The air was sharper now. Not just cold — but laced with something invisible, something heavy. Kai could feel it every time he walked the halls of the orphanage. The atmosphere buzzed with whispers he couldn't hear but understood. A warning. A shift.
Since the night of his first exorcism, he had barely slept. Not out of fear — out of focus.
Each night, he reinforced protective barriers on the windows and doors of the children's dorm. Slips of handmade talismans coated in his cursed energy stuck behind frames and under beds. His limbs ached, his brain buzzed from overuse, but the results were worth it. The air around the dorm rooms felt warmer. Safer.
Still, he wasn't sure how long that would last.
He kept a map hidden behind his bookshelf — a crumpled piece of cardboard with ink marks and strings pinned to it. Locations of negative energy spikes, dreams children had whispered about, where pets had refused to go. The pattern was evolving. Whatever cursed spirits were haunting this part of Gotham, they were growing bolder.
He made it his mission to patrol every night — not the entire city, just the few blocks surrounding the orphanage. He stayed in the shadows, watching from rooftops and alleys. His hoodie and scarf hid most of his face, and his cursed energy cloaked him from the attention of others.
He spotted his second cursed spirit three days after the first.
It clung to the side of a local church like mold — bulbous and muttering nonsense in a child's voice. It fed off guilt. Every time a parishioner confessed, it grew stronger. Kai watched it from the steeple for nearly ten minutes, studying its behavior.
When it tried to slither into the daycare next door, he made his move.
The fight was faster than his first. Cleaner.
He learned to layer his Limitless on instinct now, using Blue to draw the spirit into range, then Ghost Fang to end it in a flash. The cursed tool had been reforged with stronger symbols, and it resonated with his growing aura.
He left no trace.
Except a new seal, burned into the side of the church where the spirit had lingered — a spiral loop etched with cursed script.
He didn't sign it.
But by the next morning, the newspapers carried a photo of it with the headline: "Mystery Vigilante Cleanses Local Church?"
He chuckled into his cereal. If only they knew.
Training was becoming harder. Cursed energy was immense, but controlling it — refining it — took an emotional toll. He realized quickly that stress amplified his energy output, but left it unstable. Peace made it quiet, but weak.
So he found a middle path.
During the day, he pretended to be the same tired, soft-spoken Kai the caretakers knew. But after lights out, he meditated. For hours. Breathing exercises. Mental rehearsals. Reciting cursed technique equations from memory.
He summoned floating spheres of cursed energy the size of tennis balls and practiced making them hover, spin, flatten into sheets, and vibrate at different frequencies.
He had no one to train him. No Tengen. No Gojo. Only himself.
Every improvement came at a cost. His body wasn't fully adapted yet. He bled often. Nosebleeds. Bruised knuckles. Fatigue so strong that he sometimes passed out mid-meditation.
But he endured.
Each scar reminded him: this was earned.
One night, while scanning rooftops, he noticed something strange — not a cursed spirit, but a shift in the flow of energy beneath the streets.
He pressed his palm against the pavement. A tremor of cursed resonance buzzed under his fingertips.
"There's a nexus forming," he muttered.
He followed it for blocks. Past factories. Past closed playgrounds. Until he reached an alley filled with graffiti and trash — a forgotten corner of the city.
There, in the dirt beneath a broken swing set, was a sewer grate pulsating with cursed energy.
Kai knelt.
"Underground nest," he whispered.
He didn't descend that night. But he marked the location, reinforced it with talismans, and vowed to return once he had stronger weapons.
For now, he needed intel.
The next day at school, things felt different. The same classmates. The same dull lessons. But there was a weight in the air. His Six Eyes picked up subtle cursed traces clinging to other students.
Guilt. Anger. Despair.
The spirits were extending their influence.
He saw a boy being bullied near the lockers — cursed energy flared up around him like smoke. Kai intervened with a well-timed excuse to the teacher and an enchanted sticker he slapped on the kid's backpack. A minor ward. But it worked.
He was starting to become a ghost protector in plain sight.
And people were noticing.
Even if they couldn't explain it.
Across Gotham, a dark figure sat before a glowing screen.
Batman reviewed police reports of violent outbursts in emotionally high-stress zones — orphanages, halfway homes, grief therapy centers. The victims had no history of aggression. There was no chemical or digital trace.
Just spikes of unexplained phenomena.
He zoomed in on the church incident.
"No tech. No signs of magic," he murmured. "But there's something there."
He tapped a control. Screens lit up with surveillance footage — blurred figures, flickering shadows, a faint blue glow.
He paused.
Rewound.
Zoomed.
There, for a single frame, was a cloaked kid with a glowing mark in his palm.
"Who are you?" Batman whispered.
But Kai was already gone, slipping between worlds that no one else could see.
And the war had only just begun.