[Why?]
[Why Toji? That cursed-energy-less disgrace who shamed the entire clan? Why does his bloodline get to inherit the Ten Shadows Technique, the prize that has made every head of the family green with want?]
[The silent scream tore through him. His grip on the hilt tightened until his knuckles went bone-white, the joints cracking audibly.]
[I, Ogi Zenin, possess talent that rivals my brother Naobito's. I carry the purest blood. I have devoted my entire life to this clan!]
[I should have been head of the Zenin family. I should have stood at the pinnacle of the jujutsu world. But instead... instead, the children I produced were Maki and Mai, two daughters who can't even measure up to an average sorcerer!]
[Is it because I lack talent? No. Never. It's those two wretched girls who dragged me down! Their pathetic aptitude became a stain on my record that I can never scrub clean, the reason I was denied the seat of clan head!]
[The bitterness and venom were so acute his breathing turned ragged.]
[Somewhere in the darkest pit of his heart, he found himself hoping. Hoping Naoya would break Toji's little bastard beyond repair. Kill him, even, and bury the evidence. He would never allow some stray mongrel raised outside the clan to lord it over those of the main house.]
[As for who you were, this young intruder in a Jujutsu High uniform, your name, your identity... he couldn't care less.]
[All he needed was a punching bag for his rage. A sacrifice to prove the "absolute strength" of Ogi Zenin. Killing a trespasser would uphold the clan's dignity and, conveniently, let Naoya's little situation fester unchecked. Two birds, one stone.]
[He exhaled slowly, and his eyes went cold. Snake-cold.]
["It seems the education at Jujutsu High has truly gone to the dogs. Even its students can do nothing but babble nonsense."]
[He raised the katana. Cursed energy, frigid and dense, began to churn around his body. The temperature of the air itself seemed to plummet, and the floorboards groaned.]
["Since you insist on dying, allow me to teach you a Zenin clan lesson in hierarchy. Don't count on Gojo Satoru coming to collect your corpse."]
[Watching the naked contempt and murderous frenzy swirling in his eyes, you didn't even bother to explain.]
[Because you knew him too well. Across past simulations, you had long since seen through this man who blamed his daughters for every failure, who was selfish and cowardly to his marrow. The only language that reached someone like him was overwhelming force.]
[From the moment he'd swung that first strike, from the instant your eyes met his, the abyss behind your gaze had already activated Phantom Night Parade.]
[Your brain worked like a processor. Through what had looked like still, silent standoff, you'd been tearing apart the flow of cursed energy around Ogi's body, mapping his muscular habits, dissecting the Innate Technique he was about to unleash.]
["Zenin clan rules, you said?"]
[A short, quiet laugh escaped you. Mocking. Dripping with irony, as though he'd just told the funniest joke you'd ever heard.]
[Facing a lethal strike about to be launched by a Special Grade 1 sorcerer, you didn't even bother with a defensive stance. Slowly, with absolute composure, you raised both hands before your chest and crossed them.]
[Your fingers interlaced. Knuckles bent. Moonlight cast the shadow of something canine onto the ground.]
["Hm?" Ogi's pupils contracted the instant he saw the hand shadow. That was an ancient, deeply specific seal that had no business being formed by an outsider's hands.]
[You stared him down, lips barely parting, and spoke the name that could send the entire Zenin clan into hysteria.]
["Ten Shadows Technique... Plume."]
["What...?!"]
[The blood in Ogi Zenin's veins might as well have frozen solid. His brain whited out for a full second.]
[Before he could even begin to process the impossibility, the shadow pooling calmly beneath your feet erupted like boiling black tar.]
[CRACKLE!]
[Blinding blue-white lightning exploded from the shadow...]
[It was a wolf. Enormous. Coated in fur as pure and white as winter snow.]
[The cursed energy and shadow residue left behind from Nue's destruction had not dissipated. Instead, it had fused seamlessly with Divine Dog: White, giving birth to something entirely new.]
[Plume stood a full size larger than any ordinary Divine Dog. Beneath that sleek white pelt, muscles corded with explosive power rippled with every breath. Claws and fangs glinted cold under the moon.]
[And then, the most striking thing of all. Along its back, accompanied by a sound that set every hair on end, the wet crack and grind of bone sprouting from flesh, a pair of broad, full-feathered wings tore free. Their tips crackled with wild arcs of lightning. They snapped open, and the moon vanished from Ogi's field of vision.]
["You... What the hell is that thing?!"]
[His lips trembled violently. His eyes bulged, veins bursting red across the whites. Even his sword hand was shaking.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd finally dredged up the rumor: a Grade 2 sorcerer at Jujutsu High who could copy the techniques of others.]
[But it wasn't the copying that choked the air from his lungs. It was the Shikigami standing before him.]
[He knew this power intimately. The hallmark of the Ten Shadows Technique: when a Shikigami was destroyed, its strength merged with and was inherited by another. Plume had the body of a Divine Dog, but bore Nue's traits.]
[A technique so rare that in centuries of Zenin clan history, barely anyone in the main house had inherited it, and here it was, wielded by an outsider in a form no one had ever witnessed, displayed with a mastery that bordered on perfection.]
[Envy.]
[Hotter than fire. More lethal than poison.]
["You filthy thief!!!"]
[A raw, animal shriek ripped from Ogi's throat. The Ten Shadows Technique, the supreme treasure the Zenin clan had revered as sacred for hundreds of years, had not only been stolen by some no-name Jujutsu High student but mastered to this degree. Pride, terror, and humiliation detonated behind his eyes, obliterating every last barrier of reason.]
[This was worse than Toji's son inheriting the Ten Shadows. This was the most merciless desecration of Zenin bloodline supremacy imaginable. The ultimate insult to everything Ogi Zenin believed made him worthy. He felt like a clown who'd just been slapped across the face in front of the world.]
["You dare steal our clan's greatest treasure... and twist it into this grotesque abomination... Unforgivable! UNFORGIVABLE! I'll burn you and that mongrel together until nothing remains!!!"]
[Every shred of the elder's composure he'd spent a lifetime faking shattered. Eyes blazing crimson, he slammed every ounce of his suffocating cursed energy into the blade without reservation.]
[BOOM!]
[The cold steel erupted in flame. A deep, unnatural red, so hot the air around it warped and screamed. The floorboards beneath his feet charred black in an instant.]
[Blazing Courage!]
["Look closely, you rat! I, Ogi Zenin, am the strongest! If those two useless, worthless daughters hadn't dragged me down, I would have... I would have been head of the Zenin clan long ago!!!"]
[With that howl, soaked in the deepest self-loathing, venom, and delusion, Ogi brought the tidal wave of fire and bottomless killing intent crashing forward. Heedless of everything, he hurled himself at you and the growling Plume, swinging a strike that looked ready to cleave the night itself in two.]