β AUTHOR'S NOTE β
Author here. π₯Έ
This chapter was added on 15TH April, 2025 β after the ones that follow it in the content list β because I needed a clear way to explain the sealing and how it connects to Ogami's plans. It felt like the most natural and seamless solution, so here we are. π
Sorry for being so erratic. π
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β EVENING, 25TH JULY, 1990, SAITO RESIDENCE β
KURASAWA OGAMI'S EYES fluttered closed as the soft hum of the seals reverberated through the air, an almost imperceptible vibration that seemed to sync with the rhythm of her breathing. The tatami floor beneath her was cool, a quiet contrast to the fire that roiled in her chest.
Her hands, resting gently on the floor, splayed out in a gesture of stillness, yet her mind was a storm, weaving a tapestry of threads, each one leading her to the inevitable culmination of her long-laid plans.
The room, otherwise silent, thrummed with the echo of the seals' energy, the invisible currents of power tracing their predetermined paths. Ogami had always viewed ritualistic magic as an art, and this one β this intricate weave of energy and intention β her magnum opus.
But there was one variable in her plan that stood above all others, a piece so pivotal it had become the keystone of the entire design: Akiko.
Ogami had moulded her with a careful hand, shaping her into the perfect instrument for the task. Akiko's devotion to Ogami was unwavering, her loyalty absolute. Yet it wasn't mere obedience that Ogami had instilled in her.
No, Akiko had not just accepted her role in the grand design β she had demanded it. She was not a mere follower; she was a willing participant, convinced of her crucial place in the securing of Ogami's future.
And Ogamiβ¦ was proud of her. Proud β and perhaps, quietly, a little surprised. She hadn't expected quite so much from the girl when they first met.
The Saitos had been a tool at the outset. Convenient. Well-placed. A family of means and reputation, easy enough to turn toward her purposes. They were never meant to last β only to serve. A rung on the ladder to something far greater.
Slowly, methodically, she had turned them into little more than puppets, marionettes to act on her every whim, their every move controlled by the invisible strings she had pulled from the shadows.
Her orchestration of their downfall had been nothing short of a masterpiece. She stripped them of their assets, dismantled their influence, and led them quietly into ruin, like a conductor guiding an orchestra toward its inevitable, tragic finale.
But while the Saitos clawed at the walls of their collapse, desperate to preserve pride they no longer owned, Akiko walked willingly into Ogami's shadow β devoted, eager, almost feverish. Not a puppet, but a believer. A cultist to a god.
She hadn't just accepted Ogami's presence β she had embraced it.Β Revered it. Worshipped it. To her, Ogami wasn't the architect of her family's fall, but the force that had exposed their weakness.
Where others saw cruelty, Akiko saw clarity. Where others saw a manipulator, she saw a force of nature. She saw divinity in Ogami's control. Poetry in her precision. Purpose in her power.
Ogami was snapped out of her reverie by the sharp scent of ozone β the first sign that the ritual was entering its final phase. The boundaries were thinning. The tether was drawing taut.
Every mark she had laid, every blood-drawn line, began to glow with a dull red radiance, pulsing in perfect rhythm with the beating heart of the one beyond the veil. The vessel had been prepared. The offering was in place. Akiko had done everything perfectly.
Elegant. Clean. Perfectly executed.
The air inside the room tightened, the seals flaring now with increasing urgency. Symbols rotated along the perimeter of the circle, drawn by unseen force, and at the center, space itself seemed to convulse.
A deep, low thrumming rolled through the room like the distant growl of thunder, echoing from the bones of the earth itself. The glyphs lining the circle shimmered with complex geometries, no longer static but shifting, evolving, responding to something beyond.
Far across Japan, a jagged black-and-red seal detonated beneath Jasmine's feet, carving itself into the Gojo Estate's courtyard like a wound in space β a resonance cast by Ogami's distant ritual.
With fluid grace, eyes still closed, she began her incantations β low, deliberate, and heavy with intent. Her hand seals followed, each movement weaving power into the air like calligraphy in flame.
Her voice, low and sonorous, flowed through the chamber like velvet-wrapped steel. Each syllable woven with mathematical care, each intonation a precise key in the lock of the world. She did not shout. Power responded to precision, not passion.
Her lips barely moved as she whispered the final part of her chant:
"Gate, close."
The ritual's glyphs, etched deep into the stone beneath her, shimmered with malevolent light β not just reacting, but responding. Their jagged edges began to curl inward, the markings almost alive, hungrily drinking in the blood that pooled around Jasmine's broken form.
The pulse of Jasmine's dying heart echoed into Ogami's chamber, not through sound, but through meaning β the final, involuntary donation to a design she could never understand. Ogami's eyes remained closed, but her breath hitched ever so slightly.
Not with shock. With satisfaction.
She inhaled slowly, deeply. Jasmine's agony bled through the ether, intangible yet vividβa thread of exquisite pain that sang across the ritual circle. This was not random brutality. This was choreography.
Ogami's fingertips hovered over the floor now, her eyes shining with a light that was not her own. Around her, the chamber's shadows curled and bent, drawn toward the epicenter of the spell.
She could feel it β the tether connecting her to the cube, to the realm it represented. To it. The cube twisted open, its corners unfurling into writhing tendrils of red sinew and unblinking eyes.
Jasmine's blood soaked into the stones, the glyphs beneath her pulsing in tandem with Ogami's circle. Every heartbeat, every breath she bled, every tremor in her limbs, fed back into the arcane lattice Ogami had constructed.
Through Ginny's trance, through Akiko's loyalty, through Ogami's web of vows and stolen bloodlines, the ritual responded β and thrived.
From Ogami's fingertips, tiny wisps of red smoke coiled upward, drawn to the ceiling like incense from a shrine. Her lips parted slightly as the tether solidified, binding the ritual not just to a place, but to an event. A moment. A suffering.
Ogami finally opened her eyes, their depths pitiless as she smiled darkly. The ritual was complete.
She rose, robes whispering across the tatami, and made her way to the far end of the chamber where an old lacquered box lay waiting. Her hands, worn with age but steady as marble, opened the lid.
Inside the box was not a weapon, nor a tome, nor a relic β but a mask. Simple. Smooth. White as bone. Shaped like no human face, but something too symmetrical, too still. Its eyeholes were long, narrow slits, more suggestive than functional.
Kurasawa Ogami lifted it with reverent precision, her fingers brushing along its edges with the same care a priestess might give to a sacred idol. She exhaled β a long, patient breath β and lowered it slowly onto her face.
It was cold.
Not the cold of porcelain or lacquer, but the deep, marrow-sinking chill of absence β the absence of self, of warmth, of memory. As if the mask had never touched a living face beforeβ¦ or had touched too many and remembered every single one.
The moment the mask settled onto her skin, the chamber shivered. A pulse that raced outward and then turned back, folding into the room, into Ogami, like a backlash of spiritual inertia.
Her body convulsed β not violently, but sharply. Precisely. Like a string snapping tight against flesh. And then it began.
Black ink bloomed from her chest, spreading out all over her body, slithering out from beneath her sleeves like sentient tattoos. It crawled up the side of her neck, jagged and wet, like something freshly clawed into her flesh, morphing into cursed symbols.
The cursed marks twisted with motion, forming archaic symbols that had not been part of her ritual script. They spoke in a visual tongue β one of rejection. Of violation. Ogami's breath hitched β but not with satisfaction this time.
The seals in the chamber flickered violently, one by one blinking out in jarring succession like dying stars. The equilibrium of her carefully-constructed spell began to crumble, not with chaos but with deliberate sabotage.
Something was inside the ritual.
Her voice, usually a weapon of precise tone and tempo, faltered as she reached for a stabilizing incantation. "Ketsuβ"
But the word caught in her throat like barbed wire. The mask was heating against her skin, burning with malice. The curse marks spiraled now across her collarbone and ribs, each one feeling like a verdict carved in real-time.
Intruder. Thief. Impostor.
Ogami staggered, dropping to one knee. Her fingers gripped the edge of the tatami, veins pulsing with a virulent red-black energy she had not summoned. It wasn't foreign in nature β not in the way alien energies felt. No, this was personal. Tailored. Intimate.
Ogami clawed at the mask, fingers trembling. She could feel herown technique β SΓ©ance β rebounding inward, reflecting the shape of Jasmine Potter not as a tool, but as a wound. The mask no longer fit like a device. It clung like a parasite.
A violent pulse burst from the mask, flinging Ogami back across the chamber. She struck the wall hard, blood blossoming from the corner of her mouth as she slid to the floor, falling unconscious.
Beneath her ritual garments, a symbol was branded into Ogami's chest β a dark, unyielding mark that seemed to pulse with life. Two crows, their forms entwined in an eternal spiral, faced one another with piercing, unblinking eyes.
Their wings stretched outward, unfurled in a posture of defiance, as if ready to take flight into oblivion. The birds were framed by jagged rings of blackened curse script, their edges fraying as though the very ink had been scorched into her flesh.
The design was more than mere ink. It was a judgement.
Karasu ni Meijirareta (ηγ«ε½γγγγ).
Commanded by the Crow.
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Drop them stones and reviews, please. π₯Έ
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