Chapter 1

Confusion

The boy blinked blearily, glazed eyes peering at the gray above as if fluttering open for the first time. The sky was a blurry mess, it made Killua furrow his eyebrows in a confused frown as his vision took much too long to focus.

Distantly, he felt something nudging him, reluctant yet firm as if poking roadkill to confirm whether it is indeed deceased. The touch was cold, almost slimy, and made him shudder.

Normally, retribution would be swift and lethal, but Killua could barely get his eyelids to obey him as it was and the rest of his body felt like dead weight, as if he had been put under with the world's strongest anesthesia.

But that wasn't possible. Killua had already become resistant to A-234 when he was 5, courtesy of his doting big brother.

Painfully slowly, sensation in his limbs tingled back to life starting with his toes and traveling up his body. Thunder rumbled overhead as Killua's sight finally returned, followed by a sudden crash of anxiety, instincts screaming at him tomove.

There it was, silhouetted against the sky, inhuman, grotesque, towering at ten meters tall. The flashing storm clouds revealed its misshapen, mangled features, twisted up face and mutilated musculature. The monster crouched down, its tendrils creeping up the boy's legs, causing the grass beneath it to rot and die.

An unaligned maw twice as big as its body jarred open, unsheathing rows of jagged, mismatching fangs, exuding a malevolent miasma that put Chimera Ants to shame.

Killua's gaze turned hollow,

The air pulsed with chilling killing intent, fingernails expanded and sharpened within a fraction of a second.

A flash of lightning and burst of magenta liquid comprised a fraction of that.

Then the creature's rotting flesh was shorn apart flew in in all directions as if thrown in an open blender.

Killua stared down at the bloodied stump with contempt, flicking purple ooze off his soaking arms with a grimace. "That was sloppy."

He exhaled, letting his aura coat him and expand as he used gyo to observe the corpse of the monster as it began to transform to dust. He still could not use En, and so had to be doubly watchful for any sign of retribution from his fallen foe.

'What the hell was that? A Chimera Ant? . . . No.'

With his Nen enhancing his senses, the ex-assassin became aware of them. more of these strange creatures, hiding in the shadows, but clearly much smaller and weaker than the one he had just killed. He could see them just fine even without gyo, which implied a Conjuration ability. However…

'They definitely aren't just conjured.'

A strange miasma filled the air, coating his senses like an unwanted layer of grime. It was twisted, felt unnatural, more depraved than any Nen Killua had even encountered. In fact, he doubted it was Nen to begin with, unless it was all part of some elaborate Nen ability. But Killua doubted that. Each creature had slightly distinctive signatures, and all of them were twisted beyond anything human.

Killua scoffed, rubbing his temple. Whatever it was, it was making his migraine worse. The fact he couldn't remember how he had ended up here or the last few days did not ease matters.

Ruffled, Killua noticed he was in an alleyway behind a big warehouse, he could see towering lights in the background. As silent as the breeze, Killua leapt and made it to the third floor, far from his best but good enough.

He ricocheted off walls and platforms til he was at the roof of the warehouse. Continuing up nearby buildings that become taller and taller until reaching a satisfying vantage point near the top of a skyscraper, where he crouched and activated zetsu, blending into the shadows.

To his chagrin, the effort had him panting, his head throbbing harder. For whatever reason, he was way off his game.

The chilled breeze fluttering his clothes made him belatedly realize that his shirt was riddled with rips and barely staying on his shoulders. Killua looked at a window to his left to appraise himself with a double take.

The tattered remains of his white shirt were almost caked in crimson, his silver locks a similar reddened mess. His face was not much better, congealed blood costing his forehead and mouth. And yet, Killua could not see nor feel any injuries. Yet he could tell from experience that this dried blood was his own, his childhood mithridatism training had imbued it with the faint but distinctive scent and aftertaste of poison.

"What the hell?" Tearing his gaze away with a gulp, Killua looked down at the sprawling city below. Skyscrapers filled the skyline as far as the eye could see, rivaling Yorknew City in its extravagance.

However, Killua knew that Yorknew City had no Kukuroo-like mountain in the background, and the city's characteristic desert and river were nowhere to be found.

"Where the fuck am I?"

"According to Intel, the cursed spirit here is at least Grade I, caution is advised."

"I guess that's the least you could expect from a place like an abandoned asylum."

"Salmon."

"It's been about two hundred years since it was active, so the negative emotions are not as potent as they used to be. Still, be on the lookout for any unreported cursed spirits."

"You got it, Ijichi-san."

"Salmon roe."

"Emerge from darkness blacker still. Purify that which is impure."

The bespectacled man's face pinched in mild anxiety as the veil of cursed energy arose and obscured his view of the students, expanding in a massive dome that enshrouded the premises.

Despite decades in the Jujutsu Sorcery business, the reflexive worry for his comrades and students in the field had never quite left him.

"Ijichi-san."

Ijichi blinked, frowning.

He had expected to wait longer, but here they were, Panda and Inumaki walking out of of the barrier not even five minutes after walking in, identical looks of mild confusion.

"We cleared out the area. There were a lot of the curses of the Grade 4 variety, but," Panda hesitated.

"What about the Grade I?"

"We couldn't find one."

Ijichi looked on as Gojo lazily surveyed the scene. He knew that despite the obnoxiously thick blindfold, Gojo's eyes saw things he could only attempt to comprehend.

Despite his carefree and whimsical demeanor, to Ijichi, Satoru Gojo was infinitely more intimidating than any Cursed Spirit in existence. The sentiment was quite common.

"That settles it." Gojo announced with a clap of his hands, startling Ijichi from his thoughts.

"So the First Years were right?"

Gojo shook his head. "Oh no, Intel wasn't wrong."

Ijichi frowned. He hated having to probe the man to get to the point. "So there was a Grade I? Did it hide itself from Panda and Inumaki?"

"No no, I doubt there's a Grade I capable of hiding from those two." Gojo smiled, preening almost like a proud parent.

Then that smile turned jagged, and Ijichi instinctively tensed.

"Someone just beat them to the punch." Gojo hooked a finger into the side of his blindfold, allowing the ethereal glow of the Six Eye to peek out for a moment as he spared a cursory glance at the ground. "And whoever it was, they were thorough. There's barely any surviving residue."

' "Whoever"?'Ijichi paled. 'Curse Users? Then-'

"Come now, I can hear your fretful thoughts from here. " Gojo waggled his finger obnoxiously close to Ijichi's face.

"It's not the intuitive culprits. I can almost guarantee that." Gojo pulled the blindfold back over his eye.

"In fact, I wonder…" a hint of gravity crept into his blithe persona, "whether Cursed Energy was even involved."

Author's note: I'm back! Kind of...

I've had this crossover idea swimming around my mind ever since JJK started. I loved JJK, but the direction Gege took post Shibuya kind of disappointed me, I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. I feel it didn't live up to its potential.

JJK has ended, inversely HxH is back with a bang, Togashi seeming healthier and more productive than in years. I figured this is the best timing to start on this.

Updates will probably be slow. I'm a worn down, pseudo-nihilistic med student now, so that can't really be helped.

Between chapters, I suggest the Dark Continent(HxH/JJK) and Hunter x Justice(HxH/Batman+DC), both are incredible reads and I hope this work can live up to them.

Timeline wise, Cursed Light takes place roughly around the events of Jujutsu Kaisen: 0 and during the Succession Contest in HxH.

I am rusty btw, so any feedback is coveted