The Curse of Blood

I had only just begun to feel the faint warmth of safety under Torvin's roof when it came crashing down. The rumors reached the forge on a bitter morning, carried by a trader passing through. His words struck like a hammer to the chest.

"The mercenaries. they've taken a woman. A villager from the north. She's alive, but not free."

My stomach twisted. It had to be her—my mother.

I continued to work, my hands shaking with tongs. I tried to focus on the hiss of metal in water, the crackle of the forge fire. But my mind reeled. The image of her, bound and broken, haunted me.

When the trader was gone, I turned to Torvin.

"I have to go," I said.

He didn't look surprised. Wiping his hands on his apron, his grey eyes were heavy with unsaid weight. "You don't even know where they are, Kael."

"I'll find them." My voice shook, but my conviction was solid. "I have to."

It wasn't easy to leave the village. The people had grown colder toward me, whispers trailing wherever I walked. Even Torvin, though kind, had begun to watch me with a quiet wariness. But none of it mattered.

The trader had spoken of a mercenary camp a day's journey south. That was my destination. I left with nothing but the clothes on my back and the dagger Torvin had given me.

The road was bare, the type of desolation that felt alive, as if the earth itself watched and judged. The trees leaned in close, gnarled branches clawing at the gray sky. Every rustle of leaves or snap of a twig set my nerves alight.

It was along this road that I saw the first sign: some sort of a crude wooden pole, stabbed into the ground, with skulls impaled on it-human and animal-just staring with their empty sockets, accusingly. Beneath it, carved in the dirt, lay a symbol-a circle bisected by jagged lines.

I froze. It was the same symbol that had begun appearing in my dreams.

By the time I approached the camp, it was night: the air was heavy with smoke and sweat, the drunken laughter carrying well over the wooden walls. Before me, the camp stood in all its crassness-a fortress of sharpened logs.

I crept closer, keeping to the shadows. Through a gap in the wall, I could see the layout. In the center stood a column adorned with trophies: chains, bits of cloth, and bones—evidence of their conquests. Around the camp, tents sprawled in disarray, lit by flickering torches.

Then I saw her.

She was chained to the column, her head bowed. Her once lustrous hair now hung in tangles of dirt and blood. My heart was racing, my body shaking with mixtures of relief and terror.

"Mother." I whispered.

It was a blow, a realization that came full on my face. I couldn't simply walk in and free her. I was a boy with a dagger, and they were men who killed for sport. The despair threatened to overwhelm me then, but a voice-a faint whisper, not from outside, but from within-listened.

"She is bound, as you are bound. The blood calls."

I shook my head, trying to banish the voice. But it lingered, an echo in the recesses of my mind.

I spent the night hidden in the woods, watching the camp. I studied the mercenaries, their movements, their habits. One of them stood out—a towering man with a scar running down his face. He wore a pendant with the same symbol I'd seen on the road.

When the camp fell silent, I edged closer, my footsteps calculated, my breathing shallow. I wanted to see her, let her know I was here.

"Kael," she whispered as our eyes met.

The weakness in her voice ripped through me like a hot blade. My eyes welled at the sight of her as I reached out, the tips of my fingers mere inches from hers before pulling away.

"I'll save you," I whispered, shaking.

"No," she said, her eyes wide with fear. "Leave. They'll kill you."

"I can't leave you," I replied, choking on the words.

Her gaze softened, tears streaming down her face. "You're stronger than you know. But you must live. Promise me, Kael."

I said nothing. I couldn't.

I turned and ran down the hallway, my head full of questions. The voice, the symbol, the strange connection to all this-it couldn't be an accident.

That night, the dreams returned with even greater vividness. I saw a man standing in front of the same symbol, cloaked in shadow, speaking words that didn't sound familiar; his voice sounded like the rumble of distant thunder.

The symbol was carved in the dirt beside me as if by some unseen hand when I woke up.

Day two found me back on Torvin's dagger, thrusting and hacking with so many airs, hours upon agonized hours-and stiff-becoming musculature-knew no ending.

When finally the sun fell behind the horizon, it was time for me to double back and meander my way through camp.

My ally lay within the shadows and wrapped itself in every thread of night-the cost, her saved soul.

Yet as I crept closer, a feeling that would not leave me be would insist that I was not alone, that something or someone watched me. The weight of the curse lay heavy upon my soul, and for the first time, I questioned whether I was truly fighting for freedom-or merely stepping into the trap fate had laid for me.