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The Truth of the Curse

Author: Holland Ross
last update Last Updated: 2025-06-19 07:40:52

Lucian:

The woods felt wrong.

Every step deeper into the trees made my skin crawl beneath my armor, the curse mark burning like a brand against my collarbone. The path twisted in ways that defied nature—branches arching like ribs, the moonlight bleeding through in jagged slashes. There was no scent trail, no bird calls, just stillness like the forest itself was holding its breath.

She walked ahead of me, silent, shoulders tense under her cloak.

Ari.

Witch.

The bond between us tugged like a snare. Every time I tried to pull away, it pulled harder. The mark flared hotter. I told myself I didn’t care what secrets she had left to dig up in this ruin. But I followed anyway.

Because something in me needed answers more than it needed pride.

The ruin loomed at the heart of the woods—a shattered circle of stone and ivy soaked in old magic. Wards I couldn’t read prickled against my senses. My wolf bristled.

“She’s in there,” Ari murmured. Her voice was hoarse like she didn’t want to say it alo
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  • Her Enemy, His Curse   Of Judges and Doors

    LucianThe thing was gone.Not dead.Not destroyed.Just… gone, like a shadow slipping off the edge of sight.Arielle wouldn’t look at me.Not right away.Theron stood a few paces back, blades still in his hands. His knuckles were white, his shoulders high, ready to cut at anything that moved wrong. I couldn’t tell if that was caution… or the fact he didn’t trust what had just happened.“I’ll ask again,” I said. “What just happened?”Arielle didn’t answer. She kept staring at the patch of grass where the shadow had sunk, like she could still see it.I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Arielle—”She cut me off without turning. “It wasn’t here for us.”That wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not for Theron.“Then what was it here for?”Her eyes flicked toward me finally—brief, sharp, and unwilling. “To listen.”That was worse.Theron barked a humorless laugh. “Listen to what, exactly?”She didn’t answer him either.The silence between us pressed in. The kind that fills itself with what you th

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   The watcher

    ArielleThe ridge broke behind us, but the air didn’t ease.It clung.Heavy. Damp. Waiting.Lucian walked ahead, his back rigid, shoulders squared like the fight was still happening.Theron trailed, limping but pretending not to. He didn’t hide the blood at the corner of his mouth—he never did.I kept to the middle.Not because I wanted safety.Because the threads demanded it.They whispered in the space between heartbeats.Frayed silk on bone.Counting down in a language older than voices.Five.Five names.Five locks in a tapestry that no longer held its own weight.Lucian thinks he hides it well, but I felt his words inside the seal. The Judge had almost remembered. Almost.If it had chosen differently…If it had decided that oath no longer bound it…We wouldn’t be walking away.The threads tugged harder. I stumbled once—just once—but it was enough for Theron to glance back.“You’re pale,” he said. Not softly. Never softly.“I’m fine.”He kept staring. “Your hands are shaking.”“St

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   The clock is ticking

    LucianI barely raised my blade in time.The Judge moved like a verdict—no hesitation, no pause, no mercy.Steel rang against fractured air, and I staggered back, boots skidding across the brittle ash. The ground hated us. Every step felt like a trespass.Theron flanked right. No war cry. No witty remark. Just a blur of motion and fury, blades dancing through the failing light.He struck fast.He struck true.The Judge didn’t block.Didn’t need to.The moment Theron’s blades touched its form, they sang—not with metal, but memory. Something ancient and wrong surged from the Judge’s body like a breath pulled from the lungs of a dying god.Theron was thrown back. Hard. He hit the earth with a sound that would’ve broken a weaker man.“Arielle!” I shouted, dodging left as the Judge’s blade came down where I’d stood.She stood just outside the spiral’s center, arms lifted, threads dancing at her fingertips—fraying, burning, trying to weave against judgment. She wasn’t attacking. She was anc

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   A map beneath the skin

    LucianWe didn’t return to the others right away.The clearing around the well felt thinner now, like the world hadn’t fully healed from what we’d done — or maybe it had never been whole to begin with. The stones still pulsed faintly underfoot, warm like coals gone to ash.Theron leaned against the twisted stump of a tree, breathing shallow. His wounds were closed, but not healed. Not really. Arielle had stopped the bleeding, but what that thing had done — it wasn’t just to his body.It had seen him.And some part of him had seen it back.I tried not to think about what it meant, what unwoven really was. I wasn’t sure if I’d understand even if I asked. And something told me asking came with a price.Arielle crouched beside the well, hands in her lap, eyes unfocused. She looked like someone listening to music only she could hear. Not relaxed. Not calm.Waiting.“Six more,” I said, breaking the silence.Her gaze flicked toward me. Tired. Sharp.“That we know of.”I felt the cold return

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   Of a sealed place

    LucianWe didn’t speak for a long time.Not after the well. Not after the pulse of wrongness that passed through us like a breath we couldn’t exhale.The light from the wound had dimmed, but it hadn’t gone out.Neither had the feeling.It clung to us like soot.Arielle stood motionless at the edge of the cracked stones, her hands still raised, fingers twitching like she was listening through them. Or speaking in a language older than sound.Theron paced nearby, blade still drawn, eyes darting between the trees.I checked the perimeter—old habit, maybe. A way to keep from thinking too much. A way to pretend anything here still obeyed the rules of the world we knew.It didn’t.Birds still didn’t sing. Wind still didn’t blow. But the bell above the broken church kept swinging.Back and forth. Back and forth.A rhythm.A warning.I turned to Arielle. “What now?”She didn’t answer right away.When she did, her voice sounded farther away than it should’ve.“Now we pull the thread.”I felt t

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   A ripple in time

    Lucian We rode in silence for miles. The Tower faded behind us like a bad memory—too vast to forget, too quiet to trust. I kept glancing back over my shoulder, half-expecting it to shudder, to scream, to collapse into itself. But it only stood. Watching. Waiting. The land changed slowly the farther south we rode. The grass grew thinner. The trees more sparse. Earth itself seemed reluctant to remember life here. As if something in the soil had once bitten down on death and hadn’t yet spat out the taste. We passed no other travelers. No birds. No sound beyond hoofbeats and wind. Arielle rode ahead. She hadn’t said much since we left. She watched the road like it was a puzzle, not a path—each stone a riddle. The sun struck her hair, turning it into bronze fire. But there was something brittle in the way she sat her saddle. Something coiled. I didn’t ask. Not yet. She’d speak when she was ready. Theron lagged behind. He muttered under his breath occasionally, half-curses and fr

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