"Mai, this is Mr. Kamo's house. There can't be a curse here. You must be seeing things," Maki insisted, her voice tight with denial. Her world had always been one of tangible threats; the invisible was an abstract concept.
Mai's answer was a piercing scream. A sickening crack echoed as her thigh twisted violently, bone tearing through skin in a spray of crimson. Reality shattered Maki's disbelief.
In that instant, primal instinct overrode logic. Maki snatched the nearest object—the small wooden box with the crimson lotus—and hurled it blindly behind her. Then, she scooped up her wailing sister and bolted for the laboratory, for the only semblance of safety she knew.
She made it two steps. An invisible force slammed into her back, knocking the wind from her lungs. She stumbled, grunting in pain, but twisted in mid-fall, using her own body as a shield for Mai as they hit the ground. The impact on her fresh wound was white-hot agony, but she bit back a scream. Gritting her teeth, she tried to rise, to keep moving.
"Sister, run! Leave me!" Mai sobbed, her spirit broken by pain and the sight of her own mangled leg.
"Never! Hold on! Mr. Kamo will find it! He'll save us!" Maki's voice was a raw scrape of defiance, even as despair clawed at her.
Before she could lift Mai again, an unseen, vice-like grip closed around them both. They were wrenched into the air, then swallowed by darkness and a wave of putrid, acidic stench. They tumbled into a pool of viscous fluid inside the curse's gullet, its cursed energy seeping into their flesh like poison. The fight seemed over.
Then, in the drowning darkness of her fading consciousness, a voice—not a sound, but pure information—manifested in Mai's mind:
Offer your life willingly. Maki may yet live. Do you accept?
Mai, who had already given up, clutched at this final, desperate thread. Yes. With the last of her will, she began to channel her meager cursed energy as the instructions dictated.
"Mai! Don't close your eyes! Stay awake! I… I can't sleep either…" Maki's pleas grew faint. Just before blackness claimed her, she felt a strange, profound tugging deep within her core, as if something essential was being drawn out.
An itch on her cheek. Dazzling sunlight. Maki blinked groggily open.
Mai was leaning over her, a gentle smile on her face, her hair tickling Maki's skin. It was a smile Maki had never seen before—peaceful, unburdened.
"Mai… are we… in the underworld? I'm sorry… I failed."
"No apologies needed," Mai said, her voice clear and light. "We're not dead. Neither of us."
Maki stared, convinced it was a dream. Then Kamo Itsuki's figure appeared, silhouetted against the light.
"If you're awake, get up. I need to verify the results."
Still dazed, Maki let Mai help her up. They followed Kamo down to an underground training room.
"The issues have been resolved," Kamo stated, his tone clinical. "Now, for a field test. Maki, you first."
He pointed to the center of the room, where a squat, frog-like Grade 4 curse sat.
"Fight… that frog?" Maki asked, bewildered.
"Sister…" Mai breathed, her eyes wide. "Can you see it?"
Maki froze. She looked. And for the first time in her life, she saw. The amorphous, malevolent shape of the curse was clear as day.
Kamo stepped forward to explain. "Maki, your body has been refined into a complete Heavenly Restriction, akin to Fushiguro Toji's."
By rights, even a perfect restriction shouldn't grant sight. Kamo had found that inconvenient. "Consider it… a permanent, invisible lens I crafted for your eyes. A minor modification."
He turned to Mai. "And you, Mai, now possess a complete, independent reservoir of cursed energy. You are no longer shackled by your sister's restriction. You are a sorcerer in your own right."
As his words settled, Kamo observed the subtle shift in their bearing. Maki's defiance, once a brittle shield, now carried a grounded, fierce confidence. The weight of perceived inadequacy was gone. Mai's resignation had melted away, replaced by a quiet, steady strength. The tragic bond that had limited them was severed. In its place stood two individuals, whole and empowered, their paths now diverging yet forever linked by a choice made in darkness.
If he had to put it into words, they now carried themselves with a newfound confidence, a light of genuine hope in their eyes where only defiance or resignation had been before.
"Mai!" Maki called out.
Mai understood instantly. She closed her eyes in concentration, cursed energy swirling around her hands. "Construction Technique."
A wickedly sharp dagger, simple and functional, solidified from the air into her palm. Maki snatched it, her body already coiling like a spring.
She shot forward. The frog curse sensed the threat, its sticky tongue lashing out like a whip. Maki's enhanced body, now operating with the seamless efficiency of a perfected Heavenly Restriction, reacted without thought. A subtle shift in her center of gravity, a tilt of the shoulder, and the tongue whistled past her ear.
She didn't break stride. In a blur of motion, she passed the curse. A single, clean slash.
The frog curse shuddered, then dissolved into dissipating smoke.
It was only a Grade 4. But they were ten years old. And they had done it—not as two halves of a broken whole, but as a coordinated pair.
A shared, breathless look of triumph passed between them. Then, as one, they turned and bowed deeply to Kamo Itsuki.
"Thank you, Kamo-sama," they said in unison, their voices sincere.
'What is it with this family and bowing?' Kamo thought, a flicker of dry amusement crossing his mind.
With the sisters' transformations complete, he sent them back to the Zen'in clan. The payment for his services remained an open tab; he would collect when a suitable need arose. He had, however, already secured a more immediate favor: Zen'in Naobito's agreement to leverage the clan's resources to aid in the search for Sukuna's fingers.
Reflecting on the trip, the gains were substantial.
First: The Prison Realm. A true Special Grade cursed object, a tool of absolute sealing. Having it in his possession neutralized a potential threat and presented a fascinating subject for study—what principles of binding and spatial exclusion did it operate on? Could they be reverse-engineered?
Second: Mai's Construction Technique. The ability to manifest permanent matter from cursed energy was a logistical marvel. The possibilities for equipment, tools, and even structural components were endless. It was the ultimate utility skill.
Third: Naoya's Projection Sorcery. A superb control technique. The principle of freezing targets that deviated from a pre-set 24-frame motion trajectory was elegant. While Kamo couldn't yet achieve the cellular-level mastery Naoya would later develop, he saw immediate applications. 'If I can apply that principle not to a body, but to the blood within a body...' The thought was compelling. It could allow for remote, surgical control of an opponent's bloodstream without the need for his domain—a silent, precise, and terrifying form of subjugation.
He had come for a cage. He was leaving with a vault of new potential, his arsenal enriched not by force, but by the intricate web of exchange and revelation. The pieces on the board were multiplying, and Kamo Itsuki was carefully learning how to move them all.