Far from any village or clan estate, a lone traveller walked along an old, forgotten path.
He wore the body of a simple scholar — middle-aged, unremarkable, with neatly tied black hair and plain robes. No one would look at him twice—just another low-level sorcerer wandering the countryside.
But if anyone had bothered to look closer, they would have noticed something deeply wrong.
The man's eyes were ancient. Cold. Far too intelligent for the unassuming face it sat in.
And along the top of his head, a line of stitches ran…
Kenjaku had been moving for days.
He had heard the rumours, from his many eyes and ears in the dark; Two clans erased—a porcelain curse with a spinning crown of black shards. A Fly King now serving at her side. And a mysterious associate of the Hollow Blade who had barely escaped with his life.
All of it intrigued him.
So he came to see for himself.
Kenjaku stopped at the edge of a very far-off ridge, looking down at the Sando Estate in the far distance. Even from here he could see the changes — new stone walls, a half-rebuilt main hall, and a swarm of fly curses working like a coordinated labour force.
A slow, unsettling smile spread across his borrowed face.
"…How interesting."
He watched Himiko seated on her throne, regal and commanding, while Kuro — still clearly injured — directed the swarm with obvious frustration.
Kenjaku tilted his head, eye gleaming with ancient curiosity.
"This is going to be very entertaining."
The scholar's body began to sink into the shadow of a tree, melting away as if he had never been there.
A couple of minutes later…
From a closer, high ridge, hidden deep in the treeline and concealed behind multiple layers of subtle, cursed energy veils, Kenjaku watched.
He had to be careful. Extremely careful.
Himiko's senses were growing sharper every day. The Fly King's swarm patrolled large areas. And those four council observers were still hiding nearby, watching like frightened mice.
So Kenjaku stayed far back, using ancient techniques to suppress his presence to almost nothing. He wasn't hiding with brute force — he was hiding with centuries of experience.
His cold eyes gleamed with fascination as he observed Himiko on her throne and Kuro struggling with the hole in his chest.
"…How interesting," he murmured to himself, voice soft and layered.
"Not a normal curse… but a vengeful spirit born from pure human betrayal and hatred. She was never 'created' by the world's imbalance. She was made by her own clan's fear of a woman in power."
Kenjaku tilted his head slightly, ancient mind already calculating.
"Yet the timing is no coincidence. The Gojo boy's Six Eyes have tipped the balance of cursed energy too far toward humanity. The world is correcting itself… and she is one of its perfect answers."
His lips curled into a slow, unsettling smile.
"If one vengeful spirit born from human betrayal has already evolved this far, then the world's correction is accelerating. More curses will be born soon. Stronger ones. Deadlier ones. The true Disaster Curses may awaken earlier than planned."
He chuckled quietly, the sound unnatural and layered.
"I'll let her grow for now. Let her build her little empire. The stronger she becomes, the more useful she'll be when the time comes."
Kenjaku remained perfectly still, hidden in the shadows, watching every movement, every command, every small improvement in the estate.
Completely undetected.
Completely fascinated.
The game had only just begun.
The sun had dipped low, painting the sky in deep oranges and purples. Dusk was settling in — only minutes away from true nightfall. The observers' deadline was almost here.
Kenjaku watched silently from his hidden ridge, completely still.
In the courtyard below, Kuro finally stopped working. He dropped the heavy stone block he was carrying, green blood still slowly seeping from the slowly-closing hole in his chest. He turned toward Himiko, wings giving a tired buzz.
"Oi, Queen," he called out. "I never actually asked… how did you beat that bastard after I got knocked out? One second I'm fighting him, next thing I know everything goes black. How the hell did you win?"
Himiko lowered the scroll she'd been reading, one eyebrow raised.
"You were unconscious for quite a while," she said coolly. "When you went down… I felt something. The same feeling I had when I evolved into this form. Like my judgement was expanding across everything around me… and finding it all lacking."
She rose from her throne with elegant grace and stepped down into the courtyard.
She looked down at her own porcelain fingers, almost thoughtful.
"I had never done it on purpose before. That was the first time I consciously called upon it. The first time I truly understood what it was."
Kuro clicked his mandibles, waiting for more. When she stayed silent, he pressed.
"So what actually happened? I went down and then…?"
Himiko's expression didn't change. Her voice remained cool, regal, and perfectly composed.
"When you fell, the situation became… unacceptable. My power responded accordingly."
She didn't say "I panicked." She didn't say "I was desperate." She simply refused to let the words leave her lips.
Her ego would never allow her to admit something so… human.
"I awakened it in that moment," she continued, tone smooth and distant. "Not through training. Not through study. It simply answered when the moment demanded it."
Kuro stared at her for a second, then let out a low, knowing buzz.
"You're not gonna say it out loud, are you?" he muttered. "That you lost your cool because I got dropped."
Himiko's crimson eye flicked toward him, cold and imperious.
"I simply did what was necessary. Nothing more."
She paused, then added with that signature arrogance:
"Would you like to see it? I've not done it outside of battle before. Consciously, anyway."
Kuro scratched the back of his head, looking a little nervous.
"…Yeah, alright. Show me. But keep it small, yeah? I don't wanna get caught in whatever the hell was strong enough to drop that guy."
Himiko's lips curved into a small, dangerous smile.
"You were caught in it last time as well," she said sweetly. "While you were unconscious."
Before he could even take a step back, she raised her hand.
"Domain Expansion: Court of Fractured Oaths."
A slow, creeping wave of freezing white porcelain surged outward from her feet like liquid glass. It spread across the courtyard, turning dirt and broken stone into smooth, glossy white in seconds. Several fly-heads that were hovering near her throne were caught instantly — their tiny bodies locked mid-air, wings frozen in place, hovering like grotesque little statues.
Jagged black grudge shard pillars then violently erupted from the porcelain ground. They shot upward in sharp, irregular clusters — some thin and needle-like, others thick and twisted like dark crystal spears. The pillars trembled unsteadily, their surfaces rough and cracked, as if they were barely able to hold their own shape.
Kuro was completely engulfed. In an instant, he became a life-sized porcelain statue — wings halfway flared, one clawed hand still raised in protest, compound eyes frozen wide in pure betrayal.
Himiko stood there, breathing noticeably harder, her crown spinning much more slowly than usual. The technique was clearly draining her.
She let out a soft, elegant laugh, thoroughly amused despite the effort it took.
"Oh, dear… I may have misjudged the range again."
She tilted her head, admiring her frozen general with regal delight.
"You do make a rather handsome statue, General. Very expressive."
She exhaled slowly, voice slightly strained.
"It's still incomplete… so it spills outward uncontrollably and drains me heavily. I can only hold it for just under thirty seconds at most."
The frozen Kuro could only glare at her in silent, furious betrayal, completely unable to move or speak.
A few moments later the domain collapsed. The white porcelain melted away like frost under sunlight. The black shard pillars crumbled into dust. The frozen fly-heads dropped to the ground, twitching and disoriented.
Kuro staggered forward the moment he was free, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it.
"…That felt weird," he muttered, wings buzzing uneasily. "Like… I was being judged. Like something was looking at me and deciding I wasn't good enough. There's something else to it, isn't there? Something you haven't unlocked yet because it's still incomplete."
Himiko smiled, clearly pleased with his observation.
"Very perceptive, General."
From the treeline, the four observers remained completely still. The listening talisman they'd kept active from the very beginning glowed faintly in Gojo no Kenji's palm, carrying every word clearly.
"She just casually used it again," Kenji whispered, voice tight. "And she's training it like it's a normal technique."
Kamo no Jiro's face was pale.
"We know her clan. The Higuruma Clan had two innate techniques — Soul Fracture and the much rarer Soul Sentencing. She obviously inherited Soul Fracture… but it's been warped. Twisted into something completely different now that she's a vengeful spirit."
The Zenin scout swallowed hard.
"That 'judged' feeling the Fly King described… that sounds like a fragment of Soul Sentencing. The technique that weighs souls and passes judgement. She's mixing the two somehow."
The Abe onmyoji clutched his torn talismans, voice shaking.
"An incomplete domain with no barrier, porcelain that freezes everything it touches, and now this lingering sense of judgement… We still don't fully understand what she's become."
on the very far off ridge, Kenjaku's eyes gleamed with pure fascination.
A small, ancient cursed tool — a thin obsidian mirror no bigger than a coin — floated silently beside his ear. The surface shimmered faintly, reflecting the conversation below and transmitting every word with perfect clarity. He had slipped into the courtyard for just a moment when no one was looking — while Himiko was focused on her scroll and Kuro was busy directing the swarm on the far side of the estate. He stayed deep in the shadows, never stepping onto the platform itself. Instead, he flicked the tiny mirror from the darkness with precise cursed energy control, letting it land and wedge itself into a crack in the throne's armrest without ever exposing his position. Even Himiko's sharp senses didn't catch it.
He let out a soft, layered chuckle.
"…She's training an incomplete domain in her own courtyard. And the Fly King felt judged? How delightful. Even her own subordinate can sense it… the true nature of her power is still sealed away."
Kenjaku tilted his head slightly, his ancient mind already turning over the new information.
"An incomplete domain with no barrier… porcelain that freezes everything it touches… and now this lingering sense of judgement. She's somehow merged her clan's two techniques — Soul Fracture and Soul Sentencing — into something entirely new. How fascinating."
His unsettling smile widened, cold and calculating.
"This porcelain queen is going to break this world in ways even I didn't expect. The Gojo boy's Six Eyes may have tipped the balance… but she might be the one who shatters it completely."
The last light of the sun had completely vanished. The observers' time was officially up.