Kakine didn't really know how to feel about everything. The pain of losing his parents never went away, but it felt more manageable. He hated everything about his parents passing. But alas he couldn't do anything about it. So he mainly stayed in his room most of the time. Working on improving small devices around the house during his free time.
It was until one day he received an order from one of his grandfather's servants. "Lord Kakine, your grandfather requested you to go to his study." Kakine raised his eyebrows a bit. One of the main rules of his house was to never go into his study on any occasion, so for him to be called into his study must have been a special occasion.
Kakine slowly descended down the stairs, step by step until he reached the basement. The basement had about 3 rooms. The left room was filled with old junk that was never needed and the right room was another bedroom his grandfather slept in. The one in the middle was to never be stepped in on any circumstance.
He knocked on the door 3 times, and his grandfather opened the door for him to let him inside. "Sit down, there is much to speak about." His grandfather told him.
The study was precisely what Kakine had thought it would be and expected. It was a chamber of books , heavy with the scent of dust, aged paper, and a dry, mineral tang like old blood and copper.
The walls were lined with sagging wooden shelves, burdened with leather-bound tomes, scroll cases yellowed with age, and glass jars containing unidentifiable, shadowy specimens suspended in murky fluid. A single, ancient desk dominated one side, piled high with notes in cramped, frantic script. But the floor was the true centerpiece.
It was a dense, overlapping tapestry of what looked liked demonic circles, painstakingly drawn in what looked like silver ink, dried blood, and powdered gemstones embedded in the worn floorboards. They were not neat, geometric patterns like the ones in modern diagrams he'd glimpsed. These were organic, almost frantic in their complexity, swirling into a central, cleared space like the eye of a ritualistic storm.
Close the door," Sougen commanded, his voice seeming to soak into the dusty silence. Kakine did so, the heavy oak door shutting with a soft thud.
"You have spent weeks grieving," Sougen stated, turning. His face was all sharp angles in the lamplight. "A necessary indulgence. It is over. Now, you must understand the truth of their absence, and the reason for your presence in this house."
He gestured to a small, three-legged stool placed just outside the outermost ring of the largest circle. "Sit there. Do not scuff the lines."
Kakine sat, the stool creaking under his negligible weight. The intricate, layered circles seemed to pulse with a faint, latent energy, making the shadows in the room dance at the edge of his vision
"Your father embraced ignorance," Sougen said, turning away from the circles at last. His face was carved into sharp planes by the lamplight. "He rejected the family's craft. He abandoned the pursuit of foundational truths in favor of comfort and normalcy."
Kakine frowned faintly, fingers curling in his lap.
"Thaumaturgy," Sougen continued, as if stating a simple fact. "What the ignorant call magic. It is the study of cause and effect beyond the limits of mundane physics. A discipline passed through bloodlines, refined over generations."
Kakine didn't respond.
"The Kakine family was never meant to be ordinary," Sougen said. "Your parents chose to believe the world was safe without understanding how fragile it truly is."
He gestured toward the circles etched into the floor.
"The Great Fire of Fuyuki was not an accident."
The words settled heavily in the air.
"It was a ritual failure," Sougen went on. "A convergence event tied to a larger thaumaturgical system. One your parents were ignorant of. Their deaths were the price of that ignorance."
Kakine's gaze drifted to the silvered lines beneath his feet. If his grandfather knew they might've died in some sort of hocus pocus ritual, why didn't he tell them? Why didn't he warn them? "Then why am I here?" Kakine asked quietly. "You are here because you are my grandson," Sougen finished. "And because you are all that remains."
He stepped aside, clearing the space before the central circle. "You will be tested. If you possess suitable Magic Circuits, I will instruct you. If you do not, then I will be forced to adopt a new heir." He said without a hint of emotion on his face.
Kakine usually wouldn't start doing this with more of an explanation. He hated being bossed around regardless if it was his grandfather or God himself. But most of his days were spent in his room or just not being productive, so whatever knowledge his grandfather wanted to teach him could probably be useful. So he decided to listen and indulge in his teaching.
Sougen studied Kakine in silence for a long moment.
"Remove your shirt," he said.
Kakine hesitated only briefly before complying. He tugged the fabric over his head and set it aside, the cool air of the study brushing against his skin. "Turn around," Sougen instructed. Kakine did as in structured and faced the wall.
"Remain still," Sougen said. Then a foreign sensation surged through Kakine's body, threading inward from the point of contact.
It started as a warmth that seemed to pulse beneath the surface of his skin, radiating outward from where Sougen's palm rested. Then came a strange numbness, like static buzzing under a nerve, spreading in flickering tendrils down his arms and across his back.
His breath caught in his throat. Sougen's hand lifted. The sensation vanished just as suddenly as it had come, leaving Kakine's skin tingling where his touch had been, like echoes of energy retreating into silence.
Sougen looked at him with the same measured calm as always. "Forty," he repeated. "High-grade circuits." He finished. Kakine blinked, the strange warmth in his chest settling into a quiet hum.
"Tomorrow, you'll wake early to begin your training," Sougen said, voice calm and measured. "You probably feel tired right now." Kakine nodded slightly. "Go to sleep," Sougen added. Kakine left his grandfather's study and made his way back to his room with a lot more questions. He was speculating if magic existed in his old world but he had no concrete proof. Something like magic just seemed impossible to even comprehend, but in this world it seemed like it was a thing. He didn't know much about magicians back in his old world, the only thing he knew was Aleister might've been one and that was speculation at best.
He went to sleep while just speculating about the future and everything it had to offer.
The next day he woke up and made his way to his grandfather's study at 7 in the morning. It felt exhausting waking up this early but he might as well get this over with and maybe glean some new info about the world he was in.
Magic existing didn't feel that surprising to him when he really thought about it. Even though it was pure speculation, to think science could explain every little thing about the world he lived in was foolish.
Knocking on the door of the study, he waited for the old bastard to open the door to his study. It didn't take long for the old man to open the door and let him inside. Closing the door behind him, Sougen Kakine decided to get started with his teaching.
"Before I start teaching there is one thing I must tell you." He started off, "Magecraft must remain a secret at all costs, no questions asked." He then takes out a newspaper and it shows multiple murders with different headlines "Sometimes magi don't even consider learning hypnosis spells, they just kill any unlucky observer."
Kakine's face didn't even flinch at any of the newspapers that were brought out. The headlines and images were indeed graphic, but anti skill and other organizations in Academy City tended to clean up messy experiments that sometimes got away and other such failures.
After that warning my grandpa gave me he put away the newspaper and we started out training. "Magecraft is the essence of using rules and preparation to make the impossible happen." He took a brief pause before continuing. "The first thing I want to teach you is to open your magic circuits, and with that you must learn self hypnosis."
Kakine was confused, why would one hypnotize themselves into using their ability? Before Kakine could continue his thoughts his grandpa brought him out of his musings. "Imagine something that would put your mind in a state where you can calmly use your circuits, like a mental trigger."
Kakine thought for a moment on his mental trigger. Actually, he didn't need to really think about it. He knew what it was. That feeling when he lost for the first time. That feeling when he got his skull kicked in from the number one. That feeling when he felt himself lose consciousness in that battle.
Pain bloomed beneath his skin as thin blue lines flickered across his body. His 40 circuits started to light up after releasing his mental trigger. Kakine heard clapping coming from his grandpa's direction and gave him a glance. Sougen Kakine was holding a genuine smile on his face, while almost tearing up.
"I must acknowledge your aptitude. Opening your Magic Circuits and establishing a functional mental trigger this quickly is impressive." Sougen wiped the tears from his eyes before continuing on with his lesson. "I want you to repeat the exercise several times, until it becomes instinctual. Once you've mastered that, we will move on to the simplest spells: Gradation Air, Reinforcement, and Flash Air."
Kakine Teitoku was then dismissed from his grandfather's study and was told to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow he should be able to open and close them as simple as breathing, so he had his whole day practically filled with training.
From the moment he went back up to his room he focused on activating his magic circuits. Thin blue lines flickered beneath his skin, tracing paths through his forty circuits. He concentrated through breakfast, keeping the sensation alive while lifting chopsticks, bringing rice to his mouth, even swallowing.
The moment he finished eating, he carried it into the day. While walking through the house, his circuits hummed in the background. When he decided to go to the backyard, he kept his circuits outside. Even while pouring water into a cup or working with tech, his circuits remained active, pulsing faintly inside his body.
By evening, fatigue pressed at him. The lines across his skin went out and he stopped practicing. Kakine's body and mind had adjusted. The circuits responded almost automatically now, flowing beneath his skin without conscious thought. With that he fell asleep feeling content with his accomplishment.
But before that, he reached for a notebook. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Kakine began writing, comparing what he knew. "Esper powers were born from forcing the world to obey a personal understanding of reality." He stopped mulling over the words his grandfather told him during his first lesson. "Magecraft, so far, relied on rules, preparation, and acceptance of limits."
Before closing the notebook, Kakine added another section.
"Dark Matter, currently Nonfunctional"
He stared at the words for a long moment before writing beneath them.
Dark Matter was not magecraft. It did not rely on external laws, rituals, or permission. It existed because his Personal Reality declared it did. That declaration came from his brain, reinforced through Academy City's systems and years of conditioning.
This body was different.
His brain chemistry was undeveloped. The calculation capacity simply wasn't there. Even if the knowledge remained, the hardware did not. A Personal Reality required constant, unconscious assertion, something a child's mind could not sustain.
More importantly, this world lacked the infrastructure that supported espers. No AIM diffusion fields. No environmental reinforcement. Nothing to stabilize the contradiction Dark Matter represented.
Magecraft worked because it followed rules the world already accepted.
Dark Matter worked because the world was forced to accept it.
Right now, he lacks the means to do either safely.
Conclusion:
Dark Matter is not gone.
With rituals and experiments it may be accessible but currently he doesn't have the money nor the knowledge to hold such experiments.
He underlined the last sentence once, then closed the notebook and went to sleep.