The alley still lingered in his mind. The sound of the curse shrieking, the sickening impact against the wall, the way its body dissolved into smoke.
Haruto had won. He'd survived.
But more importantly, he'd seen the flaw.
He couldn't keep fighting like that—standing in the open, channeling cursed energy through his body until his arms and lungs burned raw. He needed a mask, a weapon, a vessel.
That night, long after he returned home and muttered a tired "I'm back" to his parents, long after the lights went out in the rest of the house, Haruto sat at his desk with his school notebook open. His pen scratched furiously across the page, lines and circles connecting into half-formed diagrams.
Wood. Metal scraps. Cloth. Binding points.
It looked like nonsense, a child's attempt at designing a robot. But to Haruto, every mark carried weight. Every line was an attempt to recall what he remembered—not from his own past, but from the flickering fragments of another man's legacy.
Nagato. Pain. Six bodies, six paths, all bound to a single will.
"I can't make that… not yet," Haruto muttered, tapping the page. His handwriting wavered where his hand trembled with fatigue. "But one body… one puppet… I can try."
The next day, classes blurred into background noise. Teachers droned, classmates whispered, the clock ticked forward. Haruto barely noticed. Every scrap of his attention was locked on the images burned into his mind: towering figures, wooden joints, glowing threads of cursed energy pulling them to life.
By the time the final bell rang, he was already planning where to start.
Instead of heading home, Haruto veered off the main streets into the neglected edge of town. The old industrial zone had become his sanctuary. He slipped into a half-collapsed warehouse, the broken windows letting in streaks of dull light. The air smelled of rust and dust.
Piles of discarded junk filled the corners: twisted rebar, snapped boards, rusted pipes, abandoned crates. To most, it was trash. To Haruto, it was material.
"Let's see if this crazy idea works."
He dragged pieces together, sweat running down his back as he shoved heavy beams across the floor. A splinter cut into his palm when he lifted an old wooden board, but he barely noticed.
Hours passed. The sun sank lower, casting long shadows through the broken glass.
By the time Haruto finally stepped back, he was staring at something crude, awkward, and hulking.
It wasn't elegant. Just a rough frame of wood and rusted pipes lashed together with strips of fabric. A torso-like shape, two heavy arms that dragged against the floor, legs too thick and uneven to balance properly. Its head was little more than a box with a hollow cavity.
Ugly. Amateur. Barely holding together.
But it was a vessel.
Haruto wiped the sweat from his brow, his chest heaving. "Now comes the real test."
He closed his eyes, pressing his hands together as he tried to steady his breathing. The cursed energy stirred sluggishly within him, coiling like smoke.
Focus. Don't just let it spill out. Channel it.
He raised his hand and extended the flow outward. Invisible threads of power stretched from his palm, sinking into the rough puppet's body. The wood groaned. The pipes rattled. The whole frame shuddered as if something unseen had entered it.
"Move," Haruto whispered.
The puppet twitched. Its right arm jerked upward, stiff and unsteady, before crashing back to the ground with a deafening clang. Dust exploded into the air.
Haruto's heart hammered. He gritted his teeth, forcing more energy into it.
"Stand."
The legs shivered. Wood cracked. The crude frame lurched upright, swaying dangerously. One step forward, slow as a glacier. Another step, dragging the rusted metal across the concrete.
It was working.
Haruto's entire body trembled, sweat pouring down his temples. The drain on his stamina was brutal, far worse than blasting energy outward like he had with the curse. But he couldn't stop. He had to see it through.
"Raise your hand!" he barked.
The puppet obeyed—clumsily, shakily, but its enormous right arm lifted high before crashing back down, sending another boom through the empty warehouse.
Haruto laughed through his exhaustion, breathless but exhilarated. "It moves… It actually moves!"
The triumph lasted only seconds.
A sharp crack echoed through the warehouse as the puppet's left leg buckled, snapping at a joint where the wood had been too thin. The entire hulking frame collapsed sideways, smashing into the floor. The crash thundered through the space, leaving only silence and the sharp sting of failure.
The puppet lay still. Lifeless again.
Haruto staggered backward, his knees threatening to give out. He collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath, his vision blurry.
His cursed energy was nearly drained. His head pounded, his muscles screamed, and yet—he was smiling.
Because it had worked.
Even for only a moment, he had taken dead material and made it move. He had given it life through cursed energy alone.
Nagato had commanded six bodies. He had commanded gods. Haruto had managed only one crude, broken frame.
But it was enough.
"Next time," Haruto whispered hoarsely, eyes locked on the fallen puppet. "I'll make it stand longer. Move faster. Stronger. I'll… I'll make it fight."
The last rays of sunset painted the warehouse in blood-red light as Haruto dragged himself to his feet. His body screamed at him to stop, but his mind was already racing.
The first step had been taken.
And if a pile of wood and rusted metal could move under his will, then soon… he could build something far greater.
Not just a golem. Not just a puppet.
A soldier.
A legend.
The warehouse still smelled of dust and rust, but now it also smelled of failure.The hulking puppet lay in ruins across the concrete floor, its wooden beams snapped, its pipes bent out of shape. Haruto stared at the wreckage for a long time, his chest still heaving, sweat dripping from his hair.
Every breath felt like inhaling fire. His head pounded from cursed energy depletion. But despite the exhaustion, his eyes didn't leave the broken frame.
"It moved," he whispered hoarsely, his voice echoing in the empty space. "Even if only for a moment… it stood."
He didn't touch the puppet again that night. His body wouldn't allow it. Instead, he trudged home under the darkening sky, muscles sore, mind racing. Dinner passed in a blur—his parents' voices muffled by his own thoughts. He collapsed onto his bed, but sleep didn't come easily. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the puppet standing, swaying under his control.
By morning, resolve had hardened in his chest.
"I'll try again."
Classes dragged. Haruto's pen doodled not notes, but diagrams. He sketched joints, levers, ways to brace the legs better. He tried to remember the feeling of cursed energy flowing into the puppet, how it resonated with dead material.
When school ended, he slipped back to the warehouse.
The wreck was waiting, collapsed like a corpse. Haruto dropped his bag and knelt beside it, running a hand along the broken beams.
"Too heavy in the legs. Too uneven in the arms. And I… I was too forceful."
Last time, he'd poured cursed energy into it like water into a cracked jug—wasteful and unstable. This time, he needed precision.
He began repairing it with what he had. New planks scavenged from other corners of the warehouse. Strips of cloth tightened into makeshift binding. Metal joints reinforced with bolts scavenged from crates.
It wasn't elegant, but slowly, the frame stood again.
Haruto wiped his brow. His hands were covered in splinters, his uniform stained with grime. But the puppet loomed tall once more, a crude giant waiting for its master's command.
"Round two."
He inhaled, steadying himself, and stretched his hand toward the puppet. The cursed energy stirred sluggishly, reluctant after yesterday's depletion.
"Focus. Slow. Don't flood it—thread it."
He imagined strings pulling from his fingertips, threads of invisible force connecting to the puppet's limbs. The resonance clicked faster this time, like the material already remembered being moved.
The puppet shuddered, then straightened. Its head jerked, arms twitching.
"Step," Haruto commanded.
The right leg lifted—slow, stiff, but smoother than before. It planted down with a resounding thud. Dust drifted from the rafters.
Haruto's grin widened. "Again."
The left leg followed, dragging slightly but obeying. Another thud echoed through the warehouse. The puppet swayed, threatening to collapse, but Haruto reinforced it with a push of energy.
Sweat already dripped down his chin. His pulse thundered in his ears. Every movement of the puppet tugged at him, as if he were lifting the weight himself. His muscles trembled though he wasn't moving.
It's like dragging a body through mud, he thought, teeth gritted. But if Pain could control six at once… one should be nothing for me.
"Raise your arm."
The puppet's massive right arm lifted high, smoother than yesterday. Its shadow stretched across the cracked floor.
"Bring it down!"
The arm crashed into the ground with a boom that rattled the metal beams overhead. The sound reverberated in Haruto's bones.
"Yes!" he gasped, his chest burning. "Better… much better!"
But the strain hit harder now. His vision blurred. The puppet's movements slowed, the invisible threads between them growing thin.
The puppet froze mid-motion, then shuddered violently.
"No—!"
It collapsed again, wood snapping, metal screeching as it crumpled into a heap.
Haruto staggered backward, nearly falling to his knees. He braced against the wall, gulping air, his body trembling.
Every attempt drained him dry. Every success ended in collapse.
But his lips curved into a sharp smile.
"That's control," he whispered. "That's progress."
Over the next few days, Haruto repeated the process.
School. Warehouse. Repair. Attempt. Collapse.
Each session left him weaker, but each time, the puppet lasted a little longer. One step became two. Two steps became three. An arm strike could be repeated before the frame gave out.
His body ached constantly. His head throbbed from cursed energy strain. But every improvement sharpened the fire in his chest.
The crude puppet was no longer just junk held together by cloth and nails. It was training. Proof that cursed energy could flow into something dead and make it fight.
And though clumsy, it was strong. Stronger than him
One evening, as the puppet managed to walk nearly half the warehouse before collapsing, Haruto slumped against the wall, drenched in sweat, grinning like a madman.
He thought of the curse from nights ago—the way it lunged, the hunger in its eyes.
"This thing," he whispered, nodding toward the puppet's heap of limbs, "could crush that curse in one blow. Maybe two."
The thought lingered, heavy but enticing.
He wasn't ready. He knew that. Every session left him half-dead. But sooner or later, a curse would come looking for him again.
And when it did, he wouldn't stand alone.
Next time, his puppet would fight.
The warehouse was no longer enough.Haruto knew it the moment his crude puppet managed to walk a full circuit without collapsing. The walls felt too close, the shadows too shallow. He needed a real test, something beyond wood and dust.
Something alive.
Or rather—something cursed.
That night, Haruto left the warehouse dragging a cart behind him. The puppet, rebuilt once more with scavenged beams and pipes, lay folded into pieces. Its size and weight made it impossible to carry whole, but he had learned how to disassemble it into segments. Crude, clunky, but transportable.
The cart's wheels squeaked as he pushed it through the deserted industrial district, every sound loud in the still night air. He found an open lot at the edge of the zone, a place overrun with weeds, ringed by broken fences and crumbling concrete. No people, no houses.
Perfect.
He reassembled the puppet under the dim moonlight, sweat dripping as he fitted beams into sockets, tied joints tight, hammered pipes into place with a stone. It loomed again at its full size—ten meters of crooked strength.
His chest tightened with both fear and excitement.
"Now… come find me."
Haruto didn't have to wait long.
The cursed energy bleeding off the puppet was like blood in the water. Minutes passed before the air thickened with malice, that same suffocating pressure he remembered from his first encounter.
A shape crawled from the weeds—a curse larger than the last one, its body twisted and jagged like shards of glass stitched together. Its limbs ended in clawed hands that dragged against the concrete with screeches. Its mouth split vertically, dripping black fluid that hissed where it touched the ground.
The curse hissed, eyes gleaming with hunger as it fixated on Haruto.
Perfect bait.
"Let's see what you can do," Haruto muttered, raising his hand toward the puppet.
Cursed energy surged through him, threads extending outward. The puppet twitched, then shuddered upright. Its shadow stretched across the lot, massive compared to Haruto's slight frame.
The curse screeched and lunged.
"Move!"
The puppet's arm swung forward, slow but heavy. The curse dodged, claws scraping sparks from the concrete as it darted aside. The puppet's fist smashed into the ground, cracking pavement and sending a shockwave of dust.
Too slow.
Haruto gritted his teeth, forcing more energy into the puppet. His muscles trembled as if he were swinging the massive arm himself.
"Turn—now!"
The puppet lumbered sideways, its torso grinding as it shifted. The curse leapt, claws extended—
The puppet's other arm caught it mid-air, not cleanly, but enough. Wood groaned, metal bent, but the curse was slammed against the ground with a crunch.
Haruto gasped, sweat dripping down his chin. The weight of control was immense, each motion like dragging his body through iron chains. But he didn't let up.
"Finish it!"
The puppet raised its foot high, then brought it crashing down. The curse shrieked, twisting aside at the last second, but one of its arms was crushed beneath the blow, splattering into smoke.
The curse retaliated, lunging at Haruto himself. Its broken arm dangled, but its claws still gleamed, aiming straight for his throat.
Haruto's chest seized with panic. He forced the puppet to intercept, but the delay was fatal—it was too slow.
The curse was almost on him when instinct screamed. Haruto flung out his free hand, cursed energy bursting forth raw and unrefined. The blast struck the curse sideways, knocking it off course. It skidded across the pavement, shrieking.
Haruto's breath came ragged. His legs trembled. His vision swam.
"I… can't keep this up…"
The puppet swayed, the threads between them weakening. Its arms twitched, slower and slower.
The curse rose again, its mouth splitting wider, hatred radiating off it.
"Move, damn it!" Haruto roared, forcing everything he had into the puppet.
The threads surged with desperate intensity. The puppet jerked, lifted both arms, and clapped them together with earth-shaking force.
The curse was caught between them. Its body crumpled, shattered, and burst into black smoke that dissolved into the night.
Silence followed.
The puppet swayed once… then collapsed into a heap of broken beams and pipes.
Haruto fell to his knees, chest heaving, sweat soaking his uniform. His limbs felt like lead, his cursed energy drained to its dregs.
But the curse was gone.
And he was alive.
Haruto sat there for a long time, gulping air, staring at the pile of debris that had once been his puppet. His whole body ached, his head splitting from strain.
But despite the pain, a fierce grin spread across his face.
"It worked," he whispered. "It actually worked."
The puppet had been clumsy, unstable, barely controllable. But even in that crude form, it had killed a curse that might have torn Haruto apart.
That meant the concept was sound.
All it needed was refinement. Efficiency. Precision.
Not a giant made of wood and pipes. Not a golem.
A body.
A vessel shaped like a person.
Human, but not human.
Haruto's breath steadied, his grin sharpening. "Next time… I'll build something better. Something real."
His mind whispered the name he'd chosen already.
Tendo.