The fire was dying when Aric finally returned to the camp. His skin felt clammy beneath his clothes, though the air was colder than frostbite. Selene watched him with narrowed eyes but said nothing. Kael, however, paced like a man who'd glimpsed the storm behind the mountain.
"You need to tell me exactly what he did," Kael said, not bothering with subtlety. "Everything."
Aric sat slowly, still trembling. "He didn't attack. He barely spoke. It wasn't… violent. But it wasn't human either. I felt like he saw through me—like he was peeling something back inside my head."
Kael muttered a curse in an old tongue.
"I couldn't move," Aric continued. "Time felt… off. Like I blinked, and he was behind me."
"He bent time?" Selene asked, eyes wide.
Kael gave her a sharp look. "No. Not bent. Ignored. That's what makes him different."
Selene didn't respond, but Aric saw the tension in her shoulders. Whatever this 'David' was, Kael feared him—genuinely. That, more than anything, unsettled him.
The following morning, they broke camp early, and Kael refused to lead them through the usual pass. "Too exposed," he said. "If he shows again, we need distance between us and the open."
They veered off the trail, cutting through frostbitten forests and uneven terrain. Selene walked silently beside Aric, casting occasional glances at him, as if waiting for him to snap.
By the third day, Aric's body was exhausted, but it was the dreams that wore him down.
Each night he saw the figure—David—standing still in different places: the edge of a battlefield, the ruins of a cathedral, in the eye of a storm.
Each time, his voice returned, not in words but meanings. Aric would wake with his heart pounding and symbols burning behind his eyelids—symbols that faded before he could remember them.
On the fifth night, Aric woke to find his left arm glowing faintly beneath the skin. Crimson veins of light spidered from his wrist to his shoulder, pulsing slowly, like a second heartbeat.
Selene saw it first.
"What the hell is that?" she whispered.
Aric stared at his own arm. "I don't know. It wasn't like this before."
Kael moved in, inspecting the glow with grim focus. "It's not corruption. It's something else. Something dormant… reacting."
"To him?" Selene asked.
"Maybe," Kael replied. "Or maybe to what's awakening in Aric."
Aric pulled his sleeve down, breath shallow. "It doesn't hurt. But it feels… alive. Like it's waiting."
Kael didn't speak for a long moment. Then: "There are stories of the first cursed. Ones who didn't just inherit power—but were chosen by something older. Not gods. Not magic. Something buried. Something… bound."
"You think that's what I am?" Aric asked.
"I think whatever David is, he sees you as a key."
Selene turned to Aric, voice sharp. "And if that's true, what happens when he decides to use you?"
"I don't know," Aric whispered. "But I don't think he's the only one watching."
That night, Kael carved a circle of protection into the ground with silver dust and ash. "If he returns," Kael said, "don't look into his eyes. Don't answer him. He doesn't speak like we do—he binds with thought. Let him in once, and you may never get him out again."
Aric didn't sleep. Not even when the fire crackled low and the woods stilled into eerie silence.
And just before dawn, in the final hour of night, a voice brushed against the edge of his mind again—not intrusive, not loud.
Just one word.
"Soon."