The attack came at 2:47 AM on a Tuesday, when the world was at its quietest and most vulnerable. Ryouta's Primordial Omniscience, even in sleep, detected the intrusion immediately—three voids in the cursed energy landscape, moving with predatory precision toward Satoru's apartment building. Not curses. Not sorcerers. Something else. Something deliberately engineered to be undetectable by conventional means.
Ryouta was out of bed and moving before his conscious mind fully processed the threat. He activated his communication talisman, sending a burst of cursed energy that would wake Satoru, Geto, and Shoko simultaneously. Three sharp pulses: Danger. Now. Come.
He teleported using his Primordial Kinetics—not true teleportation, but removing the concept of "distance" between his current position and his destination. One moment he was in his apartment, the next he was on Satoru's balcony, his seven-layer defensive barriers already active.
The assassins were already inside. Ryouta's omniscient awareness showed him their positions with perfect clarity: one in the main living area, two flanking from the kitchen and bedroom. They moved like professionals, their cursed energy suppressed to near-nothing by what looked like specialized binding vows. Curse users, then. Mercenaries who'd traded portions of their power for specific advantages—in this case, near-perfect stealth.
But stealth meant nothing to someone who could perceive intentions before they became actions.
Ryouta didn't announce himself. He simply moved, his Veil of Unbeing making him less than a whisper. The first assassin—a woman with poisoned blades—never saw him coming. He appeared behind her and drove his palm into her spine, using his Primordial Divergence to separate her cursed energy from her nervous system. She collapsed, paralyzed but alive. They needed at least one for questioning.
The other two, alerted by their companion's sudden fall, spun toward the disturbance. One of them, a man with curse-enhanced vision that could supposedly pierce any concealment, stared directly at where Ryouta stood and saw nothing. The confusion in his eyes was almost comical.
Then Satoru arrived, and the apartment exploded with light. He'd been woken from sleep but moved with the fluid grace of someone who'd trained for exactly this scenario. His Infinity was active, a shimmering barrier of impossibility. "Morning, assholes," he said cheerfully, though his eyes were cold. "Bad time to visit."
The assassins tried to retreat, their mission clearly failed. But Geto was already there, Rainbow Dragon coiling through the building's ventilation system, cutting off their escape routes. Cursed spirits erupted from the walls, the ceiling, the floor—not to kill, but to trap, to contain.
The remaining two assassins chose suicide over capture, biting down on poison capsules hidden in their molars. They died within seconds, their bodies dissolving into cursed energy—another binding vow, a dead man's switch to prevent interrogation.
But the paralyzed woman was still breathing, still conscious. Ryouta had made sure of that.
They moved her to a secure location—one of Yaga's workshops, protected by enough barriers to withstand a small army. Shoko used her Reverse Cursed Technique to stabilize the woman's nervous system while keeping her immobilized. The assassin stared at them with a mixture of fear and defiant resignation.
"You might as well kill me," she said, her voice hoarse. "I'm dead anyway. The contract ensures it."
"Then you have nothing to lose by talking," Geto said, his tone deceptively gentle. He'd become frighteningly good at interrogation—not through torture, but through a combination of cursed spirit intimidation and psychological manipulation. He summoned a particularly grotesque curse, letting it hover inches from the woman's face. "Tell us who hired you. Tell us what the plan was. Tell us everything, and we'll make sure your death is quick and painless rather than whatever your contractors have planned for failures."
The woman lasted about five minutes before she broke. The story that emerged was chilling in its banality. She and her team were from a curse user collective that specialized in "problematic sorcerer removal." They'd been contracted through several shell organizations, making it nearly impossible to trace the money back to its source. The mission parameters were simple: eliminate the four Special Grade students, make it look like a curse attack, collect payment.
"How much?" Satoru asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
"Ten million yen per head," the woman admitted. "Plus a bonus if we made it look accidental."
The number hung in the air. Forty million yen. That was the price the higher-ups had placed on their lives. It was almost insulting in its practicality—not a fortune that would attract unwanted attention, but enough to motivate skilled killers.
"Who else is coming?" Ryouta asked, his omniscient awareness already reaching out, scanning the city for similar voids, similar threats.
"I don't know," the woman said, and Ryouta's perception told him she was telling the truth. "Contracts are compartmentalized. There could be a dozen teams, or just us. The employers spread their risk."
After extracting every piece of useful information, they let the woman drink water laced with a sedative. She'd wake up in a hospital with no memory of the interrogation, another side effect of Shoko's modified healing technique. It was mercy, of a sort.
"This is it," Geto said as they left the workshop, his expression grim. "They've decided we're too dangerous to leave alive. This is war."
"Good," Satoru said, and his grin was all teeth and no humor. "I was getting tired of the subtle approach anyway."
They gathered everyone—Yaga, Mai Zenin, and the handful of other sorcerers who'd quietly joined their coalition—in a secure meeting room deep within Jujutsu High. The atmosphere was tense, charged with barely suppressed fury.
"We have two options," Yaga said, his voice heavy. "We can go to ground, scatter and hide until we can rebuild our case somewhere safe. Or we can accelerate our timeline and release everything now, incomplete as it is."
"If we run, they'll just hunt us down one by one," Mai said. "And they'll use our flight as proof of guilt, spin it as if we were the corrupt ones all along."
"If we release now, we lose the impact of a coordinated, airtight case," another sorcerer argued. "It'll be easier for them to refute, to muddy the waters."
Ryouta had been quiet, his mind running through scenarios using his omniscient awareness. He could see the branching paths, the probabilities. Running bought them time but weakened their position. Releasing early gave them the initiative but left them vulnerable to counterarguments. Both paths had significant risks.
But there was a third option. One that his past-life knowledge suggested, though it went against every instinct of his methodical, careful nature.
"We bait them," Ryouta said, and everyone turned to look at him. "The higher-ups want us dead, but they're doing it quietly because they're afraid of the attention our deaths would bring. So we give them exactly what they fear—we make ourselves so publicly visible that killing us becomes impossible without massive scrutiny."
"How?" Satoru asked, leaning forward with interest.
"We challenge them," Ryouta continued, the plan crystallizing in his mind. "Publicly. We demand a formal inquiry into clan practices, invoke the ancient right of grievance that any Special Grade sorcerer can claim. It's an archaic law, hasn't been used in over a century, but it's still technically valid. They'd have to respond publicly or risk looking like tyrants."
"And if they refuse?" Geto asked.
"Then we release everything anyway, with the added narrative that they refused to even address our concerns through legal channels," Ryouta said. "Either way, we control the narrative."
Yaga was nodding slowly, seeing the strategy. "It's risky. It puts you four directly in the crosshairs."
"We're already in the crosshairs," Satoru pointed out. "At least this way, we're shooting back."
The vote was unanimous. They would proceed with the formal challenge. Yaga would help them navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth, Mai would provide insider intelligence on clan responses, and they would prepare for every possible outcome—from legal proceedings to open conflict.
Despite the danger, despite the weight of what they were attempting, life at Jujutsu High continued with a strange, surreal normalcy. Classes still happened. Training still occurred. Students still complained about cafeteria food and difficult assignments.
Ryouta found Nanako and Mimiko in the school gardens one afternoon, practicing their barrier techniques under Geto's supervision. The girls had grown tremendously in the months since their rescue, both physically and in confidence. They smiled more now, laughed with other students, and were beginning to show signs of becoming formidable sorcerers in their own right.
"Sensei Ryouta!" Nanako called out, waving him over. "Watch this!"
She and Mimiko worked in tandem, their cursed energy synchronizing in a way that only twins could achieve. They created a barrier that wasn't just a defensive wall, but a woven structure of interlocking shields that could adapt and redistribute force. It was beautiful and sophisticated, far beyond what students their age should be capable of.
"That's incredible," Ryouta said honestly. "You've been practicing."
"Geto-sensei says we have natural talent," Mimiko said shyly. "Because of what we went through."
It was true, in a tragic way. Trauma often awakened latent abilities, forced them to the surface as a survival mechanism. The girls' imprisonment had been horrific, but it had also forged them into something stronger than they might have otherwise become.
"You're going to be amazing sorcerers," Ryouta said, and he meant it. "Both of you."
Later, as he watched them return to their practice, Geto approached him. "Thank you," his friend said quietly. "For that day. For stopping me. If I'd done what I was planning... I wouldn't have this. I wouldn't have them."
"You would have saved them anyway," Ryouta said. "Just by a different, darker path."
"Maybe," Geto admitted. "But I prefer this version of events. This version where I'm their teacher, not their..." He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
Cult leader, Ryouta finished silently. In the original timeline, these girls would have been the first of many—children Geto would "save" and mold into followers of his twisted philosophy. But here, now, they were just students. Just kids learning to be sorcerers. It was a small victory, but it felt monumental.
"We're going to win this," Geto said, and there was steel in his voice. "Not just for us. For them. For every sorcerer who's been exploited by this system."
"Yes," Ryouta agreed. "We are."
That night, alone in his dojo, Ryouta pushed himself harder than he ever had before. He knew what was coming. The formal challenge would force the higher-ups' hand, would accelerate the conflict. He needed to be ready. Needed to be stronger.
He worked on a technique he'd been developing in secret—something that combined his barrier work with his conceptual manipulation. Not a defensive technique, but an offensive one. The ability to create barriers inside an opponent's body, conceptual walls that would disrupt their cursed energy flow from within.
It was delicate, dangerous work. Creating barriers inside living tissue required precision that bordered on the microscopic. One mistake could kill his target—or worse, cripple them in ways that even Shoko couldn't heal. But if he could master it, it would be a weapon that even someone like Toji Fushiguro couldn't counter. You couldn't dodge an attack that manifested inside your own body.
Hours of practice left him exhausted, his head pounding from the concentration. But by dawn, he could reliably place micro-barriers inside training dummies, disrupting the flow of cursed energy he'd imbued them with. The technique was unstable, requiring constant fine-tuning, but it was functional.
The system appeared, as he'd known it would.
╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
║ ◇ PRIMORDIAL SYSTEM ◇
║
║ [TECHNIQUE MASTERED: Internal Disruption]
║ [CURRENT MASTERY LEVEL: EXPERT]
║
║ [10X PRIMORDIAL AMPLIFICATION AVAILABLE]
║
║ AMPLIFIED FORM: "PRIMORDIAL REJECTION"
║
║ Primordial Rejection doesn't merely disrupt—it causes
║ the target's own cursed energy to conceptually reject
║ their body, treating their own power as a foreign
║ invader. The target's cursed energy becomes their enemy,
║ attacking them from within. It is not a wound that can
║ be healed, but an existential crisis at the cellular
║ level.
║
║ ► YES - Transform to "Primordial Rejection" forever
║ ► NO - Continue developing standard Internal Disruption
╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Ryouta stared at the panel, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten. This was... horrifying. A technique that would essentially cause a sorcerer to self-destruct from the inside out. It was a weapon of absolute cruelty, designed not just to kill but to make the victim's own power betray them.
He thought about the coming conflict. About the higher-ups who'd placed a price on their heads. About the assassins who'd come in the night. About all the sorcerers who'd died for profit margins and insurance payouts.
[NO]
He dismissed the panel. Some powers were too terrible to wield, even against enemies who deserved them. He would keep Internal Disruption as it was—a non-lethal technique for disabling opponents. He refused to become the monster the system wanted him to fight.
The formal challenge was delivered three days later, in the grand chamber where the higher-ups held their councils. Ryouta, Satoru, Geto, and Shoko stood before the council—four teenagers facing down an institution that had stood for centuries.
The chamber was designed to be intimidating. Massive, with vaulted ceilings covered in ancient talismans. The higher-ups sat behind screens, their faces hidden, their voices distorted by cursed techniques. It was theater, meant to emphasize the vast gulf between the powerless petitioners and the untouchable authority.
But Satoru, standing at the center of their group, looked utterly unimpressed. His hands were in his pockets, his posture relaxed, his trademark grin firmly in place. "Nice digs," he said cheerfully, his voice echoing through the chamber. "Very 'evil council of shadowy overlords.' Very dramatic."
The disrespect was intentional, calculated to throw them off balance. Ryouta stood beside his brother, his presence a quiet contrast to Satoru's loud confidence. But anyone with perception could feel the weight of his attention, his omniscient awareness spreading through the room like an invisible web.
"You have invoked the Right of Grievance," one of the higher-ups said, their distorted voice betraying no emotion. "State your case."
And so they did. They laid out the evidence, the patterns, the deaths. They named names, cited specific incidents, presented documentation that was impossible to refute. It took three hours, and by the end, the silence in the chamber was deafening.
Finally, another voice spoke. "These are serious accusations. If proven true, the consequences would be... significant. We will investigate."
"With respect," Ryouta said, his voice calm but carrying an edge of steel, "we don't trust your investigation. We demand a tribunal—a public one, with independent observers from all the major clans. Full transparency."
The silence that followed was pregnant with threat. They'd just demanded something unprecedented—accountability.
"You overstep," a third voice said, cold and sharp.
"We're Special Grade sorcerers," Satoru replied, his grin widening. "We're kind of known for overstepping. It's in the job description."
The meeting ended without resolution, but the gauntlet had been thrown. The higher-ups now had to respond, and every response would be public, scrutinized. They'd backed the system into a corner.
As they left the chamber, Ryouta's omniscient awareness detected something that made his blood run cold. More voids. More assassins. Dozens of them, converging on Tokyo from all directions.
The higher-ups had made their decision. If they couldn't silence the four quietly, they'd do it loudly and blame it on curse users, on foreign enemies, on anything but their own corruption.
The storm was here. And it would be written in blood.