The rain had stopped, leaving everything slick and cold.But victory was an illusion, a cruel joke whispered by fate.I felt the cold hand of Aldric's magic sweeping across the field like winter given malicious intent. The temperature plummeted so suddenly that my breath misted before my face, and frost began to form on the blood-soaked stones. The air crackled with wrongness, with the sound of reality being torn apart by fingers that had no right to touch the fabric of existence.A tether manifested, black as the space between stars, coiling around Alexander's chest like a serpent striking its prey. The dark magic wrapped around my son with terrible intimacy, binding him with chains forged from shadow and despair. His eyes went wide with shock, then narrowed with the defiant rage I had seen in him since he was a child refusing to be cowed by thunderstorms.My son roared, his voice carrying every ounce of fury and determination that ran in his blood, defiant even as the shadows began
The battlefield was painted in blood and shadow. The air tasted of iron and despair, thick with the smoke of burning timber and the acrid stench of supernatural flame. Rain had begun to fall not the gentle rain of mourning, but a harsh deluge that turned dust to mud and made the stones slick with a mixture of water and blood that pooled in every crack and crevice.Aldric's generals twisted beasts of curse tore through what remained of Hollowshade's defenses like wolves through paper. These were not the shambling dead I had faced before, but creatures of pure malevolence, crafted from the darkest corners of the Cursemaker's imagination and given terrible life by Aldric's will.Each general stood twice the height of before.. Their eyes burned with stolen light, their claws dripped with venom that corroded whatever they touched, and their voices spoke in tongues that predated human speech. They moved with the terrible grace of predators who had never known fear, never experienced doubt,
The old tunnels answered me as if they had always been waiting for this moment. My blood dripped along the stoned walls, each crimson drop glowing faintly as it struck the ancient rock, guiding me through cracks where no map could reach, no mortal foot had tread.The tunnels seemed to pulse with their own life, responding to something in my blood that recognized this place on a level deeper than memory. The walls bore markings and symbols that spoke of sacrifice and transformation.The earth hummed under my feet, a vibration that traveled through stone and bone alike, pulling me deeper until the air grew thick and tasted of metal and ash. Each step took me further from the world above and closer to something that called to the deepest parts of my cursed soul.And then I saw it.The Soulforge. It was a living furnace, a heart carved from the world's bone and crystal, thrumming with the rhythm of countless souls bound together in purpose.The chamber that housed it stretched beyond wha
The first sound was not the ring of steel against steel. It was the wail of the spirits, a sound that bypassed the ears entirely and clawed directly at the soul with fingernails made of anguish and regret. I saw them, a wrongness that spread across my skin like ice, raising every hair on my arms and sending shivers down my spine that had nothing to do with cold. The very air grew thick with their presence, charged with the electrical wrongness of souls yanked from whatever rest they had found and forced to serve once more.They came clawing their way out of the cracks in the earth itself, tethered to Aldric's banner by chains forged from their own despair. The ground splits and bled darkness as they emerged Forsaken souls dragged back from whatever peace they had managed to claim, their ethereal forms writhing with the agony of forced resurrection.Their cries rattled my bones, and my heart broke as I recognized the voices twisted into weapons. Warriors who fell defending villages I l
The Trial's flames are still in my bones, burning with a heat that exists beyond the physical realm, a spiritual fire that sears from within. I can smell the smoke in my hair, acrid and otherworldly, though no earthly fire touched me during those hours of judgment. The scent clings like the memory of burning bridges, of old selves consumed in purifying flame. I can taste ash on my tongue, bitter as regret, though it was not my body that burned in those spirit-flames, it was my soul, stripped bare and cauterized clean.My legs tremble with exhaustion that goes deeper than flesh, a weariness that has settled into my very bones. The landscape around me seems different now, as if the Trial has not only changed me but altered my perception of the world itself. Colors appear more vivid, shadows more defined, as though a film has been lifted from my eyes.When I cross the threshold into the main courtyard where I once held court, where I once dispensed justice that became increasingly indist
They said the Trial of Flame was not meant for the living. That it was an ordeal only the dead should walk, a final judgment reserved for souls who had already passed beyond the veil and needed one last reckoning before finding their rest.But I am neither. alive nor gone. I am the wound between the two states, a creature suspended in the space where life meets death and neither claims me completely. The curse has made me into something beyond the natural order too corrupted to live with a clean conscience, too stubborn to die with grace.The ancient ritual was found in the deepest vaults of the castle, written in the old tongue on parchment so fragile it cracked at the slightest touch. The scholars who translated it spoke in hushed voices, their faces pale with the weight of what they'd discovered. A trial by spiritual fire, they said, meant to purge the soul of its deepest sins or consume it entirely in the attempt.The council and what remains of them after years of my reign, deman