Chapter 5 – This is a two part chapter, hence the early update! Chapter 6 will go up on Sunday.
Shoko's little party or "get together" as she called it, took place in a hidden room deep within the school. Kaia tried to remember the route they took to get there, but the harder she tried to remember, the more it escaped her thoughts. Must have been some type of magic in place to make that happen, and Kaia didn't want to know how Shoko and all of them found the path to the hidden room, though she had a feeling it had something to do with Gojo's Six Eyes.
They got to the little room and Kaia immediately thought it was rather dreary. The floor was dark hardwood and the walls were a dull gray. There was a long couch in the middle of the room and a TV on a wooden stand pushed against the wall. Kaia's brows rose and she looked at Shoko.
"Seriously? We're gonna hang out in here? It's depressing," Kaia said.
"We'll be drunk so it doesn't matter," Mei Mei said. She pulled her light blue hair in front of her shoulders and set her bag down on the floor as she took a seat at the end of the couch.
"Is this appropriate? You were my teacher earlier today," Kaia said to Utahime.
"Don't worry about it," Gojo said. He slung an arm around her shoulders and leaned his stupidly large frame on her to the point where Kaia damn near lost her balance. "It's not like Iori actually taught you anything."
"Get off of me," Kaia snapped, planting her hands on his chest and shoving as hard as she possibly could.
Gojo grinned and let out an amused laugh, choosing to walk over to the couch and drape himself on the other end. He stretched his long legs out across the cushions and laid an arm along the back of it.
"I hate him," Kaia deadpanned.
"Me too," Utahime remarked, leveling her own glare at Gojo.
"Most people do," Shoko said. She walked over to the couch and grabbed Gojo's legs and threw them off the cushions so she could sit beside Mei Mei. Shoko wasted no time grabbing the blue-haired woman's bag and pulling out a bottle of vodka and immediately taking a drink from it.
"He's not so bad once you get to know him," Geto said, patting Kaia on the back and sitting on the other side of Shoko.
That left zero spots for Utahime and Kaia to sit, and Kaia was fine with it. The longer hung around their group, the more uncomfortable she felt. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable with the people she was with, they were fine. It was just that it brought back memories of the bonfire and Reiji's disgusting hands on her body and she suddenly felt dirty.
"I think I'm actually gonna head back. I'm not feeling too well all of the sudden," Kaia mumbled.
All heads immediately turned to her. Shoko's brows knitted together in worry and she swiveled around on the couch so she directly faced Kaia.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"You don't have to drink if you don't want to, Kaia," Geto said. His voice was calm and reassuring, but it did nothing to dispel that feeling that she was sinking. She felt a knot in her stomach and imagined the smell of the bonfire, imagined Maha's friends teasing her, imagined Reiji offering her punch.
"Oh. No. I'm…" Kaia started.
"It doesn't taste bad. I've got chasers and mixers," Mei Mei suggested. She had a smirk on her face, or maybe it was a smile. Kaia couldn't be sure with her. The confidence the girl gave off made it hard to discern whether she was being genuine or not. But Kaia suddenly felt helpless again. Felt like her sister abandoned her and fed her to the wolves. Felt like she'd been left to fend for herself with dumb high school boys who wanted to take advantage of her.
"I'm okay! Thanks though! Just have a bit of a headache. I'm gonna go lie down," Kaia said quickly.
She turned around and bolted out of there as fast as she could. She didn't really know where she was, but she figured the school's seals or charms or whatever they were didn't want her to be in that room any more than she wanted, so within a few minutes, she found herself on the school's ground level, just outside of the main common room once again.
Her heart slowed as her eyes landed on the familiar frames of Nanami and Haibara. There was no alcohol in sight, no party atmosphere, none of that. It was just the two of them sitting across from each other and talking about some nonsense.
It immediately made Kaia feel safe and she sighed with relief.
She walked over to the couch Nanami was on and sat beside him.
"I thought you were hanging out with Ieiri tonight," Nanami said. He ran a hand through his ash blond hair and sipped on a water bottle, nudging her knee with his own after she'd taken her seat.
"Eh. I felt out of place. Figured I'd hang out with you guys instead," she said.
"Well, we're not doing anything," Haibara said. "We might go into town though and get some food. Wanna come?"
"Eh. I don't know," Kaia muttered. "I'm not really feeling big crowds tonight."
"Want us to hang back and keep you company?" Nanami asked. He looked at her with kind eyes and she let herself smile.
"Nah, that's okay. You guys go ahead. It'll just be me and my curse tonight."
"You know, I still haven't seen your curse. Neither of us have and I'm kinda curious since I keep hearing people talk about it," Haibara said. "Suguru Geto is really interested in it."
Kaia narrowed her eyes.
"He is?" she asked.
"Well yeah. His technique is cursed spirit manipulation, so of course he'd be interested in a curse that can't truly be exorcised. I had to shadow him on a mission the other day and he was asking me all about your curse, but like I said, I haven't seen it. He seemed a little disappointed that I couldn't tell him more about it," Haibara said. He shrugged as he spoke, but Kaia could tell he had a lot more to say on the subject. Not that she was surprised. She wasn't. Yu Haibara looked up to Geto so much. He talked about him nonstop, said what a great sorcerer he was, said how much he wanted to be strong like him.
Kaia didn't blame Haibara. He didn't know any better. But she suddenly felt like the world's biggest idiot. Here she was, walking around thinking that Geto was different than Gojo and that he was actually kind. Thinking that he was being nice to her because he was a decent person that maybe wanted to be friends.
But no. Geto was just as shitty as Gojo. Maybe even worse. At least Gojo didn't pretend he was her friend. Gojo didn't pretend to like her as a person. Geto was only being nice to her because he wanted something out of her. He was only pretending to be friendly because he wanted her for her cursed technique. Only acted like he was approachable because he wanted to get close to the curse that would kill her one day for some reason.
She was an idiot.
A massive idiot and a loser at that.
"Right…" she said with a sigh.
"Are you okay?" Nanami asked after a moment of silence.
"Yeah, just a headache," she lied, wearing a pretty smile. "Think I might go to sleep and take it easy for the night. You guys go ahead. I'll see you at breakfast?"
"Sounds good! Want us to get you anything?" Haibara asked, jumping up from the couch with a big smile on his face.
"Nah, I'm okay," she said.
"Feel better," Nanami said as he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She could feel her smile weaken the longer he looked at her, her resolve weakening with it. They headed out after and Kaia cleared her throat once she was left alone, frustration making her eyes burn.
She wanted to go home. Wanted to see her sister. Wanted to see her parents, even if it meant having them scream at her for going to that awful bonfire.
And you know what? That's exactly what she was going to do.
"What the hell was that?" Mei Mei asked after Kaia had left.
"No idea. She seemed kind of nervous all of the sudden," Utahime said. She sat on the arm of the couch and took a shot of vodka, followed by a swig of soda to chase it down. "Maybe she doesn't like underage drinking."
"Well considering the fact that the last time she drank she got assaulted by some random dude, she probably felt uncomfortable."
Utahime looked in disbelief at where Satoru Gojo was, still draped over the couch, only now with his legs thrown across Geto and Shoko instead of the cushions. He flipped through a stack of movies, abstaining from alcohol as the rest of the group took turns taking shots. Utahime couldn't help but continue to stare at him. Did that seriously just happen? Did Satoru Gojo seriously just have a moment where he considered somebody else's feelings and give insight into what they were thinking? She kept staring and after a few more moments, he looked at her and gave her the most obnoxious smile she'd ever seen in her life.
"Like what you see, Iori?" he drawled, looking at her over his sunglasses and winking.
Her cheeks flushed and anger boiled in her stomach.
"Screw you," she snapped. "I'm just blown away that the holier than thou Satoru Gojo would have such keen perception regarding a fellow student whom he considers weak."
He scoffed and went back to looking at the movies, smile gone from his face.
"As usual, you're entirely off the mark, Iori. It's not perception, it's common sense. You weren't there that night. If you were, it'd be pretty obvious that's why she didn't want to hang around. And I don't think she's weak. I think she's going to squander her potential. There's a difference."
"Hey!" Shoko said right away. She whacked Gojo on his legs. "That's my friend you're talking about."
"She's not your friend. You've known her for what? A week?" Gojo retorted.
"What's your deal, Satoru?" Mei Mei asked after she stood up and snatched a movie out of Gojo's hand to pop it into the DVD player of the little TV. "Why do you hate this girl so much? It's not like you to get so emotional."
Utahime had the same thought. Gojo usually approached everything with blatant disinterest and disregard. Unless he was dealing with someone who was on his level, like Geto, he couldn't be bothered. She glanced at Geto to see if he would say anything since he seemed somewhat sweet on her, but he also had a disinterested look on his face. He seemed more interested in the bottle of sake he snagged from Mei Mei than the current conversation.
And considering how nice he'd been to Kaia not that long ago, Utahime felt even more confused.
"Guys, guys," Gojo said. He held his hands up as if lecturing them the way Yaga did. "I am not emotional. I'm observant. There's a difference."
"That's not what I think," Mei Mei drawled as the TV sprang to life and the DVD menu for the movie Scream came on. "I think you're jealous."
"Jealous!" Satoru blurted. He suddenly sat straight up, swinging his legs so they were no longer crowding Shoko and Geto and were instead firmly planted on the floor. "Of what? A girl who can't control her cursed technique? Don't make me laugh."
Utahime slid into Mei Mei's spot and watched curiously as Mei Mei turned around and planted a hand on her hip. She smirked at Gojo, one delicately sculpted eyebrow carefully arched above the other.
"I think you're jealous because Murakami gets a pass. She gets a pass on her inability to control her cursed technique while you didn't get that pass. You're the boy with the Six Eyes. It's expected you master it. It's pivotal to jujutsu society that you do. But Murakami? Well, she's just the pretty little girl who gets a pass on mastering such a powerful technique because she's stalked by her family's curse and she's overshadowed by the thing they ran away from in Okinawa. That's why you're jealous."
Utahime could have heard a pin drop. The only noise in the room came from Scream's title sequence. No one breathed, no one drank, no one said anything. Instead, Gojo and Mei Mei stared at each other, Mei Mei smirking at him with watchful eyes and Gojo scoffing and sputtering in disbelief and throwing his hands out at her as if that would make the words hanging in the air disappear.
Finally, it was Geto who broke the silence with a long, low whistle.
"What do you think they ran away from in Okinawa? Surely, there has to be something there that would explain the little girl haunting them for hundreds of years, right?" Geto said, placing his thumb to his chin in thought.
Ah. So that's why Geto had been nice to her. He was interested in the dead little curse that supposedly stalked Kaia Murakami every single night at midnight.
Utahime was disappointed, but not surprised. She should have known better than to suspect anything out of either Satoru Gojo or Suguru Geto.
"No idea. I've never been to the Murakami ancestral home and I doubt I ever will be. Besides, Kaito made it clear that he was keen to let it rot," Mei Mei said.
"He did?" Utahime blurted, unable to understand why someone would feel so strongly about the house they grew up in. A house the entire family grew up in.
She didn't know much about Kaito and Ren Murakami. Just that Ren came from a normal, non-jujutsu family and that Kaito was the only surviving child of his parents, and that aside from some distantly related cousins who wanted nothing to do with the jujutsu world, he was the last living Murakami. The last one that mattered anyway.
She did know about the Murakami family though. She knew all about the family that hailed from Okinawa and lived by the sea for at least a thousand years. She knew about the cursed moon technique the same way people knew about the Six Eyes. Only with the Murakami, unlike the Gojo, the cursed moon technique wasn't necessarily all-powerful. It just gave the user quite a few buffs. Unlike the Six Eyes, the cured moon technique wasn't whispered about for its raw strength. It was whispered about because it was dangerous. It was whispered about because every Murakami to have inherited the technique was allegedly murdered by the spirit of a dead little girl days after reaching their full potential. It was whispered about because most families in jujutsu society believed the Murakami were cursed and that there was something chaining them to Okinawa.
There was a reason why no prominent family in jujutsu society had ever dared marry into the Murakami clan.
They didn't want to be cursed and forsaken.
"Mhm," Mei Mei said. She grabbed Gojo by the ear and yanked him off the couch, stealing his spot and reclining into the cushions as he groaned from where he laid on the floor. "Said he'd never go back and that he placed wards along the property to keep anyone out that didn't have Murakami blood—which incidentally, would include his wife. Apparently, his daughters don't even know where the house is."
"Fascinating," Geto hummed. His thumb was still against his chin and his eyes were distant, staring ahead at the corner where the wall met the ceiling.
"Weird," Gojo grumbled. "Sounds like something out of a bad horror movie. I can't believe you think I'm jealous of a family like that."
"Not the family. The girl," Mei Mei corrected as she nudged Gojo's back with her foot.
"All right, enough," Shoko finally interjected. "Say what you want, Satoru, but I consider Kaia my friend. Now can we please just move on and watch this stupid movie?"
Satoru gave a dramatic sigh and crawled over to the DVD player to hit the PLAY button that finally started the movie.
"Your wish is my command."
The train ride back home wasn't particularly long. Kaia made it back home within two hours and it still was early in the night, barely even 10pm. She hailed a cab from the busy train station and took it the short ride to her family home, getting there a little before 10:30pm. She tipped the cab driver as well as she could with her sad little student funds and walked up the dark pathway that led to her home.
The path took a sharp left bend and went up a little hill, tucking the home away from a residential street that was filled with other single-family houses. The street wasn't too crowded, but there were enough people around that her parents worried about prying eyes, so they paid the extra money in landscaping many years ago to hide the house away.
Kaia walked up the familiar path that lacked any streetlamps—something her mother had been nagging her father about fixing for as long as Kaia could possibly remember and relied solely on her muscle memory to make sure she didn't trip. The scent of winter flowers and greenery filled Kaia's senses and she smiled to herself, reaching a hand out and touching one of the hard leaves from a nearby bush.
The light from the house came into view after Kaia walked for a few long moments. The house was tucked into a hill and was high enough up that you had to walk up a flight of wooden stairs to reach the front door. Kaia entered the courtyard her mother had used as a practice area for most of her life and felt a heavy chill in the air that was distinctly out of place.
It wasn't the wintery chill that'd been surrounding Kaia for the whole walk up. No. This chill was heavier. It was darker. It felt like it could smother her if she stood around too long. Adjusting her bag on her shoulder, Kaia turned in a very slow circle, trying to identify what the hell she was feeling.
It was cursed energy. She could tell that much. But whose?
After a second pass, Kaia realized it wasn't active cursed energy, but residuals instead. She scowled at nothing, looking into the wall of trees that sat opposite her house. She didn't know how to read or identify residuals. Not yet. But she could tell by the feeling that the residuals did not belong to either of her parents.
So who the hell did they belong to and why were they in her family's courtyard?
A light suddenly flicked on, bathing Kaia in a pale fluorescent beam. She turned back around so she faced her house and looked up at the porch where Maha stood, her figure nothing but a shadow with the yellow hue of the house illuminating her.
"Kaia? Is that you?"
Kaia broke into a smile and beamed up at her sister.
"The one and only!"
Her sister laughed in disbelief, squealed, and pulled her into a backbreaking hug once Kaia reached the top of the steps that led to the house. Maha grinned and yanked Kaia inside, firmly locking and shutting the door behind her as she did. She then went and pulled the curtains shut on the windows that looked into the courtyard from the kitchen and dragged Kaia into the living room where she immediately noticed that every single window in there also had the curtains drawn.
Kaia narrowed her eyes and looked at her sister curiously before she set her bag down and took a seat on the sofa.
"What's with all the curtains? We never close the ones in here."
"I just sleep better at night with them shut is all," Maha said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She sat down beside Kaia and tucked her legs underneath her, watching with a sparkle in her eye. "What are you doing here!"
"Well, it's the weekend and I don't have class tomorrow or any missions. I thought I would swing by and check in on you since I still haven't heard from Mom or Dad," Kaia explained, carefully choosing to leave the whole party thing out of it. She also was careful to not talk about the fact she felt like a complete and total loser after realizing that Geto only tolerated her because he was interested in her curse.
"You don't need permission to leave?" Maha asked. She narrowed her pretty brown eyes that were so warm and welcoming after being around the general coldness that was Jujutsu High. Kaia shrugged and avoided her sister's gaze.
"I dunno. I'm sure it's fine."
Maha rolled her eyes but Kaia couldn't deny that her sister seemed awfully relieved that she was there. Had Maha picked up on the residuals outside? Kaia couldn't be sure. Maha could see curses and was sensitive to cursed energy, but Kaia wasn't sure if Maha's awareness was strong enough to pick up on residuals.
"Well, I'm glad you're here, even if it gets you in trouble. I've been lonely."
"I'll bet," Kaia said. She rested on the cushions of the couch and hugged one of the throw pillows to her chest. "You haven't heard from Mom or Dad either, have you?"
Maha shook her head and Kaia could see by the tightness in her jaw that she was biting down on the side of her cheek.
"Weird," Kaia said with a sigh. "I'm sure they're fine. What've you been up to?"
"Aside from homework? Nothing." Maha grinned. "Well, that and planning my trip to Trinidad."
The laughter escaped from Kaia's chest before she could truly think about her sister's words. Maha was never one to get hyper-fixated on anything. She was levelheaded, calm, and easygoing. The exact opposite from how Kaia could be. And seeing her sister so focused on traveling to such a random country filled Kaia with a unique type of amusement.
"Oh my God. You're still stuck on this?" Kaia asked through a set of giggles.
"Yes! Here, look!"
And that was how Kaia got dragged into her sister's bedroom to sit at the computer and listen to Maha babble on and on about Trinidad for over an hour on a Friday night. She played music from the area, showed Kaia photos of food, and even printed out an itinerary that she'd been working on for apparently the whole week. According to Maha, she was going to go there by herself after high school and right before college and take some time to "soul search." Whatever that meant.
Kaia just laughed and listened along, happy to hear her sister talk about something with so much passion. She didn't bring up the fact that their parents would likely never allow such a trip. There was no point in raining on Maha's little island parade. And who knew? Maybe their parents would be so fixated on Kaia's development as a sorcerer that they would loosen the leash a little bit on their perfect eldest daughter.
When Maha had finished showing Kaia her plans for Trinidad and Tobago, they returned to the living room, made popcorn and hot chocolate, and turned all the lights off as they watched a romantic comedy. Though, they didn't really watch it. They spent more time talking about nothing and poking and prodding into each other's lives.
"He's a loser, Maha," Kaia said after her sister finished telling her that she hadn't heard from Riku since the bonfire.
"He's a nice guy, Kaia," Maha retorted with a frustrated eye roll. She pulled her long brown hair up into a bun on top of her head and crossed her arms, leaning far back into the sofa and staring a hole into the TV screen.
"He was using you as a human shield!"
"He had never seen curses before!"
"So what! That doesn't give him an excuse to act like such a coward! Isn't he supposed to be a man and protect you?"
"What if I can protect myself?"
"Not against curses you can't," Kaia said immediately, knowing all too well that that might have been a bit of a low blow.
Maha stared at her, eyes wide and lips parted.
"That was a bitchy thing of you to say," she said lowly. "I'd rather be normal though than be stalked by a—"
Maha's words abruptly cut off just as Kaia felt it.
An influx in cursed energy. And not cursed energy that belonged to her, her parents, or even the dead little girl.
"Kaia?" Maha whispered. Her brown eyes widened and she inched closer to Kaia on the sofa, grabbing her hand tightly and looking anxiously between the windows, the ceiling, the doors, and the walls. All just in time for the TV to turn to gray static.
"Shh," Kaia indicated softly, putting her index finger to her lips. She listened for anything strange, but she heard nothing. It was quiet, save for the TV static. Kaia muted the TV, not willing to turn it off and lose her source of light, and tried to feel where the cursed energy was coming from. She couldn't be sure. It felt like it was all around her. At her back, at her front, on either side of her. She squeezed Maha's hand and felt her sister's fingernails dig into her palms.
She was afraid, just not for herself. On her own, Kaia could breathe enough fire to start a forest fire. But with another person? In a house made of wood? And with her sister of all people? No. No way. Kaia didn't like that one bit. She needed another option. She needed Nanami's blunt blade or one of Yaga's cursed corpses.
"We need to go to my room," Kaia said. Her voice was so quiet that a whisper didn't even come close to describing her tone. She even had to put her mouth directly to her sister's ear to ensure that she heard her. "There's a cursed tool under my mattress. It's Dad's dagger."
Her sister nodded and held her breath, squeezing her hand even harder if that was at all possible. They got off the couch, crouching low to the floor, and took painfully slow steps out of the living room. They eventually reached the narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms, and Kaia had the vague thought that she didn't remember the hallway being so long and narrow before. She chalked it up to the anxiety bubbling in her gut at the realization she and Maha were being hunted in their own home and pushed ahead.
A distant thought echoed in the back of Kaia's mind that she pushed away with all of her might. The thought of what would have happened if Kaia stayed at Jujutsu High. The terrifying 'what-if' that plagued her. The unasked question of what would have happened to Maha if she'd been alone or without a sorcerer.
They reached Kaia's room and for the second time that night, Kaia relied on muscle memory to guide her to her bed in the darkness. She reached the side of it right away and felt along the edge of the mattress, searching for where the mattress met the box spring. She felt the softness of her sheets beneath her fingertips and reached under, her hand getting squished between the two pieces of her bed until she felt the comforting grip of the cursed tool in her palm.
She clamped her fingers around it and yanked it out, turning around to see the silhouette of her sister close by.
"Maha? You okay?" Kaia whispered.
She could see her sister's silhouette nod and two hands grab onto her forearm.
"I'm scared," Maha whimpered.
"Don't be. It's going to be—"
"Go to sleep, you little babe. Go to sleep, you little babe. Your mama's gone away and your daddy's gonna stay. Didn't leave nobody but the baby."
It was an old woman's voice. Kaia had heard that voice before. In her dreams. In that awful nightmare she had about the house and the body in the chair. She hadn't heard the words the woman sang at the time, but she recognized the melody in an instant. An old lullaby like from those cowboy movies she watched as a child.
She suddenly felt lightheaded, wracked with fear, and paralyzed with the terrifying thought that her nightmare may very well have been coming true.
"Kaia!" Maha hissed, squeezing tightly. "Your curse!"
That jolted Kaia back to reality. Her eyes were still having a hard time seeing in the darkness, but she could feel the recognizable cursed energy of the little girl, not too far away. Her energy emanated from the other side of the room, the place where she materialized every night of Kaia's childhood at exactly 12:00am without fail.
The old woman's voice disappeared and the lullaby stopped. Kaia had half the mind to wonder if Maha had heard it, but she opted for asking later, only after she'd dealt with the curse in the house.
If it could affect their house so much, especially when their parents kept seals at each and every entrance, then it had to be a high-level curse. Kaia was currently only a Grade 3 sorcerer, not at all on Gojo or Geto's level. Hell, she wasn't even a Grade 2 like Nanami was. The curse that was in their house at the moment had to be a Grade 1 or higher to get beyond the wards.
Which meant they needed to get the fuck out of there.
"Maha, I'm not trying to scare you, but we need to leave," Kaia said. She turned the dagger around and pressed the handle of it into her older sister's hand. "Hold onto this, okay? If anything touches you that isn't me, stab it."
"You…" Her sister sniffled. "You can't exorcise this?"
"Not without burning the whole house down," Kaia admitted, feeling more defeated than she cared to let on. She looked over in the darkness of her room to feel the cursed energy of the little girl, drawing a sense of comfort from it.
"We just need to get outside. I think we should be okay if I go first. If something attacks me, my curse will attack it. She has a claim on my life and won't let something else take her prize. At least, I don't think she will."
There was something in the way the curse's energy flickered that made Kaia think she was correct in that assumption, but she didn't want to tell Maha that. She didn't want to tell her sister who was without cursed energy that they were relying on a dead little girl to (possibly) protect them from a much more powerful curse.
Kaia centered herself, tried to protect and conserve her cursed energy as much as possible, using the breathing technique Utahime went over that morning with her and tasted smoke on the back of her tongue. Kaia grabbed Maha's spare hand, pushed open the door of her room, and entered the hallway.
The light from the TV that was supposed to be their beacon was gone. No longer did the TV illuminate the living room with gray light. Instead, the entire house was pitch black. The hair stood up on the back of Kaia's neck.
This wasn't right. What the hell was a powerful curse like this doing in their home? And why the hell was it playing games with them?
Kaia glared absolute daggers at the dark length of the hallway and yanked Maha closer to her when she felt her sister back away.
"You have to stay close or else my curse will attack you. She's still behind us," Kaia reminded, standing still in the hallway. Her warning seemed to do the trick because Maha was suddenly pressed right up against her. Even though Kaia didn't like being in the hallway with her back exposed, she found some relief in the fact that her curse was at the rear. At the bare minimum, anything that approached Kaia from the direction of their parents' room would give itself away when the little girl screamed until their ears bled.
"This is such bullshit," Kaia snapped, letting out a breath of fire and standing her ground, purely to give her a moment of light where she could see what was ahead of her. Everything looked normal in the brief moment blue fire filled the empty space in front of her. Kaia took a step forward when she didn't feel any fluctuations in the cursed energy around her and refrained from breathing fire again. Partly because she didn't want to waste her cursed energy, and partly because she was afraid of what she would see when light filled the house again.
She let the fear, anxiety, and anger fuel her. Let it power her cursed energy.
They took a few more steps down the hallway when it happened.
The little girl screamed.
Without thinking, Kaia grabbed Maha by the shoulders and shoved her forward as hard as she could, shouting at her to run. She cupped her hands around her mouth in the next second, reinforced her lungs with cursed energy, and spat out a breath of directed blue flames down the hall from the direction they came.
The blue light illuminated the hallway with the sight of a wraith-like figure made of black shadows skewering the little girl with a talon-shaped hand. The little girl screamed all the while, making Kaia's ears ring with pain. She ignored it, tried to ignore the feeling of her right eardrum rupturing and bleeding as she focused on her cursed fire.
It engulfed the hooded shroud the curse wore and Kaia found herself in yet another one of those moments where she wished she had better control of her technique because if she did, she would be able to control where exactly her flames went even after she breathed them and she would have chosen to force the flames to circle the curse's neck until it choked and burned itself out of existence.
But she apparently still had piss poor control because all she could do was force her flames to continue covering the curse and bolt for the front door rather than spend any more time trying to do something that would use up all of her cursed energy.
She made it as far as the threshold, just in time to see Maha make it to the bottom of the stairs and turn over her shoulder to look at Kaia one last time before a lullaby filled Kaia's ears again and she was yanked into the house by the back of her hair, engulfed in total darkness.
*Author's Note*
The lullaby Kaia hears is "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby" It's an old Southern lullaby, but most notably used in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou. I love the movie and I love the song, but the song has always low key kind of creeped me out. So, I decided to incorporate it into a fic!
Drop some feedback with a review thanks!