.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Kaoru wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and tasted copper.
Blood slicked the inside of her sleeve, her left arm still slightly shocked from the earlier blow. Breathing came shallow, caught somewhere between her sternum and the burning throb in her back. Her katana, broken behind her, useless like half the men screaming across the western slope of Sekigahara. The naginata she'd ripped from a corpse's fingers was too long, too unbalanced for her body, but she adjusted.
No time for pain. No time for anything. Except him.
Keiji Maeda.
The man stood twenty paces off like a painted oni from some scroll, radiating the kind of cursed energy that made every hair on her arms rise. High ponytail flaring with every exaggerated movement, feathers braided into the strands. Crimson-and-gold armor bloomed with embroidered sakura petals, half of them now soaked through with enemy blood and some, she suspected, his own.
No helmet. No shame. No sanity, from the look in his eyes. And oh, he was grinning.
Kami, not this again.
"Ara," he cooed, resting his massive ōdachi across his shoulders, "still cute when you're trying to kill me."
The blade pulsed, glowing with the circle drawn in blood along its flat: Ashuradō. A buff was already active; that explained the earlier hit and raw strength that had sent her skidding through the mud.
And he was bouncing. Literally bouncing on the balls of his feet. Kaoru spat blood into the dirt; she wanted to punch him before the fight even started.
She gritted her teeth and steadied her grip on the naginata. Focus. She couldn't afford to waste time here. Not when Seijiro was still out there with the Mitsuboshi no Yari drawn and pointed straight at him. She knew he was strong, stronger than them, and still... still...
She could feel the cursed pressure of a kekkai forming in the distance, where Seijiro was fighting. That wasn't right: if he was going to die, it wouldn't be by their hands.
Together, they'd promised. And she'd meant it.
But first, the Maeda bastard needed to move.
Kaoru shifted forward, keeping the naginata low; the blade skimmed the churned-up ground as her stance tightened, feet placed, weight forward, heel raised. Every heartbeat sounded too loud in her ears.
Keiji lit up. "Ah! That stance suits you, Little Blossom."
"Zenin-dono," she corrected, knuckles white on the naginata's shaft.
"Mm," he hummed. "But Little Blossom fits you better."
Enough. She lunged.
Her body compressed into a straight line, and she tore across the ground, closing the distance. Keiji's oversized sword swung wide to his right to meet her, still glowing with the cursed buff and heavier than it had any right to be. The clash rang out as the impact knocked her back—but not down. She flipped mid-air and landed on her feet, skidding in the mud, knees catching the weight.
"Little Blossom—pardon, Zenin-dono—have you met Lady Sakura?" He gave the sword a twirl; it nearly decapitated a tree.
Kaoru stared at him, incredulous. "You named that thing?"
"She's got an attitude," he said, cheerfully, sprinting again. "Just like you."
His next swing crashed on the earth beside her as she darted sideways, using the loose terrain—mud, torn banners, and fallen bodies—as cover. Her speed. That was her advantage. That and—
Shadows.
She ducked low under the blade, vanished into her own shadow, and reappeared behind him in the breath between blinks. Her naginata lashed toward his ribs, low under his guard.
He blocked like he'd been waiting for it. "A sneaky strike! Shameful," he sighed, even as she whipped around for another feint.
This one she followed through; the tip of her naginata glancing across his upper arm, tearing through embroidered sakura and splitting skin. Blood spat. Keiji flinched. They clashed again, three times in quick succession. Her naginata whirled with precision and form, but his ōdachi met each strike with brute force and unpredictability. He spun, laughed, ducked, shouted blessings to irrelevant kami mid-swing.
A madman with the strength of ten men and the luck of a hundred. And worst of all: he loved it.
But the first buff was beginning to fade, and she could see it: his swings slowed, his timing opened. Kaoru surged, exploiting her smaller frame and vaulting mid-air over a heap of bodies. A monkey trying to take down an elephant: her foot planted against his pauldron as she flipped over his head, naginata flashing downward toward the crown of his skull.
It should have been a clean blow.
Too late, she realized: he was letting her.
Keiji dropped low and spun too fast with unnatural grace, unbalancing her above his head, Lady Sakura dragging through the dirt in a wide circle around him. "Praise Benzaiten!" he bellowed mid-spin. As his foot slammed down, the sigil pulsed beneath him.
Ashuradō. Again.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Kaoru muttered, landing at a safe distance from him.
The gash down his bicep hadn't clotted, and blood dripped down his armor. "Ah-ah," Keiji tsked, wagging a finger. "That's not how a lady should talk."
She rolled her eyes and inhaled once. The bastard's aiming for the triple. She didn't give him the time.
Partial summon: Max Elephant Totality - Ittō Ryōran
Cursed energy surged through her, thighs taut, heels dug in. Her shikigami's Piercing Ox traits merged into the Totality triggered. Lowering her stance, she hit full speed in a blink, gaining momentum with every step of her charge. One breath, and she was across the field.
Keiji caught the motion and laughed, swinging to intercept her mid-movement. Her naginata, powered by the charge, clashed with his ōdachi, powered by the divine buff, in a screech of metal and sparks.
The naginata shaft cracked beneath her grip, and skin split across her fingers; she deflected the strike mid-slide, twisting her hips to duck, but the blow landed anyway. Not on her; behind her, a cedar trunk exploded into splinters.
The shockwave flung her sideways, her boots tearing the ground and palms stinging as she caught herself. Bark and dirt flew like rain as her knees slammed into mud and ash and shattered bark.
She looked up just to see Keiji already on her, still glowing in divine golden luck; Lady Sakura rose again. "Double Ashuradō," he sang, crashing the blade down. "Halfway to enlightenment!"
Kaoru rolled sideways; mud splashed her calves as she slid to a stop, one hand digging into the earth. The ground where she'd stood moments before was obliterated. Panting, she barely saw as he moved again, faster than a man of his size had any right to be.
Her naginata was caught flat-on-blade with a wrenching jolt. Her arms rang to the bone, but she twisted out of his range, spinning behind him, her voice a breath:
"Great Serpent."
The snake shikigami rose from her shadow, coiling around Keiji's ankles. She shot forward again with Piercing Ox's boost still burning through her, shoulder-first, and slammed into his chest, slipping under his guard; there, she twisted, locked around him like a vice. Her legs dug against his back, choking his neck with her forearm. She lifted her naginata over her head and drove it down toward his neck.
"Hold still," she hissed breathless against his ear.
The blade sank, not deep enough to kill, but blood exploded from the wound, soaking his chestplate and splashing her face; he gasped and staggered but stayed upright.
"Oh," Keiji gasped, still too cheerfully for a man with a gash in his neck and blood on his lips. "You're always this affectionate?"
Still pinned by Kaoru and Great Serpent, he tilted his head to the side, grinning up at her, and to her horror, with one bloody finger, he scrawled a cursed circle on the chestplate of his armor.
"No—"
She tried to wrench her blade deeper, to interrupt it, but the circle spun into light. The third Golden Eye in a row. Ashuradō. Kaoru's stomach dropped as the earth cracked under his feet.
Keiji's entire body lit like a shrine lantern, hair lifting with static, eyes glowing gold. A divine light split the battlefield, and the Great Serpent shriveled, recoiling into nothing.
Kaoru felt his cursed energy detonate beneath her and saw the exact moment the wound on his neck closed in a spike of Revere Cursed Technique. Blood stopped falling from every injury on his body. She didn't need him to say it; she already knew what was happening. But, of course, he said it anyway.
"Ashura Funnu!" he bellowed. "The kami's favorite mistake!"
A split second later, Kaoru was grabbed and airborne. Her naginata wrenched free of her hands as she hit the ground head-first, rolled, skidded through blood and bone, landing on one knee just in time to avoid vomiting from the impact. Her ribs screamed.
"Let's make these the best 108 heartbeats of your entire life."
Keiji blurred.
He was there—and then he was everywhere. He was no longer fast, he was inhuman; no one should have been able to move like that, not with that mass, not with that weapon. Engulfed in that golden light, his every step now cracked stone and every slash shattered something: earth, armor, physics.
And in a blink, he was on her.
The first strike split a pine tree behind her as if it were paper; she dodged by inches, rolling and grabbing back her naginata in the process. The second shattered her naginata's haft in half with an upward slice, splinters embedding deep in her shoulder as if they belonged. She was sent skidding backward on one knee, hiding behind a rock, only for it to explode behind her as Lady Sakura cleaved clean through it.
The third—Kaoru couldn't dodge.
The flat of the golden glowing ōdachi slammed into her right arm. Armor cracked. The bone broke. The sound was horrible, an egg's shell cracking under pressure, and her vision went white. She almost lost her senses as she worked for her Reverse Cursed Technique to reinforce bon just enough to avoid being split in half. Stumbling, right arm now limp and dripping blood into the ground, she tested her fingers: still working. Just enough to hold on to her only weapon.
Keiji stormed forward like a laughing avatar of karmic chaos. "C'mon, Little Blossom! You're holding out on me!"
Kaoru backed off fast, shifting through shadow, behind broken stumps and collapsed corpses. Her mind was a flurry of counters and calculations as she was leaking blood, breath, and seconds. Too fast, too strong. I have to wear him out. The mantra repeated in her head, pulse crashing.
She pivoted fast, slamming her hand to the dirt. "Max Elephant Totality, Ittō Ryōran."
The shadow beneath her boiled; from the ground rose Ittō Ryōran, the three-meter colossus of water-veined muscle and shadow, compressed water katana in hand. The thing roared and charged, cleaving toward Keiji's side. Piercing Ox's trait surged, supporting its charge, and Kaoru ran behind it.
Ittō Ryōran struck from the right, Kaoru from the left. The colossus's katana cleaved Keiji's ribs in a brilliant arc—deep, dangerous, deadly—and a blood geyser in a perfect curve, painting the ground.
In the time it took her to blink, it healed.
The flesh knit mid-swing, bone cracked but reformed. The blow should've gutted, and yet... The Ashura Funnu kept his body drenched in constant Reverse Cursed Technique, and he was regenerating faster than damage could register.
"Nice try!" he roared.
Kaoru's lips twitched in disbelief, but there was no time. Again, together, they struck. Ittō Ryōran closed again o Keiji's blindspot as she summoned Great Serpent to his other flank. The snake shikigami managed to coil once—just once—around his thigh.
Distance. I need distance from that kami-blessed Oni. He can't keep this up forever, she thought, desperate as her shikigami closed on him in tandem.
One spinning cut. One damned laugh.
Lady Sakura whirled, and the Great Serpent exploded, ripped apart with a single sweep. Too easily.
Shadows and blood splashed into the air, and Kaoru choked, folding slightly as the shikigami destruction's feedback slammed into her chest. She stumbled and fell to one knee, coughing, vision spinning. Her right arm was entirely numb now, shoulder torn, armor hanging by threads. Her fingers barely held her naginata.
Keiji only laughed harder, not even tired. "Try not to die, Little Blossom! I like you!"
She gritted her teeth, cursing him under her breath, and adapted.
With every swing, she moved differently, just enough. Angled her hips. She used debris, shadows, and dead bodies as cover as Ittō Ryōran slipped between her and Keiji to gain her time. She couldn't risk losing her Totality, but she couldn't risk taking another hit from that monster either.
She was slowing; too much blood dripped from a body that had begun to disobey her.
She kept going anyway.
Ittō Ryōran tanked one blow after another, staggering each time. Until it didn't.
Keiji's blade strike split a boulder too easily, and the shockwave flung the shikigami aside; the water-blade cracked mid-defense, form rippling out of cohesion. Kaoru's eyes widened as Ittō Ryōran collapsed back into her shadow in a splash of dying light, not destroyed but—
The blow found her.
She felt it in the marrow before it landed. Her shoulder twisted with a pop, sliced open to the bone. Her vision spun sideways. The ground rose up to meet her as she crashed into it hard, rolled once, twice, and came to a stop sprawled in the mud. Limbs askew. Eyes open.
Flat on her back, Kaoru stared up at the sky.
The battlefield still roared around her, but her ears no longer registered it. Everything dulled, the pain turned distant, a throb behind her thoughts. The sky above Sekigahara was an impossible blue that day, as if the kami themselves had granted them at least that. A single wisp of cloud moved slowly as breath. She watched it, unmoving.
How many heartbeats left?
She counted. One. Two. Three.
Kami, how many more?
Kaoru could hear him—Keiji—getting closer, stomping carelessly with triumph. His shadow lengthened over her, stretching, and still she didn't flinch. She was tired. So, so tired.
I should've been faster. Should've gone for the knee, not the ribs. Should've expanded her Domain instead, but with him in that state, a misfire is death. I should've summoned Nue first —
No. Wrong. Her mind stopped working for a brutal second, and a sense of lightness washed over her.
What if... What if I just... stay like this?
She could. Just let it happen, let it end here. Maybe he'd call her Little Blossom one last time, he'd perhaps carve her into the dirt and be done with it. She could finally rest.
Her heart thudded once more; final heartbeat.
Keiji's pace slowed, one step, two; he stood just a couple of steps from her, chest heaving, blade resting on his shoulder, and sweat gleaming at his temples. The divine buzz faded, golden light receding into the lines of his body. "Still standing?!" he shouted, beaming. "You're one hell of a flower, Zenin!"
"I'm not your flower," Kaoru rasped as blood flowed in slow streams joining the endless mud of Sekigahara. Her right arm was limp, and her fingers were barely responsive. She had lost one shikigami. She could scarcely breathe.
But he was mortal again. That counted for something.
Then, just as she struggled to sit up, to elaborate a plan, cursed energy flickered in the corner of her eye. In the distance, behind the mist of war, the sky pulsed, and a barrier rose across the field.
A domain barrier.
Her thoughts stopped spinning. Seijiro? The name sparked like a sun inside her and with it—clarity. Her pulse jumped. Right. This wasn't just her battle, and this wasn't a fight she could afford to drag out.
I'll rest when I'm dead.
Her body screamed as she rolled onto her side, coughed once, blood in her mouth. She wiped it away with shaking fingers, dirt and gore smearing across her jaw. She wasn't done.
Kaoru planted one knee into the earth, shoulders square. The broken shaft of her naginata trembled in her grasp. She didn't care. Bone scraped bone inside her right forearm. She didn't care. She reached up and tore the red ribbon from her hair, the same red cloth Yoshinobu had tied for her that morning. It fell loose in her fingers, damp and frayed at the edges. Then she wrapped it around her splintered arm and the haft of the naginata in a tight, angry knot. Not neat, not pretty, but solid. That was all that mattered.
Her black hair spilled down around her shoulders, tangled and streaked in mud and blood. No court lady would wear it this way. But she wasn't a court lady, and this wasn't a painting. This was war. And Seijiro—
I'm not dying here. He's not dying without me.
"Fine," she whispered as a prayer, more to herself than to the kami. "I won't let go."
Then Kaoru stood. And she ran.
Keiji blinked in surprise, delighted. "Damn," he wheezed, raising Lady Sakura to meet her charge. "You fight like my third wife."
He spun, quick and careless, scrawling a muddy circle with his heel. The symbol shimmered—Chikushōdō. Animal Realm. Kaoru's first strike landed cleanly, cutting a long arc across his leg, and he took it smiling. Blood welled and dripped, but he didn't flinch. As if he was suddenly numb to pain.
"Oof," he grunted, almost laughing. "There it is. Kami bless my bones, I can't feel a damn thing!"
Animal Realm. So, that's what it did: dulled the pain.
Kaoru backpedaled, her steps uneven. Her mind should've recalculated—should've found an opening—but instead it spun. The blood loss was messing with her head; a dangerous, hazardous idea formed as she laughed under her breath.
Stupid Hajime.
With his reckless lightning-charged swings and his cracked knuckles and smug grin. She used to yell at him for it; she never understood what he saw in frying himself alive.
But right now?
She closed her eyes for just a second. "Nue," she whispered.
Not the full shikigami; just the storm. Just...
A grin formed on her face as lightning answered. They crawled under her skin, through her veins, into her bones, then licked across her shoulders, down her spine, seeping into the haft of the naginata. She welcomed and forced them through herself, accelerating her every twitch, every breath. Her fingers burned, her skin crackled, the fabric of her kosode smoked where the current coiled against it. She didn't care.
Her nerves frayed, and her world narrowed into a corridor of motion and light. The next step made her vanish.
Flash. Step. Flash.
Keiji's grin faltered as she reappeared with a crack like thunder inside his guard, lightning trailing behind her. "Ah, hell," he muttered.
Kaoru blurred as her naginata glowed and sparked with unstable arcs, lightning surging through it in jagged waves. The pace was self-destructive, impossible to maintain for too long. But it worked. Her every strike conducted it into his body.
"You're insane—" he gasped, trying to parry.
"Yeah," she muttered, "I'm starting to enjoy it."
She spun, heels kicking mud, lightning bursting out in a spiral from her hips, and her naginata carved through the air with a keening hiss. Every movement was painful. Her forearm screamed, her bones no longer felt real. But she stayed close.
That was the plan: stay under his guard no matter the price. Never let him breathe, never let him draw another circle. Every time he tried to move his hand, she slashed the motion apart with lightning in microbursts.
Keiji couldn't reset, couldn't draw a new realm. Shadow-slip left and lightning-thrust center: her blade sliced against his ribs, and blood bloomed hot. He stumbled. Outside of Ashura Funnu, he couldn't regenerate fast enough.
Kaoru pressed on. She chose to bleed—a cut to her side, a graze across her collarbone—but she took them. Paid for her proximity in pain, because the closer she was, the more lightning she could pour through him.
Two years scolding Hajime for pulling this shit, she thought savagely, jolting another charge of lightnings down her weapon and into Keiji's abdomen. What kind of idiot fries their nerves just to hit a little harder and faster?
She grinned, unhinged and breathless.
...Kami, it works.
As blood ran down her face and into her mouth, she vanished into shadow, jumping mid-air behind him with a howl of ozone just as Ittō Ryōran rose from her own shadow a heartbeat later, water-katana slashing upward in time with her downward strike.
The water-katana cleaved deep through the armor and sliced his side clean. Bone split. Blood spilled in a wave.
Keiji reeled. Lady Sakura swung wide, and Kaoru dropped low beneath the arc and slammed her shoulder into his gut, knocking him back. She swept his legs out and struck again: a cut across his cheek this time, deliberate, defiant.
His legs moved for another circle beneath him.
No chance.
Lightning discharged from her naginata. She didn't aim for his body; she aimed for the earth. The sigil sizzled away before it could form. "Not this time," she hissed, voice warped from pain and static.
Smoke rose from her fingers, burning her sleeves off to the shoulder. Her arms' bare skin was fractured and blackened. But she was in rhythm now. His rhythm. She pressed closer, next dash instant and blink-fast.
Keiji was finally—finally—slowing. Bleeding. Three deep cuts opened across his chest and side, the sakura embroidered on his armor soaked red. He looked down, dazed. Then up. And grinned despite the blood dripping down his jaw. "Kami," he said, softly. "You're really a menace." He spun, Lady Sakura carving air like a scythe toward her chest. "Getting faster, Little Blossom! You're almost—ghhk—"
He didn't finish.
Lightning snapped from Kaoru's palm into the open wound, finding their target too easily, and Keiji's fist—broad as a temple bell—slammed into the side of her face. It felt like hitting a wall, neck straining under the pressure, trying not to snap, but she took it. She took it. Mud churned beneath her heel as she stumbled, but Itto Ryōran slipped back into her shadow.
Silent. Invisible. Mourning Tiger's trait. Keiji never noticed as the shikigami slipped inside his shadow and, one breath later, rose behind him, swinging his water-katana.
"Too slow!" he shouted, turning just in time to see the flash of water.
And Kaoru was already inside his guard. Low, wild, nearly dropping her weapon. She clenched it harder, binding ribbon soaked red, and drove the naginata upward, throwing her entire weight and lightning against his with what strength remained.
Keiji jerked, looking down on her, eyes wide, just inches from Kaoru's. They locked gazes, close enough to share breath.
"Smile for me," she whispered, half-gentle, half-delirious.
A heartbeat later, the blade drove right through him.
Straight through the stomach, point to spine in a crackle of flesh, breaking ribs and rupturing muscle; the tip burst out his back in a wash of red. The smell of blood—his, hers—thickened between them. Kaoru's arm trembled, then lit up in agony; the red ribbon tying Kaoru to the naginata burned away in an instant as she twisted the blade deeper and—
Lightning Discharge. Or... a mimicry that vaguely remembers it.
The lightning exploded through the shaft, a wild, miniature storm that lit Kaoru's arm in flame and detonated into Keiji's core and gut. The sound it made when it struck—
Not thunder. A crack like the world ending. In his hands, Lady Sakura split clean in two, halves falling to the earth in molten steel.
Kaoru staggered back and ripped her naginata free. Blood splattered up her face, over her throat, down her chest
Keiji took one staggering step, swaying. He looked at her, face half in shadow, mouth agape. "Huh... So that's what the kami look like," he murmured between reverence and disbelief. Then, his knees buckled, and the rest of him followed.
Keiji Maeda hit the earth with the grace of a fallen mountain.
A breath driven out of his chest, eyes wide and dazed, mouth still faintly shaped in awe but blood bubbling at the corners.
Kaoru almost collapsed half-step, catching herself on the haft of her naginata. The charred hand gripping it trembled uncontrollably, and her breath came in jagged pulses, but she limped forward and stood over him.
Keiji's hand tried to press weakly to the gaping hole in his gut, futile, the torn skin pulsing. The wound poured blood and cloth at an alarming rate, and the smoke from his body filled the air with the scent of burnt flesh.
The last discharge had cooked him from the inside.
Slowly, painfully, Kaoru knelt. Not to pray, just to exist, for one second longer. "Last words?" she asked flatly.
Keiji wheezed, smiling almost boyishly. "Damn, Little Blossom…" He choked on the blood pooling in his throat. "I knew you were beautiful. But you—" he chuckled wetly, breath hitching, "you'd make the Buddha weep."
Her eyes narrowed, maybe a flicker of amusement, perhaps pity, but her arm wouldn't lift the naginata again. She tried, but it shook in her grip—
—A bloom of cursed energy collapsed in the distance, folding inward like a ruptured star. A domain's barrier shattering.
Kaoru's head snapped up. Right. No time.
She stared down at Keiji's broken form, still alive but barely. She could end it. She could end him. And he'd earned that, hadn't he? But... He was already done, and she didn't have time to think it through. So she staggered upright instead, one last breath, before she turned and ran—well, what passed for a run.
One more step. Another. Toward the other battlefield. Toward whatever hell waited next.
Keiji lay on his back. Sky above. Dirt below. Blood was soaking everything. "Ah. She forgot the killing blow," he muttered. "How rude." He coughed up more blood.
The naginata wound was deep, too deep, and that lightning attack... Yes, his guts were probably soup by then. He grinned anyway, casting a fond glance at what remained of Lady Sakura, half a blade buried in the earth. "Damn. I really liked that sword."
With the last of his strength, one hand trembling violently, he dragged a fingertip through the dirt. Sloppy. Barely stable. A single shaky circle draws in dust and blood. The symbol bloomed gold beneath his palm, five dots inside an open mudra.
Nindō. The Human Realm.
His cursed energy pulsed weakly. Wounds began to stitch. Not enough to stand, but enough to live. He let his head fall back as scorched grass tickled his scalp. "Heh," he whispered. "Not today either, huh?"
Then, with all the sarcasm of a drunk refusing to die, he muttered loud enough for the heavens to hear:
"Told you. I'm the Kami's favorite bastard."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
Kaoru ran like a deer shot in one leg with an arrow.
Each step was a stagger, half-jump, half-limp, the dull thump of her boot dragging into the ground, making her slip into the mud. What remained of her crimson kosode clung to her skin, charred to black at the shoulders, and the armor plates had cracked and warped from the lightning backlash, one shoulder strap hanging by a thread. Her naginata slipped in her palm, no longer bound by the red ribbon that had disintegrated along with everything else in her last strike.
She let the weapon fall to the ground behind her.
Wind rushed past her from the mountain pass, tugging at her hair and cooling her burned skin. The Reverse Cursed Technique within her worked overtime and slowly, painfully slowly, the bone-deep gash along her shoulder began to bleed less and less. The fractures in her forearm shifted, bone grating under her skin as they aligned together, millimeter by millimeter. Her fingers, still trembling, managed to curl again.
Her right arm would probably never be good again, but the lip cut sealing itself was almost funny; a scratch, really, compared to everything else. Still, it was something. She could still fight; she just needed to move that stupid arm again, long enough to end this.
She reached the ridge, and silence fell across the battlefield.
Sekigahara was dying.
Infantry units had shredded one another. Cavalry still clashed at the far edge of the field, distant war cries echoing in the valley, but the center had become eerily quiet, save for the jujutsu sorcerers—those blessed, cursed few who tore battlefields open like scrolls of divine wrath.
Kaoru took inventory in her head. Her cursed energy: low, too low for comfort. Her healing was draining what little she had left. The other powerful sorcerers? Keiji Maeda—down. Masamune Date and Mumei—on her side. Musashi and Hajime—still likely breaking each other's bones for fun somewhere in the west. Masanari would be holding the flanks.
That left only one actual threat, one true power, standing on the board.
Seijiro Gojo.
The one man who could still flip the tide to the Western Army with a glance and a half-formed thought. She grit her teeth, and her pace quickened. She crested the ridge, breath shallow, and at first, all she saw was light; an explosion of crimson that singed the air with familiar intensity. Red.
And then, clarity and silence. The valley just beneath her cracked open, and three figures came into view.
Only one stood. One had already fallen. One was falling.
Kaoru's breath hitched. She had braced herself for the worst. Expected it, even; some small, bitter part of her had already pictured Seijiro on his knees, arrogance finally outmatched, bleeding out beneath the weight of his own pride.
What she hadn't expected was to see Masamune Date sprawled face-down in the dirt, smoking from his coat and unmoving. Nor had she imagined Mumei, armor in tatters, fingers still clenched around the Mitsuboshi no Yari like she hadn't yet registered her own death. A blood-slick hole in her stomach wide enough to see daylight through, one leg twisted unnaturally, knees buckling as her body gave out beneath her.
She looked at the man in front of her, not understanding what had just happened. As if he had rewritten the ending of a story she thought she'd already won.
Falling.
Her knees hit the ground, and her fingers pawed weakly at the wound as if they could stitch it closed. Blood pooled, spilling between her legs. A breath later, she collapsed face-first on the ground, and the spear clattered beside her.
Kaoru didn't feel pity. Her gaze had already moved—inevitably, unavoidably—to the one who remained.
Seijiro. Or... what was left of him.
He stood upright, calm, ruined, and eerily still, his arm still extended and fingers still lifted in the fading afterglow of Red. His white haori was gone. His black kosode hung half-open, torn and scorched, baring a chest smeared with dried blood across the skin. The mess of his ribcage, scored with burns and bruises, barely moved with each breath. The corners of his mouth, his jawline, even the hollows of his eyes were crusted with blood.
Too much blood to look at him and think he'salive. And yet, no fresh wounds. No trickling fresh blood.
Kaoru's eyes narrowed. Too quiet. Seijiro's posture was too steady, his breathing too smooth. That wasn't the posture of someone alive by chance; that was the terrifying stillness of someone who had already made peace with the cost.
For one perfect, awful second, Kaoru thought he might drop dead too.
Then, her heart seized, and her mind caught up: Mumei, her ally, was down. Seijiro, her enemy, was still standing. And somewhere in her exhausted, stubborn bones, she remembered that the war wasn't over.
She moved without thinking. Summoned Round Deer cast herself down the slope like a woman possessed. Not because she really feared for Mumei, but because something in her heart had stopped and refused to start again until she reached him.
The shikigami erupted from her shadow, gentle, antlers arcing pale light as it reached the dying girl. Kaoru threw herself forward, planting her body between Seijiro and the broken form of Mumei. The Round Deer let its Reverse Cursed Technique wash over both of them. Mumei coughed once, wet and small, as her bleeding slowed and Kaoru's own pulse calmed. Her shoulder didn't really heal, but it sealed.
Enough.
Seijiro finally blinked. His gaze had lingered on Mumei as if he didn't know what it was, not until Kaoru appeared between them. Now, finally, slowly, he lifted his gaze. The tension in his face softened, not entirely, but enough to be noticeable. He didn't drop his hand, but he did lower it, and his posture slackened by a fraction.
His ice-blue eye met hers—black, wide, still—and that was the moment everything stilled, saved for the pounding in her ears. Kaoru's breath caught, tilting dangerously sideways, and her heart had missed a step. Sekigahara ceased to exist as her world narrowed to one point: his eyes.
"Oh kami," she mouthed, biting down too hard on her lower lip; the cut she'd just healed split again. "What the hell did you do?"
In hindsight, it was a stupid question.
She had just forgotten every rule of caution and torn a man in half with lightning, nearly burning off her own arm in the process, playing at being Hajime of all people. Called it a strategy. And now she was asking him what he had done? The answer was written across his face.
Or rather—his eyes.
His right eye still held color. Life, familiar to her as her own pulse. The left... was dead.
Not blind in the way of injury, but hollow, extinguished, the socket remained intact, but the Six Eyes' brilliance was gone, and what remained was a static blue-gray devoid of life like a dead star that had once burned bright.
A breath broke through Seijiro's lips, and he smiled. That stupid Gojo half-grin. A little bloody. A little insane. Completely him. As if he wasn't full of old blood and kami-knew-what-else, as if none of this mattered, because she was here now. You're late, Pretty Boy, it said.
Of course he'd smile like that, the bastard.
Messy strands of white hair clung to his cheek as he tilted his head, tapping a thumb just above the lifeless eye that no longer saw. "Had to get creative," he said with false lightness. "Kamo princess was annoyingly good with that spear. And after expanding my Domain—"
He winced mid-sentence, pressing a palm lightly to his ribs as a fresh cough clawed up his throat. He turned his head to the side to spit blood into the dirt; nothing new.
"A fair trade, don't you think?" he went on, more quietly. "Half my cursed sight to restore my burned-out Limitless and enough instant Reverse Cursed Technique to not die outright. Didn't have time to bargain for anything better." He flexed his hand experimentally; it shook slightly. He frowned, almost offended. "But honestly? I feel cheated."
Kaoru snorted. A binding vow. High risk, high yield, personal cost. Dramatic. So typically him. But really, sacrificing one of his eyes? Now the strain of the Six Eyes would fall on the remaining eye; the migraine must be unbearable. Hell, would the Six Eyes even work the same with only one eye? She let herself chuckle for exactly one breath—couldn't help it. "Fool," she said, too softly, too fondly. "You'll only be able to see me with one cursed overpowered eye now."
Seijiro tilted his head, mock-pouting. "Rude." A beat. He made a face. "Everything's weirdly symmetrical. Depth perception's off. And your face's blurrier, which is tragic."
"You're not missing much," she muttered, dragging a hand to her swollen cheek. "Keiji punched me halfway across Sekigahara. My face is a mess."
"Mm." He squinted at her, his one working eye flicking down her frame, tilting his head the other way in something oddly close to awe. "Still pretty. If you ignore—" he gestured vaguely at her "—the burned half-detached arm hanging on by a tendon."
She rolled her eyes but didn't argue. Not her best day.
Behind her, the Round Deer gave a final flicker and sank back into the shadow under her feet. Mumei was stabilized enough to live, and that was all Kaoru could offer in her current condition.
They were both frayed. Kaoru still had her right arm ruined and screaming in pain with every twitch, and Seijiro was clearly still suffering from internal trauma—if not organ failure—post Blood Manipulation. Their reserves were nearly gone. But Kaoru smiled just a little up at him, and as Seijiro bled at the corner of his mouth, he smirked down at her.
Nothing else moved. And now only one thing remained.
Kaoru looked up at him and wondered—what was going through that ridiculous head of his, staring at her like that? Probably something infuriating. Probably something stupid. Probably—
"So. I suppose," his eyes—eye—lingered on her as his expression softened, almost, and then... hardened. "You're not going to let me kill her, are you?"
It wasn't really a question. And Kaoru didn't pretend otherwise.
She wished she could, kami, she really wanted to walk away, let him end it, clean and quick. She had little sympathy for Mumei, not after what that damn spear had done to Seijiro, what it had made him do, but…
Same war, other side.
Kaoru shook her head once. "No," she said gently.
She didn't even try to justify it, and he accepted it with a single nod. Not angry. Not even disappointed. They both knew what this meant: only one of them would decide the war, and neither of them could survive a second drawn-out fight. Everything, everything, would hinge on the next move and on who'd be faster.
Seijiro already knew who was faster. So did Kaoru. That's why she hadn't moved.
Seijiro saw it, the hesitation, in the way her weight hadn't shifted. "Alright," he murmured, exhaling deeply and dragging a shaky hand through his hair as if letting go of something.
He had only half-perception and didn't have time to adjust to the blind side. He wasn't even sure he could modulate his cursed energy output in the right way anymore. It was suicide. It also didn't matter. Someone had to start this, and he knew Kaoru wouldn't strike first unless she had no other option, not unless she had to, not unless someone else crossed the line. Too loyal.
So he forced her hand.
One foot back, knee low, he shifted, lowering into a stance. His hand lifted, lazily, slow enough for her to see. He was giving her time, telling her what was coming. Come on, his eye said. Catch me if you can.
A flicker of cursed energy spiked from his frame, and Kaoru recognized it in an instant. So did her body. "You absolute idiot," she breathed, reacting almost before she realized she had.
Her feet slid apart, mirroring his stance as her fingers snapped fast through her domain seal, index fingers raised to the heavens, pinkies entwined, wrists aligned. Seijiro's fingers folded in answer through his own hand sign with maddening slowness.
Two voices overlapped, one a whisper of pain, the other a soft crystalline echo:
"Domain Expansion—"
The world fractured, then collapsed inward.
"—Mi'eisō."
"—Muryōkūsho."
His domain spread like the sea, but hers came faster—always faster when it came to this—slipping through its edges like shadows. Barrier crashed into barrier. Light met shadow. Paradox collided—limitless nothingness meeting karmic finality—and for one breathless instant, the world trembled.
His domain broke, and hers swallowed him whole.
Seijiro wasn't surprised when her Domain won. He had already seen it coming, and if he had to be honest? He had hoped for it to happen. But kami, it still annoyed him, still pissed him off. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Of course you'd win that part," he muttered, huffing a breath, proudly and lovingly. "You maddening woman."
His barrier dissolved to ash, and silence fell.
They dropped into stillness. Into water. Into Mi'eisō.
Not darkness, exactly, not even void. An eternal dusk.
Above them: no sky. Only a mirrored dome of perfect black reflected all below. Below: too many shadows that stretched long and wrong across the vast water's surface, unmoored from sun or moon, but vivid, too vivid. Seijiro looked down to see his own reflection staring back. One eye glowing. The other gone.
The last residue of his own domain shattered around him, dissolving in water. His one good eye focused against the shift, adjusting with eerie clarity. Even half-blind, the Six Eyes were still Six Eyes; not that it mattered. He could have found her from a thousand miles away.
His gaze snapped to the center of the domain and found her.
Kaoru stood, ankle-deep in the mirror-lake, black hair soaked in blood still falling loose down her back. She looked like a ghost. She looked like judgment. She looked—Seijiro thought with something dangerously close to affection—like an empress ruling a garden of death.
Seijiro breathed in. "Huh."
"Gojo Seijiro," her voice echoed, weightless.
He felt it more than heard it. And as the fool he was—a devoted, irredeemable fool—his body responded without question. He looked up. Not because he wanted to, but because she said his name. And names, in that space, had power.
Just like that, she had him.
A ripple spread across the mirrored surface. It didn't hurt. Not really. Just... disoriented him. It was strange, like water flowing through his veins.
"What—?" Seijiro's gaze dropped: at first, he wasn't sure, but then his shadow, the one beneath his feet, began to move. It twisted, stretched. And finally detached from him. It slithered across the water's surface toward her, as if it wanted to go.
And—at her side—the shadow rose. It took shape slowly, growing limbs, forming edges, taking on familiar lines. His lines. His height. His frame. His damn ponytail flopping the same way as if smoke. That thing made of rippling black smoke—his shadow—tilted his head just-so exactly like him. Its eyes white, pupil-less and blank. A mirror of muscle memory and cursed signature that reflected his in a perfect, awful echo.
Him. Seijiro Gojo.
No, not really him—but it sure looked like him.
Seijiro looked at her, then at himself beside her, and let out a breathless chuckle. "You really made me into a shikigami?" he muttered, biting down on a grin that had no business being there, half amusement and half bitter awe. "You know, I was going to give you a gift," he said, lowering himself into a stance, ready. "But I think you won't need it right now."
Across the mirrored water, Kaoru just nodded slightly, calm: the kind of calm that came from knowing the war was almost over. "Correct name," she said softly, as the shikigami shifted at her side, mimicking him too well. "Your shadow is now mine forever."
Seijiro chuckled, exhausted. He couldn't help it. His heart shouldn't be beating so fast, and yet—
Forever huh? I don't hate the idea.