Kamo Itsuki shot Geto a sharp look, his voice cutting through the aftermath. "A meteorite landing in a populated area would birth curses from the panic alone. Our duty is to minimize suffering, not create new horrors for ourselves to clean up."
Their intervention had been so swift, so seamless, that to the sleeping citizens below, the event registered as little more than a strange, distant flash and a faint rumble—a curiosity, not a catastrophe. The night settled back into an uneasy quiet.
Hundreds of kilometers away, Kenjaku moved like a wounded predator through the darkness, his form flickering between shadows. The escape had cost him dearly. The "Asteroid" technique had been a nuclear option, burning through the reservoirs of stolen techniques he'd hoarded for centuries. Now, all he had left was his core, vile biology: the Body-Swapping Parasitism.
A cold fury warred with a colder calculation. Three Special Grades, working in concert. The board has changed. Direct confrontation was impossible. But he was not without assets—ancient pacts, slumbering powers, a millennia-spanning web of influence. Yet to awaken those forces now, in this weakened state, would be to trade one master for several. They would see him as a prize, not a partner.
He needed a new vessel. A fresh start, away from the prying eyes that now hunted this stitched-together body.
Fate, it seemed, offered a twisted courtesy. In a dimly lit alleyway on the outskirts of a sleepy town, he saw her: a little girl, alone, her small frame trembling. Her cursed energy was a faint, untapped spark, but it was there. More importantly, her eyes held a depth of trauma—a perfect cocktail of fear and self-loathing that made for a compliant host.
He approached, his smile a carefully crafted mask of concern. "Little one, are you lost? Where are your parents?"
The girl recoiled as if burned. "Stay away!" she cried, her voice a raw whisper. "I'm bad! I… I killed my mommy and daddy! Anyone close to me gets hurt!"
A surprise, but a convenient one. A self-blaming host was easier to subdue. "It's alright," Kenjaku cooed, his voice dripping with false warmth. "Uncle is very strong. I can't be hurt by you. I can even make the bad things go away."
As he spoke, he knelt, his right hand extending in a gesture of false comfort. At the same time, the horrific truth of his being manifested. The scar-like stitches across his forehead pulsed, then began to part. From the fissure, a pale, convoluted brain—slick and pulsating with cursed energy—began to slither out.
The girl's screams turned into silent, wide-mouthed horror as she tried to scramble back, but Kenjaku's technique was already in motion. An invisible force gripped her, holding her paralyzed not by strength, but by a profound, invasive pressure on her very soul.
"Don't worry," the brain-thing whispered directly into her mind, its voice a dry rustle in her skull. "Your pain ends now. Your body will serve a greater purpose."
The transfer began—a vile, silent process as the ancient consciousness prepared to abandon its compromised shell and claim a new, tragic home. The hunt was over for Kamo Itsuki's beacon, but Kenjaku's survival, and his millennium-old grudge, was poised to be reborn in the most innocent of guises.
The transfer was supposed to be seamless—the dark psychic tendril engulfing the little girl, her consciousness smothered, her body becoming a blank slate. A satisfied, cruel smile began to twist Kenjaku's lips.
It died instantly.
A flicker of movement, a splash of impossible color in the gloom. A plump, ornate goldfish Cursed Spirit, looking utterly out of place, materialized beside the girl. Its big, dopey eyes fixed on the slithering brain.
The girl's terror vanished, replaced by a chilling, clear-eyed clarity. "You're a bad uncle," she stated, her voice firm. "Mommy said I can fight bad uncles, eat him."
The goldfish's mouth distended, not into a bite, but into a vacuum. A sudden, overwhelming suction yanked Kenjaku's exposed, vulnerable brain-core from its trajectory and swallowed it whole. The goldfish gave a satisfied little wiggle, then nuzzled against the girl's hand before popping out of existence.
The alley was silent. Only the headless, stitching-marked corpse of Kenjaku's former vessel remained, toppling to the ground with a final thud.
Half an hour later, the trio arrived at the scene, guided by the fading pulse of the blood worm—which led them only to a corpse.
"We're late," Kamo Itsuki said, his voice tight. The worm's signal had terminated here. "He's jumped ship. Suguru, anything? Any residual scent?"
Geto closed his eyes, reaching out with his senses. He opened them, shaking his head. "Nothing. It's… clinically clean. Not a whisper of stray cursed energy. He covered his tracks perfectly."
Gojo's Six Eyes scanned the area, seeing the truth in the absolute void of information. "The new host has to be nearby. Someone vulnerable, alone." His gaze was hard. "We sweep the area. Now."
They did. For days, they combed the nearby towns and forests, a net woven of supreme power and determination. But they found nothing. Kenjaku, the master survivor, had vanished into the population once more, his new identity a perfect mystery.
The hunt had ended not with a victory, but with a chilling disappearance.
Yet, the operation was not a total loss. The ripples of their "Prison Realm" trap had shaken the jujutsu world's foundations. The communications, the rushed orders, the panicked movements—all had left a trail. A trail that led straight to the rot within.
In the following weeks, a quiet, internal purge began. In the Kamo Clan alone, six high-ranking members were found to have been in deep collusion with the mysterious curse user. The evidence was damning.
Standing before the dossier of names, Geto Suguru let out a weary sigh. "Even with this proof… will it be enough? Charges are just words to people like them. Their power is built on backroom deals and unspoken alliances."
Kamo Itsuki stared at the list, his expression unreadable. He knew Geto was right. The law was a tool, and in the hands of the powerful, it was a malleable one. A formal trial might end in a slap on the wrist, a temporary disgrace followed by a quiet reinstatement.
"Charges may not stick," Kamo Itsuki finally said, his voice low and decisive. "But exposure is its own punishment. And in our world, a weakened position is often a fatal one."
He wasn't talking about legal justice anymore. He was talking about the harsh, unspoken rules of jujutsu politics. The evidence was now a weapon. It wouldn't send them to a human court, but it would strip them of their allies, their influence, and their protection. It would make them vulnerable to the "accidents" and "mission failures" that plagued the life of a sorcerer.
The battle against Kenjaku had shifted from a direct confrontation to a shadow war of attrition and internal cleansing. They had lost the head of the snake, but they had begun the arduous process of burning out its nest. The war was far from over, but a new, more complex front had just been opened.