The Zen'in estate smelled of old wood and older blood.
Kage would learn this years later, when his senses sharpened enough to distinguish the metallic tang of violence from the cedar that lined the walls. But on the night of his birth, all he knew was cold—the kind that seeped into newborn bones and never quite left.
His first breath came without crying.
The midwives would whisper about this for weeks. A child born silent, they said, was a child born with a curse already lodged in its throat. They were half right.
"Show me."
Ogi Zen'in's voice cut through the room like a blade drawn from its sheath. The midwife hesitated, her hands trembling as she pulled back the bloodied cloth swaddling the infant. What she revealed made even the most hardened attendants turn away.
Where eyes should have been, there was only smooth skin.
Not scarred. Not wounded. Simply absent, as if the universe had decided that sight was a luxury this child didn't deserve. The empty sockets were perfectly formed, almost beautiful in their completeness—a void made flesh.
"Useless." The word fell from Ogi's mouth with the finality of a death sentence. "Another defective piece of trash."
On the futon behind him, Kage's mother bled out in silence. The attendants said it was complications from childbirth. The way they avoided Ogi's eyes suggested otherwise. She died without ever holding her son, and perhaps that was a mercy. Some loves are better left unknown.
"Dispose of—"
"Wait."
Naobito Zen'in stumbled into the room, sake bottle in hand, eyes already bloodshot from the evening's drinking. The clan head moved with the particular grace of career alcoholics—steady despite the poison in his veins, dangerous despite the slur in his speech.
He leaned over the infant, close enough that Kage would later remember the smell: rice wine and disappointment.
"No eyes, you said?"
"A Heavenly Restriction," Ogi spat the words like they tasted rotten. "But unlike Toji, he still has cursed energy. So he's blind and worthless."
Naobito's laugh was ugly. "Or blind and potentially useful. Toji turned his restriction into power. Maybe this one can too." He straightened, swaying slightly. "Besides, killing infants is such poor optics. Let him live. If he survives childhood, we'll know he's worth something. If not..." He shrugged. "Problem solves itself."
The silence that followed was punctuated only by the infant's shallow breathing—steady, eerily calm, as if already resigned to the world he'd been born into.
"Fine." Ogi's agreement carried no warmth, only calculation. "But he's my responsibility. My training methods. My results."
"Yours to break or build," Naobito agreed, taking another swig. "Just make sure we get something useful out of him."
They spoke over the infant like he was a tool to be sharpened, not a person to be raised. In the Zen'in Clan, this was love's closest approximation.
The infant they named Kage—calamity and shadow—made no sound as the room emptied. He had learned his first lesson before his first day ended: in this house, silence was survival.
Five years later.
"Get up."
Kage's small body pressed against the dirt floor of the training pit, every muscle screaming. Blood—his own—mixed with the mud beneath his palms. Above, Ogi's silhouette blocked out the sun, rendering the world in shapes of light and shadow that Kage couldn't see but somehow felt.
"I said get up!" A foot connected with his ribs. The pain bloomed white-hot, and Kage gasped, fingers clawing at the earth.
Five years old. Most children his age were learning to write, to play, to laugh. Kage was learning that the world was defined by impact—the force of his father's fists, the weight of the clan's disappointment, the texture of different kinds of pain.
"Useless. Just like I thought." Ogi turned away, disgust evident in every line of his posture. "Can't even stand after a few hits. And you're supposed to have enhanced durability?"
The Heavenly Restriction had manifested, true enough. Kage's other senses had sharpened to inhuman levels—he could hear the beetles crawling in the garden walls, smell the rot in the floorboards three rooms away, feel the vibrations of footsteps from across the estate. But what good was hearing when all it brought was the sound of his own bones breaking?
"Maybe I should've let Naobito dispose of you after all."
Something in those words—the casual cruelty, the complete dismissal—sparked something in Kage's chest. Not courage. Not defiance. Something colder. Something that tasted like the void where his eyes should have been.
If I die here, the thought came with crystalline clarity, he wins. He gets to be right.
Kage's hands pressed flat against the dirt. His arms trembled. His ribs screamed. But slowly, agonizingly, he pushed himself up.
First to his knees.
Then, swaying like a sapling in a storm, to his feet.
Ogi paused mid-step. Turned. For just a moment, something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe. Or calculation.
"Again," Ogi said, and this time there was something almost like approval in his voice. Almost. "Tomorrow. Sunrise."
He left Kage standing in the pit, bloodied and broken but vertical. The small victory felt hollow. Kage had stood up, yes. But he'd done it to spite his father, not to save himself. In the Zen'in Clan, this passed for character development.
That night, alone in his sparse room, Kage ran his fingers along the walls. The texture of wood grain told him more than eyes ever could—the age of the planks, the direction they'd been cut, the density that spoke of quality craftsmanship. The estate was built solid. Made to last.
Unlike its inhabitants.
He traced the patterns until his fingers bled, memorizing every surface, every corner, every escape route he might need someday. The Zen'in compound was his prison, but he would map every inch of his cage. Knowledge was power when strength failed.
Outside his window, he could hear the night sounds of the estate: senior clan members arguing about territory disputes, servants rushing to fulfill impossible demands, the distant sound of cursed spirits being broken in the training yards. The Zen'in Clan ran on violence, greased by fear, powered by ambition.
Kage was five years old, and he already understood he had two choices: become another cog in their machine, or become something they couldn't control.
The decision wouldn't be made for years. But the seed was planted.
The pit. Six months later.
"There's something in here with me."
Kage spoke to the empty air, his voice steady despite the terror clawing at his throat. He'd been in the training pit dozens of times, knew every rock and divot by touch. But this time was different.
This time, the air moved wrong.
Cursed energy. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it—thick and oily, pressing against his skin like a living thing. It had texture, weight, malevolence. The curse made a sound like wet breathing, somewhere between a growl and a sob.
Above, Ogi's voice drifted down. "Good. You can sense it. Now kill it."
"I'm five years old!"
"And it's a Grade 3 curse. Barely stronger than a human. If you can't handle this, you'll never be worth the food we waste on you."
The curse lunged.
Kage threw himself sideways on instinct, his enhanced hearing catching the displacement of air. He hit the pit wall hard, scraping skin from his shoulder, but he was alive. The curse's attack—claws? teeth? something sharp—scraped the ground where he'd been standing.
His heart hammered against his ribs like it was trying to escape. Every instinct screamed at him to curl up, to hide, to give up. He was a child. Children weren't supposed to fight monsters in pits. Children were supposed to be protected, loved, kept safe.
But this was the Zen'in Clan, and Kage had been born without eyes into a world that only valued sight.
Survive. Just survive.
The curse came again. This time, Kage didn't dodge fast enough. Something raked across his back—burning lines of agony that made him scream. He stumbled forward, barely keeping his feet, the world tilting dangerously.
Blood. He could smell it. His own.
"Pathetic," Ogi called from above. "I've seen toddlers put up better fights."
The words stung worse than the wounds. Kage hated that they did. Hated that even now, bleeding and terrified, part of him still wanted his father's approval. That weakness, that need—it would kill him if he let it.
The curse circled. Kage could hear it, feel the vibrations of its movement through the ground. It was toying with him now, sensing easy prey. The cursed energy radiating from it felt gleeful, hungry. It wanted to hurt him. To break him. To prove that he was exactly as worthless as everyone said.
No.
The thought came from somewhere deep, somewhere primal. The same place that had made him stand up after Ogi's beating. The same void that existed where his eyes should have been.
I refuse.
Kage's small hands clenched into fists. Cursed energy—his own—flickered to life around them. He'd felt it before, this power that lived in his bones, but never like this. Never so hungry.
The curse lunged one more time.
Kage didn't dodge. Instead, he stepped forward, into the attack, his fist driving upward with all the strength his five-year-old body could muster.
The impact sent shockwaves through his arm. But more than that—something else happened. The cursed energy around his fist sparked, condensing impossibly, turning the air black for a heartbeat. The curse's scream cut off mid-shriek as Kage's punch connected, and reality itself seemed to stutter.
Black Flash.
Kage didn't know the name for it. Didn't know that achieving it on his first real fight was considered impossible. All he knew was that the curse was dead, its body already dissolving into nothing, and he was still standing.
He was bleeding. Exhausted. Traumatized.
But alive.
Above, silence. Then Ogi's voice, sharp with something that wasn't quite satisfaction: "Again."
The training pit became Kage's second home. Day after day, Ogi threw him into darkness with creatures that wanted him dead. Grade 3 curses. Grade 2. Sometimes two at once. Sometimes with weapons. Sometimes without.
Kage learned to read cursed energy like others read books. Every curse had a signature, a texture, a rhythm. He learned to predict attacks by the shift in malevolent intent, to exploit weaknesses by feeling where cursed energy gathered densest.
He learned that pain was just information. Fear was just feedback. Death was just the consequence of hesitation.
By the time he turned eight, Kage could exorcise curses with the same casual efficiency that other children caught insects. His body was a roadmap of scars, but his technique was sharp. The Heavenly Restriction had given him something beyond sight—he saw the truth of things. The cursed energy that comprised reality itself.
But knowledge came with understanding, and understanding brought clarity he wished he could unlearn.
One evening, after a particularly brutal training session, Kage returned to his room to find a tray of food waiting. Not the usual rice and pickles, but real food—fish, vegetables, miso soup still steaming.
He could smell the poison in it. Subtle. Probably meant to make him sick, not kill him. A test of his enhanced senses, maybe. Or just cruelty for cruelty's sake.
Kage ate it anyway. Threw it all up an hour later. Spent the night shivering on the floor, willing his body to process the toxins, using the cursed energy manipulation he'd been developing to flush his system.
He survived.
In the morning, Ogi said nothing about the food. Just threw him back into the pit.
That was when Kage understood: his father wasn't training him to be strong. He was training him to be useful. There was a difference. Strength meant autonomy, choice, freedom. Usefulness meant servitude, obedience, being a tool in someone else's hand.
The Zen'in Clan had plenty of strong sorcerers. What they valued were the ones they could control.
At eight years old, standing in another training pit with blood on his hands and a fresh curse dissolving at his feet, Kage made a decision.
He would become strong. Stronger than anyone could control. Stronger than his father could use. Strong enough that the Zen'in name became his to define, not theirs to wield.
And if they tried to stop him, he'd bury them in shadows.
Above, Ogi watched his son—blank face turned toward the sky, small frame radiating cursed energy that was already beginning to feel vast—and smiled.
He thought he was creating a weapon.
He was. Just not the one he intended.
Three weeks before Tokyo Jujutsu High enrollment.
"You're leaving."
It wasn't a question. Naobito stood in the doorway of Kage's room, sake bottle in hand as always, but his eyes were clearer than usual. Dangerous.
Kage continued packing. His belongings fit in a single bag: spare clothes, the worn wooden practice sword he'd carved himself, nothing else. The Zen'in estate had given him scars and skills, but nothing worth keeping.
"You could stay," Naobito continued, stepping inside uninvited. "With your abilities, you'd be an asset. The clan would benefit from having someone like you under our banner."
"Under your control, you mean."
"Control. Guidance. Is there really a difference?"
Kage turned, his empty eye sockets directed at the clan head with eerie precision. Even without eyes, his gaze felt weighted. "You know the answer to that."
Naobito took a drink, considering. "You're what, ten years old? And already you think you can make it alone. The arrogance of youth."
"I learned from the best."
A bark of laughter. "Fair enough." Naobito set the bottle down with exaggerated care. "You're heading to Tokyo Jujutsu High. Masamichi Yaga will try to teach you about teamwork, about protecting the weak, about all the noble ideals sorcerers are supposed to uphold." His smile was sharp. "Don't forget what you learned here, boy. Power is the only currency that matters. Everything else is just pretty wrapping."
"Then why are you letting me go?"
"Because you're dangerous." Naobito's honesty was startling. "You're young now, malleable. But in a few years? You'll be something the clan can't contain. Better to let you leave on good terms than have you burn the estate down on your way out."
It was the closest thing to respect Kage had ever received from the clan leadership.
"There's one more thing." Naobito reached into his sleeve, produced a length of black cloth. "A blindfold. For your... condition. Some people find the empty sockets unsettling."
Kage took it, felt the quality of the fabric. Silk. Expensive. A parting gift that was also a leash—wear this, hide yourself, remain palatable to those who couldn't handle what you are.
He tied it around his head anyway. Not because Naobito asked. But because he was tired of seeing people flinch when they looked at him.
"One last question," Kage said as Naobito turned to leave. "My mother. How did she really die?"
The silence stretched. Then: "Childbirth complications. That's the official record."
"And the truth?"
"The truth," Naobito said, "is that some questions are better left in the dark. Goodnight, Kage Zen'in. Try not to disappoint."
He left Kage alone in the empty room.
That night was the last time Kage would sleep under the Zen'in roof for years. He lay awake, blindfold discarded, fingers tracing the patterns of his ceiling one final time. Memorizing. Cataloging. Preparing to leave the only hell he'd ever known for one he couldn't yet imagine.
Outside, the estate creaked and settled. Somewhere in the compound, Ogi was probably training another failure. Somewhere else, servants whispered about the blind boy who was leaving for Jujutsu High. Would he survive? Would he thrive? Would he come crawling back when the real world proved too harsh?
Kage didn't know the answers. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty:
He would never be a tool again.
The void where his eyes should have been had taught him something the Zen'in Clan never intended: in absolute darkness, you learned to create your own light.
Or you learned to make the darkness your weapon.
Kage chose both.
Dawn. Departure.
The estate gates loomed before him, old wood reinforced with cursed energy barriers. Beyond them lay Tokyo, Jujutsu High, and a future that wasn't written in the Zen'in Clan's blood-stained ledgers.
Kage adjusted the blindfold, hefted his bag, and walked forward without looking back.
Behind him, from a second-story window, Ogi watched his son leave. No goodbye. No blessing. Just calculation in his eyes as he measured the weapon he'd forged and released into the world.
"Be strong, boy," he murmured to the empty air. "Or die trying. Either way, you'll prove me right."
But Kage was already gone, swallowed by the morning mist, his cursed energy signature fading like a shadow at noon.
The Zen'in estate returned to its routines: training, politics, violence. Another child lost to ambition. Another name added to the list of those who left seeking something the clan could never provide.
And in Tokyo, at a school where curses were taught to be weapons and weapons were taught to be human, a blindfolded boy with void where his eyes should be walked through the gates.
His first Black Flash had come from survival instinct.
His next would come from choice.
The difference, he was about to learn, mattered more than anyone realized.