𝜗𝜚 paring: ryomen sukuna x reader
𝜗𝜚 summary: When famine and plague threaten your village, you make a desperate bargain with the King of Curses, Sukuna, whose intimate curse binds to your blood, tightening with every act of defiance as he reshapes you into something that belongs to him alone
The shrine had been abandoned for three generations, left to decay at the edge of the forest where the old-growth trees twisted into shapes that hurt to look at for too long. Your grandmother had told you stories about it when you were small—warnings, really, about the thing that lived there. The King of Curses. Ryomen Sukuna. A name that should never be spoken above a whisper, and never, ever spoken with want in your voice.
But what was a luxury? What you had was desperation.
The village was dying. Not quickly, not dramatically, but slowly, inevitably, like a body bleeding out from a wound no one could find. The crops had failed for the third year running, the grain stores were nearly empty, and the sickness had come with the last rain. It started with the children—it always started with the children—and then spread to the elderly, the weak, and the ones who couldn't fight it off. Your sister had been the first in your family to fall ill. Your nephew, only four years old, had been the second.
The village elders had prayed to the new gods, the ones with clean temples in the capital, the ones whose priests wore white and spoke of purity and redemption. Those gods did not answer. Perhaps they never had. Perhaps they were too far away, too clean, too removed from the mud and blood and desperation of a place like this.
So you went to the old shrine instead.
The path was overgrown, barely visible beneath three years' worth of fallen leaves and creeping vines. No one came here anymore. No one wanted to remember what the village had been before the new religion, before the capital's influence, before people had decided that the old ways were savage and the old gods were demons.
The shrine itself was smaller than you had expected. The wood was grey with age and soft with rot in places, the thatched roof sagging inward like a mouth that had lost its teeth. The offering box hung crooked on its post, empty except for a bird's nest and the desiccated body of something small and long dead.
There were no priests here. No rituals you knew how to perform. You had only the stories, the fragments your grandmother had whispered when she thought no one else was listening. The old ways. The forbidden ways.
Blood and want. That was what the old gods understood. Not prayer, not piety. Sacrifice.
Your hand shook as you drew the knife across your palm. It was a small blade, meant for cutting thread and paring vegetables, but it was sharp enough. The pain was bright and immediate, a clean line of fire across your skin. Blood welled up, dark and thick, and dripped between your fingers.
You let it fall onto the shrine's threshold, watched it seep into the ancient wood, and spoke the words your grandmother had taught you. Words in a language you didn't fully understand, syllables that felt wrong in your mouth, like they were scraping against something inside you that didn't want to bend into those shapes.
"Ryomen Sukuna," you said, and the name tasted like copper and ash. "King of Curses. I offer blood and want. I offer desperation and need. I ask—" Your voice cracked. You swallowed and tried again. "I ask for aid. For mercy. For salvation."
Not gradually. Not the slow quiet of birds settling down for the night. Instantly, completely, as if every living thing had simultaneously held its breath.
Then, from inside the shrine, something laughed.
It was not a kind sound. It was the sound of rot spreading through healthy wood, of meat spoiling in summer heat, of bone breaking under pressure it was never meant to withstand. It was amusement, but the cruel kind, the kind that came from watching something small and helpless struggle against inevitable doom.
"Well," a voice said, and it came from everywhere and nowhere, from the shrine and the trees and the ground beneath your feet. "It's been a long time since anyone came here with want in their blood."
You should have run. Every instinct you had was screaming at you to run, to get away from this place, to take your chances with the famine and the sickness because at least those were natural; at least those were things you understood.
But your sister was dying. Your nephew was dying. The whole village was dying.
"I need help," you said, and hated how small your voice sounded. "The village—there's a plague, and the crops won't grow, and we're—we're dying. All of us."
"Yes," the voice agreed. "You are."
Silence. Just your breathing, harsh and quick, and the wind moving through the trees with a sound like whispered warnings.
"Will you help us?" you asked.
The laugh came again, softer this time, almost fond. "Such a polite way to phrase it. Not 'save us', not 'I demand aid', just... 'will you help?' As if I'm a neighbour you're asking to mend a fence."
You waited. There was nothing else to do.
"What will you give me?" the voice asked. "If I help your dying little village, what will you offer in return? Your soul? Your firstborn? Your eternal service?"
You had thought about this. Had spent three sleepless nights thinking about nothing else. "Whatever you want," you said. "Anything. Just save them."
"Anything." The word rolled through the air like thunder. "Dangerous thing to offer a curse, girl. We're not bound by the same rules as your clean, new gods. We don't deal in metaphor and spiritual transformation. When we take, we take."
"I know." You didn't know. You couldn't possibly know. But you said it anyway.
"Do you?" The voice was closer now, coming from directly in front of you, though you could see nothing but the empty shrine. "Do you know what you're offering? Do you understand what it means to give yourself to something like me?"
Your hand was still bleeding. The cut wasn't deep, but it wouldn't stop. Blood dripped steadily onto the threshold, and you watched it pool in the grooves of the ancient wood.
"I understand," you lied.
"Liar." But there was approval in it, dark amusement. "You don't understand anything. But you will."
The air pressure changed. Your ears popped, and suddenly, there was a shape in the doorway of the shrine. Not walking out of it—just there, as if he had always been there and you simply hadn't been able to see him until this moment.
He was tall. That was your first thought. Inhumanly tall, broad-shouldered, with a presence that seemed to take up more space than his physical body should occupy. Four arms, just like the stories said. Two pairs, one above the other, each hand tipped with black nails that looked sharp enough to flay skin from bone. Marks covered his skin—dark lines that might have been tattoos or scars or something else entirely, patterns that seemed to move when you weren't looking directly at them.
But it was his face that made you understand, truly understand, what you had done.
Two faces, merged into one. Four eyes, all of them focused on you with an intensity that made you feel like an insect pinned to a board. Two mouths, both smiling, and the smile was worse than the laugh had been because you could see the hunger in it.
"There you are," Sukuna said, and his voice was different now that you could see him, deeper, resonant in a way that you felt in your chest. "Blood and want and desperation. My favourite flavour."
You couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
He stepped down from the threshold, and the leaves beneath his feet withered and died. He moved closer, and you still couldn't make yourself run, couldn't even make yourself step back.
"You want to save your village," he said. It wasn't a question. "All those dying people. The children have a fever in their lungs. The old ones are coughing up blood. The crops are rotting in fields that used to be fertile. You want me to fix it."
"I could." He was right in front of you now, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his skin and could smell something like incense and iron. "I could make the sickness disappear. I could make the fields fertile again. I could save every single one of your pathetic, dying villagers."
Hope flared in your chest, bright and desperate and painful.
"But I won't," Sukuna continued, and the hope guttered out. "Not for free. Not even for your soul—souls are tedious things, and yours isn't particularly interesting."
"Then what?" Your voice was steadier than you expected. "What do you want?"
All four eyes gleamed. Both mouths smiled wider.
"You," he said simply. "Not your service. Not your worship. Not your soul. You. Your blood. Your body. Your presence. I want you bound to me in a way that can't be broken, can't be escaped, and can't be bargained away." One hand reached out, fingers catching your chin, tilting your head up. His skin was fever-hot. "I want you to belong to me."
You should have said no. Should have run. Should have done anything except stand there and meet his gaze and say, "If that's what it takes."
His smile changed. Became something sharper, something satisfied.
"The village will be saved," he said. "The sickness will vanish by dawn. The fields will be fertile again. The water will be clean. Your people will live." His thumb brushed across your lower lip, and you tasted copper. "And you will be mine. Bound by blood and curse. Marked. Claimed. Owned."
"How?" you asked, because you needed to understand and needed to know what you were agreeing to.
"Like this," Sukuna said, and bit you.
Not on the neck, not like in the old stories about vampires and demons. He bit your bleeding palm, the one you had cut to make the offering, his teeth sinking into the wound with a sharp, bright pain that made you gasp.
It spread from your hand up your arm, not burning but transforming, like your blood was being rewritten, like something foreign and powerful was being etched into your very veins. You could feel it moving through you, could feel it reach your chest, your throat, and your heart.
When Sukuna pulled back, there was blood on his lips—your blood—and his eyes were brighter, more alive, and more present than before.
"There," he said softly. "Now you're mine. My curse lives in your blood. My mark sits in your marrow. You can't cut it out. You can't pray it away. You can't run far enough or fast enough to escape it." He released your chin but didn't step back. "I'll be with you always now. In your dreams. In your reflections. In every shadow that crosses your path."
You looked down at your hand. The cut was gone. In its place was a mark—a dark, intricate symbol that looked like it had been burnt into your skin, though you felt no pain from it. It was beautiful and terrible, and you knew instinctively that it would never fade.
"What did you do to me?" you whispered.
"I bound you," Sukuna said. "The way I said I would. You're mine now. And every time you resist, every time you try to fight it, the bond will only grow stronger." He leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred your hair. "The bite doesn't kill, little one. It binds. Forever."
Not walking away, not fading. Just gone, as if he had never been there at all.
You stood alone in the clearing, in the growing dark, with a mark on your hand that pulsed in time with your heartbeat and a feeling in your chest like something had wrapped around your ribs and wasn't planning to let go.
Behind you, in the distance, you could hear the village bells ringing. The alarm bells, the ones that only rang for emergencies.
By the time you reached the village, people were pouring out of their homes, crying, shouting, and laughing. Your sister met you at the edge of the square, her face streaked with tears, and grabbed you in a hug so tight it hurt.
"He's breathing," she sobbed into your shoulder. "He's breathing. The fever broke. He's going to be fine."
All around you, it was the same story. The sick were recovering. The dying were sitting up, asking for water, for food. The impossible had happened.
You had damned yourself, but you had saved them.
That night, you couldn't sleep. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Sukuna's face, felt his teeth in your palm, and heard his voice promising that he would be with you always.
The mark on your hand throbbed.
In the corner of your room, the shadows seemed darker than they should be and seemed to move when you weren't looking directly at them.
And when you finally, fitfully, fell into an exhausted sleep just before dawn, you dreamed.
You dreamed of a temple made of bones, of a throne carved from a single piece of black stone, of a figure sitting on that throne with four arms and four eyes and a smile that promised terrible things.
And in the dream, he looked at you and said, "Welcome home, little one. We have so much to discuss."
You woke with a scream trapped in your throat and the mark on your hand burning like a brand.
The bond had begun to tighten.
The first week was the worst. Not because anything happened—nothing happened, and that was the problem. You went about your days in a haze of paranoia and exhaustion, waiting for Sukuna to appear, to claim whatever it was he had bound you for, to drag you away to whatever hell he inhabited.
The village celebrated its miraculous recovery. The fields, which had been barren and cracked, were suddenly verdant again. The well water ran clear and sweet. The sickness vanished so completely that it was as if it had never existed. People spoke of divine intervention, of the new gods finally answering their prayers, of a miracle.
You said nothing. You wrapped cloth around your marked hand and tried to pretend the symbol wasn't there, tried to ignore the way it sometimes pulsed with warmth, and tried not to think about the price you had paid.
Your sister noticed you were withdrawn. "You should be happy," she said one evening as you helped her prepare dinner. Your nephew was playing in the corner, healthy and whole, building elaborate structures with wooden blocks. "We're all going to be alright now."
"I know," you said, and forced a smile. "I am happy."
She didn't look convinced, but she didn't press. No one pressed. They were all too relieved, too grateful, too caught up in their own joy to notice that you barely slept anymore, that you jumped at shadows, that you avoided mirrors.
Every night, without fail, you found yourself in that bone temple. Sometimes, Sukuna was on his throne, watching you with those four burning eyes. Sometimes he was closer, circling you like a predator, speaking in that deep, resonant voice about things you didn't understand—about curses and power and the nature of binding magic.
"You're adjusting well," he said one night, and you realised with a start that the dreams were getting clearer, more vivid. You could feel the cold of the stone floor beneath your feet, could smell the incense and iron, and could see every detail of his marked skin. "Your body is accepting the curse. Soon it will be as natural as breathing."
"I don't want this," you told him, because in dreams you were braver than in waking life. "I didn't agree to—to belong to you. I agreed to save my village."
"And I saved it." He moved closer, and you found you couldn't step back, couldn't move at all. "I upheld my end of the bargain. Now you'll uphold yours." One hand reached out, fingers ghosting across your cheek. "You gave yourself to me. Willingly. With full knowledge of what I am."
"I didn't know what it would mean."
"Then you should have asked." His thumb traced the line of your jaw. "But you were desperate. Desperation makes people reckless. Makes them offer things they can't take back."
You wanted to argue, to fight, to pull away from his touch. But this was a dream. His domain. And in his domain, you had no power at all.
"Why?" you asked instead. "Why bind me? What do you want from me?"
All four eyes gleamed with something that might have been amusement or might have been hunger. "You'll understand soon enough. For now, just know that you're mine. And every day that passes, you become more mine. The curse is spreading through you, little one. Taking root. Soon you won't be able to imagine existence without it."
You woke gasping, the mark on your hand burning.
Outside your window, the sun was rising.
The second week, you started seeing him in mirrors.
Not clearly. Not at first. Just a flicker of movement in your peripheral vision when you passed by reflective surfaces. A shadow that didn't quite match yours. The suggestion of a shape that was too tall, too broad, and that had too many arms.
You stopped looking at mirrors. Started avoiding them, taking the long way around the house to bypass the polished metal your mother used to check her appearance, keeping your eyes down when you passed by the well.
Because if Sukuna wasn't in the mirrors, he was in the windows. In puddles. In the polished surface of serving spoons and the glassy eyes of dead fish at the market.
Everywhere you looked, he was almost there, just at the edge of visibility, watching.
"You're looking tired," your mother said one morning, concern creasing her forehead. "Are you sleeping enough?"
"You're not fine. You haven't been fine since—" She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Since the miracle. Did something happen? Something you're not telling us?"
Everything you wanted to say. I sold myself to a curse to save you all, and now he lives in my blood and haunts my dreams and watches me from every reflection.
"No," you said instead. "Nothing happened. I'm just tired."
She didn't believe you, but she didn't push. Your mother had always been good at knowing when to let things lie.
That night, you avoided sleep for as long as possible. Sat by the window, watching the village settle down for the night, watching lights flicker out one by one until only the moon remained.
Your hand ached. The mark seemed to pulse stronger when you were tired, when your defences were down.
You lasted until just past midnight before exhaustion dragged you under.
This time, Sukuna wasn't on his throne. He was standing right in front of you, close enough that you could feel the heat of his skin, close enough to count the marks that covered his body.
"You're avoiding mirrors," he said. "Why?"
"Say it anyway. I want to hear you admit it."
You gritted your teeth. "Because I see you in them."
"Yes." He sounded pleased. "The bond is strengthening. Soon I won't need mirrors. I'll be able to manifest anywhere there's shadow. Anywhere there's darkness. Anywhere you are."
"This isn't what I agreed to."
"This is exactly what you agreed to." His hand came up, fingers tangling in your hair, tilting your head back. "You agreed to be mine. Body and blood. This is what that means. This is what binding looks like."
"No, you don't." His second set of hands came up, one settling on your hip, the other on your shoulder. "You're afraid, yes. You're overwhelmed. But you don't want it to stop. Because the bond works both ways, little one. You're in my blood now just as much as I'm in yours. You're starting to feel it, aren't you? The pull. The need. The sense that something's missing when I'm not close."
He was wrong. He had to be wrong.
But even as you thought it, you could feel the truth of his words. The restlessness you felt during the day. The way your skin felt was too tight, too confining. The strange, inexplicable urge to go back to the shrine, to find him, to—
"Yes." He leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred your hair. "Fight it all you want. Resist as hard as you can. All you'll do is make the bond tighter. Make the pull stronger. Make yourself more mine."
"I know." He sounded amused. "Hate me all you want. It changes nothing."
When you woke, there were tears on your cheeks and an ache in your chest that had nothing to do with fear.
The third week, he appeared in the shadows.
You were walking home from the market, basket heavy with vegetables and grain, when you saw him. Not in a reflection this time. Not in a dream. Standing in the shadow cast by the old oak tree at the edge of the village, as solid and real as anything else.
He smiled, both mouths curving in perfect synchronisation.
"Hello, little one," he said, and his voice was exactly as it had been in your dreams—deep, resonant, inescapable.
You looked around frantically. There were people nearby, other villagers going about their business. But no one was looking at the oak tree. No one seemed to see him.
"They can't see me," Sukuna confirmed, reading your thoughts with that uncanny perception. "This manifestation is for you alone. A gift of the bond."
"I don't want it," you whispered.
"So you keep saying." He stepped forward, out of the shadow, and the sun should have made him disappear, but it didn't. He was there, solid and present, four arms and four eyes and all. "Yet here you are, still alive, still whole. Still mine."
"The same thing I've always wanted. You. Your presence. Your acknowledgement. Your submission."
The word hit you like a physical blow. "I'll never submit to you."
"Won't you?" He moved closer, and you found yourself backing up until your shoulders hit the wall of the nearest building. "You already have. The moment you made the bargain. The moment you let me bite you. The moment you accepted my mark. " One hand came up, catching your marked palm, pressing his thumb against the symbol burnt into your skin. "This is submission, little one. This is surrender. You just haven't accepted it yet."
The mark burnt where he touched it, but not with pain. With something else, something that made your breath catch and your heart race.
"Every time you resist," Sukuna continued, his voice dropping lower, "the bond tightens. Didn't I tell you that? Didn't I warn you?" His other hands came up, one framing your face, one resting against your ribs, right over your racing heart. "Feel that? That's not fear. Not anymore. That's recognition. Your blood knows me. Your body knows me. Soon your mind will catch up."
"We'll see." He leaned in, and for one terrible moment, you thought he was going to kiss you. Instead, he pressed his forehead against yours, and you felt something shift in your chest, something click into place like a lock finding its key. "Three weeks," he murmured. "Three weeks since the binding. The curse has spread through your entire body now. Every drop of blood. Every breath. Every beat of your heart. You're more mine now than you've ever been."
Then he was gone, dissolved back into shadow, and you were alone against the wall, shaking, your basket of vegetables scattered at your feet.
No one had seen. No one ever saw.
You were alone in this. Utterly, completely alone.
In the fourth week, you stopped fighting.
Not because you wanted to. Not because you accepted what Sukuna said. But because fighting was exhausting, and you were so, so tired.
You let yourself sleep. Let yourself dream. Let yourself exist in that bone temple without struggling, without arguing, without resisting every single thing he said.
And in return, the dreams became... gentler.
Sukuna still circled you like a predator, still watched you with those burning eyes, and still spoke in that voice that resonated in your bones. But he also talked to you. Really talked. Not orders or demands or cruel observations, but conversation.
He told you about the world before, the age of curses, when beings like him walked freely, and humans built shrines out of fear and respect rather than just fear. He told you about power and binding and the nature of deals made in blood. He told you about loneliness, about being sealed away, about the long centuries of silence.
"You're the first person to approach that shrine in seventy years," he said one night. "The first person to make an offering. The first person to give me something I wanted."
"You wanted me," you said. Not a question.
"I wanted connection." One hand reached out, fingertips brushing your cheek. "Power is meaningless without something to tether it to. I've had power for a thousand years. What I haven't had is..."
"Someone who chose me." His expression was unreadable. "You came to me. You offered yourself. You didn't have to—there are other ways to save a village, other powers you could have begged. But you came to me."
"Because I was desperate."
"Because some part of you knew I would answer." His thumb traced your lower lip, just as it had that first night. "Because some part of you recognised me."
You wanted to argue. Wanted to say he was wrong, that it was just a coincidence, just bad luck.
Because deep down, in a place you didn't want to examine too closely, you knew he might be right.
In waking life, Sukuna appeared more frequently now. In shadows, always, but sometimes he seemed more solid, more present. He didn't touch you when he manifested like that, didn't speak much, just... existed near you. Watching. Waiting.
The mark on your hand had changed. The symbol was the same, but it had spread, tendrils of dark pattern creeping up your wrist like vines. It didn't hurt. It should have terrified you.
You were getting used to it. To him. To the bond.
And that realisation was more frightening than anything else.
One month after the binding, something changed.
You woke from a dream—Sukuna's temple, his throne, his eyes—and found you couldn't remember what your life had been like before. couldn't remember the events, the people, the daily routine. But couldn't remember what it felt like. Couldn't remember existing without the constant awareness of him in the back of your mind, in your blood, in every breath.
The bond wasn't just tight anymore. It was fundamental.
You got up, got dressed, and avoided looking at your hand where the marks had now crawled halfway up your forearm, intricate and beautiful and utterly inhuman.
Your sister found you in the kitchen, staring at nothing.
"Are you alright?" she asked, and you realised you'd been asked that question a hundred times in the past month. A thousand times.
"Yes," you said, and for the first time, it wasn't entirely a lie.
You weren't alright. But you weren't falling apart anymore either. You'd found a strange, unsettling equilibrium. The bond was there. The curse was there. Sukuna was there. And you were... adjusting.
"Your hand," your sister said, and her voice was sharp with concern. "What happened to your hand?"
You'd forgotten to cover it. The marks were visible, dark against your skin, impossible to explain away.
"It's nothing," you said quickly, pulling your sleeve down. "Just an accident. A burn. It's healing."
She didn't believe you. You could see it in her eyes, in the way her mouth tightened. But she didn't push, didn't demand answers you couldn't give.
"If you need help," she said carefully, "if something's wrong, you can tell me. You know that, right?"
But you couldn't tell her. Couldn't tell anyone. Because how could you explain this? How could you make them understand that you'd traded yourself to a curse, that you were slowly being transformed into something that belonged to him, that the village's salvation had come at the cost of your freedom?
You couldn't. So you didn't try.
That night, the dream was different.
You appeared in the bone temple as always, but this time, Sukuna wasn't on his throne. He was standing in the centre of the vast chamber, and there was something about his posture, about the way he held himself, that was almost... vulnerable.
"One month," he said without preamble. "The binding is complete. The curse has settled. You're fully mine now."
"I know," you said, and your voice was steadier than you expected.
He tilted his head, studying you. "You've stopped fighting."
"That's not why." He moved closer, all four eyes fixed on you with unnerving intensity. "You've stopped fighting because you're starting to feel it. The bond. Not just as a curse, not just as a compulsion. You're starting to feel what it really is."
"Connection." He reached out, one hand catching yours—your marked hand—and his touch sent a jolt through you that had nothing to do with pain. "I told you the bond works both ways. You're in my blood just as much as I'm in yours. I feel you, little one. Your fear. Your exhaustion. Your slowly growing acceptance. And you feel me."
He was right. You did feel him. A presence in the back of your mind, constant and warm and oddly comforting. Not an invasion—or not entirely an invasion. More like a shadow that had learnt to match your movements perfectly.
"I don't want to belong to anyone," you said quietly.
"I know." His other hands came up, one cupping your face, one settling on your waist. "But you do. You belong to me. And I—" He paused, and something flickered across his expression, too quick to read. "I belong to you."
The words hit you with unexpected force. "What?"
"The binding goes both ways," Sukuna repeated, and now there was something almost bitter in his voice. "You think I chose this lightly? You think I didn't know what it would mean? I bound you to me, yes. But in doing so, I bound myself to you just as thoroughly."
You stared at him, trying to process this, trying to understand. "But you're... you're the King of Curses. You're powerful. You don't need—"
"Power is nothing without an anchor," he interrupted. "I've been alone for so long, little one. Sealed away. Forgotten. The shrine is rotting. No one is speaking my name. No one is coming to me with offerings or prayers or even fear. Just... silence. Endless silence." His hand on your face tightened slightly. "And then you came. Desperate and frightened and so full of want. And I thought, here. Here is someone I can bind to. Someone I can keep."
"So I'm what? A pet? A possession?"
"You're mine," he said simply. "Mine to protect. Mine to keep. Mine to—" He stopped, seeming to struggle with the next word. "Mine to care for."
The admission hung between you, fragile and weighty.
"I don't understand," you whispered.
"Neither do I." He leaned in, resting his forehead against yours again, and you felt that same click, that same sense of something settling into place. "I didn't expect this. Didn't expect you to be so... stubborn. So resilient. So unwilling to break. "A pause. "So interesting."
"You've killed people. Probably thousands of people."
"You're cruel and dangerous and—"
"Yes," he said again, cutting you off. "I'm all of those things. But I'm also bound to you. And the binding changes everything."
You didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know what to feel. Part of you wanted to reject it, to push him away, to keep fighting even though fighting was useless. But another part—a growing part—wanted to lean into it. Into him. Into this strange, terrible connection that was slowly becoming the most real thing in your life.
"What happens now?" you asked.
"Now?" One of his hands came up to trace the marks on your arm, following the patterns that had spread from your palm. "Now you stop resisting. Stop pretending this isn't what it is. Stop lying to yourself about what you want."
All four eyes gleamed. "Me. You want me. You've wanted me since the moment I bit you, even if you won't admit it. The bond didn't create desire, little one. It just made it impossible to ignore."
You wanted to argue. Wanted to say he was wrong.
But standing there in that bone temple, with his forehead against yours and his hands on your skin and his presence wrapped around you like a second heartbeat, you couldn't.
The bond had changed you. Was still changing you. And part of that change was the slow, inexorable pull towards him. Not love—or not just love. Something deeper, more primal. Recognition. Need. The sense that you were two halves of something that had been split apart and was now, finally, coming back together.
"I hate this," you said, but there was no heat in it.
"I know." He pulled back just far enough to look at you, all four eyes soft in a way you'd never seen before. "Hate it all you want. It won't change what we are. What we've become."
You woke with tears on your cheeks and the mark on your arm burning.
But this time, the burn felt almost like a caress.
The seasons began to shift. Summer's oppressive heat gave way to autumn's cool reprieve, and with it came the harvest—a harvest so abundant that the village could scarcely believe it. The fields yielded three times what they had in the best years before the famine, the fruit trees hung heavy with perfect, unblemished offerings, and the livestock grew fat and healthy.
It was Sukuna's doing, of course. His curse didn't just bind you—it bled into the land itself, into the soil and water and air. The village prospered because of him, because of the bargain you'd made, because of the mark that now climbed past your elbow and had begun to trace delicate patterns across your shoulder blade.
You found yourself touching it sometimes, when you thought no one was watching. Running your fingers over the raised lines, feeling the warmth that pulsed beneath your skin. It should have repulsed you. Should have felt like a violation, like something foreign invading your body.
Like it had always been there, waiting to surface. Like Sukuna's curse hadn't added anything new but had simply revealed what was already present, dormant, sleeping in your blood until he woke it.
Your mother noticed the marks one evening when you were washing. You'd been careless, too tired to remember to keep yourself covered. Her gasp was sharp and pained, and when you turned, she was staring at your bare shoulder with wide, horrified eyes.
"What is that?" she demanded, and there was fear in her voice. Not fear for you—fear of you. "What's happened to you?"
You pulled your shirt back on quickly, fumbling with the fabric. "It's nothing. Just... a rash. It's been spreading slowly, but it doesn't hurt."
"That's not a rash." Your mother's voice was shaking. "That looks like... like the old marks. The ones the cursed ones bore, before the purges."
The purges. You'd heard stories about them, whispered in the dark when you were small. A hundred years ago, the capital had sent priests and soldiers to cleanse the countryside of curse users, of people who'd made bargains with the old gods, of anyone who bore the marks of unholy pacts. They'd burnt shrines, killed hundreds, and tried to erase every trace of the old ways.
"I'm not cursed," you said, and the lie tasted like ash.
Your mother's eyes searched your face, looking for something—reassurance, perhaps, or confirmation of her worst fears. "If you are," she said slowly, carefully, "if you've done something, made some kind of bargain—"
"I haven't," you interrupted. "Mother, I promise. It's just a skin condition. It'll fade."
She didn't believe you. You could see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her hands twisted together. But she was also afraid to push, afraid of what she might learn if she asked too many questions.
"Cover it," she finally said. "Don't let anyone else see. The village is... people are already talking. About the miracle. About how sudden it was. If they see marks like that on you, they'll start asking questions we can't answer."
You nodded, throat tight. "I'll be careful."
She left you then, and you stood alone in the small washroom, staring at your reflection in the basin of water. Your face looked the same—the same eyes, same mouth, same features you'd had all your life. But there was something different in your expression now. Something sharper. Older.
You looked like someone who'd seen things they shouldn't have. Known things they shouldn't know.
You looked like someone who belonged to a curse.
In the water's surface, behind your reflection, you saw movement. A shadow that was too tall, too broad. Four eyes gleaming in the darkness.
You didn't turn around. Didn't need to.
"You're getting sloppy," Sukuna's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from the water and the walls and the air itself. "Letting her see the marks. You'll draw attention."
"I was tired," you said to your reflection, to his reflection. "I forgot."
"You need to be more careful. The last thing either of us needs is for this village to decide you're a threat. "A pause. "They killed curse-marked people here, you know. A century ago. Burnt them alive to 'cleanse' the land."
"Do you? Do you understand what they'll do if they find out what you are? What do you become?" His reflection moved closer, and you could feel him even though he wasn't physically present. Could feel the warmth of him at your back, the weight of his presence. "They'll turn on you. The people you saved. Your own family. They'll tie you to a stake and light the fire themselves, all while praying to their clean, distant gods."
You closed your eyes. "Then what do you suggest?"
Your eyes snapped open. "What?"
"Leave the village. Come to me. Fully. Completely. Stop pretending you can live in both worlds—the human one and mine. You can't. The bond is too strong now. The curse is too deep. You're more mine than theirs, and it's only going to become more obvious."
"I can't just leave my family."
"You can. You just don't want to." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "But you will. Eventually. When the choice is taken from you. When they look at you with fear instead of love. When they raise their hands against you." A pause. "I'd rather you came to me willingly. Before it gets that far."
"I'm not yours," you said, but the words were hollow.
"You are. You've been mine since the moment you offered your blood at my shrine. Since the moment you said 'anything'. Since the moment you let me bite you and didn't pull away." His reflection smiled, both mouths curving. "You're just afraid to admit it."
You wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that you were still your own person, still had choices, and still had control.
But the mark on your skin pulsed warm, and you could feel him in your blood, in your bones, in every breath. And you knew he was right.
The only question was how long you'd keep pretending otherwise.
The dreams became more vivid. More real.
You would fall asleep in your small bed in your family's modest house and wake—truly wake, not dream-wake—in Sukuna's temple. The transition was seamless now, no disorientation, no confusion. Just one reality sliding into another as naturally as breathing.
The temple itself was changing too. Or perhaps you were simply seeing it more clearly. It wasn't just bones and black stone anymore. There were tapestries on the walls, woven from what looked like spider silk, depicting scenes of battles and rituals and things you couldn't quite comprehend. There were braziers that burnt with flames that gave off no smoke but smelt of sandalwood and myrrh. There were windows—impossible windows, since the temple existed somewhere outside of normal space—that looked out onto landscapes that shifted and changed: mountains that walked, forests where the trees bled sap like honey, and skies painted in colours that had no names.
Sukuna's domain. Not just a temple. A world unto itself.
"Do you like it?" he asked one night, finding you standing at one of those impossible windows, watching a river of stars flow through a valley of crystallised shadow.
"It's beautiful," you admitted. "Terrible. But beautiful."
"Like me," he said, and there was dark humour in his voice.
You turned to look at him. He was sprawled on his throne—four arms relaxed, expression almost lazy—but those eyes were sharp, missing nothing.
"Why do you bring me here?" you asked. "Every night. Why not just... leave me alone? You have what you wanted. The bond is complete. I'm bound to you. Why do you need me here?"
"Because the bond isn't just about possession," Sukuna said, sitting up straighter. "It's about connection. Proximity. Presence." He stood, moved towards you with that predatory grace. "I told you—I've been alone for a very long time. Silent. Forgotten. And now I have you. Why wouldn't I want you close?"
"I'm not really here, though. This is a dream."
"Is it?" He reached out, one hand catching yours, raising it to examine the marks that now covered your entire arm. "You feel solid enough. You can touch things here. Change things. You wake with memories of this place as clear as any waking moment. What makes it less real than the other world?"
You had no answer to that.
"The bond blurs boundaries," Sukuna continued, his thumb tracing the patterns on your skin. "Dream and waking. Yours and mine. Human and curse. The deeper it goes, the less those distinctions matter. Soon you'll be able to manifest here fully. Not just in sleep. You'll be able to walk between worlds the way I do."
The thought should have terrified you. Instead, you felt a strange flutter of anticipation.
"And then what?" you asked.
"Then you won't have to go back," he said simply, matter-of-factly, as if it were inevitable. "You can stay here. With me. Where you belong."
"—will forget you." His voice was gentle but implacable. "Not immediately. But over time. The bond will make you... difficult to remember. Difficult to hold in their minds. You'll become like a dream to them. A ghost. Until eventually, it's as if you never existed at all."
Horror washed over you, cold and sharp. "No. No, I won't let that happen."
"You won't have a choice." He pulled you closer, one hand settling on your waist, another cupping your face. "The curse is rewriting you. Making you into something that can exist here, with me, permanently. Fighting it only makes it work faster."
"Then I'll stop fighting," you said desperately. "I'll accept the bond, I'll stay in the village, I'll—"
"You'll die," Sukuna interrupted, and there was something in his voice you'd never heard before. Something that might have been fear. "If you try to stay fully human while bound to me this deeply, the conflict will tear you apart. You have to choose, little one. Become what the bond is making you—something between human and curse, something that belongs to both worlds and neither—or cling to your humanity and let it destroy you."
You stared at him, searching those four eyes for any hint of deception, any sign that this was another manipulation.
"I don't want to lose them," you whispered.
"I know." He pulled you against his chest, all four arms wrapping around you, and for the first time since the binding, his embrace felt protective rather than possessive. "But you're going to. One way or another. The only question is whether you lose them while dying or whether you lose them while becoming something new."
You pressed your face against his shoulder and let yourself cry. Not the silent, hidden tears you'd shed so many times in the past weeks, but real, wracking sobs. Grief for what you were losing, for the choice that wasn't really a choice at all, for the life you'd traded away to save people who would eventually forget you anyway.
Sukuna held you through it. Didn't speak, didn't offer empty comfort, just held you while you broke apart and slowly, painfully, began to put yourself back together in a new configuration.
When the tears finally stopped, you pulled back enough to look at him. "If I do this," you said, voice hoarse, "if I let the bond complete, if I become whatever it is you're making me into—what happens then?"
"Then you're mine," he said. "Fully. Completely. No more half-measures, no more divided loyalties. You live here, in my domain. You exist as my—" He paused, seeming to search for the right word. "My companion. My anchor. My other half."
"Like a queen," he corrected. "I am the King of Curses. If you bind yourself to me completely, you become my equal. My counterpart. Not a possession, but a partner."
The distinction seemed important to him, though you weren't sure you understood the difference.
"And my family? The village?"
"They'll prosper. The blessing I gave them will hold. They'll have good harvests, healthy children, and long lives. They just won't have you." His expression softened. "It's not a cruelty, little one. It's a mercy. They'll forget slowly, gently. They won't mourn you because they won't remember you clearly enough to mourn. It'll be like... like trying to remember a pleasant dream. They'll have a sense of something good, something lost, but no pain attached to it."
You wanted to believe him. Wanted to think that your sacrifice wouldn't destroy the people you loved.
"Can I... can I say goodbye? Before it happens?"
"You can try." He released you and stepped back. "But the bond is already working on them. You've noticed it, haven't you? How do they look through you sometimes? How do conversations seem to slide away from you? How even when you're in the room, they forget you're there?"
You had noticed. Had been trying not to notice, trying to pretend it was your imagination.
"How long?" you asked. "How long until I can't go back at all?"
"A month. Maybe less." He reached out, caught your chin, and tilted your face up to meet his gaze. "The next full moon, the transformation will be complete. You'll have to choose before then. Come here willingly, or be pulled here anyway. But either way, you're not staying human. Not anymore."
When you woke, the sun was already high. You'd slept late, and no one had come to wake you.
You found your family in the kitchen, preparing the midday meal. Your sister was laughing at something your nephew had said, your mother was kneading bread, and your father was repairing a broken chair.
"Good morning," you said.
Your mother looked up and smiled vaguely. "Oh. Good morning. Did you sleep well?"
"Yes. I—" You paused. " I was wondering if you needed help with—"
"We're fine, thank you," your mother said, already looking back at her bread.
You stood there for a moment, waiting for someone to ask where you'd been, why you'd slept so late, and if you were feeling alright.
Your sister glanced at you once, her expression puzzled, as if she was trying to remember something. Then your nephew said something else, and her attention shifted, and you were forgotten again.
You left the kitchen. Walked through the house. Went outside.
The bond was already erasing you from their lives, and they didn't even realise it was happening.
The next three weeks passed in a strange, detached haze. You went through the motions of daily life—helped with chores, attended village gatherings, smiled and spoke when spoken to—but you felt increasingly like a ghost in your own existence. People looked past you more often than at you. Conversations you participated in seemed to evaporate from others' memories within minutes. Your sister forgot your name twice, correcting herself with a confused laugh both times.
The marks had spread further. They covered both arms now, winding across your shoulders and beginning to trace delicate patterns down your spine. You wore long sleeves and high collars constantly, even as the weather grew colder and such precautions became less suspicious.
But it wasn't just the visible marks that were changing.
Your senses had sharpened. You could hear conversations from three houses away, could smell the difference between varieties of apples from across the market square, and could see in the dark almost as clearly as in daylight. Your strength had increased too—you'd accidentally broken a wooden spoon while stirring soup, had lifted a sack of grain that should have required two people, and had torn a door off its hinges when it stuck.
You were becoming something other. Something more.
Sukuna appeared to you more frequently now, no longer constrained to dreams and shadows. He manifested in full daylight sometimes, solid and real, though still invisible to everyone but you. He would walk beside you through the village, commenting on the people, the buildings, and the small dramas of daily life.
"That one's having an affair," he'd say, nodding towards a respectable married woman. "The baker's son. They meet in the mill on Thursdays."
Or: "The elder with the limp—he's embezzling from the village funds. Has been for five years."
Or: "Your sister is pregnant again. Two months. She doesn't know yet."
You didn't ask how he knew these things. Curses saw differently than humans, perceived truths that were hidden, and sensed the threads of fate and fortune that wove through mortal lives.
"You'll be able to see it too," he told you one afternoon as you walked through the forest, ostensibly gathering firewood. "Once the transformation completes. You'll see the world as I do. All its hidden rot and secret beauty."
"I'm not sure I want to," you admitted.
"You say that now." He plucked a leaf from a low-hanging branch, and it withered to dust in his palm. "But human sight is so limited. You see surfaces. I see depths. You see moments. I see patterns. You see individuals. I see the vast, interconnected web of choice and consequence that binds everything together." He let the dust fall. "It's overwhelming at first. But then it's... clarifying."
You watched the dust settle onto the forest floor. "Will I still be me after?"
"You'll be more you than you've ever been." He moved closer, one hand coming up to trace the marks on your neck. They'd reached your jawline now, delicate as lace. "Humans are so constrained by what they think they should be. By social expectations, moral frameworks and fear of judgement. The transformation burns all that away. Leaves only the essential self. The truth of you."
"And what if the truth of me is something terrible?"
"Then you'll be terrible," he said it without judgment, without condemnation. "But you'll be yours. Authentic. Undiluted. Free."
Freedom. You'd never thought of the bond as freedom before. Had always conceptualised it as a chain, a prison, a loss of choice.
But maybe it was the opposite.
Maybe surrendering to Sukuna meant surrendering all the things that had constrained you—duty, propriety, fear, and the need to be good and sweet and acceptable. Maybe becoming his meant becoming yourself, unfiltered and unafraid.
The thought was intoxicating and terrifying in equal measure.
Two weeks before the full moon, your father stopped recognising you entirely.
You came down for breakfast, and he looked at you with polite confusion. "I'm sorry, miss, but I think you've entered the wrong house."
Your mother looked up from the fire, squinting. "Who... oh. Is that... do we know her?"
Your sister frowned. "She looks familiar. Do you work at the market?"
You stood there, frozen, as your family—your own family—looked at you like a stranger.
"It's me," you said, voice shaking. "It's—" But you couldn't say your name. Couldn't make yourself speak it, as if the bond had stolen even that.
"I think you'd better go," your father said, not unkindly. "We don't have extra food to spare for travellers."
Travellers. They thought you were a traveller.
You turned and walked out, numb, and didn't stop walking until you reached the forest, until you were deep enough in that the village sounds faded to nothing.
Then you collapsed against a tree and screamed.
Screamed rage and grief and frustration, screamed until your throat was raw, until the sound became more animal than human.
When you finally stopped, Sukuna was there.
Not manifesting from shadows this time. Just there, solid and present, as if he'd been waiting.
"It's time," he said quietly.
"Not yet. The moon isn't full yet. You said I had until—"
"The bond is complete." He moved closer and knelt in front of you. "Your family doesn't remember you. The village is forgetting. There's nothing left to hold you to that world. You're already gone from it, little one. You're just clinging to a corpse."
"They are to you. And you to them." All four of his hands came up, cradling your face, wiping away tears you hadn't realised you were shedding. "Come home. Stop torturing yourself. Come home to me."
"I don't have a home," you said brokenly.
"You do." He pressed his forehead to yours. "Here. With me. In my domain. You've always had it. You just weren't ready to accept it."
You closed your eyes, felt the mark on your skin pulse in time with your heartbeat, felt Sukuna's presence in your blood like a second soul, and felt the bond pulling tight and tighter until there was no space left between you.
"What do I have to do?" you whispered.
"Just stop resisting. Stop fighting. Let go of what you were and embrace what you're becoming." His voice was soft, almost tender. "Let me pull you through."
Through. Not to. Through.
Because you weren't going to his world. You were going to exist in the space between worlds, the liminal realm where curses lived, where the bond had been pulling you all along.
"No. The transformation is already complete. This is just... the final step. Letting yourself exist fully in both places. Human world and cursed world. Mortal and immortal. Yours and mine."
You took a shaking breath. Let it out. Took another.
Then you opened your eyes, met his gaze—all four burning points of attention—and said, "Alright. Take me home."
He smiled, both mouths curving in identical expressions of satisfaction and something that might have been relief.
Not the bite from that first night. A real kiss, claiming and possessive and surprisingly gentle. His lips were warm, and you could taste copper and smoke and something sweeter underneath. The kiss deepened, and you felt the bond flare bright and burning, felt it wrap around you like chains made of light, felt it pull you apart and remake you and pull you somewhere else entirely.
The mortal world disappeared.
You fell through darkness that wasn't dark but full of colours you had no names for, fell through space that wasn't space but the gaps between moments, and fell for an eternity that lasted less than a heartbeat.
Then you were standing in the bone temple, solid and present and more real than you'd ever been in any dream.
Sukuna stood in front of you, all four hands still touching you—one on your face, one on your waist, one tangled in your hair, and one pressed over your heart.
You looked down at yourself. The marks covered every inch of visible skin now, intricate and beautiful. Your clothes had changed too—no longer the simple homespun dress but something that looked like it had been woven from shadows and starlight, flowing and dark and perfectly fitted.
You looked like you belonged here. In this impossible temple, in this space between worlds.
You looked like a queen of curses.
"How do you feel?" Sukuna asked.
You took stock. Your body felt the same but different—lighter, stronger, more present. Your senses were even sharper than they had been. You could feel the temple around you, could sense the vast domain beyond it, and could perceive the threads of cursed energy that wove through everything like an invisible web.
"I feel..." You paused, searching for the right word. "Awake. Like I've been asleep my whole life and just now opened my eyes."
"Yes." He looked satisfied. "That's exactly right. You're fully conscious now. Fully present. No more half-existence."
You turned in his arms, looking around the temple with new eyes. It was even more magnificent than you'd realised, every surface carved with intricate patterns, every shadow hiding depths you could now perceive.
"Can I go back?" you asked. "To the mortal world?"
"Yes. You exist in both places now. You can walk between them at will." His arms tightened slightly. "But you can't stay there. Not for long. And they still won't see you. Won't remember you. You're a ghost to them now."
You nodded slowly. You'd expected that. Had already mourned it.
"And this?" You gestured to the temple, to the domain beyond. "This is home now?"
"This is home," Sukuna confirmed. "Our home. Yours and mine."
The word settled into your chest, heavy and warm and right.
You turned back to face him fully and reached up to touch his face—something you'd never dared to do before. His skin was warm under your palm, the marks raised slightly, textured like embroidery.
"I'm yours," you said. Not a question. Not a complaint. Just a statement of fact.
"Yes." His lower set of hands came up to cover yours. "And I'm yours. The binding goes both ways, remember? You're not my possession, little one. You're my equal. My partner. My—"
He stopped and seemed to struggle with the word.
"You're what?" you prompted.
All four eyes met yours, and there was something vulnerable in them, something almost afraid.
"My heart," he said finally, quietly. "I didn't have one before you. Didn't need one. But the bond... it gave me something to protect. Something to care for. Something that could be lost." His hands tightened on yours. "You're my heart. And that's terrifying."
The admission hung between you, raw and honest.
You leaned in, slowly, giving him time to pull away if he wanted.
You kissed him, soft and deliberate, and felt the bond sing between you, felt it settle into place like it had been waiting for this moment all along.
When you pulled back, Sukuna was looking at you with an expression you'd never seen before—unguarded, open, almost tender.
"Welcome home," he said again, softer this time.
And standing there in a temple made of bones, in a domain outside of time, bound to a curse that had claimed your body and soul, you realised something.
The village had forgotten you. Your family had let you go. Your mortal life had ended.
But here, in the spaces between worlds, in the arms of a monster who'd somehow become more real to you than anything else, you'd found something you hadn't even known you were searching for.
You'd found where you belonged.
The bond pulsed warm in your blood, and you smiled.
Time moved differently in Sukuna's domain. Days could pass in what felt like hours, or hours could stretch into what felt like weeks. You stopped trying to track it, stopped trying to maintain any connection to the mortal world's rhythm.
You learnt to navigate the domain, to walk through its impossible corridors and ever-shifting landscapes. You learnt to perceive cursed energy the way Sukuna did, to see the threads that bound everything together, and to understand the vast and terrible beauty of the cursed world.
You learnt to use power—not the same way Sukuna did, all destruction and domination, but in your own way. You could heal curses that were injured, soothe spirits that were distressed, and mediate disputes between entities that had been fighting for centuries. Where Sukuna ruled through fear and strength, you ruled through something else. Something that might have been compassion or might have been a deeper understanding of what it meant to be bound and broken and remade.
The courtiers began to call you Queen. Not because Sukuna commanded it, but because they recognised what you were—his equal, his balance, his other half.
Sometimes you visit the mortal world. Walked invisibly through your old village, watched your family go about their lives. Your sister's pregnancy had progressed; she had a healthy daughter, whom she named something that hurt to hear because it was almost your name, but not quite. Your parents grew older, their faces lining with age and contentment. The village continued to prosper, blessed by Sukuna's lingering magic, unaware of the price that had been paid for their salvation.
You didn't miss it. Didn't long to return to that small, constrained existence.
But you remembered it. Honoured it. Let it inform who you were becoming in this new, vast, impossible life.
Sukuna found you one evening (or what passed for evening in the domain) standing at one of those impossible windows, watching the mortal world spin below.
"Do you regret it?" he asked, coming to stand beside you. "The choice you made?"
You considered the question seriously. "No. I regret the necessity of it. I regret that it had to happen the way it did. But the choice itself?" You turned to look at him. "No. I don't regret choosing you."
Something in his expression softened. He reached out, pulled you against his chest, and you went willingly, fitting yourself against him like you'd been designed for that exact purpose.
"I would do it differently," he admitted quietly. "If I could. I would give you more time. More choice. I would be less..." He paused, searching for the word.
"Impatient," he corrected. "I saw what I wanted, and I took it. Didn't consider what it would cost you. Didn't care what it would cost you." His arms tightened. "I care now. If that matters."
You stood there together, watching worlds spin and shift, and you thought about bindings and choices and the strange, twisted path that had led you here.
You thought about the girl you'd been—desperate and frightened and willing to trade anything for the people she loved.
You thought about the creature you were becoming—powerful and strange and bound to something monstrous.
And you thought about the space between those two states, the liminal existence you now inhabited, neither fully human nor fully cursed but something new, something unprecedented.
"The bond doesn't kill," you said softly, remembering Sukuna's words from that first night. "It binds."
"Forever," Sukuna agreed.
And in the temple made of bones, in the domain outside of time, in the arms of the King of Curses who'd claimed you and been claimed in return, you felt the bond pulse warm and constant in your blood.
And somehow, impossibly, that was enough.
The mark on your skin glowed softly in the twilight, and you smiled.
'Forever' sounded just right.
𑣲 likes, reblogs, comments, and follows are always appreciated and really motivate me.
