ꜱᴜʙᴊᴜɢᴀᴛᴇᴅ | [ᴛᴏᴊɪ ᴢᴇɴ'ɪɴ 𝙭 ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ 𝙭 ᴠᴀʀɪᴏᴜꜱ]

Pact

Trigger Warning: blood; self-sacrifice; self-harm (only to an extent)

The influence of the old house was unwholesome.

They were not alone. On the outskirts of the room, skulking noisemly, was a young man somewhere in his late teens to early twenties, a slick mop of straw blond hair combed back. His sullen eyes darted fanatically back and forth between his grandmother and the broken body of Y/N in Toji's strapping arms. He looked like a famished jackal who hadn't had its fill in months.

Toji's lip drew back in portent, exposing his teeth like an apex predator fending off the scavenger.

Behind the crone lay a slab of slate like a monolith of indistinct geometry, casting long, vague shadows under the glaring orange gleam of thousands of drifting candles suspended just barely from the surface of the flooring. It lingered an inch off of the floor boards, defying gravity.

Some quantum levity hexcraft shit...

The crone gestured inconspicuously towards it with a spindly, deadened hand.

"Hngh,"-she breathed, the slits of her eyes glowing with a quasi-hypnotic pulse-"Place her on the alter."

Toji had never seen her eyes before, his forest green irises contracted as his gaze came down heavy lidded in revulsion. But nevertheless, he closed the gap with one powerful stride to gently lay down the girl upon the cold slate.

Y/N's breath was just barely audible, expiring almost, her leaden body more cadaver than extant - but upon the contact, her hollows and curves flickered. Objects such as these held within them strange, dwimmer properties and Y/N's reaction to the contact was an ominous sign that the alter was clearly channeling ancient powers and long forgotten theurgy through her veins.

"Strip her down."-she rasped throatily.

Toji's gaze narrowed so sharply, the airspace glitched.

"Tch, is that necessary?"-he grunted.

The crone clicked her tongue, the sound of it was horribly moist.

A malignant leer rippled onto her face, those prodigious bulging yellow eyes of hers glinting, scintillating with secret knowing - it was as if she could see right through him, past his hard exterior, past the iron cages of his burnt out heart and into the bottomless recesses of his soul.

There was no denying his mind hadn't drifted hungrily to the thought of stripping her naked.

But not like this.

"Do you doubt my authority here, in my realm, Toji Zen'in?"-she chided.

Toji Zen'in, Toji Zen'in, why did this bitch have to emphasize his name in every phrase she spoke?

There would come a day where he would erase even the very memory of the Zen'in family name from his very being and rip it from the fibers of his body, obliterate it from his mind...

"Heh, you better not be bullshitting me. Because I will fucking sunder you apart if ya are."-he sing-songed.

The evil, sardonic, and seemingly unmotivated grin of the beldame set Toji's skin crawling in execration.

"Just unclothe her Toji Zen'in. Or I will have my grandson do it in your place."

The nebulous blur of the blond youngster came into focus as he sidled closer, loitering just barely out of Toji's reach.

Or so he believed.

Vein twitching in his temple, Toji flexed his rippling muscles. He cracked his neck. His lip curled again, stretching out his scar. Toji could feel the skin of the disfeature straining, almost ripping. His forest green irises shimmered as his gaze traveled over the length of Y/N's fragile frame.