Chapter 4: The Ghosts of Shibuya
The silence of the Prison Realm was no longer a physical threat; it had become a cathedral.
Satoru Gojo stood amidst the bleached, calcified ruins of the skeletal wasteland, a singular point of absolute, unyielding order within a dimension of chaotic stagnation. The violent, explosive symphony of his self-mutilation had ended. The air no longer smelled of ozone and his own vaporized blood. The macabre, fleshy cubes that formed the infinite walls of his cage pulsed with a slow, almost submissive rhythm, their stagnant cursed energy parting around him like water around the prow of a dreadnought.
He was pristine.
The dark fabric of his Jujutsu High uniform, previously shredded and soaked in the gore of a million localized detonations, was immaculate. The passive, skin-tight barrier of Limitless: Absolute Zero hummed exactly one millimeter above his epidermis, filtering out the filth, the ambient malice, and the chill of the realm on a sub-atomic level. He was encased in an armor of frozen reality.
But as the physical pain of his evolution faded, the psychological dam broke.
Without the agonizing distraction of rebuilding his own brain, the sheer, crushing weight of his meta-knowledge flooded his consciousness. The earthly reader and the Jujutsu God were no longer two souls sharing a space; they had permanently alloyed into a singular entity. And that entity was intimately, horrifyingly aware of what was happening outside the box.
Time did not exist here. Which meant that outside, in the sprawling, neon-lit metropolis of Tokyo, Shibuya was currently drowning in blood.
Gojo sank slowly to the ground, crossing his long legs, his brilliantly glowing blue eyes staring sightlessly into the oppressive dark. He didn't see the giant, grinning skulls of the Prison Realm. He saw the B5F platform of the Shibuya subway station.
He saw the transfigured humans, twisted into grotesque, screaming shapes by Mahito's idle transfiguration, being crushed under the panicked stampede of innocent civilians. He saw the exact moment the prison realm had snapped shut around him, the metal eye weeping tears of blood.
"I leave the rest to you."
The voice echoed in the cavernous expanse of his mind, so clear, so painfully familiar that Gojo physically flinched.
"Nanami," he whispered to the empty dark.
His Six Eyes, capable of processing the flow of cursed energy across the world, could not pierce the dimensional walls of his prison. But his meta-knowledge painted the picture with a brutal, uncompromising, high-definition clarity.
He saw Kento Nanami. The man who had walked away from the horrors of jujutsu society to become a salaryman, only to return because he couldn't stomach the thought of letting children bear the burden alone. He saw Nanami, half of his body scorched down to the muscle by Jogo's flames, his stoic face a mask of unimaginable agony, blindly swinging his blunt cleaver through a horde of transfigured humans.
He saw the exhaustion in Nanami's soul. The desperate, protective fury. And then, he saw Mahito's pale, stitched hand resting gently on Nanami's chest.
Gojo's breathing hitched. The invincible armor of Absolute Zero could stop the World-Cutting Slash, but it could not filter out the devastating grief of a failure he had already committed.
He saw Nanami look at Yuji Itadori—bright, hopeful, shattered Yuji—and offer a final, gentle smile. He saw Nanami's upper torso violently detonate into a shower of blood, bone, and viscera, painting Yuji's face with the remains of his mentor.
"I'm sorry," Gojo rasped, his voice trembling, a profound, sickening tightness gripping his throat. "Kento. I'm so sorry."
The ghosts didn't stop there. The floodgates were open, and the manga panels the earthly reader had once flipped through with detached shock were now vivid, visceral, lived realities.
He saw Nobara Kugisaki. The brash, fiercely independent girl from the countryside who had demanded her place in Tokyo. He saw the sickening snap of Mahito's technique connecting with her face. He heard the wet, concussive pop as her left eye burst from its socket, her beautiful, defiant face caved in by the expansion of her own soul. He saw her fall, her body going limp, her final words a bittersweet reflection on a life cut violently short.
And Yuji.
Oh god, Yuji.
Gojo brought his hands up, pressing the heels of his palms against his closed eyes, as if he could physically crush the visions out of his brain. But the Six Eyes saw everything, even the memories.
He felt the exact moment Ryomen Sukuna seized control of Yuji's body. He felt the overwhelming, suffocating, malevolent cursed energy blanket the Shibuya ward. He saw the fifteen fingers of power manifesting in a boy who just wanted to give people proper deaths.
He watched Malevolent Shrine expand.
He didn't just see the ink on a page; he saw the reality. Two hundred meters of absolute, indiscriminate slaughter. He visualized the invisible, relentless storm of Cleave and Dismantle descending upon the city. He saw terrified civilians, hiding in office buildings, crying in the streets, looking up at the sky as their bodies were instantly, methodically julienned into microscopic ribbons of meat and bone. Buildings collapsed, the asphalt ran red, and the air filled with a fine, crimson mist of atomized humanity.
And then, Sukuna relinquished control.
Gojo saw Yuji wake up in the center of a crater made of minced human flesh. He felt the boy's soul—a soul so pure and bright it had once contained the King of Curses out of sheer willpower—fracture into a million jagged, bleeding pieces. He heard Yuji's agonizing, guttural screams as the boy clawed at the bloody dirt, begging to die, begging for execution, broken beyond repair by the sins committed with his own hands.
"I let it happen," Gojo breathed, his hands dropping to his lap, his fists clenching so hard the joints popped like gunshots.
The original Satoru Gojo had masked his grief with arrogance. He had carried the weight of Riko Amanai's death, of Suguru Geto's descent into madness, by convincing himself that as long as he was the strongest, he could eventually fix the world. He had adopted the persona of the untouchable, playful teacher because if he ever allowed himself to truly feel the crushing gravity of his failures, it would destroy him.
But this Satoru Gojo had the luxury of a merged perspective. The earthly reader knew the truth.
His strength was a deterrent, not a cure. His cocky, playful demeanor in the face of Kenjaku and the disaster curses had led directly to his sealing. He had prioritized the mental puzzle of the Shibuya station—trying to save everyone without casualties—and in doing so, he had doomed them all.
"I was a god playing a game," Gojo whispered, the brilliant blue of his eyes darkening into a violent, stormy indigo. "I thought my mere presence on the board was enough."
A low, vibrating hum of cursed energy began to emanate from his core, bypassing the stasis barrier. It wasn't an attack; it was the raw, unfiltered manifestation of Satoru Gojo's rage. The skeletal wasteland trembled. Dust rose from the marrow-drained bones, floating upward in defiance of gravity.
Then, the final, most agonizing phantom materialized in his mind's eye.
Megumi.
The boy with the spiky black hair and the perpetual scowl. The boy who walked with the shadows.
Gojo remembered the day he met him. A little first-grader standing in the sunlight, glaring up at the towering, white-haired teenager who had just killed his father. He remembered buying Megumi from the Zenin clan, paying an exorbitant sum of money just to spite the conservative elders and to secure the boy's freedom.
He remembered the years of messy, unconventional parenting. Buying sweets Megumi hated, teasing him relentlessly, watching the boy's annoyance mask a deep, desperate need for a stable anchor. He remembered the fierce, burning pride that had swelled in his chest when Megumi first manifested Chimera Shadow Garden, proving that the potential to rival even the Six Eyes was real.
Megumi wasn't just a student. He was a son. The only family Satoru Gojo had left in the world.
And he knew exactly what Sukuna was going to do to him.
The meta-knowledge laid out the tragedy with surgical precision. The "Enchain" vow. Sukuna tearing his own finger from Yuji's hand. The sickening, violent force-feeding of that finger into Megumi's mouth.
He visualized the black tattoos spreading across Megumi's pale skin. He saw the second pair of red eyes blinking open beneath Megumi's own. He felt the chilling, triumphant smirk of the King of Curses as he finally claimed the vessel he had desired from the very beginning.
He saw the "Bath." Sukuna submerging Megumi's body in a concentrated vat of pure, liquefied evil—a distilled essence of cursed spirits designed to crush Megumi's soul into the darkest depths of despair.
He saw Tsumiki—Megumi's beloved sister, the entire reason the boy fought as a jujutsu sorcerer—revealed as the reincarnated sorcerer Yorozu. And he saw Sukuna use Megumi's own innate technique, the Ten Shadows, to butcher her.
He saw Megumi's soul, curled into a fetal position in the absolute, lightless abyss of his own innate domain, weeping in pure, unadulterated agony as the burden of Mahoraga's adaptation wheel was violently grafted onto him.
"Sensei... help me."
The phantom plea echoed in Gojo's mind.
Gojo stood up.
The ambient cursed energy surrounding him didn't just hum; it screamed. The fleshy, pulsating cubes of the Prison Realm's walls violently convulsed, shrinking back from the epicenter of his aura. The veins pumping the blackish-red fluid ruptured, spraying foul blood that instantly vaporized the moment it came within a yard of Gojo's body.
"He is going to hijack my son," Gojo said aloud, his voice devoid of any human warmth. It was the absolute, zero-degree voice of a natural disaster. "He is going to wear his face, use his technique, murder his sister, and drown his soul."
In the original timeline, Gojo had emerged from the box and immediately sought a fight. He had been so consumed by the thrill of facing Sukuna, so blinded by the desire to find an equal, that he had accepted the possibility of death. He had fought with a smile on his face, trading domain expansions, enjoying the intellectual chess match of jujutsu combat.
"I'm glad I died to someone stronger than me."
The earthly soul inside him recoiled with a violent, sickening disgust at the memory of Chapter 236.
How could he have smiled? How could he have felt satisfaction in the airport afterlife while Megumi's body was being used to butcher the rest of his students? How could he have looked at Geto and Nanami and said he gave it his all, when his all had resulted in the absolute destruction of everything he loved?
"Never," Gojo snarled, the sound ripping through the dark like a physical blade. "I am not that man anymore."
The philosophical divide between the original Gojo and the merged entity finalized in that moment. The original Gojo suffered from the curse of the pinnacle. He was an alien among humans, desperate for someone, anyone, to look at him and see a peer instead of a god. He wanted to be understood.
This Gojo? He didn't give a damn about being understood.
The reader's profound attachment to the characters had overridden the god's need for an equal. He didn't want a peer. He didn't want a good fight. He wanted his family safe. And if that meant he had to become a monster so far beyond the realm of humanity that he would forever be utterly, terrifyingly alone at the top... so be it.
He would be the wall. He would be the executioner.
"I am going to save Megumi," Gojo swore to the infinite, skeletal wasteland, his glowing blue eyes burning like supernovas. "I will rip Ryomen Sukuna out of his body, even if I have to tear the King of Curses apart on an atomic level to do it. And I am going to mount Kenjaku's head on a spike for putting me in this box."
But to save Megumi, he couldn't just kill Sukuna. If he destroyed the body, Megumi died.
The meta-knowledge provided the answer.
Yuji Itadori.
Yuji possessed the unique, inherent ability to perceive the contours of the soul, a byproduct of housing two souls in one body. During the Shinjuku showdown, Yuji's strikes had targeted the barrier between Sukuna's soul and Megumi's soul, actively lowering Sukuna's output and waking Megumi up.
Furthermore, Yuji possessed the soul-swapping technique learned from Ui Ui's training.
"Yuji is the key," Gojo calculated, his hyper-evolved brain processing the strategic board. "I cannot pull Sukuna out myself. The Limitless is a physical and spatial technique. It does not interact with the metaphysical barrier of the soul in a way that can separate a reincarnated sorcerer from a vessel without destroying both."
He began to pace, his mind shifting from the paralyzing grip of grief to the cold, ruthless efficiency of a tactician.
"When I am unsealed, I cannot fight Sukuna immediately. If I fight him on the day I am unsealed, as Kenjaku expects, Yuji will not have the time to master his soul-striking or his blood manipulation. Yuta will not have time to copy the necessary techniques. Maki will not have time to fully realize her heavenly restriction."
He stopped, staring up at the distant, fleshy ceiling.
"I need to buy them time. I will set the date for December 24th, just like before. But I will not spend those weeks just sparring and waiting. I am going to turn Jujutsu High into a war machine. I will completely rewrite their battle plans. I know every trick Sukuna has. I know about Kamutoke. I know about his true form incarnation. I know about his open barrier domain."
Gojo's lips curled into a sharp, predatory smile.
"And they know absolutely nothing about the new me."
He had the ultimate defense. Limitless: Absolute Zero completely negated the World-Cutting Slash.
But a shield was not enough. He needed to execute Mahoraga before the Divine General could even begin to process an adaptation. He needed a technique that did not rely on physical force, gravity, or imaginary mass. He needed a technique that enacted an absolute, undeniable law upon reality.
He had theorized it shortly after perfecting his defense. Now, driven by the agonizing ghosts of Shibuya and the desperate need to secure Megumi's survival, he was ready to forge the sword.
He turned his gaze toward the dark horizon of the Prison Realm. About three miles away, rising from the sea of bones like a grotesque, white mountain, was the skull of a colossal, prehistoric cursed spirit. It was easily the size of a fifty-story skyscraper, its hollow eye sockets staring blankly into the abyss.
It was the perfect target.
Gojo raised his right hand. He didn't point a single finger like he did for Red or Blue. He extended his arm fully, his palm open, his fingers slightly curved as if he were holding a baseball.
"Mahoraga adapts to phenomena," Gojo whispered, his voice steady, his focus absolute. "It analyzes the cursed energy, the trajectory, the physical effect, and alters its own cursed energy to become immune to the concept."
He visualized the wheel turning above the shikigami's head. The chilling clack of the adaptation.
"To prevent adaptation, the attack cannot have a travel time. It cannot have a physical force. It must bypass the concept of cause and effect entirely."
He focused his immense, perfectly controlled cursed energy into the palm of his hand.
Step One: Establish the coordinate.
Unlike his defensive domain, which rested precisely one millimeter above his skin, he mentally projected the parameters of his innate domain outward. He targeted a spherical coordinate in space, exactly one hundred meters in diameter, perfectly intersecting the center of the colossal skull three miles away.
Step Two: Apply the Absolute Zero stasis.
He didn't need to fire a projectile. He simply applied the rule of his newly evolved domain to that specific, distant coordinate. Instantly, a one-hundred-meter sphere of space intersecting the giant skull locked into absolute spatial stasis. It was severed from the universe's continuity.
Step Three: The execution.
"If I force a space that refuses to move to expand," Gojo murmured, the golden light of RCT flaring intensely in his brain to handle the horrific complex calculations required for this next step, "the universe will not allow the paradox to exist. The universe will correct the error by violently deleting the corrupted space."
He closed his hand into a tight fist.
Cursed Technique Maximum: Limitless: Null.
There was no sound.
There was no blinding flash of purple light. There was no concussive shockwave of displaced air. There was no gravitational pull or explosive repulsion.
It was an event of pure, terrifying silence.
Three miles away, a perfect, one-hundred-meter spherical chunk of the colossal skyscraper-sized skull simply... ceased to exist.
One microsecond it was there, solid, ancient, and calcified. The next microsecond, there was a void. The edges of the missing chunk were flawlessly smooth, polished to a sub-atomic level. The bone, the dust, the stagnant cursed energy that had occupied that specific spherical coordinate had not been pushed away. It had not been vaporized into ash.
It had been conceptually deleted from the fabric of reality.
The universe had recognized the impossibility of an expanding, static space, and the laws of physics had reflexively hit the "backspace" key on that specific area to prevent reality from tearing itself apart.
Gojo stood perfectly still, his arm outstretched, staring at the perfectly smooth, spherical crater he had just carved out of the giant skull from three miles away.
A cold, creeping sense of awe washed over him.
He had just weaponized a glitch in the universe.
"It's silent," Gojo breathed, a dark, breathless laugh escaping his lips. "It's completely instantaneous. There's no spark of cursed energy traveling through the air. There's no projectile for Mahoraga to perceive. One second it's standing there, and the next second, a hundred-meter sphere of its torso is permanently deleted from existence."
The implications of the technique were horrifying.
If he used this on a human being, there would be no blood. No gore. Half of their body would just vanish into the void. If he used this on Sukuna...
Gojo lowered his hand.
"No," he reminded himself. "I can't use Null on Sukuna while he is in Megumi's body. A spatial deletion cannot be healed by Reverse Cursed Technique. If I delete Sukuna's chest, I delete Megumi's chest. Megumi would die instantly."
Null was reserved exclusively for Mahoraga. And Kenjaku.
For Sukuna, he had to rely on close-quarters combat, standard applications of the Limitless, and the unbreakable armor of Absolute Zero. He had to beat the King of Curses to a bloody pulp, drain his cursed energy, and hold him down while Yuji shattered the soul barrier.
It was a delicate, incredibly dangerous needle to thread. But as Satoru Gojo stood in the silent, macabre realm, bathed in the ethereal blue light of his own eyes, he knew he was capable of threading it.
He had the defense. He had the executioner's sword. He had the battle plan.
He just needed the door to open.
Gojo sat back down on the bones, crossing his legs, assuming his meditative lotus position. The chaotic, agonizing era of his physical training was over. The self-mutilation was complete. His brain was permanently rewired, capable of running a closed-barrier spatial stasis domain subconsciously, 24/7, without breaking a sweat.
Now, he began the final phase of his confinement: optimization.
He closed his eyes, turning his perception entirely inward.
He observed the flow of his cursed energy. The dark, volatile negative emotions—the grief for Nanami and Nobara, the rage toward Sukuna, the protective love for Megumi and Yuji—were continuously drawn from his gut, multiplied into golden positive energy in his newly fortified brain, and circulated flawlessly through his body to maintain the Absolute Zero armor.
It was a perfect, perpetual motion engine of jujutsu sorcery.
In the canon timeline, Gojo Satoru had spent his time in the Prison Realm doing absolutely nothing. He had sat in the dark, trusting his students to handle the outside world, secure in his own unparalleled strength, waiting patiently for the day they unsealed him.
But the man sitting in the dark now was not waiting patiently. He was coiling like a spring of infinite tension.
He imagined the timeline outside.
He knew Angel. Hana Kurusu. He knew that right now, Yuji, Megumi, Maki, and Yuta were navigating the hellscape of the Culling Games. He knew they were fighting ancient sorcerers, gathering points, desperately searching for the Angel to use her technique, Jacob's Ladder, to nullify the seal on the back of the Prison Realm.
"Nineteen days," Gojo murmured to the darkness. "It took them nineteen days from the Shibuya Incident to unseal me."
In here, those nineteen days felt like centuries. He had lived entire lifetimes in this dark, fleshy box. He had died a million deaths to perfect his techniques.
"Take your time, kids," Gojo whispered, a soft, genuine warmth bleeding into his voice for the first time since he awoke. "Get strong. Survive. I know it hurts right now. I know you feel like the world is ending. But just hold on."
He opened his glowing blue eyes, staring directly at the fleshy cube wall in front of him, as if he could see through the dimensions, straight to the surface of the earth.
"Sensei is coming back."
The silence of the Prison Realm settled over him once more, but it was no longer oppressive. It was the calm before the apocalypse.
He sat there, an immovable object of infinite power, wrapped in an armor of absolute zero, wielding a blade of pure deletion. He reviewed his meta-knowledge over and over, analyzing every single panel of the manga, dissecting Kenjaku's plans, memorizing the rules of the Culling Games, plotting the exact coordinates of Uraume's location, formulating the perfect stealth assassination plan for Yuta.
He left nothing to chance.
He would emerge from the trench. He would look Kenjaku in the eyes. He would look at the King of Curses wearing his son's face.
And he would break the world.
Deep within the Marianas Trench.
The physical object known as the Prison Realm, a cubic puzzle box made of flesh and weeping eyes, rested in the crushing, lightless depths of the ocean floor. Kenjaku had placed it there, layered behind a secondary seal, guarded by cursed spirits, assuming that even if Gojo Satoru was somehow unsealed, the absolute pressure of the trench and the lack of oxygen would instantly kill him.
It was a flawless, logical precaution.
But logic was a construct of the mortal world.
For weeks, the cube had remained perfectly still, a silent, bleeding anomaly in the deep.
But on the nineteenth day, deep beneath the crushing waves, the water surrounding the cube began to violently boil.
It wasn't heat. It was the sheer, terrifying density of the cursed energy leaking from the seams of the box. The ambient sea life—blind, deep-sea fish and microscopic organisms—were instantly vaporized as a pressure far greater than the ocean itself began to assert its dominance.
The eyes on the cube darted frantically, their pupils dilating in an emotion that cursed objects were not supposed to feel.
Fear.
The entity inside was no longer knocking on the door. He was waiting, perfectly still, for the lock to turn.
And somewhere, far above on the surface of Japan, a girl with white wings of cursed energy raised a trumpet to the sky, preparing to sing the song of unsealing.
The slow burn was over. The god was ready to wake up.