Please pay attention as this chapter has some dark themes; your well-being comes first.
TW: Genocide, Implied Child Death, War Crimes, Burning Alive, Graphic Descriptions of bad injuries and mutilations.
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The inner gate fell.
Harunobu heard it from across the courtyard, a splintering crack followed by the roar of timber collapsing inward. Then came the second sound: boots, dozens of them, advancing. He spat blood onto the stones. "Idiots," he rasped, not sure whether he meant the men who had opened the outer gates at dawn or himself for believing the inner barricades would hold longer than an hour. "Did they think they'd show mercy?"
The southern gate had been unbarred by a handful of fools who thought surrender might buy clemency. They had shouted that they were civilians, that there were children inside, that Nagoya-go was no threat, and Harunobu had watched from the wall as the Gojo cut them down first. Mercy was not part of the Gojo campaign.
Now the last barrier between the inner compound and the Gojo line had gone, and smoke poured in behind them, suffocating everything, burning lungs and stinging eyes. Harunobu ducked beneath a half-collapsed engawa as a war blast of cursed energy tore through the corridor behind him, ripping wood and sending roof tiles raining down. His lungs burned as his katana flashed out in a tight arc, gutting a Gojo retainer who had come too close right in the abdomen. He didn't wipe the blood from his face, didn't fix the soot stinging his eyes, or the strands of hair escaping his ponytail. He just kept going.
A farmer armed with a split bamboo spear ran past him and was immediately cut down by a Gojo swordsman mid-stride. Behind, the farmer's daughter screamed and tried to reach him, but someone struck her across the jaw with a cursed-energy reinforced fist, then dragged her by the hair toward the southern pyre.
Harunobu staggered back, coughing, hauling a half-conscious Zenin fighter from beneath a fallen beam with one arm. The man's legs were crushed to the bones and were useless. "Fall back," Harunobu muttered. "Crawl to the inner courtyard. And don't cluster."
They clustered anyway because panic made men stupid.
The southern wall had fallen at dawn, and from that first breach, everything had spiraled out of control. Too few defenders, too many structural points, too many noncombatants clogging every space meant for defense and retreat. The few Zenin fighters and sorcerers had been caught shamefully unprepared.
Harunobu had tried—kami, he had really tried—to set controlled burns to deny the Gojo space to advance, to collapse engawas and create funnels, but the Gojo were already inside the spine of the estate. And now—
Now he no longer counted the dead.
He moved through smoke and debris, shouting instructions, pushing the able-bodied toward the old quarter, not because he believed they could win; that illusion had burned away with the southern gate, but because there were still priorities.
The spear. The heir.
Kaoru would have flayed him for the order of those words; always save the people first, she would say. He agreed with her, but if the Mitsuboshi no Yari fell into Akiteru Gojo's hands, this would not end at Nagoya-go. It would reach the Zenin in Edo, sooner or later.
Harunobu cut down another Gojo retainer who came barreling through smoke; the man's throat opened under Harunobu's katana, leaving an arterial blood spray bright against ash. Harunobu pivoted and shoved a servant toward a side corridor. "Take the elders. Move."
An explosion rattled the floorboards under his feet. The eastern wing went up in a rush of flame, collapsing inward, and it turned lethally hot, the heat punching even through his leather armor. Somewhere behind him, someone screamed until the sound broke into coughing, then fell silent.
He rounded a corner and almost collided with a boy frozen in the inner hallway. The child was small, standing there with a bokken clutched in his hands as if it would be useful against Gojo sorcerers. He grabbed the boy by the collar of his kosode and hauled him into a recessed alcove where a storage room had partially collapsed. There was a hollow beneath fallen beams, a pocket not yet reached by flame and violence.
"Listen to me," Harunobu said, gripping the child's shoulders hard enough to leave bruises, because that was the only way a child would listen in that situation. "You do not move. You do not make a sound. Even if you hear screaming and even if you hear me, you stay here until it is completely silent."
The boy's lip trembled. "But—But my I lost my sister—"
Harunobu shoved him down into the gap and pulled a broken plank over the opening, leaving a slit for air. "Not a sound," he hissed. "Do you understand?"
The boy nodded quickly between sobs, eyes wide and wet.
Harunobu held his gaze a second longer, then turned away, tepped back into the engawa just as the Gojo line flooded in from the northern breach. They advanced in formation, too coordinated for an army sieging a stronghold of farmers and peasants.
A sorcerer at their rear slammed his fist in the ground, detonating a wave of cursed energy. His cursed technique rippled outward, creating an earthquake, and the ceiling above a knot of Zenin farmers collapsed, burying them. Harunobu lifted his katana overhead, reinforced with cursed energy, shielding himself from debris just as a woman ran past him with a toddler in her arms. He tried to grab her by her arm and yank her back, but it was too late; a Gojo soldier intercepted her, drove a spear clean through both bodies, then kicked them aside as if clearing brush.
Harunobu came close behind him and cut him down, but two more filled the gap immediately. He fell back step by step, slashing, parrying, shoving the last of his men toward the inner compound to defend what little remained of Nagoya-go's former inhabitants. Somewhere in the haze, he spotted a child's body crumpled beside a koi pond, half-submerged, his skin already swollen and blue. The child was small. Maybe eight. Maybe younger. Maybe the same age as Yoshinobu.
For a heartbeat, Harunobu saw his own son.
Oh right.
Far away, in Edo, Miyako should have given birth by now.
His fingers clenched around the hilt of his katana so hard his knuckles ached. Thank the kami, they were all in Edo, far from this.
Harunobu turned not toward where the last survivors were gathering. It was futile; Nagoya-go was gone anyway. But Tatsuhiro and the Mitsuboshi no Yari were the priorities and had to made it out no matter what. He rounded a corner to Lady Reika's former quarters and stopped, because in the charred remains of the inner garden, framed by smoke and flame, stood the architect of this ruin.
Akiteru Gojo.
Calm and untouched.
Around him, Gojo sorcerers were herding prisoners away, toward the southern pyre; a line of Zenin—men, women, children—were forced to kneel, and those who resisted were struck down where they knelt.
A man, Harunobu, recognized as one of the few remaining sorcerers inside Nagoya-go, rose into the air before Akiteru, his limbs thrashing as if seized by invisible hands. Akiteru had not lifted a finger; he just stood there with his hands behind his back. There was nothing in sight, but something was there. Harunobu, who had trained his perception to a blade's edge to compensate for the cursed technique he never had, felt them.
Phantom limbs? Invisible arms?
The air warped and distorted around the sorcerer's body. His shoulders jerked backward, and there was a terrible, cracking pop as both arms were torn free from their sockets. He screamed, high as blood hovered suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, outlining the shape of the invisible arms suspending him, before spattering across the stone. His legs twisted next, his knees snapping sideways, and bone puncturing skin. The body folded unnaturally with another wrenching pull, and the torso split at the waist. The two halves fell to the courtyard with fleshy thuds.
Akiteru did not move through any of it. No hand seals, no visible motion.
Harunobu had heard the rumors about Akiteru Gojo's cursed technique for years. Only a few ever survived long enough to describe it. Hands like wrathful temple statues, capable of crushing stone, of tearing men apart before they understood they were dead. Invisible arms, dozens of them; no one knew the exact number, and that uncertainty on a battlefield was the biggest disadvantage.
Some had compared his cursed technique to Senju Kannon, the thousand-armed bodhisattva of mercy. Harunobu stared at the man standing still in the smoke and flame, with blood misting the air around him and sliding down his invisible arms.
Mercy. Ridiculous.
There was nothing merciful here, and Akiteru was not a bodhisattva; he was a God of slaughter.
Akiteru turned his head at the sound of his boots scraping stone, and their eyes met across a courtyard carpeted in bodies. "You," he said, almost pleasantly. "You are Zenin-dono's personal retainer, aren't you?"
It wasn't a question, and Harunobu didn't answer. He raised his katana instead, stepping over the body of a boy who had died with his hands still bound together, even as every muscle in his body screamed at him to retreat, even as every scrap of instinct told him this was suicide.
Because every scrap of loyalty to Kaoru told him to stand.
Akiteru tilted his head, considering. "Tell me," he said lightly. "Where is the heir of Zenin-dono?"
Harunobu, of course, gave him nothing. Behind Akiteru, a Zenin child stumbled; a spear butt drove into his spine to correct the error. Harunobu's grip tightened on his sword until his knuckles whitened beneath soot and blood. Genocide; call it what it was.
Akiteru's smile deepened by a hair. "No answer?" he said. Around him, cursed energy pulsed, oily. The air bent as his invisible limbs flexed behind him, as if coiling before a strike. "Then perhaps you'll be more forthcoming about the Mitsuboshi no Yari."
Harunobu's heart slammed once, hard. He knows. How? No time to ask; he locked his stance, katana angled to guard both his body and approach to Lady Reika's quarters behind him. "Buddha," he said, eyes fixed on the man before him, "wouldn't drop a temple on a child's head."
Akiteru's mouth curved. "Buddha," he corrected, "has no place here."
As the Gojo head stepped forward, the world bent, and the phantom limbs snapped into motion.
The first attack came without warning, a wall of air and a blast of compressed force that tore toward Harunobu's skull. He twisted on instinct, in time to feel the pressure shearing past his ear and carving a deep gouge through the stone pillar behind him. Invisible and fast. Too fast. His counter came in the same breath; steel met the invisible resistance mid-arc. The sensation was the same as cutting flesh, only the flesh in question was invisible and hardened with cursed energy to the point of resisting even a blade. Harunobu felt it give slightly, the cursed matter compressing under impact, but it didn't budge.
Harunobu twisted out of that invisible arm way and landed hard, skidding backward with his chest heaving and his katana trembling. He recalibrated instantly and tried to lock on the invisible limbs not with sight but with sense. The distortion in the air told him what vision couldn't. And then—there. Subtle lines of cursed energy arcing out behind Akiteru.
Akiteru's brows lifted a fraction. "Ah," he said. "You can feel them. A perceptive swordsman. Rare."
Harunobu circled, breath steadying by force, pouring cursed energy into the blade of his katana.
The Gojo leader exhaled in disappointment. "What a waste." He raised one hand, and six katana, scattered across the bodies littering the courtyard, lifted into the air. They floated around him like petals of a blossoming lotus, each suspended by a single phantom limb. "Let's see," he murmured, "if your swordsmanship matches your perception."
The next slash came fast, and Harunobu ducked low, felt it slid just past his scalp. He pivoted and lunged, trying to shorten the distance, driving his katana at the gap he spotted along Akiteru's exposed ribs. No opening there; a phantom hand smashed into his wrist mid-strike, jarring his arm. He parried another blow by instinct—felt the shudder of force run through his bones—but the next hit him in the ribs like a hammer blow of pressure.
Harunobu staggered back to safety, breath hitched. A bone cracked; probably a rib, maybe two. No time to check it. He forced himself upright and his stance held even as blood poured from a slice along his side, soaking into the ruined cloth of his leather armor. He could feel the hidden limbs rippling through the cursed energy, reaching, waiting for the right moment to strike. Not six. Far more. Ten? Twelve? Kami, how many can he control at once? Akiteru was deliberately showing him just enough to make him second-guess his every move.
He could not win; he knew that. But he could delay, no, he had to. Because, behind him, twenty paces, maybe less, Lady Reika's engawa still stood, blackened but intact; and behind that, concealed deeper among collapsed rafters and rotting floorboards—
Hajime. Tatsuhiro. The Mitsuboshi no Yari.
Akiteru had not yet sensed them. Maybe he was still assuming the relic was locked inside a ceremonial vault, not hidden like contraband inside a dead woman's old quarters. If he sensed it, he would tear the place apart like a butcher gutting a pig.
Harunobu's jaw tensed. Not yet.
"Your stance is good. Wasteful lineage," Akiteru remarked lightly, as if they were trading compliments at a tea ceremony, not trying to kill each other. He twitched one of his real hand and the six katana suspended mid-air moved.
Harunobu barely twisted in time, as three blades dove low and three carved high, drawing a line across skin, causing blood that splattered the broken tiles underfoot. Kami, he was fast, faster than most. But Akiteru Gojo wasn't most. So, Harunobu did the only thing left; he charged, and for a fraction, Akiteru stilled, interested as he closed the distance with his katana arcing cleanly for the exposed throat.
Invisible arms wrapped him mid-stride before he could read. Waist. Wrists. Chest. Each crushing. The breath left his lungs in a violent exhale as he twisted and slashed blindly, nicking one of the suspended katana that rang like a temple bell struck. Then, a phantom limb drove into his side, and something tore where heat flooded his abdomen. Blood surged into his mouth as Harunobu hit the ground hard, rolled once, barely conscious. His left hand went numb, and his vision blurred at the edges.
He could hear, distantly, the pyre roaring, could hear children screaming until their voices broke, could hear a Gojo soldier laughing as someone begged. He forced himself upright on his knees and placed himself—again—between Akiteru and the damn crumbling engawa.
Focus. Focus, he told himself, grip tightening on the blade. Is this what you want her to find when she returns? Ash?
The blade trembled in his hand, and in the bloodied ruin of the garden, his gaze caught something small: a crooked stone lantern, scorched and half-standing. The same one Kaoru had cracked herself during one of their training match. Kaoru had been nine, and he had been training her in swordsmanship and the application of cursed energy to a blade to reinforce her durability and her cutting range. She had stuck the lantern stone and split it in half, then looked down at it as if it meant something. Like proof.
I broke it, she'd said, proud she'd finally been strong enough to leave a mark in the world.
Harunobu smirked despite the blood at his lips. Then let this be mine, he thought. Kaoru would come back to ruin, yes, but he would be damned if she returned to nothing.
"You're trembling," Akiteru noted with idle amusement.
"I'm breathing." Harunobu resisted the urge to look back at where Hajime and Tatsuhiro were hiding. "If you want trembling, you'll have to try harder, Gojo-dono."
Another snap of his cursed energy, and his katana was engulfed again, even with blood running freely down his side, soaking into the ground. He could feel the weight of Nagoya-go pressing behind him, generations of men and women who had built these walls, who had trained children in courtyards now slick with blood. The world narrowed to pressure and heat and the sound of his own pulse in his ears.
Akiteru tilted his head slightly, curious, almost, as he took a step forward. "How quaint," he said. "Dying for nothing."
Harunobu spat blood onto the stones between them. "Rot in hell."
Meanwhile—
Within the wreckage of Lady Reika's quarters, a very different kind of battle was unfolding.
Hajime crouched beside a splintered shoji, bare feet planted against splintered tatami, his cursed energy crackling and snapping along his skin in thin blue filaments. His cyan hair stood on end from static, and every muscle in his body leaned toward the noise outside.
He needed to be in it, not hiding. Out there, where it mattered. He hated waiting, hated hiding, hated more than anything...Being stuck inside a collapsing room babysitting some trembling noble brat who couldn't hold a weapon without looking like he was about to wet himself.
Tatsuhiro—kami help him—was absolutely useless. He clutched the Mitsuboshi no Yari as if it were a lifeline instead of a weapon. The tri-tipped golden spear was too long for him, too heavy, and he kept fidgeting with it like it might sprout legs and run if he loosened his grip.
Curled in the corner beside his aunt's scorched altar, he looked less like a clan heir and more like a shaking child clinging to a charm against thunder.
Hajime looked at him and saw everything he hated: privilege without scars. He turned away, grinding his teeth, and peered through the broken slats of the shōji.
Outside, Harunobu was still standing, but barely. His leather armor hung in strips, and his katana moved without hope, as the air around him flicked with distortion, compressed, as if something massive and invisible was pressing in from all sides.
Akiteru Gojo.
Hajime's jaw locked. He didn't know much about the man beyond the basics. Gojo clan head, patriarch, father of that loudmouthed white-haired idiot Kaoru, was suspiciously soft about. Seijiro Gojo smiled too much, talked too much, and had a face that practically begged to be punched. But Kaoru trusted him, which meant Hajime, against his instincts, had tolerated him.
His father? Different story. That was a man Hajime did not need permission to hate.
He reached instinctively for Nyoi slung across his back, but a clammy tug on his sleeve yanked him out of his thoughts.
"Sit down, idiot," Tatsuhiro hissed, voice trembling. "We're supposed to stay hidden. That was the order!"
"Yeah?" Hajime snapped, tearing his sleeve free from the trembling hands of the heir he was supposed to be protecting. "Orders change when your clan's being slaughtered."
Tatsuhiro tightened his grip on the spear, back pressed to the fractured wall. "Don't you get it? You'll only get in Kashimo-sama's way! He said to stay out of sight!"
"In the way?" Hajime barked a laugh that carried no real humor. He pointed toward the shōji with two fingers. "That old man's bleeding out for you. For you! The people you claim to lead are dying out there while you're in here clutching a stick and crying!"
"It's not for me," Tatsuhiro shot back, with thin, frantic sobs. "It's for the clan, for all of us—he's buying time! If the Gojo takes the spear, we're finished! You come from the street, you don't understand!"
"No," Hajime snapped, stepping into his space. "You don't understand." He jabbed a finger into the heir's chest. "You think you're special because you've got a mon and a family name? You've never bled for anything. Ever. You've just stood behind Kaoru's legacy!"
"I'm not—" Tatsuhiro tried. "Kaoru-dono said—"
"Kaoru isn't here now!" Hajime roared. "Open your fucking eyes, cabbage-brain! Look around you, we're already losing!"
Tatsuhiro's mouth opened, but nothing came. Just the slow, widening tremble of someone who didn't want to believe what he already knew. His knees gave out as he dropped even more to the floor, still clutching the spear. "…Language," he muttered weakly, as if that mattered.
Hajime rolled his eyes so hard his head tilted with it. "Language," he mocked under his breath.
"This wouldn't have happened," Tatsuhiro whispered, voice breaking, "if Kaoru-dono hadn't left—"
A kick landed on his shin with precision and zero ceremony. Not cruel, not soft. Just final "You say that again," Hajime said, glaring with small lightning across his hair, "and I'll break your nose next."
Tatsuhiro yelped, clutching his shin, toppling sideways. "Ow! You—!"
"Maybe," Hajime went on, "if you weren't such a coward but the heir they all expect of you, Kaoru wouldn't have to do everything. If you can't even fight for your own kin, then watch your fucking mouth and get up."
Tatsuhiro glared up, eyes glassy. The tears didn't fall, but they hung there, ready.
"Tch." Hajime exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. He turned away again. He should've left him there. Let him sob, let him learn, let him see what the world really was.
But he didn't, because he remembered Kaoru's voice rapping the back of his skull whenever he acted out. You guard what I tell you to guard. She trusted him, and he didn't want to let her down, but he hated her for making him promise he'd look after the little heir like he was worth something.
"All this," he muttered, looking at the spear. "For a damn stick."
He stepped closer. The Mitsuboshi no Yari lay across Tatsuhiro's knees, its three golden blades catching the light. It looked almost inert. A weapon. A stupid, cursed weapon. What could possibly be worth this much blood?
It's just a—
He frowned, stepping closer. "Hey," he said, mostly to himself. "This thing. It's supposed to be a big deal, right?"
"Don't—" Tatsuhiro's head jerked up, panic surfacing, but Hajime reached down and yanked it free anyway. "Hey—!"
He spun it once in his hands, twice, testing weight and balance. He had watched Kaoru train with it both in Edo and Nagoya-go enough times to copy her stances when she wasn't looking. Even gotten smacked for it.
"This is what they're dying for?" he said. "What Nobu's out there trying to keep from that bastard?"
"Put it down!" Tatsuhiro scrambled up, panic rising. "You can't just—"
"Why not?" Hajime spun it again, not gracefully, but confidently. "Kaoru always uses it. This should be powerful, right? Something that can reshape battles? Cast barriers? Or... Destroy something. Whatever. Maybe lock the damn Gojo out?"
"You're not Kaoru-dono," Tatsuhiro said, pale, as he tried to lunge to snatch the spear from Hajime's hands."You can't stabilize it. If you try to force it, it could kill us."
Hajime planted a hand on Tatsuhiro's forehead and shoved him back flat with humiliating ease. "Then you do something," he said. "Oh, right. You won't."
"I'm protecting it!"
"You're cuddling it!"
Tatsuhiro lunged again. "Give it back!"
"Make me," Hajime shot back with a grin. He moved to the center of the room, dragging the trident blade behind him with a lazy scrape. His toes curled against the ruined floorboards. He stopped. Focused. "If this thing's so special," he said under his breath, eyes narrowing, "then let's use it."
"Hajime. No—"
Hajime slammed the base of the spear into the tatami. His cursed energy surged up his spine like lightning striking from inside. He poured into it without finesse and without permission, just like Kaoru had taught him, between one insult and the next, between bruises and corrections. The moment his energy touched the Mitsuboshi no Yari, something from within pushed back.
Hard.
The pressure crashed down on him as if a mountain dropped from the sky. His knees buckled, and for a moment, the world went white. His cursed energy clawed for purchase, but the spear rejected him again and again—until—
Hands off my things, brat.
The voice wasn't his. Wasn't Kaoru's. Wasn't anyone he knew. It wasn't even spoken; it was just in his head.
Hajime flinched, and his grip almost slipped, but he growled through clenched teeth and shoved back, harder.
The spear shuddered in his grip, a final resistance, then something gave. For a heartbeat, nothing.
Tatsuhiro, pale and wide-eyed, let out a shaky breath. "See? I told you. Only Kaoru-dono can—"
Then the blast detonated.
A shockwave tore from the spear and outward through the room. Shōji panels ripped, paper exploding, dust and splinters erupted.
Hajime was hurled backward into the wall, while Tatsuhiro slammed the opposite direction with a strangled cry, striking hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
The ceiling cracked, and outside's smoke and stench of burned flesh bled inward.
Hajime groaned, dragging himself upright through the ringing in his ears.
At the center of the wreckage, the Mitsuboshi no Yari pulsed once. Then again. From its haft rose a thin, writhing mist of cursed energy, dense and structured. Then, the spear stabilized, and suddenly every sound was muffled.
"…did it work?" Hajime blinked debris out of his lashes, baffled. He got to his feet, slow and stiff.
Tatsuhiro blinked dazed through dust. "W-What did you do?"
Hajime crouched beside the spear, nudging it with his foot. "…I think I made a barrier." The grin was just forming when—
The shōji behind Tatsuhiro exploded inward.
Something invisible had smashed through it with crushing force. Wood splintered, and the whole structure began to collapse.
Tatsuhiro screamed and tumbled forward, hitting the floor hard, blood blooming where wood sliced his cheek.
Hajime moved without thinking. He grabbed Tatsuhiro by the collar of his kamishimo and flung him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. "Move, idiot," he spat.
They dove as the rest of the ceiling collapsed, burying the Mitsuboshi no Yari beneath falling beams. They hit the courtyard hard. Hajime rolled once, absorbing impact, cradling Tatsuhiro with one arm as best he could, despite his instinct to drop him.
Stone cracked under their landing, as lightning snapped out of his bare feet to enhance his speed.
Too close. That had been too close.
Hajime barely caught his breath before the hairs on his neck stood on end. His instincts screamed.
Lightning snapped at his heels again, and he lunged again, vanishing and reappearing ten steps away in a stumble, dragging Tatsuhiro with him. Behind them, the space they had just occupied imploded, tiles blasting outward into flying jagged shrapnel.
The ground trembled.
Hajime dropped into a crouch, Nyoi finally in his hand with one smooth motion, and one arm still hooked around Tatsuhiro's back as the boy whimpered. "Get up," he growled.
Then he saw him. Through smoke and settling dust, a figure stepped forward at a pace that did not acknowledge urgency.
Tall. Indigo kosode and black robes. White hair like ash cascading in and half-tied. Deep blue eyes, unlike Seijiro's frosty ones. But it was the air around him that made Hajime's stomach knot.
Something held six katana in the air. Not hands, not strings. Just... pressure. No, not just pressure. Presence. Invisible presence.
The same thing that had shattered the wall, the same thing that had nearly ended them just now, cursed energy running through them so dense it distorted the world around it. It grasped the weapons like a puppeteer's strings, perfect and lethal.
Hajime didn't know what they were, but he didn't need to. He only knew danger when he looked at it. And if those invisible things could hold swords… "They're tangible," he murmured. He tightened his grip on Nyoi. And if they were tangible...
"Hajime." Harunobu's voice cut through his haze. "What the hell did you do?"
Ah. Right.
Hajime blinked, pulled his attention up fully, and stopped.
Harunobu stood between them and Akiteru like a man who had run out of reasons but not out of spite. He was hunched forward and soaked through in blood. One hand still on the hilt of his katana, the other pressed hard to his side where a wound cleaved from rib to hip; there, his armor was ripped and his cloth torn, the skin peeled back to raw flesh, showing twitching muscles beneath. He swayed with every breath but refused to fall anyway.
Hajime didn't flinch—he'd seen bodies worse in gutters—but something in him went quieter and mean in that way that made his cursed energy snap brighter, because the bastard in front of them was still standing with six swords and invisible arms, and because Harunobu was still standing at all.
Tatsuhiro made a strangled gasp behind them. "K-Kashimo-sama—!"
"Focus," Harunobu hissed without turning. "Hajime?"
"I made a barrier," Hajime answered, rapid-fire. As if he'd done it on purpose. "I think. Look." He jerked his chin toward the courtyard's edge.
The cursed mist hovered there, unnaturally still like a veil drawn around the old compound in a perfect boundary line. Not pretty like the one Kaoru had once cast around Edo, but functional. Anything that touched it from the outside rebounded with backlash. Zenin and Gojo alike, repelled in sputtering bursts.
A kekkai.
Beyond it, chaos. Gojo and Zenin's forces both collided in the streets of Nagoya-go, but here, at the core—
Only them, and Akiteru now isolated from his men.
Harunobu let out something that could've been a laugh if there hadn't been blood bubbling at his lips. "Hah. Stupid, reckless rat. Kaoru-dono would be so damn proud."
"Shut up," Hajime muttered automatically, but his mouth twitched.
He hauled Tatsuhiro upright by the collar just as Harunobu's gaze slid on them, focused despite everything, past Hajime to where Tatsuhiro stood trembling.
"Hajime," he said, ripping a strip of his torn sleeve, clumsily wrapping it around his sword hand to anchor it to the hilt of his katana, preventing himself from dropping the blade even if unconscious. He clenched it with his teeth. "That bastard walks out of here with anything he wants, let him. But Tatsuhiro-sama comes out breathing. Even if everyone else in Nagoya-go dies, you and I. He's Kaoru-dono's blood. Do you hear me?"
Hajime's eyes narrowed. "…Yeah," he said, too quiet. "I hear you."
Behind them, Tatsuhiro swallowed audibly as Akiteru turned to them. His gaze slid across the courtyard. It passed over Harunobu, lingered a fraction too long on Hajime, then drifted—inevitably—toward Tatsuhiro and then to the smoking pile of rubble where beams and scorched tile still hissed.
"Ah," Akiteru murmured, pleased. "So that's where the young heir and the Mitsuboshi no Yari were."
Harunobu's entire body went rigid. "Hajime," he snapped, low. "Get the spear. You can reach it."
Before the words finished leaving his mouth, Hajime crouched and launched himself, vanishing in a blur of white-blue lightning snapping in his wake. At the same instant, Harunobu surged forward, limping and bleeding but still moving.
He wasn't fast anymore in this condition, not compared to his usual self, but he only needed to buy seconds.
Akiteru didn't step back as his phantom arms moved for him. Six katana slashed through the air in perfect, lazy synchronicity. Harunobu parried the first, ducked the second, felt a third kiss his shoulder. A fourth missed his jaw by a hair, the fifth would've opened his throat—
But all six swords stopped at the same instant.
The blades froze mid-flight, suspended like ornaments as the invisible limbs holding them locked in place, and tension held. A heartbeat; then another. Akiteru froze, too, going full rigid. His expression didn't change, but something in him tightened in an almost imperceptible pull, like a man realizing his footing isn't as solid as he assumed. His head turned the smallest fraction and, with visible effort, toward the far end of the courtyard, behind Harunobu.
Tatsuhiro stood there, trembling, both arms raised. Thirteen and too thin in his kamishimo. His entire body shook with the strain as blood lined the corners of his eyes, thin at first, then thicker, as vessels burst under the pressure one after another. His cursed energy flared erratically, barely under control.
Paralyzing Gaze.
Harunobu's thoughts spiraled. Fool. He won't last. Not against him. At this rate...
Still, Akiteru's body remained bound, his phantom limbscaught, and for the first time all day, his eyes narrowed with the smallest genuinely alert.
Harunobu moved, determined not waste the opening; he surged in, katana raised, closing the gap for Akiteru's heart with one desperate, ugly step at a time, dragging himself. He was nearly there when Tatsuhiro buckled. Blood bloomed heavier from both eyes, spilling down his cheeks. His hands trembled, and his eyelids fluttered on instinct, shutting down.
And just like that, the cursed technique snapped, and Akiteru moved.
The assault resumed as if the pause had never happened. Harunobu's blade missed by a breath, and a phantom hand filled instantly and smashed into his guard; the impact knocked him back hard enough to choke him, as blood flew from his lips.
Elsewhere—
Hajime landed inside the wreckage in a thunderclap with smoke drifting around his bare feet. He skidded over shattered beams, kicking them away as his eyes tracked fast at the trails of cursed energy leading to the spear. There. The Mitsuboshi no Yari was half-buried beneath a collapsed timber, its rimson shaft visible and the tri-tipped head hidden.
He reached, but something hit him too fast to see, aiming right at his head in a single lethal sweep. Hajime twisted midair, Nyoi snapping up with lightning aligning along its length to parry. The impact rang through his bones, but the invisible force clipped him anyway, his forehead splitting, and blood pouring down one eye, blurring the world to red.
Just as he felt the phantom limb striking again, whispering behind his neck and almost closing around it, he grunted and wildly shoved cursed energy into Nyoi. Lightning leapt wild and feral, then, to his surprise, it climbed the invisible limb, following the outline of it back toward its source.
Far, on the other end of the phantom limb, Akiteru grunted; one shoulder jerked. Just once. It wasn't much, but it told Hajime everything he needed to know. The phantom limb closing around his neck recoiled.
But another one curled tighter around the spear's shaft.
"Shit—!" Hajime lunged, hand outstretched.
Too late.
The Mitsuboshi no Yari floated free of the rubble, lifted with too much precision. Akiteru turned his head slightly, and the spear drifted ready to drop neatly into his waiting hand. Across the courtyard, Tatsuhiro forced himself upright, shaking. He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand, smearing blood on his cheeks and blinking hard through pain that made his whole face twitch.
He saw the spear in the wrong hands. And still—still—he lifted both arms again. His cursed energy flared weakly, but for a breath—one thin, pitiful breath—Akiteru's body locked as Tatsuhiro tried to buy Hajime time.
Just enough for blood to slide down in more copious tears from both eyes. Akiteru's gaze snapped to him as he opposed resistance to the paralysis, his every phantom limb fighting against the stillness at once.
Then the paralysis died before it could mean anything, and silence fell in the space it left behind.
Harunobu collapsed to one knee, one hand braced to keep himself upright. Shielded behind him, Tatsuhiro sagged, swaying, his breath stuttering, his hands still raised as if his body hadn't gotten the message yet. Then, his knees wobbled, and he dropped down sobbing from pain and rubbing at his eyes again, trying to stop the bleeding uselessly.
Hajime landed beside them in a crouch, panting and with lightning still dancing along his skin. He glanced at Tatsuhiro, really looked this time. He glanced at Harunobu. Then Tatsuhiro. Maybe I was too hard on the little lord, he thought. Maybe he's not completely spineless after all.
But none of that mattered now, because Akiteru Gojo had the Mitsuboshi no Yari in his hands.
Harunobu's hand twitched on his katana, still trying to stand between that monster and a child. He glanced at Hajime sideways. If the Gojo patriarch figured out what the Mitsuboshi no Yari could really do, if he realized it could nullify cursed techniques—
They were all fucked.
Across from them, Akiteru held the Mitsuboshi no Yari as if weighing his legacy. His face stayed calm, but his cursed energy changed, testing in a curious way. He let a sliver of his cursed energy slide into the weapon, and the reaction was immediate.
The spear's surface shimmered, then trembled, then pulsed with a sick, uneven rhythm. A hiss of cursed mist coiled up from the haft like a breath from something that didn't want to be touched by unworthy hands.
Akiteru's fingers tightened as a burst of backlash snapped through his arm, leaving his robes smoking in its wake. He took one small step back, a single, involuntary retreat as he forced himself not to drop the spear.
It was telling.
"Tch," Akiteru clicked, cutting the flow of his cursed energy. "Unstable."
He turned the weapon slightly, eyes narrowing, not really angry because he had expected that outcome all along. Not for me, he seemed to decide with mild annoyance. It wasn't surprising. He had always known he was no prodigy. Not like his son; not like Kaoru Zenin; and—apparently—not like the barefoot lightning brat who'd managed to activate it at his first try.
Anyway, it didn't matter. He didn't need to wield a weapon to control it; he needed leverage and will. He would have Seijiro bend it to his will when he returned to Kyoto; he would understand. And if not, well... Akiteru would make him understand. Seijiro was his son, and that was what sons were made for.
Power, in the end, bowed to will.
Opposite him, Harunobu and Hajime stood in silence. Blood dripped steadily from Harunobu's side, soaking the ground. Hajime's jaw was clenched, his eyes locked on Akiteru with quiet fury. Behind them, Tatsuhiro was struggling to his feet, swaying, one trembling hand still wiping at bloodied eyes.
Neither spoke. They didn't have to. Hajime's bare feet shifted slightly on the slick stone. Harunobu adjusted his stance, barely perceptible. A glance, brief and unspoken, passed between them.
He doesn't leave with the spear.
Harunobu moved first, with low strides. He charged with what he had left: battered form and swordsmanship drilled into muscle over decades. Hajime surpassed him, faster and brighter, with lightning snapping at the edges of his motion, tearing through what little remained of the Zenin compound.
Akiteru didn't look surprised; he looked just vaguely irritated. He raised a hand, and his phantom arms jerked into motion. One invisible blow slammed Harunobu into the ground like a hammer, driving air from his lungs, and a heartbeat later, phantom limbs pinned him to the ground, crushing his wrists. Harunobu grunted in pain as a katana dropped like a pin, impaling Harunobu's shoulder and nailing him to the courtyard stone with a brutal sound.
"Don't embarrass yourself," Akiteru said coolly. "You're already dead."
Hajime launched skyward in a burst that left a crater on the ground, Nyoi raised overhead. For a split second, he thought he might—
A massive pressure hit his gut mid-flight and lifted him clean off the ground. Another invisible arm seized his wrist, yanking his arm high, and twisted. His bones and joints screamed, and something cracked; one more turn and his arm would've come off. He barely heard Tatsuhiro's voice behind him, hoarse and frantic, before—
Everything stopped again, and Akiteru's body locked.
The phantom arms, Hajime froze, and the blades stilled in the air like startled birds. Akiteru's eyes flicked, annoyed at Tatsuhiro, standing across from them and shaking so violently his knees knocked. Both hands were raised again, blood still pouring from his eyes in steady lines, more than tears now, ruin.
Idiot, Harunobu would've cursed if he could breathe. That will kill you.
Hajime didn't waste time. He let lightning explode outward from his skin and drove it into the invisible arm still gripping him; the current raced along cursed matter, crawling upward toward Akiteru's back, and Akiteru flinched violently as static crossed him from head to toe. A hiss escaped him as he seized Hajime with a phantom grip and hurled him like discarded trash.
Then Tatsuhiro broke.
His body convulsed as the cursed technique shattered under strain just as Hajime hit dirt, rolled, and somehow came up half-crouched beside Tatsuhiro as he collapsed. There was no scream at first. Just a wet, nauseating pop, too soft, and a silent, violent convulsion that buckled his body inward. Something hot followed the sound and sprayed Hajime's face.
Then the screaming came.
Tatsuhiro's hands flew to his face, where blood gushed, too much, flooding the left side of his face completely and dripping to the ground, liquid at first, then denser. Something softer followed, jelly-like and fibrous, fibrous tissue peeling from the socket, that slid between his fingers and hit the stone of the courtyard.
His left eye was completely gone. Melted.
Hajime stared for half a second at the sobbing boy. Then his jaw clenched, and he looked away, not because he was horrified, but because he had no idea what to do against that monster. He's strong, he thought, lifting his eyes to Akiteru. Kami. He's strong. Adrenaline burned his brain clean as every nerve screamed at him to run. Instead, Hajime felt… good.
He laughed once, breathless and feral, as if something in him had finally been given a proper target. It was out of place, laughing beside a child who had just lost an eye, but he couldn't avoid it.
Across the courtyard, Akiteru tilted his head and flexed his phantom arms, still sizzling from Hajime's last lightning. His eyes slid back to Tatsuhiro with detached interest. "Troublesome little brat," he muttered. "You're Zenin-dono's heir, aren't you?"
Only more sobbing came from Tatsuhiro as he clutched the ruin of his face, blood still streaming from where his left eye had simply… stopped being an eye. Then, five katana lifted behind him, spinning into orbit.
"Good. Then you should die like the rest of your clan."
Hajime moved without thinking, arm screaming where it had nearly been dislocated, body sparking as he threw himself forward. The swords flew—
—and there was a sound like wet canvas tearing as they struck flesh.
Not Tatsuhiro's. Harunobu's.
Somehow—somehow—he'd torn the katana from his own shoulder as if it was nothing and thrown himself between them, catching every katana meant for Tatsuhiro with his body. All five sank in. Chest. Ribs. Stomach. A final punctuation. Blood poured out too quickly in waves that didn't look real until it hit the stone and kept spreading there.
Then the world went quiet in a very wrong way.
Harunobu's body swayed once, as if it couldn't decide whether to fall, as stubborn in death as he'd been in life. Then he dropped to his knees and just stayed there, slack and unmoving, unbreathing, as his body still refused to collapse.
Tatsuhiro whimpered behind him, one hand still plastered to his ruined socket. The other reached out weakly and childishly, as he might still catch him and pull him back.
Hajime didn't blink. He only watched as the katana pulled free from flesh and Harunobu tipped forward at once and collapsed face-first into his own blood.
Akiteru didn't spare him a glance. "Expected as much," he said, adjusting his grip on the Mitsuboshi no Yari as though Harunobu had merely been inconvenient. He took one step toward him, then another, calm and unhurried as his phantom arms folded around him close like petals.
Then—
Something shifted, not inside the barrier Hajime had created. Outside it. A new sound that punched through the haze, distant and rising. It even made the Gojo soldiers' voices warp in their shouts and orders.
"Hold the North line!"
"They're being scattered—north side, the units are breaking—!"
"Gojo-dono—the Tōkaidō—! The Eastern Army's on the road—Zenin banners with them—"
"It's Date-dono—The One-Eyed-Dragon—!"
Akiteru's step stalled just for a fraction.
Hajime saw it because he was looking for it, for that brief moment where Akiteru's body registered new information before his face decided whether it deserved his interest. From beyond the broken eaves, beyond the barrier's edge, a fresh column of smoke climbed into the sky to the north, rising along the line of the Tōkaidō. Not the slow, constant plume from the southern pyre. This smoke was violent and moving.
Akiteru stopped and angled his head toward the north as if listening. Date Masamune. That would be… inconvenient, now. He exhaled once through his nose, slow as his phantom arms tightened, then settled. "You're finished anyway. All of you," he murmured, almost kindly, as he turned away with fast steps, reaching for the edge of the barrier.
Retreating. Not because of them, but because something else arrived.
Tatsuhiro crawled to Harunobu's side, sobbing properly and not even trying to swallow it back now. He slid, smeared blood into the dirt as he grabbed at Harunobu's sleeve, trying to shake life back into the man who'd just died for him.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
Hajime barely heard him; his eyes stayed locked on Akiteru. The way he walked, the way he didn't even bother to look down, the way he held the spear. As if they weren't worth killing anymore. That stung more than the dislocated shoulder.
It wasn't the dislocated shoulder that hurt most; it was the dismissal. As if they weren't worth the time anymore, even worth killing properly.
His lips parted, dry. "Oi."
Akiteru didn't turn. He reached the boundary line where Hajime's barrier held and stepped through it as if it wasn't there. The kekkai kept people out after all, shoved bodies back with backlash, but it let what was inside leave. And just like that, he was outside the barrier, walking away into smoke and shouting, into a Nagoya-go that still screamed behind him.
Then, the barrier collapsed, and smoke resettled like incense for the dead over a battlefield already lost.
Hajime stood frozen with blood dripping from his jaw and his arm hanging uselessly at his side. He stared at the space Akiteru had occupied, then down at Harunobu. "Get up," he said.
Silence.
"Oi. 'Nobu." He stepped closer, snapping harsher. "I said, get up. That bastard's getting away with the spear."
Still nothing. Tatsuhiro's sobs grew louder into a scraping sound, throat tearing with every breath.
"If you don't stop him now," Hajime muttered, nudging Harunobu with his foot the way you test whether someone is faking sleep, "Kaoru will be so pissed."
Still nothing.
"C'mon," he muttered, furious. "Don't make me carry you, lazy old man." He moved to kick him again, because that always worked, because Harunobu always swore and shoved him and told him to stop acting like a feral dog—
"Stop it!" Tatsuhiro's voice cracked. "He's dead, you idiot! Don't you get it?! Dead!"
Hajime paused and stared down at the blood, at the stillness, at the katana still tied to his unmoving hand in limp fingers.
Dead?
He blinked once, then twice, then thrice like he expected the world to correct itself on the third.
"Oh," he said finally, flat, as if he'd just noticed.
Right. People died when they bled like that. Hajime had seen it before on the streets of the capital, men sprawled in gutters, lives leaking out while the city kept moving. It just had never felt like a rule that applied to Harunobu, because Harunobu was too loud when he corrected Hajime's footing, too annoying when he knocked him on the head for forgetting honorifics.
A low and ugly wave stirred in Hajime's gut. He didn't have a name for it; he didn't even know if he was supposed to feel anything in times like these. He stared at Harunobu again, at his eyes open but not seeing. No twitch, no rise of breath, no muttered correction.
Just blood.
Oh. Kaoru would be so mad.
Behind him, Tatsuhiro cried harder, and with that, something in Hajime flipped over, like an arrow left free; he straightened. His shoulder was still dead weight, his ribs throbbed and his skin buzzed with leftover lightning, but his legs still worked s he supposed he was still good for something. He turned, scanning the courtyard, toward where Akiteru had vanished.
That bastard hadn't even looked back. Not once.
Hajime's teeth clenched until his jaw ached. That strength; he wanted it again, wanted to crash into it again, wanted the fight until his bones screamed and his head did that thing where it went all light and numb.
"Guess I have to chase him now," he said simply. He took a step, then paused, glancing back over his shoulder as if remembering. "Oh, right," he added, tone stupidly plain."'Nobu's dead." Then he scratched his head once, aimlessly.
Tatsuhiro lifted his face, one eye only now, red-rimmed and wild with disbelief. "What... the hell is wrong with you?!"
Hajime didn't answer. He knelt beside the corpse, beside the man who'd called him "you little rat." He remembered, vaguely, a conversation long ago, said as half a joke tossed at him like a bone at a dog.
You may have it, the day I am dead.
Hajime's fingers curled tighter around Nyoi, and lightning growled under his skin, restless. "He said I could have his family name if he died," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else as he stood. "So… I guess it's mine now?"
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Ash and wind coiled through the shattered palisades of Nagoya-go, and the stench of burned bodies was now a blanket over the entire valley, clinging to armor, to hair, to the backs of throats. It turned every breath into one it had to force down.
Akiteru rode at the head of the withdrawal in the saddle of a dark stallion, the Mitsuboshi no Yari lashed tight at his side, almost untouched by the work. Around him, his men gathered in tight ranks, scarred and blackened, but victorious. Some limped, some shook with leftover adrenaline. Others laughed too loudly.
Akiteru didn't laugh. He counted. A little more than a fourth of his forces were gone, and mostly because of that damnable samurai. Still acceptable, in the end. The spear had been recovered, and the estate burned to the ground. His hand drifted to the spear's haft, tracing the cloth-wrapped wood, feeling the dormant thrum of a weapon refusing to be soothed by the hand that held it.
He turned once more to the smoldering ruin behind him. Nagoya-go lay in blackened splinters, its inner halls reduced to ash, its courtyards churned into mud by boots and blood. The pyre at the southern gate still roared as ash fell like snow, if snow were even made of the bodies of farmers and children and women. The sound had settled into the background of the world.
A fitting end for the Zenin line.
Too bad for the heir, he thought mildly. A pity he hadn't finished the work, but the boy will eventually die of blood loss.
Besides, he had the Mitsuboshi no Yari, and now that he had it, he could make the rest inevitable. He would return to Kyoto and place the spear in Seijiro's hands and watch the boy's pride wrestle with duty, and Akiteru would win either way as always.
His gaze softened—only a fraction—at the thought of home. "Atsuhime," he murmured, saying his wife's name in a private prayer. "I'm coming back."
Already, the forward ranks had begun the descent, and the first wave of men disappeared down the southern road. There was nothing left to hold them here. The dead would burn with the dawn, and Date Masamune—if the One-Eyed Dragon truly was spilling down the Tōkaidō—would not pursue recklessly into a slaughterhouse. The Date were allied with the Zenin, and they would stop to salvage what could still be salvaged.
Akiteru's stallion snorted, stamping ash into the dirt, then—
A cry. Distant, edged with panic. Then another. Screams, but not Zenin's screams. Those had been everywhere, all night and morning, but these were his own. Akiteru turned his head toward the rear flank, where the last perimeter held the retreat together. Something had erupted there, white arcs of cursed energy ripping through the smoke. Unrefined and violent.
Date Masamune? No, he was still too far north.
Another flash—blinding—followed by bodies hitting the ground in spasms as someone shouted an order and got cut off mid-syllable. A blur moved through the chaos too fast to track, in a streak of motion that didn't slow down.
Akiteru slid off his horse without hurry, boots sinking into mud that was more blood than earth, and started walking toward the rear. Men stumbled out of his path; heads bowed; no one looked him in the eye.
And then Akiteru saw the cause of the commotion.
Hajime didn't know what he was feeling.
He only knew it was hot, and it made him want to tear something apart.
Barefoot. Blood down one side of his face, drying black in the soot. Cyan hair standing on end and a grin split across a mouth that had bled recently, as if pain was a new form of entertainment. His shoulder sat wrong—still half out of socket—but he moved like it didn't matter. Nyoi crackled in one hand as lightning filaments crawled along the boy's skin in eager threads.
He cut through Gojo retainers like practice dummies and didn't even finish strikes; he started them and let momentum and lightning do the rest, feeling light and above them all, as men dropped around him, twitching, scorched, suddenly very quiet.
He wasn't thinking clearly, not about Harunobu lying with five swords in his chest, not about Tatsuhiro sobbing beside him. He wasn't hunting an army; he was hunting one specific man. And when his eyes found Akiteru, his posture tightened like a dog.
Akiteru watched him approach, and annoyance flashed across his face. Clearly, he hadn't expected this. "Fall back," he said smoothly to the nearest commander. "Take the spear toward Kyoto."
The commander opened his mouth, perhaps to argue, but Akiteru didn't wait for sound. Behind his back, the phantom limbs opened like a spider unfolding its legs, each one drifting into place quietly. The smoke warped around them.
Hajime exhaled slowly, narrowed his eyes, expanded his perceptions. How strange. For one heartbeat—one strange, clean heartbeat—everything slowed, and he saw the phantom limbs. Every single one of them.
He didn't see them with his eyes, but with everything else; with his cursed energy, his skin, the way the world pressed. Fifteen—no, more. Eighteen. The count was instinctive and immediate. He felt every twist, every curl, every jointless bend, and his expression twisted into delight.
For the first time all day, Akiteru wasn't terrifying.
Hajime's grin widened, feeling as if something inside him had broken, then rearranged itself. He didn't know how he knew. Just that he did. They've been there the whole damn time, he thought, giddy. I just wasn't looking the right way.
Across the churned earth, Akiteru studied him with an assessing stare. "So they underestimated you." His gaze slid to the scorched bodies of his men on the ground. "I'll admit, I did too."
Hajime wiped blood from his chin with the back of his hand, smearing it. "Right back at you," he muttered, voice light. "You should've killed me when you had the chance."
"You were beneath my notice, boy." Akiteru frowned faintly. "I don't waste time with street filth."
"Yeah," Hajime said, grinning. "Keep telling yourself that. That's how losers think."
He lowered into a crouch, bare feet sliding over blackened stone, Nyoi held loose. The air around him buzzed; his cursed energy coiled tighter, wilder, like a storm refusing to stay in its cage, as he exhaled once, slowly, steadying himself. Kaoru's voice rose in his mind, impatient in the way she spoke when she was pretending she wasn't proud.
You'll be the strongest sorcerer in Nagoya-go once I'm gone.
If Kaoru said it, it had to be true. That was the logic he lived by.
"Sorry, old man," Hajime murmured, lightning forming at his heels, "but someone told me I'm the strongest sorcerer in Nagoya-go." He tilted his head, studying Akiteru. "And that person never lies."
Then he moved. It was a blur, no, not a blur, lightning. He cut low across the distance between them, weaving through Akiteru's phantom limbs that lashed like whips, predicting their every movement with insulting ease. They cracked against earth, gouged stone. They should've caught him, but they didn't. Nyoi struck one limb hard, and lightning chained along the invisible arm, crawling up unseen bone, and Akiteru grunted. He narrowed his eyes on Hajime; the cursed energy that crackled around him didn't feel like a child's anymore, nothing like the boy from minutes before. He didn't even seem like the same person. And worse, he was clearly enjoying it, feral and bright like an animal that had cornered a prey much larger than itself.
"Annoying brat," Akiteru muttered, deflecting with a phantom arm only for lightning to leap from staff to limb again, racing down and reaching him.
Akiteru's body spasmed once, electrocuted, and Hajime came high this time, twisting mid-air, his feet skimming a phantom arm as if it were a rail. He used it like a springboard and launched himself, sparkles bursting from his soles as he vaulted over a slash meant to cleave him in two.
The shock on Akiteru's face was real, as he adjusted half a step too slow.
Hajime slammed right into Akiteru's back before he could turn, feet planting on his shoulder as he seized the nearest phantom limb with one hand. He twisted, yanked, and tested as Akiteru sputtered beneath him.
"Just as I thought," Hajime growled, lightning climbing his forearm. "If I can touch it—"
The limb bucked in his grip, and pressure crushed at his ribs as another invisible arm slammed into his side hard enough to rattle his teeth. Still, Hajime didn't let go.
"—then I can tear it off."
His cursed energy exploded outward, and the air stuttered, danced, snapped as Akiteru actually staggered. In panic, more phantom limbs snapped forward to rip Hajime away, but lightning lashed back, biting at them all, making them recoil.
One limb moved too close.
Big mistake. With a snarl, Hajime twisted and bit down hard on the space where the cursed energy felt densest. There was no flesh, no skin, but his teeth found something.
Akiteru let out a strangled sound in disbelief, pure and ugly, dragged out of him, because no one had ever bitten his cursed technique. "You—little—mongrel—" he rasped.
Then Hajime released a different kind of charge. A crack like heaven breaking open as a single, perfect arc of lightning fell, rending the air in a scream of pressure and white light. It tore through the phantom arm in his grip and surged straight into Akiteru's spine.
Akiteru's body arched, and his breath hitched. Alarm flared across him as Hajime planted his feet more firmly on Akiteru's shoulder and yanked with everything he had.
Finally, something tore, and the feedback threw him.
Hajime hit the ground hard, skidding, his limbs heavy and burning. His bicep had split, and flesh cracked and smoked. His arm trembled violently; he blinked at it as if it were beautiful. "Ah," he muttered, dazed. "Right. Kaoru said not to overdo it."
Something thudded on the ground beside him, heavy, and still twitching. He couldn't see it, not exactly, but he felt it: a severed phantom limb, its cursed "blood" dripping across grass like grey oil.
Hajime stared at it for half a beat, then he smiled again, pleased. "Oh."
He didn't know how, exactly, he'd done it, only that it worked.
One arm, gone. Seventeen left.
He let the severed thing drop like it meant nothing. His scorched hand shook, but he didn't care. What mattered was simple: he'd hurt him; he'd really hurt him. Kaoru had been right. He was the strongest in Nagoya-go, even above Akiteru Gojo.
Across the clearing, Akiteru staggered. His indigo kosode was smoldering where lightning had bitten through, and blood spilled down his back from a ragged gash where his phantom limb had once been attached to his body. The remaining seventeen phantom arms recoiled. This shouldn't be happening.
"You little—" Akiteru's jaw clenched so hard it showed, and humiliation burned under his composure, followed by disbelief. He hadn't been hurt like this in years. That boy—What was that boy? A lightning-born monster?
That was not training, nor discipline, nor lineage. It was inborn. This one is like them, Akiteru thought, the assessment arriving with a bitterness he didn't bother hiding from himself. Like his son, like Kaoru Zenin, like all the damned prodigies born to upend the old world he had spent his life trying to preserve. His eyes narrowed, furious. "What is your name again?" he snapped.
Hajime pushed himself up, grinning through blood and soot, lightning crawling down his cheek. Because his arm hurt like hell. Because his head was spinning too lightly. Because Akiteru Gojo had looked at them like they weren't real, and Harunobu was dead behind him, and Tatsuhiro was thirteen and screaming into his own hands with one eye gone, and Kaoru was going to be so angry at him, and Hajime didn't know what to do with the numbness in his head except that he wanted more.
"It's Hajime Kashimo, now."