[Naobito Zenin’s bloodshot eyes narrowed to slits. He stood rooted in place, chest rising and falling from the breakneck sprint.]

[But what truly rattled him wasn’t the physical toll. It was the sickening wrongness coiling through his body, a strange blockage choking his Innate Technique. Projection Sorcery had always moved through him like breathing, effortless as flexing a finger. Now it seized and stuttered, refusing to answer his call.]

[And his battle-hardened instincts pointed the blame squarely at the young man standing a few paces ahead, silhouetted against the headlights.]

[Squinting through the harsh white glare, Naobito tilted his head and studied you.]

[His gaze snagged on your clothing almost immediately. That distinctive dark uniform.]

[Jujutsu High...]

[A chill ran through him.]

[Then the details from what he’d witnessed during the pursuit struck like a bolt of lightning.]

[He was certain. The shikigami that had caught the exhausted Megumi mid-fall and carried him safely to the ground had not been summoned by the boy himself.]

[It had launched upward from below, rising from a shadow pool on the ground to intercept.]

[And that bird wreathed in crackling electricity... its wings were identical to the ones sprouting from the back of Megumi’s winged black hound. Not similar. A perfect match.]

[Could there be... a second person in this world capable of using the Ten Shadows Technique...?]

[The thought was absurd. It spat in the face of everything the jujutsu world understood about bloodline inheritance. Yet it lodged in his mind and refused to leave.]

[He was about to dismiss it as ridiculous when his whole body went rigid. Something clicked.]

[The Jujutsu High uniform... an identical version of someone else’s technique... and that bizarre lockdown just now...]

[His pupils contracted.]

[He remembered. At Tokyo Jujutsu High, in the same year as those two blindingly brilliant Special Grade monsters, Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, there was supposedly another student. Someone who kept a low profile but possessed a power that broke every rule in the book: the ability to perfectly replicate the Innate Techniques of others.]

[Is that... him?]

[Naobito’s fist clenched involuntarily. If this really was that replication sorcerer, why would he have any connection to the son Toji had left behind? How had he positioned himself so precisely at this exact chokepoint, standing like a guardian deity on the only road out? And what unknown technique had he copied to make Projection Sorcery choke and die in an instant?]

[Questions tangled into a hopeless knot behind his eyes.]

[The ruddy flush that years of drinking had permanently stained across his face drained away, leaving his features carved in stone. The deep lines bracketing his mouth cut even deeper.]

["Who... are you?"]

[Not a ripple crossed your face.]

[Since you didn’t yet know the full extent of what Megumi had done inside the Zenin compound, whether the kid had merely caused a scene or blown the roof clean off, you took a moment to consider. Then you chose the most reasonable, most bulletproof answer available.]

[Your tone carried all the weight of a comment about the evening weather.]

["Me? If I had to put a label on it... I suppose I’m this child’s teacher."]

["..."]

["Teacher..."]

[Old fox that he was, he set aside the question of how much truth that claim held. Because regardless, the word "teacher" slotted into the evening’s biggest mystery like a skeleton key turning a lock. It answered the question that had been gnawing at him all night: how a boy this young could possibly wield such terrifying combat ability and technique mastery.]

[Toji had been strong enough to make gods flinch. But he was also a Heavenly Restriction non-sorcerer who couldn’t produce a single drop of Cursed Energy.]

[A man who couldn’t even see curses could never have trained Megumi to this level in jujutsu and shikigami taming. Not in a thousand years.]

[And even if Toji had once belonged to the Zenin Clan, his bone-deep hatred for the family meant he’d never cared about its secret techniques, let alone bothered teaching them to his son.]

[But if a supremely powerful sorcerer had been standing behind Megumi from the very beginning, everything fell into place.]

[Not just any sorcerer. A monster who could copy other people’s techniques, who could perfectly replicate and demonstrate the Ten Shadows Technique itself.]

[That explained everything. How an illegitimate child living outside the clan, having awakened the family’s hereditary technique, could wield something that complex and profound to such a spine-chilling degree before his tenth birthday. At least from the Zenin Clan’s perspective tonight, that horrifying fusion shikigami had been under Megumi’s control.]

[But following that logic to its conclusion, a cold sweat broke across Naobito’s back. Because it led straight into a question he couldn’t dodge.]

[If the student who’d been trained could single-handedly tear through the Zenin compound’s defenses, battering a lineup of elite sorcerers including Special Grade 1 fighters into the dirt and escaping with critical injuries dealt to every one of them... then the teacher who’d forged that young lion with his own hands, the seemingly harmless student standing before him now...]

[How unfathomably strong were you?]

[The image of his heir Naoya, publicly dismantled and left broken. Ogi Zenin, Jinichi Zenin, and the rest of the clan’s top-tier sorcerers falling one after another. Those impossible results had already sobered Naobito considerably.]

[Combined with that inexplicable lockdown that had killed his technique before he could even begin his opening frame... the threat assessment he’d assigned you was climbing at a terrifying rate.]

[His eyes changed. Something behind them shifted into the cold focus of a man who understood he might be facing his own death.]

[Every last trace of contempt and arrogance evaporated. Cursed Energy erupted through him like magma breaching the surface. Those clouded old eyes sharpened into a raptor’s glare, locked onto you as he ground out his declaration through clenched teeth.]

["That child carries Zenin blood. He inherited the most legitimate technique our clan possesses. Tonight... I’m taking him with me, no matter what."]

[Against the full pressure of a Big Three patriarch, a peak Grade 1 sorcerer holding nothing back, you only tilted your head slightly. Behind your lenses, a flicker of quiet mockery passed through your eyes. Your reply came steady, utterly certain.]

["Is that so? Because it seems like... he doesn’t want to leave with you. And even setting that aside..."]

[Your voice dropped to a temperature that crushed the air from his lungs.]

["You shouldn’t be able to, either."]

[The words landed like a slap. Naobito felt the blockage on his technique dissolve, and he wasted no time on talk.]

[He slammed his Cursed Energy to its ceiling and launched Projection Sorcery at maximum output.]

["Ta-ta-ta-ta..."]

[One second shattered into twenty-four frames. His body became a streak of light too fast for afterimages, the sonic boom of torn air cracking behind him as he tried to arc around you and blast straight for the car, for Megumi.]

[You didn’t move. Not a single step. Your hands rose casually to your chest, fingers shaping the ancient shadow-puppet silhouette of a bird and a rabbit.]

["Rabbit Escape."]

[Before Naobito’s blistering speed could close within three meters, the shadow beneath your feet detonated.]

[Thousands of white rabbit shikigami erupted from the darkness like a pale tsunami, geysering upward in an endless flood.]

[The blinding swarm spiraled into the air like a tornado, obliterating every reference point and sightline in Naobito’s field of vision.]

[Individually, the rabbits were fragile. The gale force of his sprint shattered them into wisps of black shadow on contact. But the sheer physical mass of the swarm, enough to reshape the terrain itself, threatened to warp his pre-plotted trajectory and trigger Projection Sorcery’s self-freeze penalty.]

[Yet Naobito’s real mistake was the one you’d counted on. The blizzard of rabbits devoured his attention, every calculation bent toward predicting obstacles ahead. He never once looked down.]

[Where, hidden beneath the endless tide of white fur, your pitch-black shadow had been creeping outward across the asphalt like a silent flood.]

[What...!?]

[Alarm bells screamed through every fiber of his being. Too late.]

[Exactly like his heir in that tatami room not long before, caught by the same trick at the worst possible moment. Mid-sprint at a speed that broke the sound barrier, Naobito’s front foot slammed down on what should have been solid pavement and plunged straight through into a bottomless shadow pool.]

[The twenty-third frame of his pre-set motion warped from the sudden loss of ground. The deviation from his plotted trajectory violated the technique’s rules, and Projection Sorcery’s merciless freeze penalty triggered instantly.]

[Crack...]

[A sound like shattering glass, and Naobito’s blurring form locked in place.]

[The untouchable head of the Zenin Clan, imprisoned by his own technique’s backlash, sealed flat into a two-dimensional frame suspended in midair like a figure trapped behind acrylic.]

[But this time, in that fatal frozen second, what waited for him wasn’t the claws of a Divine Dog that could tear through steel.]

[It was, in the gap where the rabbit tide parted, your leg. Coiled back, every muscle wound tight as a drawn bow.]

[BOOM.]

[Your right leg whipped forward like a black lash splitting the air, loaded with devastating kinetic force and Cursed Energy reinforcement. The kick struck dead center of the two-dimensional plane, which was to say, dead center of Naobito’s stomach.]

[The frozen frame shattered into a spray of dissolving light, and the freed Naobito took the full, unmitigated impact. A kick that could have caved in half a Special Grade Cursed Spirit.]

[A choked grunt of agony tore from his throat. His body rocketed backward like a round fired from a cannon.]

[He skidded across the asphalt for several meters, boots carving twin furrows into the road, before he barely managed to arrest his momentum.]

[One hand clutched his churning gut. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.]

[His expression had hardened beyond anything resembling composure. Those weathered eyes blazed with disbelief as he stared straight ahead.]

[And there, framed in the soft halo of the headlights, you hadn’t so much as broken your breathing rhythm. You drew your kicking leg back with the unhurried calm of someone who’d done nothing more strenuous than stretching.]

[In the night wind, you raised one hand. Your middle finger pressed lightly against the bridge of your glasses.]