Morning light crept quietly into the small room.
Thin rays slipped past the wooden window frame, stretching across the floor before finally reaching the futon where Sora lay staring at the ceiling.
He hadn't slept well.
Not because of pain though there was plenty of that but because his mind refused to slow down.
Bandages wrapped tightly around his side and shoulder, the white cloth standing out against his dark shirt. A smaller strip covered the shallow cuts on his arm.
Sora shifted slightly and winced.
"Shit."
He had completely forgotten how much those wounds hurt when they weren't being ignored in the middle of a fight.
When he returned to the temple the night before, the caretaker had immediately noticed something was wrong. Apparently walking in covered in dirt and dried blood wasn't as subtle as he thought.
The old woman had demanded an explanation.
Sora had settled on the safest answer he could think of.
I fell while training.
It wasn't entirely a lie.
Just… missing a few details.
The caretaker hadn't believed him completely, but he still cleaned the wounds and wrapped them carefully before forcing Sora to go to bed.
Now here he was.
Wide awake.
Staring at the ceiling.
Thinking.
His hand slowly lifted from the blanket, hovering above his chest.
Cursed energy stirred faintly around his fingers.
Weak.
Unstable.
The fight yesterday had drained almost everything.
Still…
That wasn't what occupied his thoughts.
"Reverse Cursed Technique…"
He whispered the words quietly.
Even now it felt unreal.
Most sorcerers spent years trying to learn it.
Many never succeeded.
He tried to recall the moment again.
The curse's claw.
The pressure.
The feeling that everything was about to end.
Then the energy inside him collided once again.
Negative against negative.
Instead of exploding outward, it had folded inward and turned into positive energy.
Sora frowned slightly.
"...But the necessary cursed energy is too much. It is taking three times the cursed energy for revese cursed energy. I believe it was two times."
He hadn't noticed the cost of RCE.
He had already tried several times since waking up.
Each attempt ended the same way.
His cursed energy simply behaved normally but the convertion was disappointing.
Poor transformation.
Disappointing level of warmth.
Healing only the surface wounds or stitching the skin healing.
Unless he overuses the cursed energy the healing is not life changing.
His joy from the previous experimentation was misplaced.
He didn't have proper energy reserve or control for any fancy technique.
To upgrade his control, he needed to practice and train the innate technique and its stability alongside reversed cursed technique.
The time needed for experimentation was enormous and the presence of curses around his home was worrisome.
He needs to mind a cost effective method.
But the question is..
How?
His hand dropped back onto the blanket.
"The entire situation is mind churning."
He turned his head slightly, looking toward the wooden ceiling beams.
The memory replayed again in his mind.
Not the moment of healing.
But the moment right before it.
The refusal.
The absolute certainty that he wasn't going to die there.
Sora exhaled slowly.
"So it works when I'm about to die…"
That wasn't exactly a practical training method.
He imagined explaining that to someone.
To train my healing technique, I just almost die repeatedly.
Even thinking about it made him grimace.
Still…
The fact remained.
He had done it once.
Which meant it was possible.
The problem now was figuring out how to do it again.
His fingers moved slightly against the blanket.
A thin shimmer of liquid metal appeared over his knuckles before dissolving again.
His cursed technique was far easier to control.
Liquid metal manipulation had taken years to stabilize, but at least it behaved predictably.
Reverse Cursed Technique was different.
It wasn't just control.
It was a completely different state of cursed energy.
Sora closed his eyes.
"If negative energy multiplied becomes positive…"
Then theoretically it wasn't impossible to reproduce.
But the precision required was insane.
He could barely control normal cursed energy properly sometimes.
Trying to manipulate it at that level was like attempting surgery with a hammer.
Still…
If he could stabilize it—
His eyes opened again.
Everything would change.
Healing meant longer fights.
Longer fights meant survival.
Survival meant stronger opponents.
And stronger opponents meant growth.
Sora stared at the ceiling again.
"…Maybe she was right."
The thought came reluctantly.
Mei Mei's words from yesterday echoed in his head.
Learning by yourself will only take you so far.
He didn't like admitting it.
But she wasn't wrong.
Everything he knew about sorcery had been self-taught.
Experimentation.
Observation.
Trial and error.
Mostly error.
He had gotten this far because he was stubborn and lucky.
But techniques like Reverse Cursed Technique…
Those weren't things people figured out alone very easily.
Which brought his thoughts to the other part of the conversation.
"Jujutsu High…"
The words felt strange.
He had heard about the schools before, of course.
Every sorcerer had.
Places where young sorcerers trained properly.
Where they learned cursed techniques, barrier techniques, theory… everything.
Sora rolled slightly onto his side, immediately regretting the movement as his bandaged arms protested.
"…Ow."
He settled back down.
"Still…"
He was only eleven.
Too young to enroll normally.
And even if he could…
Leaving the temple like that wasn't exactly simple.
The caretaker had raised him for years.
Walking away suddenly would raise a lot of questions.
Sora stared quietly at the sunlight now stretching further across the room.
"…Maybe later."
For now, there was something more immediate.
Training.
If Reverse Cursed Technique existed inside him now, then it meant it could be refined.
Even if he couldn't reproduce it immediately.
He would eventually.
Sora lifted his hand again, staring at his palm.
A thin ripple of liquid metal spread across his fingers.
The metal shimmered in the morning light.
He closed his hand slowly into a fist.
"Next time…"
His voice was quiet.
"…I won't need to almost die to use it."
Outside the room, the distant sound of temple bells rang softly in the morning air.
A new day had begun.
And for Sora—
Training was just getting started.