Tengen

Hardly anyone in the jujutsu world knows what Tengen truly looks like, because only those allowed inside the chamber ever lay eyes on them. Whoever does meet a being well removed from human form. Four eyes gaze out of a bald, cylindrical head that tops a two-legged humanoid frame, the whole thing wrapped in an unadorned light robe. Tengen describes this condition as the result of evolving onward past their own humanity, a shift triggered when Toji Fushiguro killed the prior Star Plasma Vessel twelve years earlier and robbed them of the merger. Long ago they carried a much more human look.

Tengen reads as measured, plainspoken, and learned, with humanity's survival sitting uppermost in their mind. Awkward or blunt questions do not faze them, and they readily lend a hand to ordinary sorcerers when circumstances warrant it. Approached by Yuji and the others for help against Kenjaku, they consented but required that two of the group remain behind as protection, standing firm on that demand because their own survival props up humanity's fate. A softer side surfaces in their history too, evident when they pressed Gojo and Geto to respect Riko Amanai's choices even though it made guarding her harder, a sign of real compassion for the weight her circumstances laid on her.

Far from a combatant, Tengen is regarded as a deathless pillar binding the jujutsu community together, and centuries back they laid out the foundations that matured into modern sorcery, and their teachings spawned devotional groups, the Time Vessel Association among them. The technique at their core, Immortality, hands them unending life yet leaves aging untouched; every five hundred years or so, then, a renewal of both body and technique becomes necessary. Having failed a merger with a vessel in 2006, they slid toward the nature of a cursed spirit but clung to self-awareness by will alone and by their barriers. As the strongest barrier user there is, outclassing even Kenjaku, Tengen erected four pure barriers that refine cursed spirit suppression and reinforce the efforts of Jujutsu High's assistant managers. They also hide both campuses by rearranging their layouts each day and wall off their own Tombs of the Star Corridor behind upward of a thousand shuffling doors. Although they call themselves a non-fighter, they backed Yuki Tsukumo and Choso against Kenjaku by working empty barriers, dispelling them to break his domain, and acting as a distraction. A sharp tactician, Tengen helped chart the operation against the Culling Game and shaped most of the plan that drew Kenjaku into overreaching.