The image before Rinzo's eyes twisted.
The dojo, the sunset, and her father's gentle smile shattered in an instant, torn away by an unseen hand. She didn't even have ti to scream before her surroundings changed completely.
She was back in the woods.
The moonlight was cold, and the air carried a faint, tallic scent of blood. Kashimo stood a few paces away, his back turned to her, his erald staff resting over his shoulder.
And in front of him was a broken tree stump.
A man leaned against the wood. He wore faded robes and his head hung low, a massive, jagged hole torn through his chest. He had long since stopped breathing. The moonlight hit his face, illuminating the features Rinzo knew better than her own.
It was Hisashige Juro.
Rinzo's eyes widened. She tried to cry out, but her voice was gone. She tried to run, but her legs were lead. Her stomach churned, a bitter, acidic heat rising in her throat. She covered her mouth and collapsed into a crouch, retching pointlessly.
Then ca the whispers.
The voice was light, barely a breath, as if it were growing from the center of her own mind.
"Why are you the only one who lived?"
Rinzo froze.
"Without cursed energy, do you even deserve to be my daughter?"
She wanted to shake her head, to scream a denial, but her throat was constricted.
"I have no daughter like you," the voice finished.
Rinzo snapped her head up. The man leaning against the stump had turned his head. His lifeless, vacant eyes were staring directly at her.
Another voice ca from behind. She spun around.
It was Haruta. He stood just a few feet away, his face twisted into a pale, rigid mask of death. It wasn't the lazy, joking face he'd worn in life. His mouth hung half-open and his eyes were hollow sockets, dark and empty, staring at her with cold intensity.
"You're a traitor," he said. His voice was stiff, like an echo from the bottom of a deep well.
Rinzo's lips trembled, but no words ca out.
"You followed your father's killer."
Another voice joined in from the side. It was another disciple from the dojo, a quiet boy who had spent all his ti training in silence. He stood there now, his skin just as pale, his eyes just as hollow.
"Are you even human?"
"You don't belong here."
More voices flooded in from every direction. The familiar faces appeared one by one: her brothers from the dojo, her sparring partners, the neighbors who used to help with the chores. They surrounded her, forming a circle that grew smaller with every step.
Every face was white. Every eye was a black hole. They spoke in unison, their rigid lips moving in a terrifying rhythm.
"Just die."
"Just die."
"Just die."
A crack of thunder shook the world.
The sound felt as if it had co from miles away and from inside her own head at the sa ti. Rinzo shuddered. For a fleeting second, the twisted faces and the venomous voices blurred.
Rinzo opened her eyes. She looked at the pale faces and the empty sockets surrounding her.
"My father," she said. Her voice was quiet, but it didn't shake.
"My brothers."
She tightened her grip on the dagger Kashimo had left her.
"My friends."
The things around her kept talking, their voices a rising tide of malice, but she stopped listening.
"They would never!" she scread, swinging the blade in a wide arc toward Haruta's face. "They would never say those things!"
The mont the blade bit into the pale mask, the world shattered. The twisted figures, the phantom dojo, and the corpse of her father leaning against the stump all broke apart like glass hit by a stone. The shards flew into the night, vanishing into the moonlight.
***
"What?!"
A shocked snarl erupted from the darkness.
"Why didn't the sure-hit effect work on her?"
The moonlight returned to the room, revealing a distorted, black shape by the window. It was a curse born from the human fear of nightmares: a Night Terror. Its body was trembling, its pale eyes wide with disbelief. A jagged wound from a cursed tool ran across its midsection.
"Damn it."
The curse seethed, its dark energy billowing like smoke. Its chaotic tentacles lashed out, but it began to back toward the window. "It doesn't matter. I can still escape."
The black mist grew thicker, its outline blurring into an inky sar.
Suddenly, a gust of wind cut through the room.
The curse's retreat stopped. It looked down at its chest in stunned silence. A blade had been driven straight through its core.
The person holding the knife was Rinzo.
The moonlight caught her face. She looked young, almost fragile, but the fear and confusion were gone. She looked strangely calm.
"Since I was a child," she said, her words steady in the night air, "I wondered if soone without cursed energy could ever carry the weight of my father's legacy."
The curse's body began to thrash. The black mist was being torn away, bleeding out from the wound.
"My father said I was his successor, but I never felt any power. Every ti I asked him why, he told it wasn't ti yet."
Rinzo's eyes were bright, burning with a new clarity.
"But I've found it now. My power."
She twisted the blade.
"It isn't cursed energy. It isn't a technique."
She pulled the knife out and began to hack at the curse with raw, frantic energy.
"It's the strength of my own muscle and bone."
The Night Terror was torn apart. Its form disintegrated into a whirlwind of black mist and purple blood that sprayed across the walls. The moonlight poured into the room, falling over the fourteen-year-old girl. Her face was flushed and her breathing was heavy, but the doubt was finally gone.
***
Outside the city.
Kashimo stood in a trashed clearing, his staff resting on his shoulder. His shadow stretched long across the grass, which was littered with the unconscious forms of the sorcerers he had just dismantled.
He was about to move on when he stopped.
A figure had erged from the shadows of the trees.
White robes. White hair.
And a pair of brilliant blue eyes that looked like fragnts of the sky had been torn away and set into a human skull.
The Six Eyes.
Arashi Gojo.
Kashimo's grip on his staff tightened for a second, then relaxed. He looked at the man standing in the shade and felt a slow, jagged smile spread across his face.
"Talk about bad timing," he muttered. He shifted the staff back onto his shoulder. "Or maybe it's perfect."
***
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A/n: Yep, no point in denying it anymore, Gojo vs Kashimo is happening. Hope ur hyped enough because the action is about to get crazy!!
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