Priestess's Master Plan

"Where could they be... my snacks?"

The mutter slithered through the air, barely heard above the chatter of the market crowd. People passed him by without a second glance, their eyes sliding over the void his presence occupied like oil repelling water.

He stood tall but slouched—arms hanging loose like puppets with fraying strings. His dark flak vest clung to his form like dried skin, and the hitai-ate on his head was smeared, its symbol erased as though fate itself had wiped his identity clean.

Two furry red hands swung at his sides—paws? No, claws. A grotesque fusion of human and fox. Patches of chakra fur twitched unnaturally, and the faint sound of chains echoed with every step he took, like phantoms dragging behind him.

His eyes spun lazily, the Sharingan warped, corrupted—no longer a proud crimson but something darker, like wine mixed with oil, smeared and bleeding at the edges.

"Snacks... snacks... where—oh where..."

The cursed spirit licked his lips, or where lips might've been. He was humming now. A nursery rhyme without tune.

He entered a small, poorly lit shop, the hanging bell above the door jingling just slightly off tempo.

Behind the counter stood a man who looked like he'd fought sleep and lost, then crawled back for another round. Dark circles cradled his eyes like bruises. At the sound of the bell, he forced a reflexive smile, not even looking up yet.

"Welcome—! Ah... sorry, I... must've imagined the door..."

He blinked. There was no one.

Or so he thought.

The cursed spirit was already standing inches from him.

The clerk's breath hitched.

His eyes widened—not at the presence, not yet—but at the sudden feeling. Like fingers dragging down his spine. He felt a presence even if he couldn't see it.

The spirit, eyes glowing faintly like coals in fog, spotted it.

A small fox spirit had wrapped a spectral chain around the man's neck. The cursed energy was faint, subtle. Just enough to draw the attention of something hungry.

"Ah, there you are~!" the spirit giggled with delighted madness.

He reached out, plucked the fox off like it was a misbehaving cat from a couch—and stuffed it whole into his mouth. The fox spirit squealed and writhed, then disappeared into his throat in a wet crunch.

In that instant, the clerk jolted upright as if a plug had been reconnected.

He saw him now.

He saw everything.

The twisted face. The furred limbs. The blood.

And those eyes.

"Oh, uh—welcome, customer..." the clerk choked. He forced a laugh, his legs locking beneath him. "S-sorry, I've been in a daze lately. Is there... anything you're looking for?"

The spirit tilted his head. A childlike expression of mock curiosity.

The clerk could barely keep his eyes focused. He thought he saw something dripping from the man's hands. Red... with a hint of purple?

No—his mind scrambled to justify it—I'm hallucinating, right? Probably the sleeplessness... yeah... hallucinating to—

He didn't finish the thought.

The world flipped.

His body was still standing.

His head wasn't.

And then the body collapsed, folding like discarded laundry.

The spirit stood there, crunching on the last of the fox tail, eyes glazed with quiet joy.

Blood oozed onto the wooden floorboards, and yet he made a sour face, licking his fingertips like a picky gourmet unsatisfied with the aftertaste.

"Ha... I wonder where do all my snacks go?"

He sat on the counter, legs swinging. He glanced to the headless body like someone checking the clock.

"No matter..."

He reached for the severed head on the floor, his shadow stretching like ink across the grain.

"Snacks were never a problem I should be worrying about anyway."

And then he smiled.

His mouth widened impossibly, his lips tearing and black gums splitting apart.

Rows of jagged, ink-colored teeth slid forward like knives in drawers.

He took a slow, deliberate bite from the top of the head—skull, scalp, and hair—his crunch echoing through the dead silence of the shop.

.

.

.

Shion collapsed onto her bed with a dramatic thud, her face smashing unceremoniously into the mattress. For a moment, she didn't move — just sprawled there, limbs flung out like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Uhhhhh..." came the groan, long and pitiful, muffled by cotton.

Silence hovered.

Then—

"WAAAAAAAH!"

She wailed into the blanket, voice cracking, body vibrating with unfiltered despair.

Her room looked like a literary crime scene. Notes and timelines littered every surface — some caught in the lazy spin of the ceiling fan, others wedged under furniture like they were trying to escape. Mind maps twisted into nonsense, character pyramids devolved into scribbles, and her handwriting? Officially illegible.

And in the eye of the storm was Shion herself, hair sticking out at weird angles, eyes glazed from what might've been three days of back-to-back research, caffeine, and losing her will to live.

"This is hell," she mumbled into the pillow, flipping over just enough to breathe through the fabric. "Actual, story-induced hell."

Because of course it wasn't a regular isekai. No, that would be too merciful. She had landed in that fanfic — the one starring a terminally ill Hyuga named Akai, barreling toward global apocalypse with no brakes, no cure, and definitely no plot armor.

And the real kicker?

She had already read the entire thing.

She still couldn't explain why. Morbid curiosity? Literary self-harm? Pride? Whatever the reason, she'd made it through both versions: the final, published take and the unedited draft the author had dumped online in a moment of raw honesty.

"I've tried hard, you know?" the author had written. "Here's the draft, so you guys can see how hard I worked not to kill every character or make the MC totally unredeemable."

Spoiler alert: they failed on both counts.

The draft was unhinged — more deaths, more suffering, more existential horror. Characters she had emotionally invested in were wiped out like footnotes.

The polished version was still a slow descent into despair, sure... but the draft? That was a nosedive into madness with a "DO NOT OPEN" label taped over every chapter.

Therefore, reader's still prefer the official better. 

It was an improvement. A significant one.

But it didn't change the outcome. Not really.

"Obviously, like most fanfics, that guy's a reincarnated person too—it's just that his memories return gradually, instead of all at once."

Akai Hyuga was still fated to go off the rails. That narrative train had already left the station — Shisui's death was just the scheduled detonation.

Shion exhaled sharply, eyes fixed on the ceiling like it held divine answers. Her voice came out dry, almost numb. "They even gave him a reason for killing. A good reason, even."

But she wasn't fooled. The draft had shown her too much. She knew where the story was heading — and that was what haunted her.

"I'm gonna die in here," she muttered. "I'm going to die in a fanfic that the author tried to make less deadly and still failed."

A sheet of paper drifted down and stuck to her forehead like fate itself was mocking her.

She peeled it off with a half-hearted swipe. It was one of her disaster timelines — dates, names, branching outcomes, most of them violently crossed out. Shion squinted at the mess and tapped it against her chin.

"If Akai's here already," she mumbled, brain starting to spark through the fog, "then that means Elder Genzou's arc is over."

Which would place them right before Shisui entered the scene.

Her breath caught.

Shisui would appear slowly. Slipping into Akai's orbit with small kindnesses, quiet words, gentle guidance. He'd become a stable presence — the older brother figure Akai never had.

Until the story ripped him away.

And with that grief, Akai would snap — the dam would burst, and his cursed technique would evolve into something far darker. Reversal turned inside out. Healing twisted into destruction.

Shion curled inward, pressing her fists to her chest.

She adored Naruto. She even had a begrudging respect for Jujutsu Kaisen — in that masochistic, "watch everyone suffer while pretending it's character development" kind of way. But this?

This crossover fanfic was straight-up Gege-core: unrelenting despair wrapped in cursed energy mechanics and weaponized emotional trauma.

And the worst part? The author embraced it. Full-on Shibuya arc devastation. Bodies piling up. Hope plummeting like a rock in a cursed pond.

It all traced back to that day — the day fanfic history was scarred forever. The day a 5,921-word negative review was born onto the scene, forged from pure, incandescent rage.

Normally, reviews capped at 140 characters. But thanks to a glitch? This one bypassed the limit and let the whole rant breathe.

You see that?! Even W*bnovel itself wanted it out there!

But who wrote it?

Well...

Shion did.

A thirty-something woman who normally stuck to soft smut, romantic fluff, and yaoi one-shots — who had somehow read this apocalyptic tragedy to the bitter end.

She clenched the page in her hand until the corners dug into her skin.

She remembered every twist. Every death.

She knew exactly how the story went.

"...I'm so screwed," she whispered.

Above her, the ceiling fan spun like a wheel of fate, taunting her with its slow, steady rhythm.

She closed her eyes. Tried to breathe.

And then — a shift.

Shion sat upright with sudden stillness, her face pale, her eyes distant.

"Cursed Objects..." she murmured, voice scraped raw.

The memory surfaced sharply, ripped straight from JJK's lore. Binding Vows. The contracts forged with blood and intent.

Shion knew how they worked — knew too well, thanks to the obsessive rabbit holes she'd fallen into late at night, digging through fan wikis and arc breakdowns.

A Binding Vow was more than just a word.

It was a deal made with the universe. A personal restriction that, cannot be broken once vowed.

Like chakra expenditure from a jutsu... but worse. It didn't just take energy. It could rip away a piece of your existence, leaving scars reality couldn't heal.

And to become a cursed object, Binding vows needed to be made.

And in the story — the hell she was now trapped inside — Akai Hyuga had paid the steepest price imaginable with Binding vows.

The narrations burned in her mind like a cursed seal.

Shisui's body — lifeless in Akai's arms. His death, a fixed point in the narrative. Unavoidable. Cruel. Designed to break the protagonist just enough to push him over the edge.

A sacrifice made at the peak of his despair. A vow to sever himself from every power he'd ever known.

The narration played in her head like a grim prophecy:

"To live," Akai pondered it, perhaps he is selfish, selfish enough to bring back someone from death just because he is sad that they left him.

He gave up the Byakugan. The Sharingan. His cursed energy.

All of it — vowed and surrendered to forge Shisui's whole existence into a Cursed Object.

Her hands trembled.

"And then he ate him," she said hoarsely.

The words sounded absurd — twisted beyond reason. But they were true.

Like Sukuna's fingers in JJK, Shisui's body had become a a cursed object. Akai ate it like how Yuji Itadori did, But instead of regaining his old self... he came back wrong.

Stripped of humanity. Void of compassion. That annoying "Will of Fire"? they're gone too.

He wasn't Shisui anymore.

He was rage. Hunger. Curse.

And Akai... was just the container.

The binding vow only restrained the boy — not the monster he birthed.

Cursed Shisui wasted no time. He unleashed everything Akai had locked away — cursed energy, doujutsu, everything.

Four eyes gleamed from his twisted face: Two Sharingan, glowing red and sick with power. Two Byakugan, fractured and seething. All four dripping with black, inky malice.

Shion remembered the fanart. It had gone viral. Tags like

#FourEyedHell

#AkaiShisuiFusion

#WhyDidYouDoThisToHim circulated like wildfire.

And after the transformation?

Everyone died.

Canon characters, OCs, side villains, fan-favorite mentors — no one made it out. It was a bloodbath.

"A protagonist as a main villain is always so depressing..."

There was a pause — then Shion let out a helpless, broken laugh.

She faceplanted again with a muffled scream.

"I hate this fic," she said into the sheets. "And I read all of it."

Another page slid off the bed beside her — a sketch of Akai's cursed form, drawn in frantic charcoal.

She didn't need to look.

She could still see it. Every time she closed her eyes.

Those four, bleeding eyes.

And the horrifying knowledge that she was now inside that world.

Shion dragged herself upright, eyes still hazy, limbs protesting every movement like they'd staged a coup during her meltdown. She rubbed her face hard enough to leave lines and staggered toward her dresser.

Her room was modern by Konoha standards—wooden flooring, a standing lamp, even a desk with a functional drawer—but tradition still had its stubborn fingerprints all over it.

"Right," she muttered, pulling it off. "Of course the isekai gods forgot to give me pajamas that aren't historically accurate..."

She dressed in something casual enough to pass off as civilian wear, mentally promising herself she'd grab a change of clothes somewhere on the way.

A tunic-style top, loose slacks, and a light overcoat—decently nondescript. Nothing that screamed "I just fell into a fanfic with apocalyptic stakes and trauma-based power scaling."

Once outside, she let the door swing shut behind her and took a deep breath of the noon hot air.

Shion stared up at the sky, then down at her hands.

"I was going to fix it," she whispered. "Stop the massacre. Save the clan. Patch the narrative while there was still time."

But now?

Now, her thoughts spiraled back to the second antagonist. The one the fandom didn't argue about, because they couldn't.

There was no discourse. No debates.

Just fear.

Kanzai.

Not a cursed spirit. Konoha's cursed spirit.

In the lore of Jujutsu Kaisen, cursed spirits formed from collective human fears. Natural disasters. Forests. Oceans. Volcanoes.

And hatred.

Mahito had represented the hatred of man for man.

But Kanzai?

Kanzai and Mahito were born of the same seed.

Both were shaped from humanity's hatred. The instinctive fear, revulsion, and cruelty people show one another when the world doesn't give them space to heal. Hatred is easy to create. It doesn't ask for reason—only pain.

But where Mahito was new—wild, gleeful in his malice—Kanzai was something ancient.Older. Heavier.He started as hatred.

But he did not remain that way.

Because hatred in Konoha had history.It wore masks.It passed laws.It called itself order.

And that's what Kanzai became.

He was born from three curses, layered over decades.

First: the Nine-Tails.Not just a beast, but a cataclysm.Its attack didn't simply destroy the village—it shattered the illusion of safety.The people were powerless, broken, grieving.In that grief, something took root.They called the fox a force of nature, a calamity. And in this world, calamities leave behind curses—ghosts of terror.Kanzai fed on those lingering remnants.He became their vessel.

Second: the Uchiha.Or rather, how the village feared the Uchiha.A slow, institutional kind of paranoia.Whispers behind closed doors.Surveillance becoming doctrine.Doctrine becoming exile.Prejudice that hardened into law, until it snapped into massacre.And the malice didn't vanish—it fermented.Kanzai absorbed that, too. The rot beneath the leaf.

Third: Root.Danzo's silent kingdom.A place where orphans were tools.Where children vanished, reappearing only as weapons.Where names were stripped away and obedience was bred through pain.Where cruelty was systematized, justified, hidden.The darkness Konoha buried under ideals like "Will of Fire."

Kanzai was shaped by that silence.By the lives ground down in Root's training halls.By the forgotten, the discarded, the ones no monument would honor.

A cursed spirit born before the main story.A consequence Konoha never admitted to birthing.

Where Mahito came last in Jujutsu Kaisen's timeline, Kanzai came first.

Because Konoha's sins came first.

And in the quiet spaces between the tragedies, Kanzai grew stronger.Feeding on weaker curses.The chain-spirits left in the Nine-Tails' wake.The wraiths of masked ANBU children who never got to grow up.The silent cries buried under concrete and compliance.

He devoured them.Twisted them.Wore them like relics.

Fur-red arms, echoing the fox.A jounin's vest—ironic armor.A mangled Sharingan, not to see—but to remember.

And when he noticed Akai Hyuga—a boy who could see him, speak with him, understand him—he did not kill him.

He laughed.

He was gleeful.

Because for the first time in a century of being ignored by jounin, ANBU, elders, and sages—someone was listening.

And Kanzai loved an audience.

"You're interesting," he had said, the first time he appeared to Akai. His voice was smooth and slithering, like oil across parchment. "Do you know what you are?"

Akai hadn't answered.

Not out loud.

But he hadn't run either.

And that was enough.

Kanzai had lingered. Laughed. Followed like a shadow stitched to Akai's spine.

And when the time came—when Shisui lay broken in Akai's arms, his blood soaking into the soil like ink into parchment—it was Kanzai who whispered.

Words laced with false kindness.

Hints offered like gifts.

"You don't have to let him go, you know?" Kanzai had murmured, barely audible beneath the sound of Akai's shaking breath. "You could keep him."

"How?" Akai's voice was raw. Cracked. Desperate.

Kanzai didn't grin. His mouth didn't move. But something shifted in the space around them, like the world itself had inhaled.

"Make a vow," Kanzai whispered. "The deepest kind. A Binding Vow. You give up what makes you you—in exchange, you turn him into something the world can't ignore. A Cursed Object. That should keep him alive. I've told you a lot about them, right? The cursed objects, I mean. "

Akai didn't understand.

Not until it was too late.

Not until he felt the energy coil around his heart like barbed wire. Not until he whispered the vow, lips shaking, eyes burning.

Not until he ate Shisui who had become the cursed object.

Not until Kanzai smiled.

And vanished.

Shion stared blankly into the streetlight's glow, its yellowish flicker painting everything in sickly hues.

"It was him," she breathed. "Kanzai was the one who pushed it."

The real antagonist.

Not the elders.

Not even Akai.

The curse that watched history rot from the roots and called it fertilizer.

The curse of Konoha.

She turned on her heel.

Whatever plans she'd had—to stop the massacre, to redirect fate—they weren't enough anymore.

Because Kanzai wasn't in the original timeline.

He was the variable.

The curse that never got exorcised.

And now he knew Akai could hear him.

"...I have to find him," Shion whispered. "Before Kanzai approaches Akai."

She didn't know what she'd do after that.

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To be continued.