"Mashiro, are you composing waka for the ladies-in-waiting at the Palace?"
Aboard a roofed pleasure boat drifting through Heian-kyō, a man dressed in a pale blue Kariginu was teasing his friend.
Paper, brushes, and an inkstone lay on the low table before them, while half-finished drafts of paired verses littered the space in front of his friend.
"Meguru... I..."
The long-haired man holding a brush was about to answer his friend, but barely two words had left his mouth when his breathing grew labored and his heart began racing, as though it might stop altogether the next instant.
"Mashiro, what's wrong?"
Seeing his friend's unnatural complexion, Meguru was about to reach over and support him, only to see Mashiro's body begin twisting and folding at impossible angles.
An invisible force tore his entire body in every direction, ripping apart every inch of his skin. Once it had stretched his body to its limit, it crushed and folded his limbs together like sheets of paper.
A hoarse roar of pain tore from the black-haired young man's throat. He could not help collapsing to his knees, his entire body drenched in blood.
In that instant, everything within his consciousness seemed to slow endlessly. The faces of people he had known flashed and overlapped before his eyes like pages being rapidly turned.
Amid the chaos, he heard his own bones and flesh grinding together under the pressure, producing a teeth-grating creak.
Blood pattered down, spreading in winding trails across the floor.
The black-haired man gasped for breath, desperately opening and closing his lips as he tried to say something.
The next second, his head was crushed until it burst into a billowing cloud of blood.
Amid the shower of blood, his friend reached out in horror, but all he managed to catch were a few spattered drops.
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
The other passengers watched helplessly as the young man was inexplicably twisted into a shriveled, horrifying rope person. Screaming, they stumbled away in every direction, trying to escape.
But the boat was some distance from shore. They jumped into the water with one splash after another, abandoning all their usual concern for appearances as they swam desperately.
At the same time, many others across the country were inexplicably being twisted into ugly rope people just like him.
The Sugawara Clan suffered the worst of it.
The Sugawara Clan Head was at Rokujō-in when he heard of the upheaval at home. He hurried back, only to find bodies twisted by agonizing deaths throughout the estate. The once-exquisite gardens and corridors were already covered in congealed blood, and the air was thick with a foul, bloody stench. One whiff nearly made him vomit on the spot.
Several servants prostrated themselves on the ground at the sight of him, trembling.
"M-my lord...!"
"What happened here?!"
The Sugawara Clan Head harshly scolded the servants.
I only got up early to pay my customary respects at the Palace. How did my home end up like this?
"W-we don't know... So many people in the clan s-suddenly ended up like this."
The servants were terrified to their very cores, their bodies trembling uncontrollably and tears spilling from their unfocused eyes.
Seeing that he would get nothing out of them, the Sugawara Clan Head swept his sleeve in anger and strode into the inner residence.
The estate was all but carpeted with corpses. He sent his guards to count them.
Overnight, 163 people in the Sugawara Clan had died: six from the main family, thirty from the branch families, and 127 servants.
The Sugawara Clan Head was bewildered. Who possessed the power to kill so many of their people without anyone noticing?
Half the clan's Jujutsu Sorcerers have gone to provide support in Tōsandō, but we are still a clan of Jujutsu Sorcerers whose abilities are passed down through our bloodline. No one should have that kind of power right now!
Even if their political rivals, the Northern House of Fujiwara, had deployed both the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad and the Five Void Generals, they could not have killed so many people in such a short time.
The head of the Northern House of Fujiwara was just as puzzled.
Although the Northern House of Fujiwara currently held great power, fear of rebellion against their rule had led them to either turn insiders or plant spies within major clans such as Abe, Sugawara, and Minamoto.
At Rokujō-in, he witnessed the Sugawara Clan Head hurry away and sent someone to investigate. His subordinate returned to report that half of the Sugawara Clan's members had turned into ugly rope people.
Just as the head of the Northern House of Fujiwara was gloating over their misfortune, several members of his own clan twisted and died in bewilderment before his eyes.
He made a point of examining several of the bodies. Such utterly brutal deaths hardly seemed to be the work of a human. At the very least, no Jujutsu Sorcerer currently in Heian-kyō possessed that kind of power.