Ten hours later:
The Ancient One sat in the main hall of Kamar-Taj, the steam from her honey tea rising. Her task had been grueling, not magically, but the logistically. She couldn't simply deposit the rescued children at the nearest U.S. Embassy; that would have been a death sentence.
Many of these infants and adolescents had been kidnapped, their files buried under layers of HYDRA bureaucracy and active missing-persons cases.
With Dr. Reinhardt's facility compromised, HYDRA would be scouring the globe for their "lost property." To return them without absolute anonymity and protection would be to hand them back to the wolves.
Thus, she had personally navigated the globe via Sling Portals, returning those with families to their doorsteps under the cover of night.
For those who had no one, she established them in reputable group homes under forged identities. To ensure their long-term safety, she wove a contingency protection spell—a silent trigger during that would set off during a mortal peril, immediately alerting her to their exact coordinates.
Now, as she sipped her green tea laced with honey, the sweetness did little to mask the bitter memory of her encounter with the humanity-born curse, Mahito.
She reflected on the peculiar sensation of the battle against the Grade 4 spirits. It had felt like watching a memory from centuries ago.
Cursed spirits born in different eras possess distinct "flavors" of energy and anatomical traits;
These entities bore the grotesque hallmarks of the the Early Modern Period(1601-1700), yet their energy signatures were fresh, not centuries old.
The discrepancy was a jarring anomaly until, like a sudden bolt of lightning, a realization struck her mind.
She had read of such a phenomenon in the darkest corners of Kamar Taj archives. Agamotto had named it the "Culling Games." It was the greatest bloodbath of the Golden Era, defined by ten million curses being reincarnated.
Reaching out with her left hand,She watched as the air distorted into a shimmering fractale. She reached through the rift and retrieved an item sealed away for millennia, passed down from one Sorcerer Supreme to the next: the "Prison Realm."
This living cube was a macabre artifact of containment, and inside resided a being of terrifying potential.
During the height of the Golden Era, the curses sought to trigger the "Merger of Humanity," a process intended to force all of mankind into a single, unified entity. The focal point for this ritual was Nevaeh, a sorcerer who possessed the cursed technique of "Immortality."
However, her technique was a double-edged sword; while she could not die, she could not remain human. Her body was forced to evolve, transforming her into a transcendent, cursed-spirit-like entity that threatened to consume the collective consciousness of the world and the negativity ousing from such entity would give birth to the strongest of curses.
The sorcerers of old had fought a war of attrition to capture and seal her within the Prison Realm, halting the merger.
If Mahito was orchestrating a modern revival of the Culling Games, his preparations likely spanned over 10,000 years.
This was not a mere repeat of the past; it was an escalation. In the natural order, cursed spirits do not reincarnate with their identities intact. When a curse like Jogo is exorcised, the fear of fire remains, eventually birthing a new fire curse, but the original personality is lost.
However, the Ancient One theorized that with Idle Transfiguration, Mahito could bypass this law. By manipulating the soul itself, he could facilitate a form of true reincarnation where a curse—or a sorcerer—returns to the physical plane with their memories and techniques fully preserved.
The Culling Games were a grand ritual of jujutsu terrorism designed to generate the massive amount of cursed energy required to merge the entire human race into Nevaeh.
She was lost in these thoughts when a Sling Ring portal sparked open in the main hall.She put the prison realm back in the fractal seal.
Ethan stepped through, mid-conversation with Tora, who followed closely behind. They were discussing the wheel—how it was actually a Cursed Artifact rather than a Cursed Energy construct. Then she saw it: the eight-headed wheel hovering above his head.
Ethan had subjugated the tenth shikigami, just as she suspected, and the wheel was its manifestation of its partial summoning. But now, she had to deliver the crushing news of his twin brother's death.
"I got your text... something urgent?" Ethan asked with a grin, pointing toward the artifact. "How do you like the look? Cool, right?"
Her heart ached at the sight of his smile. "Ethan... you should sit down for this," she said softly.
Ethan's expression instantly shifted. He mentally command Tora to sink back in his shadow as He sat, his face hardening into a mask of seriousness. "Who died?" he asked bluntly. In Kamar-Taj, it wasn't uncommon for sorcerers to fall in battle.
The Ancient One was taken aback by his blunt accuracy. Noticing her reaction, Ethan added, "So someone did die... Please tell me it's not the guy with one hand. I've grown fond of his terrible dad jokes."
"Master Hamir is currently on an expedition to East Asia; as far as I know, he is in fine health. No, this concerns your... brother."
"What?" Ethan stammered.
The Ancient One began her explanation.
She detailed the potential lobotomization of the human race by Mahito and her confusion as to why Ethan was the sole exception.
She spoke of the one-sided link she discovered between Ethan's soul and Seth's while Ethan was mid-ritual, and the horrors Hydra had inflicted upon his brother and thousands of other children.
Finally, she revealed how Mahito had cannibalized Seth's soul, and his ability to use Hollow Trace.
Ethan listened in eerie silence, offering only slight nods to prompt her. By the end, he was staring upward.
"Why didn't you call me sooner?" his voice rose, trembling with grief and fury. "I was in Myanmar, I understand that—but you could have called the moment it was over! I gave you that kunai for exactly this situation!" He has a brother. No... he had one.
"Mahito was already gone, Ethan. You were on your way to save 100,000 people; it wouldn't have helped. Hollow Trace cannot be tracked," the Ancient One explained calmly.
"And why take over his body? That should hinder the curse more than help it," Ethan countered.
Neither fully understood the Heavenly Restriction Seth had awakened, but she theorized that based on the sheer destruction and lack of a residual cursed energy signature, Seth had left behind.
"I have a theory," she summarized. "Seth may have acted as a shield when you were infants, protecting you from Idle Transfiguration. But by cannibalizing Seth's soul, Mahito made their souls one and the same. Now, you and a fragment of Mahito share a soul-origin. He can manipulate his own soul to bypass Seth's protection. Had he simply killed Seth, the shield protecting you might have remained active even in death."
They did not yet know about Mahito's Binding Vow preventing him from "harming" humans, which led to the next question.
"What could he have sacrificed to gain such global reach?" she mused.
Ethan pondered for a moment. "It must have been something that went against his very nature. Those Vows are the strongest, second only to those involving a life-exchange." He paused, a thought occurring to him. "If Seth fully awakened a Heavenly Restriction, his body should resist possession, right?"
"Not if Mahito performs the Bath."
A look of realization washed over Ethan's face. He knew the term. In the lore of Jujutsu Kaisen, the Bath was a ritualistic immersion in dark, cursed liquid—the same process Sukuna used to drown Megumi Fushiguro's soul to gain 100% control over his vessel.
"You know what the Bath is?" the Ancient One asked, seeing his reaction.
"Yeah," Ethan replied solemnly.
"He could be submerged as we speak. The process traditionally takes ten months and ten days, though it can be extended for decades to increase efficacy. For a being like Mahito, decades are a blink. Ethan... Seth is already gone." She voiced the thought they both dreaded.
He had a brother that has been protecting him since they were infants.
Ethan stood and walked toward the exit. Mahito was out of reach, but there were targets he could still touch.
"Where are you going?" she asked from her seat.
Ethan stopped and turned, his shadows writhing violently behind him. "I'm going to kill every Hydra operative I can find."
The Ancient One took a sip of her honeyed tea. "I will not stop you, but you will be labeled a terrorist. Hydra is embedded in the U.S. government; they won't take your attacks lightly."
"You think I care? And who said I was attacking personally? At my core, I am a summoner," Ethan spoke as Mahoraga and Tora manifested behind him in the Training hall.
She locked eyes with him, making one last appeal. "Weren't you recently planning to move to Los Angeles? To finish high school and enjoy a bit of life?"
"Mahito is gone for the foreseeable future, hidden in a hole somewhere. Even if he returns stronger, Mahoraga will not lose to a cursed spirit. He isn't the priority. I am hunting Hydra, one head at a time."
He paused at the door. "Let's see if their heads grow back after Mahoraga cuts them off.
Oh... and I'm still moving to Los Angeles. I found a good apartment. Distance doesn't matter much for a sorcerer of Kamar-Taj," Ethan said as he vanished in the wind.
The Ancient One refrained from discussing her burgeoning suspicions regarding a possible modern revival of the Culling Games with Ethan. At this stage, they remained exactly that—unsubstantiated suspicions.
In the nearly infinite permutations of the future she had scoured up until the moment of her fated death, none had ever depicted the horrors of a global Culling Game.
She took a long, measured breath, the steam from her tea warming her face. Ethan's logic had been sound;
Mahito had likely retreated into the deepest corner of the world. To fully submerge Seth's soul within him through the ritual of the Bath,
The curse would need at least half a decade of uninterrupted concentration. For now, the immediate threat of the patch-faced spirit is gone.
"Today has been a... difficult day," the Ancient One murmured, her voice barely a whisper against the silence of the hall. "But you saved a multitude of lives today, Ethan. You must remember that." Referring to more than 100,000 lives saved across Myanmar.
The Ancient One spoke to an apparently empty room, her words drifting through the open windows. However, from the courtyard below, a keen observer would have noticed a solitary figure.
Ethan remained perched atop the steep, snow-dusted roof of the Kamar-Taj sanctuary, staring out at the vast Himalayan horizon with moist eyes.
It was a terrible day for rain.
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If you enjoy the story, please leave a Review and Power stones!
Thanks for pointing out a mistake I made.
I corrected it. Ethan was in Myanmar when Seth broke through Hydra.
Please let me know what you think, i don't mind rewriting this depending on your feedback.
Next chapter is time skip.
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