I never believed in curses. Not until I dug up the obsidian tablet beneath the ruins. The moment I touched it, the ground split, and he rose—chains burning away, eyes like embers in the dark. 'You shouldn’t have done that,' he said, voice like smoke and thunder. Now, I feel him inside me, a pulse beneath my skin, stealing my strength with every breath. He calls it symbiosis. I call it slow death. But when the assassins came last night—black-cloaked figures chanting in tongues—I saw what he did to them. And part of me… didn’t want him to stop.

He stands in the corner now, watching me write this. 'They’ll keep coming,' he says. 'You can’t run forever. But you don’t have to. Let me give you power. Let us be more than victim and parasite.'

The air crackles. My hands shake—not from weakness, but from temptation. What do I say?