The Zen'in Clan's private training dojo was completely silent.
Naoya Zen'in, now fourteen years old, sat alone in the center of the room, cross-legged on a meditation mat. Sweat dripped down his forehead, mixed with small lines of blood running from his nose.
His breathing was labored.
His body was trembling.
And his mind was saturated with an acute frustration that made him feel as if an invisible claw was crushing his soul.
"Come on..." he muttered through gritted teeth, his hands pressed against his abdomen, where he was trying to concentrate the cursed energy. "I got the theory. Damn it, I got it!"
The Reverse Curse Technique. The process of taking the negative energy of a curse and converting it into positive energy for healing. A miracle that few sorcerers could achieve, and that he, for all his genius, still couldn't control.
"Negative plus negative is positive… Yin and yang… Breaking down cursed energy into its most basic structure to recompose it into something that nourishes rather than destroys…" he muttered as if by repeating the theory a thousand times the technique would materialize on its own.
Naoya gritted his teeth.
He dug his nails into his own arms.
He tried once more to invoke that internal transformation. He visualized his energy core. He tried to "turn" the curses inside him. He felt the energy building… but instead of reversing it, it exploded.
"Crack!"
A jet of blood shot from his mouth. He fell sideways to the floor, coughing violently, his stomach twisting inside.
"AGH! Shit!" he screamed, hitting the ground with his open palm. "What the hell am I missing?!"
For hours, he crawled across the dojo floor. He didn't call servants. He didn't seek doctors. He just spat out blood, got up, tried again… and failed.
"I don't have time. I can't afford to stagnate. I'm already strong! My movement technique, my mastery, my time jump! Everything is above average! But without this… I'm imperfect!"
His hands rose toward the ceiling. They trembled. There was something pathetic in his expression… and also something terrifying.
"Shoko Ieiri… you've been able to do it since you were a teenager. You've mastered it calmly, like breathing…" he said with a bitter grimace.
He thought of her. That woman with a calm face, surgical fingers, and a cold heart who seemed to understand life and death in a way he had never touched.
"And Gojo…" He spoke the name as if it were poison. That bastard did it… after he died…
That's when his body went completely still.
The memory of the information leaked in the clan records struck him like a divine revelation.
Gojo Satoru, after being impaled by Toji Fushiguro, died within seconds.
And it was in that moment, on the brink of annihilation, that his consciousness, freed from fear, was able to master the Reverse Curse and bring his body back from the threshold.
"He died… and came back." Naoya remained silent, as if the echo of his own words made him dizzy.
Hours passed.
Night fell.
Naoya lay, his eyes open, staring at the wooden ceiling of the dojo with a blank expression.
"Is that what I need?" he wondered at last. "To die?"
He closed his eyes. His mind began to wander in monologues.
"What if I don't have talent for this? What if I'm inferior in this? But... Gojo didn't master it because he was brilliant, but because he was dead. What if... that limit can only be overcome by facing extinction? What if that final moment is the only thing that triggers the conversion?"
A chill ran down his spine.
The thought of dying made his insides churn. He, who so despised weakness, was now considering something as radical as taking his own life... as part of his training.
"How ironic..." he whispered in a raspy voice. "Make me invincible... by letting me die first?"
He sat up with difficulty. The reflection of his face in the steel of a ceremonial katana in the background returned a grotesque image: dark circles under his eyes, dried blood on his lips, disheveled hair, and a different look.
He wasn't the arrogant child he had been a few months ago.
He was something more.
Something... deformed.
"If it's what I need, I'll do it. But not now. Not yet." A smile crossed his face. "I want to exhaust every method first... and if nothing works... then..."
He stood up, walking unsteadily toward the door.
"Then I'll die... and be reborn as a god."
And with that, he left.
He didn't know it yet, but the next day he would receive an unexpected visitor.
It wasn't a sorcerer.
It wasn't someone interested in Naoya.
It was a man dressed in black, without cursed energy, with a scar across his mouth and a blank stare...
Toji Fushiguro had come to the Zen'in Clan for reasons that would change the course of everything to come.
But that... is another story.