Outside the Curtain, the Jujutsu High personnel had already picked up the signal from Mahiko's alarm. They had pinpointed Nobara Kugisaki's likely location to the Ginza hotel.
Yuji Itadori, Nanami Kento, and the rest of the sorcerers were racing toward them.
At this point, they were all but certain that Nobara had been abducted by a sorcerer.
"Hello?! Nanami! We've detected a Curtain with massive Cursed Energy output at the top of the building!"
"Keep eyes on that Curtain. We're almost there!"
Everyone was terrified for Nobara's safety. Everyone was pushing themselves to get there as fast as they could.
Meanwhile, high above — within the layered Curtains — the outermost and most fortified layer had already been breached.
Ishiryuu's output was truly something else.
A beam as thick as a great tree trunk blasted into the floor. The concrete and rebar shattered and gave way. The Curtain woven from Cursed Energy shattered simultaneously — the floor collapsed inward, and space itself began to ripple and warp.
Mahiko lashed out the rabbit chain, seized Nobara Kugisaki, and yanked her close.
Then the two of them together fell through the breach in the Curtain, plummeting downward.
The feeling of the air changed in an instant. She could smell the outside.
They'd made it.
Her throat had been shredded by the use of Cursed Speech, and there was no time to reconstruct it yet — but the most troublesome obstacle, the Curtain, had been broken.
And on top of that, Mahiko had held one more rapidly-charged [Remains] in reserve, unused.
Ishiryuu had overloaded his own Cursed Energy output, which meant he couldn't fire off another heavy blast for a while. So long as Kenjaku still didn't dare make a direct move, and no other surprises appeared — they were out. They were free.
But Mahiko knew it wouldn't be that simple. Kenjaku always had more tricks up his sleeve. She stayed razor-sharp.
But... there are some things you truly can't guard against.
Pfft—
Mahiko's pupils slammed shut.
The moment they burst out of the Curtain, she realized her body was being cut — sliced apart by something invisible, from nowhere.
Cut? Sukuna's Jujutsu Technique?
No... this wasn't Sukuna's Technique.
There were fixed, invisible blades hanging in the air.
In a single instant Mahiko understood whose Technique this was. Her reaction was almost supernaturally fast — and still, she was already too late.
All she could do was shove Nobara away and use the recoil to adjust her own posture.
Nobara was pushed clear, tumbling through the air — she wasn't struck. But Mahiko's body dragged across those invisible blades. Blood sprayed. Her left arm, her right leg, and half of her torso were severed. The girl crashed down onto the terrace below.
She bit down on the pain and forced herself upright, already reconstructing her body. The moment she got to her feet, several bird-shaped Shikigami — resembling pterodactyls — came hurtling at her face.
Mahiko summoned the rabbit. It launched itself into the air and detonated to intercept the flock — but two of the birds punched through the explosion and reached her.
The Shikigami moved like living blades, their flight paths carving through Mahiko's body. One cleaved off her right hand. The other raked across her neck — and if the girl hadn't dodged at precisely the right moment, her head would have come clean off.
Mahiko gritted her teeth and looked toward the distance.
She and Nobara had fallen into the sky garden that originally occupied the hundredth floor of the hotel.
The guests who had once filled this place were now a carpet of twisted, mangled corpses. At the very center of the carnage, a skeletal, gaunt old man sat cross-legged among the bodies.
——Durufu.
Just like Ishiryuu, he was a figure who in the original story would only have appeared during the Sendai Colony of the Culling Game — one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Sendai.
His Technique was the manipulation of two types of Shikigami. The movement paths of these Shikigami would be transformed into inviolable domains. The invisible blades in the air just now had been the result of his Technique converting the flight trajectories of the bird Shikigami into fixed, impenetrable space.
Damn it...
The situation had turned catastrophic in an instant.
Mahiko bit down hard. Kenjaku had even resurrected Durufu?
Against a sorcerer who fights through Shikigami, the main body is usually fragile — so attacking the main body directly is the correct play.
Of her four limbs, only her left leg remained, making movement a nightmare. But she still had that one rapidly-charged [Remains] she hadn't fired yet.
If she could put Durufu down with a single [Remains] right now, she could turn the tide — but before she could even redirect her Cursed Energy, the next attack came crashing down from above.
Glacial Incantation — Ice Picks.
Rime came in from overhead.
An ultimate blizzard of ice fog rained down from above, swallowing Mahiko entirely.
Rime had been weakened by the poison, so this strike wasn't as devastating as it might otherwise have been.
But it was more than enough to freeze Mahiko as she was right now.
Mahiko channeled Cursed Energy to fight the cold.
Even so, half her body was encased in ice.
"You know... I genuinely admire you. That isn't a lie." Kenjaku's voice, distorted by the voice modulator, drifted over from beside her. "I think you're a once-in-a-millennium existence. So truly — I really do hate to have to kill you..."
Kenjaku had landed on the garden terrace. Rime and Ishiryuu came to the terrace as well.
This was bad.
Mahiko continued pushing Cursed Energy through her body to thaw herself, while fixing Kenjaku with a cold smile. "Oh? I can't say your actions have done much to convey that."
Only now did she take in the full picture of the sky garden.
The ground was covered in twisted human remains — or rather, no. They were all still alive.
Just like the aftermath of Idle Transfiguration, the bodies of each person had been partially crushed — nearly half their volume compressed into something like brightly colored plastic.
Every single one of them was half-dead. But every single one of them was still alive.
Kenjaku must have arranged this deliberately. Using Idle Transfiguration to attack the crowd while sparing each and every life.
And it wasn't just that — there were a staggering number of people on the ground here. Far more than just the guests who had originally been dining and strolling in the garden. It looked as though all the other guests from within the hotel, trapped inside the Curtain, had been herded here together and struck all at once.
When Nobara Kugisaki hit the terrace, she was lucky enough to snag on a tree and avoided injury — but several of the bird Shikigami circled her in slow spirals, their inviolable domains forming a cage that locked Nobara inside.
Nobara could feel it. Every single person at this scene radiated an overwhelming, suffocating aura.
Every one of them... possessed power so far beyond hers that they could kill her without a second thought.
She had already figured it out. These people's target was the blue-haired Cursed Spirit — not her. Because eliminating her wouldn't require this many powerhouses.
She was bait. Bait to lure in the blue-haired Cursed Spirit.
Nobara's gaze drifted toward the blue-haired Cursed Spirit.
Why had this Cursed Spirit saved her?
She couldn't understand it.
This place was a dragon's den, a tiger's lair. As far as she knew, she and this blue-haired Cursed Spirit had absolutely no connection... so why had it come to save her?
The girl couldn't make sense of it.
All she could do was bite down, lower her presence inside her cage, and watch for any opportunity — any chance at all — to help the blue-haired Cursed Spirit.
"What's this — you don't believe me?" Kenjaku said, facing Mahiko. "Every word I've said is genuine."
Mahiko let out a cold laugh. "Is that so. Well — personally, I think you've got a screw loose. And that's also genuine."
The blue-haired girl's mind was running at full throttle.
What now. What should she do right now?
Her Cursed Energy reserves were critically depleted, and her body was in pieces. Reconstruction would take time.
The one saving grace was that she had already reconstructed her throat.
She had one use of Cursed Speech remaining. One rapidly-charged [Remains]. And... the Domain Expansion she had never once fully revealed, never once fully deployed — a 0.2-second window, not yet fully mastered.
Rime was weakened by poison. Kenjaku almost certainly wouldn't make a direct move. Ishiryuu was heavily injured but showed no signs of reduced combat ability. Durufu seemed, like Ishiryuu, to have not yet fully recovered his original strength — but his Technique alone was already a nightmare.
How should she play these last three cards — to turn the tide, and save Nobara... and everyone else here?
Mahiko's gaze swept across the mass of half-dead people on the ground.
These people had nothing to do with her.
She had no obligation to save them.
Reality was cruel. She seemed powerless to save this many people — because each and every one of them had had their soul crushed by a soul-level attack. To save them, she would need to apply targeted Idle Transfiguration to each individual.
How was that even possible?
Right now, she seemed to have no choice but to abandon them.
And abandoning them wouldn't be wrong. There was nothing wrong with it at all.
Kenjaku noticed where her gaze had gone. He smiled, and looked across the field of half-dead bodies himself.
"They're going to die," Kenjaku said.
"What?" Mahiko frowned.
"They're going to die," he repeated — then added: "Killed by you."
Mahiko went still.
"I know you still have cards you haven't played. You might be able to run..." Kenjaku said. "So run, then. But Nobara stays here. And these thousands upon thousands of half-dead people covering the ground will stay here too."
"They were all killed by your Idle Transfiguration."
"You'll become the enemy of Jujutsu High and every last person in Japan."
"Even if you escape, you'll spend the rest of your life hiding in the most remote corners of the earth. You'll never stand in the sunlight again. Every faction — hero or villain — will hunt you down."
Kenjaku said all of this, and smiled.
"So whether you run or not — the fact that these people were killed by you cannot be changed. Unless you can defeat all of us in a short window of time and then perform precise, individualized treatment on every single person here... but can you do that?"
Can you?
"You can't."
"So in the end, your only option is to be a good girl and join our side. Accept reality."
Kenjaku believed Mahiko had nowhere left to go.
Every injured person on this terrace required precise, targeted Idle Transfiguration treatment. Every enemy present was something that Mahiko — shattered as she was right now — couldn't defeat quickly.
The rapidly-charged [Remains]? The crowd-control Cursed Speech that would ruin her throat the moment she used it once? Or that unstable Domain Expansion she could only maintain for 0.2 seconds?
None of Mahiko's cards could reverse the current situation. Not one of them could suppress her enemies while simultaneously saving everyone.
Just as Kenjaku had said — she had already lost. This was over.
So.
"Heh..."
Fine, then. Let's go with that.
The girl let out a soft, quiet laugh. She lowered her head. Her eyes dropped.
Her Cursed Energy faded out. She stopped thawing the ice. She stopped reconstructing her body. She looked, for all the world, like she had completely given up — surrendered.
So much so that Kenjaku let out a quiet, satisfied laugh.
He thought he had won.
But then — he saw the girl's head still bowed, and her lips moving.
"...?"
The girl seemed to be... softly singing.
Singing?
Kenjaku didn't understand.
The lyrics were indistinct, the melody barely perceptible. Yet within that song, Cursed Energy flowed — a thin thread of Cursed Speech drifting through the air on the back of her voice.
A Cursed Speech attack?
Kenjaku instinctively reinforced his ears with Cursed Energy.
But — it didn't seem like an attack. It was simply a song. A directionless, formless song with no intelligible meaning. The Cursed Energy within it was so faint it was barely more than a wisp of smoke on the breeze.
What was she doing?
A lament, sung at the end of the road?
The song was, undeniably, sad.
Matched against the girl's wretched state — both arms and one leg severed, half her body entombed in ice, blood and frost congealing together — the picture was nothing short of harrowing.
And yet the girl's song grew clearer with every passing moment.
Slowly — a luminous ring of light appeared above Mahiko's head.
Kenjaku instinctively went rigid, taking half a step back.
He knew the intelligence on this girl. At its core, that halo was a kind of hand-seal. She had used it before in place of physical hand-seals — to deploy Miyakogakuro.
...Was she trying to deploy Miyakogakuro right now?
But that would be a completely meaningless move.
"Hey..." And then Kenjaku heard Rime's voice at his back — uncertain, rattled. "What's going on...?"
What? What was going on?
Something was already very wrong with the sounds around him.
A dark premonition surfaced in Kenjaku's mind.
He turned — and his pupils clenched tight.
Because everyone was singing. Everyone was singing along with Mahiko.
Low voices, quiet voices — Nobara was singing, the half-dead people on the ground were singing, the Low-grade Cursed Spirits that surrounded the terrace were singing, even the tiny insects in the soil...
Every living creature was murmuring together in song, as though reciting the melody Mahiko had breathed into the air.
The song entered the mind. Unknown information surged unbidden into Kenjaku's consciousness, and for a moment — he froze.
He thought he understood now what Mahiko was trying to do. And at that realization, his pupils trembled violently.
["I have a question I wanted to ask you... about my Domain always collapsing..."]
["If your innate Domain is a tent, then your Curtain is the tent pole... your pole is too fragile..."]
Domain Expansion works by imprinting the innate Domain onto a Curtain using one's Jujutsu Technique. If the Curtain's structural strength is far below the weight of the innate Domain, the Domain collapses the instant it forms.
The solution Mahiko had previously chosen was to compress and contract the Curtain, maximizing its density and strength — which allowed the Domain to briefly manifest for just 0.2 seconds.
But... there had been another idea in the girl's mind, long dormant.
If her Curtain was too weak to bear the load — then why couldn't she simply abandon the Curtain entirely?
"Heh heh..."
The singing stopped. Mahiko let out a quiet laugh, raised her head, and met Kenjaku's gaze — then broke into a full, open smile.
Her song had ceased, but everyone present was still singing. Every voice rising together, the pitch climbing higher and higher.
"Attack her!" The moment Kenjaku grasped what was about to happen, he lost his composure entirely and began screaming. "She's deploying a Domain!"
Ishiryuu heard it. He raised his head, charged Cursed Energy into the cannon at the crown of his skull, and fired. The beam shot directly at Mahiko.
The shadow around Mahiko writhed — the rapidly-charged [Remains] launched simultaneously, slamming into the beam head-on. [Remains] was weaker than the beam, but it was enough to knock the blast off course. The beam swept sideways into one corner of the sky garden — the platform shuddered, the ground cracked, subsided.
Then split apart. Then collapsed entirely.
Everyone and everything on the platform began to fall.
Even Durufu and Rime were not spared — the ground simply vanished beneath their feet.
Of course they wouldn't die from a fall. They had plenty of ways to arrest their own descent — but in that very moment, Kenjaku was screaming "Defend!" Because he knew. He knew that right now, there was no longer any way to stop what Mahiko was doing.
Damn it. He should have seen this coming far sooner.
The halo above Mahiko's head was fundamentally a replacement for hand-seals. And hand-seals could mean she was deploying Miyakogakuro — or they could mean she was deploying her own Domain.
There was no time left to stop the Domain from forming. He could only raise his own Domain in opposition — or pray that the girl's insane gambit would fail.
By the time he truly understood what Mahiko intended to do, there was no longer any way to stop her.
Because while he had still been hesitating, the girl had already completed every last preparation.
Like threading the message and the "planned sequence" into the minds of every living creature present through song and Cursed Speech.
Like using the halo as a hand-seal to prime the Domain — which normally could only manifest for an instant — into a state of readiness, coiled like a spring.
Now.
Everything was ready.
Everyone was falling alongside the girl.
The blue-haired girl's body was shattered, falling like a discarded ragdoll.
But she was smiling. The halo blazed with light — she was wrapped in the song of thousands of voices falling alongside her — and her expression had gone completely, utterly relaxed.
Come on then.
Let's try it.
This was something she had only ever conceived of in theory. Something she had never truly believed was achievable. Something that even Satoru Gojo had never mastered — so she, by all rights, should have had even less chance of pulling it off.
But things had already come to this. So why not try?
So — now.
"Come..."
She breathed the word softly — and wings grew from her back. And so, the people falling around her all grew wings.
The halo above her head stood in for the hand-seal. And so — all of them, following the guiding information woven into the song, reached out and took each other's hands. In midair they formed rings within rings, using each other as the other half, sealing together.
Mahiko's innate Domain emerged — and with it her Technique, spreading outward like ripples on water, growing larger and larger.
The Domain should have lasted only an instant before dissolving — for it had no Curtain to anchor it. But as the Domain spread outward and touched the people around her, their bodies were reshaped — remade into forms capable of receiving Mahiko's Cursed Energy and Technique. They sealed together. They received the Domain together with her. Like routers, they relayed and propagated the Domain back and forth between one another.
It became a net.
It became an ocean.
It became layers upon layers of interwoven surface.
In this moment, the people — like the faithful of a god surrounding an angel — became a part of Mahiko's Domain.
"Is this... a Domain?" Rime stared, stunned, still rooted to the spot, still waiting to deliver the finishing blow when the Domain collapsed after its 0.2 seconds.
"Fall back! Get behind me!" Kenjaku was simultaneously forming his own hand-seals, screaming with raw force, his voice cracking. "Can't you see what's happening?! This is an open Domain!!"
Thousands of people as anchors, constructing a Domain.
Thousands of people as the faithful — an open Domain, gradually taking form.
The girl had always treated this idea as nothing more than a joke, a idle fantasy. She had never believed a Domain could come into being this way.
But at this moment — facing the greatest crisis she had ever known — she had no other choice.
Ha. Then let's try it. Let's find out if she could make a miracle.
And so — now.
Clap.
The girl brought her hands together once — and the pilgrimage song that had encircled all of heaven and earth went instantly, completely silent.
Golden clouds lit up the night sky. White feathers, countless as snowfall, rained down across the streets below.
A bell rang.
Dew, clear and bright.
The Curtain shattered.
And so — now — her Domain succeeded.
The girl opened her mouth — and so thousands of faithful opened their mouths alongside her.
"Domain Expansion——"
Far below, Yuji and Nanami and the others who had not yet arrived — they looked up. Every one of them felt their pupils constrict in an instant.
Because they saw it. They saw thousands of faithful, rallying around an angel ascending into the sky.
"——[All Creation Sings as One Under Heaven]."
____
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