Buddha Bone Relic Awakens

The impact blasted outward.

A headless corpse dropped to the floor. Blood spread beneath it in thick lines, red and yellow mixing across the ground until the room looked more like a corner of hell than a place where people had once made plans.

Kento Nanami's brows tightened.

His hands trembled slightly.

"So this is what killing feels like," he murmured.

He did not like it.

There was no thrill, no clarity, no sudden transformation into someone else. There was only the weight of a life ending under his hand, followed by the cold fact that the people before him had chosen this path first.

Ren had once said something simple.

Those who kill must be prepared to be killed.

The hesitation in Nanami's eyes disappeared. His gaze fell on the remaining curse users, and murderous intent settled in its place.

"Sorry," he said, gripping his weapon. "I'll be borrowing your heads."

His body shot forward like a starving beast.

At Jujutsu Headquarters, in the highest meeting room, Number One sat alone at the main seat.

For some reason, unease had begun to gather in his chest.

It was not fear exactly. At his age and position, he had long since learned how to press fear beneath layers of calculation. Yet tonight the feeling refused to settle. It pressed against him as if something bad had already started moving and he was only waiting for it to reach the door.

"Can those people really kill Ren Zenin?"

He spoke to himself while turning the Buddha Bone Relic between his fingers.

"I keep feeling something will go wrong."

Ren had exorcised Falsehood and Yadha. If that were true, his strength might already have reached the level of those old monsters hidden behind the jujutsu world. If that were the case, could a group of hired curse users, no matter how strange their techniques were, truly kill him?

"It should be fine."

Number One thought of the old woman's technique, of the copied form that resembled the strongest shikigami of the Ten Shadows Technique. He had experienced that power himself. Even he could not have fought it safely for long.

Then the relic moved.

A pale blue glow leaked from the Buddha Bone Relic, bright enough to light the room yet somehow stained with shadow.

Number One's fingers tightened.

"Awake?"

The cursed spirits sealed beyond the Gates were supposed to remain under absolute suppression while sleeping. Power should not have been able to pass through the seal. Yet the relic rose slowly from his hand, hanging in the air as if gravity had become a suggestion.

Mist-like blue energy seeped from it.

Number One stood at once. Cursed energy rushed through his body, dyeing the space around him red. The two forces touched.

Then his expression changed.

His cursed energy sank into the blue light like coal thrown into a furnace. It was not destroyed. That was the terrifying part. He could still feel his power, still recognize it as his, but he could no longer move even a thread of it.

Something had bound it.

"You are going to die, human."

The voice appeared directly inside his mind.

Cold. Clear. Wrong.

"I can see the death gathering around you. You provoked an opponent you should never have touched. Your fate is shrinking. Weakening. To the world, your weight is becoming small."

Number One did not understand everything the voice said about fate, but he understood the first sentence perfectly.

"Sealed inside a Gate and still able to release cursed energy," he said. "An existence like you cannot be nameless. Who are you?"

The old woman had failed. That was the answer the voice gave him without needing to say it aloud. The sealed thing had no reason to waste effort on a lie so easy to expose.

Still, Number One did not panic. If this cursed spirit had spoken, then it wanted something. If it wanted something, he could bargain.

"Who am I?"

The voice repeated the question. The blue cursed energy rolled like a quiet tide.

"It has been too long. Far too long."

Number One had dealt with countless cursed spirits, but this voice was different from all of them. Curses were born from hatred, fear, madness. Even Falsehood, whose entire nature was deception, had carried a madness buried beneath its smooth words.

This one did not.

Its voice was calm like a dead sea. As if every storm in the world had passed over it and failed to leave a ripple.

"I have no name. Names are useless and false. But the people who worshiped me fifteen hundred years ago usually called me..."

The pause seemed to stretch through the room.

"God."

Number One's heart gave a cold twitch.

Another madman calling himself a god.

He remembered Falsehood laughing, claiming he had been one step away from godhood. He had thought it arrogance then. Now the relic before him carried something quieter and much worse.

"Time does not speak," the curse said. "It witnesses. Your life is running down. In the future about to arrive, I see a boy in white taking your head."

Number One's pupils narrowed.

"He is also a problem for me. I saw him outside the river of time, untouched by age. Such an anomaly should die."

The relic erupted.

Blue energy surged like a wave. The room warped. Number One wrapped himself in cursed energy by instinct, but his heart sank. Even sealed behind a Gate, this thing possessed enough force to distort the highest meeting room of Headquarters.

What exactly had been sealed inside the Buddha Bone Relic?

Was it truly some kind of god?

"Let us kill him together," the curse said.

"He wants you dead. I want him dead. Unlike Falsehood, I do not deceive the world. Time never lies."

The blue light began to withdraw.

"Keep the relic on you. He is coming."

The relic spun once in the air, then drifted back toward Number One.

He caught it.

Was he really about to cooperate with a cursed spirit again?

Ren's figure rose in his mind, white clothes, pale eyes, pressure like a god standing over men. Number One clenched his teeth until his jaw ached.

Ren Zenin.

Do not force me.

The meeting room fell dark again.

Number One placed the Buddha Bone Relic inside the pocket over his chest. His cursed energy spread to its limit. He had no retreat left. The moment he hired those curse users, he had already prepared for a direct confrontation with Ren.

Hired killers did not protect their employer's name out of loyalty. If the mission failed, his identity being exposed was only a matter of time.

Footsteps sounded outside.

Slow. Measured.

Each step landed against Number One's heart.

The door opened.

Ren Zenin stood there with a smile on his lips, white clothes unstained, black hair falling against a face so calm it made the darkness around him feel deliberate.

Outside the door, guards lay scattered across the floor.

Toji Fushiguro crouched on one guard's back, drinking beer as if the corridor were a cheap bar. Kento Nanami stood nearby in a white suit, a file in hand, recording something with a serious expression.

"Ren Zenin," Number One snapped. "You broke into Jujutsu Headquarters without authorization. What exactly do you intend to do?"

"Jujutsu Headquarters was established by the jujutsu world and the Japanese government together. It represents the highest authority of this society. Insulting this place is an insult to every sorcerer."

Even now, he tried to use Headquarters and the government as a shield.

Ren only smiled.

He pulled over a chair and sat down in front of Number One, relaxed enough that the highest seat of jujutsu authority suddenly looked like his own backyard.

From the moment Ren entered the room, it felt less like an invasion and more like the owner returning home.

"Mr. Chairman," Ren said, "last time we met, I believe I told you something. I hate people who create trouble for me."

He sighed lightly.

"I only wanted to run a quiet little agency. Why insist on making me come all the way here? So much trouble."

"I do not understand what you are talking about."

Number One could not admit that he had hired curse users to assassinate Ren. If he admitted that, even the old monsters behind the scenes would have no proper reason to intervene. The stain of colluding with curse users would ruin his name completely.

"Admit it or don't," Ren said. "It doesn't matter to me."

His smile faded by a fraction.

"I came to notify you."

The room seemed to tighten.

"I'm here to collect a debt."

Ren vanished from the chair.

Number One's pupils shrank. He had not seen the movement at all. Decades of combat experience moved his body before thought could catch up. His hands struck the table, and he leapt backward.

The next instant, the judgment table exploded.

Ren appeared on top of it, one foot planted on the surface that had decided the fate of countless jujutsu cases.

Cracks spread beneath his heel like a spiderweb.

Then the table shattered into dust.

Cold sweat appeared on Number One's forehead.

Too strong.

Ren's body and cursed energy were several times greater than they had been at the Ryukawa estate. He had crushed a table reinforced to the level of a Grade 1 cursed tool with physical force alone.

"Good speed," Ren said. "Still not enough."

His toe tapped the floor.

Blue light spread beneath him. Nine palaces, eight directions, yin and yang, the outline of the Sovereign Wind Array unfolded across the entire room.

Inside the Buddha Bone Relic, a sealed figure suddenly opened its eyes.

Its pupils were two black wheels.

The sutras and seals inside the Gate surged, trying to force those eyes closed again.

"Enough."

The figure spoke two words.

For an instant, everything stopped.

Sutras broke apart.

"The scent of fate," it murmured. "You can truly move fate. Why would such power be in human hands?"

It looked through countless layers of seal and saw the array beneath Ren's feet.

"Old monk," the figure whispered, "I promised that after your death, I would accept the seal until someone capable of shaking fate appeared."

Its eyes brightened.

"Now I have waited long enough."

"I am leaving."

Light appeared in the endless dark.

A face emerged from it, merciful and calm, like an old bodhisattva statue. The eyes were nearly closed. The mouth carried a gentle smile.

Yet anyone who looked at that face would feel time lose meaning.

"Do you need my help?"

The voice sounded in Number One's heart.

Number One felt Ren's vast cursed energy pressing down like a divine weight. He hesitated.

He was not hesitating out of dignity as a sorcerer. He hesitated because he had already sent a signal to those old monsters. If he joined hands with a cursed spirit now and they actually arrived, he would be the one condemned.

For the first time in many years, Number One found himself trapped between two bad endings.

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