Chapter Text
The Heian era is one incredibly long stretch of war and a constant bloodbath. For every human, there are at least two hundred curses that lurk in the shadows of the village streets and forest trees, hidden in the flourishing and dry long grass both, and in the depths of even the purest water supply.
One sure place where curses typically could not enter was that of a sorcerer clan’s establishment. Sorcerers were not the average human. They were few in number, having only popped up in the last three centuries or so, but slowly growing in population. Their ancestors had awakened something deep inside them. Rumours claim that when the humans vanquished curses for the first time, the gods themselves granted humans the innate abilities to further continue their executions of the monsters that purged upon the land.
Those who were blessed were the starts of the clans that have become known today. Upon one of the continually expanding groups are those of the Zen’in. Martial arts was a preference in battle in the Heian period, but noble families, those of wealth, tended to bear prodigies in the art. Those who were not born into the life were mercilessly trained into it. And so, after generations of tradition and technique passed from father to son, mother to daughter, the Zen’in clan quickly became one of the strongest clans to exist with few sorcerer rival clans to call their opponents.
Of course, that was all politics. Sorcerers fought for the life of humans and the purging of curses and their allies, curse users, traitors of their own kin. They may not agree or like another clan, but in the end, they shared the same goal and therefore were allies. It’s what created the sorcerer council. Made up of members of the head of each major clan. They created the rules of jujutsu society, the executions of their laws, and the upbringing of the future generations of jujutsu sorcerers.
Since sorcerers are the only defense against curses of the human race, they are often the target for annihilation. Commoners and non sorcerers may be farmed for slaughter by the curses, but sorcerers live to serve and die in the process. It is why each clan births many children, each child raised with the hope that they’ll exceed their parents and take over a clan technique or something even more powerful.
Zen’in Megumi is a prodigy, and the first in over a century to inherit the Zen’in clan technique. The Ten Shadows Technique. It’s an ability that allows the user to summon ten different shikigami with the control of the shadows itself. To control an animal, one must first learn to summon a shikigami, and then be powerful enough to defeat it. Only then can a user evoke commands and complete control.
His birth is not momentous. He is not the first born of the current generation, nor is he the second or third, or fourth or fifth. He is smaller than most, the youngest of them all. He is lithe and with feminine features that have his mother and sisters doting, and brothers and father distanced.
At three years old, he walks elegantly through the halls of the Zen’in house, with it’s neverending narrow hallways lined with straight smooth wooden floors and decorated old tapestries between the sliding doors. It’s the middle of the night so most of the outer doors are cracked open to allow the moonlight to shine past and illuminate their rooms if by just a bit.
But the moon is not even near full. There’s barely a sliver of light in fact. It’s the end of a cycle, the moon slowly but surely waning away to disappear and shroud their sky in darkness. It’s the perfect night for an attack from the curses who thrive in that anxiety and fear the humans stew with on nights where the moon cannot give them light to fend off the horrors of the dark. He particularly likes to take long walks on these nights. Curfew was hours ago for the likes of him and his siblings, their parents believing that routinely sleeping and filling meals coupled with the intense day training is what creates a clan warrior in youth.
It’s because of the strenuous work during the sun hours that he knows he’s not the only one wandering across the clan grounds. His siblings are likely elsewhere, though probably in groups. It makes him less likely to be in trouble if found out.
On nights where the moon is near non-existent, the sorcerers of their clan stay awake nearly the whole night, swapping with others in shifts to stave off the attacks that could surely come when least expected. And so, with security up, the risk is much higher. His siblings make it a game amongst each other, the girls typically winning in stealth and subtlety over their brothers with their heavy footing and swords at their hips softly clinking against the trinkets and weaponry strapped to their belts and satchels.
He’s always leaned towards the company of his sisters. They’re less bully and more open to spoiling him with their scholarly lessons.
“You’re much too small, anyway, ‘Gumi. Mother thinks father should lessen your training to instead pursue a higher status in Japan.”
“Mother thinks you’ll rise to become a close follower of the emperor, Megumi.”
“Hush, I hear father’s going to increase Megumi’s training. He thinks Megumi will die when his cursed technique first appears.”
His older sisters are all trained in the art of stealth rather than the art of war. Women rarely become sorcerers. They can be born with the ability to see cursed energy, especially if they come from a lineage of sorcerers, but they do not take part in battle. A Zen’in clan secret though, is that they only allow clan sons to marry highly sensitive curse energy women. Those who can sense it from miles away even. While women are never sent to their deaths, they are often given missions involving stealth, infiltration, deceit. Nobody expects a woman to do a man’s work.
Two of his older sisters have been on these assignments and have regaled their tales of seduction and catering to the whims of their enemies. Sometimes they’re gone for months. He hears one infiltration had lasted even years before tragically dying at the hands of another sorcerer who thought her to be a curse sympathizer.
Megumi often trains in this art.
Though with his fifth birthday approaching in two years, he’s been told already by his father and brothers that his training will only get harsher as they prepare his body to handle whatever awakened power the gods bless him with.
There’s a cue in his mind that signals him to halt, and so he does and simply stands frozen in the shadow of the hallway. A wooden pillar from the outside casts the darkness over a segment in the outer walkway he finds himself in. He doesn’t dare move, not when he can feel such bloodthirst radiating in waves only metres from his current location.
Without so much as releasing a huff of air, he casts his eyes around the edge of the pillar, and that’s when he lays eyes on what can only be described as a curse. He’s heard enough stories, looked over a multitude of horribly gory paintings, and seen from the safety within his home the horizon lined with monsters that are slain in battle by the Zen’in warriors.
But the monster before him, the curse, is much too close for comfort. If it so much as catches a whiff of him, it’s over. He’s armed with no weapons, wears no guard or armor to protect his body from physical harm, and no cursed technique to counter an attack if it comes.
There’s a heavy pit in his stomach when the curse with its tilted head up, elongated nose in the air, creaks its head around starting at the opposite end of the courtyard before slowly spinning in a circle all the way around as if an owl. It has eight large red eyes surrounding a curved head as if a spider, pincers lining its arms and neck snapping at the air out of sync. It stops moving its head when it lands on his spot.
Megumi had taken his final breath in before all eight of its eyes zeroed in on him, and as it continues to stare, he remains frozen with his feet planted so firmly into the floors that not even a strong gust of wind has the power to move him.
He wonders what the curses senses. Can it see his figure, smell his blood, or detect the undoubted curse energy that runs through the veins of a sorcerer’s son? But it looks so very hesitant as it stares at his spot, hovering in place questioning if it’ll draw near for a pursuit. But Megumi knows that the second he moves, that will give way to his position. If he can delude himself into a stillness that makes him undetectable then perhaps it means the curse won’t be able to either.
“Megumi!”
Heart stopping, he snaps his head to the left and finds one of his brothers and sisters together. They’re both panting, as if they’ve been running this entire time, and both have swords in hand even though the females of their family have no training in weaponry.
It’s when he finally sees this that he hears the sound of yelling and smells the smoke in the air. And he watched the curse as it speeds over, faster than lightning itself, and unhinges its jaws to swallow his sister whole. The broken sounds of her scream as it opens and closes its mouth while chewing her leaves echoes that bounce off the wooden and stone courtyard. Megumi watches in open-mouthed horror at what’s happening, and when he finally wills himself to take a step forward to do anything , his body’s immediately snatched up by his brother who ran towards him, away from her to flee from the curse.
“No! Nee-san! We have to go save her!”
“She can’t be saved, Megumi. It ate her. And by the gods, I’m not letting that thing eat you too.” They run into more people as his brother carries him to what he assumes will be safety, but the more distance they cross, the more curses they end up running into. His brother dutifully maneuvers past and brings his sword out to slash at any oncoming limbs and appendages that make a grab for them.
And then they’re outside his parents’ bedroom. His father is posted at the door and instantly opens up his arms to accept Megumi into them from his brother. There’s a lot of hushing and ushering as the guards and others of their clan round up the women and push them through the guarded doors.
His father sets him down at the entrance and kneels down to meet him at eye level. “Tosuke told me he barely saw you. You were hidden in the shadows.” He presented a sheathed sword, it was the one his father gifted to him when he turned four only a few months ago. Megumi can’t imagine the panic both his parents must have felt when they ran to his room when the attack came only to find their son missing from his mat.
A sudden thought has him turning around to count the people in the room. “Where are the others?” Tosuke is standing behind their father, a rather pained expression on his face. He’s unable to hide the agony. But their father doesn’t share that look. Instead, he grips Megumi’s shoulder with a false smile. Your brothers are fighting curses right now. We’re still looking for your other sisters.”
An explosion goes off nearby, and then there’s screaming, and just out the door, a rain of blood falls from the sky. All the women in the background whimper when they see it, and Megumi looks at them to find them all shielding their eyes. Most of them are covered in blood. Most of them witnessed a death up close.
“You’re so strong, Megumi. Protect the people in here.”
He nods as his father takes his stand, and suddenly, they’re all shrouded in darkness when the doors slide to a close.
The wait is long, and his anxiety is worse than anything he’s ever felt. No amount of reassurances and niceties from his mother, sister, and maidservants can calm down whatever nerves are keeping him standing. His sword remains tied around his waist but his hand never leaves the hilt. His sister’s death replays in his mind and her screams pierce his ears. He shudders. Tosuke had been covered in their sister’s blood.
The door rattled and the men outside began moving. All that could be seen was the shadows of their people drawing weapons out of their sheaths. There’s some yelling back and forth, and metal meeting flesh. Every little sound has a woman behind him sobbing.
And when silence greets them, everyone quiets as best they can.
But then the side wall gets knocked down. Wood flies everywhere and splinters through one person or another. Megumi whirls around to find a curse creeping closer. It’s shaped like a worm and has an open mouth the size of a person. Razor sharp teeth line the inside and it jumps around chasing after people who are running in a frenzy around the spacious room. But then the doors are torn past and two more curses appear, these two actually having eyes and are covered in blood from head to tail. They look like serpents, and he notes they have pairs of wings behind.
He sees his father racing towards them from the other side, one arm gone, one of his sisters draped unconscious over his back, and when Megumi turns, he understands why his father looked so panicked.
The worm lifts its fat body up and his mother is on the floor beneath it, ready to succumb to the darkness, and what will no doubt be a painful death.
So Megumi does the first thing he can think to do.
He focuses his gaze upon the curses and brings his hands to meet in the shape of a dog, pointing the gesture towards the beings as if to direct something of his own at the things terrorizing his family and all those he’s grown to know.
“ Gyokuken.” To his surprise, and everyone else’s, the very shadows themselves pooling at his feet begin to shift and swirl around, taking form and shooting out in the direction Megumi’s willed them. Two dogs, one white and one black, both large things buzzing with cursed energy, appear out of thin air and charge towards the curse, jaws clamping down at the sides to bring down and tear into. Megumi is frozen from the surprise of it all, and finds the two dogs, more like wolves with the sheer size of the things, turning their attention to him once they’re finished taking down the curse.
Then Megumi glances at the other two serpent curses and the dogs understand, lunging at those to take down like they did the first one. It seems they’re learning too, because they work together better this time and it’s much more efficient than their first curse, less messy too.
His demon dogs made of shadows and curse energy pad on over to him and butt their heads into his sides in greeting, awaiting pets he can’t help but give. They’re both soft to the touch. He runs his fingers over the three red dots on each of their heads.
“Kuro. And Shiro.” The animals seem to accept their assigned names, but their friendly nature suddenly morphs into defensiveness when his father comes near. They growl loudly at him but when Megumi goes willingly, they back off.
His father holds his face with the only arm he has, looking grateful, happy even that Megumi is in one piece. He thinks that means his father loves him. He knows his father does deep down, but Megumi can’t help but wonder if the care his father feels is because of genuine love or a duty and obligation to produce an heir.
An heir especially that has the rumoured Ten Shadows Technique of the Zen’in clan.
After the rest of the curses are taken care of throughout the night and into early morning, they send letters out to the other clans and ask for assistance in helping rebuild. The other clans are eager to offer their aid, sending carts of food and supplies, and a few people of each clan to help rebuild what was broken.
His mother is still unconscious, and her wounds and those of his remaining siblings, are carefully being tended to. As much as he wants to visit each of them during their time of bedrest, his father has other ideas.
With his technique awakened so early, his father is quick to put him to training. It’s a constant cycle of sword training, summoning his dogs, taming the beasts, training his command over them, then more physical training. It goes on for hours, a problem he wouldn’t have if his mother were awake to tell his father to take it easy on him. Even his brothers, who usually easily take his father’s attention away from Megumi, can’t help but wish for Megumi to never stop training.
Him awakening his technique this early must mean he’s strong, so why do they think he needs to speed up his training to get better so fast? Surely that means he can take his time now that they know he’s capable on his own to defend himself and others?
With each passing day, he finds his free time lessening significantly.
And with the fatigue lining his body, he finds his gloom increasing tremendously.
Today is one of the rare days his father seems to be in a good mood. His mother is finally awake, his siblings all healed over, and praise spews from his father’s mouth when he watches his youngest son finally be able to join the ranks of all his brothers in their group training sessions. And so, Megumi and his brothers get a day off to do whatever they wish to after it’s all over. So all of his siblings leave the estate to make the thirty minute walk to the center of their village where the annual festival of flowers is being held. Festivities and dances by the artists and performers of their village will be going all day. Many travelled to their village for the sakura blossoms, and many stayed to witness the entirety of the bloom and fall of the petals.
Megumi and his sisters were always particularly fond of the festival. His siblings would take turns carrying him on their backs, and their father would always reluctantly buy them all snacks from the vendors when one or a few of them pleaded for it. His brothers preferred to stray from the family to give chase between them and join the other village boys in their adventures and endeavors around the festival. There were a multitude of activities and games to participate in after all, many of them offering prizes for the winners.
Though, since he’s been spending more time around his brothers, having finally awakened a cursed technique, and therefore dubbed to finally be strong enough to join their ranks in camaraderie, his brothers corral him towards their outings. Megumi looks back longingly at the peaceful walk his sisters and mother are on but they all shoo him away to join his other siblings instead.
They spend a few hours at the hearth of the festival itself, his brothers joining up with their friends and fellow future village swordsmen, introducing Megumi to each one though their names are lost to him almost as soon as it’s spoken. There’s a little petting pen area that Megumi drags them to, wanting to hold a duckling. They indulge because he’s younger, but then soon drag him to an eating contest. He’s sorted into the kid’s section of it and finds himself to be in last place, having only been able to eat two plates full. Then they’re participating in a sibling versus sibling race. His brother just swings Megumi over his shoulders and runs across the field that way.
All in all, it’s actually pretty fun.
It’s when everyone begins to veer off from the village to head towards the tree line that Megumi begins to drag behind the rest, coming to a complete stop just beyond the entrance of the forest.
“Father says we shouldn’t go past the trees at night.”
One of his brothers rolls his eyes. “There’s a group of us and we’re all armed, Megs. We’ll be fine. Besides, sunset isn’t until another two hours. You wanted to tag along with us today, right? We do this every year, don’t worry.” He wants to say that he actually wanted to spend the day with their mother but just gives a resigned sigh as he follows after on quick feet, making sure to remain squeezed between his siblings at the center of the group.
They apparently, every year, do dares and challenges within the woods. Ones that involve literally luring out curses to battle against. Tosuke, notably, is not part of this group, since he’s the eldest brother and ‘would disapprove of their games’. Tosuke is going to be clan head after their father, something his siblings lament about when things get serious and vulnerable. Their emotions turn to Megumi though.
“I hear that it’s tradition to make the Ten Shadow user the clan head though. So if Megumi’s of age when father passes, that means he’s in charge of the Zen’in clan.” Megumi, thoughtfully, does not wish that duty upon himself. He sees the harsh way his father orders their men around, and the ruthless way he slays his foes in battle. And the strict way he’s raised all of his children, sons and daughters both.
“I don’t want to be clan head.”
There. The look of pity he always hated. His brother have always looked at him with it. Because his father had always commented on how small in build Megumi was, how feminine his features were, and how short in height he’d grown. Now that he’s getting all of this attention and affection, he knows it’s because of his awakened curse technique.
He knows everyone cares for him.
But how many of them love him?
“Maybe we could run away. Not all of us, obviously. A few of us. Fake our deaths. No more clan responsibilities. We could have normal families.”
“Quiet, Hanabi.”
“No, I’m being serious.”
“Shhh!”
Someone suddenly grabbed at Megumi to pull close, one of his brother’s friends. Their eyes darted around and everyone began shushing each other. The loud sounds of the cicadas and buzzing insects, the croaking toads and the chitters of the forest animals, it all just stopped. It was already a dark place and they’d already batted off a few curses, but when you’re able to feel that shift in the air, that sense of death and despair, that was the moment you drew your sword.
Megumi was slow to do so, copying the motions of all the boys and men around him though he was at the center.
But then someone was shouting to scatter and everyone flitted past in different directions, seeing something he couldn’t with their towering height and bulky frames. Megumi, as practiced, summoned his demon dogs and found himself sitting atop Shiro, Kuro flanking his left side and snarling at the curse doing its best to take a swipe. His brother and their friends were running around in circles around the curse, and he wasn’t sure if the advantage was within them or if the curse was simply waiting for the opportunity to deliver a sure strike.
They had the numbers.
But the curse had the size. Bigger than any of the curses that invaded the Zen’in estate, and slowly making its way towards the village where hundreds of people were drunk and merry and running about carefree for the never-ending celebration.
One of his brothers came to a skidding stop in front of the dogs, Shiro and Kuro padding over to a halt and circling. That’s when Megumi sees it. His brother has a ball of light hovering in his left hand but it’s bright enough to illuminate the immediate surrounding radius, and just within eye’s reach, a line of curses slowly marching their way. They take different shapes and forms, bodies slimy or thick, eyes and limbs asymmetrical and armed.
Megumi nods feverishly and taps Shiro’s neck. Both shikigami give two barks and turn tail, understanding the assignment. He bids his brother goodbye, and good luck, and leads his dogs in the direction the curses seem to be marching towards.
But halfway there is when he meets a curse head to head.
And in fleeing, running for more than the time it should have taken to get back home, he commands the dogs to stop, and finds himself lost in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to bring him home.
He might have just killed an entire village because of his carelessness.