Chapter 8: The Depths of Hunger
Megumi woke to the scent of old stone and something else, something alive and electric that tasted like ozone on the back of her tongue. She was lying on a bed of what felt like pelts, deep and impossibly soft, in a pool of muted orange light from a single, massive brazier.The ceiling soared away into a darkness so complete it felt liquid.
She was still naked. The memory of the tunnel, the rhythmic thunder of his heart against her ear, returned in a warm rush. Her thigh throbbed with a dull, fresh ache where he had gripped her, but the blood was gone, meticulously cleaned. She sat up, the furs sliding down her waist.Sukuna was there, of course. Not looming, but sitting against the far wall of the colossal chamber, a dark silhouette against the intricate, horrifying carvings. He was watching her.All four eyes.“Sleep well?” he rumbled.
She rubbed her eyes, the gesture unthinking, casual.A remnant of a normal life she’d never had. “I didn’t dream.”
“Good. Dreams are useless here.”
She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. The air was cool but not cold, heavy with the silence of deep earth. Her gaze traveled over the walls—not just carved, but inscribed, every inch covered in tight, frantic script.Names.Thousands of them.A ledger of the damned.
“Who are they?”
“The ones who thought they could contain me.Bargain with me. Worship me.” He shifted, the light catching the sharp planes of his face. “They’re recipes.”
The casual horror of it should have frozen her. Instead, she felt a distant curiosity, a numbness that was not quite peace.She had been a recipe too.Now she was… something else. Something sitting in the chef’s pantry.
“My name’s not up there,” she said, her voice small in the vast space.“No. Your name is here.” He tapped his own chest, just over the secondary mouth, which was presently still, lips sealed. “Different ledger.”
She was quiet for a long time, listening to the crackle of the brazier. The terror was a thin shell now, cracked and peeling. Underneath, a terrifying emptiness yawned, waiting to be filled with something, anything. The warmth from his skin, the solid finality of his presence, the way he had erased Naoya from the world without a second thought… it flowed into that emptiness.
“You ate him,” she stated.
“I did.”
“You said you’d savor me in time.”
His eyes glinted. “I did.”
She unfolded her legs, looking down at her own body. Pale skin, slender, marked only by the faint shadows of old bruises from Naoya’s casual cruelties.She traced a finger over a faint yellow mark on her rib. “He used to say I was only good for parts.That my value was in pieces. A lock of hair for a binding.A vial of blood for a pact. A virgin’s heart for a summoning.”
Sukuna said nothing.He waited, a monument of still hunger.
Megumi looked up, her green eyes finding his red ones in the gloom. “You said every part of me has value. That you’d savor me.”
“Yes.”
“Would you…” She took a breath, the air shuddering into her lungs.“Would you savor a piece now?Not to kill me. Just… to taste.”
The chamber seemed to grow even quieter, the hum of the ancient stone deepening into a thrum.Sukuna unfolded himself, rising to his full, terrifying height. He crossed the space not with a predatory lunge, but with a slow, deliberate walk, each step echoing finality.He knelt before her, even then towering over her seated form.
“Little priestess,” he said, his voice a low vibration she felt in her teeth. “You are asking me to hurt you.”
“I’m asking you to want me,” she corrected, her voice barely a whisper. “In a way he never could.He just took. He didn’t… appreciate the flavor.”
A slow, wicked smile spread across Sukuna’s face, and the mouth on his stomach parted in a silent echo of glee. “You continue to be delightfully unexpected.”
One of his lower hands reached out, the one without a mouth. His fingers, absurdly large, traced the line of her jaw, then drifted down her neck, over her collarbone. They stopped just above her small breast.His touch was like heated iron, a brand of pure attention. “Where?”
She guided his hand lower, past the remembered violations, down the soft plane of her abdomen, to the smooth skin of her left thigh.“Here.Where you held me. Make it yours.”
His other hands came up, cradling her, supporting her back, holding her leg steady with an immovable gentleness. The primary mouth on his face opened, his teeth glinting in the firelight. They were not the jagged fangs of a beast, but sharp, precise, and deadly human.“This will hurt,” he warned, his breath washing over her skin.
“I know.”
He didn’t hesitate.He didn’t play with his food. He bent his head and bit.
The pain was instant and brilliant, a white-hot lance of pure sensation that ripped a short, sharp gasp from her lips. Her fingers flew to his pink hair, tangling in it, not to push him away but to anchor herself. She felt the pressure, the incredible strength of his jaw, then the clean, searing release as he took a piece.
He leaned back, lifting his head.His mouth worked, chewing thoughtfully, his eyes locked on hers. A trickle of blood escaped the corner of his lips. On her thigh, a neat, oval wound wept crimson, the pain settling into a deep, throbbing pulse.He swallowed. “Hm.”
“Hm?” she breathed, her body trembling not from fear, but from shock.“Sweet. Salty with fear.Rich with life.” He licked the blood from his lips.“Not a sacrifice. A gift. The first taste is always the most potent.”
He lowered his head again, but this time his tongue, broad and warm, lapped at the wound, cleaning the welling blood. The sensation was so foreign, so intimate, it stole her breath more than the bite had. It was tender in a way that was utterly monstrous.When he finished, the wound was clean, the edges defined. It would scar.A mark.His mark.
Megumi’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of bone. But her mind was crystal clear, focused on the red haze in his eyes, on the profound satiation she saw there. He had taken a part of her into himself.They were connected now, by more than circumstance.
“My turn,” she said.He blinked, a slow, four-eyed phenomenon. “You hunger?”
“I want to know what you taste like.”
A chuckle, deep and rolling, filled the chamber. “Bold little thing.” He extended one of his massive forearms, the corded muscle shifting under smooth skin. “I am not tender.My flesh is not for mortal digestion.It will burn you. It may change you.”
She took his wrist, her hand barely circling it. The skin was hotter than human, pulsing with a potent, ancient energy. “You changed me the moment you didn’t eat my heart.”
With a nod, he raised a single claw. With surgical precision, he drew a line down the meat of his own forearm.The skin parted, but no blood welled. Instead, a faint, golden light glowed from within, and the scent that arose was spicy, alien, overwhelming—like incense and lightning and old, old blood.
A piece of his flesh, smooth and gleaming like a wet stone, peeled away. He pinched it between two claws and offered it to her.Megumi took it.It was warm, almost hot, and heavier than it looked. She brought it to her lips, hesitated for only a second—a last vestige of the girl groomed for a holy death—and then took a bite.Flame erupted in her mouth. Not the flame of heat, but of pure, violent power. It raced over her tongue, down her throat, a comet of raw sensation.Her eyes watered. It tasted like chaos and eternity, like the moment the asteroid struck the dinosaurs, like the scream of the first creature to crawl onto land. It was agony and ecstasy, a storm in her skull.
She chewed, tears streaming down her cheeks, and swallowed.The effect was immediate. The throbbing in her thigh faded to a distant murmur.The cool air felt suddenly warm. Her senses sharpened; she could see the individual threads in the furs, hear the faint crackle of each coal in the brazier. A warmth, different from his, bloomed in her stomach—a low, humming strength.
She looked up at him, panting slightly, her lips tingling.
Sukuna watched her, his expression unreadable. He brought his own wounded arm to his mouth and licked the glowing seam closed, the flesh knitting instantly.“Well?” he asked.
Megumi wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.She felt dizzy, exhilarated, profoundly altered. A laugh bubbled up in her chest, raw and a little unhinged. “You taste like… victory.”
He threw his head back and laughed, a sound that shook dust from the ceiling. When he looked back at her, his gaze was utterly, devastatingly focused.Possessive.Delighted.
“And you, my little priestess,” he said, leaning close so his words vibrated in the marrow of her bones, “taste like home.”
He gathered her up then, furs and all, and settled back against the wall, cradling her against the furnace of his chest.She didn’t resist. The alien warmth of his flesh inside her pulsed in time with his hearts. Her thigh ached, a sweet, claimed pain. Outside this chamber, in the world above, there would be panic, desecration, a cult crumbling.
But here, in the ledger of the damned, a new entry was being written in twin sets of teeth and golden light. And for the first time in her eighteen years, Megumi Zen'in felt full.