Jujutsu Kaisen: False Dawn

Ren woke up on his mat, the dull light of morning slipping through the thin curtains. For a moment, his limbs refused to move. His mind wandered.

Then, a slow smile stretched across his face.

He remembered what he did last night.

"I actually did it…" he muttered to himself, eyes squinting at the ceiling like it held some cosmic joke he wasn't yet in on. "I forced a curse… to agree to a two-way binding vow."

He laughed—a little too loud, a little too unhinged.

The memory was vivid. The feeling of Kai2's perception entering his mind, the way the world had shifted and twisted, the honesty of it. The pulse of cursed energy through Red Stitch. The trembling resistance. The raw connection.

Ren rubbed his temple.

"Okay, focus…"

Now that the rush was gone, what had really happened?

Red Stitch, as a technique, was supposed to be used like threads—constructs of cursed energy that responded to Ren's will. But they weren't just weapons or traps now. No. Somehow, they served as direct conduits between him and curses. A link.

Red Stitch could connect to a curse's core—and when Ren ran his cursed energy through it, the curse responded like a marionette. It was flawed, sure. Flawed and inefficient. But it worked.

Barely.

Kai2 had only been a weak grade 4 curse, but even then, Ren could hold control for maybe thirty seconds—max—before his cursed energy began to shred itself trying to maintain the connection.

Still, it was enough.

Enough to cheat.

Enough to force a curse to make a binding vow.

That power alone…?

That was terrifying.

But Ren wasn't foolish enough to celebrate too much. The cheat had drawbacks. Big ones.

Problem One: The cursed energy drain. Too much for too little. It wasn't sustainable in a real fight.

Problem Two: It only worked on curses weaker than Ren. A stronger curse would resist or even lash back.

Problem Three: It only worked on curses. Red Stitch couldn't link to humans the same way. He'd tried. They didn't react. It just felt like tapping them with a wire that didn't exist.

"Red Stitch isn't made for curse control," he whispered. "It's not a leash. It's a thread. A link."

Still, he had bent that link into something useful.

The cheat was possible. Not great. Not perfect. Not scalable.

But possible.

And yet—even with all those drawbacks—he had done something no one else in this world had.

He sat up slowly, wincing as his back cracked.

Kai2 lay motionless on the mat across from him. The fish-curse wasn't floating anymore. It twitched occasionally, barely conscious.

Ren frowned and grabbed the edge of his hoodie, wiping his mouth.

"Yeah, I guess forcing a two-way vow really took it out of you too."

He got to his feet and stepped away. Today, he would let Kai2 rest.

Instead, Ren did what had become his ritual.

He began training.

The same cursed energy drills he had been running for weeks. But something was different now. Something subtle.

As he flowed cursed energy to his palms and pushed it down into his forearms, he could feel… rhythm. Patterns.

Like seeing the threads in fabric for the first time. A flaw here. An overflow there. Pressure building in one direction, leaking in another.

Last night's cursed vision had changed him.

It wasn't about raw knowledge anymore. It was about perception.

Now he could feel what was wrong.

"I've been wasting so much," Ren muttered, furrowing his brow. "All this time… it was slipping through my fingers."

He took a deep breath, slowed his output, and focused on stabilizing the cursed energy on his right hand.

This time, it held longer. Cleaner. It shimmered around his fist like a dim red flame. The threads of Red Stitch curled slightly with it, responding like tendrils in water.

He smiled again.

"You're learning."

For the next two hours, Ren trained like a madman.

Shifting cursed energy into different parts of his body. Holding it. Releasing it. Shaping it through muscle movement. Every breath became a lesson. Every misstep, a discovery.

And then—time for phase two.

He revisited his old binding vows.

The ones that helped him train faster.

Like the one-minute cursed energy boost.

"For one minute, my cursed energy output is increased, but the cost is doubled, and I cannot stop the flow."

That vow, once brutal, was now tolerable. The boost felt more responsive. More efficient.

He wrote a few new variations in his notebook:

- "For 10 seconds, cursed energy sensitivity is tripled. Drawback: dizziness for 30 seconds after."

- "For the next 30 seconds, Red Stitch can stretch 5 meters. Drawback: cursed energy will leak steadily for the next hour."

- "For the next minute, cursed energy will forcibly wrap my right hand. Drawback: no fine control during this time."

Each one was a lesson. Each one gave him feedback.

He wasn't just training anymore.

He was researching.

Even his body was adapting. His stamina was slowly increasing. His cursed energy reserves—while still weak—were more efficient now. Compact. Less wasted.

He sat down again on his mat, drenched in sweat, red strings twitching between his fingers like puppeteer threads.

Kai2 still hadn't moved.

Ren sighed.

"I get it. You're out for the day."

He leaned back, letting the ceiling come into focus again.

The memory of those 10 seconds… that cursed sight…

The things he saw. The way energy clung to emotion. How every object had a residue of human suffering or sorrow or joy.

It wasn't just power. It was a story. Memory. History.

"I think I understand now," he said aloud. "Cursed energy is the soul's record."

He reached out with his fingers and called Red Stitch.

A few flickering threads danced into his palm, soft as breath.

"I saw it through your eyes, Kai2," he whispered.

"And now… I think I'm ready to go deeper."