A scream tears through the training grounds – not a shout or yell, but the kind of raw, animalistic sound that comes from someone who’s just realised they’re about to die. My heart slams against my ribs so hard I can feel it in my throat, and I know immediately it came from Zone Two.
Hajime.
Misaka and I whip toward the barrier just as it flickers transparent for half a second, and through that brief window I catch a glimpse of what’s happening inside. Hajime is pinned to the ground by something that might have been human once but isn’t anymore – skin like rotting meat and far too many limbs, it has an arm buried straight through his chest where his heart should be. There’s just a gaping absence, a hole, and blood spreading across the dirt in a dark circle that grows wider with each passing second.
His mouth opens and closes like he’s trying to say something, it might be “help” or “Mum”, but he doesn’t get the chance because the curse yanks its arm free with a wet, meaty sound that I can hear from where I stand two zones over, and Hajime goes limp.
Don’t try to be brave.
Those were the last words I said to him, and I now have to watch as medical sorcerers step through the barrier with the kind of practiced calm that suggests this is normal work for them. They grab Hajime by the arms and drag him out, his heels carve twin grooves into the dirt, and then they drop him into the growing pile of bodies like he’s nothing more than an inconvenience.
They don’t drop him gently, or with any kind of reverence, just chucked on top of a blonde girl and a boy who’s face is too mangled for me to recognise, and that’s when I understand what I’m looking at – a body pile, an actual fucking body pile, and Hajime who was fidgeting with his jacket buttons just twenty minutes ago is now part of it.
“Oh my god.” My hand clamps over my mouth before the scream building in my chest can escape, and bile rises in my throat leaving the aftertaste of copper and ash.
I hear a faint sob from the observation area, I can’t bring myself to look, I just know that Hajime’s mother had to witness that. Around me, candidates stare in horrified fascination, and the faculty don’t even react because they’ve seen this a hundred times before. Fuck. Maybe even a thousand. I turn toward Zone Four’s entrance searching for something – acknowledgment, horror, anything – and I find Satoshi Gojo standing at the barrier with his arms crossed, looking directly at me with a harsh smirk curving his lips.
“Watch closely,” he says loudly, everyone nearby glances in his direction. “That’s how it ends.”
That didn’t sound like a warning that sounded like a threat. He expects the same thing to happen to me, and my stomach flips.
I will prove my worth.
I refuse to end up in that pile.
“Sazama. You’re up next.” The hooded sorcerer’s voice cuts through the ambient noise with the same tone you’d expect from a receptionist at a doctors surgery, like he’s not sending me into a death zone.
Misaka bumps her shoulder against mine, a gesture that should ground me, and when she says “See you on the other side,” her voice remains steady, but her eyes tell a different story – she knows the odds as well as I do, she knows that ten people have entered Zone Four and all have come out as bodies.
I give her what I hope can pass as a confident smile and step up to the barrier, ignoring the scarred boy’s voice shouting “I won’t mourn you!” from somewhere behind me because he’s still a dick and I refuse to give him the satisfaction of a response.
The barrier’s cursed energy hits me before I even touch it, thick and oppressive like walking into a wall of summer humidity except its poisonous and not full of life. It makes my skin crawl with how much malevolent intent radiates from just the threshold. I take a breath and push myself forward, and the sensation of passing through is like being dunked in ice cold water. Frost rushes over my skin and into my lungs, so deep into my bones that my skin pebbles in response.
The darkness swallows me whole instantly, like someone flicked a switch and turned off the sun. I can’t see my hands when I wave them inches from my face. I can’t see the ground beneath my feet, and my breath comes in fast and shallow whilst my heart hammers loud enough that anything waiting in here can track me by sound alone.
Breathe. Focus. This is just disorientation. It’ll pass.
It clears, slowly, like a photograph developing in reverse with details bleeding in from nothing until the carved-out arena takes shape around me. Uneven ground covered in patches of dead grass that crunches under my boots, concrete walls at least thirty feet high and scarred deep gouges from claws and cursed techniques and impact craters left behind by everyone who fought here before me. The air tastes like rust and rotting meat, and cursed energy saturates everything so thickly I barely have to focus to see the purple residuals that cling to the walls.
This place wasn’t built for protection – it was built to trap things and observe as they kill each other, and I’m the latest thing they’ve thrown into the pit.
Movement flickers in my peripheral vision and I drop into a defensive crouch with my hands already forming the beginning of the mudra hand sign for my cursed technique. I scan the area for threats. Three Grade one curses spread out across the space except – wait, no, there’s a fourth concealing its cursed energy, hiding in plain sight and letting me underestimate the field which suggests it’s intelligent. It also means I’m completely fucked.
My assessment recommended Grade Two trials, which means I should be fighting one Grade One curse, but instead I'm staring down four of them because Dad decided to make a public spectacle of sentencing me to death.
I plant my feet and force myself to breathe—inhale, hold, exhale—because panicking kills you faster than the curses do and Fushiguro drilled that into me often enough that it's become reflex. "Fear is information. It tells you where the danger is. Panic is noise. It drowns out the information." Right, so what is my fear telling me right now?
I scan the arena and start cataloguing: Curse One has leathery skin with multiple eyes beneath a crown of matted brown fur, and its wounds are already closing from the barrier entry which means fast regeneration and aggressive combat style. Curse Two is a mannequin, completely white and featureless with jerky movements that could be its natural state or could change once it's learned enough from watching me fight—adaptive curses are like that. Curse Three is massive, easily the size of a car, hunched over with greenish-grey skin stretched too tight over warped muscle and long arms that scrape the concrete as it sways, which reads as strength-based with low intelligence but devastating damage output. And Curse Four is still hidden somewhere, concealing itself, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, and that's the one that's going to kill me if I fuck up.
Four Grade One curses with four different combat styles, and there's only one of me, but I'm not going to think about the odds because thinking about the odds is just another form of panic. I need to think about surviving, need to stay nimble and use agility over strength, need to get into position and then strategise from there.
I roll my neck and bounce lightly on the balls of my feet. Dirt explodes to my right, scattering chunks of dried mud and debris around me, that tells me something massive just moved fast.
My instincts kick in before my brain catches up. I compress air beneath my right heel in a sharp, violent burst and the pressure release detonates hard enough to launch me sideways through the cloud of dust, which should blind anything tracking me visually.
I’m already pulling cursed energy from my core as I twist mid-flight, dragging it up through my chest and down my arm into my fist whilst the leathery curse comes into focus with all seven of its eyes locking onto my trajectory. It’s fast, already moving to intercept, but I collapse the air directly in front of my knuckles to create a vacuum pocket and rotate my whole body into the strike.
My fist connects and the sound is louder than bones breaking, more like concrete shattering – because the compressed air I’d trapped releases as point blank range in a single violent burst. The curse’s ribs don’t just break, they cave inward like an empty can being crushed by a hydraulic press, its flesh rupturing and purple blood spraying onto me as the force launches it backward twenty feet into the mannequin curse behind it.
This was a new uniform jacket. I’ll cry about it later.
I land in a crouch with my boots skidding in the dirt and my right hand throbs from my knuckles splitting during the impact. My own blood drips onto the ground, but it was worth it. The leathery curse isn’t dead – I can already see its ribs shifting back into place with wet clicking sounds as flesh knits closed – but at least I managed to buy myself a few seconds.
Grade One regeneration is a bitch.
I adjust my stance and dig my heels into the ground, I curl my fingers into the proper mudra hand sign with my ring and little fingers tucked into my palm and my thumb pressing over them whilst my index and middle fingers extend straight ahead, aiming straight at the curse. I push cursed energy through the sign and draw deep from my reserves.
“Pressure Cut.”
Thin blades of compressed wind fly towards the regenerating curse, slicing into flesh and bone, spilling more purple blood onto the ground like waves in the ocean.
I flick my wrist and the air around its torso tightens suddenly with atmospheric pressure plummeting, crushing the curse inward and causing its regeneration to falter as limbs lock in place. It’s not dead, just stalled, which gives me time to push off the ground and spin to face the third curse as it lumbers forward – the massive one, at least the size of a car, hunched over with dull greenish-grey skin stretched taut over warped muscle and long arms hanging past its knees with thick clawed fingers scraping grooves into the concrete as it sways.
I circle it slowly whilst keeping both the mannequin and the first curse in my peripheral vision, and the fourth curse stays hidden in the shadows, watching for its time to strike.
Then I hear it – click, click, click – a rhythmic tapping that seems to come from everywhere, from the walls and the ground and the air itself. My muscles lock up and it’s not a choice. My body just stops responding to commands whilst the clicking continues with metronomic precision.
Cold tension crawls down my spine and settles deep between my shoulder blades, and I realise with growing horror that I’m being hunted. The sound burrow s into my skull and scrapes at my focus until my vision blurs at the edges and my hands go slack, dropping from their defensive position without my permission, and when I try to move my legs they simply refuse to respond.
My thoughts slow down like synapses trying to fire through molasses, and I know this isn’t just a distraction technique – this is control, the fourth curse – I can see it now, it’s skeletal – it’s using sound to hijack my nervous system and turn me into a puppet. I can hear the bulky curse moving closer with heavy footsteps that shake the ground, and I still can’t move, can’t do anything except stand here and wait to die unless –
Bite down. Pain breaks mental techniques.
I sink my teeth into my tongue hard enough to draw blood, and the taste of copper floods my mouth as the fog clears all at once. My muscles unlock and I gasp as I pull a long drag of air into my lungs. The bulky curse is lunging with its claws outstretched and it’s way too close.
I throw myself sideways but I’m too slow, and the curse’s talon catch my right shoulder in a grip that goes past cutting and tearing – they sink deep, three claws punching through fabric, skin and muscle until they scrape against bone. White-hot pain explodes down my arm and my vision blacks out for a second as my nervous system tries to process the sheer wrongness of having something foreign embedded in my body. The scream that leaves my throat is guttural and it echoes across the arena.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Fuck.
My dominant hand, the one I use for everything—fighting, hand signs, technique precision—just gone, rendered completely unusable while I'm still surrounded by three more curses. My cursed energy reserves are dropping faster than I'd like, my shoulder is fucked, and I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that this is exactly how you die in these trials.
The clicking intensifies and I duck under the bulky curse's next swing, wincing as my shoulder screams in protest, then hit the ground and roll while forcing a sharp pressure burst behind me that throws dirt and debris into its face. The mannequin rushes toward me with its limbs twisting unnaturally as it closes the distance on all fours, no longer slow and jerky. Well, that’s fucking terrifying. I compress air beneath both feet to leap straight up. My boots hit the concrete wall and I push off hard, flipping over both curses as they collide below me with a sickening crunch, and I land in a crouch behind them while blood continues to drip from my shoulder.
The fog creeps back in as the clicking resumes and my grip on my cursed energy wavers, but I grit my teeth and force cursed energy to flow directly to my ears, muffling the sound and fighting the haze until my vision becomes clearer. The first curse is still pinned by atmospheric pressure with its ribs crushed inwards and regeneration slowed—easy target, I should go for that one, but that clicking is still there and I need to find the source.
My eyes dart around the arena until I spot it—a shadow flickering along the far wall, skeletal and hunched on all fours with hollow sockets where eyes should be and blade-tipped fingers dragging across the concrete. It's blind, which means its technique must be sound-based, and I slam my foot into the ground to release a sharp pressure burst that cracks loudly enough to echo through the arena. The skeletal curse's head snaps toward the sound—away from me—and I've got it now, I know how to fight this thing.
The clicking stops abruptly and silence fills the arena with heavy air that makes my ears start ringing as the pressure vanishes like something being ripped from my skull, and then all four curses move as one unit with dozens of eyes fixating on me as they rush forward. The ground buckles under their combined weight and air pressure spikes wildly as I pull it from every direction to brace myself, and the mannequin reaches me first with its hands forming into scythes that swipe at me.
I jolt backwards and dodge the attack with one scythe ripping through my uniform jacket but not piercing skin, then slam a burst of compression into the ground to vault upwards. The shockwave sends dust and debris flying and the bulky curse barrels through it without slowing, its hands ripping through concrete where I stood a heartbeat ago, and wind screams around me as I land hard with my knees bending to absorb impact. Pain flares in my shoulder and causes my vision to white out for a second time, but I force myself upright and straighten my back while biting back the scream of agony that threatens to creep up my throat. I'll worry about the pain later—right now I need to survive.
The skeletal curse is hanging back like it's calculating and strategizing while the others are aggressive and reckless, which I can use to my advantage. I compress air into both palms and slam them together, and the resulting shockwave explodes outward in a ring that sends the three closest curses staggering backwards as they're dragged by the pressure wave like leaves caught in a gale.
The skeletal curse clings to the far wall with all four razor-jointed limbs grinding against stone as its ribs flare outward like it's breathing in the weight of the atmosphere itself, and then the tapping stops completely. My hands fly to my ears as a resounding screech of metal on metal resonates across the arena, and I snap my gaze to the sound—the skeletal curse dragging its blades across the walls with each sharp scrape sending waves of nausea through me. It peels itself from the wall with a wet grinding sound and then silence encases the area as its claws stop scraping.
My stomach drops as the pressure in the air shifts subtly with wind stuttering around me and the hairs on my arms rising, and I try to pull my focus back to cursed energy but the response is sluggish and delayed. The curse's skull twitches toward the disturbance and I realize it's listening, trying to locate me through the air currents, and then it taps a bone-tipped finger with its hollow gaze locking onto me as the sound echoes back.
Shit. Echolocation. It's been toying with me this whole time.
My pulse hammers in my ears as I force myself to stay completely still—don't shift, don't breathe, no pressure bursts—and wind curls around me on instinct but I clamp down hard on my cursed energy to thin the currents until they're barely perceptible. Fushiguro's advice reverberates through my mind: "Control your emotions. It's all about control."
The skeletal curse tilts its head and releases another screech that skims across the arena, and I stay perfectly still while the bulky curse grows impatient behind it, shifting its weight side to side. The mannequin spasms with its head wrenching toward me like it's waiting for permission, and the leathery curse paces while circling me slowly. Then the skeletal curse raises one elongated finger and silence fills the area as that finger points toward me with precision, and the curses lunge—not all at once because that would be merciful, but in a coordinated attack pattern.
The mannequin rushes me with its joints popping loudly, the leathery curse mirrors it while circling wider to cut off escape angles, and the bulky one advances head-on with its weight cracking the ground and each step vibrating through my bones. The skeletal curse stays back and watches, then scrapes a talon against the wall and fire races through my skull as the sound rebounds, making my vision swim while I stagger and grind my teeth to catch myself before I buckle completely.
A throbbing ache builds behind my eyes as the screech fades and leaves hollow ringing bouncing around my skull, but I force my vision to steady by blinking hard until the arena sharpens again. The mannequin is a hair's breath away and I pivot at the last moment while dragging air sideways in a shallow pull instead of a burst, and its scythe hand severs through the space where my ribs were a moment before, close enough that displaced air grazes my skin and leaves a shallow cut.
I twist and drive a compressed gust into the joint of its knee and the limb snaps with a dull crack, folding inward and sending it skidding across the concrete in a tangle of limbs. The skeletal curse screeches at the noise and the sound punches through my head, turning my legs to jelly while I bite back a pained cry as blood trickles from my nose and my cursed energy flares in response.
Control it. Control it!
What was it Fushiguro told me about sound-based cursed techniques? There's a way to block them.
The bulky curse charges and I throw myself sideways with my shoulder groaning in protest as I roll and the impact rattles my bones, and its hands rake the ground where I land while gouging deep trenches into cement. Fushiguro's words echo: "If you are up against a cursed technique that uses sound like cursed speech, flow cursed energy to your ears. You can block the effects of the technique."
Fushiguro, if you weren't in your late forties I would kiss you.
Cursed energy floods my ears with a faint blue glow just in time for me to spot the leathery curse lunging from the flank, and I swivel hard while drawing air diagonally across my body. The pressure collides into its torso mid-leap and twists its momentum, hurling it into the wall with a bone-crunching thud, and it rebounds while snarling as limbs already knit back together.
Of fucking course.
The leathery curse pushes itself free from the crater with bones snapping back into place through sickening pops that make my stomach churn, and its regeneration accelerates as cursed energy surges in angry pulses that distort the air around it. The atmospheric pressure I'd pinned it with shatters as it roars with sound sending vibrations into my bones, and there's no time to recover because the bulky curse charges again with even more speed than before—it's adapting to my movements.
It lowers its head and ploughs forward like a battering ram with clawed fingers tearing furrows through the ground, and I channel cursed energy into Shear Step to compress air beneath my feet and launch myself sideways while skimming low across the arena floor. My boots barely touch down before I'm turning again and trailing a curved pressure wall up in its path, but the curse crashes through it and shatters the shield like glass while sending me sliding across the ground until I smack into a wall.
Pain flares through my ribs and air is punched from my lungs in a sharp gasp as I bounce off the wall and collapse to one knee while the arena spins violently, and my shoulder sears red hot as something wet and warm trickles down my side. I drag in a pained breath and force myself to get up, but the bulky curse is learning—its charge adjusts mid-stride with claws carving deeper and posture lowering to compensate for my evasiveness as the ground fractures beneath its weight.
The leathery curse follows in quick succession while circling wide and regenerating its injuries with furious pulses of cursed energy that distort the air, and all eight of its eyes fix on me while narrowing in tandem. The mannequin snaps back upright even though it doesn't seem to know how to regenerate its crushed knee, but that doesn't stop it from launching toward me anyway.
I pull myself up while bracing an arm on the wall and slam my foot down, compressing air into the ground with enough force to splinter the stone, and the recoil kicks me airborne just as the mannequin's scythe-hand cleaves through the air and misses me by millimeters. Wind howls around me as I roll midair and pull pressure into a tight spiral around my body, then land with knees bending while flinging the spiral outward in a violent lateral burst that catapults the mannequin into the leathery curse with a bone-rattling crackle.
No time to celebrate that small win because the bulky curse is already on me, and I brace myself as its shoulder collides with my chest while crushing air from my lungs and driving me backward across the ground. Pain shoots down my spine as I skid with friction tearing at my clothes and ripping skin open, and I barely manage to deflect the follow-up strike by dodging with Shear Step.
The realisation hits me like cold water: I can't keep this up. My cursed energy is maybe half depleted, possibly more—it's hard to gauge when you're bleeding and your thoughts are fragmented by pain—and my right shoulder is completely useless with my arm hanging dead at my side. The skeletal curse controls the entire battlefield with that clicking sound that keeps trying to lock down my nervous system, the bulky curse is learning and adapting and getting faster with every exchange, the leathery curse regenerates faster than I can damage it, and I don't even know what the mannequin is doing anymore but it's probably something terrifying.
Four Grade One curses against one exhausted, injured, half-delirious sorcerer, and the math simply doesn't work out in my favour. I have two real options here: keep fighting and die slowly over the next two or three minutes before ending up in the body pile with Hajime, or use my Maximum Technique to group all four curses together and unleash Atmospheric Collapse with the barrier containing the blast so there's no civilian casualties or collateral damage.
Just me, probably dying from complete cursed energy depletion with physical collapse guaranteed and recovery time unknown, which is a polite way of saying I'll probably never wake up. Using your Maximum Technique as an unranked sorcerer during trials is basically suicide, but dying to four Grade One curses because I was too scared to use it seems even more pathetic, and at least this way I get to choose how I go out.
At least this way I take them with me, and maybe—just maybe—if I somehow survive the technique itself, I'll have proven I'm Grade One material and Dad will finally look at me like I'm worth something instead of just another disappointing Sazama who couldn't hack it.
I'm sorry, Shiori.
I stop moving and let my guard drop, and the curses sense the shift immediately—the blood, the exhaustion, the vulnerability. They close in from all sides while the skeletal curse screeches in triumph, and my vision blurs as I bring my hands together while interlacing my fingers.
Just a little closer.
"I'll be dying first, bitches!" my voice cracks from exhaustion and defiance, and I interlace my fingers in the final seal and pour everything I have into the technique.
"Maximum Technique: Atmospheric Collapse."
Every ounce of cursed energy in my body—my core, my reserves, the dregs I didn't even know I still had—I rip it all out and throw it into the air around me, and the atmosphere buckles in response.
Space itself literally warps and bends inwards like reality is collapsing towards a single point between the palms of my hands. The temperature plunges and frost forms on the walls. My breath comes out in short white puffs. The curses lunge as the pressure drops to absolute zero. Perfect silence. Perfect fucking silence falls over the arena. My own heartbeat doesn’t even reach my ears.
The curses freeze midair and their monstrous faces twist with confusion. I bring my hands together and focus every last drop of cursed energy into the attack. The air detonates. The atmosphere collapses inward as all the pressure I’d been holding suspended rushes toward the point between my fingers.
The curses are pulled from their feet and thrown around violently like they’ve been caught in a hurricane. The resulting vortex tears flesh and snaps bones as their cursed energy unravels like threads coming apart at the seams. The skeletal curse lets out one final screech before its skull caves in on itself with a sickening crunch. I fight the shudder than runs through my body. The mannequin shatters into tiny porcelain fragments. I throw my arm over my eyes so the shards don’t cause me any more injuries. That’s the last thing I need right now.
The bulky curse tries to latch itself into the ground using its claws, but the ground is being pulled inwards towards the growing vortex. The concrete cracks and splitters, flying toward the centre along with the curse.
The leathery curse tries to regenerate desperately. But it fails against the onslaught of pressure. It dissolves mid-scream into ash that scatters in the air. Drawn to the vortex.
I release the pressure from the attack and it creates a shockwave that explodes outwards in a perfect circle. The barrier barely holds against the weight of the attack. For one terrifying breath, I think I’m about to kill everyone outside. But the barrier shudders before settling.
Smoke curls throughout the arena and the dust clears to reveal the ground that’s been completely erased. The concrete sits as powder. There’s nothing left except the tiny residuals of cursed energy from the curses.
I did it.
Black spots coat the edges of my vision and my legs give out and I drop to my knees with the impact jarring through my bones, completely empty of cursed energy, hollow in a way I've never felt before. My shoulder screams and blood drips from the wound onto the powdered concrete beneath me, and I curl my hands into fists while slamming them weakly against my thighs. Work, come on, get up. But my arms buckle immediately and I collapse onto my side where the ground is cold and gritty and tastes like ash when I breathe. The barrier above me shimmers and drops away, and I hear voices that sound distant and muffled like I'm underwater—"She's alive!" and "Get her out, now"—followed by running footsteps. Strong arms slide beneath me and lift with practiced ease, and pain flares white-hot through my shoulder and ribs and spine, everywhere, and I try to open my eyes but my eyelids are too heavy. Just for a second they flutter open and I catch a glimpse of white hair through my blurred vision—Satoshi?—before darkness swallows me completely and someone announces "Special Grade" from far away, though I don't hear whatever comes after that.
