His back hit the twisted metal of a shattered storefront, chest heaving. The air here was cooler, but not by much. He tapped the hilt of Nightfall, dropping the katana back into the System inventory.
"That was..." Ren swallowed hard, throat raw with ash. "Stupid."
A sleeve dragged across his forehead, wiping away sweat and soot. Still, the golden notification pulsed faintly at the edge of his vision.
One thought dismissed it, and the System Points hit his balance in a rush. Gooseflesh still prickled his arms from Sukuna's presence. He looked down at his empty hands, waiting for the adrenaline to burn off.
"Not even close," he rasped.
Complete Heavenly Restriction gave him a body that could keep pace with monsters — but that's all it gave him. Against that level of jujutsu he wasn't fighting, he was surviving, and only because Sukuna hadn't bothered to step on him yet. He needed to close that gap, fast.
He flicked the interface open again, just long enough to catch the number attached to the Ashes of the Volcano achievement. Zeroes on zeroes.
"That's why," he muttered, and closed the grid. "Worth it."
A boom rolled through the ground under his boots, west of him. Sukuna and whatever Megumi had summoned were already taking the skyline apart.
Ren didn't wait to watch. He shoved off the storefront and turned east, toward the veil's edge, breaking into a sprint.
...
The pavement shuddered under Maki's boots, hard enough to send broken glass skittering and dancing across the asphalt.
Behind her, civilians pressed close together, shuffling forward in short, uneven steps, someone's breath catching audibly every few seconds.
On the left flank, Kusakabe. Taking the rear, Panda gently nudged a terrified businessman forward, his massive frame shielding the stragglers from looking back at the nightmare they were leaving behind.
A shadow detached itself from the gloom of a collapsed storefront.
Maki's stance widened instantly. She whipped the heavy red staff up, the iron links snapping taut.
"It's just me," a rough voice called out.
Ren stepped into the dim glow of a flickering streetlamp. He looked like he'd been dragged behind a truck. His clothes were singed, his face smeared with soot, but his pace was steady.
Maki lowered her weapon. Her shoulders dropped, just slightly. The rest of her stayed flat.
She stepped out of the formation and met him halfway, her eyes doing a fast, clinical sweep of him — limbs intact, nothing bleeding that mattered, just cuts and a heavy coat of ash.
"You took your time," she muttered.
"Got held up," Ren said, falling into step beside her.
Before Maki could press him for more, the western skyline lit up.
It wasn't fire. It was a blinding, unnatural flash of pure energy that bleached the dark clouds above Shibuya white. A second later the sound hit — a deafening, concussive boom that shattered the last of the windows on the block. Civilians dropped to the pavement, arms over their heads.
Kusakabe froze. He pulled the unlit cigarette back out from behind his ear and stared at the sky.
Panda stepped up beside Maki, one heavy paw shielding his eyes from the glare.
"Hey," Panda said, his voice dropping an octave. "What the hell is going on over there?"
The explosion barely touched Ren. He dragged a soot-stained sleeve across his forehead like he was just wiping off sweat.
"That's Sukuna."
Inumaki went rigid on the right flank, his hand freezing halfway to his collar.
"Sukuna," Panda repeated, staring at the swirling column of dust and debris tearing into the sky miles off. "Who's he fighting? Satoru?"
"Satoru's sealed," Ren said flatly. "He's fighting something else. Special Grade curse, maybe some kind of overpowered shikigami. Whatever it is, they're leveling the district block by block."
Kusakabe crushed the cigarette in his fist and let the tobacco fall to the asphalt.
"I'm not getting paid enough for this." His voice was tight, no humor in it at all. He grabbed the shoulder of the nearest frozen civilian and pushed him forward, gentle but firm. "Fuck this. We're leaving, right now. Anyone still standing in the center of Shibuya when that thing lands is already dead. Move!"
That did what asking nicely hadn't. The huddled group scrambled up, their shuffle breaking into a ragged, stumbling jog east.
Panda kept pace at the back, arms out wide to herd the stragglers. Inumaki sprinted ahead to scout the next intersection.
The shockwaves finally stopped rattling their teeth about three miles east of the station. Kusakabe called the halt at a gutted mid-rise office building. The glass doors were already blown out, but the concrete bones of the structure were solid.
Inside the dim lobby, the adrenaline crash hit everyone at once. Panda slumped onto a cracked leather reception sofa with a heavy, dusty sigh. Inumaki took up a quiet post by the shattered entrance, hands buried deep in his pockets. The civilians collapsed in a huddled mass near the center of the room, too terrified and exhausted to even whisper.
Maki didn't sit down.
She paced the length of the lobby twice, her boots crunching over broken glass. Her knuckles were stark white around the iron shaft of Playful Cloud. She glared out toward the burning horizon for a few seconds before turning on her heel and marching toward the fire stairs.
Ren watched her go, waited exactly thirty seconds, and followed.
He found her on a second-floor terrace. The wind up here carried the heavy, suffocating scent of ozone and pulverized concrete.
Maki stood at the edge of the railing, staring dead ahead at the white-hot glow bleaching the clouds over central Shibuya. She didn't look back when Ren's boots scraped against the concrete.
"This is a nightmare," Maki muttered, her voice tight with a volatile mix of anger and sheer disbelief. "Gojo is sealed. Sukuna is out there fighting god-knows-what and leveling city blocks just by breathing. It doesn't make any sense."
She turned to face him, the jagged burn scars on her cheek catching the dim light. "If we don't figure out a way to unseal Satoru right now, everyone is dead. The whole jujutsu world is done."