I Awakened A Divine Curse

Asenya frowned at the little boy's jest but shook her head slightly.

Beyond the back-and-forth with Auren, something else seemed to hurry her thoughts.

"Do you have something else you'd like to ask?"

Auren smiled.

"Of course. A lot."

He paused and glanced around before meeting her gaze again.

"You wouldn't happen to have water around here, right? After walking through still air for ages, with all my fears weighing on me like a mountain, running from trees that tried to kill me for not crying, and dying horribly countless times at the hands of an empty sheet of metal with a floating heart—I need water. Badly."

Asenya fixed him with an impassive stare, then moved. She walked past him toward her left, beyond the well of black water, and reached the broken, black-stoned dais of the hall.

Near the wall at the left end of the dais stood a water faucet, handsomely fashioned from the onyx wall.

She snatched up a black ceramic cup lying carelessly nearby and filled it with water—her movements quick and cold.

Then she returned to Auren, stopping closer to him than before.

"Take it."

Her golden eyes gleamed as she extended the cup, though not threateningly. Instead, a flicker of sympathy shone in their depths as she watched the little boy accept the cup and gulp down its contents.

"Couqfuck! My throat is literally burning!"

Auren gasped as he drained almost all the water.

"Thank you very much, Lady Asenya."

His voice dripped with such genuine gratitude that it was almost impossible to believe he was the same person who, mere seconds ago, had danced cunningly around her with his carefully crafted words.

She studied Auren's face, doubt and pity flickering across her features like shadows on water.

"Did you really... brave those horrors of the True Darkness and survive? You ventured through the Garden of Grief and entered the Home of Rage. Even killed the Polypheme?"

Auren brushed her words aside with a dismissive gesture.

"No reason to re-emphasize something you don't want to believe. Leave it be. I don't quite understand what you expected when you hurled me into that place."

Asenya chuckled awkwardly, the sound brittle as cracking glass.

"Ah. Ah... nothing really. I abandoned all expectations the moment you dove into the black water. Worse still, you took the Sword of Withering Fate."

Auren's mind flashed to how the cursed blade had multiplied his suffering. His expression darkened.

"The realm has an unpredictability that only Aven Noctis understands. Well, he created it after all. I've been there once, with him and... those horrors are impossible to endure for any mighty human, much less one like you..."

Her gaze fell on Auren, laden with quiet disdain.

Auren recoiled with a dark grimace.

"Uh? Uhn uhn! One like me? What do you mean by that?! Don't compare me with any mighty human! I am the lowest of the low! A crack-born! Which is why I'm the only kind of slippery worm that can squirm through anything—even death! Garden of Grief? Home of Rage? Pfft! They're merely meat for me!"

Asenya exhaled as her headache crept back. She massaged the edge of her brows with her fingertips, then spoke after a brief silence.

"Alright. I've heard you, tough worm. You're a tough worm. No one comes close to you. What else do you have to ask, worm?"

Auren's agitation gradually subsided. He tilted his head slightly.

"This Aven Night person, lord of the night, is he a God?"

"Uhhhhh?"

Asenya's lips downturned as if she'd tasted something unbearably sour.

"Gods? What? No! They exist far beyond those rotten deities!"

Auren noted her words carefully. Using "they" meant Aven Noctis wasn't the only one of his kind. Or wasn't the only one who had existed.

And it seemed Asenya herself was not a being of the same nature.

"Does Aven Noctis happen to have black, long hair, alabaster skin, deep eyes that look like they're draped in perpetual sorrow?"

In that moment, Asenya was still bristling at Auren's last question. But hearing the description, she froze and stared at him, her eyes widening slightly.

"You... it can't be. You've seen him?! How's that possible? Aven Noctis has been asleep for three hundred years. No one in this era should have seen him."

Auren shrugged nonchalantly.

"It's a bit complicated to explain and remember, old hag. No beating around each other's business. Next question. What or who are the gods? What kind of people is Aven Noctis part of? What are you? What in the damned gruesome butthole is this place?"

Asenya's lips curled upward. A brittle chuckle cracked from her throat like ice breaking.

"Oh well, you're one clueless and confused kid, aren't you?"

"I got killed and thrust into this hell. Forgive me for not knowing a damn thing about the world. I was busy dying."

"Tsk. You didn't miss much, weirdo. But the questions you're asking—even I don't have complete answers to them. The answers I'll give you..."

She drew a sharp breath.

"You'd be wise to build your own truth around them, because these entities you're asking about are concepts beyond our understanding, formed before the existence of the world itself. They might have—perhaps consciously or unconsciously—dictated the formation of the world itself."

She paused, her fingers weaving patterns in the air as she continued.

"There was a city, once the apex of divine civilization, sung into existence by the first voices of creation. It hovered above the stars, and above a realm that existed outside time and space, where different realms intersected.

"This intersection was known as the Lake of the First Silence. This place existed because that was the point where the voices dropped and coalesced, breaking into still echoes. The flow of realms began from that point and ended at that point. And just above the Lake of First Silence, the city of Caelumenis floated.

"The towers of the city were verses of the song sung by the voices. And the first beings that existed were not created—they remembered themselves into being. And they began to slowly dictate governance over all the realms from the point of intersection. They were what we call... Gods."