the past

The forest remained still—unnaturally still.

Aiden's breathing slowed, each exhale misting faintly in the cooling dusk air. The wound at his side throbbed with dull heat, but he'd grown used to pain. It was a familiar companion now, like hunger or loneliness. He pressed a hand against it, eyes flickering down to the blood-soaked cloth.

"Still alive," he muttered under his breath—almost bitterly.

A gust of wind rustled the branches above, and something about it felt… wrong.It didn't howl like normal wind. It whispered.

"You should be dead, boy."

Aiden's eyes shot open.

He sat up straighter, heart racing, scanning the dark trees. No movement. No sound. Just that voice—soft, ancient, and cold—like it had crawled out of the soil itself.

"But you're not. Why?"

His fingers tightened against the tree bark behind him. "Who's there?" he hissed.

Silence.

But then—under his skin—the sigil on his chest pulsed again, brighter. He looked down. It glowed softly through his torn shirt, casting faint red light across his pale fingers. It didn't hurt… but it felt like something inside him was waking up.

"The curse is not your prison, child. It is your chain… and your key."

He shivered, more from the voice's nearness than the cold. He had heard echoes before—especially in nightmares—but this was different. This was real.

"Is this… you?" he whispered, placing a trembling hand over the glowing mark.

"I am what they feared. What they tried to silence when they bled you for magic. What they buried when they left you here."

Aiden clenched his teeth.

Memories flickered like shattered glass:

The ritual circle drawn in blood beneath the Valemont crypt.

His father's shaking hands.

The pain. The screaming.

The way they looked at him after—like a thing, not a child.

"They did not curse you, Aiden. They unlocked me. You were born bound to something ancient."

The boy's chest rose and fell rapidly.

"I don't want you," he whispered. "I never asked for any of this."

"And yet, we are one."

Suddenly, the sigil flared, brighter than before. The trees around him groaned, roots cracking and shifting beneath the ground. The old oak he leaned against shuddered, and a faint red glow crept through its bark—as if the forest itself responded.

Aiden stumbled to his feet, dizzy, clutching the tree for balance.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," he muttered. "Not again."

"Then stop running."

The wind shifted.

Far behind him, he heard faint voices—real ones this time. Footsteps. Shouts.The hunters were back.

Aiden's eyes snapped to the dark beyond the trees. His heart pounded—not from fear… but from something else.

He wasn't just running anymore.

Something inside him was done hiding.

Aiden's hand trembled as he pressed it against the old tree.The mark on his chest still glowed, faint but alive.And as it pulsed…the memories came rushing back.

His breath caught in his throat.

He saw stone walls… the cold of the underground chamber…the flickering red light of rune candles circling him like a cage.He was barely seven.

Bound by silver-forged chains, arms limp at his sides, too tired to scream anymore.

"Again."

The voice was like ice—sharp, calculated, and cruel.It belonged to his father. Count Alaric Gravemire.Tall. Noble. Respected by the kingdom.But to Aiden, he was something else entirely—the monster who called himself father.

"The curse responds to pain. He bleeds, and it awakens. More blood, Isadora—more!"

A woman stood beside him in black velvet robes, her crimson hair like a crown of flame. Countess Isadora Gravemire, his stepmother. Her lips were painted the same color as the blood dripping from Aiden's arms.

She smiled faintly.

"What a beautiful vessel he is," she said, stroking Aiden's cheek with a gloved finger."Such quiet suffering. The gods must truly favor us."

Aiden looked up at her, eyes swollen, lips cracked.

He remembered whispering: "Please… I don't want to…"

"Shhh, sweet boy," she cooed. "You're not meant to want. You're meant to obey."

Then she turned away—graceful as always—and signaled to the old warlock nearby.The man muttered in an ancient tongue. The ground beneath Aiden began to hum.

Suddenly, his chest ignited in pain.

The mark—his curse—flared violently, and a red wave burst from his body, ripping through the runes and slamming into the chamber walls. The guards nearby screamed, caught in the blast. Their armor melted at the edges.

Aiden collapsed, twitching.

His father's boots clicked closer. He knelt down beside him.

"That's my son," he whispered."A weapon unlike any the empire has seen."

Aiden never forgot that look in his father's eyes—not love, not pride…just greed.

"Do you know what your blood is worth, boy?""Kingdoms."

Back in the forest, Aiden gasped and dropped to his knees.

His hand clutched his chest—where the scar still burned.Tears clung to his lashes but did not fall.

He remembered everything now.

The rituals.

The cold chains.

His screams echoing through stone halls.

And Count Gravemire, always watching, always instructing…

"Let him break. The curse grows stronger when the soul shatters."

Aiden grit his teeth.

"I was a child…" he whispered.

They used him. They molded his pain into power, and when he grew too unstable, too dangerous to control—they abandoned him. Threw him into the cursed woods like trash.

But they forgot one thing.

The curse remembers too.

And now, so did Aiden.