he full moon hung low and swollen, bright enough to bleach the color out of Tokyo. Beneath it, an abandoned hotel jutted from the skyline like a dead tooth, rooftop pool cracked dry, patio furniture overturned and rusting.
Wind combed through broken railings and empty window frames, dragging the stale promise of rain that never came. Three figures stood up there anyway, like the roof belonged to them.
"Why even take on some wayward novice, Kenjaku?" Uraume's voice was flat, boredom sharpened into something practiced. Arms folded. Posture tight and guarded despite the lazy gaze. Snow-white hair fluttered like a banner that did not need an army. "Our time could be spent doing anything else."
Kenjaku looked like a man enjoying a show. Relaxed. Unbothered. His head rested in his palm as if he were in a theater instead of perched above a rooftop slaughter.
"Because he's interesting," he said, almost fond.
Below them, the novice moved like someone forced awake too many days in a row. Carter braced his forearms and caught a heavy swing from a Grade 2 curse. Cursed energy flared at the moment of impact, Carter returning a body blow. The creature's dull purple skin rippled, its tubby mass wobbling, but Carter did not give an inch.
Uraume's eyes narrowed. "Interesting?"
"His control is outstanding," Kenjaku continued, smooth as silk. "He grasped manipulation quickly. And because of his innate technique, he understands reinforcement instinctually."
Carter launched upward, twenty feet like gravity was optional. In midair his hands snapped out and cursed energy threaded into paper-thin slips, four in each hand, edges humming with intent. For a heartbeat they looked harmless. Just cards. Just scraps.
Then he threw.
The slips cut the air at blinding speed, white flashes against moonlight, all but paper shuriken. They struck in a staccato burst and detonated on impact. Sharp concussions. Bodies torn apart. Blackened residue sprayed across the rooftop.
The explosions lit Carter's face in violent pulses. Jaw clenched. Eyes locked forward. Breathing ragged, still controlled.
Uraume watched the last curse melt into sludge and clicked her tongue. "You get excited by the most insignificant things."
Kenjaku smiled without looking away. "When you've lived as long as I have," he murmured, "you learn the most miscellaneous things can be the most fun."
Uraume scoffed, irritation sharpening her gaze. "It doesn't matter. Your little project will be dead tomorrow anyway."
She dropped the words like a verdict, then turned and walked toward the open balcony door, vanishing into the hotel's dark throat without another glance.
Kenjaku did not stop her. He did not react. He simply rose.
One light hop carried him down from the balcony. He landed on the pool floor like he weighed nothing, the sound soft, almost polite. He crossed cracked tiles toward Carter, who stood in the aftermath with his chest heaving, slips still clutched between his fingers like he did not know how to let go of the only thing keeping him alive.
Carter looked different than when they first met. The exhaustion was still there, painted under his eyes, stitched into the drag of his posture, but the lostness had dulled. Something had settled in its place. Something harder. Direction that did not require hope.
Kenjaku stopped a few feet away and studied him the way a craftsman studies a blade.
"Tomorrow is the seventh day," Kenjaku said. Calm. Certain. "Are you ready, Carter?"
Carter's breathing slowed, each inhale measured like he was counting seconds with his lungs. He lifted his head. In his eyes, moonlight caught something fierce. Not confidence. Not peace. A refusal. A refusal to fold.
A refusal to be erased.
He nodded once. And in the confines of his mind, where fear could not borrow anyone else's voice, the promise landed like a nail driven into wood.
I will live.
Tokyo Colony
Before the American ever laid eyes on the barrier, it stood there already, taller than the sky and black as space. Carter stared at it with a burgundy book in his hands, eyes scanning the same lines over and over like the pages were holy and could make him safe if he read them hard enough.
Fingerless gloves covered his hands. Black sports shorts. A zip-up, short sleeve light hood over a thermal that wrapped his neck and arms. Practical. Tight. Like he was trying to turn himself into something that could survive.
He closed the book like a bell had rung.
"Well," Kenjaku said behind him, voice easy, almost cheerful, "maybe I'll see you in the end…"
Carter turned. His gaze hit Kenjaku and stayed there, measuring. Weighing. Trying to understand if gratitude and hatred could exist in the same breath.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Carter said, voice low, "but I hope I never see you again."
His eyes, cold as steel most of the time, softened for a moment. Just a moment.
"But… thanks."
That was all he gave. Kenjaku took no offense. If anything, a smile tugged at his lips. He lifted a hand in a lazy parting wave, like sending a kid off to school.
Carter faced the curtain of black. Up close, the barrier felt alive. Pressure radiated off it, cursed energy so thick it made his skin prickle. He swallowed, took one final breath, and stepped through.
Instantly, the world dropped out from under him.
He was falling. Nowhere near where he started.
"Shit!" Carter yelped, more in his head than out loud.
Wind knifed his face like pins and needles. Gravity yanked him toward an early death with no ceremony.
He reinforced his body on instinct, cursed energy flooding his limbs, and summoned a larger slip than usual. It snapped into existence in his hand, bigger, heavier with intent. He angled it beneath him, forcing air to catch, bleeding speed away.
Not enough!
He still crashed, hard, into the roof of a building. Concrete screamed. His bones complained. His breath punched out of him.
"Fuck." The word left his mouth like steam. Thin. Bitter. Gone the second it touched the air.
Carter dusted himself off after the fall, blinking grit from his lashes as he peered down at the damage he'd left behind. The rooftop below was cracked in a perfect spiderweb beneath his feet, lines radiating outward like the building had flinched.
He swallowed, throat tight, and mentally thanked Kenjaku for the warning. If he'd spawned any higher, if he'd landed on anything weaker than reinforced concrete, that drop would've folded him in half.
"Kogane."
The small spirit popped into existence with its usual cheerfulness that felt borderline offensive in a place like this. Its skull-like face hovered at eye level, empty sockets fixed on him.
"How many curse users are in this colony?" Carter asked.
Kogane's skull mouth split wide, then turned into a glowing screen. Names and numbers rolled down like a scoreboard, listing sorcerers, curse users, and their points.
"With me, that makes twenty-one," Carter muttered. He'd expected… more. A bigger crowd. A louder storm.
Disappointment laced his throat, bitter and quick, but he forced it down. Less people meant less noise, less chaos. It also meant every fight mattered more. It meant the ones who were here had probably survived long enough to be dangerous.
Stay alert. Memorize. Move.
Carter turned, scanning for a stairwell or a door, anything that would take him down to ground level. He found one and took a step.
The floor collapsed.
For a heartbeat he was weightless again, stomach climbing into his chest. Then gravity remembered him and dragged him down through splintering beams and crumbling concrete.
And somewhere above, unseen, a woman watched the fall with a wicked smile that looked like hunger.
"Finally," she whispered, voice slick with glee. Her grip tightened around the hilt of her katana. Her eyes shone with something ecstatic, like the world had finally decided to entertain her. "Some fresh blood."
Carter hit hard and rose with a heaps of groans, rolling his shoulders like he could shake loose the ache. "Just my luck," he said, deadpan, even as his ribs complained.
Sunlight spilled through the jagged hole in the ceiling, turning the once-dark space into something almost holy. Dust hung in the air, caught in the beam, glittering like the room was being unveiled after centuries sealed underground. It gave the office an ancient, ruined dignity. Like a relic.
"An office," Carter muttered.
His voice sounded smaller in here, swallowed by cubicles and broken monitors and toppled chairs. It was too familiar. Too normal. That was the sick part.
This was the place he'd been interning at. The reason he'd even been in Tokyo in the first place. The reason his life had snapped in half.
He walked forward slowly, stepping through the sunlit wreckage as if tracing old footsteps. The faces of his classmates drifted into his mind without permission. Laughter in the hallway, someone complaining about the commute, some dumb conversation about snacks, ghosts wearing the masks of the living.
His feet carried him toward the break room. He pushed the door partway—
A chewing sound stopped him cold. Carter's hand moved on instinct. A slip slid into existence between his fingers, humming with cursed energy. He leaned in and peeked around the doorframe.
He saw it.
Not for the first time, but for the first time, he understood.
Curses.
Small. Ugly. Wrong in the way they moved. One of them crouched over something, jaw working, mouth wet with that mindless animal rhythm. The slip in Carter's hand buzzed—Charge mode, ready to detonate.
He stopped himself. No explosion. Not in here. He shifted the property with a thought, changing the slip from a bomb into a blade, hardening the paper until it felt like metal in his grip.
Then he flicked it.
It pierced the curse with an ugly sound Carter would never get used to. Like wet putty being sliced. The thing shrieked, its body clinging to the slip, writhing helplessly as if it couldn't understand why it was dying.
Carter pushed the door open fully and stepped inside.
And there—half in shadow, half in sun—was a body.
His hand flew to his mouth, fingers clamping hard as he fought down his gag reflex. The smell hit second. Stale, sour and wrong.
He took one step closer. Recognition hit like a punch.
"Ms. Komogi." His voice cracked around her name.
She was their guide at the company. The one who'd led the American exchange program with a smile too big for the world, always tossing out random history facts like they were candy. Always kind. Always open. A person Carter had filed away as a trusted mentor.
Her clothes were ruined. Rot had started to claim her face, the early signs of decomposition turning humanity into something that looked like a cruel imitation. Carter's stomach twisted again and he had to brace himself against the counter. His nails dug into his palm. Tears threatened the corners of his eyes.
But his gaze slid from the corpse to the curse, the little piece of trash with her flesh hanging from its mouth like it was savoring it.
Something in Carter went quiet.
He lifted his foot.
Cursed energy flowed down his leg, pooling in his sole.
He crushed the curse beneath his heel. The wailing stopped. Silence rushed in to fill the space, thick and heavy, broken only by the buzzing of flies and the sound of Carter's own thoughts ricocheting inside his skull.
He took a shaky breath. One. Two. Three. Then he backed out, closed the break room door, and for a second, just a second he pretended he was giving Ms. Komogi peace.
Like a door could do that. The america gave a hollow scoff for his intention.
In high school, Carter used to joke about having powers. About how cool it would be. How he'd be a hero, or a villain, or something legendary.
Now he had power.
And he was using it in an office break room to kill a monster eating someone he'd once said "thank you" to.
The break from reality lasted exactly long enough for him to remember the real problem.
"Fuck Kenjaku," Carter whispered, and his brown eyes burned like coal touched by flame.Then—
A vision, felt before it was seen. A pressure in the air. A mass of cursed energy barreling toward him at breakneck speed, thick and sharp like a blade drawn across the world.
His instincts screamed.
MOVE.
His body listened.
He slipped wide, feet snapping out, torso twisting—leaving a faint blue residue in his wake like the air itself had been sliced by his motion.
Something tore past him...
And the wall behind him was cut in half in a clean, impossible line, like it had never existed. Carter's head snapped toward the source. At the far end of the office, a woman stood like she'd been waiting for applause.
"So you dodged," she purred. Tall. Sleek. Head shaved down to black. A pierced lip caught the light when she licked it, slow and primal, like she tasted the fight on the air. Her katana slid free with an audible click that sounded too clean for a place this ruined.
Her three-inch boots crunched glass as she stepped down from her perch. Black leggings torn to hell, bike shorts underneath, leather jacket hanging open like she didn't feel cold or fear or anything at all. She rested the blade on her shoulder like it weighed nothing.
Her eyes were yellow—piercing, predatory—and they tracked Carter the way a cat tracks a mouse that's trying to pretend it isn't prey.
"Please don't disappoint me," she said, and there was something brimming underneath her tone. Something excited. Something starving.
Carter's mind fired questions like bullets.
A long-range attack.
How many times can she do it?
How skilled is she?
Is she Reincarnated sorcerers? Or a new one?
Was that her Innate technique? A cursed energy slash?
All of them collapsed into the same answer: Not enough information.
"Kogane," Carter called, voice tight. "Who is she?" The spirit appeared instantly, screen flickering into place.
Isao To — 41 points.
"Forty-one?" Carter's stomach dropped.
Already.
Who the hell am I up against?
He lowered his stance. Slips flared into his hands all at once, paper singing with cursed energy, the edges eager. The woman tilted her head, lazy and arrogant, letting her sword dangle at her side like her arm was only a string holding it.
"Don't tell me you're scared," she said.
Cursed energy swelled from both of them, pressure meeting pressure, the room tightening like it was holding its breath. Carter had nothing to trust but training and talent. The crash course. His instincts. His technique. So he did the only thing he could.
He steadied himself and prepared for a life or death battle.
Across from him, Isao To's grip tightened, clean and practiced. Her stance widened with the fluid certainty of flowing water.
Her eyes went feral.
And from the depth of her throat, she roared raw, thrilled, alive.
"Shall we get this started!" Her katana carved a wide arc. A slash of cursed energy tore through the air at blinding speed.
A/N: hello guys, I just wanna say thanks for the comments and support it truly motivates me to keep writing this. This was just an outlet/break from my other writing project. So this story doesn't really have a concrete plan but I would love your advice and criticism to become better. My goal, anyway for this fic to get better at telling stories through fight scene. So thank and keep up the engagement if you want more