While the dawn began to bleed grey light over the Pacific, the high-security suite occupied by the Yotsuba Clan was alive with the low hum of encrypted transmissions.
In a virtual conference room, the projections of the Yotsuba Elders flickered like ghosts. These were the men and women who had once treated Tatsuya as a "Rettousei," and their voices now carried a sharp, jagged edge of anxiety.
"The reports from Okinawa are conclusive," one Elder rasped, his image distorted by a privacy shroud. "The 'Zero' successor possess the exact innate abilities as the Magian Company's Director. Decomposition and Regrowth at a scale that matches the Scorched Halloween."
"But there is a deviation," another voice added, more pressing. "Unlike Tatsuya, this Hanamiya Satoshi possesses a Double-Capacity MCA. He is not restricted. He can execute high-level Systematic Magic with the same fluidity as he dismantles a missile. He is the 'Perfected Tatsuya' that the Fourth Institute failed to produce."
"The Reikage have held this secret for seventeen years. If he masters those powers alongside modern systems, he will not just be a Strategic-Class Magician. He will be a god that even the Ten Master Clans cannot contain."
"And he is currently standing on a balcony with the Shiba daughter," the first Elder noted. "If the Yotsuba and the Reikage bloodlines merge... the world's power balance will dissolve into ash."
******
Unaware of the elders' panic, Satoshi stood before the door of the main suite. He didn't knock. He didn't need to. The door slid open before his hand even reached for the panel.
Shiba Tatsuya sat in a simple armchair, looking out at the morning sea. He didn't turn around. He didn't reach for a CAD. He simply existed, his psion pressure acting as an invisible barrier that would have crushed a lesser magician.
Satoshi stepped into the room. He felt the weight of Tatsuya's presence—a cold, absolute stillness that reminded him of the void he felt within his own magic.
"I know why you're here," Tatsuya said, his voice as calm as the deep ocean.
Satoshi didn't bow. He didn't show the subservience his own father demanded. He stood straight, his eyes locking onto the back of the legendary magician.
"Saori told me about your past," Satoshi began, his voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him. "She told me how you were treated, and how you mastered the very magic they said was impossible for you. My family... they call me a god, but they only taught me how to be a weapon. I have the capacity for everything, yet I feel like I'm drowning in my own power."
Satoshi took a deep breath, lowering his head slightly—not out of fear, but out of a warrior's respect.
"Train me. Teach me how to master Decomposition and Regrowth not as a curse, but as a tool. I don't want to be a 'Demon of the Zero' who accidentally unmakes the world. I want to be someone who can protect the person I love without fearing my own hands."
Tatsuya finally turned his chair. His Elemental Sight scanned Satoshi's MCA. He saw the raw, untapped potential—the "Double Capacity" that made Satoshi's mind a roaring furnace of information.
"My training is not like the Institute's," Tatsuya said, his eyes narrowing. "They taught you to calculate. I will teach you to perceive. If you fail, the feedback will not just cause a headache; it will unmake your mind. Are you prepared to stare into the abyss until it blinks?"
"I've been living in the abyss since I was eight," Satoshi replied, a grim, determined smile touching his lips. "It's time I started looking back."
Tatsuya stood up and walked toward the center of the room. He raised a single hand, and for a split second, the reality of the room seemed to flicker.
"Then let us begin," Tatsuya commanded. "First, show me your Regrowth. Not on a physical object, but on the air itself. Restore the atmosphere to its state from ten seconds ago without disturbing a single molecule of the oxygen I am currently breathing."
Satoshi's eyes widened. That level of precision—selective restoration—was something he had never even attempted. It required a processing density that would break a normal magician's brain.
But as he looked at Tatsuya's calm face, he realized this wasn't just a test of magic. It was a test of his soul.
******
The training room within the Okinawa facility was no longer a room; it was a pressurized chamber of raw, vibrating Psions. Tatsuya stood at the centre, his presence like an immovable mountain. He wasn't using a CAD; he was simply projecting his intent.
"Again," Tatsuya commanded. His voice was a flat, cold resonance that brooked no argument.
Satoshi was on his knees, his breath coming in ragged, bloody hitches. His Double-Capacity MCA was screaming. Tatsuya was firing a relentless barrage of Gram Demolition bolts—compressed masses of Psions designed to shatter a magician's Activation Sequence.
To survive, Satoshi had to use one "side" of his brain to calculate a Regrowth spell to keep his own nervous system from liquefying under the pressure, while using the other "side" to manifest Mist Dispersion to erase the incoming bolts.
"Your processing is split, but your focus is fractured," Tatsuya said, stepping closer. The air around him distorted as he prepared a high-level Pressure-type spell. "You are trying to be two people. You must be one 'Zero.' If you cannot unify your decomposition and your restoration, you are nothing but a sophisticated calculator."
Tatsuya unleashed a wave of Decomposition directed at Satoshi's own Eidos. It was a lethal move. Satoshi felt his very existence begin to fray at the edges—his skin beginning to flake into grey ash.
"AHHHH!" Satoshi roared, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, dual-colored light.
He didn't just cast a spell; he forced his two calculation channels to merge into a single, high-density stream of information. In a flash that blinded the room's sensors, he executed a perfect Gram Dispersion that didn't just stop Tatsuya's attack—it consumed it. At the same instant, his body flickered as Regrowth snapped his cells back into their "perfected" state.
He collapsed, face-first onto the reinforced floor, his mind a void of exhaustion. He had done it. He had stared into the Untouchable's abyss and survived.
Watching from behind a one-way reinforced barrier, Kuroba Mitsugu, the head of the Yotsuba's internal intelligence branch, watched the boy with a gaze that could freeze blood.
Beside him, his young Guardians remained silent, but Mitsugu's hand was clenched white on the railing. As a man who viewed the world through the lens of Yotsuba Clan supremacy, Satoshi represented a variable that defied all logic.
"He is a monster," Mitsugu whispered, his voice laced with a mixture of awe and absolute dread. "We spent decades fearing Tatsuya because he was the 'Sin' of our desperation—a weapon with no heart. But this boy... he is the answer to a prayer we never dared to make."
Mitsugu adjusted his glasses, his analytical mind already mapping out the geopolitical shifts. "He possesses the absolute destruction of the Shiba, but with the versatility of the Ten Master Clans. If he aligns with the Reikage, the Elder Senate becomes a direct threat to us. If he aligns with Saori... he becomes a kingmaker."
To Mitsugu, Satoshi was no longer a student or a romantic interest for Saori. He was an SSS-Rank Asset that needed to be either integrated into the Yotsuba or "managed" before he could unmake the current era.
"A 'Perfected Tatsuya'..." Mitsugu murmured, his eyes narrowing as Satoshi struggled to stand up. "The world isn't big enough for two of them. We must decide which shadow he will belong to."