The Zenin training grounds were not a place of growth, but a slaughterhouse of potential. It was an arena where the family's ancient, violent legacy was ruthlessly enforced and celebrated, a place where spiritual inheritance was judged heavier than human life. Beneath the relentless, grey, cold sky which seemed to mirror the clan's spiritual temperature the air tasted sharply of sweat, iron-heavy old blood, and metallic resentment.
This pervasive psychic residue formed a heavy, suffocating fog of unresolved grudges that hung like a poisonous shroud over every practice session. The ground itself was not natural soil, but packed dirt mixed with gravel, perpetually stained by the exertion, the blood, and the unshed tears of generations of failed children. This was where the clan measured its future, using a cruel, absolute scale that instantly discarded anything that didn't possess the devastating, recognized power of the Ten Shadows or Projection Sorcery.
Nayona, now six, was a silent, unsettling fixture on the periphery, his presence tolerated only because of his grandmother's calculated assessment of his utility. He was deemed too physically fragile and spiritually passive for the relentless physical rigors of the elite 'Hei' unit. His body remained thin, his movements precise but unhurried, and his Cursed Energy was too neutral and philosophically inclined for combat. Yet, he was considered too valuable to simply ignore due to his unique, unsettling technique.
His designated role was observational: Maari and Ogi used him as a strange, spiritual tuning fork. They hoped his bizarre Saṃsāra Cycle technique could be refined to detect nascent, hidden abilities in others perhaps a technique that was spiritually present but physically unmanifested or, more crudely and more often, identify spiritual weaknesses in the other trainees that could be exploited later for psychological leverage. They were trying to weaponize his compassion.
Maari Zenin herself was watching Nayona closely from the porch of the main dojo, her face carved from stone. She wasn't watching the twins; she was watching him, searching for a flicker of aggression in his neutral aura. The entire 'Kukuru' squad, the clan's silent enforcement arm, was visible further down the wall, a reminder that the failure to conform would not be met with mere dismissal, but violent eradication.
Nayona sat on a low, sun-weathered stone bench, noticeably separate from the yelling instructors and the aggressive, crackling energy of the combatants. His Cursed Energy, the silent grey tide of neutrality, flowed around him, acting as a subtle, instinctual barrier that neutralized the worst of the aggressive, hate-fueled atmosphere, creating a small pocket of spiritual calm.
He wore the standard, heavy training uniform, but his posture was the same as it had been beneath the cherry tree perfectly straight, the position of a monk in deep meditation, a stark contrast to the slumped, broken exhaustion and simmering hostility of his peers.
His dark eyes were fixed on two figures in the main pit: Maki and Mai Zenin, barely a year older than him. They were the most potent, tragic example of the clan's perverse cruelty, tied together by a twin pact of both loyalty and destruction.
Their shared Heavenly Restriction the spiritual pact that halved their total Cursed Energy pool and split it between them, leaving neither whole, neither meeting the Zenin standard was the clan's favorite point of mockery.
They were sparring with heavy wooden staves, and it was less a spar and more a public execution of hope, conducted for the amusement and judgment of the elders. Maki, already possessing staggering physical prowess and a superhuman constitution despite her negligible Cursed Energy, moved with ferocious, focused rage.
She blocked, struck, and drove forward, every move a violent, desperate testament to her consuming need to prove her worth to a family that denied it completely. Her lack of Cursed Energy was her greatest strength, forcing her into physical perfection, but it was also her deepest spiritual wound, constantly inflamed by the Zenin's scorn.
Her body moved beautifully, but her Cursed Energy signature was choked, a dark, heavy vapor clinging to her spirit, a manifestation of the collective hatred of the entire clan.
Mai, however, moved with slow, heavy, resentful effort. She possessed Cursed Energy a decent quantity, enough to be considered minimally viable for a sorcerer yet she was utterly dependent on it, physically weaker and slower than her twin due to their Heavenly Restriction.
Her strikes were lazy, filled with bitterness aimed not at her opponent, but at the world, and most keenly, at her twin sister. She failed to block a low sweep that Maki executed with ruthless, almost despairing precision, and Maki's stave slammed sharply into her ribs.
Mai collapsed onto the dirt, coughing violently, clutching her side. The impact was purely physical, yet Mai's Cursed Energy instantly flared, a desperate shield against non-sorcery pain.
"Again! Get up, Mai!" the instructor's voice was a whip crack, laced with Cursed Energy meant to physically sting the recipient. "You are embarrassing the lineage! Your Cursed Energy is not enough to excuse that sloth! It's clear your twin is absorbing all the talent! You are dragging her down!"
Maki immediately dropped her stave, the sound of wood on gravel startlingly loud, and offered a hand, her face etched with raw, unhidden concern a concern that was instantly registered as a weakness by the watching elders. "Mai, are you hurt? We can slow down, just focus on the form. If you'd just try to match my speed, we can end this quickly."
"Don't touch me," Mai spat, batting the hand away with sudden, toxic venom that carried a low spike of Cursed Energy the only moment her energy was truly potent. She scrambled up, her eyes blazing with an anger that was far more damaging than any projectile Cursed Technique. "Don't pity me, you cursed failure. You're nothing without your strength. You just enjoy watching me fail. If you weren't here, I'd be enough!"
Nayona watched the tragic exchange, and the Zenin philosophy of power suddenly crystallized for him, becoming a perverse reflection of the spiritual reality he knew. He saw the suffering, the dukkha, not as a simple reaction to physical pain, but as an elegant, clan-imposed spiritual trap, perfectly aligned with the Four Noble Truths he had dedicated his past life to dismantling.
Dukkha (The Truth of Suffering): Maki's suffering was the result of attachment to acceptance (Upādāna). Her body was a masterpiece of physical discipline, but her spirit was fundamentally shackled by the need for the Zenin clan's validation. She was desperately attached to the name, the status, and the inherent worth she felt the clan owed her, driving her to extreme, self-destructive effort that would eventually leave her spiritually hollow.
This attachment was the specific flavor of her pain. Mai's suffering, conversely, was the result of aversion to reality (Vibhava-tṛṣṇā). She resented her twin's physical talent and her own need for Cursed Energy, choosing to hate Maki rather than face the true, painful source of her pain: the Zenin standards themselves. She actively pushed away the only person who cared for her Maki deepening her isolation and self-pity.
Samudaya (The Truth of the Origin of Suffering is Craving - Tṛṣṇā): Nayona recognized the underlying cause woven into the very fabric of the Zenin environment. It was tṛṣṇā, the craving, in all its forms. Naoya craved superiority and adoration. Ogi craved control and legacy. But Maki and Mai craved worth and love. Their Heavenly Restriction served the clan's purpose perfectly by manufacturing both a powerful craving for what they lacked and a strong aversion to what they possessed.
The Zenin clan intentionally cultivated this hunger, feeding the twins just enough hope to keep them chained to the system, but never enough fulfillment to grant them peace. This institutional craving the desire for power, and the desire to avoid low status was the very toxic engine of the Zenin's power structure, ensuring loyalty through manufactured pain and codependent suffering. The clan's existence was a collective Samudaya.
Nirodha (The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering): The idea was simple: stop the craving, stop the suffering. Nayona knew that the only way for the twins to cease their internal dukkha was to completely abandon their attachment to the Zenin name and its validation. This cessation of attachment was the spiritual freedom. However, he also knew the clan would deploy every available sorcerer, including the dreaded 'Kukuru' squad, to hunt down runaways, making the physical nirodha (cessation of clan membership) impossible in this environment. The path to freedom was spiritual, but the consequences were material death, proving the Zenin clan was fundamentally a prison designed to perpetuate suffering.
Magga (The Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering): This was the missing piece, the philosophical divergence. The Zenin offered a path: the Path of the Sword, a brutal, straight line toward absolute power enforced by violence.
Nayona knew the only true path was the Eightfold Path, a subtle, winding route toward enlightenment. He saw the components missing in the twins: Right View (seeing the Zenin clan as a source of suffering, not worth), Right Intention (seeking peace, not power), and Right Effort (striving for liberation, not validation).
He realized his role was not to fight the Zenin path, but to quietly illuminate the true one, knowing that only by adopting the Magga could the twins find lasting release. This insight brought a profound, heavy weight to his small shoulders.
As the sisters resumed their painful, inefficient spar, pushing each other toward self-destruction, Nayona focused his silent, grey Cursed Energy on them, not to attack or interfere, but to observe and mentally chart the flow of their spirits. He was learning how the Zenin's emotional cruelty manifested in their Cursed Energy signatures, cataloging their psychic wounds.
Maki's Cursed Energy was negligible, barely a flicker a curse in the Zenin sense. But the cursed energy surrounding her was dense, compressed, and chaotic, radiating pure Institutional Resentment not her own initial malice, but the collective hatred of the clan against those with no technique. It acted like a heavy, invisible counterweight, slowing her down spiritually and energetically, even as her body excelled. This invisible burden was her greatest obstacle, a psychic gravity field of scorn that she had to constantly fight against with pure physical will.
Mai's Cursed Energy, meanwhile, was like a thick, stagnant puddle plentiful, but heavy. It was infused with Self-Pity and Jealousy. Every move she made was dampened by the weight of her own negative attachments, making her powerful energy inefficient and difficult to refine into a technique. She was strong enough by birthright, but her spirit was broken and weak, ensuring her failure.
The instructor called a brief, grudging break, throwing two lukewarm bottles of water into the dirt, deliberately placing them far from the exhausted twins, forcing them to scramble to retrieve them, further reinforcing their inferior status through petty humiliation.
It was then that Naoya Zenin, older, impeccably dressed in immaculate training robes, and radiating smug, arrogant confidence, sauntered over. He paused directly beside Nayona, explicitly ignoring him as if he were a piece of low furniture, before turning his attention to the twins.
He moved with the precise, deliberate arrogance inherent to his Projection Sorcery, every step a statement of superiority. He looked at the bruised, sweat-soaked figures with a predatory smirk that promised deep psychological pain.
"Look at you two," Naoya sneered, his voice cutting like glass. "Fighting like stray dogs over scraps. The Ha unit should be ashamed to have you. You are a stain on the Zenin legacy of power, and an insult to the Projection Sorcery I inherited. You're lucky you even get to train here."
He addressed Maki first, his voice dripping with syrupy condescension, savoring every syllable. "You, the physical freak. Your cursed energy is garbage. You're an anomaly a failed experiment. You might as well train with the servants, because that's where your spiritual status lies. Your efforts are just pathetic noise. You'll never be seen, no matter how hard you strain those muscles."
He then turned to Mai, his tone shifting to cruel dismissal, yet laced with a dangerous familiarity. "And you, the lazy failure. You have the energy, the gift our ancestors provided, yet you have no will to use it effectively. You're just a half-measure, a compromise, incapable of achieving anything definitive. Why bother trying to live up to her strength when you could just surrender? You're equally worthless in the eyes of the family."
Naoya, the clan's golden child, understood the Zenin game perfectly: shatter the spirit, then force the broken pieces to conform into a desired, subservient shape. His words weren't just spite; they were a deliberate, weaponized infusion of Cursed Energy designed to feed on the twins' suffering and attachment, making their dukkha his own spiritual fuel and reinforcing his own fragile ego. This was the Zenin Way: weaponize suffering to consolidate the power of the successful few.
As the twins silently simmered in their humiliation, their eyes locked in a mixture of shared pain and mutual hatred, Nayona felt a deep, wrenching compassion a violation of the very detachment he strived for. The Bodhisattva vow demanded action, even if subtle.
His hand instinctively traced the pattern of his acorn beads, a physical reminder of his commitment to help others find peace. He saw the same dukkha in Naoya the man was suffering from the attachment to his own superiority, destined to fall just as spectacularly when someone stronger inevitably arrived.
Maki, you crave their respect. Mai, you crave your twin's failure. Naoya, you crave your own flawless reflection. All are chains of Tṛṣṇā. All are walking the path of Dukkha.
He understood now why his own technique was so abhorrent to the elders. The Saṃsāra Cycle offered illumination and release from suffering. The Zenin clan demanded the perpetuation of suffering for power, requiring dukkha to run their engine. His very existence, embodying acceptance and detachment, was an antithesis to their foundational principles.
He looked away, turning his gaze toward the towering walls of the compound, the prison that kept them all bound. His past life taught him that to interfere directly in the cycles of others was a path to further bondage. Yet, to allow this immense, clan-manufactured suffering to continue was a failure of the Bodhisattva vow he carried in his soul.
Nayona knew he couldn't stop the wheel from turning on the grand scale, but he vowed to offer the twins a path off the Zenin Wheel when the time came.
He would be the quiet, grey force of liberation in a house of blinding, destructive red and blue. He would wait for the perfect moment of their spiritual exhaustion to offer them the path to Nirvana freedom from the Zenin name, and freedom from the crippling, codependent hatred they felt for each other.
His path to enlightenment would begin by helping these two lost souls find their own.