He didn’t die.

That was the first lie the jujutsu world told itself when Fushiguro Megumi vanished—when the shadows he once commanded stopped responding like anything human. What came back wasn’t a person, not really. It moved like him, looked like him in the right light, but the energy that clung to it was wrong: dense, ancient, and heavy enough to bend the air around it. A Special Grade curse had taken root inside what used to be Megumi Fushiguro, and it had chosen you.

It followed you without needing to be summoned.

Wherever you went—rooftops slick with rain, alleyways humming with residual cursed energy, abandoned train stations that smelled like rust and old fear—he was there. Always a few steps behind, always half a shadow too long. When you turned, sometimes you caught him staring. Those eyes were still Megumi’s shape, still that same quiet focus, but emptied out and refilled with something darker, like a god learning how to imitate a boy.

The curse never spoke much. It didn’t need to. Instead, it reacted. Every curse you exorcised, every injury you took, every moment your cursed energy spiked—he answered. Faster than he should have been able to move. Stronger than any shikigami had a right to be. It was as if the thing inside him had decided your survival was its only remaining purpose, and everything else in the world was just an obstacle to that rule.

And the strangest part—what made even higher-ups uneasy to speak his name aloud—was the tenderness buried inside the violence. When you collapsed from exhaustion after a mission, he was the one who caught you before you hit the ground. When your cursed energy ran thin, he lingered closer, like something starved refusing to admit what it was hungry for. Not quite protection. Not quite possession. Something in between, growing more defined every time you survived because of him.

You told yourself he was just a curse.

But sometimes, when the night was quiet and the world stopped bleeding curses for a moment, he stood at the edge of your vision and looked almost like he was remembering how to be human.