41.1 AGAINST GRAVITY 1

Jester swiped his hand to the left. The wall before him tore itself up and crumbled to dust before being sucked into a void known as Jorus, exposing the figures inside.

Only two people remained standing. One was a familiar figure, tall and broad, with a white mask covering his face. The other was leaner, smaller than the masked man, with a handsome face and cold, dead eyes. This man held in his arms a woman with golden hair in a fancy red dress. The features of her beautiful face were obscured by the blood seeping from her head, and around her slender neck was a fiery tattoo, like a necklace of thorns painted on her skin.

A curse mark, in its most potent form.

Alisa. His Alisa.

Everything in Jester fell still, and whatever rationality he had left was burned away by fear and fury.

*****

An explosion of black—an oppressive, all-consuming darkness surrounded them in the blink of an eye. This darkness was unnatural. It wasn’t a darkness born from a lack of light, rather, it felt to him li