(I hope the technique is balanced or seem cool)
The wind over the ridge howled like a wounded beast, carrying dust and Originium ash across the dry, ravaged hills.
Yuta's coat fluttered behind him as he crouched over the ledge, peering down toward the ruined checkpoint below.
Charred banners hung from broken pylons, and the smell of blood lingered in the stagnant air.
There was a noise, not a human scream, but something like it.
A man staggered backward out of the crumbled gatehouse, clawing at his chest, eyes wide with panic.
Then, just as he dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap, his attacker appeared... from thin air.
No cursed energy buildup. No incantation.
Just pop.
Yuta's eyes narrowed.
That wasn't teleportation.
The cursed energy signature rewound, not shifted.
Whoever this was, he wasn't a normal sorcerer, but a manipulator of space and time through a pseudo-temporal anchor.
The sorcerer stepped into view.
A lean figure in dark armor laced with Originium wiring.
Face covered with a metal mask, one eye glowing violet with residual cursed energy.
Slung across his back was a jagged spear that shimmered faintly, as if flickering between states of existence.
Yuta stood, his katana already humming with cursed reinforcement. "You're the one causing the disappearances in this sector" he said flatly.
The masked sorcerer tilted his head. "And you're the one they call the Wraith of Terra."
"I'm not here to talk."
"Good. Then let's not."
The masked man vanished.
No shift in wind. No sound. Just... gone.
Yuta's instincts screamed.
He twisted, cursed energy surging into his legs, and barely avoided the ambush from behind.
Steel scraped flesh as the spear grazed his shoulder, tearing a line of crimson through his jacket.
He returned to a saved position... behind me..... Tch.
Yuta spun and slashed, his blade meeting the spear mid-arc.
A burst of cursed sparks exploded between them, the impact forcing both back. Yuta skidded across the gravel, flexing his fingers.
Pain radiated through his arm.
Not broken, but close.
The masked sorcerer stood motionless now, spear at the ready.
"You're not the only one who can read cursed flows" the man said, his voice distorted, mechanical.
"I've been testing how long I can hold a checkpoint. Three seconds max so far. I call it 'Checkpoint: Recall.' I mark a point in space, then return to it, wounds, cursed energy, and all."
He is... exposing his technique, to increase it's effectiveness... Just... how many sorcerers are out there? Am i the reason why sorcerer appear?
"Then I'll kill you in one blow," Yuta growled.
The air warped.
He moved, faster now, cursed energy flooding into his limbs, tightening muscle, sharpening focus.
He darted forward, feinting high with a strike. The masked man met him mid-charge, but Yuta was no rookie.
[Binding vow: reduced cursed energy output in exchange for increased reaction time.]
He ducked under the sweep, rotated, and slashed upward, a Black Flash exploded as the strike connected, cursed energy snapping like lightning through the sorcerer's ribs.
Blood arced into the air.
But just as Yuta lunged to finish it, the man vanished again.
Appeared at the edge of the ruined checkpoint, unmarred.
"Black Flash, huh?" the man rasped. "Nice. But you didn't hit my real body."
Yuta's breath hitched. "You recalled to before the injury."
"Exactly. You kill me, I go back. It's not healing, it's rewinding."
That was dangerous.
It made every injury temporary... so long as the user could reset in time.
But that also meant something else.
"There's a limit" Yuta said. "You can't save endlessly. The more cursed energy you spend, the further you are from the recall point. That creates a gap, a blind spot."
The masked man didn't deny it. "Catch me in it, then."
Yuta exhaled slowly, blood dripping from his fingers.
Fine.
He'd adapt.
"Rika" he whispered under his breath, cursed energy forming behind him like the shadow of a monster.
The ghostly shape of the mature Rika loomed briefly over his shoulder, eyes glinting.
"Let's push him to his limit."
...
<>
Technique Name: "Checkpoint" (帰点, Kiten)
The user can "save" a physical location and "load" back to it at will, anchoring their existence to a spatial point in time like a fixed coordinate in the world.
Save (記録, Kiroku): The user "saves" their current location, orientation, and physical state (posture, direction they're facing, injuries included) using cursed energy. A faint glowing sigil marks the spot, only visible to those with high perception.
Load (読込, Yomikomi): They instantly teleport back to that saved point, retaining their current state (wounds, energy level, mental state). It's not true time travel, just positional anchoring.
The range for saving is wide, but loading is limited to 10–30 meters, depending on mastery.
Restriction:
The user can only have one active checkpoint at a time.
They can only load once per "save", after which the point vanishes unless saved again.
Loading cancels all momentum (a user falling from the sky can instantly "load" to the ground unharmed).
Repeated use causes cursed energy dissonance, vertigo, nausea, bleeding ears, as the body resists being "rewound" too often.
Can't use if fatally injured or unconscious, the load still preserves the soul's connection to the body.
<>
...
.
.
.
Rika's presence manifested like a gale sweeping across a frozen battlefield, not physical in full, but enough to crack the air with pressure.
Even with only fragments of her power returned, her presence made the cursed energy around Yuta feel like the eye of a collapsing storm.
The masked sorcerer staggered slightly as if the very air had thickened into a swamp of malice.
"Shikigami" the man hissed, narrowing his glowing eye. "You can manifest that much?"
"She's not a shikigami," Yuta said softly, raising his blade. "She's Rika."
Rika's hand reached down and brushed his shoulder, her voice low and clear like glass touched by wind.
"You promised me you'd smile more."
He blinked.
A flicker of emotion crossed his face, a crack in the hardened exterior.
Then he surged forward.
The masked sorcerer set a checkpoint mid-air, leaping back just as Yuta's blade carved through where he'd been.
He reappeared ten meters away, launching a flurry of cursed energy-infused spear thrusts.
Each strike folded space slightly, not teleportation, but distorted distance.
Yuta met the first few with his blade, twisting and ducking with practiced, almost mechanical rhythm.
Then he took a hit, deliberately.
The spear drove into his side.
Blood splattered the ground.
"Got you," the sorcerer hissed.
But Yuta gritted his teeth and grabbed the spear, cursed energy crackling violently across his palm.
"Bind" he whispered, not Cursed Speech, not yet, but a temporary restraint of cursed energy.
The feedback forced the spear to lock in his grip for half a second.
That's all he needed.
Yuta leaned in and headbutted the man hard enough to dent his mask.
The masked sorcerer stumbled back, and Yuta sliced, aiming for the neck.
Again, a burst of cursed energy, but again, the man vanished mid-blow, resetting to a previous position.
Yuta landed, breathing heavy.
He's good. Precise. Cold. But he's getting slower. His energy is burning fast.
Above him, Rika drifted quietly.
"He reminds me of you... before."
He looked up. "How?"
"Alone. Scared. Pretending not to be."
Yuta didn't respond, but something shifted in his stance.
The masked man reappeared a few paces ahead, one hand on his bleeding ribs, the other still clutching the flickering spear.
"You're cornering me," he admitted. "But so what? You think pain scares me?"
"No," Yuta said. "But loss does."
He took a stance, and his cursed energy dropped. The flow around his body calmed, became still.
A Binding Vow.
[Binding Vow : Temporary lock Sky manipulation... for double return in output on the next movement]
Then he vanished.
Not teleportation, just speed.
Cursed energy burst under his feet, cracking stone and flinging debris.
He moved in zigzags, faint afterimages trailing behind him.
The masked sorcerer snapped into recall, once, twice, trying to time the strike.
Too late.
Yuta's blade came from above.
The man raised his spear to block, but this time, Yuta didn't aim to kill.
He twisted.
Cut through the man's side, but not fatally, just enough to cause pain, confusion. The sorcerer staggered.
Yuta landed, skidding to a halt.
"Now" he whispered, drawing his fingers to his throat.
Cursed Speech ignited.
"Don't move."
The words pulsed through the air like a thunderclap wrapped in iron.
The masked man froze, eyes wide with horror.
Veins bulged in his neck as his body locked against his will.
His attempt to Recall failed, locked out by the verbal command.
Yuta stood tall, blood running down his chin, his blade trembling in his hand.
"This is the blind spot" he said quietly.
He stepped forward.
Lifted his katana.
The masked sorcerer gritted his teeth. "You could have just knocked me out."
"I could have" Yuta agreed. "But I wanted you to remember this moment. The moment you lost everything because you thought time would protect you."
Then he slammed the flat of the blade into the man's neck.
Not enough to kill, but enough to end it.
The masked man crumpled.
Yuta exhaled, long and tired.
Rika floated behind him.
"You didn't kill him."
"No," Yuta said, staring down at the unconscious body. "But next time... I might."
He sheathed his blade and turned to walk away.
Behind him, wind blew through the broken checkpoint, carrying with it the quiet whisper of a new world still learning how to fear.
...
The masked man stirred slowly, pain dragging him back to consciousness like rusted chains.
His head throbbed, his ribs ached, and his cursed energy was sluggish, fractured from overuse.
Blood crusted around his mask, which now hung loosely to one side, exposing a bruised jaw and the faded tattoos of his past life, a remnant of a gang long since dissolved in the chaos of Terra's infected underworld.
He sat up inside a ruined outpost, tucked in a ravine northwest of Columbia's outer scrapyards.
Quiet. Empty.
The fight replayed in his mind, the sheer weight of that cursed energy, the voice that pinned him down like a coffin lid. And above all, that young man's eyes, not angry, not sad.
Just... empty. Controlled.
Who the hell are you really, Okkotsu?
He groaned and pulled out a small, sleek comm device, a makeshift phone modified with arts circuitry.
"Tch..." he muttered. "This is Graymark. Encounter confirmed. Target is alive. Hostile. Dangerous as shit. Motherfucker might be special grade, i don't think he used his technique completely"
The static on the other end buzzed faintly. Then a voice replied, gruff, distorted, calm. "You're sure? The ghost sorcerer?"
"Yeah," he coughed, spitting blood onto the floor.
"Name's Yuta Okkotsu. Said it himself. Can use Cursed Speech. Reinforcement. Black Flash. And he's got... a shikigami or something. Rika. Goddamn monster, I couldn't even scratch him."
A pause.
"Report in person," the voice ordered. "No more risks. We'll send a team."
"No, wait" Graymark leaned forward. "He's in Terra now. Not just passing through. He's changed things. The curses, they're forming. People are awakening. This world's different now. I think he's the reason why our Arts mutated to technique"
"Then we act accordingly."
Graymark sat back, sighing, flipping the blade Yuta had broken in half during their fight. "Still got one last recall saved. Didn't think I'd wake up at the fallback point. Bastard hit hard."
But he didn't notice the shifting shadow behind him.
A snap, the glint of a stun-baton sparked off his shoulder.
He collapsed instantly, convulsing once before unconsciousness took him again.
Two silhouettes stepped forward from the broken steel beams, both clad in modified combat gear, Rhodes Island insignia faint under the dust.
"He's the one who robbed the supply team last week," the taller operator muttered.
"Used some kind of movement technique, popped in and out of nowhere like teleportation. We lost good people to that trick."
"Got him now," the other said, tightening the zipcord cuffs. "We take him back for containment. Medic team's en route. No infections detected, but he's definitely not normal."
They hoisted Graymark onto a stretcher.
As they moved toward the evac point, the shorter operator spoke again, glancing back over the rubble.
"You think Rhodes will want to know about the guy who did this to him?"
The taller one hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. No way this was a normal brawl. The guy who took him down did it clean. No mercy. No glory. Just like... execution."
They disappeared into the morning haze, unaware that their words would reach higher ears soon, and that Rhodes Island's interest in sorcerers had just gone from passive observation to urgent priority.