𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑺𝑬 𝑶𝑭 𝑺𝑶𝑹𝑹𝑶𝑾⇢ Gojo Satoru

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈 - 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐖𝐈𝐌

It's not real. It's not real. It's no–

KINZOKU MIKAZUKI BREATHED IN THE PAIN. She let it course through her veins and fill her blood like poison spreading through the tendrils of her perilous Cursed Energy. The air changed around her, the blanket of quiet and peace that previously filled the forest turning into darkening shadows. The darkness grew, spreading and reaching across the clearing, spiralling shadows building into the trees and covering everything in eternal darkness. Soon, all the light was gone. There was no sun, no life, no sign of anything beyond the blackness that spread across the empty wasteland. Mikazuki fought the urge to recoil at the sight, swallowing her fear and slowly moving across the vast expanse of nothingness that greeted her.

The darkness was dead, still and quiet, yet it was also livelier than she expected. It moved, coiled and swam soundlessly around her, like a creature stalking its prey. It was a dangerous sort of quietness, the kind that made her hair stand on end, the kind that haunted her every breath. Goldslayer felt weightless in her hand, almost as if the blade offered no protection against the ageless darkness creeping around her. Still, Mikazuki gripped the hilt as tightly as she could, her nails carving half-moon shapes into the aged wood. The silence lingered, the only audible sound were her breaths, even yet shaky, along with the thundering ghostly beat of her anxious heart.

The shadows moved in front of her, blanketing the ground and expanding like an endless carpet of smoke. Before, she'd been able to feel The Beldam. It was close, roaming around the forest, hiding from the tendrils of her Everlasting. Now, there was only silence – this terrible silence that stretched into quiet violence, that haunted her every breath and made her heart stutter. The pain in her leg was still there, but it was nothing but a phantom sensation compared to the fear that inhabited her soul.

"Come on!" She called into the darkness, the echo of her voice rumbling in the shadows. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, you filthy little creature."

Mikazuki swung her nodachi like a bat, the gesture lacking any real threat while she continued to advance through the blackness. The sorceress tilted her head, hoping she'd catch a sound – any sound, really – but nothing but perpetual silence answered. She was afraid of the darkness, but not as much as she was of the quiet. It was eerie; haunting.

Despite being a living breathing thing, the darkness didn't answer. It lingered. It... hovered. The sorceress waited for a little longer, hands wrought with tension while she fought the primal urge to turn back. These feelings – this fear, this haunting – weren't real. She'd known since she stepped into that damned forest, but it was clear as day now. None of it was real. It was The Beldam, toying around with her mind, taking her fears and feeding off of them like a fucking parasite. It didn't change the fear, though. It just made it thicker.

It wasn't only darkness though, it was also the smell. It reeked horribly, a mixture of rotting meat, copper and gold. She knew that smell by heart, now. Had committed it to memory a long time ago. There wasn't a single night where she wasn't haunted by it, where she didn't wake up covered in sweat with the sheets clinging to her skin, the smell of the memory permeating the air. It was that night – it was always that same night.

The abandoned lighting factory. The thirty-seven sorcerers. The massacre. The blood. The curse.

Oh, gods. She could almost see it, now. She could make up the building in the background, the large concrete frame that towered over the trees, an eery cutout of a terrible day, pasted on a creepy forest. It was impossible, it was wrong; and maybe if it weren't so beautifully haunting she might have recoiled from the sight. Instead, she was lured in, the siren song playing silently as she pushed forward, ignoring her bad leg and any sense of danger which had driven her forward until then.

The darkness was endless, yet it stopped right then. The shadows parted, rolling on the ground until they turned into small, rounded clouds and shrivelled off. Then, like a looming form emerging from the shadows, the building appeared. The factory was the same as it had been then – ten years ago; abandoned and overgrown, with vines and plants growing through the cracks in the mixture. It had always been a beautiful place – most broken old things always were, even marred with the terrible history behind it.

Mikazuki inhaled deeply through her nose, holding her breath while she gazed at the building. There was no wariness in her stare, no hatred or resentment. This place had been cruel to her, but not as much as she had been to it. What she'd done that night... it was inhuman. The sorceress wiped her tears, slowly approaching the dilapidated building. The smell became pungent, the concrete steps appearing before her along with human mess sprawled over.

The bodies began at the foot of the stairs, like a crumpled mix of disembodied corpses, blood and gore coating every single surface and tainting the air with that nasty scent of decay. The Kinzoku didn't let it take root, holding her head high and chin up as she sidestepped the mass grave. She felt their bones crunch under her boots, the skin melting with the rain with each step.

Mikazuki pushed the metallic doors open, hinges creaking under the weight of her hands until she finally pushed into the building. There was very little left of the ceiling, vines dripping down from the decaying hole while Mikazuki stood under the sunlight, watching is stream through the cracks and land softly on her head.

There were bodies in here too. Other victims, from her other crimes. Mikazuki looked down, tilting her head as she surveyed the newly appeared corpses. Some of them; she recognized. Others, she didn't even remember. She'd killed so many people it was hard to remember all of them. The faces blurred together, after a while. Some she never even learned in the first place.

Was this what The Beldam was trying to say? That she'd become a monster, too?

Well, then. Mikazuki cracked her neck, twirling the hilt of her nodachi with glee. I guess it's time for two monsters to face each other, then.