["Maximum: Uzumaki."]
[The detonation swallowed the world.]
[When that cold name left his lips, a black flood compressed from countless Cursed Spirits roared downward with enough force to crack the earth open.]
[In the hundredth of a second before annihilation, you had no other option.]
[You released Nagihiru Kinkou, wrenched your Cursed Technique back to Phantom Night Parade, and force-replicated Limitless.]
[Without the Six Eyes to support it, the cost was catastrophic.]
[Two seconds of resistance stretched into an eternity.]
[Spatial concepts, atomic-level Cursed Energy manipulation, torrents of environmental data... all of it drove into your brain like white-hot needles.]
[Your neurons screamed. Cursed Energy drained from you like floodwater through a broken dam. The sensation was soul-deep, a tearing, hollowing agony that went beyond the physical.]
[At the eye of that apocalyptic storm, Geto watched you struggle against the black tide, his expression unreadable.]
["I only figured this technique out recently, so the execution's rough... but I never thought the first person I'd use it on would be you."]
[Crack.]
[Mortal limits shattered. The computational load exceeded what your mind could sustain, and Limitless collapsed in its final instant.]
[But Geto deflected the core of the Uzumaki at the last possible moment. He couldn't bring himself to kill you. The shockwave alone, though, tore through your right abdomen as it grazed past.]
[You crashed into distant rubble. A horrific, gaping wound punched clean through your right side, and blood painted the earth red in seconds.]
[Strength to stand was a memory. You could only lie in the spreading pool, clinging to the thinnest thread of consciousness, running the Reverse Cursed Technique on raw instinct alone, refusing to let the last ember of your life gutter out.]
[With Nagihiru Kinkou gone, Geto released every Cursed Spirit he had left.]
[Under the night sky, the massacre began. Cursed Spirits howling. Timber splintering. Villagers torn apart, their screams and desperate pleas weaving together into a hymn fit for hell.]
[Firelight reached for the heavens. Geto walked through the carpet of severed limbs, and over you where you lay bleeding in the dirt.]
[He reached the reeking shack. Cut the chains. Took the two trembling twin girls gently by the hand.]
[Through the retreating glow of flames and the fading screams, in the final heartbeat before consciousness left you, you thought you heard something carried on the wind.. quiet.. sorrowful... a whisper addressed not to you, but to fate itself.]
["Hayase... if only you had been the one with Special Grade power... how much better things could have been."]
[When the first light of dawn struggled through the mountain fog, the remote village hidden among the peaks had been reduced to scorched, silent hell.]
[Because he'd followed your instructions, the Assistant Manager had survived the night. He arrived at dawn as scheduled, driving up the mountain road.]
[What met him at the village entrance wasn't a Special Grade Sorcerer reporting mission complete. It was a carpet of blood, shredded remains, and ruins still exhaling black smoke.]
[He tore through the wreckage in a frenzy, screaming your name, and finally found you at the edge of a massive crater blasted by monstrous Cursed Energy near the village's far end. Soaked head to toe in blood.]
[The wound through your right abdomen was ghastly. You were unconscious, your body running the Reverse Cursed Technique on the faintest reflex alone, clinging to the last thread of life through nothing but stubbornness too deep for the mind to override.]
[His desperate cries for help and the wail of sirens that followed carried you back to Jujutsu High.]
[Days later, a cold and merciless report landed on the rotting desk of the jujutsu higher-ups.]
[Jujutsu High third-year Suguru Geto, dispatched on assignment. Two days post-deployment, 112 residents of the old village confirmed dead.]
[Initially suspected to be the work of a Cursed Spirit. Subsequent analysis of Residual Cursed Energy confirmed the deaths as the result of Geto's Cursed Spirit Manipulation.]
[Suguru Geto, currently at large. Per Jujutsu Regulation Article 9, as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, he is hereby designated for execution.]
[In the cold basement surgery of Jujutsu High, the sting of antiseptic hung so thick it could almost solidify.]
[Shoko Ieiri stood before the operating table in sterile scrubs, dark circles carved deep beneath eyes that hadn't closed in far too long. Under the shadowless lamp, you lay motionless, bristling with tubes and monitoring lines, locked in a coma so deep it might never end.]
[In every memory Shoko had of you, you were the dependable one. Always first to heal someone else, always throwing yourself after every person within reach, dragging them back from the edge whether they wanted saving or not.]
[Now the person who spent every waking moment saving others lay here like a porcelain doll smashed beyond recognition, lifeless, waiting for her to put the pieces back together.]
["...Idiot."]
[She bit her trembling lip hard enough to leave marks, and let out a sigh that carried the weight of something far heavier than exhaustion.]
["Always going on about saving everyone. And in the end... the ones who needed saving most were you self-righteous fools all along."]