The Record

A thousand years ago, sorcery had a golden age. The Heian era. The age when cursed energy ran strongest, when sorcerers were monsters and monsters were kings. Two names from that age never stopped casting shadows: Ryomen Sukuna, the undisputed King of Curses, and the court mystics whose names became legends, among them Abe no Seimei, master of the dead. The golden age ended. The monsters did not. They waited.

One of them learned to wait better than all the rest. A sorcerer whose technique lets him swap bodies and live forever, stitching his plan across a thousand years of stolen faces. Today he wears the body of Suguru Geto. The world knows him as Kenjaku. His dream is simple and monstrous: force humanity’s cursed energy to evolve, whatever it costs.

Two things stood in his way. The first was Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer alive. At Shibuya, on Halloween night, Kenjaku baited him into the one weapon that works on a man who cannot be beaten: the Prison Realm, a cube that seals rather than kills. Gojo fought a sea of curses, won, and was sealed anyway. The strongest is now a prisoner in a box, and the box has only one key.

The second obstacle was the key itself. An ancient Heian sorcerer called Angel, reincarnated into a girl named Hana Kurusu, the two of them sharing one body as equals. Angel’s technique, Jacob’s Ladder, erases any curse, any technique, any seal. Including the Prison Realm’s. In another telling of this story, Angel reaches the heroes and Gojo walks free. Not in this one. Kenjaku found her first. Caged, hidden, held. With one capture he locked three doors: Gojo stays buried, the heroes’ last hope is gone, and the payment he owes an old monster stays in his pocket.

Because Kenjaku did not return from the Heian age alone. To populate his game, he reincarnated the dead of the golden age, and the oldest of them, Abe no Seimei, came back carrying the Shisha no Sho, the Book of the Dead, a relic that can raise armies from the slain. The book sleeps at half power. Only one thing can wake it fully: Angel. Kenjaku promised her to Seimei as payment for his service. Until that debt is paid, the curse-king of the Heian era serves the Games, and waits.

Then Shibuya gave the world one more ghost. Kenjaku’s curse user, Granny Ogami, resurrected the most feared assassin of the modern age as her puppet: Toji Fushiguro, the Sorcerer Killer, a man born with no cursed energy at all and lethal beyond reason because of it. The puppet broke its strings. Toji killed Ogami, carved through Shibuya, crushed a Disaster curse inside its own domain, and then crossed blades with a boy commanding shadows. His son. What happened in that moment, the Codex will tell when its seal breaks. What matters here: in this telling, Toji walked out of Shibuya alive, owned by no one, and the colonies are about to learn what that means.

With Gojo sealed and the key caged, Kenjaku declared his game. The Culling Games. A barrier over Japan, carved into colonies. Every sorcerer inside is a player, willing or not. Points for killing. A withering death for refusing to play. And the cursed energy of a terrified, slaughtering population rising exactly the way Kenjaku always wanted.

And in the opening days of the Games, the worst thing possible happened. The King of Curses had spent months caged in the body of Yuji Itadori, a vessel too strong-willed to steer. Sukuna does not break cages. He waits for them to rust. When grief and betrayal finally shattered the will of Megumi Fushiguro, Sukuna made his move: he forced his way into the broken boy, seized the Ten Shadows technique, and buried Megumi’s soul alive inside his own body. The boy is still in there. He cannot reach the surface. The King of Curses now walks the colonies wearing the face of Toji Fushiguro’s son.

That is the world you wake up in. The strongest sorcerer is a corpse in a box. The only key is in the warden’s pocket. The King of Curses hunts in a stolen body. The golden age of monsters is bleeding back through every crack in the barrier.

No one is coming to save you. You are a sorcerer of the Culling Games.

Welcome to Arcbound. The first arc starts now.