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Chapter Ten: Changes
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2025-11-12 03:07:54The storm ripped through the forest like it had a life of its own, wind whipping at my face as I spurred Prince forward. His hooves sank into the mud, splashing up water and leaves with every desperate stride. Beside me, Snow urged Excalibur on, his dark coat slick with rain, mane flying like a banner in the wind.
“Faster!” I shouted, though the roar of thunder almost swallowed my voice. Lightning cracked above us, illuminating the forest in jagged white flashes—and in one of those flashes, I saw him. Carter.
He was on the ground, robes caked with mud, chest heaving as if each breath was fire in his lungs. My stomach twisted, and I leaned forward over Prince’s neck, pressing for speed.
“Hold on, Prince!” I shouted, though it was almost too late—Prince’s hooves slipped on the slick earth, sending a shower of mud in all directions. I gritted my teeth and dug deeper, heart hammering. Snow stayed close, her grip tight on Excalibur’s reins, eyes sharp, jaw set, and I could see her worry in the way her shoulders tensed.
The storm wasn’t natural. Not anymore. It pulsed around Carter like a living thing, black and red twisting through the air, bending the trees, swallowing the light. My pulse raced. He wasn’t just in danger—he was caught in something that should not exist.
“Carter!” I bellowed, hoping my voice could cut through the chaos. “Hang on! We’re coming!”
Lightning split the sky again, and my stomach dropped. The air around him swirled, pulsing, alive, pressing at the edges of reality. He struggled to rise, fingers clawing at the mud, robes plastered to him, but the force around him wasn’t letting go.
Snow’s voice cut through the storm. “Almost there! Don’t let go!”
I leaned harder into Prince, urging him faster, feeling the raw power of the horse beneath me, muscles coiling and releasing in perfect rhythm. Whatever held Carter, it wouldn’t hold him forever—not if we reached him in time.
And then, in a flash that lit the forest like day, I realized: this wasn’t just a storm. This was a warning. And whatever had him trapped… was him too.
We reached Carter, and without thinking, I flung myself off Prince, mud splattering as I sprinted toward him. My chest tightened, every heartbeat hammering in my ears, and then I saw him.
He was sprawled on the ground, mud streaking his robes, a harsh slash cutting across his face, and his eyes were closed. Unconscious. My stomach dropped, and I dropped to my knees beside him, gently lifting his head.
“Carter! Come on, man! Wake up!” My voice cracked, fear lacing every word.
Then I noticed his hair. It wasn’t the same. Midnight black now, with fiery red strands curling at the ends. My throat went dry, and my stomach sank further when my gaze fell on his arm—the sleeve of his robe pulled back to reveal a burning mark, etched into his pale skin: an X encased in a circle, slashed through with a single line, smoldering like it had been branded by fire. Snow was silent beside me, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder, grounding me, but even her presence couldn’t hide the weight of what I was seeing.
“This… this isn’t him,” I whispered, voice tight. My heart pounded as dread coiled in my chest. “This… this is something else.”
And deep down, I knew that whatever had done this—whatever had marked him—was far from finished.
Suddenly, a violent rush of red and black smoke exploded through the clearing, swallowing everything in its path. The air turned thick and heavy, choking me as I staggered backward, coughing hard. The world blurred into a haze of shadow and ember.
“Snow?!” I shouted, my voice cracking against the chaos. I waved my arms through the smoke, searching for even a glimpse of her white cloak. “Snow!”
No answer. Only the low hiss of the storm and the sinister hum of magic still vibrating in the air. I blinked through the sting in my eyes, trying to focus—but when the smoke finally began to thin, my heart dropped straight to the pit of my stomach.
She was gone.
The place where she’d stood seconds ago was empty, nothing but a dark scorch mark seared into the ground.
My pulse hammered in my ears as I turned in frantic circles, scanning the rocks, the trees, anywhere.
“Snow!” I yelled again, louder this time. My voice broke. The echo of her name bounced back to me from the cliffs, hollow and mocking.
And that’s when I felt it—the faint trace of energy in the air, fading fast. The Wicked’s energy.
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The Curse Between Two Worlds Epilogue: Light and Ash
The city hummed around me—cars, voices, footsteps on pavement—yet somehow it all felt distant. Muffled. Almost gentle. I leaned forward against the metal railing of my balcony, letting the evening breeze brush across my face. It carried that familiar early-summer warmth, the kind that hinted at thunderstorms but hadn’t committed to them yet. Below me, people hurried along the sidewalks, laughing, arguing, taking phone calls, balancing paper cups of iced coffee. Nothing supernatural, nothing world-ending. No firestorms, no crumbling sky, no beasts clawing their way out of shadows.Just life. Ordinary, uncomplicated life.And for once, ordinary didn’t terrify me.I lifted the notebook in my hands, thumb brushing over its worn spine. It was the same one I’d used during the interview months ago—the same one the cameras had caught a million times, the same one news articles called The Source of His Genius. If they only knew. The pages were full of everything I had lived through, worded and
The Curse Between Two Worlds Chapter Twenty-One: Moving On
The lights were bright—almost too bright. They weren’t the warm kind of lights, not the kind you’d find in a cozy living room or the soft glow of early morning. These were sharp, clinical, designed to illuminate every flaw, every twitch of expression, every fracture in the mask I had so carefully arranged on my face. They hummed faintly, a high-pitched buzz at the edge of hearing, like they were trying to drill into my skull.The camera lens directly in front of me reflected in my eyes like a cold, unblinking pupil. I could see myself in it—posture straight, hands clasped politely in my lap, my expression relaxed. A practiced image. The one I’d been coached on: calm, composed, approachable.But beneath that reflection was the weight of every gaze in the room. The audience sat in rows of shadowed silhouettes, their attention drawn toward the stage like moths to flame. The host beside me—the interviewer—wore a smile so bright it almost blended with the lights above. Behind her, screens
The Curse Between Two Worlds Chapter Twenty: Final Breaths
As Carter writhed beside me, his body bowing with every wave of agony, a different kind of pain ignited in my chest—hot, crushing, suffocating. I fought to keep the shield of light above us intact as the sky cracked open, raining fire and shards of the world we once knew. The air was thick with smoke and heat, carrying the scent of scorched earth and the sharp tang of metal from shattered structures. My fingers trembled, gripping the shield so tightly I could feel the pulse of energy through my bones.“Just hold on, Carter,” I choked out, teeth grit so tight they nearly cracked. “Don’t leave me. Not now.”But he moved.Carter staggered to his feet, shoving me aside with more force than he should’ve had in his broken state. The shield flickered violently, almost collapsing, and I stumbled after him, heart hammering. My lungs screamed for air, my legs shaking as if the earth itself had turned to liquid beneath me.“Carter—what are you doing?” I gasped, but he didn’t answer. Not at first
The Curse Between Two Worlds Chapter Nineteen: Eclipse
The sky was breaking. Not just cracking—not just splintering like fractured glass—but shattering, wide and violent, as if some monstrous hand had torn open the seams of the world and let the apocalypse pour through. Red lightning veined across the heavens. Black storm clouds churned, boiling like living smoke. Ash fell in thick sheets, sticking to my skin, burning my throat with every breath. The air tasted like iron and fire—like the inside of a furnace that had been fed corpses and nightmares. Flaming fragments of the sky—literal shards of it—fell around us in blistering streaks, hissing as they hit the ground and smoking like dying stars. The forest trembled under every impact, trees bending, earth shuddering beneath my knees. And through that chaos, through the roaring of the storm and the cracking of reality itself, the only thing I could focus on was the boy kneeling in front of me. Charlie.His silhouette flickered with the glow of the burning sky above us. Ash clung to his
The Curse Between Two Worlds Chapter Eighteen: Beginning of the End
I dug my heels into Prince’s sides, driving him harder toward the looming fortress in the distance—an obsidian castle clawing at the sky, wrapped in spiraling clouds of black and blood-red. Every thunderous stride he took hammered against the ground and against my chest, my heartbeat barely able to keep up. Excalibur’s hooves pounded beside us, Snow leaning low over his mane, her braid whipping behind her like a silver flag in a storm. Every second we wasted was a second stolen from Carter. And a second closer to the world ending.“We’re almost there!” Snow shouted over the roar of the thunder and the distant, bone-deep rumble of the earth beginning to split beneath the bleeding sky.I didn’t waste breath answering. I only urged Prince faster. His breaths came harsh and ragged, his muscles quivering with effort—but he pushed on, for me. For Carter. For all of us.I pressed a hand against his neck, felt his trembling steady beneath my touch. “Almost there, boy,” I whispered.We hit the
The Curse Between Two Worlds Chapter Seventeen: Nuclear
The next morning came far too fast.I stood in the clearing with sweat already sliding down my back, hands glowing with an unsteady flare of gold. Snow’s blade flashed toward me in a clean arc.“Focus, Charlie!” she barked.I threw my palms up just in time. A burst of light exploded outward—messy, unfocused, more panic than precision—but it was enough to knock her strike off course. The force sent her skidding across the grass, boots digging into the dirt to stop herself.“Better,” she called, already charging me again, “but not good enough!”I ducked, rolled, and slammed both hands into the ground. A shockwave pulsed outward, rattling the earth beneath us. Snow leapt over it like the show-off she was, landing effortlessly and spinning back toward me. Before she could reach me, Phineas lifted his staff.“Charles. Again.”The air thickened instantly—pressure closing in around me like invisible hands squeezing my ribs. My legs buckled. My lungs fought for air. Even Snow stumbled, cursi
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