A thick darkness, smelling of rust and dust, enveloped Yuji.
He didn't know how long he had been curled up in this corner of the ruins.
After the Shibuya Incident, the world had turned upside down, and his world had already half-collapsed the moment Satoru was killed. Now, the remaining half was also crumbling into dust before his eyes in a slow and irreversible manner.
The roar of battle seemed to still ring out sporadically in the distance. Those were the surviving Jujutsu Sorcerers and members of Window cleaning up low-level Cursed Spirits, or dealing with the remnants left behind by Kenjaku.
But these sounds reached Yuji's ears only as hollow and distant echoes. His brain was buzzing, his body felt as heavy as lead, and every breath pulled at a dull ache in his chest.
Sensei... that final explosion, that completely vanished, powerful Cursed Energy residue that was enough to be the foundation of the world.
He didn't want to think about it, yet he couldn't stop thinking about it.
His fingertips were ice-cold, trembling as they held that phone with a screen covered in cracks. The battery was already critically low, the red warning icon flashing piercingly.
This phone was something he had picked up amidst the mess, belonging to some unfortunate ordinary person. There was no password, the screen unlocked directly to a video app interface, and the automatically pushed, pinned, blood-red live stream replay link had a shocking title:
[The Real Secret Revealed! The New World Descends! The Strongest Being Revived!]
Uploader ID: Uraume.
Yuji's fingers froze.
Uraume...
That Curse User who followed Sukuna, with an aura as cold as a blade.
He took a deep breath, but only inhaled more turbid dust. His fingertip, carrying a will that seemed not to belong to him, tapped down. The buffering circle spun a few times, and the screen suddenly lit up.
What first met his eyes was not the expected face of Sukuna or Uraume, but an extremely shocking, extremely surreal sight—within the 'Malevolent Shrine' domain.
In the center of this battlefield, two figures crossed, collided, and separated at a speed almost impossible for the naked eye to capture, each contact erupting with an energy shockwave that tore through space.
It was Gojo-sensei! And... Sukuna in his complete form!
Yuji's pupils suddenly contracted, his breathing stalled.
The phone screen was too small, yet it conveyed that world-destroying sense of power vividly.
He saw Satoru's Hollow Purple tear through the domain, saw the slashes swung from Sukuna's four arms cut through space, saw Unlimited Void and Malevolent Shrine collide, shatter, and expand again.
Every offense and defense far exceeded the scope of Yuji's understanding.
The video was clearly specially processed, not a simple recording. The angles were varied, sometimes zooming in to show the cold or fanatical combat expressions of the two, sometimes pulling back to present the grandeur and horror of the domain collision in a panoramic view.
Slow-motion at key points, accompanied by concise yet precise energy flow markers, allowed even ordinary people who knew nothing about Jujutsu to intuitively feel the level and destructive power of the battle.
The camera even captured the moment Satoru's chest was pierced by Dismantle with blood splattering, as well as the final, all-burning light of determination in his eyes when he used Hollow Purple.
The battle footage wasn't the full duration but was edited into the most essential and impactful fragments.
When the final Hollow Purple collided with Sukuna's technique, triggering the expansion of that all-annihilating dark sphere, the footage came to an abrupt halt.
Immediately, the camera switched. The background became a high point overlooking parts of the Shibuya ruins. Smoke hadn't dissipated in the distance, but the foreground was clear and stable.
A youth with a white bob-cut, a face as exquisite as a doll's, but eyes that were bone-chillingly cold, Uraume, appeared in the center of the frame.
They wore a clean white kimono, looking completely out of place with the surrounding ruins, as if they came from another world.
They looked directly into the camera, or rather, at every person in the world currently watching this video. There was no human emotion in those eyes, only a detachment as if looking down at ants, and a faint, barely perceptible appreciation for the chaos about to be triggered.
"Good evening, everyone." Uraume's voice came through the phone speaker, clear, steady, with a metallic quality and no fluctuation whatsoever.
"Perhaps you feel confused, fearful, or believe what you just saw was some clumsy special effects synthesis regarding that performance."
They paused slightly, the corner of their lips twitching upward very subtly. It couldn't be called a smile, but was more like a cold proclamation.
"Regrettably, it is all real. The daily life you live in, the world you perceive, has for a long time been merely a phantom built upon fragile lies. Today, this phantom is being torn open by our own hands."
Uraume's voice was neither hurried nor slow, yet it carried an unquestionable sense of authority as they used the simplest language to define concepts like Cursed Energy, Cursed Spirits, Jujutsu Sorcerers, and Curse Users—terms that were like fairy tales to ordinary people.
Accompanying his flat tone, the video footage appropriately cut in some blurred but still visibly hideous images of low-level Cursed Spirits, as well as archival photos of some covered-up, bizarre deaths or disaster events in history.
"You fear the dark, you fear the unknown, you fear those unexplainable tragedies and accidents."
Uraume's speaking speed quickened slightly. "Now, you can know what to fear. Fear Curses. They are everywhere, originating from your negative emotions, lurking in the shadows, ready to take your lives, your loved ones, and everything you cherish at any time. And those so-called solutions from before were merely insignificant struggles carried out in places you couldn't see by a few people called Jujutsu Sorcerers."
They defined Jujutsu Sorcerers as maintainers of the old order and incompetent ones, their tone full of contempt.
Next, the screen switched back to several freeze-frame shots of that ultimate battle—the moment Sukuna crushed Satoru with an overwhelming posture.
"And the strongest symbol of the old order, the sorcerer crowned with the title of strongest by them, Gojo Satoru."
Uraume's voice finally had a slight change at this moment, one of pure, unabashed reverence and fanaticism.
"He has today, in Shibuya, been exorcised by our supreme master—Ryomen Sukuna."
The camera gave Sukuna a close-up, it was a moment during a gap in the battle where he turned his head to look at the camera or rather, in Uraume's direction.
That gaze pierced through the screen, straight into the depths of every viewer's soul, triggering the most instinctive shudder.
"From this day forward, fear has a concrete form."
Uraume opened their arms as if embracing the arrival of a new era, their voice suddenly rising with strong penetration and a strange provocativeness. "Remember this name—Ryomen Sukuna! The King of Curses from a thousand years ago, the true strongest! He has already reclaimed all his power and returned to this world!"
"The order of the Jujutsu World has collapsed! The protection of the old days is gone!"
"The era of Curses has fully arrived!"
"Now..."
Uraume's face leaned closer to the camera, those ice-blue eyes enlarging, reflecting void and madness within.
"Be afraid, struggle, and then in despair, wait for my lord's selection, or... destruction."
The video ended there, suddenly going black.
Only a final line of blood-red text remained, like a brand, slowly emerging and then slowly disappearing.
[The New World! The Era Belonging to Curses and Sukuna Begins!]