[Four years later – Hanae's Point of View]
Morning came early to the Ryomen estate, but Hanae was always earlier.
She moved through the corridors of the eastern residence like a ghost—soft, unnoticed, obedient. Her robes whispered against the polished floor as the cold morning air slipped through the paper walls.
The world had changed, and yet, she hadn't.
Except for one thing.
Her son.
The boy born of cursed rituals and divine blood now walked, talked, and stared like a monarch trapped in a child's form.
He was only four.
And he terrified her.
Not because he cried or raged or hurt others. No, Sukuna never cried. He never begged. He never lashed out. It was the opposite. He watched everything. He listened too well. He moved with the calculated stillness of a man who already knew where everything should go—especially people.
This morning, as every morning, she found him awake before the sun, sitting outside in the covered courtyard, legs crossed on a cushion, facing the garden.
His posture was flawless. Back straight. Eyes open but unfocused, as though seeing something beyond the horizon.
A scroll lay beside him. Another lay in his lap, already halfway read. Across the stones, a training staff rested precisely where it had landed the night before.
She watched silently. He hadn't noticed her—or if he had, he didn't turn.
He learns so quickly…
She remembered when he first held a brush. His fingers had not fumbled. By the third day, he could copy sigils without instruction. By the second week, he had begun modifying them.
Once, she found a charm he had created himself. It was for repelling low-grade curses. Efficient. Elegant.
He should not have been able to design that.
And yet—he had.
He'd taught himself to read. Taught himself to channel cursed energy in pulses, spirals, and threads. He hadn't been shown meditation—but he sat for hours, motionless, eyes closed, breath calm.
The elders said he didn't need teachers.
Hanae disagreed.
He needed a childhood.
But she didn't say that out loud.
Not here.
[Flashback — Before His Birth]
The memories still haunted her.
The temple had kept her behind silken veils and thick incense, praised her as a divine vessel chosen by the stars. But she was no more than a flower in a cage.
She had accepted her fate.
Her life was to be offered up—body and soul—for the sake of balance.
Then the Ryomen came.
No—he came.
Ryomen Karyu.
The clan leader. The man with crimson eyes and a voice like distant thunder. The temple resisted. The monks pleaded.
But their chants meant nothing against the Ryomen name.
She was taken.
Married.
Not loved.
Karyu never struck her, never insulted her—but he rarely spoke to her either. His warmth came only in moments—soft hands during winter, silent gifts, a night he sat beside her and said nothing but didn't leave.
She lived for those moments.
She learned to survive on silence.
But nothing prepared her for giving birth to Sukuna.
The sky had trembled. The seers screamed. The curse energy warped the walls.
And when she saw him…
She couldn't call it love.
It was awe.
And fear.
And a strange, growing guilt—because part of her, deep down, didn't want to be his mother.
[Back in the Present]
Now, four years had passed.
She watched him in secret.
Sukuna stood before a row of clay jars, each holding a different cursed item—dull talismans, broken rings, a cursed nail. With a small gesture, he made the nail rise.
He inspected it with cold curiosity.
Then, with his index and middle finger pressed together, he released a whisper of cursed energy. The nail shattered mid-air, dust scattering in a circle—precise, clean, effortless.
Later, she saw him practicing with his own body.
He moved his limbs in patterns. Not martial arts—not yet—but fluid drills that stretched his cursed energy through muscles and joints. He was teaching himself to fight.
He hadn't spoken to her in days.
Not cruelly. Just… indifferently.
As if she were one of many objects in his world, filed under necessary but replaceable.
[The Inner Conflict]
It began during meditation.
Hanae had passed by the hallway near his room and paused.
The atmosphere had changed.
It felt…off. As if the air had grown heavier, harder to breathe. She heard something. A low hum—almost like a growl—but from within the walls.
Sukuna was inside, cross-legged, still as stone.
His cursed energy flowed like a tide. Not wild—but controlled.
She didn't know then what he was experiencing.
[Within Sukuna — The Inner Sanctum]
Sukuna sat at the edge of himself. Through meditation, he had descended into the root of his soul.
There, he found it.
A voice—always whispering—had finally become clear.
"Little king… I've waited long enough."
A form coalesced from the void. A twisted demon made of rotting masks and broken bone, wrapped in shadows that bled.
"You are incomplete," it hissed. "Let me fill what you lack. We were meant to be one. I have always been here."
Sukuna tilted his head. "I know."
"You know?" the thing snarled.
"You're not me," Sukuna said, voice flat. "You're just a bug."
The thing surged. "I AM YOUR LEGACY!"
"You are in my way," Sukuna replied.
And with that, he attacked—not with fists or spells, but with the sheer force of rejection. He grabbed the thing not with his hands but with his soul, and pushed.
It screamed. Shadows peeled away. It tried to burrow deeper. He held it.
"You don't get to be in me. Parasite."
The inner sanctum split. The throne he hadn't yet built cracked. The sky above him turned red. The air roared.
And outside—back in the real world—the consequences exploded.
[In the Real World]
The hallway lights blew out. Seals broke. Paper wards curled into ash.
A wave of cursed energy surged from Sukuna's room.
Hanae fell to the ground.
She heard a deep crack, like a mirror shattering in another dimension
Then silence.
She scrambled to her feet, running to the door.
It was scorched.
When she slid it open, wind and pressure blasted outward. It smelled of sulfur and burnt wood. The floor bore strange marks—like ancient runes, half-written in blood.
Inside, Sukuna stood at the center of a room ruined by energy.
He was untouched.
And behind him, for just a flickering moment, was a haze—a partial domain. Red mist, fragments of architecture forming and unforming—a half-finished temple with a skeletal throne.
The mist faded.
Only the boy remained.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time, he truly looked at her.
Not as a servant. Not as a caretaker.
As his mother.
He took a step forward.
"You are my mother," he said, voice calm, eyes sharp. "You should take care of me more sincerely."
Hanae's breath caught.
She didn't respond.
She couldn't.
There was no room in that moment for pride, or pain, or excuses.
There was only him.
And so—she bowed her head.
For the first time, not out of duty to the Ryomen clan.
But to her son.
To Sukuna.
"I'll make a exception for you.", said Sukuna.
Continued...