I Awakened A Divine Curse

Auren was ready. Or he wasn't. He didn't even know what was coming for him, had no idea what he was about to fight or how to defeat it. From his recent encounter, he could at least discern vividly that this other side of the Night was no conventional realm therefore the creatures in it followed no conventional means of death.

So, what would it take to vanquish this red and black creature whose heart Asenya needed? And worse still, he'd need to wield this cursed sword to do so.

Auren glanced down at the sword with a forced grin, anxiety of the unknown churning in his gut.

'I guess we have something in common. You cursed, I cursed, what do you say we have a cursed date together or something?'

A few beats passed in silence. Auren looked down at the sword again, his expression paling.

'Seriously... does madness include the curse it possesses?'

Auren clenched the sword tightly and began to push forward, walking toward the glow that seemed to shimmer closer.

As he trekked forward, he discovered it was an optical illusion. The way the glow brightened amidst the black fog deceived him into thinking it was approaching. But no matter how far he ventured into the black fog, he never reached it.

Still, Auren kept walking anyway, certain this was his ticket out of this silent hell.

He walked silently, his expression hardened like stone while his mind bred curses for his joyless fate.

It had been one catastrophe after another since the day of the awakening—disaster piled upon disaster. He had suffered without reprieve, all for what? Because he got cursed.

'Like I asked to be...'

And who cursed him? Who was that bastard who wanted to ruin his life so thoroughly?

Auren did not know. But he also loathed thinking this way.

Because it made him feel as though he valued the Archon's favor. He might not have valued it, but he also wanted to live a good life and be strong. He had never envisioned these ordeals for himself. At least not this much.

Either way, things had unfolded like this. He'd just assume that with the dangerous path he trod regarding his faith toward Hope, he had it coming.

So no bad blood.

He would savor his sufferings.

So when the time came for him to return it tenfold to Hope, let it savor the experience too... without complaints.

Finally, Auren could make something out through the fog. The red glow pulsed more vividly now.

And as he stepped closer, his eyes widened with confusion at what slowly materialized before him.

Auren beheld a colossal wall that stretched endlessly to his right and left. He furrowed his brows at the sight.

Cracks veined across its surface, as if a monumental battle marking the extinction of an age had unfolded there. Crimson embers leaked from these fissures like blood from ancient wounds. Directly before Auren gaped a gateless entrance.

The hinges clinging to the wall suggested the gate had been violently wrenched away by something—or someone—massive and furious.

'It would take world-scorching rage to tear off a gate this immense...'

His thoughts echoed as he raised his eyes to meet the wall's summit and where the peak of the gate should have been, had it survived.

Most of it vanished into the black fog above. Yet what Auren could discern loomed so high that fifty men stacked atop one another would still fail to reach its zenith.

Auren returned his gaze to the gateless entrance and felt rage beckoning to him like an old friend.

He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his heartbeat quicken. It was that peculiar sensation where fury wells up inexplicably, its source untraceable.

Having experienced something similar mere minutes ago, Auren recognized what was happening.

He frowned thoughtfully and stepped through the gateless entrance, advancing forward.

Within lay a shattered Citadel. It appeared as though a savage fire had devoured it, burning relentlessly for years only to abandon it when its structures stubbornly refused to crumble into ash.

Auren's frown deepened as he surveyed the compound, striding toward the wide stairs that led into the Citadel's depths.

Upon reaching the entrance, he noticed an inscription carved into stone above—similar to those that often marked the thresholds of great manors.

It read:

Home of Rage.

A grim smile tugged at Auren's lips.

'Just as I suspected.'

He swallowed hard and stepped inside.

Auren scanned his surroundings as he ventured deeper. The halls sprawled vast and imposing, their corners consumed by crimson-tinged darkness.

Chains dangled from the ceiling like metallic veins, twitching with subtle, unseen tension.

Each footfall Auren made branded the floor with a scorching imprint. It was as if he trod upon molten glass—each step causing the seething temperature to spike momentarily before dimming.

Yet he felt no burn beneath his feet; it was like walking on ordinary ground.

Looking down, he observed images—thousands, perhaps millions of soldiers wielding diverse weapons: guns, swords, commanding four-wheeled metal beasts lost to the devastation that preceded the archons.

He watched them clash in cataclysmic combat. The landscape convulsed and erupted beneath their fury. Rage saturated the scene like oil feeding flames, the destruction itself seeming to howl with all the world's accumulated wrath.

In reality, Auren heard nothing—neither the war raging beneath the scorching glass floor nor the primal scream of destruction his mind perceived.

Wrenching his gaze from the ground, Auren looked ahead.

Before him stretched a lengthy dais running the hall's considerable length. From its base to the throne seat rose a forest of swords—charred blades, each buried point-first into the glass floor.

And finally, upon the throne itself, lounged a creature, propped on one arm, its eyes blazing crimson as it regarded Auren with chilling, foreboding indifference.

'Red and black... right... so obvious.'

Auren stood mere steps from the forest of buried swords, gripping his own cursed blade with intensity. He fixed the creature with a grave expression, beneath which fear, anxiety, and timidity smoldered like banked coals.

The entity before him resembled a human being, yet simultaneously defied such simple categorization. It loomed larger, fiercer—more akin to something that had shed its humanity countless eons ago.

An armored polypheme, twin crimson orbs of light shimmered from within the shadowed visor of its helm. The armor itself was obsidian black, so dark it seemed to devour light, yet veined with hairline fractures that wept subtle crimson radiance.

Auren approached cautiously, but the creature remained motionless—seemingly frozen in time. Only the malevolent glow of its eyes and the pulsing crimson light seeping through the cracked depths of its obsidian shell betrayed its true nature.

The bastard was definitely alive.