Not Sukuna.
Tall, gaunt, wrapped in a heavy coat despite the heat radiating off the stone. Uraume stood beside the meteorite, one hand hovering over Jogo's ruined form like they were deciding whether it was worth the trouble of saving.
Ren stayed flat against the rebar, barely breathing.
No sign of him. Nothing.
He scanned the area again, waiting for his gut to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. Nothing. Just Uraume, the smoking meteorite, and rubble settling somewhere behind them.
"...Did he already leave?" Ren muttered, barely above a breath.
The words hadn't even finished leaving his mouth before something answered.
"Leave? Now why would I do that."
Ren's whole body went rigid. The voice came from directly behind him, close enough that he felt it more than heard it, a low, amused rumble right at the back of his neck.
He spun, hand already snapping toward his hip out of pure muscle memory before he remembered the sheath was empty. Fine. His fists came up instead, weight dropping into a stance, every nerve screaming at him to move, to run, to do something.
Sukuna wasn't even looking at him.
He stood there with his hands tucked into his pockets, an easy, unbothered slouch.
"You," Sukuna said, almost conversationally, "are annoyingly quiet for something with legs."
Ren didn't answer.
Sukuna's head tilted, eyes narrowing on whatever was happening out past the skyline.
"Interesting," he murmured, more to himself than anyone. The word came out almost lazy, like he was filing something away for later.
Then he was walking. No goodbye, no second glance, just three unhurried steps and the space where he'd been standing was empty again.
Ren stayed pressed flat against the rebar for a long moment, waiting for his heart rate to catch up with the fact that he was still breathing.
He let out a slow breath through his nose, dragging a hand down his face.
"...Yeah," he muttered under his breath. "Difference between us is way too much right now." He almost laughed, except there was nothing funny about it. "Let alone whatever Fushiguro just called out there."
No point dwelling on it. Sukuna was gone, and that alone felt like the only mercy he was going to get tonight.
His eyes drifted back down to the base of the meteorite.
Jogo was still there. Barely. The cracks running through what was left of him had spread further, thin lines of orange light bleeding out from inside like the whole thing was one bad breath from caving in. Not dead yet. Close, though. Close enough that it wouldn't take much.
Ren's eyes went from Jogo to Uraume and back.
Uraume still hadn't moved, hand hovering an inch above what was left of Jogo's chest, head tilted like they were listening for something Ren couldn't hear.
He didn't wait for a better moment. There wasn't going to be one.
Nightfall dropped back into his hand from the System's blue grid, sheath and all. He drew it at a dead run, the motion so practiced it barely slowed him down.
Low, fast, angling around a slab of collapsed concrete so it stayed between him and Uraume's eyeline as long as possible. The ground under his boots was still warm, half-melted glass that gave slightly with every step.
Twenty feet. Fifteen.
Jogo's eye rolled toward him and stopped, like even that much effort cost more than he had left.
Ren closed the last of the distance and drove Nightfall through the widest crack running down Jogo's chest.
It went in easy. Too easy — no resistance, no weight behind it, like putting a blade through ash that hadn't finished falling yet. The cracks spiderwebbing across what remained of him split wide all at once, thin lines of orange bursting through before the whole thing caved in on itself.
Jogo's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Then there was nothing left to make a sound. Just ash lifting off the rock in the heat and drifting into the smoke.
[ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Ashes of the Volcano ]
Condition Met: Deliver the finishing blow to a Special Grade Disaster Curse.
[ REWARDS DISTRIBUTED ]
Ren didn't read past the header.
Uraume's hand snapped back like she'd touched something hot. Her head came up, and for half a second nobody moved — Ren crouched over the empty space where Jogo had been, Uraume six feet away with her fingers curling slowly shut.
Ren yanked the blade free and ran.
He kept moving anyway, cutting hard around the collapsed pillar, putting rubble and smoke between himself and the meteorite until his legs gave out on the effort and he dropped to a ragged, gasping walk two blocks later.