I Awakened A Divine Curse

Auren and Asenya stood at the edge of the battlefield.

Below them, the Highrise Kingdom's forces stirred once more—preparing for another siege. Titanic logs of black wood were being hauled forward by ferocious Cursed Creatures, their sheer size alone forcing Auren to second-guess why he was even here.

Between the fortress of the Heart Kingdom and the forest they had crossed lay a wasteland—strewn with corpses and soaked in blood. The land drank the crimson rivers greedily. Winged Cursed Creatures descended, undisturbed as they fed. Their long beaks stabbed through sockets, their jagged teeth tore flesh as if savoring agony.

Auren narrowed his eyes from the cliff's edge.

'I know those…'

Beside him, Asenya studied the advancing soldiers with silent intensity. Her expression remained unreadable. The moon, hanging above dark plain, burned blood red—reflecting the carnage below like a cursed omen.

She hadn't spoken since they crossed the desert. Not even when Meredith and Jasper split off on their separate mission. If anything, she seemed adrift in her thoughts.

Auren didn't press. He had his own weight to bear.

He looked down again at the battlefield.

'Now that I think about it... those two must have gone through hell.'

Murmurs stirred among the Highrise soldiers gathered at the forest's edge. They began parting, making way as someone emerged from their midst.

A knight—fully clad in obsidian armor—stepped forward, carrying a massive broadsword and a jagged, rectangular shield strapped to their back.

The mount they rode resembled a horse only in form. Its legs were thick with power, ending in razor-like claws. A long, whip-like tail slithered behind it, curling and snapping like a serpent. Its head blazed with white fire, searing brighter than flame, and its skin gleamed metallic—drinking in the sickly light of the bloodied field.

The beast snarled and reared, its forelimbs slashing the air before it crashed down and bolted forward, a blur of violent speed.

The soldiers followed like a tidal surge, flooding out from beneath the forest canopy. Even Auren's breath hitched at the sight—the trees had hidden their true number far too well.

"What in the... I thought they'd been fighting for weeks. How are there still this many left?"

He couldn't begin to imagine how vast their ranks must have been at the war's start if, even now—at the crescendo—their numbers remained this staggering.

They poured across the field, a flood of armor and war cries. Crimson and silver glinted across the land, a wave of battle crashing against the silence of night.

Among them, parchment scrolls glowed with runes, and monstrous siege-beasts hurled strange weapons forward—each one more baffling than the last.

One resembled an enormous bow, but it had no strings—only the curve of destruction, waiting for bolts large enough to reduce walls to sand.

Another was a metal tunnel fused with the pulsating back of some grotesque organic mass, thumping like a heart with a will of its own.

The last was a towering stone monolith, crackling with erratic bursts of lightning, as if the storm itself had been chained to stone.

Each one was launched into the fray, thundering ahead while the soldiers surged in their wake, a relentless tide of fury.

On the walls of the Heart Kingdom's fortress, defenders were beginning to reveal themselves. Cloaked in dark, matte armor that seemed to absorb the moonlight, they nocked arrows in silence—and let them fly.

A rain of death fell from above, black-feathered bolts slicing downward, striking into the storm of Highrise warriors below.

The black-feathered arrows struck like a swarm of vengeful spirits, punching through armor, flesh, and bone. Highrise soldiers in the vanguard dropped mid-charge, their war cries severed mid-breath as the Heart Kingdom's archers loosed another volley without pause.

Yet the Highrise forces did not falter.

At their forefront, the obsidian knight raised their broadsword high. The blade did not blaze with flame—but with a writhing, liquid darkness, dripping into the air like ink unraveling in water. With a single, sweeping arc, they cleaved through the incoming volley, the unnatural edge of their weapon unraveling the arrows into trails of smoke before impact.

Auren's fingers twitched at his side.

That's no ordinary weapon.

The knight's mount shrieked—a piercing, otherworldly cry—its burning mane flaring even brighter as it bolted forward, leaving scorched trenches in the earth.

Behind them, the siege beasts stirred to life.

The stringless bow—its curved limbs pulsing with latent force—suddenly twisted as if drawn by an unseen hand. The space between its limbs distorted, shimmering like warped glass, and with a sound like rending cloth, it fired. A bolt of pure, condensed force exploded outward.

Auren barely had time to flinch.

The projectile slammed into the fortress wall.

Stone ruptured.

A crater the size of a wagon burst open in the defenses, chunks of rock spraying through the air as debris hammered both sides. Screams tore through the battlefield—soldiers crushed beneath the rubble—but the Heart Kingdom's warriors did not waver. They retaliated.

From within the fortress, a deep, resonant hum surged across the field. The ground shuddered. For a breathless moment, Auren thought the world itself might crack open.

Then—

A pillar of molten gold erupted from the fortress heart, spiraling skyward before crashing down like a divine lance. It struck the siege beast fused with pulsating flesh—the one that throbbed like some grotesque organ.

The impact was devastating.

The living mass let out a scream—so chillingly human it froze Auren's breath—before it detonated, a cascade of blackened gore and molten iron bursting into the sky. The shockwave hurled soldiers in all directions, bodies twisting through the air like shattered dolls.

Asenya didn't flinch. Her gaze locked onto the scene with a cold, razor-edged focus.

And then—for the first time since they'd arrived—she smiled.

A wild, gleaming grin cut across her face.

"These bastards... they're using soul-forged weapons like they're toys."

Auren turned toward her, frowning.

"What?"

But before she could respond, the battlefield shifted again.

The stone monolith—crackling with lightning—began to unfold. Its surface split open like the petals of some monstrous flower, and from within, a storm of jagged energy erupted. Whip-like tendrils of lightning lashed the fortress, each strike vaporizing stone and reducing men to scorched silhouettes.

The defenders scrambled to regroup—but it was too late.

The Highrise vanguard was already upon them.

The obsidian knight's mount leapt onto the fractured ramparts, claws biting deep into the stone as it landed with a thunderous crash. The beast let out another scream, and the knight raised their sword.

And the fortress answered.

From the shadows of the battlements stepped a lone figure, clad in armor darker than midnight. A single, blood-red plume streamed from their helm, trailing like the tongue of a flame. In their hand was a spear—long, jagged, and utterly lightless. It drank in the world around it.

Their eyes met—the knight of Highrise and the champion of Heart.

The air between them grew heavy. Warped. Reality itself seemed to bend beneath the pressure of their intent.

And then, with a roar that shook the bones of the battlefield—

They clashed.