The banquet was over.
Zenin Sawara led his procession back to the family estate. As his carriage rattled through the narrow streets, he leaned against the padded wall, a thin smile playing on his lips.
Tonight had been a success. He had effectively cornered that Gojo brat, forcing him into a defensive position while the majority of the sorcerer factions signaled their support for the Zenin. The reason was simple: the Zenin clan possessed the Hei and the Kukuru units, a military force that offered tangible security. The Gojo clan might be powerful, but they relied on a single man to hold up the sky. These sorcerers were pragmatists. They knew who was more likely to be standing when the dust settled.
The carriage ca to a halt outside the main gates.
Sawara stepped down and stretched his neck, but a sudden frown touched his face. He looked at the closed gates and felt a prickle of irritation.
"Why is it so quiet?" He scanned the dark entrance, his voice tight. "Where are the guards? What is Taichi doing?"
He gave a sharp wave of his hand. "Open the gates."
The heavy wooden doors creaked open.
The laughter and chatter of the returning party died instantly. A collective gasp rippled through the guards.
Sawara stood frozen. His hands began to tremor.
Bodies.
They were everywhere. Slumped by the well, draped over the thresholds, scattered across the courtyard. So were cooling in pools of blood while others were torn into fragnts that no longer looked human. Dark red trails snaked across the dirt, shimring like oil under the cold moonlight.
"Soone," Sawara said, his voice barely a rasp. "See if anyone is alive."
Yuichi, a captain of the personal guard, snapped out of his shock and barked orders for a search.
Ti seed to stretch. No one spoke. The only sounds were the frantic footsteps of the searchers and the occasional muffled cry of horror. Ten minutes passed before a scout returned, his head bowed and his voice shaking.
"Lord Yuichi... the Kukuru unit is gone. Every man. The Hei as well."
He didn't need to finish. Everyone already knew.
Sawara didn't look back. He began walking toward the center of the estate. "Follow to the vault."
***
The vault door stood wide open.
Moonlight spilled into the interior, illuminating a scene of absolute wreckage.
"The door was opened?" Yuichi followed close behind, his voice filled with disbelief. "How is that possible? The barrier—"
"It wasn't opened," Sawara said.
He knelt, his fingers brushing a jagged piece of debris on the floor. It was a fragnt of the reinforced door, its edges twisted and blackened. It hadn't been picked or bypassed. It had been shredded from the outside by a force so violent it had simply ceased to exist as a barrier.
"It was detonated by raw cursed energy."
Sawara remained silent for a long ti, his thumb tracing the scorched tal.
"What kind of monster possesses this much power?"
He stood and turned to face his n. The man who had been laughing at a banquet an hour ago was gone. His face was now a mask of cold, murderous shadow.
"Listen to carefully," he said. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of a death sentence. "Not a single word of this leaves this estate. As of tonight, the Zenin clan is in total isolation."
His gaze swept across the crowd, lingering on a few key officers.
"Yuichi, find out who did this. Use every resource we have."
"Yes, Lord Sawara," Yuichi replied, his voice firm.
"And if anyone leaks even a whisper of what happened here tonight..." Sawara raised a hand and drew a slow line across his own throat. "I will execute their entire bloodline."
No one moved. A cold wind blew through the courtyard, carrying the lingering scent of copper.
Sawara stood in the silence of his ruined ho, his nails digging into his palms until they drew blood. He had just secured the political backing of the major factions. He had just humiliated Arashi Gojo. If word got out that his elite units had been slaughtered, his vault pillaged, and his legacy gutted in a single night, the consequences would be fatal.
The laughter of his rivals would be the least of his problems. Every faction that had just sided with him would defect to the Gojo clan by morning. Every predator in the country would descend on the Zenin like wolves on a wounded stag.
If he couldn't hide this, the clan was finished.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the desperation was gone, replaced by a singular, icy resolve. He would bury this truth under a mountain of corpses if he had to.
***
While the Zenin estate burned with silent panic, the architect of the disaster was whistling a tuneless song.
Kashimo wandered toward the city outskirts, a heavy sack slung over his shoulder and a staff propped against his neck. The moon was high and the night air was refreshing. He was in an excellent mood. Every few steps, he would give the erald staff a playful spin, testing its weight.
"Achoo!"
A violent sneeze nearly knocked him off balance.
"Damn. Who's talking about now?"
He rubbed his nose, looking genuinely confused. In the seventeen years since his reincarnation, he had lived a remarkably clean life. No scandals, no romances. He had been too busy fighting to worry about anything else.
He turned his attention back to his new toys. He had already figured out the basics of the ring on his finger.
The Lightning Ring.
It was an interesting piece of work. It functioned as a sort of battery, automatically siphoning and storing his electrical cursed energy. If he ever ran dry in the middle of a fight, it would serve as a backup power source. He could also choose to discharge the entire reserve in a single burst. It was a powerful trump card, though he hated the idea of wasting all that stored energy.
He looked at the ring and thought of a kid he rembered from the manga, Yuta Okkotsu. That brat had a ring too, though he used his to store a whole vengeful spirit. Show off, Kashimo thought.
He weighed the staff in his hand. He had decided to call it the... Staff. Yeah, he wasn't exactly a fountain of creativity when it ca to naming things, so he just settled on the first na that popped into his head, one it probably already had anyway. He inspected the weapon again, searching for any sign of a special ability...
"Utterly useless," he muttered.
However, it was highly conductive. The more energy he poured into it, the more devastating the impact. He tested this by tapping a nearby tree with a fraction of his power. The trunk shattered instantly, the upper half of the tree collapsing into the brush with a loud crash.
"Still useless," he grumbled, though a small smile touched his lips. He shouldered the staff and kept walking. "I wonder if they have fines for property damage in this era."
He reached a wide, empty plain well outside the city walls. It was ti for a real test.
Kashimo ca to a halt and held the Staff out in front of him. He had an idea.
He began to flow cursed energy into the weapon, but he didn't just dump it in. He carefully filtered the energy, stripping away the negative charges and infusing the staff solely with positive ones. The erald wood began to glow with a soft, steady light.
He took a deep breath and threw the staff with everything he had.
It cut through the night sky like a physical manifestation of sound, disappearing into the distance in a heartbeat. Kashimo squinted at the horizon.
Now for step two.
He focused on his own body, drawing out the remaining negative charges and letting them settle into his skin.
The principle was simple: opposites attract. If he was right, he could turn himself into a projectile.
The mont the charges aligned, the world turned blue. A series of electric arcs snapped into existence before him, weaving together to form a brilliant, crackling path of light. It was a direct link between his own soul and the staff miles away.
Then, he was gone.
***
A few miles away, a lone carriage driver rubbed his eyes.
He thought he had seen a young man standing in the field, talking to a stick. A second later, there was a flash of blue light and the boy had vanished into thin air.
"Right," the driver yawned, snapping the reins. "I really need more sleep. I'm starting to see things."
***
On a distant hilltop, Kashimo materialized out of a bolt of lightning.
He stumbled as his feet hit the dirt, but he managed to keep his balance. The Staff lay on the grass at his feet, its erald surface gleaming under the moon.
He stood there for a few seconds, stunned by the success. Then, a manic laugh bubbled up in his chest.
"Well, well," he said, picking up the staff and giving it a flourish. "I guess those physics lessons weren't a waste of ti after all."
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