While Satoshi sat in the suffocating silence of the Reikage estate, two separate webs began to tighten around him.
In the high-tech sanctuary of her bedroom, Shiba Saori sat before a terminal that bypassed every civilian firewall in Japan. Her eyes were sharp, her movements precise—far beyond the capabilities of any normal high schooler. Using a secure uplink provided by her family's private network, she bypassed the national server and dove into the deep web of the Elder Senate.
"Hanamiya is a ghost," she whispered. "But no one is invisible to the Untouchables."
She entered a series of high-level decryption keys. Suddenly, the screen bled red. A single file appeared, protected by a seal she had only seen in the most restricted corners of her household archives—a level of classification identical to her own family's.
[CLASS SSS - ABSOLUTE NATIONAL SECURITY: PROJECT REIKAGE]
Her breath hitched as she scrolled. Subject: Reikage. Origin: Institute 0. Ability: Molecular Decomposition and Information-State Regrowth.
The words hit her like a physical blow. Saori leaned back, her heart hammering against her ribs. She knew those powers. She had grown up in the shadow of them.
"Decomposition and Regrowth..." she whispered, her mind racing to the image of her own father, Yotsuba Tatsuya.
Her father was the most powerful magician in the world, a man who could unmake matter and restore it in an instant. But he was also a man who had sacrificed his ability to use "normal" magic properly; his Magic Calculation Area was almost entirely occupied by those two terrifying, innate abilities.
But Satoshi... she had seen him in the gym. He had dismantled Ayato's magic with Gram Dispersion and used high-level Modern Systematic magic with the grace of a scholar.
"Father can't use standard spells without a specialized CAD or immense effort... but Satoshi's brain capacity is doubled. He can use everything."
She realized then that Satoshi was the perfected version of her father's power—a "Demon" who didn't just possess the power to destroy, but the capacity to master every system of magic known to man.
******
At the same time, across Tokyo, Saegusa Ayato—the son of Saegusa Kouichi's second son—was pacing his room in a cold sweat. He picked up a secure phone and dialed his father.
"Father, I need you to crush someone," Ayato hissed, his bandaged hand throbbing from the psion backlash. "A student named Hanamiya Satoshi. He humiliated me. He mocked the Saegusa name!"
There was a long silence. He heard the sound of his father accessing the Saegusa family's private database. Suddenly, the sound of typing stopped.
"Ayato," his father's voice was suddenly hollow, stripped of all its usual arrogance. "What did you say his name was?"
"Hanamiya Satoshi. He's a nobody! I want him—"
"Be silent!" his father roared. "I just ran that name through the Master Clan's internal registry. The file doesn't exist. It's been 'Redacted by the Senate.' Ayato... do you understand what that means? Only the Yotsuba and the Shadows have files like that."
Ayato's face went pale. "The Shadows?"
"The Reikage are a hidden clan—a myth used to scare even the Ten Master Clans. They built the system we live in. If that boy is their heir, the Saegusa cannot protect you. You have walked into a den of monsters, and you've brought their attention to us."
******
Back in her room, Saori closed her laptop. She finally understood the "unbelievable" truth. Satoshi wasn't just a powerful magician; he was a mirror of her own life, but even more isolated.
He was a "Demon" who could decompose the world, yet he had used that same terrifying hand to gently hold hers. He was a perfected successor to her father's legendary power, yet he looked so lonely.
"You're just like us," she whispered to the darkness. "A secret that the world is too afraid to know."
******
The digital trail should have been a death sentence. The moment Saori's terminal bypassed the Senate's final layer, a silent alarm—a Reikage Sting—triggered within the Zero Institute's servers. A specialized interception spell began to trace the signal back to her bedroom, prepared to incinerate the intruder's brain via the neural link.
But it hit a wall of absolute void.
A surge of Information Interference so vast it felt like the weight of the ocean swallowed the Reikage's trace. On the other end, Shiba Tatsuya sat in his private study, his eyes glowing with the faint, cold light of Elemental Sight. He had sensed his daughter's unauthorized "dive" the moment she accessed the S-Rank archives. With a single, silent command, he dismantled the detection sequence and erased Saori's digital footprint as if it had never existed.
Seconds later, the space in Saori's room shifted.
Her Guardian, a high-ranking Yotsuba combatant, stood by the door with his hand on a hidden CAD. He froze, bowing his head instantly as Tatsuya walked past him. Tatsuya looked at his daughter, his expression unreadable—until he saw the state she was in.
Saori wasn't hiding her screen. She was hunched over the terminal, her shoulders shaking with silent, racking sobs.
"Saori," Tatsuya's voice was calm, but it held a rare note of gravity. "Those files are sealed for a reason. Even for us, the Reikage are a name that must remain in the shadows."
Saori turned around. Her eyes were red, tears streaming down her face in a way that shocked her Guardian. She didn't look like a proud magician; she looked like a girl who had just stared into a child's nightmare.
"Father..." she choked out, pointing at the glowing text on the monitor. "How could they? How could they do this to him just because of how he was born?"
Tatsuya's gaze shifted to the screen. It was a Supplemental Observation File from Institute 0 regarding the young heir of the Reikage, dated twelve years ago.
Subject: Hanamiya Satoshi.
Ability Status: Confirmed Innate Born Specialized Magic: 'Decomposition' and 'Regrowth'.
Incident (Age 8): Subject attempted to use his innate 'Decomposition' on his own heart to end the 'Cursed Cycle' of his existence.
Outcome: The innate 'Regrowth' ability, acting as an autonomous survival instinct, restored his organs faster than he could unmake them. The attempt resulted in three hours of continuous cellular collapse and reconstruction.
Institute Note: The Reikage Elders monitored the event as a 'live-fire test' of the subject's regenerative limits. No medical intervention was provided.
"He tried to kill himself," Saori sobbed. "He didn't ask for this power. It was just there when he was born, and instead of helping him, they just... watched him suffer to see how much his body could take. He was only eight, Father! Just a little boy!"
Tatsuya stood silent. He, more than anyone, understood the weight of possessing "cursed" innate magic. He looked at the data on Satoshi's Double-Capacity MCA—a biological anomaly that allowed Satoshi to use Modern Systematic Magic despite his specialized nature.
"The Reikage view individuals as containers for power, Saori," Tatsuya said, his voice dropping to a low resonance. "To them, his innate mutation was merely an asset to be measured. Unlike me, he has the capacity to handle the world's most destructive magic alongside modern systems without losing his mind. He is the 'Perfected Magician' the Zero Institute always dreamed of creating."
"He isn't a project! He's the boy who held my hand!" Saori stood up, her grief turning into a fierce, protective anger. "He's lonely, Father... he's more alone than any 'Demon' should ever be."
Tatsuya looked at his daughter. He saw the fire in her eyes—a fire that reminded him of the fierce loyalty he had seen in the Yotsuba family for generations.
"He is the heir to the Zero Institute. If you stay close to him, you are declaring war on the shadows that even the Ten Master Clans fear to name."
Saori wiped her eyes, her expression hardening into steel. "I don't care. If they treat him like a demon, then I'll be the one to stand by him. I won't let him be alone anymore."