Darkness.
Mahiko stood there in a daze.
The girl looked left and right. It truly was pitch black all around her — but as her eyes slowly adjusted, shapes began to emerge from the void.
It looked like a vast, lightless lake. A faint luminescence drifted across its surface, and at the center of the lake in the distance, something had been piled up into a kind of island.
Mahiko blinked.
Because the things forming that island were bones.
In that instant, drawing on her memories of the source material, she had a rough idea of where she was.
She looked up.
The bone island soared high above her, its shape like a grotesque shrine stacked all the way up to the pitch-black ceiling. At the very top of the shrine sat a throne, and on that throne sat a man.
He rested one hand beneath his chin, eyes gleaming in the shadows, gazing down at her with what looked very much like amusement.
"Cursed spirit. You're interesting." The man smiled. "I never imagined that after a thousand years, something as entertaining as you could still appear... At least I won't be bored."
This was Sukuna.
— This place was Sukuna's innate domain.
Mahiko's head immediately started pounding.
She had carelessly brushed against Yuji Itadori's soul, and now she'd been dragged into Sukuna's innate domain!
In the source material, Mahito had once tried to use Idle Transfiguration on Yuji — touching his soul. But because Yuji's soul and Sukuna's soul were fused together, touching Yuji's soul was the same as touching Sukuna's. Mahito's own soul had been yanked straight into Sukuna's innate domain as a result. Exactly like what was happening to her right now.
Mahiko couldn't help clicking her tongue.
She remembered it perfectly clearly — she had never pulled Yuji into her own domain just now! Could it be that Yuji had charged in on his own?
That was such a dirty trick!
In the source material, after Mahito had touched Yuji's soul, Sukuna had immediately slashed him. And right now, at this most critical moment, she absolutely could not afford to take a slash from Sukuna...
"No need to be nervous. I'm not going to make a move on you. The fact that you can see me — that's because I reached out to you myself."
Sukuna sat high above, his face shrouded in shadow, only those glowing eyes fixed on Mahiko, shining with excitement. "Cursed spirit, you're in serious trouble right now. Remember — don't you dare die."
The tone was almost... caring. Mahiko blinked.
"Keep fighting and stay alive. I'll be watching you the whole time." The unassailable monster was smiling. "I hope you'll keep being interesting for a good long while..."
The world rippled, and Mahiko's consciousness slammed back into her body. She jolted awake on the ground.
The moment she moved, pain shot through every inch of her.
Gritting her teeth, the girl forced herself upright — and only then did the memories of what had just happened come flooding back. The domain clash had already reached its conclusion.
Mahiko struggled to raise her head and take in her surroundings.
She was sprawled across a broken length of steel rebar. This had originally been the sky garden on the hundredth floor of the hotel — but now the entire garden had been smashed apart, leaving only the skeletal frame of what had once been a terrace.
On one side of the building's facade, a massive white longsword was buried deep into the wall. Holy flames still clung to the blade, not yet extinguished, glowing faintly.
In the distance, a small section of platform still remained intact.
She could see Ishiryuu lying on it, half his body charred black, completely motionless.
On the other side, at the very edge, another figure was slumped — one whose body was relatively unscathed.
Rime.
Rime had also regained consciousness, and was trying to push herself up off the ground.
As for Suo and Dulufu — Mahiko couldn't see them at the moment. Most likely they'd already been driven into the building's structure by that enormous sword.
The domain clash just now — Mahiko had won.
She had poured every last drop of Cursed Energy from herself and all of her followers into it. The great sword had finally shattered Kenjaku's defenses.
But even though she'd won, it was the narrowest of victories.
Kenjaku had never properly deployed his domain. Instead, he had turned the unformed domain inward, using it as a turtle shell of pure defense. In the instant the domain shattered, it had paradoxically expanded outward with a burst of released energy — and Mahiko's own Cursed Energy had been completely exhausted in the exchange, causing her domain to collapse as well.
So both domains had crumbled at the same moment, leaving only the great sword still carrying its residual momentum as it came crashing down and caught Kenjaku's entire group in the strike.
Now, Mahiko could see Rime pressing her hands against the ground, trying to get to her feet.
Mahiko's eyes flickered.
She struggled to rise as well.
She couldn't be slower than Rime. She had to get up first.
Who knew what condition Kenjaku was in — conservatively speaking, even if the sword had injured him, it almost certainly hadn't dealt any truly decisive damage.
But regardless of anything else, looking at just the situation right in front of her: Rime was getting up. She could not afford to be slower. She had to seize the initiative by rising first.
"...Ngh!"
It really hurt.
Her Cursed Energy was completely drained, even her soul had been overloaded — of course she could feel pain blanketing every part of her body.
Though it wasn't as if she had zero Cursed Energy left.
Mahiko felt that if she really squeezed, she might still be able to wring out a tiny bit more... probably enough for one or two uses of Cursed Speech or Idle Transfiguration. But it was nowhere near enough to sustain any high-intensity fighting.
In terms of her actual objective, Mahiko had already won.
Because everyone she had wanted to save had been saved — whether it was the civilians here or Nobara Kugisaki, all of them were safe.
Kenjaku's plan had failed completely.
At the moment the domain was released, Mahiko had pre-programmed the outcome: when the domain ended, everyone who had been absorbed and assimilated within it would automatically have a parachute deploy, carrying them in a slow, spread-out descent toward the streets below — dispersed to prevent the parachutes from tangling.
So now, glancing sideways, she could see the entirety of the Ginza pedestrian street — every inch of it — dotted with people drifting downward like a dense snowfall.
Which meant only a handful of people remained up here on the hundredth-floor sky platform. Everyone else was below.
The people from Jujutsu High would be arriving at any moment.
Kenjaku's plan had gone up in smoke. All that was left was to hurriedly clean up this mess on the hundredth floor, then slink away.
She still had two uses of her Jujutsu Technique held in reserve — keeping them for an escape. That was the rational choice.
But right now, Mahiko was in a state of technique burnout.
The domain she had just deployed had contained far more than just Idle Transfiguration. Her Cursed Speech included, many of her tools were equally locked out in a state of technique burnout.
The situation was dangerous. The girl couldn't even use Idle Transfiguration to heal herself.
And not far away, Rime had already started using Reverse Cursed Technique to heal her own wounds.
But the reality was even grimmer than Mahiko had imagined.
"Ha... hahahahaha...!"
A man's loud laughter, rising from somewhere in the wreckage.
She saw Kenjaku drag himself out of the rubble, battered and disheveled, pull himself upright, and tilt his head back in peals of laughter even as he braced his own body.
"Magnificent, magnificent... To think I'd be fortunate enough to witness a domain like that... Hahahaha, is this my reward?" Kenjaku laughed. The armor covering him had been completely shattered; wounds and blood covered his body. He looked at Mahiko, laughing all the while, and gradually straightened himself to his full height.
Damn it.
Kenjaku was recovering faster than either her or Rime!
Kenjaku would presumably also need to wait for his technique burnout to clear — but Mahiko wasn't sure whether she'd recover faster than him.
Bad.
Very bad.
Mahiko rapidly ran through the list of techniques she still had available to her.
Several different variants of Piercing Blood were still usable.
And one other thing — when she had deployed the parachutes on everyone else, she had also equipped one on herself.
But the moment she opened it, she'd become a sitting duck. Setting aside the others, Rime could definitely catch her.
Her original plan had been to wound Rime badly enough to take her out of the chase, then flip over the edge and escape.
But now Kenjaku — though injured — had still managed to drag himself out of the wreckage with his combat ability intact.
What should she do?
"Truly eye-opening, Mahiko..." Kenjaku fished out some kind of mask and put it over his face. "May I ask you something? How did you manage a Domain Expansion like that? My thousand years of accumulated Jujutsu mastery felt completely useless against you... Hahahahaha... How fascinating..."
"Tch. You think I'd tell you?" Mahiko let out a scoffing laugh. "You must be joking."
How many more seconds until technique burnout cleared? Ten? Twenty?
Damn, that was too long...
"Fair point... Mahiko, I'll admit it — you won, and we lost. A pity there isn't more time, because otherwise I'd absolutely want to talk with you all night." Kenjaku reined in his laughter, his voice taking on a tinge of genuine regret. He raised his hand and pointed at Mahiko.
"Rime. Finish her. Give her the final blow."
And Rime had already raised her hand before Kenjaku even finished giving the order.
Aimed straight at Mahiko.
Frigid Cursed Energy condensed.
If Mahiko took a hit in her current state, it was over.
Mahiko calculated the time remaining on her technique burnout, her nerves wound to an absolute breaking point. The moment Rime made her move, she would seize that last split second to strike simultaneously — firing off a Piercing Blood [Arrow].
The situation had reached its most desperate point.
The girl clenched her jaw tight.
"What a pity — though you won, you are still alone in the end. Sorcerers won't help you. Curse Users won't help you. The meaning of doing good lies in maintaining social stability, which in turn allows you to reliably receive society's help in return. But you — you can only ever be alone."
Kenjaku sighed as he spoke. "And so I do pity you, Mahiko. Because your nobility means absolutely nothing."
Rime raised her hand.
Mahiko raised hers at the same instant.
A mighty torrent of frost surged forward like a river breaking its banks.
And at Mahiko's fingertips, a resin-form Piercing Blood condensed and sharpened.
She had to wound Rime faster than the glacier could reach her — that was the only way out.
At the same moment, she threw herself into a roll, letting her body begin to fall toward the ground far below. Using the reverse recoil of the Piercing Blood, she could accelerate her descent and dodge the frozen river's strike.
The girl was completely improvising, one step at a time.
Just as Kenjaku had said — she was ultimately alone. Unless someone from Jujutsu High could instantly cross the distance of city blocks and a hundred floors to throw a wrench in things, Mahiko could see absolutely no path that would let her survive this.
Forget it — dodge the glacier first, then figure the rest out.
Mahiko thought, teeth gritted.
She wanted to fall.
But she didn't fall.
What?
Mahiko's heart went cold.
She felt something catch her from behind!
Something at her back had snagged her — her plan to fall had been stopped cold.
Terrible!
There was no way to dodge Rime's attack now!
The sudden turn of events threw Mahiko into complete panic.
She wrenched her head around to see what had caught her.
But what made the girl freeze in an instant was what she actually saw: cascading crimson-to-scarlet ombre hair, billowing in the night sky.
And a... magic wand?
"Zhuolian..."
There, in the night sky — a red magical girl, one arm wrapped around the battered and broken Mahiko, the other hand leveling her staff directly at the oncoming glacier, and at Rime and the others beyond it, whose expressions had shifted to pure shock.
Her eyes were ice cold.
Her voice was colder still.
"— Kaleidoscope · Blazing Meteor!"
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