The void was not empty.
It pulsed—slow and alive—like the breath of something ancient. Alina floated weightless, Selene drifting just beside her. But their hands remained linked.
Then it spoke.
"You call me curse. I was once called promise."
Alina's mind buckled under the weight of the voice. It was not sound—it was memory made sentient. The voice of the curse was not male or female. It was everything that had ever been lost.
Selene winced. "It's sentient. It remembers."
"I was born from love's betrayal. Fed by fear. Shaped by power. You wear my mark, Alina of the Hollowblood. You reignited me."
Alina forced herself to speak. "We didn't choose this."
"But you accepted it. And that makes you the first in centuries to truly understand me."
Visions surrounded them—lovers torn apart, kingdoms undone, fire swallowing everything.
"I was never meant to punish. I was meant to protect what the world refused to."
Selene whispered, "The curse is a sentient defense."
"Yes. And now that you've seen my origin... you must decide: will you end me—or become my bearer?"
The void began to collapse. Alina and Selene dropped through memory again—this time faster.
They landed in the present.
The Hollow was in ruins.
But waiting for them, at the heart of the broken altar, was a flame.
Inside it: a blade.
The same blade used in the first ritual.
"Take it. Accept me. Become my voice."
Selene stepped back. "Alina, don't. You're more than this curse."
But Alina looked at the flame. At the history. At the pain.
And whispered, "Maybe I need to be both."
She reached in.
And everything changed.