Not the sharp, alarming kind—the quiet aftermath kind. It clung to the silk screens and the tatami mats, mixing with incense someone had burned too much of, too fast. Servants stood frozen against the walls like decorative shadows. The midwives had stopped breathing properly somewhere between the first cry and the first words Lady Sizuna had spoken to her son.

And what words those were.

You'd been near the door when it happened. Uraume's apprentice. Nobody important. The kind of person noble households looked through the way light passes through paper screens—present, useful, invisible.

But then the bundle had been shoved toward you. Not gently. Not with ceremony. A desperate, trembling midwife had simply needed to put the baby somewhere that wasn't near the woman who'd just called him crooked.

And now here you were.

Holding the heir of the King of Curses like he was made of something precious.

Four tiny arms. Four red eyes blinking open one at a time, confused by the cold, by the brightness, by the simple audacity of being born. The little mouth on his stomach yawned when his real mouth yawned, and both were equally toothless and equally furious about it.

He was the most ridiculous, impossible, beautiful thing you'd ever seen.

Across the room, Sukuna hadn't moved.

He'd gone still the moment his wife's disgust had filled the air. The kind of still that made seasoned warriors forget how to breathe. His four eyes were fixed on the scene, but not on Sizuna. Not anymore.

They were fixed on you.

On the way you adjusted Riyo's fourth arm when it got pinned beneath his body. On the careful support of his head. On the finger you traced across one absurdly chubby cheek like you were memorizing the shape of him.

And then the baby's tiny hand closed around your finger.

All four of his eyes focused on your face for the first time, and something in your expression changed. Softened. Warmed. Became something dangerously close to love.

Sukuna's jaw tightened.

Sizuna had carried this child for months. Had felt him kick inside her. Had been given the gift of carrying something so utterly, devastatingly like his father—and she'd rejected him within minutes.

You'd known him for minutes.

And you were already looking at him like you'd commit treason for him.

The silence in the room stretched. Grew teeth.

Somewhere behind you, Lady Sizuna's voice cut through it like a blade.

Several servants flinched. One midwife made a sound like a wounded animal. Uraume, standing near the far wall with their hands folded inside their sleeves, did not move—but their eyes flickered toward Sukuna.

He still hadn't moved.

But something in the air had changed. Thickened. The candles nearest him guttered, though there was no wind.

Riyo squirmed against your chest, unsettled by the shift in atmosphere. His lower lip trembled. All four of his hands opened and closed uselessly, searching for warmth, for comfort, for anyone who might make the world feel less enormous.