Chapter Text
No matter where they went, fear always managed to manifest itself in similar ways.
Sukuna found it boring. The nobles. The peasants. The slaves. All of them were the same. They feared him, were disgusted by his physique and so terrified that they only knew how to scream or quiver when they stood in front of him. Weak like maggots and pathetic in their desires, none of them were anything exciting.
There was a kind of arrogance to them too, which was strange for Sukuna to say but he knew what the nobles and regular jujutsu sorcerers thought of him. They found his appearance abnormal, an abomination that shouldn’t have existed when they would starve themselves or put poisoned paint on their skin because others said so. They claimed him to be a monster that had no intelligence merely because of his insolence and looked down upon him for his disregard of societal class. Sukuna didn’t bow to their emperor, cared very little about the traditions that they revered, and he refused to play by anybody’s rules except his own.
It angered plenty of people, especially the old elites who were afraid of Sukuna’s powers. Many have made the bold declaration that they would take his head one day but so far, none have succeeded. It was laughable, really. Sukuna wasn’t disappointed that no one could kill him yet, he was more annoyed by how weak the assassins were.
Did those morons really think he would lose to the likes of those trash? They weren’t challengers or killers, just troublesome pests that crawled and struggled hopelessly.
Soon, the bold and brave died out and the cowards that were left knew only of fear. They had spines made with cotton and knees that seemed to be glued to the floor. Sukuna paved his way with blood and tears of their loved ones but none would even dare lift their heads to glare at him. Hatred spilled off them, blankets of ink and shadows that crept towards Sukuna but even their curse, just like their will, were laughable. He barely had to lift a finger to kill the monsters out for his blood.
These fools couldn’t even curse him properly. What a pathetic bunch. They were angry and sad and a whole other storm of negative emotions stirred within them but what do they do with it? They do not fight. They do not curse. They waited and took the sorrows quietly, praying to the heavens for aid and begging hell to stay away for another day.
They were hoping for a hero to carry their burden, waiting to be saved when they wouldn’t even try to save themselves. Ridiculous and helpless.
And then their hearts twisted their ugly souls into a monster that no jujutsu could exorcise. Parents surrendering their children. Brothers turning upon each other. Friends stabbing each other in the back. Men raged war to loot and rape and steal. Women ran, crying and fighting and dying while children scattered into the woods, becoming the beasts’ dinner or sold into slavery by soldiers.
It wasn’t just pathetic any more, it was insidiously idiotic.
People loved violence but they had to wave a flag of reasons to excuse their own behaviors. Nobody forced them to kill after stealing, but they did. Raping children before setting a village on fire did nothing to help anybody’s survival. But people would claim it was necessary, justifying every vile action or blaming the heavens and monsters like Sukuna for all of their misfortunes.
The weak couldn’t even face their own nasty desires without shifting the blame to someone else.
Sukuna never had that problem. He killed because he could. He took because he wanted to. There were no righteous reasons behind his actions and he never bothered needing an excuse. He was strong so he did as he pleased, destroying villages or ordering for battles to cease on a whim.
What did that earn him? Well, people started calling him a god.
They praised him, danced for him and now the idiots brought him a new bride, wrongfully thinking that normal pleasures any man dreamed of could ever satisfy Sukuna.
This one was different in terms of appearance though. Far better in looks than the malnourished bunch that came before her. People do not always give Sukuna princesses or noble ladies. Those women of high ranks were put to better use, married off to other lords and only presented to Sukuna when there was no other choice or when their fathers and brothers had great favors to ask.
He would admit they tasted better than the garbage from a random village or working class meat that had been laboring under the sun for too long. Women and children tasted better to begin with. Their meat wasn't as stale and held more juice in their fat than the shriveled mass of the old. A grown man’s meat was tougher and because of the lack of nutrition, often tastes dry.
Honestly, he didn’t care what kind of titles the human sacrifices delivered in front of him held. He didn’t have any patience for their tears or listen to whatever sad story that resulted in them ending up in front of him either. It was the same tales all around anyways. Extra daughters who wouldn’t be missed terribly even if dead. Loathed orphans that the villagers were more than happy to see gone. Men that offended somebody else so tricked and forced to repent.
Their pain and suffering only made their flesh taste better. It would be terribly boring if his food came in already dead in the spirit.
Which was why Sukuna found this new cattle rather odd.
She had wavy hair as dark as midnight and skin paler than snow. It wasn’t a natural kind of fair skin or the cosmetically painted fake, more like a condition that was achieved because she hadn’t seen the sun in ages. Her limbs were thin, her waist frail, and her lips held a tint of red. There was a slight tremor in her steps but otherwise, her breathing was normal…he would even say that it was too slow, not the shallow and quicken gasps before fainting that he normally received from ladies of high class.
She must have come from a good family. It was in her postures and the way she carried herself.
Sukuna could sense it from her too. Apprehension mixed with impatience and disgust, the slight flinch and incline of her body to make sure no villager touched her, as if she was repulsed by the idea of being in such proximity with commoners.
That was rather strange.
Most of the people that came before him would be too busy fearing death to be bothered with such superficial and trivial things. Even the nobles, who valued their reputations more than anything, wouldn't be as indifferent towards death.
More importantly, she was judging him. Her gaze held a different kind of calculation than wishing for mercy. She wasn’t studying him like the jujutsu sorcerers before a battle either, waiting for an opening or trying to come up with some form of manipulation. This woman was looking at Sukuna as if she was merely curious.
The villagers called her “Kaguya-hime”, a princess of the silver moon’s night.
And she had deemed him to be tolerable as a husband.
Or rather, her desire to live overpowered her distaste towards a marriage. Sukuna could tell this woman had no room for romance or children in her heart. Her red eyes sparkled with life when she spoke of her desire to survive. At least she was honest in that aspect but that alone wouldn’t have caused Sukuna to spare her.
What intrigued him was the indifference she exhibited when she ate human flesh. Love could be manipulated and adoration could be faked, politeness was a mask that people wore like a second layer of skin. But there was an emotion conditioned into everyone of these maggots that they couldn’t hide–disgust.
Even those numbed by war or ravished by hunger would hesitate before consuming one of their own but this woman ate without an ounce of woe.
Something wasn’t right with her.
So Sukuna let her live, hoping she would be at least entertaining to a certain degree but after a few days, she proved to be disappointing. Besides the bit of oddness, she was just like the rest of the humans. Weak and always complaining, frail to the point where even the brightness of the sun was something she avoided like the plague. There wasn’t much ink in her empty head either even if she read plenty.
He sank his teeth into her neck when he got bored. Her meat was soft like he expected but it didn’t taste normal. It melted off his tongue like heated fat but her blood was sweet, almost nectar-like thickness and taste. Sukuna drank from the wound splitting her head from her body, tearing it open wider and unbothered by how her blood splattered across his chest. The liquid drenched her kimono too while her red eyes widened as her breath exited her body.
There were some words that were forming on her tongue before he ripped out her throat with his teeth. Sukuna guessed that she wanted to curse him, which he was so used to that he couldn’t care less. His teeth chewed throw pale flesh, dragging a string of raw and red meat apart.
Her nails clawed at him a few times, desperation for survival giving her enough strength to leave thin marks across his shoulders. The more he drank from her the more he was reminded of wine. There was a hint of bitterness to her blood, traces of what tasted like overly ripe fruit that hadn’t gone bad yet but was on the verge of fermenting.
Sukuna tossed her lifeless body aside, leaving the leftover meat with the broken bones stained in blood on the floor, covered by ink-colored hair that fell over her face like a pile of rotting seaweed.
He was about to call for someone to clean it up when he felt a pain in his stomach. It was sharp and gripping, almost as if there was a hand within him, trying to pull him apart from the inside. Immediately, Sukuna sliced his stomach open, while blood gushed, he reached into his abdomen and searched for the cause of his pain but he found nothing.
The pain persisted, radiating out of his core and into his limbs.
His four arms swung around while his stomach healed from a reverse technique, one hand lifting the woman’s head off the ground. Her head–which had been connected to the rest of her body by a thin layer of skin–snapped off as Sukuna stared into her large eyes. Long lashes and crimson red eyes, blood painted her lips red like flames.
“What did you do?” he growled.
And the woman blinked. Beheaded with blood and fluids still dripping from her severed neck, she blinked and she smiled. “You really are sharper than you looked.”
He kicked the rest of her body into the wall as a response. Her body slammed into the wall but even headless and broken, it climbed back up from the ruins. Broken fingers felt across stone and feet stopping over fallen beams. The sound of bones grinding against bones came, pieces of her were twisting back into place. Her body changed too. Still thin and frail but taller, much taller and less curved.
Sukuna suddenly lost control of his arm that was holding the head. It wasn’t completely out of his control as he could resist the involuntary urge to let go but in the slight second where he tried to retain full control, the woman’s hair shortened and the head was no longer his possession.
The thing–not a curse and certainly not human–reattached his head. The woman’s kimono was too small on him, so short that it revealed his ankles. Sukuna was sure he broke those before he drank from this thing’s neck, but now they were all healed.
A reverse technique? No. He didn’t feel any cursed energy from it. Some kind of immortal monster? No, nothing was truly immortal.
“If you kill me, you will die with me.” The thing with a human skin was talking, his voice now a man’s but still insolent and insidiously arrogant. A nobleman’s speech pattern. Was this thing a monster that was created by men claiming to be gods then?
His blood boiled, rushing through his veins but at the same time, Sukuna knew it wasn’t his blood. The abnormality wiggled and squirmed within him, traveling through his body like worms with no form. His hands shook while the thought of choking himself flashed across his mind.
“It’s your blood that’s poisoned,” he said. Blood was a liquid and it was mixed inside him. He couldn’t separate this thing’s blood from his own. “Do you really think that’s enough to threaten me with?”
“No,” the thing admitted. “I know I can’t kill you but you don’t want to waste effort either so let’s make a binding vow.”
So she was listening and observing. Blood seeped out from Sukuna’s parted mouth and he spat out a piece of himself. His organs were dying, being destroyed from the inside and he was kept alive by constantly running a reverse technique.
Wind sliced through the monster’s arm and it screamed across from Sukuna, cursing angrily while it dodged. His arm was healing too, skin resealing itself together. He healed just like Sukuna would. It was a battle to see who could last longer, endless and pointless and so infuriating.
“What do you want?” His voice was muffled by more blood rising up his throat. The more his attacks cornered the monster, the faster his own body deteriorated.
“A binding vow where you promise to not hurt me or kill me. I’ll leave you alone too. A cease fire if you will.”
Fucking hell. Sukuna could see all that was evil embodied in this monster. He was a greedy coward, spineless and shameless and despicable in his demands. Really, he was the worst of man, frail with his pride and vile to his selfish core.
Sukuna agreed to the binding vow.
But he didn’t let the monster leave either. He might not be able to kill this thing himself and he hadn’t thought of a satisfying way to repay it for tricking him but he knew how to piss it off. This thing–Muzan was his name–was given to him as a wife and lied to him under that guise so Sukuna would grant him his wish.
He now had a wife, not some sacrifice to eat but a wife.
Muzan hated it because even being associated with Sukuna by name meant people of all sorts would hate him, would hunt him and chase him to the end of the world to kill him. It must be hell for a monster whose only wish was to live. Sukuna never helped him during those situations. He just watched as angry jujutsu sorcerers plotted Muzan’s death.
At some point, Muzan must have had enough because he started using Sukuna’s name to do as he pleased, smearing Sukuna’s reputation not in hopes that the King of Curses would care but just out of spite to disgust Sukuna. Rumors flew, whispers about how madly in love Sukuna was and how the king fell under the seduction of the night.
Sukuna doesn’t really remember what other fictional lies mortal men spread about him, all he remembered was that the most common curse he heard from his enemies from that point on was a wish that he would rot in hell with his wife.