**Second Phase**
The future is never shaped by desire alone.
It is molded — carved — by the world surrounding it.
A child raised in a good family grows with morals, becoming a proud contribution to society. But a genius raised in a house poisoned by cruelty and devoid of love can only become one of two things — a monster, or a waste.
---
Footsteps echoed through a long, quiet corridor.
A man in a black floral kimono strolled past rows of tall windows, his short black hair and the strange stitch-like markings across his forehead illuminated by thin morning light.
Kenjaku smiled.
Below him — in the courtyard — his little experiment was thriving.
Two years had passed since he began what he called Hell Camp.
Hundreds of children from across the world, handpicked by a rare cursed technique capable of sensing and awakening hidden potential.
Lured by promise of power, they were taught the principles of jujutsu sorcery, forced through brutal combat training, and reshaped — body and soul — into weapons.
"They'll make fine participants for the Culling Games," he murmured, pausing to glance outside.
---
Physical education — in a school of sorcery — was far from ordinary.
A burst of blue flames exploded across the training field, crystallizing the sand into glass.
The boy responsible, no older than twelve, had wavy azure hair that shimmered in the glow of his own cursed flames.
The fiery bolt roared toward another student: a lean boy with short jet-black hair and blood-red eyes, framed by a faint black halo.
That boy — Takeo Enma — vanished in a blur, reappearing through the smoke.
Perfect timing for a counterattack.
He clasped his hands together, his cursed energy swelling with power.
"Canis. Lykaon. Come forth."
Two enormous wolves surged out of the shadows, their bodies black as ink and fast as lightning.
They closed the distance in a heartbeat, lunging at the flame user.
"Yamato, dodge!!" several onlookers cried — all cheering for the flame boy.
Yamato reacted instantly, conjuring a dome of searing fire that scorched the air.
The wolves' fur smoldered, their bodies glowing red — before dissolving into shadows that twisted and reformed into long, black katanas.
Takeo grasped both blades.
He swung once — a clean arc of cursed energy that sliced the fire dome apart.
Blades that cut through all phenomon, the unique power of Canis and Lykaon blade forms.
The slash stopped at Yamato's throat.
"Stop! The duel is over," called one of the instructors — a man dressed in black with a fox mask hiding his face.
"Takeo Enma wins."
Takeo exhaled quietly, dismissing his shikigami and returning to his seat.
The other children muttered among themselves, glaring.
From the upper window, Kenjaku chuckled.
"Takeo Enma, hmm."
Beside him stood a woman in a crimson kimono, her long black hair cascading down her shoulders. Her crimson eyes followed the boy with mild interest.
"Yes, Lord Kenjaku," she replied. "He's one of the ten with the highest chance of reaching special grade. But for now, he lacks that overwhelming destructive power required of one."
"Only because he hasn't awakened his other summons yet," Kenjaku mused.
Takeo's background was a cruel paradox.
His mother — born of the Zenin clan — was cast out for her lack of cursed energy.
His father, on the other hand, was a non-sorcerer… yet carried the bloodline of a monster from the Heian era.
Kenjaku's smile widened.
"I've already prepared a vessel for him," he murmured. "But if fate allows… a descendant may do just as well."
His eyes glinted with quiet madness.
"Let's begin Phase Two. We aren't raising caged birds. It's time to release them into the world."
Danger was the whetstone of strength — and Kenjaku intended to sharpen these children into monsters that could rival the legends of the Heian Age.
Everything was already in motion.
---
Takeo sat cross-legged in a realm of shadows — a void filled with ancient sliding doors arranged in a circle around him.
Each door was sealed with talismans, except one.
From that open door, a deeper darkness leaked — the same abyss from which his first shikigami, Canis and Lykaon, had emerged.
Two years ago, in the depths of despair, he had awakened them.
Back then, they had been pups mirroring his starved and wounded weak self.
They hunted for him when he couldn't move. They kept him alive when no one else would.
As his strength grew, so did they.
When Hell Camp found him, he was already something more than a weak child despite his appearance.
Atleast he had repaid that family for everything they'd done before he left.
Now, in the stillness of the shadow world, he stared at the remaining doors.
Each hid another shikigami — another part of himself — but he hadn't yet discovered how to unseal them.
"My technique… it's not quite the same as the Ten Shadows," he whispered.
His mother's heritage wasn't a secret.
The instructors often compared his ability to the Zenin clan's inherited technique. He'd even heard rumors of a new Ten Shadows user emerging after decades of silence.
"But I don't see where I'm supposed to subjugate my shikigami," he muttered. "I can't subjugate what's already me."
Unlike the Ten Shadows, whose shikigami were tamed spirits, Takeo's were fragments of his own existence — ten pieces of his soul given form.
If he could awaken and control all of them, he had no doubt he'd surpass even the Grade 1 instructors who trained him. Being special grade would be least of his trouble.
Lost in thought, his consciousness was suddenly pulled — ripped — out of the shadow world.
He found himself standing beneath a night sky, beneath a silver crescent moon.
A figure stood before him.
A girl with long, snow-white hair that fell like silk over her face. Her silver eyes gleamed with amusement as she shook him playfully.
Takeo's gaze sharpened. From his shadow, a black katana materialized in his hand.
It lacked the curse-breaking effect of his wolves' true forms, but it was still deadly.
He slashed.
The girl didn't flinch. A translucent barrier flickered before her, halting the blade inches from her throat.
"Tch… Limitless," Takeo hissed under his breath.
As expected — from a girl of the Gojo family.
---