u/Key_Machine_5585

Things don’t vanish when they’re abandoned. They wait, alone in the dark...”

Biographical Information:

Species: Incarnation (Human-Spirit hybrid)
Age: Human - 26 years, Spirit - 4,000+ years
Grade: Special
Occupation: Former scholar, none
Affiliation: Independent
Status: Unknown

Description:

There are fears of slaughter. There are fears of illnesses and injuries. There are fears of natural disasters and even of the natural world. There are fears of being assaulted, maimed, oppressed, or brutalized. Humans are beset from the moment they are born on all sides, by all manner of mundane horrors… and from each cursed spirits are born which further endanger our lives, our psyches, and our souls. Under such constant and existential threat even existence itself can become unbearable.

The human mind is fragile. It survives the world not by constantly confronting and accepting the negative aspects of reality, but by refusing it. Humans abandon knowledge. They suppress facts and repress memories. Every guilt, every shame, every truth too challenging to face, every feeling left unfinished is pushed away somewhere out of sight. What cannot be accepted will instead be forgotten.

Shita-naru-mono was born from these acts of psychic disposal. It is not a spirit of darkness, but the spirit of what the dark contains. The spirit first formed from abandoned scraps of cursed energy and grew stronger feeding on the residue of emotions humanity rejected and denied. In the desperate pleas and soul-wrenching confessions whispered into the dark and in the sins and horrors committed in the shadows that would never be acknowledged, Shita-naru-mono found an endless bounty of cursed energy to consume and command.

As society evolved, humans developed new methods of shedding its unwanted emotional refuse. As language and writing developed, Shita-naru-mono learned that humans externalized their emotions to more easily dispose of them. The world was slowly becoming littered with forgotten journals, unsent letters, and whispered confessions all hidden in the dark. In time Shita-naru-mono became the curse of all the darknesses of the human mind and soul. Its body comprised of the filth that accumulates in unseen corners, the shadow under the ink on the page, and the evils we hide by abandoning them in darkness.

Shita-naru-mono came into conflict with early jujutsu society often. Its tentacles could be severed. Its body burned and its manifestations dispersed. But attempts to destroy it failed. No sorcerer could exorcise it. Eventually ancient jujutsu society learned something horrifying - no matter how they assailed it, pieces would always remain. Fragments would always be left behind, suppressed emotions and repressed memories soaking into the death site in the form of residual cursed energy. This scattered essence would flee to some unobserved shadow of the world or human mind to gather itself in another place and another form.

A coalition of early sorcerers, scholars, monks, and barrier specialists concluded that conventional exorcism was impossible and instead chose to pursue something unprecedented. If the spirit was formed of residue, then they would turn its nature against it to trap Shita-naru-mono within the most enduring form of residue humanity created. Writing.

A ritual was devised. Not a prison, or cold iron chains. Not a barrier. A manuscript. Shita-naru-mono was lured into a meticulously prepared archive space crowded with thousands of pages of specially crafted cursed paper. They battled, and there the sorcerers performed a binding unlike any other. Rather than imprisoning the spirit physically, they captured the residue of its destruction. They translated it. Shita-naru-mono was rendered into language and captured in a book. Every page a fragment of its being, every sentence a prayer of containment, Shita-naru-mono's shadowy essence was distilled into ink and flattened into script.

The resulting object became known as the Marginal Codex, black-bound volume containing no stable language. The words of the text shifted subtly when looked at. Margins widened. Sentences rewrote themselves, or repeated. Sentences rewrote themselves, or repeated. Those who handled the Codex reported feeling like it could understand them, and they could not bring themselves to destroy it. Burning it merely blackened pages with further text. Tearing pages caused new sections to appear, and blank passages filled themselves in over time. Shita-naru-mono was no longer free, but neither was it absent. It was waiting.

The sorcerers who created the Codex understood that the prison itself was dangerous. Words demand reading. Meaning demands comprehension. Not merely touching the book, or even opening its covers, or seeing the text. The danger posed by the Codex was hidden like a poison needle within understanding itself. The passage of meaning from page into mind would allow Shita-naru-mono passage back into the physical world. The Codex was therefore sealed similarly to relic-grade cursed objects, repeatedly moved and hidden across generations. Always guarded, never read. Never interpreted.

In time, the Codex was lost. The surviving records kept by its custodians conflict, though most say it vanished during a period of upheaval. Some claim it disappeared during the Heian era. For centuries, nothing. Eventually even the memory of it fell to neglect, and then the Codex resurfaced. Auctioned after its discovery in a collapsed archive following an estate liquidation, but its buyer was not a sorcerer. Bought by an academic institute, it was catalogued incorrectly and filed as damaged religious material. Its unwitting guardians were unable to see its stranger nature and so it was once again forgotten. Some years later, a young scholar specializing in forgotten cultures and languages discovered it. He was not a sorcerer, not yet. Though he was unknowingly, a window. Chiefly, he was simply a man who began translating, and became obsessed.

The Codex resisted at first. Sentences shifted, grammar changed. At times entire passages seemed impossible to remember. Yet he persisted. As his mind unraveled, he became convinced the manuscript was unfinished, that some terrible misdeed had deliberately interrupted its final chapters. He believed he was completing a forgotten work. Restoring history. More blood, more sweat, more tears, more effort, he continued. Line by line, he poured his soul onto the page... and the page’s wait was over. There existed a moment of mutual comprehension occurred between monster and man. Not writing. Understanding. The binding was broken, and Shita-naru-mono was freed.

Survivors later describe the archive completely losing sound and light. The shadows beneath shelves grew thick, ink bled from books, security footage failed. The inside of the library building was a charnel house, though the scholar was missing. When the Codex was found, it was empty. Every page now blank, Shita-naru-mono had emerged. But the spirit had not escaped into the physical world.

The Codex was the spirit. Rinku had completed Shita-naru-mono.

Their shared understanding had created a connection between them. While the man, Rinku Kuroda, had become the spirits final page, Shita-naru-mono had chewed away at the scholar’s soul and rooted itself within his innate domain. Rinku’s cursed energy awakened instantly, the scholar became a sorcerer. Not by inheritance, or training, but a result of his soul becoming chimerically fused with Shita-naru-mono.

Appearance:

Rinku dresses in dark, layered clothing. Academic attire altered for fieldwork. Long coats, weatherproof fabrics, gloves, and heavy boots. His eyes are permanently bloodshot from lack of sleep, his irises are pale grey and can seem pleasantly reflective in dim light. Tall and lean, his clothes sometimes appear stained faintly with ink that was once poorly washed out. His fingers are always smudged black, no matter how often he cleans them.

Something partially hidden can occasionally be glimpsed in the shadows surrounding Rinku. Only portions of it are visible but what can be seen resembles layers of fabrics soaked in oil or pitch. The surface undulates constantly and large portions of its form vanish into nearby darkness.

Shita-naru-mono's true form is nested within Rinku’s soul and rarely extends itself beyond the darkness in Rinku’s heart, except when reaching out through shadows and into the physical world. It's central mass is large and amorphous, the edges are difficult to identify as they blur and fade into dim light. Shita-naru-mono grasps through darkness with large boneless tentacles that trail liquid shadow, teeth and mouths line the underside of each tentacle, and the endless limbs are slick with oily residue that drips upwards against gravity and disperses into the air like ink in water. Each portion of its flesh is dotted with clusters of lidless eyes which stare out mutely from behind a thin membrane of gloom.

Personality:

Rinku was a quiet child. He grew up in a small apartment where the lights were rarely turned on. At first abandoned as an infant, he was handed into the care of his extended family before being once again neglected and returned to the care of the state. He passed through the foster system learning with each failed homing new ways in which he was worthless. Rinku came to believe that while everyone else had a place in the world, and a purpose, he himself was destined to be left behind. Forgotten for as long as he would live.

The riddle-like resistance Shita-naru-mono had posed in translating the text was intended to break and mold the pieces of Rinku’s essence into a better shape. Malignantly, the spirit abused and manipulated Rinku’s psyche to plunge him further into the hollow of despair, unneeded humanity was surgically excised. Emotions carved away and cast off as naive offerings.

The moment Shita-naru-mono took up residence in his soul, Rinku was gone. His will has been entirely replaced by that of Shita-naru-mono, his thoughts, instincts, and urges now whispered to him from within the darkness inside himself. Rinku’s memories and identity remain intact in a way that means that he himself cannot recognize how incomprehensibly inhuman he has become, however recently he has begun to worry that he has changed.

Rinku is not malicious, he is detached. He does not speak emotionally, though he becomes unusually empathic toward fear. He has the manner of a scholar discussing some system and behaves with unnerving calm. He speaks little but when he does it is to indulge his curiosity.

Abilities and Powers

Physical Capacities:

Strength: Rinku’s strength is average, he does not rely on physical dominance. Shita-naru-mono can crush stone or bend metals with the raw strength of its tentacles
Speed: Average, though Rinku has excellent reflexes. Shita-naru-mono appears slow but moves deceptively quickly through shadows
Agility: Rinku is not particularly athletic, but he moves very efficiently. His agility seems precise and mechanical
Endurance: Rinku rarely exerts himself. He treats everything like a game of chess and makes small, economic movements moving towards an inexorable endgame . Shita-naru-mono is endlessly hungry and appears not to tire or sleep
Durability: Moderate, Rinku avoids direct confrontation if possible but excels at reinforcing his body with cursed energy if needed. Shita-naru-mono is difficult to harm conventionally and reforms quickly
Combat Style: Rinku acts methodically in combat, he dominates and controls battles with his oppressive technique cutting off avenues of escape and slowly overwhelming opponents, herding them into patches of darkness where they can be devoured by Shita-naru-mono or unmade by void ink

Mental Capacities:

Intelligence: Extremely high analytical intelligence and pattern recognition. Rinku’s spatial reasoning and memory are excellent
Perception: Rinku’s senses are extremely sharp and largely unaffected by challenges such as distance or darkness. He habitually notices inconsistencies and irregularities, especially in conversation with people

Cursed Energy Capacities:

Control: Rinku’s control is highly refined. He can target or apply his cursed energy with incredible precision and has an innate understanding of barrier techniques
Efficiency: Rinku does not use cursed energy particularly efficiently and tends to over supply his techniques. His presence in an area is obvious, however his use of techniques is difficult to read due to the volume of energy surrounding him
Output: Rinku can moderate his output well. He tends towards more extreme use of cursed energy but is capable of subtle, small uses if required.
Reserves: Rinku’s reserves are incredibly high. His cursed energy flows from Shita-naru-mono and is therefore almost endless. In addition to this, Shita-naru-mono constantly consumes residual cursed energy in an area and therefore constantly replenishes itself
Hybrid nature: While positive energy is lethal to pure curses, Shita-naru-mono’s status as a human-spirit fusion allows him to bypass the usual limitation of curses by taking advantage of Rinku’s soul. Shita-naru-mono is highly resistant to reverse cursed energy, additionally unlike most spirits, Rinku can use a reversal of its technique
Immunity to Soul Damage: The larger portion of Rinku’s soul has been replaced by a cursed spirit whose hungry mouth presses into reality through darkness – both in Rinku and in the world around him. Touching Rinku’s soul is akin to touching a black hole and immediately exposes anyone attempting to do so to consumption by Shita-naru-mono

Cursed Technique: Shadow Manifest

”The empty space shapes the image...“

Description:

Buddhism teaches that the true nature of reality is Ku - emptiness without lack. It is the nothingness which makes a bowl useful, the silence which precedes sound, the void from which form and nature arise. Ku is the blank page upon which the world is written.

But reality is subjective. The ink written upon Ku - through which meaning, identity, boundary, and form become fixed - is maintained by collective recognition. When the writing upon the worlds canvas is abandoned, ignored, or forgotten, the neglected ink begins to fall off the page and out of reality. This ink bleeds and accumulates with repressed action and memory, with discarded possibilities and unrealized potential. Darkness is not simply the absence of light, but areas where the definition of the world weakens and reality is partially unwritten.

Shadow Manifest is a cursed technique that allows the user to manifest void ink, a metaphysical substance composed entirely of what reality has abandoned. This ink is capable of marking Ku - the emptiness through which reality, meaning, and motion pass. By harnessing void ink to paint and overwrite the strokes that compose existence, the user can deny, interrupt, or sever connection through Ku.

Mechanics:

By infusing shadows with cursed energy, the user converts darkness into metaphysical doors to the conceptual margins of Ku where discarded perceptions, forgotten emotions, and abandoned actions accumulate as void ink. Shadows manipulated in this way appear unnaturally dense, swallowing light rather than merely darkening it.

Void ink is metaphysical residue composed of discarded meaning, abandoned memory, and unrealized possibility. Anything sufficiently affected by void ink begins to lose ontological clarity as reality begins to reject it too. Memories and experiences falter, physical distances fluctuate, and shape becomes difficult to identify consistently.

Limitations:

As reality rejects void ink, it can persist outside of darkness only while sustained by the users cursed energy. Once void ink is projected from a shadow, it spreads like liquid ink in water as its intent diffuses. This causes void ink to lose efficacy over time and distance.

Bright light alone does not neutralize the technique, but it does make it significantly less efficient. The brighter an area, the more cursed energy is required to sustain void ink. Total illumination drastically reduces the amount of ambient void ink and the amount of shadows available as interfaces for this technique.

Base Technique: Between the Lines

The user floods darkness or shadows with cursed energy converting it into void ink. Through this process, shadows become literally liminal spaces where reality’s "text" weakens and can be partially rewritten.

Unlike conventional shadow manipulation techniques, this does not command darkness directly. Shadow Manifest edits the certainty attached to what darkness conceals.

Extension Techniques:

**Negative Space:**The user may move through darkness by “slipping” through the unfinished margins to teleport between locations, treating connected shadows as annotations surrounding reality rather than part of physical space itself.
Unseen Archive: By connecting shadows with their interior darkness, the user is capable of storing items in the margins of Ku. Items stored in this way are less affected by physical properties such as mass or volume and so the user is not limited by the size or weight or stored objects, however if the user is unable to keep track of specific items they can be permanently lost to darkness due to exposure to void ink
Foreshadowing: The user causes void ink to spread beyond the boundaries of shadow, sublimating into the air like ink in water. As it diffuses, light levels in the affected area dulls and sound softens.
Censor Barrier: The user paints lines of void ink directly on to Ku. These lines do not block force or motion conventionally instead they erase the path of traversal, anything attempting to cross a censor experiences an interruption and fails to pass the lack of continuity defined by the line.
Footnotes: The user paints solid lines of void ink into the air and uses them to walk on or leap from. These fragments behave like temporary areas of unfinished reality and can be used as ramps, walkways, footholds, or platforms. Footnotes disperse rapidly after use but can be maintained through effort and the constant supply of cursed energy
Annotation: The user marks a person, object, or location with a small fragment of void ink. Annotations can be maintained over considerable distance and allow the user to see and hear through connected shadows or sense movement around the mark
Redacted Pages: The user spreads void ink across an area, object, or individual. Affected targets become ontologically unstable and are difficult to perceive or remember accurately. Observers can fail to notice items or individuals, lose track of exit, forget conversations, or misremember events. This is not illusion but immersion in unreality, and causes cognitive experiences to be "incomplete" to perception or memory

CT Amplification: Many-Handed Manuscript

By unleashing amplified cursed energy the user can saturate shadows with void ink, significantly weakening ontological stability in an affected area. As the distinction between reality and shadow begins to blur, it becomes possible for Shita-naru-mono to reach out of the darkness within Rinku and into the physical world - while using this technique, shadows that are connected to Ku autonomously manifest blinking eyes, whispering mouths, and grasping tendrils and tentacles.

Void ink begins to spread naturally through shadows and other areas hidden from direct observation such as cracks, seams, and beneath furniture of objects. The density of void ink makes it easier for the user to connect shadows or harness void ink to significantly overwrite the physical world.

Extension Techniques:

Inkblot Erasure: The user strikes a target or object with an outpouring of concentrated void ink, causing their outline on Ku to smear and lose coherence. Techniques and barriers lose targeting precision and destabilise, while a targets own body or thoughts become incredibly difficult to process. If exposed for long enough, targets can be partially or entirely dissolved into nothingness
Inkwell Oubliette: The user opens a doorway into a dense pool of void ink in the shadows beneath a target. The shadow drags the target into the conceptual margins of Ku where they experience silence, isolation, and a loss of temporal awareness. The longer a target remains within an ouibliette the harder it becomes to escape.
Penumbral Blade: The user condenses void ink into impossibly thin, concentrated black edges. Unlike Censor Barriers which sever passage, these blades sever continuity. The user draws a line which indicates disjunction and causes reality to stop recognising "this side" and "that side" as the same thing. The user can project clean, surgical slices which temporarily inhibits regeneration due to loss of continuity
Unwritten words: The user manifests a deluge of void ink in half-realized, unfinished constructs which shift and change like living text. These unreal phenomena behave unpredictably, opponents struggle to react and their defenses or reinforcement struggles to respond adequately to a series of attacks which have not fully entered reality

Reverse Cursed Technique: Clean Canvas

Rather than weaponizing abandoned reality, by infusing a target with positive energy-infused void ink the user can wash away accumulated distortion or damage to reality, like using a solvent to remove paint.

The user is able to target specific wounds and "remove" the ink which makes them from Ku entirely. Additionally, the user can target specific body regions, allowing them to "remove" any trace of a targets limbs, eyes, mouth, etc.

Maximum Technique: Gyotaku of the Shadowed Self

Just as traditional gyotaku preserves a negative impression through ink, the user can harness the metaphysical negative of a target who has been repeatedly exposed to void ink.

This technique manifests a targets suppressed shame, guilt, and self-hatred along with their repressed desires and emotions. It does not produce a clone, illusion, or shikigami, but a "negative print" print of the targets soul.

Negatives target the individual they were created from with extreme prejudice. Negatives are capable of anticipating their targets movements and actions with eerie precision, additionally the targets reinforcement fail to recognise the negative as an enemy and so does not protect against their attacks. Any damage caused to a negative is partially reflected into the target it was created via pseudo-soul resonance with the targets "shadow self"

Domain Expansion: The Shadow Beneath Meaning

”All things emerge from emptiness. All things may return to emptiness...“

Domain Environment:

An infinite, black-and-white expanse. All darkness within the domain appear subtly reflective, like liquid ink.

The environment and all individuals within it are entirely replaced by their own silhouette, with all sense of distinction given by impossibly bright white lines which mark the surface of Ku.

Brushstrokes fade slowly in and out of existence, hanging in the air at impossible distances. Everything appears partially unfinished, like a painting abandoned halfway through creation

Domain Effect:

Within the domain reality is never fully fixed. Targets experience loss of memory, physical and temporal awareness, and stable tangible form. The user has an effectively infinite supply of void ink within the domain, and is able to harness it freely for any of this techniques applications.

Targets are devoid of any sure sensory input or haptic feedback from their environment or actions, entry to the domain automatically isolates all individuals from awareness of each other making cooperation nearly impossible.

As the domain progresses targets words begon to slur, and their movements falter and slow entirely. Cursed energy leaks excessively into the domain and techniques partially unravel. Of the domain continues unbroken, exposure to the excessive amounts of void ink in the domain can completely unwrite targets effectively erasing them from existence entirely.

Cursed Technique: Heighway Dragon Skin

OC: Rinku Kuroda (Human-Spirit hybrid)