Chapter 5: Blood Magic
The moment we stepped through the perfectly "safe" doorway of the abandoned hospital, an unpleasant and terrible pressure hit us simultaneously. It landed all at once — dense and physically tangible. As if the very air had turned to liquid, making it not just difficult to breathe but nearly impossible to move. A crimson haze pulsed before my eyes. Dust? Spores? The only reliable source of light was an unusual, mystical, and alien red glow in the distance. Something like a lamp or a candle.
"Kha-h! Kha-h! Khm!"
I felt a foreign contamination trying to work its way into my lungs. My reaction was immediate: I accelerated my pulse, forcing cursed energy to saturate the bloodstream. The blood inside me responded obediently, burning and filtering out the foreign substance. My breathing steadied. Makoto followed suit moments later, wrapping himself in a protective layer of energy.
"Something here is… wrong… Naoya-sama? I don't think we should…"
He didn't finish. Makoto had been about to suggest retreating — the most rational advice possible — but the reality behind us had already closed shut. Where the door had been, absolute matte blackness now gaped. The stench of rot and old blood struck our noses — this was a "seal" or a powerful barrier, cutting us off from the outside world.
"Something here is either a powerful cursed artifact, or a Grade 1 curse or above." Makoto forced the words out through his teeth. His movements had turned sharp and erratic. He produced a pack of tablets and, without looking, tossed a generous handful into his mouth. Slowly, carefully, and quietly, he drew the katana blade from its scabbard and settled into the two-handed diagonal stance of Wakigamae. He was hoping it was truly a cursed object — but our reason for coming here had been specifically to investigate the disappearances of local civilians. Supposedly, foolish young teenagers had wandered in here more than once seeking that particular sensation of danger. That fact had been what determined the assignment's expected rank.
*Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.*
Deep impacts, like drumbeats from somewhere far within the building, froze us in place. For a moment, the illusion arose that it was a panicking heart hammering against ribs — but the pulse in my own veins ran at a different rhythm. This was an external source. A heavy, measured, vibrating sound emanating from the walls themselves, as though some colossal heart had been bricked into the hospital's foundation.
The corridor seemed endless. There were no stairs here — only a straight intestinal passage of a building, disappearing into darkness. The windows were covered with something repulsive: a black, viscous substance, resembling either moss or clumps of dirty wool, had completely blocked out all external light. Broken glass crunched underfoot, and old plaster peeled from the walls in strips.
My attention was drawn to the gouges on the walls. Deep, even rifts cut through the concrete.
*"Too even for time's decay,"* I noted internally. *"The spacing between the lines is identical. Claws. Large ones. Very sharp."*
"Here… something… what does this remind me of?" I pressed my palm to my temple. The pressure of the heartbeat, the atmosphere around us, this place — all of it resonated in my soul. In my chest.
"Ah… Makoto, there's a 'Mimic' living here. It has come for our lives. Because it plays with them… manages them…" I dropped my voice to a barely audible whisper. "…just as I once did."
I straightened, staring into the endless void of the corridor.
"You've already understood that we're trapped, Makoto. At the end of this, something truly terrible is waiting. So allow me to explain its nature."
"You know what we're dealing with?!" Panic-tinged hope broke through Makoto's voice. "You know its weakness? Naoya-sama — I'm listening!"
"Not exactly. Just a small, but instructive story. Who knows… this may be the last thing you hear from my lips."
"There's no need for the dramatics, my lord!" Makoto almost shouted it, trying to push away not my fear, but his own. "Don't panic! We'll make it out!"
I turned my head toward him slowly. My face remained an unmoving mask.
"You're interpreting my indifference as desperation, Makoto. Mistaking the absence of emotion for an acceptance of death. That's incorrect. Just be quiet and listen."
I exhaled heavily. A strange, almost forgotten sensation spread through my chest — not fear, but a deep and absolute acceptance of the inevitable.
"The art of doctors is meant to restore what has been lost. To stitch flesh, reassemble bone, wrest from death's grasp what already nearly belongs to it. That is their purpose. That is their essence. Each of them swears an oath… but what happens when the very place designed for salvation begins to hunger for blood?"
Every step produced a hollow, viscous echo. The shadows in the corridor thickened, pressed close at our backs like escorts barring any turn aside. With each passing second, the red light ahead pulsed with greater fury, and the alien heartbeat drowned out every other sound. I walked slowly, eyes on the floor, not permitting the metamorphoses around us to disturb my internal rhythm.
Blood — foreign, old, and cursed — seeped through surfaces, forming a chaotic, living web across floor, walls, and ceiling. It devoured the space, painting over the ruin like a deranged restorer attempting to "renovate" this rotting pocket of reality. From the walls, tearing through the plaster, bony formations began to push through — fleshless forearms reaching outward. Hundreds of palms, in a single trembling surge, extended their index fingers, pointing us toward the deepest interior.
My bodyguard. My partner. He saw only old walls, but I saw the underside.
Cursed souls were trapped here permanently. Pressed into the floor, walled into the ceiling. These were not fully formed curses — only scraps of consciousness, unquiet and abandoned, having become part of a particular entity's retinue.
Something powerful had gone to ground here. I had never faced a Special Grade directly, but instincts honed by hemomancy screamed a single thing: we were trapped. Nothing short of a higher-order being could turn "hunters" into "prey" so instantly, so elegantly, simply snapping the trap of reality shut behind them.
All this time, the location hadn't simply been occupied by a curse. The very substance of the building was a manifestation composed of many cursed souls. Something — or more precisely, someone — had awakened this terrible and monstrous sleeping hive.
"…but what happens when the oath cannot be kept due to circumstances that same doctor had no power to influence? When the circumstances are stronger than you, and the world you tried to heal suddenly decides to destroy you." Injustice was excellent soil for hatred. That person's life hadn't merely been draining away — it had been crumbling to dust, piece by piece. Losing his work because of an emotional outburst born of an unwillingness to accept the stupidity and unfairness of people. Losing his home to arson carried out by unhinged self-proclaimed crusaders for justice. Losing the woman who had genuinely tried to support him through that terrible period — but who had broken under the weight of it, grown frightened, and left. And the most pathetic and ironic part, perhaps, was that he died completely alone, keeping company only with lung cancer. Alone with his illness, wrapped in fear, self-pity, and hatred for everything he had been and everything he had become. Kindness, mercy, and goodwill had ultimately given him nothing at all. No money, no friends, and no hope of salvation. In his final moments, that doctor had felt only one all-consuming sensation. Not fear, not hatred, not pity. None of those. Because he understood that everything would be over soon. That there would be long-awaited peace and rest from the pain and suffering. What he felt was… disappointment. He should have been furious at a world that had simply discarded and forgotten him — but in truth, he was disappointed in himself. He should have been more selfish. More brazen. More cunning. He should have taken what he believed was rightfully his. Because it is precisely this "Evil" that controls the world. His life had been destroyed by a society that had already decided he was the villain before he'd done a thing. Corrupt and sensationalized articles, amplified through social media, manufactured a vast mindless herd of people who wrote the most unpleasant things imaginable and thirsted to see justice, cruelty, and… death rendered unto him. All those with the necessary power and influence simply mocked, tormented, and attempted to break him — without ever engaging with him directly. One book of life came to an end, but suddenly a second, more agreeable book began. A new beginning, a new life, a new chance.
"So what you're saying is that this spirit was also disappointed in its own nature?" Makoto frowned, trying to absorb the scale of what I was confessing. "There was a hospital here once, and one of the doctors…"
"I have no idea," I cut him off, eyes fixed on the crimson glow ahead. "I only feel our kinship. The similarity of our suffering. 'Mimicry' can take many forms, but I know this aftertaste of disappointment far too well."
The roar of the heartbeat became unbearable. My temples were clamped in an iron vice, and a solid ringing filled my ears — but we had finally reached our destination. Double doors of an operating room, above which a round red lamp pulsed. The moment we froze before the threshold, the drumming of that heart abruptly ceased, leaving a deafening silence in its wake. The door panels slowly spread apart with a drawn-out, almost welcoming creak. Makoto gave a decisive nod and stepped first into the darkness.
"Ah… New… patients?" The curse's voice was like a scalpel scraping across bone.
It was enormous — nearly two and a half meters tall. A worn, tattered nurse's uniform barely covered pale, corpse-white skin threaded with crimson-black veins. A gauze bandage concealed its face, and greasy, pitch-black hair hung over its eyes. Its fingers, in cut-off gloves, ended in grotesque claws. In its left hand it gripped a massive syringe half-filled with thick blood, and in its right — a rust-pitted scalpel.
It stood with its back to us, absorbed in tracing something across a decomposed corpse. The operating room itself, through a distortion of space, more closely resembled a throne hall filled with red-black miasma. Two rows of ten beds faced one another. On each — an emaciated body twisted in agony. Teenagers, elderly people… all those who had made the mistake of crossing this hospital's threshold.
For five seconds, we were paralyzed. The pressure of a Special Grade was so monstrous that instinct screamed only one thing: run or die. The chasm between this creature and everything I had exorcised before was bottomless. The aura alone, erupting from beneath it in black flame, left no room for illusions.
Makoto and I reacted simultaneously, inflicting "sobering" wounds on ourselves to shatter the paralysis. My dagger went deep into my thigh, making the blood ignite and expel the numbness. Makoto drew his blade across his neck, leaving a thin red line, and immediately brought the katana up into a high ready stance. He was betting everything on one single counterattacking lunge.
"I wasn't quite prepared for new arrivals, but no matter. We'll improvise with what we have," it rasped.
The nurse began to turn its head. Slowly, with a wet tearing of flesh and a dry crunch of vertebrae — at an absolutely unnatural, nauseating angle. From its eye sockets, blazing red, seeped a thick black substance that imitated tears.
"What are you doing here?" My voice cut through the silence of the operating room. My body was already coiled like a spring, primed for a lethal burst.
The creature turned fully toward us and, with an unnerving casualness, pointed a claw at its own chest.
"Me?.. I'm working!" Inappropriate, deranged cheerfulness broke into its tone. It squeezed its eyes shut in a fox's grin. "It's been so difficult to keep things organized lately… And the patients," it cast a tender glance at the dried-out corpses, "they do love to sleep. Well, no matter. Everyone who has come to us will receive the treatment they deserve. And rest."
It didn't understand what it was? It didn't know it was a clot of cursed malice? This shattered my understanding of curses. Normally they were slaves to instinct — destroying, killing, devouring people. What stood here was a distorted humanity, and that was far more frightening. Makoto darted a nervous glance at my shoulder, searching for a command.
"Do you remember your name?" I called out, hoping for a moment's confusion.
"Name?.. Hmm…" It dropped its head, cradling it in its clawed hands.
Our opening. Makoto broke from his position. His burst was flawless — a downward strike that should have split the skull — but the blade only struck a spark, leaving a pitiful scratch on the creature's skin. It didn't even flinch. It simply swayed like a pendulum and, with surgical precision, drove the syringe directly into Makoto's shoulder.
*Projection.*
The world around me froze, dissolving into twenty-four frames per second. My semi-transparent white silhouette cut through the space in a low start. My palm touched its shoulder, laying down the seal of the rule.
The curse froze — reduced to a flat, two-dimensional prop, stripped of volume. My right hand: three lunges that collapsed into one, fast as a brushstroke. The dagger punched through the glassy surface of the flattened reality with a crack, restoring its depth. The second resumed its course. Three points of impact exploded in fountains of black-red blood, like slow-motion footage of a catastrophe. One of the blood splashes landed accidentally on my right arm.
"Kh-m!" It barely winced, as though stung by a bee.
What followed was a monstrous arcing swing of the scalpel. The horizontal line of the cut tore open Makoto's chest, a fountain of blood spraying across my face, and the blade continued onward, already angling to split me open as well.
*Projection.*
I'm sorry, Makoto — by my calculations, I don't have time to push you clear and get myself out. A sliding burst backward. Even the accelerated second allowed me only to tilt my head at the last instant, the blade passing millimeters from my face. One smooth step, and I opened the distance.
Makoto's condition was grim. His shoulder was swelling visibly, tearing through the fabric of his uniform; the muscles beneath the skin pulsed, filling with dark purple, then dead black. The flesh was ready to burst from the inside. Gathering the last of his strength and will, Makoto unleashed a furious battle cry. A headbutt to the creature's face, followed by a crushing kick to its torso — and at the moment of contact, space warped.
Black Lightning.
A flash of black discharge marked a perfect fusion of cursed energy and physical force within a millionth of a second. A blow amplified to the power of 2.5, landing not only on the body but on the very soul of the curse. My bodyguard had mentioned he could produce this at best once a month. By sheer absurd luck. The nurse was thrown — its skull snapped forward, its eyes rolled back, and for a moment its body became a broken, helpless doll.
"Kh — Argh! Naoya-sama…! The blood in the syringe, it's —! Kh! KHA-A-A-A!!!" Makoto's cry dissolved into a wheeze.
Primal hatred blazed in his eyes. Without wasting a moment, he transferred the katana to his left hand and in one fluid motion severed his own right arm at the shoulder.
*Projection.* Third one in the fight.
The world froze again in its frame-by-frame dissection. My right arm was coated in the creature's blood — a caustic, poisonous substance already beginning to consume my sleeve and gnaw into my skin. One more second and I would dissolve in this acid. I tore the remnants of my upper clothing off in a single motion and threw myself at the staggered enemy.
The last "safe" second had run out. I threw the poison-soaked fabric directly over the nurse's face, and my dagger crunched into its skull, driving the creature into the floor. It crashed down on its back, arms spread like a star.
I rushed to Makoto immediately. The situation was bad. Blood was pumping from his body in pulses through the stump of his shoulder. He was attempting to create an improvised plug of cursed energy to stop the bleeding, but the real problem lay elsewhere.
"Khm…! Tch. I'm in… pretty bad shape… aren't I?" Makoto rasped.
I said nothing. I had no desire to curse aloud, nor to state the obvious. His skin had gone deathly pale, and the black-purple network of swollen veins at his neck made it clear: the infection that creature had injected had already reached his heart. The amputation had only postponed the inevitable briefly. We retreated. Makoto walked hunched over, bracing himself alternately on the tip of the katana and the slick wall. His breathing — ragged, greedy — filled the corridor with a death rattle.
"Naoya… Naoya, leave me. I'm already finished." He addressed me deliberately without the honorific, sensing the end's approach. He wanted me to remember him, didn't he.
I allowed him to slide down the wall. He went still, gasping for air in short convulsions, and a silent question settled in his eyes. He didn't understand why I was simply standing there, watching him with that heavy, inwardly scorched sadness.
"This has nothing to do with heroism, Makoto," I said quietly. "Haven't you understood yet? We were finished the moment we crossed that threshold."
I turned around. The red lamp above the operating room doors ignited with renewed force. The nurse was rising — unnaturally, brokenly, in the finest tradition of horror films about the walking dead. Physical damage was merely a minor inconvenience for it. The drums struck again. Thoom. Thoom. The rhythm ended the instant it launched into a monstrous, blurred lunge forward.
From my palm, fed by the flowing blood, a dagger formed — my Red Fang. I threw up a block, calculating the trajectory precisely, but the difference in mass was fatal. The scalpel knocked my blade aside with a dry ring and dragged a deep cut across my chest. Pain like burning roots instantly branched from the wound through my entire body.
"You both require… rest…" it rasped.
In its left hand, in place of the syringe, a horrific glove had formed. Each finger was tipped with long needles connected by tubing to a cone-shaped vessel at the forearm. A red-black slurry bubbled within. It was preparing to test this cocktail on me.
*Projection!*
I tried to flee, to run, to leave Makoto behind — but somewhere deep down, I already knew this was the end. The blame lay not with fortune but with my own ignorance. The surgeon's curiosity had overpowered the sorcerer's rationality.
My only hope had been that it would release me and choose something simpler — but on the ninth step of exiting the projection form, my back was punched through by a five-fingered palm. Five rusted, hideous, revolting needles injected an unknown compound into my chest's circulatory system.
"Tch… D-damn… and why do I feel…?"
Instead of the expected burst of pain came a heavy, cotton-thick drowsiness. The glove had delivered neither poison nor acid. It had switched off the nerve endings, dragging consciousness into a sticky, viscous haze.
Anesthesia.
Ah. She really was a proper doctor after all.
Consciousness drowned, sinking deeper and deeper into the viscous dark. I didn't resist. I willingly allowed the abyss to pull me under, hoping to see, to feel, and finally to remember what I had so carefully concealed. The line between dream and reality was easy to identify, but I couldn't leave this haze. Someone was holding me here.
Ah. Of course. It was myself. I needed to remember the reason — and strip away the mask of someone who was obligated to play only on one side or the other.
Waking up in the second world had been strange. Boundless possibilities, despite the fact that I had literally come to in a garbage bin. A delinquent orphan with no money, no connections, no past. And it had been… wonderful. Only when you lose everything do you attain true freedom. Everything and everyone was open to me. Nothing and no one had the power to stop me. And when blood became my form of strength, development, and evolution, it was only a matter of time before I would be the one making the decisions. Heal, protect, observe, cripple, kill…? I was capable of all of it, and no one and nothing was there to dictate to me. I simply acted as I saw fit. Because I felt it was right.
But that had been a lie. My favorite lie — the one I loved to believe.
The role of the hero never appealed to me in its fragility. Today you are an idol and a protector, and tomorrow one misstep, one wrong gesture, and the crowd gleefully names you a monster. My ability from birth had robbed me of any prospect of a quiet, ordinary life. Every hero depends on others' opinions.
A villain — or an antihero — is more honest in that regard. He doesn't ask permission, doesn't seek justifications, doesn't judge by conscience or morality. He simply acts, guided by personal desires and goals. Perhaps those goals are amoral or cruel in society's eyes, but that was precisely what made such personalities comprehensible to me. Convenient. Tangible. Power, money, the desire to live just a moment longer than everyone else — there was sincerity in that. Genuine and unvarnished honesty.
"Evil" fascinated me. Because it was one of the true engines of the process. Without darkness, light cannot be created; without an antagonist, no hero is born. People lied to themselves, claiming they loved only virtue — but what they truly craved was good villains.
I savored this endless spectacle. I carved out the tedious scoundrels and healed those whose nature seemed to me multifaceted. When I understood that "Evil" was an entirely subjective concept, I found true freedom of choice. My power became the key to doors behind which the future was being forged.
I was in love with challenges, with the art of combat, and with the aesthetics of weapons. Because for me, pain was the only irrefutable proof of being alive. Destruction was merely a tool for preserving this fragile and delicate embodiment of "Peace."
Suffering with purpose proved my resolve and my devotion to my principles. My technique demanded blood and torment, and I accepted that as a blessing. I absorbed others' lives, becoming a part of them. But this chaos frightened those around me. They wanted clear answers and straight paths, not to witness the endless multitude of truths I carried within myself.
"You cannot kill me, Scarlet."
A red hooded cloak concealed a body wrapped head to toe in white bandages. Metal rods, obeying her will, tore shrieking from the walls, piercing my flesh and pinning me in place, preventing me from taking another step… forward… toward where life was boiling.
I wanted to see. I wanted to feel. I wanted to experience all of them! Give me a result — worthy or not — it doesn't matter! Show me your true faces in the face of death! Let me become the very weapon that humanity has forged for centuries in the name of creation and destruction.
My body, driven by the instinct of force, melted and ran down the rods in a thick red slurry, then coalesced once more before her. Wanda Maximoff. The Scarlet Witch. My dear Scarlet.
"I know I can't kill you," her voice trembled with tension, "but I can send your soul somewhere so far that you'll never find your way back. Find another place to play, Red ******. Your selfishness, your greed, and your insane desire to keep both the Light and the Dark pieces on your board make you too dangerous. For all of us."
"What a shame," I bowed theatrically, radiating something almost resembling genuine regret. "What a shame that of the two of us, it is I who wants to free Magneto — who fought for you while people were trying to erase us from the face of the earth. Genosha is only one of their countless sins, Wanda."
I was lying to myself that my arrival here had no reason. I had known that reason from the very beginning. Any outsider who refuses to take a side is labeled a madman. Illogical. Uncontrollable. Dangerous. Too chaotic and uncontrollable for villains, and absolutely intolerable for heroes.
An endless, eternal, deathly quiet ocean of blood. My true home. The mirror of my soul.
I was half-asleep. In this viscous half-dream, I lay on my side, unwilling to return to reality. Half of my face and body was submerged in murky crimson water — a semi-transparent black-red ocean of blood, through which skeletons, corpses, and writhing, half-living forms of lesser existence slowly drifted. Naoya — the true owner of that name — appeared small, pathetic, and insignificant beside me in these waters. He was desperately tugging at my arm. No, not to drown me. Even this weak soul understood the abyss between us. Primal fear and pleading were frozen in his eyes. He wanted me to rise. He wanted "Me" to finally wake up.
*"All right, all right. I'm getting up."*
I stretched lazily, yawned, and began to rise. My feet found solid purchase on the mirror surface of the bloody waters. Above the ocean, a black sunset was burning out, exuding its blissful crimson radiance. My personal manifesto: any light can be smothered by darkness, and these two natures will tear at each other forever, bleeding in their struggle for dominance.
The time had come. Time to lift the limiters from my mind… or from what this world calls a soul. Remarkable, how long I had managed to play the part of that self-absorbed boy named Naoya.
My palm found its way to my face involuntarily, trying to conceal, to seal, this wretched, anticipating smirk. Pure, undiluted pleasure at the proximity of pain, suffering, and death. Everything this world tries to force upon you can be returned with ease.
The truth was that everyone received their due. Of course, in those moments when it was convenient for me. All other times? Sincere hypocrisy and lies. I would use "Evil" to my own advantage. Until I grew tired of it.
The awakening was about as unpleasant as possible. She had found me a bed. Black straps, tight and sticky, had nailed my torso, stomach, and legs immovably to a metal frame. A drip needle had been driven into my left vein, but this apparatus was working itself to exhaustion in the hospital's favor. Life was being pumped out of me, replaced by a dense, foreign cursed blood. It wasn't being absorbed — it was displacing my essence, turning the body into a dried-out, hollow mummy.
The only chance to survive was to accept the rules of the game. To force a battle where this creature considered itself master. I needed to take, absorb, and subordinate the blood on which this place fed.
And in that moment, the comfortable illusion of the operating room finally dissolved entirely. The walls, floor, and ceiling exposed their true nature — solid, pulsing flesh. Pink, seeping mass contracted in time with the beating of an invisible heart. From the walls, like veins, organic tubes emerged, coiling around cone-shaped drip capsules. The building had not merely been occupied by a curse — it was itself a stomach, grinding up the fools who dared cross its threshold.
My body was weakening, going numb, trying to slip once more into the merciful oblivion of the anesthesia. The poison had been designed for a "merciful" death — quiet, calm, imperceptible. But the shadows of those who had died here before me were not in agreement. They had no mouths, but I heard their cry — silent, soul-rending — in the blind hope that someone would hear, would rescue them, would give them a chance to escape.
I closed my eyes, forcibly quieting the chaos in my thoughts. In my inner sight, two threads appeared: thin, infinitely long, and hostile to each other. My blood. And her blood. I needed to create a symbiosis between them, and then — turning the very essence of my energy inside out — force my body to absorb the cursed substance.
"Body-to-Soul Transmutation."
This was madness. Pure and undiluted risk. One wrong step and I would permanently cease to be human, becoming forever part of this cursed hive. The exchange was honest: evil for evil, darkness for darkness, blood for blood.
The drip choked. The direction of flow reversed, and now it was I who was pulling energy from the building itself. A negative current flooded into my veins, bringing with it a primal, venomous rage. I wanted to tear, to shatter, to grind everything in existence to dust.
So this is what Curses feel at every moment of their existence.
"Kh! M-hm! Tch!"
Convulsions wracked my body, teeth grinding as if ready to crack apart. A thick black slurry poured from my mouth — the excess, the "refuse" my body refused to accept. The moment that filth left me, I felt the darkness inside grow quiet, submitting to my will. I sealed it in the depths of my being.
I was human. And I chose my own path. I would dance on this edge forever, crossing from one side to the other, inventing purposes and reasons for myself. Let it be a lie — this lie was my shield. This world already had enough monsters. There was no need to create more. There were too many ways to find amusement here to reduce everything to a primitive cycle of destruction.
The blood in the pouches ran out. The black straps snapped with a crack, unable to withstand the pressure of my renewed strength. My body felt frighteningly light and powerful. Where before I had concealed my true nature, I now burned in this murk brighter than any curse.
I sat up on the bed. As it turned out, this "caring" creature had managed to change me into a white hospital gown. At least it had left my undergarments. I shifted my gaze to the bed beside mine. Makoto… He was dead. A desiccated, pale corpse. She had even neatly bandaged his stump — but the "treatment" had killed him. She simply hadn't understood the difference between healing and slaughter.
"Patients are not to leave their beds," her scraping voice came.
She stood in the doorway — the true "Heart" of this hospital, its binding link, nourished by the agony of the fallen.
The nurse had finally decided to lay all her cards on the table. In a frighteningly calm, almost mechanical manner, she drew the blade across her own wrist and unleashed a torrent of hexed blood upon me.
I took a short step to the side. My palm found the back of my own head, fingers pressing into the flesh, locating the base of the spinal cord. In one slow, deliberate motion, I pulled out my own spine. The wet crunch of torn ligaments drowned in the roar of cursed energy. In my hands the bone instantly lengthened; the segments fused and curved, taking the shape of a war scythe. My back responded with a flare of heat — the lost skeleton regenerated in fractions of a second, fed by the ocean of absorbed blood.
I held the scythe before me, spinning it fast enough that it became a humming disc of bone. Yellow sparks flew in every direction as my improvised shield deflected the volley of her scalpels. The creature threw up its free hand, and from the ceiling a rain of syringes, surgical knives, and massive black needles came pelting down.
"Blood Shield."
I raised my palm, materializing a crimson plane above my head. Steel rang as it embedded itself in the sticky defense. Not giving her a chance to seize the initiative, I took one broad, commanding step forward.
"Spines."
From the floor before me, a row of crimson spikes erupted. Speed played a cruel trick on the curse — it impaled itself on them with its full weight, unable to brake in time. The impact burst the bandage across its face, exposing a mouth torn back to the ears, lined with rows of needle-like teeth.
"Full synchronization takes time," I said, calmly and simply, looking into its empty eye sockets. "That's why I have to narrate each step. But thanks to you, I've relearned how to translate the art of will into tangible reality. For good or for harm? It doesn't matter."
It didn't answer. The curse seemed not to register its position, nor the spikes jutting from its back. With a violent effort, it tore free, and its flesh began to regenerate before my eyes.
"You manipulate blood quite competently," I noted, watching the instantaneous regeneration. "Heightened sensitivity, paralysis, pushing the body to its absolute limit…? You can make flesh explode or plunge it into total anesthesia. But all of this is only foundational skill. Surface knowledge of a novice."
It froze. A silent question settled on its ravaged face. It seemed to have denied its own nature until the very end, sincerely believing in a mission of healing. A curious phenomenon — a curse with a messiah complex.
"I… I wasn't causing harm, I was only…" it rasped.
"Look the truth in the face," my voice struck like a whip. "You are a Curse. Remember. Wake up."
It didn't argue. Slowly lowering its gaze, it examined its clawed hands, the withered corpses on the beds, the pulsing flesh of the walls. Understanding arrived alongside a monstrous shriek that shattered the only black pane of glass in the hall. A furious cone of black-red energy punched through the ceiling. The creature broke into motion, barreling toward me with primal ferocity.
I didn't move. It was my perfect training dummy, on which I was relearning the fundamentals of my art.
"Creating weapons from blood is the foundation. True mastery demands imagination and the most brutal focus."
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, initiating Body Transfiguration. The body began to change rapidly, tuning its parameters toward my ideal combat form. My height increased; muscles swelled, covered by a network of straining veins. In the midst of the transformation I couldn't respond to its attack. From both hands it executed a crossing slash across me. My bare chest flared open, releasing blood — and in its wake, from a low runner's stance, it drove both arms straight through my chest in a lunge.
"Karma," I extended my index and middle fingers, directing them first at my own wounds, then at it. "Voodoo."
In the same instant, its chest exploded. Identical torn wounds appeared on its body, making the creature choke on its own blood. It was shocked, but still alive. Using its confusion, I seized its wrists and poured all the force of my new body into a shattering hook to its head.
The impact shattered, splintered, and broke its jaw into tiny fragments with blood. The curse flew off, bouncing across the floor several times like a ragdoll, and with a dull impact embedded itself in the wall — causing a rumble and shaking like an earthquake for a couple of seconds. My right hand didn't withstand the force — the fist was crushed, the bones of the fingers distorted. The body had not yet fully adapted to such power. But seconds later, accompanied by a dry crunch, my hand returned to its normal form.
"Blood can influence not only flesh, but the mind."
A snap of my fingers — and the structure of its perception collapsed. There was no need to speak or shout commands when a gesture could serve as an absolute signal for the execution of judgment. The nurse slowed sharply. For each of its desperate sprints, the floor responded with a forest of crimson stakes growing precisely beneath its feet. A sprint that didn't exceed human speed — which made it look particularly pathetic and almost absurd, charging straight at me like that. My left thumb cracked against my middle finger.
"Structural Change."
The blood spikes, already having achieved the density of bone, instantly shifted into a liquid, dense, and unbearably sticky form. They enveloped it, erupting into raging flame. Like living tar, gnawing into its essence.
"KHY-A-A-A! A-A-A-A-a-a-a!" Its shriek was swallowed by the fire.
Neither fury nor hatred could drown out or extinguish this agony. Pure, primal pain of burning. I didn't allow the blood to evaporate; it sank into its cursed essence, becoming part of its "self." The greater your experience and understanding of the art, the deeper you could set the level of that influence.
Another snap. The flame went out. It froze in place — a charred black statue hanging motionless.
The foreign blood opened its memory to me. I saw this hospital decades past. An occupation by some criminal group. A massacre: the mob had cut down the staff, patients, and children in idiotic retribution — the doctors hadn't saved their boss, and so everyone was guilty. Japanese gangsters of those years knew nothing of honor, operating purely on fanatical loyalty. All these deaths had created a perfect site for the formation of a dormant cursed "object" — an abandoned hospital.
But the manifestation of this nurse had clung to the last remnants of innocence until the very end. It had been her dream — to save people. Ironic and almost funny: on her very first official working day, she had wept on her knees at gunpoint, lamenting to the gangsters that this was "unfair." She never got the chance to understand what it meant to be a doctor.
"Erasure… Fabrication of false memories… Integration…" I conducted her consciousness like a complex operation. "Done. One final touch remains."
I clapped my hands loudly. The nurse's body burst apart, vanishing in a blinding crimson flash. But her soul didn't scatter — it remained here, dark, wandering within my blood.
I had considered creating familiars or keeping her for experiments, but a better idea had come to me. Considerably more elegant.
"Creation."
On the floor, our two streams of blood met, weaving into a complex, pulsing pattern. The crimson matter foamed, gaining density and form, until an ordinary-looking — at first glance — black cat stood before me, with piercing red eyes. My technique hadn't merely given her flesh; it had overlaid her with a layer of "normalcy," concealing the curse's true nature from any magical sight.
"M-mew?…"
"Easy now, don't be afraid." I extended my hand toward her.
In this small body, the remnants of a human personality still warmed — but her memory had been burned away and rewritten. She was a blank page now. Any creation born in this way would inevitably be drawn to its maker.
"Come here." She approached hesitantly and settled beside me, still watching me with curious, attentive eyes. I would find a name for her a little later. Right now I didn't have the time.
I felt the tension releasing. Holding the peak form of the "Outcast" was growing increasingly difficult — the current vessel named "Naoya" was not yet ready for loads of this magnitude. I urgently needed to construct a plausible story for the clan, but fate, as it turned out, had a particular sense of humor.
"Kh… M-hm…"
A quiet rasp made me turn around. My bodyguard. I had been certain he was dead, but Makoto had turned out to be far more resilient than I had expected. At the brink of death, his body had instinctively initiated a process of autonomous circulation: cursed energy had imitated the bloodstream, sustaining oxygen delivery and electrical impulses to the brain. His organism had clung to life with a dead man's grip, adapting the principle of "transfusion" for the sake of survival.
A remarkable phenomenon.
"Makoto?.. You lucky son of a bitch."
In reward for his tenacity, I decided to return my partner's arm. Manipulation of blood and flesh allowed me to restore what had been lost, feeding his body the life force necessary for survival. But now came the time for "makeup."
I materialized a red scalpel. A precise incision here — a blade-shaped scar at the very corner of his eye, missing the pupil by a miracle. Here — a ragged wound, there — a deep contusion. The key was balance. Injuries too light would raise suspicion; injuries too severe would raise questions about the very fact of his survival. No one was to guess how we had survived such blood loss.
"My turn."
I slung Makoto over my shoulder and headed for the exit. With the death of the "Heart," the building had instantly lost its illusion. The pulsing flesh had vanished, leaving only dusty ruins, silence, and stillness. I had simply cleaned up the mess left by people of the past.
Right at the threshold, an elegant crimson hand extended from a pool of shadow, handing me my "flip phone." I opened it, dialed the number, and deliberately forced a spasm in my throat — the taste of blood rose. My voice needed to sound like a man on the edge of unconsciousness.
"Naobito… Father… the assignment at the hospital… address in the message… I… K-ha!"
"Naoya?! Naoya!" The phone barked.
I dropped theatrically face-first into the road dust, keeping the connection open so he could "hear" my fall.
"Structural Change," I whispered barely audibly.
The body obediently reverted to the image of a fragile adolescent. My torn clothing, the broken dagger, the mangled katana that Makoto still gripped in unconsciousness. Everything in its place. Makoto would be generously rewarded for his valor and courage in the face of death.
Everything went smoothly. The clan council and my father swallowed the account of an encounter with a Grade 1 curse. There were no gaps in the story, because I had written it, and the rest found it convenient to attribute everything to luck. The Zenin clan was accustomed to risk — that was their celebrated "samurai honor," the thing they had been hiding behind for four hundred years.
Some secretly regretted that I had survived, coveting my position. Others had genuinely developed respect for my fearlessness. I only looked at them and smiled softly to myself. The show went on.
---
*Two years later.*
*January 21st, 2002.*
Two years had passed without notice. In that time I had grown considerably more, and had taken relatively few assignments or missions. After that incident at the abandoned hospital, Naobito had become excessively fastidious: missions were now issued in measured portions, only verified ones, guaranteed to match the appropriate rank. I didn't complain. Free time I converted into training, reading, and investments. My "green" on the exchange flourished, and my influence over key figures in government and business continued to grow. Sorcerers rule from the shadows, but the world is ruled by those who hold capital.
Yesterday had been a special day. Misaki had successfully given birth to twins. Upon the discovery of her condition, the clan had been obligated, for obvious reasons, to reassign her duties. Someone named Kaoru-san — a friend of hers. Calm, reserved, and just a touch nervous. My quiet, composed, and almost gently mocking nature was unfamiliar to her. I had an uneasy premonition, and so this morning I intended to speak with Misaki — but only after training. During lunch. I had long since grown accustomed to performing this standard, pleasant routine.
My bare, muscular torso gleamed with sweat and the falling snowflakes of winter. I wore only loose athletic trousers and heavy spiked running shoes. To occupy my thoughts, I had a brand-new cassette player with wired earphones. I was listening to a beautiful piece of local classical music: *Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me.*
*"What an angelic voice she has."* It was fortunate that the local internet had allowed me to reach her in time.
As it happened, she had cervical cancer — something that should have taken her life the year before — but I had decided that voice was worth helping through my blood magic. My "kindness" had extended her life, while granting me an aesthetic pleasure during training, study, and rest.
I ran along the white path, the obvious crunch of snow rising underfoot with each step. Thick steam poured from my mouth, and my damp fringe kept falling into my eyes. Ahead loomed "my" mountain. Only eight hundred meters in elevation, but for some it was still a brutal challenge. How many times had I climbed it over these two years? Thousands? Tens of thousands? My habitual ritual.
I glanced at the watch strapped to the inside of my wrist. Time to head back. Time was the one resource I had never been inclined to waste.
After rinsing my heated body in the shower, I changed from athletic gear to a fresh set: a black turtleneck fitted snugly against my torso and neck, accentuating the clean, firm lines of muscle, while black trousers and light sneakers completed the look. In my room, I brewed coffee at a measured pace. The aroma of freshly ground beans filled the space; I poured in a little cold milk — not only to drop the temperature, but to give the drink the softness and gentleness I wanted.
Taking the first sip, I stepped into the corridor of the estate. My destination was Misaki's quarters. No permission or invitation was required — the status of heir-designate made such formalities redundant.
Passing the main training ground, I slowed involuntarily. There, to the accompaniment of sharp vocal commands, dozens of students were raising and lowering bokken in unison. The wooden swords cut the air with a whistle, striking in time with a fierce rhythm. My gaze lingered for a couple of seconds on the figure of the instructor — Nobuaki Zenin.
One of the clan's leading swordsmanship masters, he fairly radiated arrogance, drunk on his own talent. Nobuaki barely concealed his contempt when looking at me; it grated on him that I outranked him in status, and — if truth be told — the simple fact that I was more talented than him. I didn't pass up the opportunity to needle him. Stopping at the edge of the grounds, I raised my coffee mug slowly, almost solemnly, in his direction. My lips spread of their own accord into a soft, fox's smile.
Nobuaki grimaced immediately. His face became a mask of tight irritation for a moment, and he crossed his arms hard across his chest, making a point of not looking in my direction. Another round of psychological warfare — won by me.
With my free left hand I slid the relevant door sharply aside. The chestnut dimness of the entryway flowed into a succession of rooms. A simple sitting room, a bathroom, a bedroom. I didn't conceal my approach, letting the sound of my footsteps announce my presence in advance. The fusuma of the bedroom parted with a dry rustle.
Misaki stood with her back to me, leaning over a cradle. Her shoulders were trembling finely.
"Misaki-san?…" I called, softly.
She turned around slowly — with a kind of rigid stiffness. Her face was a waxen mask smeared with the tracks of dried tears. In her hands she clutched an ordinary kitchen knife. At the sight of me her fingers released; the steel struck the tatami with a dull sound. Misaki seemed to lose all strength in her legs and crumpled to her knees.
"What happened?" I already read this situation like an open book — but I needed her to say the words herself. The foundation of our alliance had to be built on honesty, not guesswork. I had no intention of losing people like this.
"My husband…" her voice was barely audible — a scrape. "He said I was useless because I hadn't given him an heir. These twins… they are already condemned. In this clan, only pain and suffering await them. It would be more merciful to end it now, before they grow up hating themselves, hating me, hating the clan."
She was spitting these words out, forcing herself to believe this lie. Poor acting. She might have deceived the clan's fanatics — but certainly not me. I stepped closer, looking down at her, but my gaze held no contempt. Only endless calm.
"I cannot feel your pain, Misaki-san — but I can help you accept yourself. Stop lying. Don't force yourself to hate them simply because they were born girls. That is the height of foolishness."
I paused, giving her time to absorb and process that.
"Support them. Love them. Be their anchor, no matter what. Promise me that. You cannot hide from me the love and care you feel for them."
I had personally observed the birth of the twins. My tiny familiar — a crimson fly, lost in the shadows of the ceiling — had recorded every detail. Before their father entered the ward, Misaki had been… happy. Call it maternal instinct or a hormonal surge, but it had been the plain truth. She had held those fragile white bundles against herself with such tenderness and at the same time such fierce grip — as though she feared they might dissolve into the air.
She collapsed immediately. Misaki lurched forward, wrapping her arms around me, and then crumpled back to the floor with her face pressed into my shoulder. A desperate, tearing wail tore from her chest. Tears now flowed without stopping, soaking into the fabric of my turtleneck.
I accepted the embrace in silence. No complaints, no withdrawal — I simply placed my palms on her trembling shoulders, offering her a simple, steady support.
"Yes, it will be hard for them," I continued quietly. "Life is rarely a fair thing, especially here, for people like you. Each of us has to fight for something. You are no exception. Don't you dare give up."
"Why… why are you so kind to me, my lord?" she rasped, without lifting her head.
"Someone has to be," I replied with an ironic smirk, and exhaled tiredly at this whole picture.
I didn't believe she truly could have carried it through to the end — the canonical scenario and parental instincts were usually stronger than momentary impulses. Most likely she would have come back to herself at the last instant, but spent the rest of her life torn apart by contradictions. I simply saved her years of self-flagellation.
"In all seriousness, Misaki-san — consider this an investment. In the future. Our clan will sooner or later be forced to accept change. Whether you want it, whether my father wants it, or whether the clan itself does? That was never particularly important to me."
"Is that… is that a good thing or a bad thing?" She found the courage to ask that bold, almost impertinent question.
I looked down at her — the gaze was almost poisonous, saturated with the sarcasm I had been accumulating for so long.
"Good or bad?" I echoed, and something metallic rang in my voice. "Misaki-san, leave the concepts of 'good' and 'evil' for children's stories. Especially here, where the line between them is not particularly easy to see. What I offer the clan is 'efficiency,' and what I offer you is 'stability.' For you personally, this means only one thing: your children will not merely live — they will be free to choose. Is that not enough?"
"Then… I will stop pretending," Misaki raised her head, and for the first time in a long while, a gleam of steel appeared in her eyes. "I will give them everything they need. I will be their shield. And you…?"
"And I," I paused, straightening the sleeve of my turtleneck, "will be the one who shows them the true reality of their situation. When the time comes."
"I understand."
She exhaled deeply and rose from her knees. Her movements were more precise now, steadier. Taking a cloth from the table, she began to compose herself. As if on cue, the silence of the room was cut by a doubled infant cry — demanding and clear. Misaki immediately darted to the cradle, answering it with soft murmuring.
"I'll be going," I said, heading for the exit.
"Be careful, Naoya-sama." Her voice caught me at the very threshold. "Your attention toward us… it won't go unnoticed. The consequences may not be the most favorable."
I stopped, but didn't turn around.
"I don't care. The opinions of idiots don't interest me, and difficulties have long since become part of my routine. I will be watching over you. Don't stay silent. Tell me everything you consider important. I have taken you under my protection. Don't ignore things, don't endure things in silence, and don't you dare avoid me."
On that note, our conversation was finished. At least for me.
*— A brief note from the Author clarifying the concept of "soul" and "body." In the JJK world, there is the memorable character of Mahito. He can act directly upon the soul, allowing him to transform people into whatever he wishes through cursed energy — in his case, into mutants and monsters. What we have here is the reverse influence. The blood of the body is transmuted into the spiritual and the cursed to create an "exchange," which allows the protagonist to alter cursed souls just as Mahito alters people.*