The stars above Ibanji did not shimmer—they shivered, cold and distant, as though recoiling from the foulness growing beneath them. It was a cursed night. The kind that made old kings pray and stillborn infants scream in their graves. From the black cliffs of Uromba to the whispering marshes of Kizu, even the gods blinked.
Smoke bled from the belly of a burning village, rising in thick coils toward the broken moon. The village of Amana, once proud, now groaned under death's heel. Its walls lay torn open like wounded flesh. Children, wives, elders—slaughtered. Blood soaked the roots of their sacred trees, and the silence was only broken by the crackle of fire... and the hiss of something unnatural.
In the center of the ruin stood one man, bare-chested, dripping, his skin soaked in crimson — Kaelen Obasi.
Not all the blood was his.
His eyes, once brown, now glowed a sickly gray, the left scarred down the socket like it had been clawed open by something divine. His face—young, but shaped by agony. His breath—slow, cold, inhuman. Around him, blades hovered in the air, forged from solidified blood, dripping but deadly. Spears made from the arteries of his enemies. A whip of liquified alcohol snaked in his hand, stolen from a nearby tavern, humming with power. His body was marked by black runes that pulsed with cursed energy.
Kaelen didn't carry weapons.
He was the weapon.
The soldiers that had razed Amana thought they'd found an easy kill—just another small fishing village. Just another nameless boy. They didn't realize until it was too late.
Kaelen's curse was not just vengeance.
It was a warning.
---
He had awakened when his mother's skull cracked against the stone. When his baby sister's cries were drowned in the river. That moment... the very blood of Amana answered. It rose to him, flooded into his limbs, and sang. Not with song, but screams—ancestral, ancient, and vengeful.
He tore through the soldiers of the Black Horned Legion like parchment soaked in oil. Their weapons melted. Their flesh peeled. Their blood turned against them—twisting into jagged spears, lances, razors. One man watched his own veins erupt from his body and wrap around his throat. Another drowned in his own saliva, liquefied and hardened into glass.
A general tried to flee. Kaelen solidified the man's sweat into needles and pierced every joint in his body. Then, without a word, Kaelen split his skull open with a hammer made from a nearby puddle of spilled wine.
Not a single enemy survived.
Not because they couldn't run.
But because Kaelen bent their blood to his will.
---
When the smoke cleared, Kaelen stood alone, surrounded by the corpses of the damned and the innocent. A few villagers, barely breathing, crawled to him for help. His eyes looked down on them — but something else looked through him.
Something older.
The mark on his chest pulsed again. A god's curse. No, something worse. A forgotten god's brand, etched into him the day he was born, now fully awakened. He didn't remember the name, but it whispered through his bones:
> "You are mine."
His right hand twitched as a sharp sting filled his fingertips. His blood fought back. Not just to save, but to destroy. The pain wasn't from wounds — it was his gift being unleashed.
Kaelen turned from the burning corpses of his village and walked toward the wildlands, his body steaming from blood-forged battle.
He didn't know his purpose yet.
But the world would soon remember his name.
---
Far beyond the smoke of Amana, in the ivory city of Zunari, where marble spires pierced the sky and priests washed their feet in milk, a god trembled.
He felt it. Deep within his divine marrow. The awakening of him — the boy with cursed blood.
The god's name was Ezradamus, the Lord of Ashes and Chains. The one who fed on mortal fear and ruled the 7th dimension from behind the black gate of Korthugal.
He rose from his obsidian throne and spoke in a voice that fractured mirrors:
> "It has begun. The Curse-Blood walks."
---
Elsewhere, deep in the assassin pits of Mysha, where girls were raised with blades instead of lullabies, a warrior dropped from a rooftop into shadow.
Her name was Asha N'Dari, unknown to Kaelen, but bound to him by fate.
She knelt beside a corpse—her latest kill—then looked east, as if something inside her stirred. A chill. A whisper. The world was shifting.
Her master's voice echoed in her head: "When the blood weapon awakens... you will find him. Or he will find you."
She didn't believe in prophecy.
But even Asha felt the pull of war coming.
---
Across the continent of Ibanji, eight kingdoms stood on the edge of ruin and glory. Some rich, others forgotten. Two were superpowers — Tchamba and Gholar — locked in silent war, their armies vast, their sorcerers old, their gods proud.
And yet even their kings began to whisper of signs.
Plagues where there should be none. Lightning striking from clear skies. Infants born with no eyes. Blood raining in temples.
Priests bled from the ears when trying to read the stars. One screamed until his spine snapped and muttered just one word before dying:
> "Obasi…"
---
In the palace of Queen Iriya of Tchamba, servants whispered rumors about a boy covered in blood who survived the Black Horned Legion. Iriya, beautiful and brutal, summoned her spies.
> "Find this child," she said. "If he's what they say... he will either be my weapon — or my grave."
---
Kaelen walked into the night.
No food. No armor. No allies. His body still steamed from the power he unleashed. His mind was quiet, but something behind his eyes roared like a sea of voices.
He had not chosen this fate.
But he would shape it with blood.
And far above, a council of forgotten gods — those who had once ruled before time — stirred in their sleep.
For the boy who had survived the slaughter of his village now walked the world.
And where he walked, gods would bleed.
END OF CHAPTER ONE