The doors to the birthing room flew open. The midwife's voice was loud enough to rattle the roof tiles. People surged forward, a chaotic wave of questions that died the mont she spoke again.
"Gods above. He has the Six Eyes."
The infant's cry echoed through the inner rooms, sharp and clear. The elders of the clan traded looks, their clouded eyes filling with relief.
The head of the house took the bundle. He looked down at the wrinkled face and the eyes, a piercing, crystalline blue, as if a fragnt of the sky had been carved out and set into the child's eyes.
"What shall we call him?" soone asked.
The father was silent for a long ti. He looked out the window. A gust of wind had just pulled the clouds apart, revealing the vast azure above.
"Arashi," he said. "Arashi Gojo."
***
An ancient tree stood in the center of the Gojo courtyard. Its branches were heavy with leaves, shading a patch of ground said to be older than the estate itself.
Arashi spent much of his childhood lying in that grass, watching the sky. Clouds drifted. Birds circled. He would stay there for hours, lost in the blue.
My na is Arashi Gojo.
They told I was the future. The hope of the family. They said the Six Eyes were a divine gift, a legacy of power I was born to carry. They said I was the light of the jujutsu world.
My early years were happy. My father was busy, but he always found ti to spar with . My mother was gentle, watching my antics with a permanent, soft smile. Even the elders, stiff and formal as they were, looked upon with kindness.
Until I turned fifteen.
My father died. My mother fell ill. Suddenly, I was the head of the house.
The world wasn't as beautiful as I'd imagined. Sorcerers, clans, curse users, the Shogunate, they were all playing a ga of shadows and slaughter. I learned to read the hidden anings in every greeting and the knives tucked behind every smile. I learned to hide myself away, presenting only the mask of a composed leader.
My life felt grey. Until I t her.
Arashi lay beneath the tree, a small smile touching his lips at the mory. He didn't say her na aloud, but thinking of it felt like a sunbeam breaking through a storm.
We loved each other. We married. Within a year, we had a child. A small, loud boy. He didn't have the blue eyes, but his cry was strong enough to shake the walls.
The happiness didn't last. During an attack by curse users, she threw herself in front of a technique ant for our son. She survived, but she fell into a deep, silent sleep.
A day passed. A month. A year.
I sat by her bed every morning. I told her about the small things. What I'd eaten, how the boy was learning to speak, how the old tree was growing new leaves. She never heard , but I kept talking.
And today, she woke up.
I stood by the bed, watching her eyes open. I saw the smile slowly return to her pale face. I held her hand, my throat tight and my eyes burning, unable to find the words. They brought the child to her, a little boy who could now walk and talk, and she wept as she held him.
We held each other. The whole house wept with us. The servants, the kin, the guards, they all shed tears of joy. The sound of their crying drifted through the halls, out into the courtyard, and under the shade of the old tree.
But sothing felt wrong.
The crying. It sounded different. It sounded like mourning.
Is it... for ?
Arashi looked down. His hands were thinning. His body was becoming transparent, a ghost in his own mory. He looked at her face, the woman who had just been smiling, and saw her looking back at him through a veil of tears.
He understood then.
The battle. The man made of lightning. The collision of the Hollow Purple and the lightning.
Had he won? Had he lost? He couldn't rember. He only rembered the feeling at the end. A deep, hollow exhaustion, followed by a strange sense of peace.
He looked at his wife one last ti. He looked at his son. He looked at the shadow of the old tree.
And he smiled.
***
Moonlight washed over the clearing. Kashimo stood in the dirt, looking at the remains of the man in the white robes. Only the legs were left standing.
The entire upper half of Arashi Gojo had been erased. The electromagnetic railgun had consud nearly every drop of Kashimo's cursed energy, but it had successfully countered the Purple. The legs remained planted in the grass, held up by the final, lingering montum of a dead man's stance.
A breeze drifted through the trees, rustling the dead leaves as it passed between the two standing limbs.
"You actually dropped the Infinity to boost the output of that last shot," Kashimo said, his voice flat. "I was planning to get in close if I missed, but you made it easy."
He spat on the ground. "Stupid."
He turned away, shouldering the Soul Split Katana as he walked toward the edge of the clearing. He found the Tokugawa sisters lying in the dirt.
Fuka was still breathing, her chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged jerks. Her red robes were soaked through with blood. She stared up at the stars, her expression distant. A few paces away, Hotaru lay still.
She was gone.
Steam rose from Kashimo's skin as his reverse cursed technique finished knitting his wounds together. The white mist drifted in the moonlight. The pain was there, but he was used to it. It didn't bother him.
He looked down at Fuka.
"Why?" he asked.
Fuka's eyes shifted, focusing on the silhouette of the man standing over her. His face was in shadow, his expression unreadable against the moon.
"Why... what?"
"Your sister is dead," Kashimo said. His tone was clinical. "Shouldn't you be sad?"
He watched her closely. His eyes were cold, as if he were studying a strange specin, trying to understand a concept that had always eluded him.
Fuka's lips quirked into a bloody, twisted smile.
"She and I... we didn't have much of a bond," she rasped. "We shared a father. We shared blood. That was all."
Her red eyes were bright in the darkness, like two glowing embers. Kashimo clicked his tongue. He wanted to say sothing, but the words felt stuck. He looked at her for another second before turning his back.
"Wait," Fuka called out.
Kashimo stopped and looked over his shoulder. "What?"
"Aren't you going to kill ?"
She lay there, looking up at him with a mix of confusion and sothing else he couldn't na. She had been raised to believe the weak were simply fodder for the strong. It was the law of the world.
"I'm not interested. My goal is powerful sorcerers, not two weak won who have nothing left."
He paused, feeling a flash of irritation at himself for explaining. He wasn't good at this. Being around Rinzo had made him soft, or at least prone to talking too much.
Fuka watched him go. Her eyes blinked slowly in the moonlight.
"You're a strange one," she whispered.
What was left of her cursed energy was still working, slowly knitting her back together. It wasn't much, but it would be enough to keep her alive. It would be enough to heal.
***
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A/n: This was the bonus chapter because we passed 100 power stones. I finally managed to drop all 5 chapters... So, how did u like the chapters? I'm really curious about ur thoughts on the Gojo vs Kashimo fight. If u liked everything so far, i really appreciate ur power stones.
200 power stones = I will drop 1 more bonus chapter. You can help reach it by giving ur daily power stones. See u in the next chapters!!
For early access to 10 chapters ahead: p@tre~~/Demonic_Fiction (Link is in the synopsis and my profile).
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