East Port Area — a battlefield of ruins.
Kashimo Hajime shook his wrist, viscous blood dripping from his fingertips. The player at his feet lay silent — body twisted, embedded in the cracked asphalt.
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue, his eyes glinting with bored annoyance. "So boring."
He looked up at the gloomy sky cloaked by the Culling Game barrier, voice dropping into a low growl of longing. "Higuruma!!! where are you hiding? Come out and fight!"
Just as his words faded—
BZZZZ—! An ear-splitting tremor swept across all of Tokyo!
It felt as though countless taut strings had been plucked at once, each shrieking with unbearable tension. Then came the sharp, glass-like sound—
CRACK! CRACK—CRACK—CRACK!
Like a colossal dome of glass about to shatter, the sound rang dense and suffocating. Kashimo's head snapped up, his pupils constricting sharply. From above, countless dazzling blue-white fissures appeared across the translucent barrier that enshrouded the sky, each glowing with an ominous, frigid light.
They were slashes — countless, minuscule, yet lethally precise — blooming and weaving across the heavens like a spiderweb of destruction.
"What is that?!" Kashimo's body tensed, cursed lightning exploding across his frame.
A chill ran down his spine. His instincts screamed danger. Then his gaze locked onto the sky's center — where the cracks converged.
A figure hovered there.
White hair whipped violently in the chaotic air currents, black clothes flapping in the pressure.
He held something in his right hand. No — not something. Someone.
A young man in tattered robes, limbs severed at the roots, regenerating sluggishly with Reverse Cursed Technique. His body was drenched in blood, his face pallid and broken.
Kashimo's eyes widened instantly. His lips parted soundlessly. He recognized that face.
Kenjaku?!
The thousand-year schemer — the puppet master behind the Jujutsu World itself — was dangling like a rag doll, clutched in another's hand.
Kashimo froze, his mind momentarily blank. That cold, emotionless figure in the sky — who was he?
Tensei Tensei lifted his gaze toward the fading blue-white fractures. The remnants of his slashes flickered faintly across the collapsing barrier.
"...Nero, you cannot destroy the barrier," Kenjaku rasped, blood gurgling in his throat. His words came through the bubbling sound of torn lungs. "This barrier is the fruit of countless years of work. Even if you break the one over Tokyo, the others will repair it."
He coughed, then forced a hoarse, mirthless laugh as fresh flesh bloomed from his stumps.
"You think this will—"
"Is that so?" Tensei's voice cut through him — calm, quiet, and absolute. His white hair fell over one eye as he spoke.
"Then I'll just destroy all ten of your 'carefully prepared' barrier points at once." Kenjaku's regenerating eyes bulged.
'Ten?' How could he know the exact number? Nero wasn't supposed to even care about the Jujutsu World! Before he could process the thought, Tensei's figure blurred — and vanished.
A faint ripple distorted the rooftop of the tallest hotel in the East Port Area. Tensei appeared there, still holding Kenjaku. He dropped him casually with a dull thud.
"Cough—!" Kenjaku hit the ground hard, his half-regrown limbs rupturing again. Tensei ignored him. His left hand closed loosely.
Bzzzt—!
A katana materialized in his palm — simple, black-corded hilt, plain wooden sheath. No markings, no cursed aura. Just steel.
He hung the Yamato at his waist and rested his hand on the new sword's hilt, tapping the sheath lightly with his knuckles.
"Shing—"
As the blade slid out by half an inch, the world itself seemed to collapse. An unseen pressure crushed downward — not cursed energy, but a gravitational weight that warped the air.
It swept across the entire East Port Area like the world had inverted.
Kenjaku's back slammed against the rooftop, cold sweat soaking his tattered robes.
The power was alien — empty of cursed energy's taint, yet infinitely heavier, suffocating, absolute.
All across Tokyo, sorcerers hiding among the ruins dropped to their knees, palms pressed to the ground to stay conscious. A special-grade cursed spirit whimpered in agony, curling into itself. Culling Game players shook uncontrollably as their cursed energy spiraled into chaos — utterly useless before this presence.
"What… what is this…?" Kenjaku's voice trembled like paper in the wind. His newly formed flesh began to crack and peel. Tensei continued drawing the blade, slow and deliberate. Its mirror-silver surface caught his half-lowered eyes, and with every inch, the invisible net of pressure tightened around the world.
Kashimo, mid-charge, halted abruptly. Lightning hissed around his body, his feet nailed to the ground.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A heartbeat — or perhaps every heartbeat within range — pounded in unison beneath the crushing weight. Tensei glanced at Kenjaku's terrified expression, a faint, cold smile curving his lips.
"Shing—KLAANG!"
The final inch slid free.
The oppressive force peaked — yet the revealed sword was… broken. Its blade was weathered, its edge marred by dried, crimson stains that resembled ancient blood.
But heat shimmered faintly from those patterns, pulsing like a living flame.
Kenjaku's eyes widened in disbelief. This? This broken sword?
Tensei inverted the hilt, pointing the tip downward, and raised it to his lips.
"Ryūjin Jakka," he murmured, his tone as calm as the still before a wildfire. "If he moves, burn him to death." Then, with a sharp flick—
PFFT—!
The crimson blade plunged through Kenjaku's chest, pinning him to the rooftop.
His cursed energy faltered — Reverse Cursed Technique collapsed before it could activate. Then came the heat. A bone-deep, searing agony exploded from the wound, spreading through his organs and veins like molten steel. The crimson veins on the blade flared to life, glowing with molten light. A translucent ring of flame encircled Kenjaku's body, its faint hiss rising with each breath he failed to take.
Tensei dusted off his hands and turned to face the cityscape, his coat whipping in the wind. Behind him, Kenjaku's body convulsed violently. His cursed energy bled out into the sword, devoured by the living flame. He couldn't even lift a finger without feeling his vessels burn to ash.
"Kenjaku," Tensei spoke without turning. "A thousand-year Culling Game, wasn't it?"
He turned his head slightly — his eyes, beneath his white hair, cold as frozen iron.
"I'll show you that all conspiracies are meaningless before true power."
The wind howled — and his figure faded into a drifting shadow, vanishing.
Kenjaku's eyes darted wildly. A chance! He gathered the last of his energy—
BZZZZ! The blade in his chest trembled.
"EAAAHHHHHH—!!!"
Flames surged through his soul. His scream echoed over the ruins. The crimson veins on the sword glowed like molten magma, pouring unbearable heat into his body. Even his spirit felt incinerated, until the thought of resistance itself turned to ash.
He collapsed, twitching, eyes glassy and wide open. The sky above burned.
Blue-white fissures still flickered like scars across the heavens. Tensei's words rang in his mind:
True power.Could it be that his thousand years of careful scheming… would end here, in the hands of such a monster?
Across the ruins, Kashimo's lightning faltered. He stared at the pinned, burning figure on the rooftop, the fury in his heart drowned by awe and dread. That sword — that broken sword — radiated a force his instincts couldn't withstand.
An energy that screamed one thing only: Do not touch. Do not resist. Burn.
Kenjaku's body melted into the rooftop, flesh blackened and still. In his dying mind, memories of a thousand years replayed — the skins he'd worn, the wars he'd ignited, the lives he'd used and discarded.
Everything — every move, every victory — shattered in an instant. A bitter, broken laugh slipped through his bloody lips.
And then—
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH—!
Above, the blue-white cracks ignited, flooding the entire East Port Area in blinding light. The sound followed—
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—BOOOOM!!!
Like a billion glass panes exploding at once, the sky itself screamed. The barrier that once sealed Japan shattered in a storm of glowing fragments, falling like meteors upon the ruins below.
Kenjaku's eyes widened one last time.
"Ten barriers… simultaneously?! How—how long has it even been?!" His words came out ragged, blood bubbling from his lips.
"How could it fall… so fast?!"
His final defense — the work of a thousand years — collapsed in under three minutes.
The sky fell. And with it, everything Kenjaku had ever built.