Naraku began life as Onigumo, a bandit whose hatred and lust festered after a betrayal left him crippled and abandoned. Discovered by Kikyo, the guardian priestess of the Shikon Jewel, his fixation on her and resentment toward her protector, the half-demon Inuyasha, drove him to barter his soul to demons. This pact fused human malice with yōkai forces, birthing Naraku—a cunning half-demon determined to twist the Shikon Jewel’s purity and annihilate rivals to his dominion. His opening gambit exploited Inuyasha and Kikyo’s bond. Disguised as each, he tricked Kikyo into believing Inuyasha attacked her, mortally wounding her and seizing the jewel. Framing Inuyasha ensured the priestess used her dying strength to imprison him, their fractured love poisoning the jewel with hatred—a corruption Naraku deemed essential to unlock its full, malevolent potential. To counter his hybrid vulnerabilities, Naraku evolved through cycles of shedding weaker flesh and assimilating potent demons. Over decades, he orchestrated chaos to isolate threats: cursing Miroku’s bloodline with a lethal void and brainwashing Sango’s brother Kohaku into slaughtering their clan. Each scheme destabilized allies who might unite against him while securing scattered jewel shards. His incarnations—Kagura, Kanna, and others—acted as expendable proxies, though some rebelled against his control. He dominated Kohaku by erasing his past, turning him into a weapon, yet traces of Onigumo’s humanity lingered. Fleeting conflicts arose from his unresolved obsession with Kikyo, though he ruthlessly silenced such weakness to pursue demonic supremacy. Naraku’s final gambit sought to fuse the jewel’s shards into a perfected, tainted orb, erasing his half-human frailty. This required annihilating Inuyasha’s allies, whom he tormented through psychological traps, illusions, and betrayals. His downfall emerged from twin miscalculations: the tenacity of those he sought to break and the buried shards of Onigumo’s heart, which eroded his demonic resolve from within.