"Plop..."
Only when the clear sound of dripping water reached Itadori Yuji's ears did he slowly awaken, as though only now realizing what had happened, and open his bleary eyes.
"Where is this...?"
He looked around blankly, feeling as though he had arrived in hell.
Beneath him stretched an endless expanse of bloody water, like a crimson lake, filled with the soft patter of water.
Above him was a sky of the same hue, wreathed in clouds of scarlet mist.
And he himself lay in that bloody water as though floating on its surface, yet he did not feel soaked at all.
Itadori Yuji instinctively held his forehead and tried hard to recall what had happened before he lost consciousness.
He remembered that he had been in Shibuya with Nanami Kento and Fushiguro Megumi. After overcoming countless obstacles, they had headed toward the third curtain in Shibuya.
But afterward, they had been attacked by a man dressed like a monk.
The man had first ambushed Fushiguro Megumi, severely injuring him and leaving him unable to continue fighting.
Then he had summoned Cursed Spirits and manipulated gravity, crushing Itadori Yuji and Nanami Kento so thoroughly that they could not resist at all.
Nanami Kento had called him Geto Suguru.
Yet the man had looked at him with an extremely strange gaze and attacked him.
Though he had resisted with all his strength, he had still been defeated and eventually fallen unconscious.
"So... was I killed? Am I in hell now?"
The murmur had barely left his lips when it was answered by a low, mocking laugh.
"It does not matter if you think of this place as hell. After all, my Innate Domain is indeed equivalent to hell for you."
That voice, so familiar that Itadori Yuji hated it, swept away