Three years—a span neither fleeting nor eternal—had unspooled since the day of the failed assimilation.
Heian-kyo existed in a state of curated serenity, as if the cataclysmic crisis of that year had been nothing more than a fever dream. The seasons had flourished and withered thrice over, and the common folk lived according to the natural order. Yet beneath this brilliant facade of tranquility, the air hung heavy with the metallic tang of fresh slaughter.
"Gah...! P-please... spare me...!"
In the depths of a suffocating forest, a wretched death rattle tore through the silence. Scores of villainous curse users lay scattered across the loam, their limbs severed, wallowing in pools of their own gore. The lone survivor scrambled backward, his face a mask of primal terror.
At the edge of his vision stood a youth with eyes like shards of frozen sky.
Utsugi, having shed every vestige of his childhood softeness, flicked the blood from the blade of his tachi with a rhythmic, detached motion. The silver steel glinted coldly under the filtered moonlight.
"Have mercy! We were merely contracted! Name your price—I can give you gold, anything—!"
Schlick.
The excuse died in his throat. A blue arc of light traced through the air, and in the same heartbeat, the curse user’s head spiraled into the darkness. Crimson erupted like a fountain, drenching the earth at Utsugi’s feet.
Sheathing his blade, Utsugi turned away with a hollow gaze. He had executed every mission assigned by the clan with mechanical perfection, never once tasting failure. More notably, he had begun to refuse the company of other sorcerers, walking alone into death traps where survival was a statistical impossibility.
On the rare occasions he was forced to bring a lower-ranked sorcerer who subsequently fell wounded, Utsugi would not grant them so much as a glance. He would merely offer a freezing dismissal:
'You are in my way. Drag your dead weight elsewhere.'
Witnessing him leap into the vanguard while leaving his broken comrades behind, the world whispered that he was a man without blood or tears—an arrogant prodigy who viewed all others as insects. But the truth was far simpler: Utsugi could no longer bear to watch anyone die before his eyes. He refused to endure the hell of forging a bond only to feel its warmth vanish again.
Thus, he built a wall and cast himself as a monster, welcoming the world's hatred and fear as a shroud.
Exiting the woods, Utsugi instinctively touched his chest. Beneath the silk of his collar, nestled closest to his heart, were the letter she had left three years ago and a single Deutzia crenata blossom—now dried to a brittle, ghostly white. For Utsugi, time had ceased to flow on that spring day three years past.
He swung his sword with such unrelenting fervor not out of loyalty to the Sugawara, but because he knew that if he did not drown himself in the scent of blood, the void carving through his chest would consume him whole.
•
On the outskirts of the capital, within a secluded villa of the Northern Fujiwara.
The Clan Head, Fujiwara no Tokisada, snapped his fan shut with an irritable crack and rose from the seat of honor. "The Sugawara monster has done it again. He decimated a nest of curse users in the west entirely on his own."
Tokisada’s voice was laced with profound caution and thinly veiled malice. "His martial prowess is beginning to defy our containment. No matter how we manipulate the Court or weave our schemes, if that creature baring his fangs is enough to flip the board, then the board itself is useless."
Utsugi was no longer viewed as a mere political pawn between rival clans; he was an apex predator, a walking calamity threatening the established ecosystem. Tokisada gestured with the tip of his fan toward a man kneeling in the shadows of the room.
"It is your turn, Mugai."
Zenin Mugai. Despite his name being called, the man did not breathe a sound, remaining as motionless as a boulder. He was a man of savage countenance, a jagged scar bisecting his mouth. Strapped to his back was a massive spear wrapped in tattered bandages.
"I have heard that Sugawara scion's eyes allow him to perceive Cursed Energy on a divine level," Tokisada sneered, a cunning smile curling his lips. "They say he can read the flow of energy from an arrow fired behind his back. But... what if he faces a 'transparent man' who possesses no Cursed Energy at all?"
Heavenly Restriction. It was the horrific curse and singular blessing engraved upon Mugai’s body. Born with absolutely zero Cursed Energy, his body had been compensated with physical capabilities that transcended the laws of the world. In the sorcery-obsessed Zenin Clan, he had been discarded in the gutter like refuse. It was Tokisada who had scavenged him and honed him into a flawless killing machine—the perfect reaper for sorcerers.
"Go and kill him," Tokisada commanded. "Gouge out those Sugawara eyes and prove your worth as a hound of this house."
"By your command," Mugai replied. His voice was flat, devoid of inflection. Yet within the darkness, his eyes burned with the cruel instinct of a beast starved for the flesh of the strong.
•
The moon was smothered by heavy ink-black clouds, casting the world into an abyssal night. Utsugi moved through a desolate cypress forest on his return path to the estate.
Rustle.
The sound of leaves whispering in the wind. The Six Eyes continued to map the entirety of the forest in excruciating detail. The vibration of an insect’s wing, the warmth of a mole burrowing beneath the earth, even the friction of dust motes dancing in the air—everything was caught in Utsugi's perfect sensory web. Or so he believed.
Shrii-ip!!
Suddenly, three thick cypress trees behind Utsugi were shorn through at a diagonal, collapsing without a sound. Utsugi’s body, flooded with instinctive dread, lunged forward in a desperate crouch. At the same moment, a massive weight of iron whistled past the crown of his head. A tuft of his bound hair was severed, fluttering into the void.
It was a perfect blind spot. The Six Eyes had detected no Cursed Energy, no killing intent—nothing. It wasn't that he had 'failed' to sense the attacker; it was that for the entity that launched the strike, the very concept of detectable Cursed Energy did not exist.
Clang!!
Utsugi spun, drawing his tachi in a single fluid motion to parry the follow-up strike. The shriek of metal on metal echoed through the woods. Before him stood Mugai, wielding a spear as large as his own body, his lips pulled back in a lupine grin. "Impressive. You are the first to evade that blow."
Utsugi’s brow furrowed sharply. 'Zero Cursed Energy... a complete Heavenly Restriction?'
To the Six Eyes, Mugai did not register as a living human. Depvoid of any Cursed Energy flow, his body appeared in Utsugi's vision as nothing more than a stone or a tree—an inanimate object. For Utsugi, who relied entirely on the flow of energy to interpret his surroundings, this was a total blind spot.
"Who are you?" Utsugi’s voice was like ice cracking in a winter gale.
"Unnecessary information." Mugai kicked off the ground.
BOOM!!
The earth cratered beneath his feet. With nothing but pure physical power, he surpassed the speed of sound. With the air itself screaming in protest, Mugai’s spear lunged toward Utsugi’s flank.
Thrum!!
Utsugi condensed Cursed Energy into his blade to block the thrust. But in that instant, his eyes widened in shock. Through the barrier of his reinforced defense, a primitive, overwhelming brute force threatened to shatter his wrists. "Tch...!"
Utsugi was blasted back like a cannonball, snapping through several cypresses before impacting the ground. Before the dust could even settle, Mugai was already airborne above his landing point. "The Six Eyes aren't much after all!"
Mugai brought his spear down in a crushing vertical strike. Utsugi twisted away at the last second, but as the spear struck the earth, it splintered the ground into dozens of stone shards that flew up like buckshot. One fragment grazed Utsugi’s cheek, carving a deep crimson line. Overwhelming physical force. A true monster that trampled the logic of jujutsu with nothing but muscle and speed stood before him.
Utsugi distanced himself, treading over the fallen timber. His wound healed instantly via Reverse Cursed Technique, but his gaze became sharper than ever. 'Dangerous. His physical specs exceed my Cursed Energy reinforcement. If I try to read him with the Six Eyes alone, I will lose.'
Utsugi immediately revised his strategy. He shifted his focus away from the enemy's body and toward the environment surrounding him.
Fwoosh!
Mugai vanished from sight once more. But this time, it was different. Utsugi read the sudden compression of the air on his left flank.
"Falling Blossom Emotion."
Utsugi spun half a turn, detonating a flare of blue energy around his body. The moment Mugai’s spear thrust inward from his blind spot, the Falling Blossom Emotion redirected the physical impact, guiding the force harmlessly aside.
Clink!
Capitalizing on the sliding blade, Utsugi lunged into Mugai’s guard. "I have you."
Utsugi's blade surged toward Mugai's chest. But Mugai was a creature of war; rather than dodging, he reached out with his bare left hand and seized the freezing steel of Utsugi’s sword. Screeech—! Mugai’s palm was sliced to the bone, blood spraying, yet he grinned as if the concept of pain was a foreign tongue. "Not good enough."
Pulling Utsugi toward him, Mugai slammed his forehead into Utsugi’s face with horrific velocity. CRUNCH! Utsugi’s nose shattered, and bloody tears blurred his vision. In that moment of disorientation, Mugai’s massive boot buried itself into Utsugi’s abdomen. "Gah...!"
The agony of ruptured organs. Utsugi coughed up blood as he tumbled across the forest floor. "Oi, Sugawara prodigy." Mugai rested his spear on his shoulder and shook the blood from his mangled hand. "Judging by the way you fight, your insides are rotting away, aren't they?"
Utsugi’s attempt to rise faltered. "I can see it. The five senses of a Heavenly Restriction can smell the essence of a man." Mugai’s lip curled. "You smell just like me. A scent of a corpse that has lost everything, carving through others just to fill a hollow shell by gnawing on your own soul. You’re just an empty husk living in the tomb of your past, aren’t you?"
Those words carved into Utsugi's deepest abyss more effectively than any blade. He had been fleeing into the act of slaughter, unable to move a single step away from the powerlessness he felt on the day he failed to save her.
"...Shut up." The Cursed Energy radiating from Utsugi began to churn with a sinister hue. It was not mere anger; it was an instinctive rejection of the man who had seen his most wretched truth.
"I’m not wrong, am I? Though I don't know what you lost." Mugai gripped his spear and surged forward like a predatory beast. "Keep swinging your sword like that, and you'll end up cutting yourself!"
"I decide how I will live!!" Utsugi’s eyes flared with a blinding azure radiance. He did not dodge Mugai's spear. Instead, he leaped directly into its path.
Thwack!
Mugai’s spear pierced deeply through Utsugi’s left shoulder. The sound of bone splintering rang out. "...What?" Mugai’s eyes widened. It was an extreme tactic—flesh for bone.
With his shoulder impaled, Utsugi grabbed Mugai’s collar with a death grip. Simultaneously, a hiss of white steam erupted from his body. Reverse Cursed Technique. The shattered bone and muscle of his shoulder regenerated around the spear in real-time, effectively bolting Mugai’s weapon into his own body. "I have you now... beast."
In Utsugi's right hand, the tachi pulsed with Cursed Energy of an unprecedented density. Space distorted, and black lightning coalesced at the tip of the blade.
Black Flash.
TH-BOOOM!!!!
The black radiance erased the cypress forest in a single strike. Utsugi’s blade cleaved through Mugai’s abdomen in a perfect diagonal arc. "Gah...!!" Even a body fortified by Heavenly Restriction could not withstand that ultimate strike. Mugai’s massive frame was hurled dozens of meters away, trailing a geyser of blood before crashing into the earth.
Silence returned. In a forest of burning timber, Utsugi wrenched the spear from his shoulder and cast it aside, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He approached Mugai slowly. The mortally wounded assassin lay on his back, staring at the night sky with shallow, rattling breaths.
"...Kill me," Mugai muttered dryly. There was no fear of death in his voice, only the nihilism of a tool that had outlived its purpose.
Utsugi leveled the cold tip of his blade at Mugai’s throat. A single thrust would end it. But the man's earlier words rang in his ears: 'You're just an empty husk living in the tomb of your past.'
Utsugi looked down at him with indifferent eyes. A man discarded and robbed of cursed energy. A man living as someone else's tool. In this miserable sight, Utsugi saw a reflection of his own heart.
Ching.
Utsugi withdrew his blade and sheathed it. "...Why don't you kill me?" Mugai asked, bewildered.
"If Tokisada wants to send insects, tell him to send ones that are actually worthwhile next time." Utsugi turned his back. "The next time I draw my blade, I will take Fujiwara's head."
His voice was freezing, yet the killing intent had vanished. Mugai watched Utsugi's receding silhouette in the darkness. It was not the silhouette of a champion ruling the heavens, but that of a wounded beast wandering without a path.
Left alone on the forest trail, Utsugi stopped and looked up at the moon. With a blood-stained hand, he gripped the dry remnants of the white Deutzia blossom hidden inside his collar. His heart ached as if it were being torn asunder. When, if ever, would he be free from this suffocating cycle of the past?
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