Yami had turned five, meaning he was at the ripe age for his cursed technique to finally reveal itself.
He would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous. 'Please be something good. I can work with anything above average. I'll just run away from this country, I swear to god.'
Sweat trickled down his face, his hands trembling slightly as he stepped into the conference room.
He was the only kid there, the rest were old people, and above them all, seated on a raised pedestal like he owned the air itself, sat Naobito Zenin.
His gaze settled on Yami for a brief moment. "Do you feel it?" he asked.
Most jujutsu sorcerers awaken their cursed technique somewhere between five and six. The signs appear beforehand, little tremors before the earthquake, which is how they predict when the real moment will come.
Yami's heartbeat quickened, his cursed energy moved on its own, rushing upward, accelerating toward his brain like it had somewhere to be.
A sharp pang hit him right in the prefrontal cortex and a short gasp escaped his mouth.
'No, I can't laugh yet.'
'Hold it in.'
His eyes widened, bit by bit, slow and uncontrollable, everyone in the room noticed.
Yami Zenin was trying very hard not to laugh.
"What is your cursed technique?" Ogi asked, his gaze narrowing.
Yami slapped himself across the cheek. "Okay, be serious."
"A perfect duality, A single spirit."
He exhaled.
"Feast on these shadows, Divine Dogs."
Two dogs materialized behind him.
The room went still.
Then Naobito lost the battle with his own composure. "AHAHA, just as a Six Eyes Limitless user appears, now this too? It really is fate, isn't it!"
He straightened up, pointing at no one in particular. "Oi, you old fogies know what this means, right?"
'Aren't you older than us?' thought approximately every elder in the room simultaneously.
"Get the Kukuru guarding him and make sure he can't leave the clan."
'I'm right here, you know,' thought Yami, incredulous.
Naobito lifted his gourd and drained it in one long, satisfied pull. "Jahaha. I'll personally train Yami from now on, yeah? That alright with you, Ogi?"
Ogi gritted his teeth.
He knew exactly what that meant. 'Take your hands off him, he's mine now, that's what you're really saying, isn't it, Naobito.'
'I am still right here,' thought Yami.
***
A week had passed since Yami had awakened his Ten Shadows, and the sorcery world was in an uproar.
And yet, one thing gave people pause.
When Satori Gojo had been born, the balance of the world had shifted.
No such thing had happened for Yami.
Which meant the Zenin clan's claim was already being quietly questioned in the halls that mattered.
"To put that to rest," Ogi said, folding his hands, "your birthday is coming up. We'll be hosting a party, the big three clans, several other influential figures. Consider it an opportunity, bBe sure to uphold the clan's dignity."
Yami nodded once, already somewhere else in his head. "Actually, can you help me with something I've been stuck on?"
Naobito, lounging nearby, waved a hand. "Don't know shit, sadly."
Yami ignored him and pressed on. "I can summon the Divine Dogs manually, that's fine. But what if I used their abilities without summoning the shikigami themselves? The previous Ten Shadows user proved it was possible, I just can't figure out the approach."
Naobito reached up, excavated something from his nostril with complete serenity, and wiped it directly onto Yami's shirt.
"Say that again."
Yami's brow twitched, he looked down at his shirt and then he looked up at Naobito.
"I told you," Naobito said, already grinning, "I don't know shit."
He scratched his chin, though, something shifting behind his eyes. "Hmm but okay, what if instead of summoning the shikigami... you summoned the ability itself?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, man. Just a thought."
Something cracked open in Yami's mind like a window thrown wide.
"You," he said, pointing, "are a goddamn genius."
He turned and bolted, kimono flapping around his legs, sandals clattering against stone and he nearly stumbled, caught himself, forcibly composed his posture, and then ran again at the exact same pace.
Naobito watched him go, gourd already at his lips. "Jahaha."
***
The training hall the Zenin clan had allocated to Yami was quiet.
Yami knelt on one knee at the center of it.
His shadow stretched out beneath him, he pressed his fingers into it and felt the familiar cold pull of something vast waiting on the other side.
He stayed like that for a moment.
'I have to reach past the shikigami themselves.'
'What makes them what they are.'
He exhaled slowly.
"I'm not summoning you," he said quietly, to no one visible. "I'm taking what makes you you."
"Give me everything Divine Dogs!".
The shadow rippled once but then paused.
Yami waited, after some time he stood up, rolled his neck and walked a circle around the room thinking.
'What am I doing wrong?'
He'd read the records, the previous Ten Shadows user had done this had used the power of a shikigami without manifesting the creature itself, it wasn't theoretical, ithad been done.
'I'm summoning. I keep trying to summon.'
'That's the problem.'
He stopped walking.
'I don't need the Divine Dogs. I need what makes the Divine Dogs divine dogs, their essence itself!'
He turned that over.
'But to take an identity, you have to understand it, actually understand it and not comprehend it intellectually,'
He thought about the divine dogs.
'They are dogs.'
'To take a dog's identity.'
He stood very still for a moment.
'You have to be one.'
He looked around the empty hall, no one was watching.
He closed his eyes.
"...Arf."
No embarrassment followed, there was no room for it, this was survival, and survival had no use for dignity.
"Arf. Arf."
His jaw throbbed as his canines pushed longer against his lip, the hair on his forearms thickened and spread. His fingers cracked at the knuckles as his nails elongated.
He opened his eyes.
His reflection in the far wall's lacquered surface looked back at him.
'There.'
"Woof," he said, and it didn't sound like a joke anymore.
The cursed energy in the room lurched.
[Merged Soul Mode: Totality]
Yami looked at his hands.
Totality and Merged Soul collapsed into a single mode.
He started laughing.
"HAHAH, both of them! It combines both instead of one, so it can function as Totality and Merged Soul simultaneously!"
The floor came up to meet him.
He didn't register falling, one moment he was standing, the next his cheek was against the wood and every muscle in his body had filed a formal complaint with his nervous system simultaneously.
"AHHH!"
He curled onto his side, jaw locked against the sound trying to claw its way out of his throat.
The wolf ear was gone, the nails were back to normal, the mode had collapsed on its own, which told him everything he needed to know.
He lay there on the floor of the empty training hall, staring at the ceiling, breathing through his teeth.
'Of course.'
'The technique restructures the body, changes the physical architecture to accommodate the identity of the shikigami.' He thought about it with the cold, almost annoyed clarity that pain sometimes produced.
My body can't sustain that structure yet.'
'It's incomplete.'
He thought about Ryomen Sukuna because you always had to, eventually, when you were pushing the ceiling of what jujutsu could do.
Sukuna could invoke Mahoraga's wheel without becoming Mahoraga, could use the Maximum: Elephant's water cannon without ever growing a trunk.
'I forced it. Sukuna wouldn't need to.'
'I'm not there yet.'
Yami pressed his fist against the floor, then he pushed himself upright.
"Regardless, I have to do this,"