Acceptance

With Cross wounded by humans, the Simurians, who lump cursed spirits together with Kalyans, press Japan to halt all exorcisms. Once the sorcerers quietly take the work back up, the Rumelians catch on and demand Tokyo be surrendered as their own nation. Japan's refusal hardens the deadlock into a contest of single combat.

Keeping vigil at his brother's bed, Maru hears that Cross took a bullet when humans took his reach for a sword draw, and Osuki erupts at Jabaloma's praise for fear it suggests Cross is gone. Elsewhere Tsurugi learns Usami lies near death from his Cursed Speech recoil and cannot fathom a grade 1 sorcerer backfiring so severely, until Miyaguni reveals the power was aimed at Dabura, a calamity no rank can measure. A flashback shows Dabura barging into Tokyo, demanding who shot Cross, and ripping off Yakumaru's arm before Usami's Cursed Speech pinned him at the price of his ruined throat. Offering up his own life to spare his subordinates, Usami stirred a memory of Dura in Dabura, and the alien pulled back.

Halting exorcisms strikes Headquarters as impossible, since curses would soon spill beyond Tokyo, yet they consent to a one-month freeze that Mino's estimate permits. Come December the sorcerers slip back into nighttime hunts, never realizing Osuki picks up the dying curses from the Naunax and weeps. Branding the killings an international crime, the Simurians ratchet things up, and the deepening winter spawns fiercer curses that push sorcerer losses to record heights. Ordered by Dabura to stop listening, Osuki rounds on him, charging that a Deskunte cannot fathom Rumelian grief, a rebuke Dabura accepts.

In the end the Rumelians demand Tokyo's annexation for a homeland sworn to guard cursed spirits, threatening a Deskunte-style duel. Miyaguni holds that only Yuji Itadori could stand against Dabura, but Mino reaches for a recording instead, the voice of an aged Nobara Kugisaki, who discloses that Yuji slipped away after Hana Kurusu's funeral, turned immortal and worn down by a life without end. As Mino reckons all hope spent, Miyaguni teases one remaining card, and come January 2087 Dabura lays down his formal challenge while Japan puts forward Yuka Okkotsu as its champion, a charge she takes on. The chapter is gathered into Modulo Volume 2 and showcases Cursed Speech.