.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Kaoru was gone.
One moment, she had stood in the valley beneath him; the next, she was gone with the sound of impact and Keiji Maeda's voice echoing louder than the battlefield.
Seijiro followed with his gaze, her body arcing through mist and debris, crashing against scorched pine and vanishing over the western ridge. He hadn't seen her land, just the blood on the rock and the torn edge of a sleeve, crimson against the mud.
But the Six Eyes fed him with cruel precision: thirty-three meters, the impact velocity, the angle of the blow, the probability of internal damage. He swallowed against all of it; his lips didn't move. Not her name, not even a breath. She's alive, he told himself. No cursed energy rupture, no collapse; he would have felt it. He exhaled through his nose, forcing the panic out with it.
"One less variable," he muttered to no one and maybe to himself. No Kaoru meant no dumb emotions: he wouldn't hesitate, wouldn't be tempted to protect, and wouldn't have to see her bleed.
Better this way. Too many people died when he hesitated, and she wasn't his to worry about.
His boots touched the earth with soundless grace, cursed energy softening his descent like this wasn't war at all but a polite conversation he was choosing to entertain and not the other way around. His sleeves stirred in the breeze, and dust curled up, rejected by the shimmer of Infinity around his frame.
The world took pause.
Seijiro smiled, cold, but the expression didn't reach his eyes. Ahead of him, two figures.
Mumei, the young Kamo prodigy, was shoulder-deep in silver leather armor that somehow made her look more imperial than protected. She planted the Mitsuboshi no Yari elegantly at her side and smiled with all the warmth of a prayer bell tolling before an execution. "Gojo Seijiro," she said sweetly, "it'll be an honor to kill you."
Kami, she even tilted her head. Of course that old fox of a Kamo patriarch was hiding a Blood Manipulation prodigy up his sleeve. Just his luck.
Masamune, the one-eyed furnace, landed beside her with all the subtlety of a meteor hurled by the kami, gravel fracturing beneath his armored weight. He straightened slowly with steam that hissed from the melted edge of his right shoulder plate and sparks that leaped from his fingers.
The hilt in his hand melted already, molten leather burning his knuckles; he dropped it, let it hiss into the dirt in a single puff of smoke, and drew another with a flick of his wrist. Flame snapped to life mid-motion, a new blade white-hot at the base, searing orange at the edge. The heat around it warped the air.
"Oh," Seijiro said, narrowing his eyes. "So that's why you carry four. They can't stand your cursed energy." A beat. A smirk of disdain. "Bet your body can't stand it too."
He gave them a shallow, mock-formal bow, flicking his sleeves up and—unconsciously—adjusting the spot where the wooden comb nestled. Still tucked away.
"Well. Two-on-one?" he said brightly, dangerously so. "I'm flattered. You sure you don't want to fetch a third?"
Mumei rolled her golden eyes, already slipping into a stance. "Kami, he's exactly as smug as they said."
A single blink. That was all the warning she got.
One moment, Mumei stood poised with the Mitsuboshi no Yari; the next, Seijiro, grinning with the kind of smile that meant run, landed like a thunderclap behind her, dragging gravity with him.
Dust spiraled in his wake, the air distorting under the sudden weight as his Blue locked onto the spear's shaft. Mumei's head snapped, and she barely had time to flinch, clutching tighter, but her hands burned with the recoil.
Seijiro reached out fast, and his hand closed around the shaft of the spear. "This doesn't belong to you," he muttered low and cold.
Everything froze. The cursed weapon hummed, and cursed energy warped around them like water boiling in the wrong direction. The curse embedded within the spear fought to recognize its current wielder, and for one terrifying second, it hesitated in confusion. The Six Eyes focused, and Seijiro's cursed energy surged, violent as he twisted the shaft just enough to break her stance. Mumei staggered; her fingers almost slipped.
He had the damn thing. For a second—
The spear snapped. A pulse erupted from its core, not visible light, not fire, but an absence. A null. For one terrible second, the cursed energy in the air died, and Seijiro's Infinity vanished. He knew it could happen and still couldn't stop his pupils as they contracted. Shit.
Mumei twisted, fast, driving a heel into his sternum just enough to unbalance him, exploiting the moment Infinity was down. The spear flicked upward, flipping once, and she caught it by the blade, not caring that the flesh on her hand sliced open, and stepping back for distance.
A static stand-off, enough for Masamune to crash in like a meteor.
The flames at the man's fingers flared, and he moved forward with the force of a collapsing wall, trailing flame. Seijiro had to admit, in the split second before he moved, it was almost beautiful.
A horizontal flame arc tore across the battlefield in a crescent moon of fire as, from above, Masamune swung down hard, a blaze trailing from his ignited hilt. Seijiro turned just in time to catch the edge of the flaming katana against his ribs as the blast hit the ground in a deafening boom, setting dry earth ablaze in a hiss of steam and sparks.
Mumei skidded back, heels digging into the mud with blood from her open palm that slicked down her forearm, quickly hardening in a Slicing Exorcism that closed on Seijiro.
Infinity snapped back in place, the fire curved wide, folding the grass around his feet into embers, the blood disk fizzled as it collided with the barrier's invisible edge, flickering madly before it crumpled in on itself.
Silence, for half a second, then a twitch of his fingers. Blue. The cursed energy converged inward, compressing violently, and the earth obeyed.
Chunks of terrain ripped from the hillside free of their roots and lifted upward, slabs of rock caught mid-spin, before Seijiro hurled them outward straight at Masamune, mid-leap. The daimyō twisted, blade burning hotter, cleaving the boulder in two and landing in a spray of fire. Debris rained over the field.
"Don't blink, Gojo," Masamune growled, charging again.
"I don't," Seijiro shot back, grinning.
He caught the shift a heartbeat before it happened, Mumei's cursed energy flared behind him, and the spear darted forward fast; Seijiro pivoted just as the blade kissed his side.
Infinity collapsed.
Crafty brat—!
She smirked, slipping past him. "Oops!"
The blood around her palm pulsed inward, compressed into a tight sphere. She clenched her fist around it and fired: Convergence, and a heartbeat later, Piercing Blood. Her accuracy was terrifying: a beam of red light screamed toward his face from below. He dropped the spear.
Seijiro's mind calculated: Infinity snapped in place just in time as the blood beam screamed against its edge, curving sideways. "Okay, new plan," he muttered, icy-blue eyes snapping to her.
Red.
The repulsive crimson wave dashed outward, carving a scar into the battlefield; a line of trees detonated, trunks shredded into splinters, the shockwave strong enough to scatter both the Kamo girl and One-Eyed Dragon before they could regain their footing.
Mumei flipped backward through the smoke, spear in hand, and smiled unshaken. Masamune dropped beside her, tossing the melted second hilt from his hand without looking. It hit the ground with a dull clang, already blackened. He clicked his tongue, drawing the third hilt from his back with one fluid motion. Flames ignited, glowing white-hot; this new blade was thinner and curved like a sickle.
Across them, Seijiro exhaled through his nose, adjusting his stance. They're coordinated, he realized, sidestepping flame even as Mumei's spear carved through the smoke from above him. Too coordinated. And that Kamo princess...
"You're annoying," he snapped toward Mumei, dodging another thrust. "Like, deeply."
But too inexperienced.
Masamune slashed, too high. Seijiro ducked, slid low under the blade, and fired a point-blank Blue straight into the other man's boot. The ground cracked, caving under the explosive suction, and the man staggered. Seijiro flashed forward, blurred past his guard, and stepped behind him right inside Mumei's stance, too fast for the girl to react; his index finger pressed lightly to her throat.
Not a strike, not even a poke. A narrowed-point Red.
The cursed energy bloomed at his fingertip. That close? Even if the spear activated again, even if she dodged, it wouldn't matter. Seijiro grinned, and Mumei's eyes widened—
—And a wall of fire slammed into them both.
Seijiro fired Red, missing Mumei's throat as the girl flipped sideways and Masamune came down between them, both feet hitting the earth in a spray of molten gravel; he spun the blade in a chain-wide arc, igniting the blast a breath too late.
His Ignition Bloom detonated against Seijiro's Infinity, cooking the air.
Kicking Mumei backward and throwing her out of the way, Seijiro dodged the flame-forged sword and blocked the next swing with his bare hands. Smoke hissed from his palm, but he couldn't care. With a bright smile at the daimyō's face, he detonated Blue between them, and they both flew back; Masamune landing in a skid, flame-sword dying in his hands, Seijiro flipping clean and crouching, his palm still smoking and bristling.
Seijiro's gaze swept over both of them now through the clearing smoke—
Wait. Where's the girl—?
Shadow above: Mumei, spear in hands, in a straight downward thrust with her entire body aligned, testing his rhythm, studying his reaction timing. Her foot slid forward as he ducked low, dodging the spear's edge that bypassed Infinity again the moment it came in contact.
She was gambling on forcing him just enough to open a gap. It nearly worked.
His foot shifted, and she baited the step. She fell for it. Her eyes lit up just as Seijiro slammed a hand to the ground and Red-blasted the hillside beneath them. The entire slope collapsed under them, crumbling in on itself, and Mumei stumbled, just a beat.
Masamune appeared from behind him a second later, katana raised overhead.
Fools, Seijiro thought, grinning like a madman, fist already drawn back. That was all the opening he needed.
"Sit down, dragon."
He turned and punched.
A burst of cursed energy flared as he slammed a Blue-infused fist straight into the daimyō's sternum. Air collapsed around the strike, an implosion trailing Seijiro's fist as Masamune's armor and probably a couple of ribs folded inward with a gut-wrenching crunch. The man flew, lifted clean off his feet, and hurled across the field backward, leaving fire in his wake. When he came to a stop, he actually threw up.
A second later— Whip-crack
Blood sprayed Seijiro's cheek. Not his. He spun to his right, half-feral in the haze, just in time to meet Mumei's second strike, a Blood Edge dagger of her own blood rotating at deadly speed.
"Die mad, Gojo!" she snarled, but her follow-through was too tight, too arrogant. He exploited it and shifted back fast, slamming into the ground with both heels, Blue igniting under his heels.
He yanked her mid-motion; the compressed gravity twisted her trajectory, slamming her into a tree so hard the bark exploded. Mumei rolled on the ground and landed on her side, blood flowing from a slash on her back.
Still, she coiled for another strike, lifting her spear again.
Persistent little psycho.
Seijiro didn't wait for them to reset. He rose just a bit into the air, hair blown skyward as the wind bowed to him, and lifted both hands. Two massive slabs of stone ripped from the valley floor and hurled like twins meteors: one at Masamune, one at Mumei. The One-Eyed Dragon sliced him in half mid-flight. Mumei caught hers with a blood shield, but she was still flung backward again into the moss-covered side of the hill, coughing blood.
And then—for a moment—the battlefield paused.
And Seijiro? He landed slowly, effortlessly, languidly. He touched the ground with cursed energy still burning beneath his skin. His grin this time was too wide, too bright, borderline deranged. "Cocky fire hazard and blood princess," he said, wiping Mumei's blood from his cheek with two fingers. "Try not to die too fast. I'm enjoying this."
Mumei spat blood, and Masamune muttered, drawing his last hilt. "You talk too much."
"Yeah, yeah," Seijiro said, stretching his shoulders like a man halfway to delirium. "I've been told."
Masamune rose first, groaning, skin blistered under his broken shoulder guard. "Gojo—" he spat before turning his attention to the Kamo princess. "Ohi. You done with that thing?"
Mumei staggered to her feet, armor warped inward on her stomach, nose bleeding down her lip, and already hardening into small orbs around her. "I'm ready," she muttered, eyes never leaving Seijiro.
Lovely. So she was studying me before unleashing the spear, thought Seijiro, his jaw clenched in focus behind the arrogance; his Infinity faltered against the spear, and a sheen of sweat slipped down his temple. Those two were top-grade sorcerers. And both of them were still standing.
Then came the sound of the Mitsuboshi no Yari sinking into the dirt.
The red shaft hummed, and a kekkai layered itself over the battlefield around them. Mumei narrowed her eyes at him; she adjusted her grip on the spear's shaft, blood smearing it; she smiled again.
"Can't see us now, can you, Gojo-dono?"
The mist that unfurled from the spear, colorless and curling around their feet, dulled every sound. The world pulled back in a breath held too long, and even the battlefield faded into background noises, then into nothing.
Seijiro's pupils dilated as the Six Eyes struggled for clarity. Blinked. And died. The landscape vanished in all but form: no cursed energy signatures, no feedback from the field, just fog and a throbbing pressure in his skull. He staggered one step back, not much, but enough to speak volumes. "You little—" he muttered, as he squinted again, trying to force clarity where none came anymore.
He hated not seeing. He hated it with the fury of a man who had lived his whole life seeing too much.
Suppressing output? No, it's not that. A custom kekkai designed to deafen my Six Eyes and my cursed sight.
He'd seen this before; Kaoru had crafted that same kekkai, once. But he didn't have time to think for long; Masamune struck, predictably but well-timed. A wide-angle blast from the left. A feint: it wasn't meant to hit, it was meant to make him move. Seijiro didn't take the bait, or tried not to. But in that moment, without his vision, he couldn't track the second attack. Mumei blurred into his blindside, slipping into his peripheral vision. She dragged the spear's tip with the precision of a girl who had spent her childhood killing exactly what people told her to kill.
Seijiro pivoted fast, not surprised when Infinity failed.
The spear grazed his outer haori, missing flesh by a thread. Not that it mattered; that damn weapon was truly his curse.
"Clever girl," he hissed under his breath, triggering Blue again without hesitation at maximum output.
Cursed energy compressed in a split-second pulse, and a force field snapped in a wave around him, sending a shockwave. Mumei shot backward, and Masamune, mid-reposition, was yanked off his feet and slammed face-first into the ground, a burst of flame erupting from his armor on impact.
Seijiro straightened slowly from the crouch Blue had forced, steam coiling from his shoulders and hair clinging to his cheekbones. He discarded his ruined haori, cursed energy twitching at the edges erratically.
The kekkai was dampening his Six Eyes, and without the Six Eyes... His precision? Off. He couldn't manipulate his output the way he should. Blue pulled too much. Red lagged behind. Infinity trembled.
Weak.
His fingers shook at that, as he flicked his wrist. Red flared—unstable, barely formed—vaporizing a smear of Mumei's blood by his boots.
For the first time since he touched the ground, Seijiro felt… cornered. Not fear, but inevitability. His grin returned, arrogant and mocking, but his jaw was clenched too tight to hold it long.
"You actually made me sweat," he said too brightly. "You proud of yourselves?"
Mumei rose from the dirt, blood clinging to her temple in a slow trickle. She didn't answer, just smiled.
Masamune spat grit and dragged himself to his knees as flame hissed back into shape from the hilt in his grip. There was a brief pause as if the air itself was holding its breath, before he lifted a hand to his face.
The eyepatch peeled away, revealing a cursed limiter seal beneath—carved into flesh over an empty socket—that ignited instantly.
For a heartbeat, nothing changed.
Then, cursed energy exploded outward from him, way hotter than before.
Thin lines of glowing red carved down his temple and jaw like veins, spreading quickly across his cheekbone, his throat, down past the collar of his armor. The air around him hissed and even the mist from Mumei's barrier almost burned away.
Seijiro didn't blink, but he shifted his weight. "A cursed energy limiter?" His mind processed what he was seeing, "Bet you can't go on too long without that, right?"
As if on cue, Masamune exhaled once, and from one nostril a stream of blood began to fall; it vanished into the rising steam in a blink. A backlash from the sheer heat of his own cursed energy that was boiling his body from the inside. His next breath made his mouth smoke: a dragon.
The flame at his blade's edge turned white, then violet-blue.
The ground beneath his feet smoldered, and just like that, he lunged, cracking the earth, and vanished forward fast enough to blur. A curved arc of flame chased the swing of his katana.
Great, now he's faster and hotter. I just have to drag this fight until he burns himself out, Seijiro swore as he raised Blue, attempting to collapse the space between them, but it connected with empty fire.
Shit—a decoy?
The real strike detonated behind him from another direction, and the blast flung him forward. He barely caught his footing as blood sprayed from a new gash along his temple, and his boots carved twin furrows through the soil, struggling to stabilize.
Too much pressure, too many angles, Mumei's barrier, the damned spear—it was all interfering.
Even with years of experience, the haze over his Six Eyes was like a blindfold, and it left him half a step behind. He couldn't read the flow, couldn't see the fight anymore.
From across the field, smoke curled from the leather straps binding Masamune's armor as if he was burning himself inside out when he leveled one hand before the chest, trembling faintly; thumb pressed to ring and little finger, while the index and middle stood extended. As his palm snapped downward, his cursed energy raged up through his limbs, veins glowing beneath the skin, and the limiter seal carved into the flesh over his missing eye blazed molten red. Sparkles hissed at his shoulder, and his voice came like a funeral bell:
"Domain Expansion."
Seijiro's eyes widened in instant alarm. Reflexes lit up before thought could catch, his hands snapped up in countermeasure, fingers already forming the signs of his own domain: index and middle entwining. He could win a domain clash with Date Masamune. He knew that much—
"Domain Expansion—"
Too focused on Masamune and on his own domain, he forgot the real danger. Seijiro's gaze flicked left, and in that heartbeat, he saw her.
Damn it.
Mumei. Lit by bloodlight and pupils pinprick-sharp, veins glowing around her golden eyes as her muscles moved faster than breath; every cell in her body supercharged thanks to the Flowing Red Scale.
By the time he turned, she was already behind him—
—and the Mitsuboshi no Yari found its mark.
The spear's tip punched through the left side of Seijiro's body with a wet sound; it pierced just under the ribs, angled upward, bypassing Infinity as if it weren't even there. Muscle parted, flesh split. He felt every inch as the tip of the spear pierced the last flesh on the other side of his body.
Seijiro's mouth opened, then choked shut in a strangled gasp. Blood splashed violently across the rocks beneath him from the wound. He stumbled a step, and another. His knees almost gave as his cursed energy collapsed. He couldn't expand his domain, not like this, not with that cursed weapon embedded halfway into his body.
"...That's a cute plan," he choked with a shaky grin, blood slipping down his lips.
Mumei leaned in, twisting the spear forward into the flesh of his body, slowly, deeply. "Do you like it?" she cooed, looking up at him.
Seijiro snarled, grabbed the shaft, and pulled. She held. They fought over the weapon embedded in him, and still, he wrenched it loose, just barely, ripping it free from his side as the girl dragged it away with her.
A torrent of blood followed down his now-free wound.
Too much. Far too much.
He dropped to one knee, hand pressed to the wound, shaking, but there was no time to collapse because above him—behind him—the One-Eyed Dragon finished his Domain.
"Domain Expansion. Ryūō no Ro."
The first thing he felt was the world snapping shut around him. The second the unbearable heat that burned the air. The, the battlefield around them transformed. The sky? Gone. The trees? Gone. The air? Gone. And in their place—fire.
A furnace.
Around them was a ribcage of molten iron arched overhead like the chest of some vast, skeletal beast. Chains dangled from the ceiling, and the ground boiled in cracks of lava. Various blades hung suspended mid-forging.
The Furnace of the Dragon King.
Well, the name's fitting, though Seijiro vaguely amused as he tried to draw in breath that scorched his lungs in an instant. The pain started next: he coughed, staggered, his foot slipped on scorched stone, and his cursed energy began to burn away, evaporating at the edges as the temperature rose.
Great. This domain burns through cursed energy.
Sweat steamed off his skin, and the wound in his side kept pouring blood into the cracks of that inferno, mixing with lava.
And Masamune, damn him, was already in motion.
Infinity triggered uselessly, unable to counter a domain's guaranteed hit.
The daimyō's first strike, he dodged, though Seijiro still felt the air singe his skin. The second carved a line of fire across his shoulder, splitting through skin and burning muscle. Hot blood sprayed in an arc. The third, he twisted, but not fast enough. It tore into the same side Mumei had already pierced.
Fresh agony. Masamune's domain was merciless, and there wasn't time to recover.
Seijiro gave ground, five paces, maybe more, panting: this was going to get ugly, and he wasn't so sure anymore he'd make it out alive. His left arm trembled from the elbow down; nerve damage from the spear's kiss, he registered dimly. Too deep. The Six Eyes could barely keep up; his hip was soaked, and the fabric of his kosode cut open over his open wounds.
And even worse, his cursed energy was slowly dying.
The ground shifted beneath his feet—again—or maybe it was just him buckling.
And still, he grinned. Not because it was funny, but because it was either that or fall apart.
A blur of motion, and Mumei dove again, still bloodied and still smiling like the world was her personal stage. Seijiro wanted to slap it off her face. Her stance was now off, slightly, but her grip on the Mitsuboshi no Yari didn't falter as she aimed it at his throat; her cursed energy coiled tightly around her limbs, elevated by Flowing Red Scale.
Seijiro forced his arm to respond, and Blue slammed upward. It hit her mid-dash and dragged her sideways into a molten chain rack, leaving a smear of blood across the forge floor. She bounced once and rolled, trying to stand quickly but failing.
Before he could charge Red to end her for good, Masamune was on him again. One swing, two, every single one a guaranteed hit. Seijiro had to block with a pulse of raw, cursed energy as the flame burned on his left arm, and blood slipped from the corner of his mouth.
Every technique came late or hit wrong, and the only thing keeping him alive was speed and the rarest flickers of instinct catching just enough to delay a lethal contact. He was out of time. He was out of options.
If I stay, I'm ash.
Seijiro didn't want to do it; he really didn't. Expanding his own domain in this condition, injured, disoriented, energy bleeding from him like water through a cracked vase, was dangerous. He might not have enough cursed energy left to maintain the barrier and if his Domain didn't finish the job in one go—
If this doesn't kill them, it'll kill me.
But what was the alternative? Burn to ash in Masamune's forge? Be skewered again by that smug blood-sorceress? He saw Mumei sprinting again, blood painting her face from a cut on her forehead, poised to lunge with a shaky hand on the damn spear.
No. Absolutely not. Not today.
He dragged in one last, shallow breath, lifting his hand.
"Domain Expansion—"
The air stilled around him, light crashing inward before detonating outward in all directions—
"—Muryokusho."
The walls of the Furnace of the Dragon King shattered around them like brittle glass and the forge split down the center, flame and steel vanishing into empty starlight. Time slowed, then stopped. The world went flat. No direction, no time—just infinite light and infinite nothing and everything, laced with drifting motes of information and cognition.
Unlimited Void.
Masamune froze mid-strike. He didn't gasp; he just stilled and dropped his flame sword from his hand as his limbs seized. The dragon fire in his veins dimmed to embers; his mouth opened, but no sound escaped. Slowly, blood erupted from his nose, from his single eye. He hit the ground with a hard, echoing thud. His cursed energy vanished next in a final puff of sparkles and steam. Not dead, not yet, but paralyzed, his nervous system flayed open.
At the center of it all, Seijirō stood, swaying, a hand still raised to sustain the barrier of his Domain, body slick with sweat, hair plastered to his face. His eyes were wide, unblinking; he almost didn't look human anymore.
Turning slowly, he spotted her: Mumei. Of course a Kamo prodigy knew how to react to a Domain Expansion.
At the rim of the forming Domain, Mumei had driven the Mitsuboshi no Yari into the earth with both hands. The ground cracked outward from the impact, and a hard clang of resonance rolled through the lightless space. Blood splattered from her nose as she poured energy down the shaft of the spear, forcing it to root deep.
A sound like glass inhaling, then a membrane bloomed around her: a small kekkai, a crystalline and opaque bubble between two realities. The moment it expanded, the spreading barrier of Unlimited Void faltered, refusing to seal around Mumei.
Seijirō felt the resistance; the barrier's borders snagged against that pressure, refusing to close fully, leaving a ragged hole around the spear's locus. He exhaled through his teeth and pushed. His Domain's barrier pressed again around Mumei. She braced her knees, as her barrier shrieked and held—barely—denying closure of his Domain over that point of singularity. Her lips parted in a silent breath, head tilted slightly in strain, but she didn't collapse.
He bore down harder. The whole world bent toward her, and for a breath, it looked like Seijiro's Domain might consume her after all—
—Then the standoff broke.
As fast as they came, the stars folded back into nothingness, and Seijiro's domain dissolved. A soundless rupture, and the battlefield snapped back into place: ashes, smoke, the charred smell of scorched trees and iron. Wind, now, and even the distant howl of war somewhere beyond the ridge.
The kekkai was finally gone, and he could see again.
Just like that, Seijiro collapsed. Hitting the ground hard in an instant, one knee slamming into the mud, he struggled for air. In. Then out. Again. Again. Pupils blown wide ribs expanding under burned cloth. He didn't try to stand straight.
"...Kami above," he muttered as his other knee nearly gave out, too. He wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand as his fingers still wouldn't stop shaking, and laughed once, breathless. "I swear to all that's holy, I hate that damn spear."
His body was done: one arm hung limp, his entire left side wet with blood that gushed freely with each heartbeat. He leaned, one shoulder slouched, and brushed his hair away from his face with a bloodied hand.
He tried to center his cursed energy: nothing responded. His output was gone, choked and erratic in the aftermath of his Domain Expansion. And across the field—
Mumei was still kneeling, shaking, blood dripping from her chin; conscious, but scorched through with partial sensory overload. Her eyes unfocused, her breath ragged, the spear still humming where it stood buried in the soil.
Masamune lay crumpled in a heap of molten steel and his scorched armor. His famous crescent helm was split down the center, and the smoke curled from the cracks in his chest plate. His mouth hung open, and steam drifted from it.
Still alive. But cooked and no longer part of any battle.
Seijiro blinked through the blood in his lashes; he could still hear the hiss of molten earth cooling, could still smell the acrid, burnt residue of Masamune's Domain lingering on his skin. But he was fine.
For about three seconds.
He sensed the whisper of blood-soaked boots on grass, the faint tremble in cursed energy.
Across the clearing, Mumei stood, slowly and shaking. Her hair was undone, brown strands stuck to her skin, blood from her nose, and the corner of one eye. She wrapped a hand tight around her ribs, clearly broken under the silver armor, but her eyes burned, locked on him, furious.
She staggered forward, one foot dragging in the air as she flicked the remaining blood from her fingers in a wide arc, smearing the red across her chin. Then, with the casual cruelty of a girl too smart for her age, she lowered her stance...
...and dove in a slow, erratic charge with the Mitsuboshi no Yari still wet with blood at the tip.
Seijiro didn't even snarl. Too tired for that. "You don't know when to quit," he muttered, dragging himself upright.
His legs braced in a loose crouch, arm half-raised. He struggled for a flicker of cursed energy that curved off his fingertips. A small, shy thing, a barely there half-formed light.
They closed the distance, muscles twitching under strain, and they both let gravity finish what they started. Her cheek opened where his red-infused finger grazed her. His thigh split open where her spear kissed skin. A scratch, barely skin deep. It didn't even bleed right away. It didn't matter anymore; she was done for.
"That's it?" Seijiro smirked in disdain as his eyes lidded with exhaustion, never leaving hers. "That's all you've got left?"
He didn't see the satisfied smile on her lips at first. Not truly. Not until it was too late.
The smirk fell from his face as his Six Eyes lit up in sudden, blinding alarm. His gaze dropped to the spearhead, and a whisper escaped him, slow and low, the kind of thing a man says before the gallows give way.
"...Ah. Shit."
Not his blood on the blade. Hers. Mumei's.
And now it had already entered his bloodstream, seeped in through that tiny scratch, too small to matter… unless it was the Kamo clan's.
Seijiro didn't need to guess. The Six Eyes showed him everything: how it slipped into his veins, the foreign rhythm pulsing between his ribs, the cursed blood spreading like a curse. He reached for anything—nothing. His cursed energy wouldn't obey to him anymore.
The scratch began to burn, and he exhaled slowly in weary recognition. He should have known better than anyone else.
"You shouldn't have let me bleed on you," she said sweetly, smile tinted with iron. She lifted two fingers. "Shichiketsu no Chi."
It hit instantly.
His knees buckled, as a spike of agony cracked through his skull; something in his chest twisted wrong. A single, traitorous drop of blood struck the dirt—
—And Seijiro Gojo began to bleed from all seven apertures.
Blood streamed from his nose. His ears rang like gongs struck underwater, then popped. A spike of pain blossomed inside his eyes, feeling like they were being torn from his face. His throat filled with iron, and blood trickled past his lips, a warm stream that leaked down his neck. It came fast, a dam breaking from the inside.
Seijiro gasped, coughed, and collapsed forward, catching himself on one palm. A hand flew to his face as he could somehow hold the blood in as his cursed energy surged and spiraled in disarray. It detonated unevenly under his skin and through his limbs. Through a god. Through him. That was the brilliance of it.
His vision swam when he stared down at the growing pool of red. A part of him... it wasn't even panic, just the insult of it. Just sheer, exhausted disbelief.
Karmic retribution, Keiji would have said if he were there to see. The kami balancing fates. He should've seen it coming; of all the ways—This? The same cursed fate that took Takahiro Zenin? He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kill her. Kami, he hated her.
Seijiro's hands shook violently as he choked and spat blood, red streaming down his wrist. His body hunched over, trembling. "You've got to be—" he choked, "—fucking kidding me."
Another wave of pain; dizziness hit next, and a whisper of cold crawled up the back of his neck.
Cold was never a good sign when you were losing that much blood. Seijiro knew that.
Mumei didn't even move; she just watched, her face still painted in blood and the Mitsuboshi no Yari firm in her hand. "I won," she muttered with cruel satisfaction to herself as her chest rose and fell, labored, but steady. "I killed Gojo Seijiro."
Hands trembling, Seijiro spat to the side and wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand, staring at the streak of red across his knuckles. He blinked it away and thought, almost absurdly: I haven't even given her that comb... that stupid little thing... It's still in my sleeve, isn't it? Probably snapped in half. Probably soaked in my blood now. Figures.
The thought made him furious.
Kaoru.
Annoyed, focused, shining with that too proud smile of hers. If he had to die today, and it seemed increasingly likely he might... It should've been her doing the honors. It would've made sense. It would've made a damn good story.
But this? This smug little blood princess, born lucky, raised cruel, smiling as if victory belonged to her alone?
"I am not," he wheezed, reaching for the last scrap of cursed energy buried deep inside him, "dying like Takahiro Zenin."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The world had tilted sideways. Quite literally, in Shima's case.
One moment, she'd been nestled snug between bundles of linen and a barrel of dried fish in the supply cart marked with the Gojo mon, smugly sure that no one, not even Seijiro, had noticed her. Next, the ground shook, men shouted, and horses screamed. Something exploded far too close to her left ear.
Then the cart tipped.
She tumbled down with an indignant squeak, landing face-first in the mud with a thud that rattled her bones. The barrel rolled after her, missing her head by less than a hair's width, and cracked open on a rock, releasing a rain of dried sardines.
When she looked up, there was a foot flying over her head. Not a metaphor, an actual foot attached to an armored samurai mid-fall.
He hit the ground next to her with a groan, clutching his side, and Shima blinked at him once, flat stare, no panic, before turning on her stomach and starting to crawl dodging spears that came down like the sky itself was trying to stab her.
This was not the plan.
The plan had been simple: stow away quietly, wait until the war nonsense was over, then pop out, silently scold Seijiro for being an idiot, and make sure he didn't bleed himself into a coma as he always tried to do.
Seijiro-sama is an idiot, she thought darkly. He said I should stay behind. That he'd be fine.
Like he wasn't the one who bled everywhere at the slightest inconvenience. He couldn't even heal a paper cut, and this was war. Without her, without granny Payo. So, she had done the only reasonable thing. She followed him, obviously. If she didn't, who would bandage his wounds, force him to sleep, remind him that he wasn't immortal just because he liked to play one? Someone had to keep that idiot alive.
Not also him. Not after Mama. Not after Papa.
But now she was—ugh—in a battlefield.
Blades clashed around her, and the ground heaved and stank of blood and sweat, and something burnt. She gagged once, caught herself, ducked beneath a swinging naginata, skittered to the side of a broken cartwheel, and peeked up. A Maeda mon flashed past her eyes, another man with the Ukita mon dragging a wounded man from a ditch by the arm; she remembered those. Men who'd bowed stiffly to Seijiro in their Kyoto hall and then promptly ignored her presence. As if she were a piece of furniture.
Well. Who was ignoring her now? One samurai shouted in her direction, too busy dying to care. Someone tripped on her. She squeaked as she took a kick to the ribs. Another to the back of the head. A rough shin struck her shoulder, but she didn't cry out and kept crawling.
No one helped her, no one had time for her, and that was just as well. Let them swing their oversized swords and scream about glory.
She had her own mission.
Find Seijiro. Scold Seijiro. Eventually heal Seijiro.
In that order.
She inched toward the edge of the field, crawling uphill toward the hazy outline of the first line. If Seijiro was anywhere, it would be there, where fire lit the sky and trees exploded in waves. But then—
She saw them.
Not enemies. Not threats. Just people.
Some were slumped over, unmoving, others trembled in the mud, hands pressed to wounds, groaning low. Shima paused, thinking fast. If there was one thing she could do—only one thing in this whole war-torn world—it was this.
She pushed herself to her feet and reached the nearest body, a man half-slumped against a broken standard with a bloodied shoulder and slack mouth. His armor was cracked down the front, and his breath rasped. Alive, just barely. She crouched beside him, inspecting the damage with a clinical precision that would've made Payo proud. No shattered spine, no cursed wounds. Just blood loss and pain. She raised one hand, drew in her breath through her nose, and pressed her tiny fingers to his chest.
A soft glow lit the air around them.
The man gasped, back arching slightly, and fell limp, healed enough.
Shima stood and moved on.
The next had a burned leg, but he was alive. She pressed both palms down, focused. Reverse cursed technique. Harder this time, but she held on until the skin stopped smoking. "Kami...?" He whispered something to her in a voice thick with disbelief.
She was already moving.
Another: missing an arm, the stump still wept blood. She crouched, lips pressed together in a tight line. This one she couldn't fix, not yet, but she could stop the dying. And she did. He sobbed when the bleeding halted.
She didn't hear him, not really. Just moved on.
A Zenin sorcerer with a deep shoulder gash. A footsoldier with an arrow through his thigh. She didn't look at their faces, just their wounds. One by one, like chores, like tying Seijiro's white hair every morning.
Step. Kneel. Heal. Again. And again.
Somewhere, she had lost a geta. The other one, she slipped off herself. Walking barefoot was better and quieter; it was easier to dodge weapons and bits of armor that way. The blood on her blue-paled Yukata's sleeves wasn't hers; it never was. Each touch left her more tired, and her cursed energy strained, but her legs carried her forward. A little flatter to the ground now. A little slower.
One soldier called her a himegami, another child goddess. Another, clearly delirious, begged her not to take him to the underworld and tried to kiss her feet; she kicked him lightly in the face. She wasn't anyone's shinigami. She was nine. And she was looking for someone foolish.
Another wave of healing. Another grunt. Another breath steadied.
And still she pressed forward through the mud, healing with hands too small for war every time she stopped. Her legs shook, her head swam, but she smiled, a small, crooked thing, half-grimace, half-pride. It wasn't a battlefield; it was a triage corridor, and she would cross it all to the frontline if she had to.
Because somewhere out there was her idiotic not-quite-big-brother. And he was probably bleeding again.