Convinced since childhood of his genius and uniqueness, Kiyoya considered himself the only worthy heir to the clan. He evaluated people solely by their strength and appearance, despising even his own relatives and mentors. This conviction wasn't a teenage rebellion—it was the foundation of his personality, carved from the very material of reality as he understood it.
The Kujō clan had always played a strange role in the politics of the Council of Five. They didn't possess the brute force of the Morohashi or the intellectual heritage of the Himeji. Their strength was different—inconspicuousness, precision, the ability to find weak spots in armor composed of ambition and secrets. They were court scribes who knew where every patriarch's skeletons were hidden. And the best of such scribes was Kitsugane Kujō—Kiyoya's father.
Kitsugane was a ghost of a man. He could spend a month in a patriarch's chambers, and no one, except the patriarch himself, would even suspect his presence. His Kokurō—"A Quiet Whisper in the Archives"—allowed him not just to be invisible, but to fall out of the field of attention, become part of the background: shadows on the wall, creaking floorboards, dust on scrolls. His silhouette dissolved in corners, and the words he whispered into the ears of the powerful changed clan fates, remaining anonymous.
And such a ghost had a son.
Kiyoya was different from the first days.
Unlike his father, he demanded attention. Not with crying—with a piercing, studying gaze from his amber eyes, which seemed to assess the world at first glance and find it insufficiently perfect. He didn't crawl—he stood and walked, as if he already knew the mechanics, skipping the stage of uncertainty. At three, he first manifested Kokurō: not invisibility, but the opposite. A nanny was panicking, looking for the keys to the family library. Kiyoya, watching her flailing, simply approached, touched her hand, and said: "They're always on the third shelf." And the nanny, with relief and slight confusion, went straight to the third shelf, though the keys were never kept there. He didn't erase memory—he inscribed a new, flawless script into her consciousness.
Kitsugane looked upon his son with cold, professional horror. This wasn't an evolution of the clan technique. It was a mutation. Where the Kujō were supposed to be a shadow, an unnoticed corrector of history, Kiyoya aspired to be the stage light, the director, the author.
Kiyoya's education was torture—for his teachers. He didn't accept knowledge—he evaluated it, like a strict critic, openly expressing contempt for outdated methods and limited thinking. First-class magic instructors, masters of illusion and stealth, left lessons with trembling hands and migraines.
Kitsugane, on rare occasions when he dared direct contact, tried to teach his son the clan traditions in his study, smelling of old ink and centuries of dust:
"We are not warriors or rulers, Kiyoya. We are letters. Invisible, yet necessary. Dots and commas in others' histories. Our strength lies in absence. You must learn to be a shadow."
Kiyoya, already beginning to experiment with his appearance (the first act of rebellion—hair dyed platinum blond, a crude denial of the shadow's natural look), listened, adjusting a strand.
"Stupidity, Father," his voice was ringing, without a trace of respect. "If you write history, control the narrative, you control everything. I won't be a letter. I will be the author. My name will be on the title page."
Their dialogues always ended the same way—with Kitsugane's icy, prolonged silence and Kiyoya's mocking, assessing gaze. The father saw in his son both an incredibly powerful Majutsushi, whose potential surpassed anything the clan had seen in centuries, and the embodiment of everything they fought against—narcissism, craving for recognition, dangerous, blinding genius that would sooner or later attract the wrong kind of attention.
Three years ago, the Council needed a cleaner. Not a soldier for open war, but a scalpel. In Izumo province, not far from their own lands, an ancient mountain spirit was awakening—a mindless, elemental being whose growing power threatened to disrupt the fragile seismic and magical balance of an entire region. It couldn't be destroyed in open battle without causing a catastrophe. It needed to be... pacified. Carefully. Without witnesses.
The natural choice was Kitsugane.
Before departure, in the predawn twilight, he summoned Kiyoya to that same study for the last time. The air was thick with foreboding.
"This mission is dangerous," Kitsugane said, not looking at his son, his fingers fiddling with the edge of an empty scroll. "The spirit... it's older than any of our Scars. It doesn't obey ordinary logic, scripts. Its power is pure, meaningless chaos. The opposite of everything we are."
Kiyoya, having perfected his regal posture by then, tilted his head like a scientist examining a curious but primitive specimen.
"And so? You're going to ask me to be careful? Or finally admit that your philosophy of shadow, your eternal hiding, is just outdated cowardice?"
Kitsugane slowly raised his eyes to him. There was neither anger nor parental resentment in them. Only the weary, final clarity of a man who had seen the end of the equation.
"No. I ask you one thing. If I don't return..." he paused, as if testing the sound of these words, "...don't try to be a shadow. You won't be. You'll destroy it from within, trying to squeeze into it. Be what you are. The author. The director. Whatever." He stood up, his silhouette momentarily seeming incredibly old and fragile. "But remember. The author is responsible for every word in his play. For every comma. Even..." his voice dropped to a whisper, almost merging with the creak of wood, "...even for words written in blood. And others' blood on the pages smells just as strong as your own."
The next morning, Kitsugane Kujō vanished. Forever. No body, no personal effects remained. Only an official notification from the Council about "heroic duty fulfillment and irreparable loss."
The news found Kiyoya in the rock garden of their estate. He was drinking morning tea, watching dewdrops roll down camellia petals. The messenger, pale and trembling, stammered the message.
Kiyoya didn't drop the porcelain cup. His face didn't change. He simply closed his eyes for a long, stretched-out minute. Inside him, grief didn't rage. Emptiness of loss didn't yawn. There was... catharsis. A cleansing, icy liberation.
He imagined it as a scene in his internal theater: the old, worn-out, tired backdrop (his father) was finally being removed from the stage. A set that was always too dark, too quiet, too inconspicuous. And now, on the cleared stage, under a bright, directed light, the Main Hero could emerge. Himself.
When he opened his eyes, pure, unadulterated triumph burned in the amber depths. Anticipation.
"Finally," he whispered to himself, and his lips, without volition, stretched into that very arrogant, caustic smirk that would soon become his hallmark, frightening some and invoking hatred in others.
The political vacuum in the Kujō clan needed filling. The main and obvious contender was Kiyoya's uncle, Kitsugane's younger brother—thirty-six-year-old Harumichi Kujō. A pragmatic, powerful, and experienced Majutsushi, schooled in the shadow, beloved by the clan for his predictability and loyalty to tradition. At the emergency family council, where Kiyoya sat openly bored, Harumichi, with a bow to the elders, proposed to temporarily, until Kiyoya reached proper age and experience, lead the clan to ensure stability.
Kiyoya observed this performance with detached interest, like a spectator at a mediocre play. He said nothing.
Three days later, Harumichi Kujō was found dead in his private study. Not from a subtle blade strike or unseen poison—the tools of shadow. The body was mutilated: multiple broken ribs, shattered kneecaps, broken jaw. Signs of cruel, prolonged beating with fists and feet. As if a wild animal or... a very strong, very angry man had attacked him. The investigation by the remaining elders found no evidence. Magical traces were completely erased, the script written so that even the room's memory was clean.
When those same elders, with trembling voices and fear in their eyes, offered twenty-year-old Kiyoya Kujō to assume the reins of the clan, he merely nodded slowly, not deigning them a glance. As if accepting an offering that had rightfully belonged to him from the very beginning.
And now, in the present, on Unzei Plateau, the head of the Kujō clan was staging his new performance. After easily, almost carelessly defeating Ryūnosuke Morohashi, Kiyoya slowly turned to the remaining two.
His amber eyes slid over Kaido—this strange youth in gothic attire, whose presence "irked slightly" with some otherworldly, digital purity of aura—and stopped on him.
"Let's start with the anachronism," he announced, like a director choosing the first actor for a scene. "Your... aesthetics hurt the eye. Let's bring it in line with the overall visual style."
Kaido, already back on his feet after the pillar collision, wiped blood from his split lip. His dark eyes, the color of wet asphalt, looked at Kiyoya not with fear, but with cold, analytical interest. Inside his mind, fused with the neuro-interfaces of a distant future, four parallel streams of consciousness were already working—a unique Kokurō called "Parallel Firmware," born at the intersection of magic, 2024 technology, and the global network, now functioning in the isolation of this time.
Stream 1: Primary consciousness. "Opponent: Kiyoya Kujō. Threat level: critical. Tactics: superiority in close combat and predestination manipulation. Emotional state: narcissistic rage masked as boredom."
Stream 2: "Background Diagnostics." The world for Kaido ceased to be a picture. It stratified. Physical landscape—a gray-green grid. Auras of Scars—pulsing golden and crimson threads weaving complex patterns. And most importantly—the web emanating from Kiyoya. Finest, almost invisible blue lines diverging in space, like preliminary pencil sketches on a blank canvas. "Scripts." Trajectories of possible and most probable attacks.
Stream 3: "Logical Emulator." Based on Stream 2 data, in fractions of a second, 47 variants of Kiyoya's first attack were modeled and discarded. Probability of throat strike—68%. Sweep transitioning to pain hold—22%. Feint with flank attack—10%. The single optimal response was calculated: not evasion (predictable), not block (would break), but a micro-shift of the torso 7 centimeters to the right and head tilt of 15 degrees, taking vital zones out of the "prescribed" script lines.
Stream 4: "Body Control." The command was given. Muscles, tendons, vestibular apparatus—all worked with robotic, flawless precision, bypassing the conscious nervous system. Kaido's body performed the micro-movement even before Kiyoya began his action.
Kiyoya vanished—and appeared before Kaido, his hand, formed into a spear, already flying towards the point where his throat had been an instant before. The blow passed a centimeter from the skin, cutting only air. Kiyoya hadn't missed. He hit exactly where he aimed. The target just "moved" earlier than the command to move was given.
Kiyoya froze, his arm still extended. Amber eyes narrowed, studying Kaido. Interest in them turned to cold, sharp curiosity.
"Oh?" he drawled, slowly lowering his hand. "You don't just move fast. You... read the draft? See the lines before I draw them." He shook his head, and a new smirk appeared on his lips—not mocking, but almost professional. "I don't know where or how you learned this... precognition technique. But it doesn't particularly surprise me. After all, it's just extended analysis. And analysis always lags behind the creative act."
Irritation—not from threat, but from having his draft read without permission—made Kiyoya change tactics. If the opponent reads probabilities, give him an event with a probability of zero until the moment it occurs.
"Chronometric Imperative," he uttered, and his voice acquired the metallic, impersonal tone of a declared law.
Even during his speech, with an unnoticeable foot movement, he touched a small stone behind Kaido. On the stone, invisibly to the normal eye, a microscopic Scar flashed and died—an anchor.
The essence of the technique was blasphemously simple for the world of magic: Kiyoya inscribed a Scar of a future state on his own body: "Kiyoya's body is already at point B (by the stone)." Reality, like a pedantic accountant, faced with such a paradox (an object cannot be here and there simultaneously), panicked. To eliminate the inconsistency, it frantically played the intermediate frames, at the maximum speed possible for Kiyoya's physiology, instantly overcoming air resistance, inertia, gravity. To an external observer, it looked like teleportation. In reality, Kiyoya existed at two points of his temporal Scar simultaneously, and the world convulsively filled the gap.
Kaido's Stream 2 detected the flash of the magical marker behind his back. Stream 3 screamed alarm, producing a calculation: physical evasion impossible, opponent's movement speed exceeds human reaction limits even with precognition. The only option—take the blow on the least vulnerable area, preparing muscles for contact.
It was then that Akira intervened.
He didn't see scripts. Didn't calculate probabilities. His emptiness was a blind spot for Kaido's diagnostics. He acted on pure, honed-to-a-razor-edge survival instinct and a strange, almost telepathic sense of threat to... not quite an ally, but someone currently on the same side of chaos.
He didn't rush to attack Kiyoya. That would be suicidal and pointless. Instead, he took one step. Not sideways, not back. Forward, violating the pure, ideal geometry of space between point A (Kiyoya) and point B (the stone behind Kaido). At the moment reality began convulsively playing frames for the "Chronometric Imperative," his "Zone"—a bubble of absolute stability—activated for an instant, on the verge of the "Final Protocol."
The effect was minimal but critical. The perfect straight line along which Kiyoya's body should have passed wavered, distorted for a fraction of a microsecond. Akira's emptiness introduced interference into reality's calculations. Kiyoya materialized not at the perfect point behind Kaido's back, but a centimeter to the left, his balance disrupted for a fraction of a second.
The blow, calculated to sever the spine, passed as a glancing strike, slamming forcefully into Kaido's rib and sending him tumbling across the ground. A sickening crunch—a fracture. But it wasn't a fatal blow. Kaido, rolling away, felt Stream 4 immediately localize the area, injecting internal anesthetics and stabilizing the bone. Pain receded, replaced by the cold signal "STRUCTURAL DAMAGE. EFFICIENCY REDUCED BY 18%."
Kiyoya, straightening up, slowly turned his head to Akira. His face expressed, for the first time, not boredom or irritation, but cold, merciless interest of a predator noticing unexpected prey behavior.
"Why are you even interfering, scarecrow?" he asked, his voice quiet and dangerous as a snake's hiss. "Haven't been hit in that ugly face with that pathetic ponytail in a while? Think your emptiness changes anything? You're a glitch in the system. And glitches get debugged first."
Realizing that Kaido could predict "Scripts," and Akira with his "emptiness" could introduce chaos into the pure physics of his techniques, Kiyoya made a strategic decision. He was tired of complications. Time to shift the battle to a plane where he was absolute, an unsurpassed master for the last three years of his rule—the plane of pure, unadulterated skill.
He raised a hand, not to attack, but like a conductor giving the signal for the final act. His fingers formed an elegant, unthinkable sign, and he forcefully brought his palm down, as if driving an invisible stake into the ground.
"Final Protocol."
The air on the plateau didn't waver. It died. Sound—the roar of wind, rustle of stones, their own breathing—vanished, swallowed by sudden, tomb-like silence. On the ground around them, within a twenty-meter radius, a complex, geometrically flawless pattern of dimly glowing lines appeared. It didn't burn—it was etched into reality itself.
Kaido's Stream 2 reacted instantly, throwing a screaming warning into primary consciousness: "EXTERNAL MANDATE DETECTED. ALL NEW MAGICAL PROCESSES BLOCKED. ACCESS LEVEL: DENIED. ACTIVE PROCESSES: SUPPRESSED. SUPPORTED STREAMS: PERMITTED (WITH POWER LIMITATIONS)."
Kiyoya had used the highest expression of his authority. He selected a zone and imposed upon it a Scar of absolute, indisputable law: "All unauthorized changes of Kokurō are forbidden here." In this zone, activating new techniques was impossible. Only already active ones could be used (like Kaido's streams, now working under strain), pure physical strength, or unadulterated combat skill. Ryūnosuke's "Iron Vow," already suppressed, was now completely unavailable. Any attempt by Akira to create a new "Zone" met absolute, silent resistance from reality—his will slammed into a wall of "NO."
Kiyoya smiled. A true, joyful smile of an artist finally picking up his favorite, incomparable brush.
"Now," he uttered, shrugging off an imaginary weight from his shoulders, "we can speak truly. Without your distorted mirrors and readable drafts. Only me, my body... and your fragile physiology."
He moved towards Kaido. Not with disappearance, but with a normal, measured step, yet each step was flawless, every weight shift a textbook of biomechanics. Now it was a pure duel. He—an unsurpassed virtuoso of hand-to-hand combat, whose skill was honed not in spars but in endless, grueling solitary training before a mirror, where he practiced every strike, every block to the point of unconscious, intuitive perfection. They—one wounded technocrat whose calculating mind was stripped of magical support, and an "emptiness" without apparent combat skills, capable only of interfering, not winning.
And the methodical, cruel, almost artistic beating began.
Kaido, even with Stream 3's precognition, was powerless. He saw an attack half a second before it began. His Stream 4 gave his body commands for perfect parry or dodge. But Kiyoya's skill was beyond logic. It was intuitive, fluid, unpredictable on a fundamental level. He didn't follow optimal trajectories—he created them at the moment of strike, playing with balance, inertia, psychology. An elbow strike that should have been straight suddenly turned into a snapping backfist. A sweep Kaido foresaw was a feint, and the real kick came from another side, reflected off the ground at an unthinkable angle.
Kiyoya vanished and appeared not with magic, but with pure speed and footwork, using the "Chronometric Imperative" only for abrupt, frightening position changes, placing anchors beforehand, moments when Kaido was busy defending. Blows fell like hail: hard uppercuts to the solar plexus, snapping side kicks to the knee, sharp finger jabs to the throat, which Kaido barely parried with his forearm, feeling the bone creak under pressure.
Kiyoya simply ignored Akira, shoving him aside with a sharp, almost unseeing kick to the chest when he tried to get in the way again. He flew back, crashed into a pile of debris, and went still, stunned.
"Don't interrupt the adults, empty space," Kiyoya threw after him, not taking his eyes off Kaido.
The pompous, cruel finale came when Kiyoya, catching Kaido's rhythm and precognition, used three consecutive "Chronometric Imperatives." Anchors were placed beforehand—on the pillar to the left, on a stone to the right, on the ground behind Kaido. To an observer, it looked as if Kiyoya split into three blurred copies simultaneously attacking from different sides.
Kaido's Stream 3 choked, unable to process three mutually exclusive scripts with zero evasion probability from all. Stream 4 did all it could: tensed all muscles, shifted center of gravity, offered the least vulnerable spots.
First blow—edge of the palm to the side of the neck (from the "copy" on the left)—was parried, but threw him off balance.
Second—lightning low kick to the supporting leg (from the "copy" on the right)—found its mark. Kaido's knee joint crunched, he staggered.
Third—and it was the real one—came from behind. Kiyoya, materializing, put all the strength of his torso into the blow. His fist, wrapped not in magic but in pure, concentrated narcissist rage whose performance had dragged on, slammed into Kaido between the shoulder blades.
A sound like a breaking stick. Air was forcefully expelled from Kaido's lungs. His body, having lost all support, became a living projectile. It flew five meters backwards and slammed into the base of one of the intact pillars. The impact was monstrous. Stone that had withstood centuries of erosion cracked with a deafening roar. Dust and rubble rained down. Kaido slumped at the foot, his gothic cloak in tatters, face a mask of blood and dust. Stream 4 desperately signaled multiple rib fractures, lung contusion, concussion. Consciousness stayed afloat only due to the rigid discipline of a modified brain.
Kiyoya, slightly winded (abuse of the "Imperative" made itself known with a light, itching pain in his temples and nausea—signs of "chrono-blindness"), slowly approached. He looked at the defeated technocrat with the same expression he'd give a failed sketch that still brought some satisfaction from the correction process.
"You see," he said quietly, almost thoughtfully. "All your calculations, all your streams... they merely bring you closer to the perfect model of a victim. You calculated your death with 99.9% probability. The rest is statistical error."
He raised his hand for a final, neat blow—the edge of his palm to the temple, to shatter the skull and end this boring experiment.
And at that moment, in the very center of the plateau, at the epicenter of the "Final Protocol" zone, the air didn't tear or flash. It froze and crystallized, like frost on glass on a quiet, frosty night. With a quiet rustle like tearing silk of reality itself, She materialized from this distortion.
Kaeki.
She didn't crawl out, didn't walk out. She manifested, as if she'd always been there, just out of focus, beyond the threshold of perception. Her appearance was as absurd in this place as it was inevitable, like a glitch in a flawless program.
She had a perfectly symmetrical, porcelain face, lacking ordinary eyes. Instead, on her forehead was a single large, almond-shaped eye with a vertical, pulsing pupil, its color shifting from shimmering gray to bright orange, like a hot coal. Across her face and neck ran finest, capillary-like silver thread-seams. They didn't look like scars—it was an exquisite, eerie tattoo, a network of cracks on a flawless vase. Long, ash-gray hair seemed to live its own life, gently undulating and shimmering as if underwater. Tall, androgynous figure with an unnaturally straight, proud posture, contrasting with smooth, almost fluid movements. Skin—dazzlingly white, but in places covered with black, branching patterns resembling veins or roots of a poisonous plant. Asymmetry was her essence: left arm to the elbow—completely black, smooth and glossy like polished obsidian; right—white, with seams on joints that seemed to allow it to lengthen or change shape. She wore a wide, sleeveless garment resembling a haori. Instead of a belt—an intertwiningof dry, black vines. She was barefoot, and her steps left no trace in the dust, only a light haze of distorted air.
Her vertical pupil slowly slid over the scene. First stopped on Kiyoya, frozen with raised hand. Then—on the pile of debris where Ryūnosuke lay. On Akira, trying to rise. And finally, on the beaten Kaido by the pillar. The gaze was devoid of any emotion. Pure scanning. Object assessment.
Kiyoya, after a second of shock caused not so much by the appearance as by the absolute, blatant alienness of the being, slowly lowered his hand. His amber eyes narrowed, assessing. Beauty? No. Power? Not obvious. Threat? Barely. But primarily—it was an obstruction. Dissonance in his perfectly constructed performance.
And his face twisted into a grimace of the most sincere, disgusted contempt.
"Who brought... this here?" his voice sounded with icy revulsion. "No boobs, no handsome face... Just one big... construction error." He waved a hand dismissively towards Kaeki, as if shooing a bothersome insect. "Get lost while you can. I'm in a creative process here, and you're ruining the composition."
Kaeki's vertical pupil, pulsing orange, focused on him. Her lips—thin, colorless—didn't twitch. She didn't respond. Just kept looking. And in that silence, under the gaze of her single eye, even the flawless, all-powerful author of the script felt, for a moment, a chilling prick of something that didn't fit into any of his drafts.