Chapter Text
Gojo awoke to the sun shining through the blindfold and the strong scent of wildflowers surrounding him. Long grass swayed in a light breeze, brushing at the skin of his neck, a tickle that he ignored for the moment. The ground beneath him was warm, flower petals soft to the touch were crushed beneath his hands, and the sound of birdsong came from nearby.
It was lovely, really. Peaceful.
It was wrong.
Cursed energy seeped from the ground in a constant thrum, low and quiet. He turned his head where he lay, gaze settling on a treeline; slowly, he reached up to tug the blindfold down, scanning the trees. Mere seconds later, he sat up, brow furrowed. The forest was massive, leaves rustling in the wind, surrounding him - he turned his head, eyes narrowed at the unending ocean of trees that lined the little clearing he sat in. Birds called to one another. Every so often, the soft snap of a stick breaking reached him. The near-silent footsteps of animals. For all Gojo could tell, those sounds came from the trees themselves or from the air itself, because he had yet to see any living thing lurking in the trees.
No birds. No animals. He pulled one of the wildflowers from the ground, holding it up before scanning the clearing again. Not even insects flitting between the flowers or burrowing into the soil.
Just… empty.
Except for him.
For a few moments, he sat there, listening to birdsong coming from nothing. Then he stood with a sigh, fixed the blindfold back into place, and stretched his arms over his head until the muscles in his back pulled taut. Alone, surrounded by unnatural flowers and impossible birdsong, Gojo sighed. With no one around, no hint of what had happened-
With cursed energy coursing around on itself, filling the trees and the ground and making it impossible to trace-
“Guess I’ll go…” he spun on his heels as he spoke, “that way.”
And Gojo strode into the forest in a randomly chosen direction.
--
Being in the forest did nothing but send unease crawling slowly down his spine. The trees were huge and spread out in every direction, an endless maze that made no sense. Thick roots rose from the ground at random and heavy leaves hung far overhead, sunlight drifting through it in a way it shouldn’t have. It should have been blocked out with how thick the foliage was overhead, but it poured down around Gojo in waves, dappling the forest floor. The birdsong never stopped, calls from behind him being answered by ones before him, alerting one another to his presence as he walked.
It’d be fine if the birds actually existed.
As it was, their calls alone had him on high alert, like he was simply waiting for something to show itself. Nothing ever came.
So he walked. And walked. And walked.
The ground became uneven under his feet, a descent into an unseen valley, heavy boughs hanging over sloping hills. Gojo reached the valley floor quicker than he thought he would, pausing at the break between the trees to look down at a stream flowing just before him. The water was clear, shallow, stretching over to the opposite bank. Rocks formed a makeshift bridge over the distance, placed in a way too deliberate to be natural. Across the stream, the towering trees climbed back up another hillside. High above him, through the swaying branches, the sun was creeping ever closer to the horizon.
Gojo gave the rocks a brief look before walking alongside the water. There was no way he was walking on creepy rocks that were clearly designed to shepherd him along. He followed the water upstream instead, turning his head to peer into the trees along the opposite bank. Anything he could see was exactly like what he’d already passed through: endless forest, steadily rising hills, and a stark absence of life.
There was no doubt he could handle anything that may lurk over there but he was hoping there would be life somewhere along the water. Any kind of life, really. Animals, fish, people, whatever. Preferably a person or two so he could maybe find a hint about what exactly had happened. He had the vague recollection that he’d been fighting something.
His memories of things just before he woke up weren’t clear. There had been something threatening his students, he knew that much, but after that, it faded. Like static filling the gaps until he found himself here in the middle of nowhere. He still wore the dark uniform from the school, albeit a bit dirty, but his phone was missing - he’d discovered that fun fact in the woods after he’d thought about phone signals. It was disappointing to find it gone, another little needle of unease wormed into his spine.
The stream curved around the side of a hill and Gojo followed its path, hands in pockets, brow furrowed. The largest, most glaring issue wasn’t even his phone. It was that he’d woken up in the middle of the day, sun high above him, but he knew for a fact it’d been night when he was fighting. Bad enough he’d somehow disappeared on the kids, but he left them to deal with-
With a curse? No, curse user. Both?
The static in the gaps made it murky, a muddied swath painted over the evening. He groaned, throwing a weak glare at the forest on the other side of the bank before facing forward again.
Soon enough, he found the end of the stream. It wasn’t that far of a walk and so Gojo still stood in the midst of a huge unending forest. He stared up at the side of an immense cliff, water pouring from a cut in the rock wall. He observed it, traced the path of the water as it fell into the stream, listened to it hitting and even lowered Infinity just long enough to feel the spray of the water up close. It was a peaceful scene. Quaint.
Quietly, he said, “That’s wrong,” to himself. There wasn’t any reason to think it was, except for the forest surrounding him. He watched it a moment longer before leaning forward into the waterfall. With Infinity in place again, the water cascaded around him without soaking him through. Made it easy to peer upward and squint at the rough rock wall.
Almost immediately, he pulled back and turned, heading off in the other direction.
That waterfall sprang out of nothing. The cut in the rock was superficial, the water pouring from an impossibility. Together with the birdsong and that quiet undertone of cursed energy, it made Gojo really fucking uncomfortable. Like pinpricks in his skin.
He walked along the stream in silence, mind buzzing. There was something terrible happening here and he had the sinking feeling it was only going to get worse.
--
The sun had almost touched the horizon before Gojo made it out of the dense trees. The fading light threw shadows along the forest floor that obscured roots and rocks, small pitfalls in the dirt for him to stumble over. Fallen trees were becoming oddly common, leaning against those still standing or, in one case, lying across the stream like a natural bridge. He edged around that one, choosing to duck back into the forest.
Only to catch the sharp familiar edge of a manmade building peeking between the trees. Gojo paused, one hand on a leaning tree trunk. “Finally,” he said, the word morphing into a sigh. He left the stream behind, heading past a pair of fallen trees and toward civilization. Hours of walking, lost in a forest, had left his legs and feet aching and the promise of a nice place to rest had a smile springing to life. He could spend the evening somewhere nice and quiet, get a good meal, and start investigating this mess in the morning.
The trees split open to allow a shallow path, trod into the dirt and leaves by years worth of footfall. Gojo followed it to the building he’d spied through the trees: a small, two-story home that was completely dark inside. Every window was darkened, curtains still pulled open as if to allow sunlight in. A bike leaned against the wall near the door, painted a dull red, and a car the exact same shade sat nearby. Grass spread out from behind the house, arching over the hillside, wildflowers mixing in and trailing all the way to the edge of the treeline.
It was eerie to run into an empty home right after that particular forest, but Gojo disregarded that. There was no reason the people who lived here couldn’t be further in town, or asleep, or something. He gave the house a lingering glance before walking off.
The dirt path had become a street that wrapped around the two-story house and led past fields of grass. In the setting sun, he could just make out the spots of colors that noted more wildflowers. Those fields stretched into rolling hills that climbed into mountains at the horizon on one side, and ran straight into more thick forests on the other. Neither sight was comforting. Houses dotted the fields, visible from the road as Gojo walked. Each one of them was as dark as the first, creepy little shadows amongst the grass.
Only one of the outer homes had lights on, a warm orange glow, faintly flickering. He changed directions immediately, cutting across the field to the house. The little details stood out sharply as he approached, leading him to know before he even got to the door that this house was empty too. The light source was a candle sitting in an open window that had no curtains. There was a space by the side of the house meant for a dog, complete with a ramshackle doghouse and overturned bowls and a chain in the dirt for the animal to be tied to, but no dog. Gojo barely gave the area a glance, heading to the open window and looking into the room beyond. It was a normal living area. Television on one wall, a couch before it. A shelf on the opposite wall held books and various little trinkets.
There was zero presence anywhere in the place. No cursed energy, be it human or curse. No noise either.
At this point, he wasn’t even surprised.
Still, he leaned a bit further in, calling out a greeting that was returned with silence. Gojo made a face, pulling back from the disquieting place to look back at the candle. “Who lit you then?”
The candle, of course, did not answer.
Gojo bent down to blow it out before turning and continuing on. The houses started converging as he moved forward, becoming closer and closer together until the fields of grass and wildflowers were hidden beyond a proper town. Narrow streets, each ending in a dimly lit streetlight. By this point, the absence of life wasn’t surprising. It did send tension coiling through his spine, layer after layer of discomfort building as he moved through the town.
There were cars parked in lots, bikes resting against buildings. Little shops with fluorescent lighting and stocked shelves. Graffiti covered the walls in an alleyway, broad strokes of paint that stood out even in the dark. A cafe had its door propped open, a menu outside listing meals that didn’t match the photos alongside them. Flowers had been placed in the center of each table, both inside and out, and the counter was cleaned to sparkling. Gojo ducked his head inside the place, straining his ears in vain to hear any kind of noise.
The only thing he heard was the quiet hum of electronics.
He left the place as it was, wandering from the cafe to a convenience store to a store that looked like it sold antiques. Nothing changed. No one showed up, no curses, no residuals. Several streets down from the cafe, Gojo let himself into a restaurant. There wasn’t any prepped food but he managed to find a display of cakes and helped himself to a couple slices. He stole a pad of paper and a pen from beside a cash register, took a seat at a booth near the door, and prepared to start figuring out what the hell was going on.
After the cake. He ate a slice of cheesecake, staring out the window at the night sky and barren streets, trying to pin down the most likely scenario. In the end, he didn’t even get one word written down before he’d fallen asleep, leaning against the window with a half-eaten chocolate slice before him.
--
The next day was much the same, but with a few additional annoyances.
For one, he hadn’t even felt tired enough to sleep, had closed his eyes to focus and think. Then next he knew, the sun was rising over the empty street and Gojo had a pain in his neck from sleeping hunched over. He sat there, rubbing at his neck and frowning at the (now stale) slice of cake he hadn’t finished before his gaze landed on the notepad sitting next to it.
Sighing, he stood, gathering the notepad and the pen, as well as the half-eaten cake. The stale cake went into the first garbage can he found, the plate in the quietest kitchen he had ever seen, and then Gojo froze on the way out of the restaurant.
The display he’d found the cake on last night had been changed. Where it had been three tiers of different cakes, it was now two tiers and held a variety of breakfast items. An entire stack of pancakes sat in the center of the top tier, steam rising from it. Different pastries surrounded it; the bottom held rice balls and omelets, each on their own little plate.
Gojo stared down at it, frowning. Slowly, he bent down, squinting at an omelette like it’d explain the mystery to him. “This,” he said, “is the weirdest morning I’ve had in a while.” He took one of the pastries before leaving, eating it in two bites. Outside, the weather was crisp, almost chilly.
And quiet.
Not even the birdsong that had haunted him before reached here.
The little town looked emptier in the daylight. During nighttime, it was as if people were simply asleep and the empty streets felt less obtrusive. Under the rays of a rising sun, though, everything stood out starkly. He walked past shops he’d seen the night before, noted several displays and signs that had changed, and promptly changed directions to the outer part of the town center.
More homes, more businesses, he even spied a school off in the distance. One of the buildings at the edge of town sported a sign for a doctor’s clinic, though the hours on the door looked as if they’d been scraped off. An apartment building stood nearby, a small table with two chairs set up in a garden beside it.
It was here that Gojo sat, opened the notepad, and actually started taking notes.
This place, whatever it was, was made from cursed energy. He had stopped paying attention to the constant current of energy in the ground but it was still there, just enough of it to be on his radar. It never changed. No more or less than what he’d sensed when he had first woken up. So he was confident in a couple of things. First, this wasn’t some odd technique. Second, it wasn’t a domain expansion either. Not only had he not seen anyone who could’ve cast a domain or a technique, the lack of spikes in cursed energy alone ruled those out. If someone meant this to be an attack, Gojo would know.
And he would have remembered it, wouldn’t have been left with an unexplained gap in his memory.
His notes at the moment included a list of what he’d noticed so far, along with ‘WHAT HAPPENED’ scrawled alongside a comment about his memory trouble. Absentmindedly, he added a doodle of himself in the flower field beside the list.
At the bottom of the list, he had written ‘cursed object likely’ and the idea was troubling. Gojo hadn’t heard of any cursed object that would leave someone in a barren world like this one, and he wasn’t sure if anyone else had either. He couldn’t even ask anyone.
He didn’t get much farther than that, distracted by writing down what little he did remember from before he ended up here. A few more notes on how impossibly empty this town was, a quick drawing of the changing cake display from this morning. When he stood, the sun was high overhead; Gojo stretched, scanning the horizon while stretching his arms over his head.
There were more trees in the distance, just beyond a pair of houses in a field. Mountains arched further back, so far away that they appeared like dark blue paint strokes. Lurking around the homes, nestled into the trees, was a point that he stared at blankly, without comprehending. He tugged the blindfold down as he lowered his arms again, squinting against the sunlight, peering across the distance at the treeline. It was the same as the forest he’d walked through: huge trees with branches hanging over a path with stairs rising up higher into the mountains. A lantern sat by the stairs, next to a pair of overturned glass bottles.
Something about it drew his gaze and held it.
With nothing else to do, Gojo shoved the notepad and pen in one pocket and headed across the field. The more steps he took, the more obvious it became. Whatever that was across this field, it had massive energy. The first thing here that he’d sensed beyond surface level and it was strong. He sped up without noticing, sprinting across the field - heart pounding with adrenaline, apprehension about the energy, head spinning over what he could find.
Was it the person who cast it? Someone who actually stayed here? Was it even a person? What if it was a curse- what if it was something that could snap him in two if it wanted?
The last thought occurred as he turned around the edge of one of the houses, at the exact instant he recognized the cursed energy with a jolt. The smile on his face melted away instantly, shoulders tensing. He slowed to a stop, resting a hand on the house. “You gotta be joking,” he muttered. “This can’t be real. I’m dreaming.”
This close to the woods, his answer was haunting birdsong.
Gojo grimaced, pulled the blindfold back into place in an attempt to waste time, and strongly considered just not doing this. He could turn around, go back to the little town. There was food there, plenty of places to sleep if he ignored that he was breaking into someone’s home. There was no reason for him to go up those steps.
“This isn’t gonna go well,” he said, starting up the staircase. The branches nearly touched the staircase in places, leading to Gojo stepping around them, leaning oddly to try and get a view of what he knew lurked up ahead.
Soon enough, he was staring at a shrine… sorta. It was large, extending back into the trees farther than he could see. The guardian statues at the front of it were both broken, chunks lying on the ground around the statues. A lantern like the one at the base of the steps sat just within the shrine itself, casting orange light onto a statue that was so defaced and crumbling it didn’t resemble any god at all. The presence of the statue itself made little sense, positioned on a large ornate pedestal with bells hanging off each corner. String lights hung from each interior corner, connecting to the statue’s head. It was like a child had thrown it together.
Standing at the entrance was the exact thing Gojo had expected. Ryomen Sukuna, wearing a kimono and smirking at him like Gojo wasn’t worth his time. He was taller than Gojo expected. Broader. Much more adult than the last time Gojo had seen him. He said, “Looks like you finally woke up.”
Gojo blinked. “...What?”
Sukuna leaned against the entrance of the shrine, arms crossed. “I tried to wake you,” he said, “but you didn’t move.”
“Wait. Wait, wait.” Gojo thought back to the field he’d awoken in, to the flowers and the annoying forest and the weird absent birds. “You- you were there? In the field with-? What?”
For a few seconds, Sukuna was silent. Then he said, “You’re not very smart, are you?”
Gojo made a face at that, waving a hand between them as he spoke. “Yeah, ignoring that. Why would you wake up in an unknown place and just… leave the only other person asleep?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. This was Sukuna, the strongest sorcerer, King of Curses. He was lucky Sukuna hadn’t tried to kill him in his sleep.
Then Sukuna said, “It’s a little hard to fight you if you’re asleep.” A grin cut across his face, sharp and deadly.
“Really? You want to do this now?”
The answer he received came in the form of cursed energy, strong, unleashed with pure murderous intent. It washed right over Gojo, splitting over Infinity and crashing into the trees. Gojo sighed, the sound of trees crashing to the ground drowning it out. Apparently they were doing this. In the middle of the emptiest place he had ever seen, Ryomen Sukuna was demanding a fight.
If Gojo was dreaming, this was a shitty dream.