...
The assessment ran in three parts.
First — cursed energy output. Measuring stones. Each child forward, hand on stone, push.
Masa went first among the six year olds. His stone glowed a steady moderate blue — genuine talent for his age, controlled output, the kind of reading that said this one has been practicing his fundamentals.
Sora next.
Her stone glowed with a quality that was different from Masa's — not just output but *direction,* the energy moving rather than sitting, already carrying the character of her technique. Several elders noted something in their ledgers.
Ren stepped forward.
He placed his hand on the stone and pushed a controlled pulse. Measured. Not everything — just enough to be unambiguous.
The stone glowed immediately. Dense. Heavy blue shading toward something darker at the edges. The kind of reading that had weight to it in a way that the previous results hadn't.
Above on the observation platform Keomaru set his tea down.
Naobito leaned forward slightly.
Ogi's expression didn't change but his eyes moved from Toji to Ren for the first time since the assessment began.
Ren stepped back.
*Yeah,* he thought. *That's what above S threshold looks like at age six. Take your time processing it.*
Koji's reading came after — strong, solid, the best pure reinforcement output in the group by a meaningful margin.
Daisuke's was sharp and cutting in character. Both good. Both clearly below what Ren's stone had shown.
Then Toji stepped forward.
He placed his hand on the stone.
Nothing.
The stone sat completely dark and inert under his palm. Not dim. Not a flicker of anything. Just a stone with a hand on it.
The observation platform was very quiet.
Toji stood there for the required five seconds. Then he stepped back. His face hadn't moved.
Ogi looked at Keomaru.
Keomaru was looking at the measuring stone with an expression that was difficult to read and that Ren had been studying for two years without fully cracking.
Something in it that wasn't quite shame and wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite grief — something older and more complicated than any single word.
He looked away from the stone.
He didn't look at Toji.
---
Second exercise — control. Cursed energy guided through a marked course on the floor without breaking.
Ren managed it but not cleanly. Two breaks. E rank control was what it was — he had the reserves but fine precision was still months of work away. He noted the breaks and moved on.
Sora handled the control exercise best among the group — her wind technique required precise direction by nature and it showed in how she guided energy through the course. Clean. Efficient. Several elders noted it.
Third exercise — combat. Pairs called by the training master.
**Koji versus Masa**
The body reinforcement boy against the string technique boy. Koji was stronger and more direct.
Masa used his threads to try to redirect Koji's momentum twice — clever, almost worked the second time — but Koji's reinforced body absorbed the redirect and closed the distance and the round ended with Masa on his back.
**Sora versus Daisuke**
Wind technique versus cursed blade. Sora kept her distance and used angles. Daisuke kept closing and cutting the distance.
For one minute they moved around each other with genuine technical quality on both sides.
The training master called time with neither clearly dominant, which for a six year old against a seven year old with a cutting technique was its own kind of result.
Then — Ren versus Koji.
Koji was the established top of the generation. Two years of being the strongest kid in any room had produced absolute confidence in his own approach — forward, reinforced, direct.
He settled into his stance across from Ren with the expression of someone who had done this calculation and found it straightforward.
The training master signaled.
Koji moved first. Forward step, reinforced lead hand, clean and powerful — the kind of strike that had ended most of his previous rounds quickly because most children his age couldn't absorb a reinforced hit from a body specialist and keep functioning.
Ren wasn't there.
Not a dodge. Not a slip. He simply wasn't in the place he had been a moment before, having moved before Koji's hand extended with the kind of timing that had nothing to do with reading cursed energy.
Everything to do with a body operating at a baseline that didn't belong to a six year old.
Koji reset. Recalculated. Came again — this time a combination, reinforced body step into a forward shoulder charge meant to close distance and smother.
Ren sidestepped the charge, let Koji's momentum carry him half a step past, and put a palm strike into his ribs from the side with enough force to make the point.
Koji turned. His expression had changed. Not rattled — he wasn't the rattling type — but genuinely recalculating.
They went for the full minute.
Koji's reinforcement was real and it was good — two of his strikes connected with Ren's forearm blocks and the weight behind them was significant,
Enough to confirm that this was a genuinely strong kid and not just a kid who thought he was strong.
But connecting through a block and connecting cleanly were different things and Ren's blocks weren't giving him the angle he needed for his follow through and the full minute ended with Koji having landed nothing that scored clearly.
Ren had landed four.
The training master called time.
The observation platform above was quiet in the specific way it had been quiet after the measuring stone.
*That's the Senju body,* Ren thought, stepping back. *No technique. No cursed energy reinforcement.
Just baseline physical capacity that doesn't exist on a six year old and has no cursed energy signature for their measuring tools to explain.*
He looked up at the platform.
Keomaru was looking at him with the sharpest version of his sharp eyes.
Naobito was writing something.
Ogi was looking at Ren the way he had been looking at Toji earlier — the useful/not useful calculation running behind his eyes. Except the result this time was clearly landing differently.
---
Toji's round was against Daisuke.
Daisuke had a cutting technique and two years of training and the absolute confidence of who had never been asked to fight someone with no cursed energy because fighting someone with no cursed energy wasn't something you prepared for in this clan.
It wasn't a category. It wasn't a scenario that needed a strategy.
He moved in immediately. Cursed blade coating his leading hand. Direct. No reason to be anything else.
Toji moved back. Not retreating — creating space with purpose, reading the approach, letting Daisuke commit to his forward line.
Daisuke committed.
Toji stepped off the line, inside the cut's arc, and his elbow connected with Daisuke's jaw at an angle that produced a sound that made Masa wince from across the floor.
Daisuke's legs registered the hit before his brain did. He took two unplanned steps sideways.
Toji didn't follow. Just reset. Waited.
Daisuke shook his head. Recalibrated. Came again — this time with more caution, cursed blade extended, testing range.
Toji read the testing. Let him test twice. Then on the third probe he slipped inside it again and this time it was a straight right hand to the nose that wasn't hard enough to break anything but was hard enough to water Daisuke's eyes immediately.
Daisuke stopped advancing.
The training master called time thirty seconds later.
No clear winner on the scoring because Toji had no cursed energy output to measure and the scoring system wasn't built for a result like this.
But everyone on the floor and everyone on the platform had seen the round clearly.
The observation platform was doing the quiet thing.
Ogi was looking at Toji with an expression that had moved past the simple useful/not useful calculation into something more specific that Ren didn't have a clean word for yet.
Keomaru was not looking at Toji at all.
---
After the assessment Elder Ryozo summoned Ren to the assessment room.
Same room. Same desk. Same incense. Ryozo behind the desk, Hajime to one side, two wall elders.
And this time — Keomaru, sitting in a chair that had been placed to the right of the desk specifically for him. Naobito stood behind his father's right shoulder.
No Ogi.
Ren stood in front of the desk. Six years old. Hands at his sides.
"Your output reading," Ryozo began, looking at his ledger. "Above S threshold. Confirmed on three separate measurements during today's assessment.
" He looked up. "Your combat performance showed no cursed energy reinforcement signature. Your physical speed and reaction time are significantly above baseline for your age." A pause. "Explain."
Ren had thought about this moment for two years.
He knew what to say. He knew what not to say.
"My cursed technique," he said clearly, " It amplifies physical parameters — speed, strength, durability, reflexes, stamina, regeneration.
It operates in stages. Each stage amplifies significantly more than the last. At the current stage the baseline amplification is passive and integrated — it doesn't require active cursed energy output, which is why there's no signature during combat."
Silence.
Hajime: "A mode type. Passive integration at the base level."
"Yes."
"How many stages."
"I don't know the upper limit yet. I know there are multiple and that each one is considerably stronger than the last."
Ryozo was writing. Naobito was looking at Ren with the calculating expression that was his default setting. Keomaru had not moved or spoken since Ren came in.
"Your CE reserves," Naobito said. "The output reading. That is separate from the mode."
"Yes. Standard cursed energy reserve. The mode draws from it at higher stages but the reserve exists independently."
Naobito nodded slowly. The nod of a man filing information in a useful place.
Then Keomaru spoke.
He had a voice that matched the rest of him — not loud. Just the kind of voice that rooms listened to automatically.
"Come here," he said.
Ren crossed to his grandfather and stood in front of him. Up close the old man's eyes were even sharper than they were from a distance. Like instruments.
Keomaru looked at him for a long moment. Not the fast assessment of the measuring stone. A real look. The kind that was trying to find something specific.
"Your father," he said quietly, "had speed. Natural speed — faster than his cursed energy level should have produced. We never understood it fully." He paused. "I understand it now."
Ren said nothing.
"The technique is yours," Keomaru said. "Inherited or awakened — it doesn't matter. It is yours and you have been developing it without being asked to and without telling anyone about it."
Something moved in the old man's eyes that wasn't quite warmth but was the closest thing to it that Keomaru Zenin probably produced. "That is what this clan is supposed to produce."
He looked at Ryozo. "Move him to the house training track. Full investment. Effective immediately."
Ryozo wrote it down without hesitation.
Naobito's expression didn't change but something shifted in his posture in the small way that things shift when a calculation updates.
"Yes, Grandfather," Ren said.
Keomaru looked at him one more moment. Then he nodded — small, precise — and looked away.
Ren turned and walked to the door.
* house track,* he thought, stepping into the corridor. *Full investment. Which means better training, better resources, more access to technique instruction.*
*Which means faster growth.*
*Which means the timeline moves up.*
He kept walking.
*And he connected it to father. The speed. He thinks it's inherited and dormant and now awakened.* Ren considered this. *Good. Let him think that. It's not wrong exactly. It's just not the whole picture.*
*Nobody gets the whole picture.*
---
He found Toji in the eastern yard that evening.
His brother was sitting in the corner throwing rocks at the wall. This was Toji's thinking position — Ren had identified it at age four and it had never changed.
When Toji needed to process something he found a wall and threw things at it with the patient focused energy of someone whose brain worked better when his hands were doing something.
Ren sat beside him.
They were quiet for a while. The compound settled into its evening sounds around them. Distant voices. Bells. Wind off the walls.
"They moved me to the house track," Ren said.
Toji threw a rock. "I know. Word travels."
"Grandfather connected the technique to father."
"Of course he did." Another rock. "Easier than admitting he doesn't understand it."
Ren looked at his brother. "Your round with Daisuke."
Toji said nothing.
"You put him on the back foot twice. With no cursed energy against a blade technique."
"Didn't matter," Toji said flatly. "No score. No energy output to measure. In this clan that's the conversation beginning and end." He threw another rock. "You know that."
"I know."
The rock throwing stopped.
Toji looked at him sideways. "And."
"And nothing yet. Just noting it." Ren kept his voice even.
Toji was quiet for a moment. Then he picked up another rock and turned it in his fingers without throwing it.
He looked up at the compound walls. Stone and old wood. The weight of something that had been certain about itself for a very long time.
*Seven years,*
he had told Toji two years ago.
He recalculated quietly.
*Maybe less.*
Their mother appeared at the yard entrance. Hands folded. Waiting in the doorway the way she always waited — present, patient, giving them the moment before calling them in.
She caught Ren's eye.
In her expression — carefully neutral for the compound's benefit even though the yard was empty — he read something that had become familiar over six years. The thing she communicated when words weren't available.
**I know** just that.
---
*— End of Chapter 3 —*