The air was still over the Gremory estate, but Kael Gremory was no longer there.
Not in the garden.
Not in his room.
Not even lurking upside-down behind the library chandeliers.
Because Kael had finally left.
Not in rebellion.
Not in anger.
Not even in sadness.
He was… free.
He hadn't told anyone. No goodbyes. No warnings. No final jokes.
Only a quiet whisper of space warping, and the faint echo of a chuckle, like the last breath of mischief before vanishing from sight.
Kael stood in an empty field far beyond the edges of the Gremory territory, horizon dimming with Underworld twilight. The faint hum of boundary magic buzzed at the edges of existence.
He took a deep breath and stretched.
For once, no one was trying to slap him, contain him, or explain why chickens didn't belong in mirrors.
It was a good feeling.
"I needed this," he said aloud.
His voice was light, almost casual—but under it ran something deeper: relief. A sense of being unshackled. Not from chains, but expectations. From playing the role of the noble child, the devil prince, the family's mystery.
No one to monitor his footsteps.
No one to question his smirks.
He held out his hand. The air shimmered. Infinity, once again active, wrapped him in a layer of untouchable calm.
Then, with a breath of cursed energy, Kael formed a small, silent portal—a tear in reality itself—and stepped through.
The sensation of crossing worlds was cold, sharp, and slightly itchy.
He emerged on the edge of a suburban city road as the sky bled warm oranges into cool blue. The human world greeted him with flashing signs, distant sirens, and the faint aroma of gasoline, fried food, and city life.
Kael inhaled deeply.
The pollution had never smelled so nostalgic.
He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching cars pass, their headlights stretching across the fading light. His blindfold remained untouched, his coat fluttering lightly in the breeze, his presence unnoticed by the humans around him.
A pedestrian brushed past him and muttered, "Weird cosplay."
Kael smiled.
He began walking, hands in his coat pockets, feet slightly above the pavement, as if he were only pretending to obey gravity. His mind wandered as much as his body did.
"What a mess," he muttered. "Banished by nobles, dodging maids, flirting with social collapse. And for what? A talking chicken and a few sparkles?"
He snorted.
"Worth it."
The city buzzed around him. Kael didn't head anywhere in particular—at least not yet. He let instinct and curiosity pull him forward like a leaf on the wind.
But deep inside, a goal simmered.
Find a place to train.
Not just to float around, mess with people, or summon dumb cursed items for laughs. But truly train. To sharpen what he had been given.
Gojo's gifts. Sukuna's danger.
He'd only scratched the surface—and he knew it.
But for now, there was only motion. And sky. And neon.
And freedom.
The city lights flickered to life as Kael walked—no, floated—just a few centimeters above the sidewalk, weaving between humans who didn't seem to notice him at all. Infinity ensured that their eyes glazed over him, as if their minds simply edited his presence out of existence.
Kael found it peaceful.
Surreal, even.
He had been here before—in another life.
The buildings weren't exactly the same. New shops had replaced old ones. The billboard for a hair salon now advertised a new VR café. And the bakery that once sold chocolate-stuffed croissants had been replaced with a cell phone repair shop.
Still… the bones of the town remained familiar.
This was the place where Jace Carter had lived.
Where he had walked home from school.
Where he had waited at the crosswalk, earbuds in, daydreaming about anything but the future.
Kael stood at a corner where a small, rusted stop sign leaned too far to the left. He remembered it—not because it was important, but because it had always leaned.
"Still can't be bothered to fix it," he murmured. "Respect."
He continued, letting the streets guide him. His shoes never touched concrete, his coat billowing slightly as if he carried his own wind.
A few kids on skateboards zipped past him and turned to look, confused, only to blink and shake their heads.
"Weird hallucination," one muttered.
Kael chuckled.
He passed a park—small, old, and mostly empty. The swings creaked, and the paint on the jungle gym had long since faded. He floated near the sandbox and tilted his head.
"I fell off those monkey bars once."
He smiled faintly. "Cried. Then told my mom I won the fight with gravity."
He could still feel that version of himself. Not in a painful way. Not in the tragic, teary-eyed "I miss my old life" kind of way.
No.
Just a… warm echo.
"You did alright, Jace," he whispered. "But I've got it from here."
His journey through the city didn't bring tears or revelations. There were no lost lovers, no graves to visit, no dramatic inner monologues.
Just memory.
And momentum.
A small side street caught his eye—one he hadn't walked in years.
The neighborhood was quieter here. Homes lined the road, most of them modest. Flowerpots on porches. Barking dogs. That one weird neighbor who always decorated for Halloween and Easter.
Kael floated slowly past a familiar brick house with blue shutters.
His old home.
He stopped at the sidewalk.
Nothing dramatic happened. The sky didn't rumble. The earth didn't shake. The door didn't swing open with ghosts from his past.
It was just a house.
Someone else's now.
That was okay.
Kael didn't linger.
He gave the place a slow nod—half goodbye, half salute—and turned back toward the main road.
His eyes—still hidden behind that thick blindfold—shifted subtly as cursed energy flowed just beneath his skin.
Still no ideal place to train.
The city was far too dense. Too public. Too full of people with phones and curiosity.
He'd need something more remote.
But not yet.
"Still got time," he whispered. "I'm not in a hurry."
He launched himself skyward, slowly rising over the rooftops until the wind whipped through his coat and hair.
Below him, the lights of the city shimmered like stars in reverse.
Above him, the sky was endless.
Kael hovered above the city, suspended in the air like a celestial slacker. The breeze tugged gently at his white hair, and the neon lights below shimmered like low-resolution stars.
He sighed, arms crossed, eyes hidden beneath his thick blindfold.
"Still no training grounds."
Every rooftop, alley, and side lot he inspected had one thing in common: it just wasn't it. He didn't know what "it" was—but he'd know it when he saw it.
Right now, though?
His stomach had other priorities.
It growled. Violently.
Kael blinked and clutched his midsection. "Food. I require… substance."
But not just any substance.
"I want the apex of American culinary invention. I want… Whataburger."
And with that, he vanished in a blink—reappearing just outside the glowing orange W.
The smell hit first. Charbroiled beef, buttery buns, crispy fries, sizzling jalapeños, and a gentle whisper of divine spice carried by the wind.
The line at the drive-thru was long, but Kael ignored it.
He strode inside like he owned the building. No one saw him—Infinity made sure of that.
He stopped at the register and spoke with the solemnity of a monk reciting sacred scripture.
"Triple Meat Whataburger. Add jalapeños. Large meal. Spicy ketchup. And a Dr Pepper shake."
The cashier blinked. "Wha—wait, a Dr Pepper shake?"
Kael nodded. "Let the legends speak of this moment."
Five minutes later, Kael sat alone in a corner booth, feasting like a war god on cheat day.
The triple meat burger was stacked like a tower of glory. Jalapeños popped with heat and attitude. The fries were golden perfection, crisped by angels and dipped in the holy fire of spicy ketchup.
And the shake?
Cold, fizzy, and heretical.
Exactly what he wanted.
He took his time with each bite, savoring the contrast between his divine power and his thoroughly mortal taste in food.
Across the table sat Gerald—a paper cup Kael had drawn eyes and a mouth on using cursed ink.
Gerald said nothing.
Gerald judged nothing.
Gerald understood.
Outside the window, the world moved on. Families talked. Teenagers argued over which sauce was superior. A man spilled ketchup on his shoes.
Kael leaned back in his seat, arms stretched behind his head.
"No nobles. No meetings. No suspicious glances at my blindfold. Just meat and soda."
He smiled.
As he left, he dropped his trash into the bin with a flick of his finger, using cursed energy to arc the bag perfectly into the opening without touching it.
He stepped out into the open night.
The wind was still cool. The streets were still buzzing. The world kept moving.
Kael rose into the air once again, now slightly heavier but infinitely more satisfied.
Still no training spot.
Still no real plan.
But for the first time in a while…
he didn't care.
He just floated.
Coat flapping.
Burger grease in his soul.
The stars stretched across the night sky like scattered diamonds on velvet as Kael soared far above civilization. With Infinity passively distorting his presence and cursed energy coating his body like a second skin, he was little more than a myth moving through the wind.
He coasted silently over cities, forests, rivers, and long stretches of forgotten highway. His coat fluttered behind him like a cape that refused to obey gravity.
"Too many people," he muttered.
His first stop had been the Grand Canyon.
It made sense on paper: vast, remote, beautiful, isolated.
Or so he thought.
He landed quietly near the edge just before sunrise, only to immediately be greeted by a loud group of tourists in matching sunhats shouting over a guide with a megaphone.
One tourist pointed a phone directly at him. "Oh my god, is that a cosplay photoshoot?!"
Kael vanished mid-bite of a breakfast taco.
"Too many hikers. Too many influencers. Too many 'spiritual crystal' enthusiasts with microphones," Kael groaned.
He tried the Rocky Mountains next. Peaceful—until he startled a group of college students filming a documentary about goats.
Then he tried a desert mesa, thinking maybe a barren wasteland would grant him peace.
It did.
For twelve seconds.
Then a local ATV group roared by, kicking up dust and barbecue fumes.
"This planet is… aggressively social," Kael deadpanned, teleporting again.
So he stopped looking for perfect.
Instead, he began exploring.
And sightseeing.
Not in a touristy way—more like a bored demigod drifting over the Earth, judging things silently like an ancient spirit with fashion sense.
He floated above the Golden Gate Bridge, upside-down, sipping a slushie.
He sat cross-legged atop the Seattle Space Needle and threw fries at pigeons who couldn't touch him.
He stopped by Las Vegas, glanced once at a casino, and muttered,
"Too loud. Too sparkly. Not enough existential dread."
Then vanished again in a blink of cursed energy.
Everywhere he went, he'd take a few minutes to scan with Six Eyes—though he kept his blindfold on, lightly focusing cursed energy through it in short pulses.
Nothing yet.
Too exposed.
Too busy.
Too suspicious.
Or just plain… too boring.
"I need somewhere I won't be found. And where I won't accidentally drop a Hollow Purple on someone's national park."
He sighed and continued his journey.
Sometimes he walked invisible among people. Sometimes he flew. Other times, he just appeared atop monuments for the comedic aesthetic.
He took a selfie (using a camera he summoned from… somewhere) while crouched on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, blindfold still on, throwing a peace sign.
He posed next to Mount Rushmore and added a fifth face with cursed chalk before teleporting out laughing.
"Kael Gremory: international menace, scenic critic, and cursed art enthusiast."
Eventually, somewhere between wide-open fields and vast forest stretches, with no Wi-Fi, no people, and no signs of civilization for miles, he slowed his pace.
The wind here was crisp.
The trees were tall.
The birds didn't scream when they saw him.
He hovered in place, letting his energy settle.
It wasn't perfect.
But maybe…
"Close," he said quietly. "Close enough to keep looking."
Kael floated high above a landscape unlike any he had seen in the last three days.
Mountains—massive, snowcapped, and silent—stretched across the horizon like the spine of some ancient, sleeping titan. Forests ran like green rivers between rocky crags. There were no highways, no cities, no faint trails of smoke from distant towns.
Just raw nature.
Untouched.
Unbothered.
Unaware of who or what hovered just above it.
Kael drifted lower, his blindfold still drawn tight over his eyes. He gently touched down on the uneven ground of a high ridge, surrounded on all sides by stone and silence. The only sounds were the distant howl of wind and the soft crunch of snow beneath his boots.
"Now this," he whispered, "feels right."
He didn't know where exactly he was. No phone. No GPS. No convenient map drawn in the sky. But something in his gut told him:
This is the place.
The cursed energy in his body pulsed gently—calm, quiet, but eager. The mountains didn't resist him. The air didn't feel heavy with human presence. There were no hikers or locals. No signs, no markers, no beer cans from a backpacking trip.
Just sky and earth.
Kael reached up to his blindfold.
His fingers lingered there.
"Been a while…"
And slowly, for the first time since being reborn into this world, he removed it.
The cloth fell away.
His white hair lifted slightly in the wind, and his eyes—once hidden—opened.
And the world changed.
His Six Eyes burned like blue fire laced with celestial geometry.
Their color wasn't just blue—it was layered: sharp sapphire fractals that shimmered and rotated like living kaleidoscopes. Thin rings of silver and indigo rippled like a drop in a still pond, all centered around impossibly clear pupils that gleamed with unnatural depth.
They weren't eyes.
They were lenses into something beyond understanding.
Each blink seemed to slice through the world, dissecting it into layers: temperature, distance, cursed energy levels, gravitational distortion, particle frequency—all perceived instantly, without effort.
Even the snowflakes slowing mid-fall around him were frozen in time in his vision.
To anyone else, it would have been too much—a tsunami of data.
But for Kael, it was balance.
He exhaled slowly.
A long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"I can breathe here…"
He looked around again—his Six Eyes now glowing faintly in the dim light of dusk.
There was no one nearby. No devil scouts. No curious humans. No ambient demonic energy. Not even a whiff of celestial surveillance.
Just peace.
And endless space to stretch his power.
Kael grinned and rolled his neck.
"Perfect."
He took one step forward—and vanished, reappearing thirty feet up on a jagged cliff.
Then again, blinking to a distant peak.
Then again.
He laughed as he soared across the terrain, teleporting from ledge to ledge, floating above treetops, diving between spires of stone with supernatural ease.
This wasn't for practice.
Not yet.
This was celebration.
Kael came to a stop on a flat stone plateau overlooking a vast, unbroken valley. The wind rushed by him like applause. The sky above had turned a cold, rich blue, stars beginning to pierce through.
He stood there for a while, the blindfold clutched in one hand, his Six Eyes scanning every inch of the horizon.
For the first time, he wasn't just alone.
He was home.