Gojo stood on the steps of the old academy and counted the empty seats in the open gazebo. Six candidates this morning. Six benches, six folded jackets, six pairs of nervous hands. He needed one of them to inherit his role before the curses outpaced him. He called the first forward. The course waited past the courtyard: a fenced run where a small, sharp-toothed imp circled, yellow eyes bright. No candidate had reached the far gate. Gojo had built it that way on purpose. One by one, they tried. One by one, they came back limping, or didn't come back at all and had to be carried. By dusk the gazebo was empty. Gojo stood at the fence and watched the imp lick its claws, untouched. He walked back to the dark-tiled halls and sat on the steps. None of them. Not one. Time he didn't have was already gone. He pulled out his phone and started a new list, blank except for a single line: find someone who has already survived something worse.

Gojo was still on the academy steps when his phone lit up. Three curse sightings across the city inside ten minutes. Then five. Then the map turned red at the famous crossing downtown, where the crosswalks fan out under the giant screens. He had planned to spend the night hunting one survivor worth training. Instead he stood, pocketed the phone, and moved. He reached the crossing in under a minute. Civilians ran in every direction. A low-grade curse the size of a truck was pulling a man off the white lines. Two smaller ones climbed a signal pole. Gojo cut the big one in half with a flick of his hand and dropped the others before they hit the pavement. Then he saw the next street. And the next. The outbreak was not one site. It was a ring. He worked outward. He kept a blue sphere of energy braced at his left, ready, and a red one held tight at his right for close work. He moved block by block. He caught a woman before a curse reached her and set her behind a parked car. He killed the curse. He ran again. His shirt stuck to his back. He did not stop to count. An hour in, the last curse in the ring went down under his heel. The intersection was quiet. Sirens somewhere far off. No civilians torn apart. He had held the line. He bent, hands on his knees, and breathed. A man stepped out from under the shuttered awning of a shop. Black robe. Long dark hair. A red mark on his forehead. He had been standing there the whole time. Gojo felt the cursed energy on him a second late, and it was wrong — layered, old, wearing the body like a coat. "You're slower than the records suggested," the man said. "Interesting. You cleared the ring. I set it to see what you'd do." He tilted his head. "You still think one of them can replace you. That's the interesting part." Gojo straightened. "Who are you." "Kenjaku. The name is current. It won't be for long." He glanced at the empty crosswalk. "I've watched sorcerers try what you're trying for eight hundred years. They all fail the same way. I came to see if you'd fail faster or slower." He turned and walked into the crowd of returning civilians. Gojo took one step after him and stopped. Two blocks over, another siren opened up. A child was screaming. Gojo chose the child. When he came back, the awning was empty. He stood in the wet crosswalk light and understood two things at once. The curses tonight had been bait, and something older than his search had already been watching him look. He pulled out his phone. Under the single line on his list, he added a second: whoever I find has to survive that man.