Yurui The Cursed One

Her body changes as she speaks.

Long metallic feathers burst from her neck and shoulders as narrow seams split open along her ribs. Her arms thicken, her fingers curling into talons, and a ridged fin rises along the back of her skull like the crown of some deep-sea predator.

The others transform with her. One man’s skin hardens into overlapping plates, while another doubles in size as antlers twist through his scalp. Near the wall, a woman turns translucent, every organ visible beneath glassy flesh.

Ivy rolls up his sleeves.

Bluish skin gleams beneath the bar lights. Loose white filaments trail from his forearms, soft as fur until the rising heat stiffens them.

Someone in the background doubles over and vomits.

There it is again- the same revulsion he has seen on countless faces.

The antlered man does not waste a second before charging right at him.

Ivy pulls the knife from his pocket and drags the blade across his forearm in one swift motion. Blood spills over his wrist, and he whips his arm forward before the man can reach him.

The antlered man throws up both arms to shield his face. Most of the blood splashes across the hardened skin covering them, and flames burst to life along his body.

It barely slows him.

Still burning, he lowers his head and barrels straight through the fire.

Ivy’s eyes widen a moment before the man slams into him and drives him backward through a table. Glass shatters beneath his spine. A hoof crashes down, clipping the side of his face hard enough to tear the skin while missing his skull by inches.

Ivy thrusts his bleeding arm upward and smears blood across the man’s throat. The hardened skin resists the flames for only a moment before the flesh beneath them ignites.

The man staggers away, bellowing and clawing at his neck as flames spread across his now melting skin and force their way into the softer flesh beneath.

The translucent woman throws out both hands, and the air around Ivy compresses. Invisible pressure crushes his chest, bending his ribs inward until he can no longer draw breath. His body locks in place while the woman in white leaps onto a table above the chaos.

“Contain him!” she shouts. “Do not rupture the skin!”

Of course, she remembers. After all, she was one of the people who turned him into this monstrosity.

The pressure tightens, and darkness creeps into the edges of his vision. Ivy drives the knife deeper into his arm until blood runs freely, then whips it toward the translucent woman.

The droplets stop in midair, suspended between them by her power.

For the first time in years, Ivy feels real fear- the same raw, helpless terror he felt as a child, strapped down inside that damned institute.

She smiles.

Then the burning antlered man crashes into her from the side.

The pressure vanishes. Ivy’s suspended blood splashes across them both, and the translucent woman becomes a lantern. Flames race through her glassy body, illuminating every vein and organ before she collapses, screaming.

The remaining patrons stampede toward the exits. The woman in white spreads her hooked arms, blocking Ivy’s view of the VIP table while the plated man drags one of the researchers toward a rear door.

They are getting away.

No. Not again.

His pulse surges, and the room twists around him. Faces stretch into pale masks beneath surgical lights. The music becomes the hum of machinery. Broken tables become steel restraints, digging into his wrists.

Increase the concentration.

He can tolerate more.

Ivan, stop struggling.

His real name. The name they used as they cut him apart.

Ivy plunges the knife into his other arm once, then again. Blood spills down both hands.

The woman in white sees what he is doing.

“Ivan.”

He freezes.

No one calls him that anymore, not since the institute.

Her predatory features seem to recede, and for a moment, he sees the young researcher beneath them- the woman who had watched him burn from the inside while calmly writing numbers on a clipboard.

“Ivan, listen to me.”

His breath catches in his throat.

“You were sick,” she says. “We saved your life.”

The last of his restraint gives way.

He swings both arms, and blood fans across the room.

The woman throws herself sideways. Most of it misses her, but several drops strike one metallic wing. Fire races along the feathers, and she shrieks before tearing the burning appendage from her shoulder.

Behind her, the plated man reaches the rear door.

Ivy swings again, sending a wide arc of blood in the air. It spatters the ceiling, the walls, and the people still scrambling for the exits. The spray went wider than he intended.

A server catches fire beside the bar. A man throws himself over his wife, only for the flames to race across his back and spill down on to her. Near the entrance, someone screams for their mother.

Ivy sees all of them.

His arm moves again anyway.

Another arc of blood tears across the room. Fire races up the curtains and spreads along the walls. Behind the counter, bottles burst from the heat, showering the floor with flaming alcohol.

The plated man collapses before he can reach the door. One of the researchers crawls beneath a table, his pleas for help swallowed by the chaos.

The woman in white falls near Ivy’s feet.

Half her body has transformed back. The rest remains covered in scorched feathers, exposed gills opening and closing uselessly along her ribs.

She reaches toward him.

“Ivan.”

He looks down at her. Tears cut clean lines through the ash covering her face.

“I did everything right,” she says. “I followed every regulation. Every procedure.”

A harsh laugh escapes him, distorted by years of rage.

“You followed the procedure?”

“I never made the decisions.” Her voice breaks. “Maevis approved the project. I only did what I was told.”

There it is: Miracle City’s favorite absolution- Someone else gave the order.

Her fingers close weakly around the hem of his coat.

“Please.”

Ivy lets a single drop of blood fall onto her hand.

She stares at it.

“No.”

Her skin begins to smoke.

“No, no, please. Iv—”

Fire swallows the rest of his name.

She twists across the floor, crashing into overturned chairs as the flames consume her. Around her, the remaining patrons thrash beneath the chandeliers, their movements wild and broken while music continues pounding through the speakers. Shadows writhe across the walls in time with them.

For one brief, terrible moment, it almost looks like dancing.

Beautiful.

The word forms before he can stop it, and disgust twists through his stomach.

Then the music cuts out.

The screaming continues a while longer. One voice fades, then another, until the room finally falls quiet and only the crackle of flames remains.

Ivy stands at the center of it all. Fire crawls across his coat without catching on, and the heat barely registers against his skin. The institute had filled his body with the same adaptations that allowed Pompeii worms to survive beside deep-sea vents, reducing temperatures that would melt ordinary flesh to little more than regular warmth.

He looks over the bodies scattered throughout the burning room.

Ivy had imagined this moment for years. Sometimes he pictured himself laughing, breaking down. He imagined how he would force them to beg before he finally killed them. He had expected relief, satisfaction, anything that might make all those years of hunting them feel worthwhile.

Instead, there is only smoke, heat, and the smell of charred flesh.

The people he came for are dead, but so are others who never knew his name and had nothing to do with what happened to him. He tells himself they would have sided with Miracle Inc eventually. They would have funded it, defended it, or simply looked away when the institute created its next victim.

The lie settles over his conscience like a balm.

Ivy wipes the knife against his sleeve, tucks it away in his clothes, and turns toward the exit. There is nothing left for him here.

The street outside is nearly empty. Sirens echo somewhere beyond the towers, still distant, while smoke pours from the bar and coils up the face of the building.

Ivy steps out into the pale morning light on unsteady legs.

He has barely crossed the pavement when someone walks straight into him. The impact is light, but the other person loses her footing and falls at his feet.

A girl.

She is filthy, her clothes torn and stiff with dried blood. Bruises cover every patch of exposed skin, and her dark hair hangs around her face in tangled strands. One of her shoes looks ready to come apart.

She should not be standing.

Judging by the state of her, she should not even be alive.

Ivy reaches down without thinking, but the girl’s gaze drops to his hand. Fresh blood still glistens across his fingers.

He jerks it back.

“Careful.”

His voice comes out rough from the smoke. He pulls his sleeve farther over his arm and adjusts the hood around his face.

“If you get too close to the fire, you’ll get burned.”

The girl glances past him at the bar, where flames pulse behind the windows.

“Nice fire.”

Ivy stares at her.

She smiles, though there is nothing remotely happy in it.

“It’s all right,” she adds. “I’m not scared.”

People always said that before they got a proper look at him. Then their faces twisted with disgust, and they hurried to put as much distance between themselves and him as possible.

This girl only studies the blood on his sleeve.

“Besides,” she says, “I don’t think a little fire is enough to kill me.”

Something tightens in his chest.

Now that he takes a closer look, he notices the remnants of transformation still clinging to her body. Her arms remain subtly elongated, the skin stretched taut over joints that have not fully settled back into place. Small fragments of dark armor remain lodged along her shoulders and ribs, as though her body forgot to shed them.

Ivy recognizes the signs immediately. After everything the institute had done to him, he could notice signs of an unnatural transformation from a mile away.

“Who did this to you?” he asks.

The girl’s smile fades. She looks past him toward the distant towers.

“Which part?”

Ivy has no answer.

For a moment, he can only stare at her- the dried blood, the warped limbs, the fragments of armor embedded in her skin. He knows that expression all too well. It is the same one staring back at him from every mirror every single dam day of his life.

His gaze drifts back toward the burning bar, and whatever satisfaction he expected to find there curdles into something bitter. Killing them had changed nothing.

There were still others out there, turning even more people into monsters like him.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

She hesitates before answering. “Yurui.”

He nods once. “Ivy.”

Her eyes narrow slightly, as though she suspects it is not his real name, but she says nothing.

He offers her his covered hand. This time, she takes it, her grip weak but steady. Ivy pulls her upright and keeps hold of her until she stops swaying and finds her balance.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he says.

Yurui glances around the deserted street. “Neither should you.”

A laugh almost escapes him, but dies before reaching his throat.

The sirens are drawing closer now. Red light flickers against the distant towers.

“We should go.”

Yurui looks back at the burning bar. “Why?”

“Because whoever arrives next will have plenty of questions about the burning building, and I imagine a girl covered in tattered, blood-soaked clothes will look rather suspicious.”

“The police?”

Ivy shakes his head.

“Something worse.”

She does not pry further.

Smart girl.

Ivy heads toward the narrow alley beside the clinic. After a few steps, he hears the uneven drag of her feet behind him and glances over his shoulder.

She is following him.

“Where are we going?” Yurui asks.

He almost tells her the truth- that he is going back to the people who hold his leash, to another name, another address, another room waiting to be burned.

Then his gaze settles on the scraps of armor still embedded in her skin.

“Whoever did that to you,” he says, “do they know you survived?”

Yurui’s expression hardens. “Probably.”

“Then they’ll come looking.”

“Let them.”

What surprises Ivy the most is that there is no bravado in her voice. She means every single word.

He studies her for another moment before turning toward the alley again. “Come with me.”

“Why?”

He has no good answer. He only knows that leaving her behind would mean abandoning one of the last pieces of Ivan- the person he had been before the institute turned him into this…

After a short silence, Ivy finally speaks up.

“They’ll have a harder time finding you.”

Yurui watches him suspiciously. “And what do you get out of it?”

“Nothing.”

She squeezes out a thin smile. “There’s no such thing as free help.”

Ivy could not argue with that, but the sirens were drawing closer now, their wail echoing between the towers and steadily swallowing the quiet around them.

He lifts a hand toward her, hesitates, then gives her tangled hair a brief, uncertain ruffle before quickly pulling away.

“You ask too many questions,” he mutters.

“You answer too few.”

For the first time that night, Ivy laughs. The sound surprises him almost as much as it seems to surprise her.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll get you somewhere safe.”

Yurui studies him for a long moment before shaking her head. “I can’t.”

Ivy frowns. “Why not?”

“I have school.”

For several seconds, he can only stare at her. She looks as though she has just crawled out of a car wreck, yet she says it with complete seriousness.

“School,” he repeats.

Yurui nods.

The sirens are almost upon them now. Red light flickers across the distant buildings, growing brighter with every passing second.

Ivy glances toward the alley, then back at the girl. He could force the issue. Drag her with him and tell himself it was for her own good.

The thought makes him recoil. He knows all too well what it is like to have every choice taken from you by someone claiming it is for your own good.

“Fine,” he says quietly. “Try not to die on the way there.”

Yurui gives him a tired look. “I’ll do my best.”

Ivy turns and heads into the alley. He has made it several steps when her voice follows him through the darkness.

“Good luck.”

He stops but does not turn around.

“With whatever it is you do,” she adds.

For a moment, he considers looking back. Instead, he pulls his hood lower over his face.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “You too.”

Then he keeps walking.

He had burned an entire room full of people, telling himself their deaths would serve some greater good. For every person he killed, he promised himself he would save a thousand.

So far, he had not saved a single one.

The debt kept growing. And when a girl who desperately needed help stood before him, all he could do was walk away and hope she survived the day.

At this rate, he could keep going forever without saving anyone at all.

With every step, the thought dug itself deeper into his mind.

Behind him, Yurui waits until the sound of his footsteps disappears completely before finally unclenching her fists. Her nails have bitten deep crescents into her palms, and fresh blood glistens between her fingers.

He had been lucky he did not look like the corporate type. Had he worn the wrong suit, used the wrong tone, or reached for her too quickly, she was not certain she could have stopped herself from killing him.

Yurui releases a slow breath and looks toward the distant academy. Her shoulders sag at the sight of it, but after a moment, she forces herself forward and resumes the long walk to school.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!