Chapter Sixty-four: The Price Is Death
The hours passed with surprising speed, each minute dissolving into the next like sugar in hot tea. There I was, sitting in the passenger seat of a black sedan that smelled faintly of old leather and cigarette smoke, while an unfamiliar driver maneuvered through the streets with mechanical precision. In the backseat sat old man Shuji, his weathered face pressed against the window like a child seeing the ocean for the first time, though his eyes held none of a child's wonder—they were heavy with something darker, something that made the skin on my arms prickle.
Next to him sat his granddaughter Hana, and I found myself stealing glances at her through the front mirror, quick little peeks that probably looked more suspicious than I intended. The girl couldn't have been more than ten, but there was something coiled beneath her surface that made my instincts scream. Most people walk through life like open books, their pages fluttering in the wind for anyone to read, but Hana? Hana was a locked diary written in a language I'd never seen.
Her cursed energy pulsed beneath her skin like a second heartbeat, visible only to those with special eyes or overwhelming intuitive abilities—fortunate for me that I happened to possess exactly that. I'd learned enough about cursed energy to recognize when something was fundamentally different, and this girl radiated difference like a furnace radiates heat. She sat perfectly still, her small hands folded in her lap, her dark eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance that probably existed only in her imagination. No fidgeting. No questions. Just... patience.
The logical part of my brain—the part that hadn't completely melted from the absurdity of my situation—pieced together the obvious conclusion. The Zenin clan head needed her. Not because she was cute, not because she made a good political pawn, but because her cursed technique was almost certainly powerful enough to locate that bastard Kenjaku. In a world where information meant everything, a girl who could find anything was worth more than gold.
Screeeech.
The car tires protested against the asphalt as the driver brought us to a sudden stop, the sound stretching out like a scream that didn't want to end.
"It seems we've arrived, sir," the driver announced, his voice flat and professional, like he'd said those exact words ten thousand times before.
I turned to look at the pair in the back. Old man Shuji moved first, his joints popping audibly as he shifted—crack, pop, crack—sounds that made me wince internally. He reached for the door handle with a hand that trembled slightly, though whether from age or fear, I couldn't tell.
"Don't worry, my child," he said to Hana, his voice carrying a tenderness that seemed almost painful coming from such a weathered throat. "There's nothing to fear. I'm right here."
The little girl did something that made my eyebrows shoot toward my hairline. She smiled. Not a nervous smile, not a brave smile trying to mask terror, but a genuine, almost amused smile that seemed wildly inappropriate given our surroundings. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she looked up at her grandfather, and she might as well have been heading to an amusement park.
"Don't worry, Grandpa, I understand," she replied, her voice carrying a weight that no ten-year-old's voice should possess.
I blinked. Twice. Three times.
The communication that passed between them required no words—I could read it in the way Shuji's shoulders relaxed slightly, in the way Hana's small hand found his and squeezed once before letting go. For beings cursed with abilities that made them targets, they'd developed their own language of reassurance.
Minutes later—though time felt slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands—we stood within the Zenin clan's compound. The air here tasted different, heavier, thick with accumulated cursed energy that had soaked into the very stones over generations. Naoya Zenin materialized from somewhere in that way of his, the kind of entrance that made you wonder if he'd been standing there the whole time and you'd simply failed to perceive him.
He stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could count the threads in his expensive kimono. His eyes, those manic eyes that seemed to vibrate with barely contained narcissism, fixed on my face like he was memorizing my pores.
"Well done. Well done!" His voice rang out, sharp and commanding, bouncing off the ancient walls. "You've brought them. This deserves a reward."
I said nothing. What was there to say? Thanks, I guess? Please don't kill me later?
Then his gaze shifted, sliding past me like water around a stone, landing on old man Shuji before finally coming to rest on Hana. And here's where things got interesting: the girl met his stare directly. Not with defiance, not with the frozen terror most people displayed when caught in Naoya's crosshairs, but with a calm that bordered on supernatural. It was like watching a mouse lock eyes with a cat and simply... not care.
Thump, thump, thump.
My heart performed an enthusiastic drum solo in my chest as I processed this. Usually, cursed energy users could feel power differentials—it pressed against their senses like atmospheric pressure before a storm. The weak instinctively cowered before the strong. It was practically a law of nature in this world.
So why wasn't Hana cowering?
I found myself respecting her in ways I couldn't fully articulate. There was something almost admirable about a child who could stand before a monster and yawn. Was she fearless? Insane? Or did she possess some hidden ace that made Naoya's power seem like a candle before the sun?
My brain spun its wheels, generating hypotheses that all felt equally plausible and equally useless. In the end, I did what I always did when overwhelmed by uncertainty: I shut my mouth and waited to see what would happen.
I didn't have to wait long.
We were guided—herded, really—toward the clan's temple. The building rose before us like a sleeping beast, its curved roof silhouetted against a sky that had somehow turned gray without my noticing. Candles flickered everywhere, their flames dancing to rhythms no wind provided, casting long shadows that seemed to move with intentions of their own. Seals covered every surface—pressed into wooden pillars, carved into stone floors, even painted onto paper lanterns that hung from the ceiling like glowing fruit.
The message was clear: something ritualistic was about to unfold.
Old man Shuji stared at the temple, his expression shifting through emotions too quickly for me to catalog. Fear, yes. Resignation, definitely. But underneath both, something that looked almost like... hope? Strange time for hope, if you asked me.
I kept my own face carefully blank, playing the role of someone who understood what was happening. In reality, I understood approximately nothing. The original body's memories offered zero insight into Zenin clan rituals. My own experiences offered even less. I was standing in a supernatural temple watching preparations for a ceremony I couldn't begin to comprehend, and my only strategy was look like you belong here.
Was this some kind of enhancement ritual, designed to amplify Hana's cursed technique? Or maybe a protective ceremony meant to shield her from her own power's backlash? Both possibilities seemed equally valid. Neither felt completely right.
Hana, meanwhile, was conducting her own investigation. Her head swiveled like an owl's as she took in every detail—the candles, the seals, the masked figures who had begun to file into the space. And still, no fear. Instead, her face glowed with something that looked almost like delight.
"Grandpa!" she exclaimed, her voice carrying that particular pitch of childish excitement that makes adults' hearts melt against their will. "What are we going to do here? It looks amazing!"
Shuji crouched down to her level, his knees popping again—crack, crack—and placed weathered hands on her small shoulders. "There's nothing to worry about, Hana. Everything will be just fine." His voice held steady, but I caught the micro-tremor in his jaw, the way his thumbs pressed just a little too hard into her sleeves.
The masked individuals continued their procession, their faces hidden behind simple paper masks marked with Japanese characters. Nothing fancy—just the word "barrier" written in black ink that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. They moved with synchronized steps, their feet making soft pad, pad, pad sounds against the wooden floor as they took their positions around the temple's perimeter.
And then Naobito Zenin arrived.
The old clan head moved with that deceptive lightness that spoke of immense power carefully contained. His eyes, sharp and calculating behind his perpetually half-lidded gaze, swept across the scene before landing on Hana. Something flickered in their depths—recognition? Assessment? Both?
"Don't worry, Shuji," Naobito said, his voice carrying that particular gravel texture of a lifelong smoker. "Nothing will happen to the girl. She's certainly stronger than she appears."
I caught the glance he shot at Hana—a look that suggested he understood things about her that the rest of us could only guess at. It was the look of someone reading the final page of a book while everyone else was still on chapter one.
Then he did something interesting. He looked at me.
More preparation time passed—minutes bleeding into each other like watercolors on wet paper. The masked figures completed their arrangements, adjusting candles by millimeters, checking seals for proper placement, performing the kind of minute adjustments that suggested lives depended on getting everything exactly right.
Finally, one of them approached Shuji and gently reached for Hana's hand.
The old man's arm twitched, muscles bunching as instinct screamed at him to pull his granddaughter back, to run, to do anything other than surrender her to whatever waited in that temple's heart. But almost immediately, the tension drained from his frame. His hand fell back to his side, fingers curling into a loose fist.
He'd realized what I'd realized: resistance was pointless. We were in the Zenin compound, surrounded by Zenin sorcerers, about to participate in a Zenin ritual. The only way out was through.
Hana disappeared into a side room, her small form swallowed by shadows that seemed almost hungry. I watched the door close behind her and wondered what was happening on the other side.
Thirty minutes passed. Maybe forty-five. Time in that temple moved strangely, stretched and compressed by anticipation and the heavy weight of accumulated cursed energy that pressed against my senses like a physical force.
Click.
The door slid open, and Hana emerged.
She wore different clothes now—traditional Japanese priestess robes that hung slightly too large on her small frame, white and red fabric that rustled with each step. Her hair had been rearranged, pulled back from her face in a style that made her look older, more serious. In her hands, she clutched a small book whose pages I couldn't see.
They guided her to the temple's center, positioning her on a cushion that had been placed there specifically. She sat cross-legged, the book open in her lap, her eyes moving across pages that I desperately wanted to read.
And still, despite everything—the ominous preparations, the masked figures, the heavy ritual atmosphere—she showed no signs of distress. If anything, she looked... comfortable. At home. Like this was exactly where she belonged.
This, more than anything else, earned my respect. Either this girl had serious psychological issues (possible), or she possessed courage so profound it bordered on insanity (also possible). In this world, the difference between the two was often academic.
Naobito materialized beside me, his presence so sudden that I had to physically restrain myself from jumping. He leaned close, his breath warm against my ear as he spoke in a voice meant only for me.
"You can see her cursed energy, can't you, boy?"
Lying seemed pointless. I gave a small nod, my chin dipping and rising in the barest possible motion.
"Yes."
The clan head's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, his wrinkled face creasing into something that might have been approval or might have been calculation—with Naobito, it was impossible to tell.
"Use your eyes. Monitor her condition. If you notice any change in her cursed energy, tell me immediately."
No hesitation. "Understood."
It wasn't bravery that made me agree so quickly—it was self-interest. Whatever happened here, however this ritual unfolded, I needed to be useful. Useful people survived. Useful people got closer to their goals. And my goal, the single thought that occupied my mind like a parasite, was finding Kenjaku.
I activated my Sharingan.
The world shifted.
Cursed energy flooded my perception, painting the temple in colors that didn't exist in nature. The candles burned with it, their flames feeding on something more than wax. The seals pulsed with it, each character glowing like a live wire. And everywhere, everywhere, the masked figures contributed their own energy to the growing web that surrounded us.
But the true center—the heart of this entire production—was Hana.
Her cursed energy swirled within her like a contained storm, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. I watched it pulse, felt it hunger for something I couldn't identify. And in that moment, I understood that whatever was about to happen, it had been building toward this for a very long time.
The ritual began.
The masked figures started to chant—low, rhythmic sounds that vibrated in my chest and made my teeth ache. Their voices rose and fell in patterns that seemed to follow no musical logic, yet somehow created a framework that the cursed energy in the room eagerly occupied.
Hana's smile faded.
Her expression went blank, her eyes unfocusing as something behind them began to stir. I leaned forward unconsciously, my Sharingan drinking in every detail as her cursed energy started to move.
At first, it was subtle—small shifts, minor adjustments, the kind of thing I might have missed if I hadn't been watching so intently. But then, like a dam breaking, her power exploded outward.
The energy that poured from her small body defied belief. It rose like smoke from a fire, except this smoke had intentions, had weight, had a presence that pressed against my soul and demanded recognition. It coiled and twisted, gathering above her head, forming shapes that my mind struggled to process.
A mirror.
A mirror made entirely of cursed energy, its surface shimmering with reflections that didn't correspond to anything in the physical world. It hovered above Hana like a malevolent halo, and as I watched, I realized that the girl herself had changed.
Her short black hair had lengthened, growing several inches in the space of seconds, and now floated around her head as if suspended in water. The movement wasn't natural—it responded to the flow of cursed energy, rising and falling with each pulse of power that emanated from the mirror above her.
Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump.
My heart raced. This was beyond anything I'd anticipated.
"It's working. She's activating her cursed technique."
Naobito's voice reached me as if from very far away, his words struggling to penetrate my shock. I tore my gaze from Hana long enough to glance at him—he was watching the proceedings with an expression of deep satisfaction, nodding slowly as if confirming something he'd always suspected.
If the clan head wasn't panicking, I told myself, I shouldn't panic either. Easy to say. Much harder to actually accomplish.
I forced my breathing to slow, forced my attention back to the task at hand. Monitor her cursed energy. Report any changes. Simple instructions. Follow them.
The ritual continued.
Hana's power kept building, kept shaping itself, kept forming the mirror above her head until it achieved its final form—a massive construct perhaps five meters across, its surface silver at the edges but dark at the center, like a portal to somewhere that light couldn't reach.
And then, finally, the energy stopped expanding.
It simply... settled. Adjusted. Found its equilibrium.
Hana—no, not Hana, something using Hana—spoke.
The voice that emerged from her small throat made my blood run cold. It was deeper than her normal voice, older, carrying harmonics that suggested multiple speakers layered on top of each other. It echoed slightly, bouncing off the temple walls in ways that normal sound shouldn't.
"What do you want?"
Such simple words. If someone had heard them without context, they might have imagined a wish-granting spirit, some benevolent entity offering to fulfill desires. But I knew—knew—that this was something else entirely. Something that demanded payment. Something that collected debts in currency most people couldn't afford to pay.
Naobito gestured with one aged finger, pointing toward an individual who stood at the edge of the ritual space. An old man, so ancient he seemed almost mummified, his skin hanging loose on bones that had long since stopped caring about appearances. He moved forward at the signal, each step carrying the weight of someone walking toward their own execution.
Step. Step. Step.
The sound of his sandals against the wooden floor seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that had fallen over the temple.
He stopped five meters from Hana—five meters exactly, as if he'd measured the distance with precision—and raised his head to meet the mirror's empty gaze.
"I want you to tell me the location of the person who attacked young master Naoya."
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. This old man, this walking skeleton, had come here to ask a question that would cost him everything.
His body seized.
I saw it happen through my Sharingan—saw the cursed energy from the mirror reach out and touch him, saw something vital begin to drain from his frame. He stood frozen, trembling violently, his face contorted with pain he refused to vocalize.
The mirror above Hana began to move.
Its rotation produced no sound I could hear, but I felt it—a grinding sensation deep in my bones, like tectonic plates shifting miles beneath the earth's surface. Around and around it went, its surface rippling with images that hadn't yet resolved into anything recognizable.
And then, from Hana's throat, that terrible voice spoke again:
"The price is death."
Thump.
My heart stopped. Restarted. Accelerated.
I watched the cursed energy from the mirror wrap around the old man like invisible snakes, watched his life force begin to fade, watched the colors of his soul—if souls had colors—drain away second by second. This wasn't metaphor. This wasn't symbolic. His actual existence was being extracted as payment for information.
And the old man, this walking corpse who had probably been dead for years already, spoke his final word:
"Agreed."
The mirror's surface cleared.
An image appeared—not a photograph, not a memory, but something else entirely. Something that showed the present moment from a perspective no human could possess.
I saw them. Six figures.
The first had a head like a volcano and a single eye that burned with malevolent intelligence. Jogo. I recognized him immediately, my stomach dropping at the confirmation that my worst fears were accurate.
The second was Mahito, his stitched face twisted into an expression I couldn't read.
The third: Dagon.
The fourth: Hanami.
The fifth: that bastard Kenjaku, his stolen body carrying his cursed soul like a parasite in a host.
And the sixth—I sucked in a breath so sharp it hurt—the sixth was Geto Suguru. Sitting with them. Relaxing with them. Basking in sunlight that shouldn't have touched him because he was dead, he was supposed to be dead, but there he was, impossibly present in an image that couldn't lie.
The scene held for perhaps three seconds before dissolving into nothing.
And then the old man who had asked the question began to rise.
His body lifted from the ground, defying gravity with a slowness that made the violation of physics somehow worse. He floated upward, upward, until he hovered several feet above the temple floor, and then—
Rrrrrip.
The sound was worse than anything I'd ever heard. Wet and dry at the same time, tearing and cracking and separating in ways that made my stomach rebel. His body came apart piece by piece, skin peeling from muscle, muscle tearing from bone, organs sliding out of cavities that could no longer contain them.
Blood sprayed across the temple floor in patterns that looked almost artistic.
Bones fell like rain, clattering against the wood with sounds that would haunt my nightmares.
Flesh splattered in chunks that twitched occasionally, nerve endings still firing in the absence of the brain that had commanded them.
And through it all, the old man made no sound. Not a scream. Not a whimper. He'd paid his price in silence, and silence was all that remained.
I wanted to vomit.
I'd seen death before—plenty of it, in this world and others. I'd watched people die in ways that would shatter normal minds. But something about this... the casual cruelty of it, the transactional nature of the violence, the fact that a ten-year-old girl had been the instrument of this destruction...
My throat burned. My stomach heaved. I forced it down through sheer will, clamping every muscle in my body until the urge passed.
No one else seemed affected. The masked figures continued their chanting as if nothing had happened. Naobito watched with clinical detachment. Even Hana's grandfather, who had rushed forward the moment his granddaughter collapsed, seemed more concerned with her well-being than with the scattered remains of the man who'd just been obliterated.
Shuji gathered Hana in his arms, tears streaming down his weathered face, his voice cracking as he whispered apologies into her hair. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."
But I saw it—the relief beneath his grief. The way his hand pressed against her chest, checking for a heartbeat. The way his shoulders dropped when he felt her breath.
Her chest rose and fell. Rose and fell.
Alive. She was alive.
I exhaled slowly, unaware until that moment that I'd been holding my breath. The relief that washed through me was irrational—I didn't know this girl, owed her nothing, had in fact been partially responsible for bringing her here—but it was real nonetheless. I didn't want to be a murderer. Especially not of ten-year-olds.
But my relief curdled quickly as the image from the mirror replayed in my mind.
Geto Suguru. Alive. With them.
Naobito stroked his chin thoughtfully, his fingers making soft scritch, scritch sounds against his stubble. He turned, walked several steps, then paused.
"It appears they're on an island," he said, his voice carrying across the temple with casual authority. "But I doubt that's accurate. Since the girl's technique allowed us to see the location, that means she now knows exactly where they are. When she wakes, she'll tell us."
And with that pronouncement, he departed, his footsteps fading into silence as he disappeared into the compound's depths.
I stood there, surrounded by the remnants of ritual and the scattered pieces of a man who had given everything for information, and tried to process what I'd learned.
So that was her power. A shikigami in the form of a mirror, summoned through some kind of ritual trance, capable of answering questions directly. The mechanism seemed straightforward enough: ask a question, pay the price, receive the answer. The price, apparently, was negotiable—or at least, the shikigami stated its terms and the asker could accept or refuse.
The old man had accepted. And paid with his existence.
I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.
I didn't know if this was the full extent of Hana's technique or merely one application of a broader ability. Didn't know what other secrets her small body might contain. Didn't know anything, really, except one crucial detail:
She now knew where Kenjaku was.
And soon, so would I.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
The sound of my own fingers running through my hair seemed unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet. Around me, the masked figures began to dismantle the ritual space, extinguishing candles and removing seals with practiced efficiency. Hana remained in her grandfather's arms, unconscious but breathing, her small face peaceful in a way that seemed almost obscene given what had just happened.
I looked at the blood on the floor. The bones. The pieces of a human being who had existed an hour ago and now existed only as biology without context.
This world, I thought. This fucking world.
But even as the horror threatened to overwhelm me, a colder part of my mind was already calculating, already planning, already figuring out how to use this information to achieve my goals. Kenjaku's location. Finally, after all this time, a solid lead.
Hana would wake. She would tell us what she'd seen. And I would be there when she did.
I turned away from the remains and began walking toward the exit, my footsteps echoing in the suddenly cavernous space. Behind me, Shuji's whispered apologies continued, a litany of guilt and relief that followed me like a ghost.
Step. Step. Step.
The sound of my own feet. The only sound that mattered now.
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End of Chapter.
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