The Curse Inside the Vault
It had been three months since the night the academy bled.
Three months since Claria Tsukihara reduced a High-Grade curse to shreds under Namin Kyotosawa's command.
And yet…
Namin still couldn't sleep.
His eyes stared at the ceiling of Dorm B, Room 6 — a single, quiet unit lined with charm-etched wood and anti-curse threading. Despite the protections, he rarely turned off the lights.
He had learned the hard way that the dark wasn't empty.
It watched.
It waited.
And worst of all... it remembered.
> "You're weakening," Claria whispered from the shadows, not malicious — just stating fact.
"I'm fine," Namin muttered.
> "Your heart rate is elevated. 101 beats per minute. You lie like a child."
He sat up and rubbed his face. "You monitor my heart now?"
> "You're mine. Why wouldn't I?"
She flickered into view — a translucent girl with blood-tinted fingers and too-large eyes. Her cursed form was contained, yes, but not neutralized.
Their pact limited her actions. Not her presence.
That was the price.
And Namin had paid it in full.
---
Elsewhere, Gyuto Satomu observed a live feed projected through a talisman.
Namin was tossing in bed again. Claria hovered too close. That tether was glowing brighter than it should.
"He's slipping," said Instructor Nara, folding her arms. "The curse is bleeding through his subconscious. Let me reinforce the pact bindings."
Gyuto shook his head. "No."
"You're putting the entire dorm at risk."
"He's got to learn trust before control."
"You're gambling with everyone's lives."
"I'm betting on one," Satomu replied. "And he's not done losing yet."
---
THE NEW MISSION
At 7:15 AM, a cursed pigeon slammed into the mission board.
It left behind a scroll sealed with black wax and dried blood — standard for High-Risk Dispatch notices.
Namin had just stepped into the hallway when Miyaki Zendo shoved the scroll into his chest.
"You're up, curse boy," she said.
"...Me?"
"Yes, you. Solo field assignment. With supervision."
He paled. "Alone?"
Gori appeared behind her, arms folded. "The mission's rated Medium-High. Satomu says you need to learn outside the cage."
"What's the target?"
Ryoko Nohamara passed by muttering, "Vault haunting. Industrial-grade spirit containment breach. Urban zone. Last team didn't make it back."
"Didn't… make it back?"
"They screamed for twenty-three seconds," she whispered, "and then the signal died."
Inside the prep room, Namin stood in the center of a ritual circle as staff stitched cursed seals into the skin of his arms — temporary containment modifiers to keep Claria from overextending.
The ink burned.
Claria coiled behind him like a cloud of static and grief.
> "You're hurting."
"It's part of the protocol."
> "They're binding me."
"They're protecting you."
> "Lie again, and I'll scream."
He winced.
A staff member flinched as Claria twitched behind him, her form briefly distorting into something less than human.
---
THE RULES OF THE MISSION
Before departure, Satomu met him outside the gate.
"You don't get to be emotional today," Satomu said plainly. "This isn't a test. It's a live op. If you lose control, I kill Claria myself. If she kills a civilian, I seal you in stone."
Namin nodded, fists clenched.
"Three rules," Satomu continued:
1. "Don't speak to the curse inside the vault. It's a mimic-type."
2. "Do not remove the restraints, no matter what Claria says."
3. "Do not run. If you run, it'll follow you home."
Namin swallowed. "And if I follow all the rules?"
Satomu grinned. "Then you might live."
Namin arrived at Site 9 — an abandoned government vault once used for curse artifact storage. Now it was sealed by prayer-thread and dripping with bad energy.
The front gate opened by itself.
Claria said nothing. She was waiting.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind him.
Total darkness.
A whisper inside his mind:
> "Kyotosawa…?"
He froze.
> "That's not me," Claria hissed. "Don't answer."
The mimic had already learned his name.
---
Inside the vault, silence reigned.
It wasn't natural silence. It was manufactured — like sound had been vacuumed out of the air. Every step Namin Kyotosawa took echoed wrong, as if the space itself disagreed with his presence.
His flashlight flickered. The curse seals on his arms pulsed softly.
Claria floated behind him, reduced to a small shadow with glowing white eyes. She'd taken her least threatening form — a childlike silhouette — but Namin wasn't fooled.
"You hear it, don't you?" she whispered.
He nodded.
A sound like breathing — but not from lungs. It was metallic. Hollow.
Then it spoke again:
"Namin… help me…"
His pulse jumped.
It was Claria's voice. But not Claria.
"That's not me," the real Claria snapped, voice ice-cold.
"I'm scared… Namin… why did you leave me?"
He turned a corner, hand gripping the handle of a cursed dagger issued to him only hours earlier. The hallway was lined with lockers — hundreds of sealed cursed objects behind reinforced glass and prayer seals.
One by one, those seals were cracking.
"Don't respond," Claria said again. "That's how mimics hunt. They pull memory, reshape it. One answer, and it grows roots in your thoughts."
> "What if it already has?"
"Then you better dig deeper."
He reached the vault core.
A massive steel door — fifteen feet tall, covered in layers of talismans — stood half open. Cursed fog spilled from within.
As he stepped through, the smell hit him first.
Blood. Old, dried, clotted into the walls.
Not from animals. Not from curses.
From people.
"They tried to trap it," Claria said. "With humans."
There were bodies nailed to the inside of the chamber — some freshly rotted, others long dry. Their faces were frozen in agony.
One of them looked like Ryoko Nohamara.
He staggered back.
"Illusion," Claria whispered. "Memory mimic."
The mimic was reading his mind and forming shapes he couldn't distinguish from truth.
"You never really cared for me," said the fake-Claria again, stepping from the shadows.
She looked just like the day she died — clean uniform, hair tied up, smile gentle.
"You let me die. And now you drag me like a corpse behind you. Don't you think that's cruel?"
Namin stepped forward. "You're not her."
"I remember your hands trembling when you missed mine on the train. I remember you let go."
His voice cracked. "Shut up."
"Say my name. Say it like you used to. Let me in."
Claria flared up behind him, taking her full cursed form for the first time since the pact.
"I said, shut. Up."
She launched forward, mouth split open like a second skull. Her strike erased the mimic's illusion-body instantly — but the chamber trembled.
She pulled back, twitching. "It's embedding. The longer we stay, the more real it becomes."
Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind them.
Cursed script ignited across the floor — a trap seal.
Claria screeched. Namin's eyes widened.
> "A containment field. They designed this vault to suppress spirits that mimic humans."
"Which means—"
"It can suppress me too."
She writhed. Her form flickered, becoming unstable.
"Namin," she growled, voice distorted. "The pact won't hold if I disappear. You need to release the limiter."
He froze.
Satomu's warning echoed in his mind:
"Do not remove the restraints. If you do… you won't get her back."
Claria reached out, trembling. Her arms — once monstrous — now looked painfully human.
"Please," she whispered. "You said you'd protect me this time."
His fingers hovered over the cursed seals on his wrist.
Tearing them off would unleash her.
Not just the protector…
But the destroyer.
"You lied to me, Namin," the mimic said again, crawling out of the shadows.
"You wanted her to die. You wanted her gone so you wouldn't have to feel guilty anymore."
He didn't respond.
He walked forward.
Pulled his cursed dagger.
And stabbed his own hand.
Blood sprayed. Pain shot up his arm.
"What are you doing?" Claria cried.
"I'm anchoring myself," he said. "If I'm bleeding, I'm real. If I'm in pain, I know where I am."
He gritted his teeth, turned, and carved a protective sigil into the floor with his own blood.
It pulsed.
The mimic shrieked — a distorted Claria face melting into a mass of jaws and broken fingers.
"You want pain?" Namin muttered.
"Then here. Take mine."
He drove the dagger forward — not into the mimic — but into the trap seal on the floor, disrupting the pattern just enough for Claria to regain partial form.
She roared.
And this time… she didn't hesitate.
Claria attacked like a precision blade — no brutality, just focused wrath. Her cursed claws pierced the mimic's false flesh, dragging out its core identity — a writhing sphere of black light covered in voices.
It whispered a thousand names.
"It's made of memory," she said. "Kill it… and we lose the pieces of everyone it's consumed."
"Then extract them," Namin said. "Strip it clean."
She paused. "I can't… unless you give me permission."
The seal on Namin's arm began to glow — demanding a command.
He closed his eyes.
"Claria Tsukihara," he whispered. "Extract the dead. Spare the living."
The seal shattered.
She moved like lightning — unraveling the mimic's core, pulling strands of memory from it like silk threads. Screams echoed as faces, moments, emotions flickered through the air — brief, horrifying snapshots of victims long devoured.
Then… silence.
Only one thread remained — and it was hers.
Claria's.
The mimic had fed on her too.
She looked at it.
Then looked at Namin.
"Do I take it back… or let it go?"
He stared at the floating memory.
A little girl in a blue dress, at a train crossing. Smiling.
"I'll remember her for both of us," he said quietly. "Let it go."
She did.
And the mimic shattered.
Namin collapsed onto the floor, exhausted, bleeding from the hand, soaked in cursed residue.
Claria hovered above him, smaller again, softer. Her cursed form was calm. Almost serene.
> "You chose mercy," she said.
He nodded.
> "Why?"
He smiled faintly. "Because you're learning to ask."
She tilted her head. "Does that make me more human?"
"No," he said. "It makes me dangerously close."
The vault creaked.
The outer doors opened. Satomu stood there, arms crossed.
"You're late," he said. "The mimic's curse residue spiked to category B just before you sealed it. That would've killed a second-year in ten seconds."
Namin sat up, groaning. "And I survived."
"Barely," Satomu replied. "But you didn't lose control. And she didn't kill anyone. That's a win."
Gori, Ryoko, and Miyaki stood behind him.
They didn't clap.
But they didn't look at him like a freak this time, either.
As they left the vault site, Satomu watched Namin's back with narrowed eyes.
Claria floated beside him like a dream half-held together by grief.
Instructor Nara whispered beside him. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
He nodded.
"A second seal shattered."
"Meaning?"
"The link between him and the curse deepened. He's not just her anchor anymore…"
He looked toward the fading twilight.
"…he's becoming her mirror."
---
Three days after the vault exorcism, Namin Kyotosawa was summoned to the South Practice Yard — an open area behind the Metropolitan Curse Academy used for controlled curse-release scenarios.
The instructions were blunt:
> "Serve as anchor. Let Claria engage. Do not assist. Do not intervene. Only observe."
— Signed: Instructor Nara
He arrived at dawn, blood still crusted on the gauze around his hand.
Miyaki Zendo was already there, armor fitted tight, her polearm sharpened and humming with curse scripts.
Ryoko Nohamara sat nearby on a chalk circle, mumbling as she layered spells into the wind. Her eyes barely acknowledged him.
And in a sealed cage reinforced with triple-woven binding ropes and runes…
...was the test subject: a Class C curse, known for mimicking flame and fear. A cursed being made from years of arson survivor trauma.
It screamed intermittently, headless and twitching. The sound was wet.
"Your job," Miyaki said without looking at him, "is to keep Claria on a leash. If she kills the target, fine. If she kills me or Ryoko—"
"I'll stop her."
"No," she said firmly. "You won't. You can't."
She paused, then met his eyes.
"You'll only watch it happen."
---
The containment field dropped. The curse lunged.
Claria didn't wait for orders.
Her cursed form flickered into the clearing — still restrained by the revised pact seal, but humming with layered, suppressed violence.
She didn't strike.
She hovered.
For the first time since the pact, Claria was holding herself back.
> "Let me end it," she whispered.
"Not yet," Namin replied. "Observe it. Understand it."
"It's hurting you."
"It hasn't touched me."
> "It wants to."
"Yes. That's what they all want."
The curse tried to set itself ablaze — fire crawling across the grass — but Claria stepped through the heat untouched, her cursed energy distorting the flames like oil in water.
She wrapped one hand around the curse's distorted head and whispered,
"You don't get to hurt him."
With surgical precision, she crushed the cursed core between her fingers.
The spirit died instantly. No scream. Just silence.
---
"Too fast," Instructor Nara said, recording notes on a talisman.
"She showed restraint," Ryoko countered, voice unusually steady. "And chose a low-impact execution method. The previous Claria would've mutilated it."
"She's adapting," Satomu muttered from above, watching from a balcony. "But why?"
Nara frowned. "Because Namin is adapting."
They all looked down to where he stood.
Namin wasn't celebrating.
He was staring at the faint trace of ash Claria left behind — the shape of her handprint glowing faintly on the dead curse's dissolving form.
He wasn't proud.
He was scared.
Of how easy it had become.
---
That evening, Ryoko Nohamara intercepted Satomu outside the academy's archive wing.
"I need access to restricted curse-link documents," she said.
"Denied."
"I've been monitoring Namin."
"I've noticed."
Ryoko's voice dropped low.
"There's something wrong with him. Not just emotionally. Not just psychologically. Magically."
"Go on."
"The Claria curse obeys his commands too easily now. That's not emotional synchronicity. It's soul-deep rewriting. The kind you only see when the host begins to mirror the curse's trauma pattern."
Satomu paused.
"You think he's becoming the curse?"
Ryoko shook her head.
"I think the curse… is becoming him."
---
Late that night, Namin stood in the academy gardens under the moonlight, bleeding from his nose, hands shaking, vision blurring.
Claria hovered behind him — no longer monstrous, no longer childlike — just quiet. Almost tired.
"You pushed too far again," she said gently.
"I can feel it," he whispered. "Something under my skin. Like… you're not beside me anymore. You're inside me."
She floated forward, pressed a hand to his chest.
> "I've always been inside you, Namin."
He didn't move.
She tilted her head. "Would you hate me if I stopped obeying you?"
"No," he said softly. "But I'd die."
---
Meanwhile, miles away from the Academy…
Tatsuya Munashi stood before a chained creature — a malformed hybrid of cursed soul and parasite, stitched into the body of a child no older than ten.
The creature howled as it convulsed, trying to speak with two mouths.
Tatsuya smiled.
"The Kyotosawa boy has learned to suppress his curse. Good."
He dropped a bundle of charms into the cursed child's hands.
"Then let's see how well he performs when suppression… means murder."
The creature vanished into smoke.
Tatsuya turned to his lieutenant.
"Send it to Sector 12. Where the civilians are."
---
Sector 12 was a civilian district under light cursed surveillance — mostly older houses, playgrounds, and shuttered storefronts on the fringes of the Metropolitan Curse Academy's invisible boundary.
It was not a combat zone.
Until now.
At 4:02 A.M., three separate cursed seals exploded within a four-block radius. A scream — ragged, young — was caught on surveillance.
When the alert hit the dispatch system, Instructor Nara didn't hesitate.
"Deploy Unit Theta. High-priority evac and suppress. Namin Kyotosawa, Ryoko Nohamara, Gori. Now."
---
They arrived within minutes.
Gori led the way, his footsteps cracking pavement. Ryoko hovered near the rear, lips already moving in curse-lock prayer. Namin followed in the middle, nerves spiking — not from fear of the mission, but fear of what Claria would do if he lost focus.
The streets were already smeared in black liquid — curse rot, thick and corrosive. Trees bled. A dead dog blinked once and began whispering.
"What the hell…" Namin muttered.
"It's a parasite-type," Ryoko answered grimly. "It infects weak minds and turns their memories into curse-forms."
"And the civilians?"
She didn't answer.
They all knew.
---
Inside a shattered grocery store, they found the first victims:
A mother holding her son… both breathing, but locked in a cursed trance.
Their eyes glowed faint green. Their bodies were tangled in spectral thread. Above them hovered the attacker.
A child-sized creature, weeping black tears, holding a charm between two hands sewn shut.
The parasite.
It was whispering names — hundreds of names — in a dozen voices.
"Don't engage yet," Ryoko hissed.
But Namin had already stepped forward. The closer he got, the louder the voices became.
"Kyotosawa Namin. Claria Tsukihara. Promise. Forever. Love. Regret. Repeat."
"It knows us," Namin said coldly.
"It was sent by someone who studied your curse," Ryoko replied.
Claria flared into visibility — unprompted.
"I can destroy it," she said.
"No," Namin said. "Too close to the civilians."
"They're infected."
"They're still human."
"If I wait too long, the curse will root into their soulprints."
Namin hesitated.
Gori grunted. "Make the call, boy. We don't have ten seconds."
Claria's form crackled with instability. Her eyes flicked toward the child.
"He reminds me of you."
Namin froze.
Claria moved without permission.
She blurred forward, tearing the charm from the parasite's fused hands and slicing its core in half with a cursed scream.
But as she struck, the curse detonated.
Not in energy — in memory.
Every infected civilian nearby began to speak in Claria's voice.
"You promised."
"You let me die."
"Why didn't you hold on tighter?"
"Am I still beautiful?"
Namin collapsed, ears ringing, nose bleeding.
The voices were his.
Not Claria's.
Ryoko grabbed Namin's shoulders and forced him upright, eyes wide with realization.
She watched the residue coming off Claria's body — threads of emotional energy.
But they weren't hers.
They were copies of Namin's grief response.
"She's not just bound to you," Ryoko whispered.
"She's feeding on you."
"Her growth — her evolution — it's based on your unresolved trauma."
Claria floated above the now-silenced parasite corpse.
She didn't gloat.
She looked sad.
"You feel too much," she said. "And I want to help… so I take it."
The mother and child survived.
The curse failed to root fully. The parasite's anchor — a child's drawing left on a nearby wall — was burned by Ryoko within seconds.
Gori carried both victims to the perimeter zone.
They would live.
But Namin knew something had shifted.
Claria hadn't asked for permission.
And she hadn't needed it.
---
Back at the Academy, Gyuto Satomu reviewed the footage in silence.
Instructor Nara leaned in beside him.
"You see it too," she said.
He nodded. "Claria disobeyed."
"But not out of rage."
"No," he replied. "Out of empathy."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's not supposed to be possible."
"No," Satomu repeated. "It's not."
He opened a sealed drawer beneath his desk and pulled out a scroll labeled:
"Soul Convergence: Phase II – Curse Evolution Through Emotional Resonance"
He stared at Namin's face in the footage — broken, bleeding, whispering Claria's name.
"If this keeps going…" Satomu muttered, "they'll become something we can't classify."
---
That night, Claria sat silently at the edge of Namin's bed, feet bare, eyes wide open.
She didn't blink.
She didn't breathe.
"Why didn't you stop me?" she asked.
He said nothing.
"Am I a weapon to you?"
He shook his head. "You're a promise."
"Then why does it hurt every time I keep it?"
He couldn't answer.
And somewhere, far away, Tatsuya Munashi smiled while watching from a cursed scrying mirror.
He looked at the image of Claria — cracked, crying, glowing faintly red.
"Soon," he whispered.
"She won't be his curse anymore.
She'll be my proof."