It didn't take Jiki long to reach Ise Prefecture, but by the time he arrived, the last vestiges of sunlight had vanished behind the mountains, plunging the entire area into twilight. The sky, streaked with purple and orange, had faded into a deep, pale blue. A crisp breeze carried the mingling scents of pine and incense, a subtle yet ever-present reminder that this was sacred ground.
The car rolled to a smooth stop. Jiki stepped out, his posture relaxed but deliberate, his white hair a shock of color against his black-on-black attire. He glanced briefly at the driver - another white-haired Gojo. That single look was enough. The man understood. Jiki said nothing as he turned toward the shrine. There was no need to. They wouldn't be here long.
This time, no one waited for him at the torii gates, so he made his way up the stairs with a speed that belied his age. Taking the steps four at a time, he came to a halt, gravel grinding beneath his feet as he skidded to a stop.
Before him stood the towering, open wooden gates marking the entrance to the shrine. Beyond them, lines of figures clad in red and white stood on either side of the stone path. Dozens of shrine maidens, each one a sorcerer. They were waiting for him.
He walked past the gates.
The moment he crossed the threshold, their voices rose in perfect unison, rolling through the mountain air like a chant carried by the wind.
"We welcome the scion of she that illuminates the heavens."
"We welcome the second coming of Ame-no-Oshihomimi."
A formal greeting. A declaration of recognition. Their eyes remained lowered, their bodies composed, yet beneath their discipline was something else. Anticipation. Acceptance. Reverence.
Jiki's tried his best to ignore them and the feeling they invoked as he walked forward and onward. Then he felt it, that same warmth he had experienced after cleansing himself the first time he came here. A heat that didn't burn but instead enveloped him like a gentle embrace.
The shrine itself seemed to acknowledge him, the air thickening, folding inward, welcoming him like an old friend.
It was an odd feeling, one that stirred something deep in his bones.
He was led forward, past the silent ranks of shrine maidens, toward the heart of the temple grounds, where two figures awaited him. One was Utahime, ever poised despite the subtle wariness she now carried when it came to him. The other was the head miko, her presence weighty in a way that had nothing to do with cursed energy. She stood with the confidence of someone who wielded influence beyond what most could perceive.
There were no pleasantries. Jiki spoke first, cutting through the night with practiced ease.
"I expected you to be at Jujutsu High, considering the goodwill event is tomorrow morning."
Utahime shook her head gently before replying, "I have more important responsibilities now than being a teacher. Kusakabe has taken my place since he is now in charge of the Kyoto students, I expect him to be at the meeting as well."
Kusakabe. Jiki barely remembered the man, but he had seen him once, and that was all he needed to have the memory burned into his brain. An older man with heavy eyes, a trench coat, and a suit beneath. One of the rare unaffiliated sorcerers who managed to climb up to grade one, a man that was regarded as the strongest grade one sorcerer among his contemporaries.
Utahime continued, "As per your request, we have been searching Japan with a fine-toothed comb."
Jiki said nothing. He had recruited the aid of the shrine maidens in his search for Kenjaku. He had not bothered to give them the full details, but he assumed the head Miko had a strong idea. They had been all too happy to help, straight up discarding already in-place projects and works to fulfill his request. It was his own way of compromising by not discarding Satoru's concern. He would not knock on the other clan doors; instead, he would have the shrine maidens do it for him.
Considering the vast manpower, wealth, and information rings the ancient organization had at their disposal, it was no surprise they outpaced even the Gojo clan information network and had gotten back to him faster than Ukitake.
"And we have found something."
That was enough to pique his interest. He tilted his head ever so slightly, an unspoken cue for her to elaborate.
"During a routine search and maintenance, we lost one of our maidens." Despite the loss, the head miko didn't seem all that shaken, but Utahime was not as jaded. A scowl could be seen on her face, her annoyance and anger at the probable death clear.
"The maiden was sent to check out one of our older shrines. A forgotten one that had been long abandoned and dormant. It's a task done at least once every couple of decades. The maiden was only able to get a single piece of news back. The barriers that had long laid dormant had been reactivated. That was all, then there was nothing..."
Utahime finally spoke, her eyes on Jiki. "She was a grade one sorcerer."
Silence followed. Heavy. Expectant. Jiki exhaled softly through his nose, processing the words and implications. Grade one sorcerers were tough and were the backbone of most clans. While the shrine maidens were a powerhouse, the loss of even one grade-one sorcerer would be felt regardless.
"If she's alive, I will find her and bring her back." He replied to the younger, scarred woman and stared back at her, imprinting the truth of his words. She nodded in reply, so he turned to the older woman. "Where?" he asked, his tone smooth, unhurried.
The Miko's lips pressed together before she answered.
"Aokigahara-jukai." The Suicide Forest.
For the first time since he arrived, Jiki's expression shifted. Barely. A ghost of something unreadable flickered in his eyes before a quiet chuckle left his lips. The sound was soft, amused in a way that did not reach his face.
"Refuge in audacity."
Because he understood now. He understood exactly what this meant.
The Suicide Forest. A cursed land thick and brimming with cursed energy. A land where even the Six Eyes could not see through the dense miasma that coated it. A place where presence, sound, and sight were devoured, leaving only silence, death, and curses. It was a perfect hiding place, but more than that, it was a known hiding place.
"You're familiar with it," the head miko noted, her pale eyes on him as she picked up the realization on his face.
"Yes," he replied with a nod. "A couple of people went missing there a while ago, and I was the sorcerer sent to retrieve them… I met a friend there that day, in the same place Kenjaku is hiding."
He could feel his eyes drift as memories flooded in. "There was some initial confusion and misunderstanding, but after that was cleared up, we ate together. We broke bread, sipped tea, and reminisced about old times."
"I assume you are talking about Suguru Geto."
Jiki's silence was his response. So he continued to think it through.
It was the last place Jiki would have expected Kenjaku to hide, which meant it was the perfect place for the cunning immortal to hide. Truly, refuge in audacity.
Jiki's gaze returned to the two shrine maidens, his expression unreadable once more. He didn't waste time with further inquiries. There was no need. He had already decided. He gave a curt bow. "Thank you."
Then he turned on his heel, his movement fluid as he walked back, retracing the steps he had taken.
He had his destination, and he ached to meet the immortal sorcerer in person. Kenjaku.
…
The journey took longer than he expected or wished due to an accident that caused a massive pileup along the highway. Jiki almost considered stepping down from the car and running the rest of the way, if not for the fact that he was going to meet one of the most powerful and oldest sorcerers in history. He would not allow himself to be anything but in peak condition.
By the time he got to the suicide forest, night had slowly begun to wane, and daybreak was mere hours away. The car stopped, and Jiki stepped out once again. This time, he didn't bother to signal the driver to wait. He had run the man ragged for the past twenty-four hours. A single wave was his signal for the man to leave, yet even with that, the white-haired Gojo hesitated.
"Are you sure, Lord Heir?"
He turned back to the man and observed the dark circles under his eyes, the bloodshot pupils, and the slightly shaking hands that spoke of an overuse of caffeine.
"You deserve your rest. I can make my way from here."
Jiki turned away and began to move toward the forest. Once again, he was met with the massive stones that jutted out of the ground—the focal point of the barrier that trapped the curses dwelling in the suicide forest. Another creation of Master Tengen. For a second, he considered calling Satoru, but he discarded the thought a split second later. They had talked it over already, and this was his fight. His cousin would be too busy overseeing the Goodwill Event.
Which left him.
With a single step, he crossed the talisman-ridden totem and stepped into the forest in full. There was some familiarity in the despair and suffering-fueled mist that rolled around the forest, mist that curled and lapped at his feet, blurring the vision of those without the clarity granted to him by the Sharingan.
Desiccated trees and leaves blocked the sunlight from penetrating the forest the deeper he went. Haunting cries rang out, warbling and screeching in a perverse greeting as the true residents and owners of the forest welcomed him back. Yet there was an unfamiliar undertone in the sounds.
Screeches that were more guttural.
It took Jiki a heartbeat to decipher it, but there was pain in the sounds that were let loose. His eyes trailed down as he picked up another abnormality that hadn't been there the last time he visited. Footsteps. Human-like footsteps imprinted into the grass, but there were many others that were less than human and more curse-like. But curses didn't manifest enough to leave an effect on the world unless they were in combat.
Jiki stood still for long seconds, allowing his senses to spread out. His ability to sense cursed energy this deep into the forest was borderline useless unless the enemy was too close to matter, but his physical senses were untouched and as sharp as ever. Those senses, alongside his memories, helped him form a mental map—a map to the shrine Geto had taken him to. The same place they had drunk tea and reminisced about better times.
The moment it was complete, his eyes snapped open. He turned on the spot and moved. His feet ate up the distance as he tore a path through the forest. A forest filled with curses that avoided him. Curses that scrambled, flew, or dug their heads into the ground at his mere presence. Yet he paid them no attention. Not when they were not his focus.
With his pace, it didn't take him long to get to his destination. A clearing, much like the one where he had fought and crippled Geto's followers a year ago, but this one was wider, with a building in the middle. A dilapidated shrine, but a well taken care of one regardless. It was smaller than the one in Ise Prefecture, a single-building structure. His eyes drifted to the ground and the sudden greater concentration of footsteps.
He tried sensing for cursed energy again, but it was as futile as ever, so he took slow steps to the sliding door that served as the entrance to the shrine. At the same time, he spread his physical senses, just enough to catch a heartbeat before something burst through the paper sliding curtain with a howl and a crash.
The Sharingan spun, slowing down everything into milliseconds. Nerves and synapses fired.
Jiki's hand snapped out in a flash, catching the furiously screaming assailant by the throat. An instinctive flex of his wrist broke its neck, and its frantic motions stilled. The claw-tipped, green-brown hands that had reached for him fell limp, allowing Jiki to observe what he held in his grasp.
The creature was bigger than he expected, yet he held it up with a single arm, impassionately dissecting the anomaly. He could already tell the thing in his hands was not a cursed spirit.
There was a solidity to it that curses could not mimic, especially after death. It had mottled green skin and a humanoid anatomy, but with three hands. Two primary, and a longer one that seemed to grow out of its tailbone. Mismatched features that spoke of a curse. Yet there was a residual feeling of body heat that he felt.
The Sharingan spun as multiple theories were created and discarded. Jiki slowly reached a conclusion. Something that fit the worldview his sublime perception informed him of and reconciled with the impossibility of what his eyes whispered to him.
There was only one way to confirm.
He shoved his left hand into the chest of the dead thing and ripped out a still beating organ that was slowly coming to a stop. A muscular organ with four chambers and four valves.
A human heart.
He noted it dispassionately as he looked down at the all too familiar red blood that stained his hand and the organ he held in it. Curses did not bleed red, could not.
The creature he killed was human, or used to be at one point in time.
"Well that's a surprise. Rarely do i see sorcery like this for the first time in this atrophied era.." Jorogumo whispered, her voice like the wind as it found its way into his ears from her seal. Jiki frowned, halfway into questioning the old curse.
A fresh wave of screeches rang out, filled with fury. A sound that echoed from multiple throats, forcing him to temporarily discard her words and refocus. Beneath that canopy of distorted sound was a different voice, one hidden under the mad screams of humans that had been twisted into monsters.
"Kill him!"
Jiki gave a cold-blooded smile at those words, those very smart and well-articulated words.
It seemed like Kenjaku was not here, and the building was filled with mindless monsters. But there remained someone or something sapient in the midst of it all. Something he could question.
He flung the still body in his hand like a rocket as the first monster jumped out of the hole in the sliding door, bowling it back alongside the rest of its kin. Jiki didn't have time to waste—nor cursed energy, either. Blowing the curses away would take out most of the building and kill the person inside as well. That meant he had to do this with just close combat.
"wHERe iS My MOtHer!"
He cracked his neck as they swarmed out of the building like ants protecting their hill, humans twisted and transfigured into inhuman monstrosities muttering nonsense in warbling voices. Then he sank into a stance, discarding any thought that these were once humans for it did not matter. Human or curse, he would kill anyone who stood between him and Kenjaku.
"cOOK OR eAt oUT??"
Jiki's breath was slow, steady. His muscles coiled, his stance loose, he would have to conserve as much energy as possible. The monsters rushed him, a tangle of twisted limbs and gnashing teeth, moving with the reckless abandon of beasts but the persistence of men clinging to the last embers of their humanity.
"kiLL mE pLeaSE!"
The first one lunged, its fingers sharpened into jagged claws, reaching for his throat. Jiki shifted a fraction to the side, his hand snapping up to grab its wrist. A twist, a pop, and the limb snapped backward with sickening ease. The thing shrieked, but he was already moving, driving his knee into its chest. Ribs cracked like dry twigs, and the monster folded inward. He didn't stop there. His heel came down on its skull, crushing it into the dirt with a wet crunch.
Another came from the left. He sidestepped, pivoted, and swung an elbow into its temple. The impact sent the creature staggering, and before it could recover, he hooked an arm around its neck and wrenched. A snap. It dropped.
The swarm kept coming.
"wHat tIMe Do yOU gEt oFF!"
Jiki took one step forward, and the ground beneath him cracked from the force. He surged into the horde, tearing through them like a blade through flesh. His hands were a blur, breaking necks, caving in skulls, shattering bones. A child sized monster with four eyes leaped at him, jaws unhinged unnaturally wide, its teeth blackened and serrated. He met it midair, catching it by the throat before driving his fist through its sternum. His hand burst out the other side, blood and viscera splattering across his arm. He ripped it free and tossed the corpse aside.
One monster tried to tackle him in an innovative act that spoke of intelligence. He let it, rolling with the force, only to use the momentum to slam its head into the stone ground with enough power to split it open. Another grabbed at his back, its fingers digging into his flesh. He reached over his shoulder, gripped its arm, and yanked. The limb tore free with a squelching rip. The monster howled, but he silenced it with a swift kick to the face, snapping its neck sideways.
Bodies piled around him. The stench of blood thickened. But the swarm did not let up.
"i StiLL hAVe FivE MorE RePs tO gO!"
A particularly large one, larger than the rest, its mutations more grotesque, charged, swinging an oversized, malformed arm. Jiki ducked under the blow, his foot slamming into its knee. The joint bent the wrong way, and as it stumbled, he grabbed its head with both hands and twisted. Hard. The spine snapped, and the creature dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, the remaining monsters hesitated, shifting uneasily. Their numbers had been cut down too fast, too brutally. They may have lost all semblance of human reason, but something primal still remained. And that something was screaming at them to run.
Jiki took a single step forward.
They broke, scrambling, screeching, tripping over corpses in their desperation to flee back into the darkness of the building. But Jiki wasn't finished.
He shot forward, grabbed the nearest one by the back of its head, and slammed it into the wooden beams. The structure cracked. He did it again. And again. Until its skull caved in. Then he was moving again, only to half himself midstep as instead of running back into the house, they scattered. Leaving the clearing and running into the forest. It would've been an easy thing to track them down and kill them.
Instead, Jiki straightened as he took in a breath. The air was heavy with the scent of blood and torn flesh. He turned around, surveying the carnage. The monsters lay in heaps, their bodies twisted and broken beyond recognition.
A single noise cut through the silence.
A gulp echoed in the clearing that Jiki had turned into a slaughterhouse. He raised dispassionate eyes to the building as he shook blood and bone matter from his hand. Then he started a languid walk into the desecrated structure, which told a story of unholy torture and anguish that had befallen whatever humans had originally been trapped inside.
He doubted Kenjaku had needed to struggle much to find them. All he had to do was wait, and he would have gathered all the unwilling subjects from the people who came to the forest to die. Considering the number of people that would've gone missing alongside the tracks that littered the forest, He had not killed nearly enough to diminish the estimated numbers. He walked up the stairs to the second floor. The building was big. Too big for the dozens he had killed. It was large enough to house hundreds of those monstrosities.
So where had Kenjaku taken them? That was if he was even the one who created them. He was a valid suspect, considering he seemed to like human experimentation as much as Orochimaru, yet it would do Jiki no favors to close his mind to other outside factors.
He reached the room that held the loud heartbeat. A heartbeat that nearly drowned out every other sound in range. Then he slid the door open to reveal an even more curious oddity. A man who was a mixture of curse and human, with mottled, humongous limbs on an otherwise small frame. His small head resembled a tortoise, with wide-rimmed, all-too-human eyes behind it.
The strange man sputtered before squeaking out a sentence. "Stay back! Stay back! Lord Mahito is coming. He's coming soon. You don't want his dis-displeasure." The man's stutter increased at the very thought before he shook his head and continued to wave Jiki away with a stick.
Jiki shifted his focus from the twisted amalgamation of man and curse. His eyes wandered, searching. Yet there was only one other person in the building besides this man. He turned his attention back to him while the other presence approached. "He is not here. Where is he?"
"I'll tell you nothing. Nothing!"
The twisted man-curse blinked enlarged eyes at him in fear and anger. Jiki felt the slightest hint of a frown. The next second, he appeared in front of the man, a hand where the man's pulverized head used to be. The rest of the body was slammed an inch into the wooden wall with a boom. Then Jiki tilted his head back, blood-soaked, with the dead body beneath him, and looked at the new interloper. An ugly man, with wide eyes, green hair, and a chain wrapped around his hand that tied him to a dog like curse that hid behind him.
Jiki met his gaze knowing just exactly what he looked like and used that image to imprint fear into the man. He was an avatar of slaughter and carnage, and he asked a question in a tone that showed just how weary he had grown of repeating.
"Where is Kenjaku?"
This was the last time he would ask it, as the man was all too eager to speak."He's in Tokyo!" Jiki felt his eyes widen at the information because there was only one reason why the near-immortal sorcerer would be in Tokyo, today of all days. The Goodwill Event.