Chapter 1: The Altar of Flesh
The air in the chamber was thick enough to taste. It coated Megumi’s tongue—burnt myrrh, wet stone, and a coppery tang that felt like fear itself. Her wrists burned where the coarse rope bit into her skin, the rough grain of the black basalt altar cold and unyielding beneath her. The runes carved into it were glowing now, a faint, pulsing gold that matched the sick rhythm of the chants swirling around her.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling, on the shadows dancing from the dozens of black candles. If she looked at the robed figures encircling her, at the gaunt, scarred face of Naobito as he raised his ritual knife, she thought she might scream until her throat ripped.
“From the darkness, we call thee!” Naobito’s voice was a dry rasp, amplified by the stone. “Great One, accept this vessel of purity!”
Vessel.The word made her stomach clench. She was a person. A 22-year-old art history student who’d taken a wrong turn leaving the library. Now she was here, wearing a too-large silk kimono that pooled around her, her long dark hair fanned out like a sacrifice on a stone slab.No. The thought was a tiny, hard ember in her chest.I am not just a vessel.
The chanting reached a fever pitch. The golden lines beneath her flared, and the air in the center of the room shimmered, like heat off asphalt.Then it tore.
It wasn’t smoke that poured out, but a substance darker, a formless night given weight. It coalesced, twisted, and rose.And rose.Megumi’s breath hitched. All her defiant plans fled.He was monstrous.He was magnificent.
Fifteen feet of corded, chiseled muscle, skin the color of old ivory, he filled the cavernous chamber. Four powerful arms flexed as he settled into existence. Two pairs of crimson eyes, slitted like a predator’s, swept over the scene. And below them, on the plain of a stomach etched with definition, a second mouth grinned, a row of sharp teeth glistening in the candlelight.
The cult fell silent.Naobito was beaming, a fanatic’s joy twisting his scarred face. He took a step forward, the knife held aloft.“O Sovereign of Misery! We offer—”
One of Sukuna’s lower arms moved. It was a casual, backhanded swipe, like shooing a fly.The impact wasn’t a sound. It was a crunch, wet and final.Naobito didn’t even cry out. He simply left the ground, a limp puppet of broken bones, and smashed into the far wall with a dull thud before sliding down, motionless.A few cultists gasped.One turned to run.
Sukuna’s stomach-mouth opened. A flicker of something—shadow, or maybe just pure hunger—shot across the room.The fleeing man evaporated in a mist of red. Then, with appalling speed, the other cultists met the same fate.It was over in seconds.Not devoured. Not savored.Just…dismissed.Erased.
The silence that followed was heavier than the chanting. The only sound was a slow, steady drip from the wall where Naobito had landed.Sukuna turned.All four eyes pinned Megumi to the altar.
He took a step, the ground trembling under his weight.Another. He loomed over her, his shadow swallowing the candlelight, the faint glow from the altar runes casting his face in sharp, terrifying relief.He smelled of ozone and something ancient, like sun-baked bone.
One of his massive hands reached down.She flinched, squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the crush.
It didn’t come.
A single, surprisingly careful fingertip, hot as a brand, smoothed a strand of hair from her damp cheek. The touch was at odds with everything—the violence, the size of him, the second mouth on his belly that was still licking its metaphorical lips.
Megumi forced her eyes open.She was trembling so hard her teeth chattered.
“I think I’ll savor this one differently,” his voice rumbled, a landslide of sound that vibrated deep in her ribs.His other hands came down, not on her, but on the altar itself. With a sound of grinding stone, his fingers dug into the black basalt as if it were clay. He tore the section of altar she lay on clean off its base, holding the slab—and her—cradled in his lower palms, bringing her up level with his chest.
The world tilted. She was eye-to-eye with one set of his crimson gazes, the other pair looking down at her from above.The heat radiating from him was immense.
“You’re not… going to eat me?” The question left her in a whisper, stupid and small.
The mouth on his stomach laughed, a wet, guttural sound. The main mouth, the one on his face, curved into a smile that showed too many teeth. “Eat?” He brought the hand that had touched her face up again.His thumb, broad as her palm, stroked along her jaw. It was possessive.“Such a mundane use for something so… interesting.Your fear is exquisite. Not the screaming, wailing kind.The quiet, simmering kind. The kind that has roots.”
He leaned closer, his breath a warm cascade over her.“They called you pure. A vessel.” He chuckled.“Fools.I don’t want a vessel. I want the thing inside it.”
One of his free hands gestured vaguely at the carnage around them. “This was their ritual.Boring.Predictable.” The red eyes bored into her. “Let’s start ours.”
He began to turn, carrying her away from the chamber, deeper into the gloom of what seemed to be a winding cave system at the chamber’s rear. The slab was steady in his grasp, a grotesque parody of a royal litter.
Megumi’s mind, frozen with terror, finally sparked.He wasn’t killing her.Not yet. That meant there was a sliver, a crack.A chance.She swallowed, forcing her voice to work. “What… what is your ritual?”
He glanced down at her, the interest in his eyes deepening. “First, we talk.”