"We enjoy so many things in life. But think about a being who has so little of it. This is our story. Our curse."
"Mother, is this a horror story?" Ten-year-old Jennifer hugged her knees tighter, eyes wide. "They haunt me at night. I hate them."
Lina laughed softly — that warm, tired laugh of a mother who has seen far worse than nightmares. "Oh, I suppose you two like my past stories after all. They are real. Every part of them. The happy, the sad… and yes, the horrific."
They sat together in the branches of a grand old tree at the edge of their garden, the three-story mansion rising silent behind them in the late afternoon light. Somewhere inside, a baby slept in a cradle near the window.
On a branch just above, Jennifer's twin brother Johan lay stretched out with his arms folded behind his head, staring up through the leaves at the sky.
"Ignore her, Mother. Continue." He flicked a lazy glance at Jennifer. "Let me guess — it's about your world."
"Yes." Lina opened the old book in her lap, running a thumb along its worn spine. "About me. Your grandfather and grandmother. And your aunt."
"What was grandfather's name?" Johan asked.
"Joseph," Lina said, and smiled — the kind of smile that carries grief inside it.
Johan pointed a finger toward the window where the baby slept. "You gave the baby his name."
"I did." She looked at the window for a long moment. "I believe he will bring a smile to everyone he meets. Just like his grandfather did." She turned back to the book. "Now. Let me tell you where it all began."
The world she described was called World of Life — and it was beautiful in the way that only things which are also dangerous can be.
The sky never chose a single colour. It rolled constantly between sapphire blue, vibrant cyan, and deep emerald green, as though the heavens themselves couldn't commit to a mood. The air hummed with mana — not stored in crystals or locked in vaults, but alive in everything: in the roots of the floating mountains, in the breath of every creature, in the slow drift of rocks the size of cities as they sailed through the clouds.
Gravity, here, was more of a suggestion.
At the centre of the world rose the capital — a kingdom of gold and silver built atop a single crystalline spire so tall its peak vanished into the upper atmosphere. Beyond it, natural towers of mountain rock stretched toward the sky, their faces carved over centuries with ancient symbols that hummed quietly with dormant power. The homes of the people were not built so much as grown — carved into the bases of those towers, or nestled onto stable lower islands, constructed from bioluminescent wood and polished crystal that glowed faintly at dusk like something that had swallowed stars.
It was paradise.
It was also dying.
At the base of the central tower, a twelve-year-old girl was collecting mooshrooms. She was Lina, the future mother of Johan and Jennifer.
She wore a long, flowing emerald green robe with wide, flared sleeves. It features a deep-blue interior lining and is decorated with intricate gold embroidery along the hem and cuffs.
She moved quickly — darting between the roots of a floating rock cluster, snatching the spotted mushrooms and stuffing them into the bag slung over her shoulder. Then she spotted her opening: a low-drifting rock, moving at just the right angle.
She jumped.
The rock launched her skyward.
For one bright second, she was weightless — just wind and altitude and the whole city spread below her like a living map. Then she snapped her fingers.
SNAP!
Mana surged through her like cold water rushing into a dry riverbed. Black feathers erupted from the skin of her back and along her arms, spreading wide, catching the air. Crow's wings — powerful, silent, dark as ink against the green-tinted sky.
She flew.
Thousands of other residents already moved through the upper currents above her, their own wings of every shape and colour carrying them between towers. The sky was crowded with people, and she wove between them like she'd been born to it.
Her house wasn't far. She curved toward the familiar window, shook out her arms, and let the black feathers dissolve — each one falling away into fine dark dust on the wind. Then she tapped the glass.
TAP-TAP-TAP! TAP-TAP-TAP!
The window slid open. Her elder sister Nina appeared, and one finger went immediately to Nina's lips.
"Shh!" Nina's voice dropped to a whisper, her eyes cutting toward the back of the room. "Mama is sleeping. Papa went out this morning, and she's been tense about him all day. She just fell asleep. Don't ruin it."
Lina passed the bag of mushrooms through the window without a word. But the look on her face had already changed — her brow knitting, her jaw setting. She pulled back from the ledge, spread her wings again, and flew into the sky.
She would find him herself.
She searched the entire kingdom.
City after city, tower after tower, she flew until her wings ached and the mana reserves in her chest burned low. The sun had crossed most of the sky by the time exhaustion forced her down onto the peak of a high outer tower, where she sat with her shoulders slumped and the vast horizon stretching endlessly before her.
Tears came without permission. They always did when she was scared.
"Papa," she said to no one. "Where are you?"
"Hey! Lina! I'm right here!"
She looked down.
Joseph— her father stood on the balcony of a nearby room, one arm raised, waving at her like he hadn't just put his entire family through six hours of terror. He was grinning.
She dove.
"Woo-OOO! Lina!" Joseph caught her, laughing, steadying himself against the railing. "What a flight! I was in quite a mess today — that's why I'm late. Thank you for finding me, little bird."
"Shut up." Her voice cracked between anger and relief. "Mama has been worried sick about you all day."
His grin faded slightly. "I just went to see my friends one last time. Surely I'm allowed that much? Before I—"
"The Order quarantined you." The word came out hard and sharp. "You're lucky they let you stay home with us at all. You know what they could have done."
Joseph's expression shifted — not quite shame, not quite defiance. "So what? They can stop many things, Lina. But they can't stop a bird from flying." He stepped up onto the railing. "Not even you can stop me."
He forcefully jumped from the grip of Lina.
His fingers snapped mid-fall, and enormous eagle wings tore open from his back — broader than Lina's, golden-brown at the edges where hers were pure black, and powerful enough to generate a shockwave of wind that nearly knocked her off her hover.
"Why are you like this?" she shouted, pulling up alongside him.
Joseph tilted his head back and breathed in deeply — the long, slow breath of a man savouring something he knows he won't have much longer. "I suppose," he said quietly, "because I may be the last one left who still is."
From the ledge of a distant tower, a figure watched them. As they passed, the figure raised a hand in farewell. "Joseph! Spend more time with your family, yeah?"
Joseph smiled — broad and real, the kind that reached his eyes — and released a silent burst of mana into the sky. A small light, like a flare, blooming and fading. A wordless thank you.
"Is that your comrade?" Lina asked.
"Comrade. Best friend." Joseph's voice softened. "And master."
Nina was waiting on the front steps when they appeared on the horizon, two dark shapes against the green-tinted sky. She'd been sitting there for a while — long enough that her posture had gone from worried to resigned to something closer to quietly furious.
She stood as they descended.
"Fountain." She pointed. Her voice carried the kind of authority that made both of them freeze in mid-air. "Both of you. Shake out every feather before you set one foot inside this house."
They looked at each other.
They went to the fountain.
They shake out the manifested feathers, letting each one dissolve back into ambient mana. Wings weren't permanent here; they were mana given temporary shape, and they carried traces of everywhere you'd been. Nina had rules about that.
"Could you possibly speak to us, like we're people you love?" Joseph said, brushing dust from his sleeves.
Nina looked at him. "When you act like people I love, I'll consider it."
Alice heard the door.
She came out of the bedroom fast, and she didn't stop moving until she had her arms around Joseph, her face pressed into his shoulder, crying quietly and steadily like she'd been saving it up all day.
"Where were you?" she managed. "Do you have any idea—"
"Alice, Alice." He held her, rubbing slow circles on her back. "I just went to see Vlad. My friends. One last time." His voice was gentle now, stripped of all the bravado he wore outside. "I'm here. I'm home."
He walked her back to the room. "Don't cry."
They talked through the night.
Joseph told them everything — his years in the military, the battles he'd survived, the wars that had shaped the man he became. He told them about the comrades he'd outlived and the ones he hadn't. He talked until his voice went hoarse and the fire in the hearth burned low.
Lina curled up near his feet, listening with her chin on her knees.
"Father," she asked, during a quiet moment, "how is our Lord? Is he well?"
Joseph smiled — soft, private, like the question had reached something tender inside him. "He is as pure and kind as you."
Sometime during his stories, morning came without announcement. The sky outside shifted — sapphire bleeding into the pale gold of dawn.
Then Joseph coughed.
It was nothing at first. A rough catch in the throat. He paused mid-sentence, pressed a fist to his mouth—
Hrrk — hrrk — HRRK—
The coughing took hold and wouldn't let go, racking his whole chest, bending him forward. It went on too long.
When it stopped, he looked at his hand.
The blood on his palm was wrong. Not red — dark, nearly black, viscous as ink.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then he exhaled — a strange, almost peaceful sound. "Ah. So. It's time."
The room went cold.
"Father—" Nina's voice broke on the word.
"Yes." He looked at each of them in turn, his face unreadable. "This is our curse. When we pass thirty, we begin the transformation. Our ancestors accepted this to protect our Lord. It is old. It is real. And it is coming for me now."
Lina crossed the room and grabbed both of his hands. "Can we stop it?" Her voice was fierce, urgent, already searching for a solution. "Father, there has to be a way—"
He shook his head. Slowly. Sadly.
"No."
Before anyone could speak again, something hit the door.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
Nina opened it.
Four members of the Order stood outside. Their white military-style tunics reached mid-thigh, trimmed with gold-fringed shoulder pieces that caught the morning light. Their faces were composed — disciplined and depressed in equal measure, like soldiers who had learned to feel nothing about their orders and hadn't quite managed it.
Joseph stepped forward before Nina could say a word.
"Sir," the lead member said quietly. "Are you ready?"
Something settled in Joseph's face — not peace, exactly, but something close to it. He stood straighter. The fear that any ordinary person might wear in this moment was simply absent.
"Tell him, I am ready," Joseph said with a grin.
The Order member's expression didn't change. "The Lord is waiting in the town square."
The town square was full.
Word had travelled the way it always does in small worlds — fast and terrible. Hundreds had gathered, their faces carrying the weight of people who already knew what would happen and had come anyway, because witnessing was the only thing left they could offer. But a hope that their beloved lord will find a way to save them.
Then the army arrived.
Hundreds strong, they moved through the streets in disciplined formation — and at their head walked a figure in full blackened plate armour, matte and textured, absorbing the light rather than reflecting it.
Lord Krioxious.
The crowd's fear shifted into something more desperate. Pleas broke out from every direction — great lord, please, save us, is there nothing you can do, will it always be like this? — voices layering over each other into a kind of collective grief.
Krioxious walked through it without looking up.
He couldn't. Every face he met felt like an accusation he had no answer to. He had power enough to end wars, to reshape mountains, to burn armies into ash — and he could do nothing about a curse older than his reign. The helplessness sat in him like a stone.
Then Joseph walked into the square with his family.
The two men looked at each other across the open ground. Old friends. Old grief.
"What is your last wish?" Krioxious asked. His voice was quiet, meant only for Joseph.
Joseph smiled. Wide and real. "To die by the hands of a great warrior. Not by this course," He gestured at his own darkening veins, the black tracing already beginning to spread beneath the skin of his forearms.
"As you wish."
Joseph turned and walked toward the centre of the square.
Lina grabbed his hand.
"Father." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Please. Don't."
He stopped. He turned back to her, and his free hand came up — a light touch against her cheek. Not a slap. Gentle. Like he was memorising the shape of her face.
"I always said you are my bravest one." His thumb brushed away a tear she hadn't realised had fallen. "Take care of them. And fly as high as you can."
Nina pulled Lina back. Alice wrapped her arms around both girls, and all three of them held each other while Joseph walked away.
In the centre of the square, the transformation began. Joseph fell to his knees. His was turning black.
It moved through him in waves — his spine arching, his silhouette distorting at the edges, the darkness beneath his skin rising to the surface. The crowd fell silent. The only sound was the wind.
Krioxious raised one hand.
SNAP!
A sword materialised in his grip — "Excalibur", a blade of condensed mana, metallic and cold, the handle etched with a divine symbol that pulsed faintly with light even in the morning sun.
They looked at each other one final time.
"Sorry," Krioxious said.
Joseph's smile didn't waver. "Who blames you?"
SHUCK!
The thrust was lightning. A single motion, precise and merciful, straight through the heart. Joseph fell — and the moment he hit the ground, the transformation accelerated, his body beginning to shift, to darken, to become something other.
Krioxious snapped his fingers again.
A black mana sphere appeared above his palm — "Quemar" — and he cast it down.
Black flames consumed Joseph entirely.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing Lina had ever heard.
Around her, people had stopped crying. They stood hollow-eyed, watching the fire die, the ash settle. Someone near the back of the crowd said it first, but everyone was thinking it:
"This will be the end of us. Our whole race, burned away by a curse no one can break."
Hopeless. All of them.
Lina didn't hear them. She was watching the flames.
Beside her, Krioxious also watched the flames. He hadn't moved.
Something inside her chest — something that had been cracking since morning — finally broke completely open. It came out as a scream, raw and ragged and absolutely furious:
"I will protect them!" The words tore out of her. "My mother, my sister, everyone — I will destroy this curse, I will destroy the Dark Lo—"
Alice's hand covered her mouth.
Fast. Firm. Lina felt her mother trembling.
"Don't say that name," Alice breathed.
Slowly, Krioxious turned.
He looked at Lina — really looked at her, the way adults rarely look at children. His eyes were red-rimmed. The same tears. The same flame.
"Fine." His voice came out low and absolute, like a verdict. "He killed my friend. My brother." He looked back at the dying embers. "Let this be a declaration of war against the Dark Lord."
Lina met his gaze.
Same grief. Same fury. Same fire burning where the fear used to be.
It was the beginning of something.