In stark contrast to the violent chaos of Panda's training room and the brutal combat of Maki's, the scene inside Inumaki Toge's chamber was deceptively peaceful.
The moment he stepped inside, a soft, lulling voice whispered one word: "Sleep."
Inumaki Toge's eyes fluttered closed. His body went limp, collapsing gently to the floor as if tucked into bed by an invisible hand. His breathing slowed, deepened, and soon he lay utterly still—lost in a world far removed from the training room's dim walls.
In his dream, he was a child again.
He stood in a sunlit courtyard, small and uncertain, facing a figure he didn't recognize but somehow knew: a master of Cursed Speech, ancient and wise, whose words carried weight beyond sound.
"Only words spoken with sincerity possess true power."
The master's voice was gentle, patient. Young Inumaki Toge blinked up at him, innocent eyes full of confusion. "With sincerity?"
Before he could understand, the dream shifted. He was in a crowded room—family, friends, warm faces. He tried to speak, to join the laughter. The word escaped before he could stop it.
Screams. Pain. Blood.
The dream shattered.
It reformed. The master stood before him again, same gentle voice, same patient eyes. "Don't try to control it. Use sincerity to feel the power of language."
Young Toge tilted his head. "Just... sincerity?"
The dream shifted again. Another accident. More pain. More guilt.
Again. And again. And again.
Each cycle pushed him deeper into the nightmare, his spirit fraying like rope under tension. The trauma of his childhood played on endless loop—the fear, the helplessness, the terrible knowledge that his voice was a weapon he couldn't sheathe.
Beside his sleeping form, a puppet watched in silence. Strange runes were drawn across its sealed mouth, and its hollow eyes never left Toge's face. It monitored his breathing, his heartbeat, the faint flicker of cursed energy within him.
His breath was growing shallower. Weaker. Like a candle fighting a rising wind.
If he didn't wake soon—if he sank too deep—the puppet would intervene. Forcibly. Painfully. But it would pull him back.
Because Inumaki Toge's trial was the most dangerous of the three.
It looked peaceful from outside. No explosions. No shattered bodies. But within that dreaming mind, the stakes were absolute: lose himself in the nightmare, and he would never wake. His body would live on, breathing, sleeping—but the person inside would be gone forever.
Kamo Itsuki watched through his crimson-eyed bee, expression unreadable.
He had planned this carefully. On that first day, when he'd high-fived each student at the classroom door, he'd collected more than goodwill. A single drop of blood from each—painless, unnoticed—gave him complete biological data. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their potentials mapped in clinical detail.
Inumaki Toge's Cursed Speech was, in Kamo's estimation, one of the most powerful techniques in existence. No complex conditions. No elaborate rituals. If someone heard his words, the effect was instant. Absolute. A divine skill.
And after personally analyzing the technique, Kamo had discovered something surprising: it wasn't as draining as everyone believed. Used properly, a whisper of cursed energy could achieve devastating results.
But Toge had spent his entire life afraid to speak. Every word was a potential disaster. He'd learned to suppress, to control, to strangle his own voice before it could escape.
He was driving a顶级 luxury sports car while simultaneously flooring the accelerator and slamming the brakes. The car couldn't move. Worse, it was destroying itself.
The key wasn't more control. It was release. He needed to feel the power of language—truly feel it—without fear. He needed to become a driver who understood the perfect harmony of brake and accelerator.
Simple in theory. Brutal in practice.
Kamo's dream-induction method was aggressive, even reckless. He'd wanted to proceed gradually, gently. But Kanon's disappearance had changed everything.
His investigation into her past had uncovered something chilling.
Kanon's hometown was less than ten kilometers from the location where Kenjaku had vanished years ago. The same Kenjaku who had ambushed him, who had schemed for centuries, who should have been dead or gone.
Instead, he had resurfaced—through a child.
'Kenjaku is using her. Or perhaps... he has become part of her.'
Kamo's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Time was no longer a luxury he could afford. His students needed to grow. Now. Because when Kenjaku moved again—and he would move—this generation would need to be ready.
Inumaki Toge's breathing grew fainter still. The rune puppet shifted, preparing to intervene.
'Wake up, Toge,' Kamo thought. 'Your nightmare is just training. The real one is coming.'*
The pieces were falling into place with chilling precision.
Kamo Itsuki stood in his observation chamber, the crimson-eyed bees feeding him streams of data from three simultaneous training grounds. But his mind was elsewhere—piecing together a puzzle that had troubled him for weeks.
'Kenjaku vanished near Kanon's hometown. Around the same time, she appeared. The timing is too precise to be coincidence.'
He replayed her behavior within the Beehive Barrier—the way she spoke to empty air, the unnatural coordination between her actions and her Shikigami's attacks, the moments when her expressions shifted too quickly, as if two minds inhabited one body.
'A contract. Or something worse. Possession, perhaps. Kenjaku has always favored parasitic methods.'
And then there was her Shikigami's final, wasteful attack—the one that had scarred the Barrier wall. Kenjaku, testing the Barrier's strength. Realizing what Kamo was building.
'He saw it. The prototype. The vision. And he understood.'
Kamo's eyes narrowed. Kenjaku had spent a millennium cultivating chaos. A world without curses—without the conflict that birthed and sustained cursed energy—was his antithesis. His nightmare.
'He couldn't allow it. So he made a choice. Risked exposure. Took Kanon and fled.'
The question was: to do what?
Kenjaku never acted without purpose. He would gather strength, allies, weapons. And the most obvious target—
'Sukuna's fingers.'
Kamo's gaze shifted to another feed: a map of Japan, overlaid with blinking points of light. The Yin-Yang Butterflies had been busy. Three years of silent multiplication, spreading across the islands like an invisible net. And now, finally, they were reporting.
Three new fingers located. Confirmed. Pinned.
He had already dispatched the Finger Recovery Squads—paired puppets designed specifically for this mission. Each squad possessed combat capabilities sufficient to challenge a standard Special Grade Cursed Spirit. If they encountered something beyond their means, they would transmit their location, and Kamo would teleport instantly to finish the job.
The first squad's feed flickered to life on his display.
Location: The sewers beneath a nameless city.
Darkness. Damp. The constant drip of water echoed like a morbid metronome. Sewage flowed in sluggish channels, its stench so thick it seemed to cling to the air itself. Dim light filtered through grates far above, casting pale stripes across the filthy water.
The two puppets moved silently, their forms blending with shadows.
Then the feed focused on a figure.
A young man—early twenties, perhaps—lounged in a crude hammock strung between two pipes. His body was a canvas of twisted stitches, crisscrossing his skin like a patchwork doll brought to life. Medium-length blue hair framed a face with mismatched eyes: one yellow, bright as a warning light; the other deep blue, dark as deep water.
In his hand, he idly twirled a withered, gnarled object.
A Sukuna finger.
He seemed utterly at ease, completely unconcerned by the intrusion. As if he had been waiting.
Kamo's breath caught.
'Mahito.'
The Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Born from human hatred and fear of other humans. A creature of pure, malleable malice. And now, in possession of one of the King of Curses' fragments.
Mahito's mismatched eyes drifted toward the puppets' hiding place. A slow, delighted smile spread across his stitched face.
"Well, well," he said, his voice echoing strangely in the confined space. "Visitors. And here I thought this place was too smelly for company."
He rose from his hammock in a single, fluid motion, still twirling the finger.
"You want this?" He held it up, letting it catch the thin light. "Come and get it."
The puppets didn't hesitate. They moved as one—deadly, precise, unfeeling.
Mahito's smile widened into something genuinely, terribly amused.
"Finally," he breathed. "Something fun."
The feed flickered as combat erupted in the darkness.