The boy grows into a storm.
By thirteen, Ryomen Sukuna no longer learns jujutsu—he rewrites it. He studies ancient scrolls, tears them apart, and reconstructs techniques with his own twisted logic. Where others bind curses, he bends them. Where others purify, he corrupts. His cursed energy is not a river—it's a wildfire. It doesn't flow. It devours.
He sits cross-legged in a cave of obsidian, surrounded by cursed spirits that whisper in languages older than death. Their forms flicker—some eyeless, some mouthless, some shaped like grief itself. They do not attack. They orbit him like moons around a black sun.
His fingers trace sigils into the stone, each one pulsing with raw, unstable energy. He doesn't flinch when they explode. He laughs. The cave walls are scarred with failed experiments—burn marks, shattered glyphs, melted bones. But each failure is a lesson. Each scar a step forward.
The sorcerer clans begin to take notice.
The Kamo clan sends an emissary. A proud man with a bloodline technique and a sword carved from his ancestor's bones. He arrives with scrolls of diplomacy, a retinue of masked guards, and a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
He kneels before Sukuna, offering alliance.
Sukuna rips the sword from his hand and drives it through the man's chest.
"I don't kneel. I don't ally. I consume."
The guards flee. The cave seals behind them. The cursed spirits feast.
Word spreads like wildfire. Sukuna is no longer a child. He is a force of nature wrapped in flesh. The jujutsu elders convene in secret, debating whether to name him a calamity or a god. They settle on neither. They call him The Aberration.
But Sukuna doesn't care what they call him.
He's building something.
In the ruins of a forgotten temple—its pillars cracked, its statues weeping blood—he crafts his first Domain. It's crude, unstable—a swirling vortex of bone, flame, and ink—but it holds. Inside, time bends. Gravity twists. Curses sing. The air tastes like iron and memory.
He names it Malevolent Sanctuary.
It's not yet the perfected version that legends will speak of. But it's enough to draw attention.
A trio of elite sorcerers descend upon him. One wields shadows that slice like razors. One manipulates sound, turning silence into blades. One controls blood, shaping it into spears and shields. Together, they are meant to be unstoppable.
They last seven minutes.
Sukuna dissects their techniques mid-battle, mimics them, and turns them against their owners. He doesn't just kill them—he learns from them. Absorbs them. Evolves. His movements are erratic, elegant, monstrous. He laughs as he bleeds. He sings as he kills.
After the battle, he sits atop their corpses and carves a new symbol into his chest—a mark of supremacy. Not granted. Taken.
"If jujutsu is a language," he says, "then I am its scream."
The clans retreat. The elders panic. Temples reinforce their barriers. Shrines burn their scrolls. Some sorcerers abandon their posts and flee to the mountains. Others begin to whisper of prophecy—of a child born under a bleeding moon who would unmake the world.
And somewhere in the capital, a young Gojo ancestor watches the sky darken and wonders if the Six Eyes will be enough.
Sukuna doesn't look back.
He walks into the heart of Kyoto, alone, and declares war on the jujutsu order.
He doesn't shout. He doesn't threaten. He simply stands in the center of the city, surrounded by cursed energy so dense it cracks the cobblestones. Birds fall from the sky. Lanterns flicker. The air turns cold.
A thousand talismans activate. A hundred sorcerers mobilize. The city prepares for siege.
Sukuna smiles.
"Let the age of curses begin."