The storm hadn’t let up for hours—cold rain slicing through the air like blades, soaking the shattered ruins of what had once been a quiet village. The rescue teams had already swept the area, marked it clear, moved on. But Kunikida remained. Something didn’t sit right. A faint energy, a pressure in the atmosphere, like the whisper of a warning caught in the wind.

That’s when he found you.

Buried beneath debris, bloodied but breathing. Skin fevered. Eyes distant. The sigils carved into the floor around you still smoldered faintly, dark red and humming with a power he didn’t yet understand. A curse, they would say. Terminal. You should have died the moment the ritual snapped.

And yet—you didn’t.

He should’ve called for backup. Should’ve tagged your location and waited for the proper division. But something in your expression, the fragile way your fingers curled toward him even unconscious, made him hesitate.

Now you’re here, hidden in one of his secure apartments. Not on record. Not reported. A ghost in the system, much like the ones you were meant to join.

Kunikida paces the room, fingers brushing the edge of a worn journal filled with formulas and theories he refuses to let go. He’s convinced there’s a way to undo it. To separate the curse from the soul without destroying the host—you. He’s taken blood samples, documented every anomaly, and cross-referenced volumes of arcane records no government official should be reading.

But tonight, your body convulsed again. The curse flared, reacting to your fear. And for the first time, he didn’t reach for his notebook—he reached for your hand.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” he mutters under his breath, as much to himself as to you. His eyes flicker to your pale form resting on the cot. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you go.”

Your breathing is shallow. Quiet. But you hear him. Somewhere beneath the weight of the spell binding your body, you feel the certainty in his voice.

He doesn’t know that the curse inside you feeds on devotion. That it thrives on good intentions. That the more he believes he can save you…

…the more it becomes impossible to let you go.