The curse was a fretful, violet thing, clinging to the portly merchant like a second shadow woven from regret. To the man's own eyes, and to the rest of the world, the study was simply a study—opulently furnished, smelling of rich mahogany and aged brandy. But to Isra, the room was a canvas of quiet suffering. She could see the affliction as a faint, lavender shimmer that pulsed in the corners of the room, a magical stain that deepened wherever the man, Lord Valerius, lingered too long.
She stood before her easel, not with a brush and palette, but with tools of a much stranger trade. In her hand was a stylus tipped with powdered moonstone, and beside her, an array of inks in small, crystalline pots. There was silver-dust ink for tracing magical signatures, crushed iron-rose for delineating necrotic borders, and her most precious—a shimmering, pearlescent ink made from the dew of a single, starlit night, used for mapping the soul's true north.
Her canvas was a sheet of specially prepared vellum, stretched taut and pinned to the board. It was a costly material, soaked in a solution of willow bark and tears—the only medium that could hold the faint, ethereal lines of a magical malady.
"Is it… working?" Lord Valerius asked, his voice a nervous tremor that disturbed the dust motes dancing in the single shaft of afternoon light. He dabbed at his sweaty brow with a silk handkerchief, his bulk shifting from foot to foot.
Isra didn't answer immediately. Her eyes were closed, her senses cast out like a fine net. This was the most crucial part of the process, the attunement. She ignored the scent of brandy and focused on the subtler smells beneath: the sharp, metallic tang of anxiety, and under that, the scent of ozone and chilled air that was the curse's true signature. It was a Curse of Lingering Whispers, a petty but persistent hex likely cast by a slighted business rival. It wasn't lethal, but it was slowly driving the man mad, filling his quiet moments with the imagined voices of his failures.
To her, the whispers were a low, discordant hum in the air, a sound like cicadas in a dying orchard. She took a slow, deep breath, letting the feeling of it settle into her bones. She had to understand its shape, its texture, its unique geography of despair, before she could put it to paper.
"Be still, my lord," she finally murmured, her voice calm and even. She opened her eyes, her gaze now unfocused, looking not at the man but through him, at the shimmering violet cloud that clung to his aura. "A curse is a landscape. To map it, I must be allowed to survey the terrain."
She picked up the moonstone stylus. Her first touch to the vellum was a faint, silvery line that mirrored the curse's outer edge. Valerius flinched as if she had touched his own skin. He couldn't feel her mapping, not truly, but the connection between a curse and its host was a symbiotic, parasitic thing. When she prodded the affliction, the man felt the echo.
For the next hour, she worked in meditative silence, her hand moving with a surgeon's precision. She charted the curse's core, a dense, knotted concentration of energy near his heart, where his guilt and fear were strongest. She mapped the tendrils that snaked up to his temples, the source of the whispers. Each line she drew on the vellum appeared as a faint, glowing mark, a perfect one-to-one representation of the invisible wounds on the man's soul. It was intimate, invasive work, and as always, it left her feeling like a voyeur of private agonies.
Finally, she set down her stylus. The map was complete. On the vellum was not the image of a man, but a complex, beautiful, and terrible diagram of his pain—a web of violet and silver lines that pulsed with a faint, malevolent light.
"It is done," she said, her voice betraying a hint of the deep weariness that always followed a mapping.
Valerius rushed forward, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe as he stared at the chart. "That… that is inside of me?"
"It is on you," Isra corrected gently. "A parasite. But now that we have its complete anatomy, the Mages of the Spire will be able to craft a precise counter-spell. They will no longer be working blind." She carefully unpinned the vellum, rolled it, and slid it into a protective leather tube.
He paid her fee with trembling hands, the pouch of gold coins heavy enough to strain the seams. It was a fortune, but it was the price of peace of mind. He couldn't get out of the room fast enough, clutching the tube like a holy relic, leaving her alone in the sudden, echoing silence.
Isra stood for a long moment, letting the room's normal atmosphere settle around her. The violet shimmer was gone, taken with its host. She packed her tools, the familiar, rhythmic motions a comfort after the psychic drain of her work. Her workshop was a small, cramped set of rooms above a bakery, always smelling faintly of sweet bread and old paper. To most, it was a hovel. To her, it was a fortress. It was the only place in the entire kingdom of Elysia she felt truly safe.
She was an anomaly, a necessary pariah. People only ever sought out Isra when their lives were unraveling, when the whispers started in the dark, when their luck ran so cold it felt like a physical chill. They came to her in secret, their faces veiled, their purses heavy, begging her to chart the unseen maladies that doctors and priests could not touch. She was their last, desperate hope. And once she had given them their maps, their salvation, they fled, eager to forget the strange, quiet woman who could see the rot in their souls.
She ran a hand over a half-finished chart on her worktable, a map of a much more complex curse afflicting a child, a Sleeping Sorrow that stole the color from her dreams. Isra's heart ached for the girl, but she kept a professional distance. Empathy was a dangerous indulgence in her line of work. A cartographer could not get lost in the landscape she was mapping.
A sharp, authoritative knock echoed from her door.
It was not the timid, furtive rap of a new client. This was a sound that demanded, that did not expect to be kept waiting. Frowning, Isra opened the door to find two men standing in the narrow landing, their presence seeming to suck all the air from the space. They were Royal Guards, their armor immaculate, the sunburst crest of the Sunstone Throne gleaming on their breastplates. Between them stood a man in the severe, unadorned robes of a Royal Herald. His face was thin, his lips a bloodless line, and his eyes swept over her workshop with unconcealed disdain.
"Isra, the Curse Cartographer?" the Herald asked, though his tone made it clear he already knew the answer.
"I am," she said, her voice steady, though her heart had begun to beat a little faster. The Palace Guard never came to the bakery district.
"You are summoned to the Citadel. By order of His Majesty, King Theron." He held out a rolled scroll, sealed with the deep blue wax of the royal family. It was not a request.
Isra's mind raced. A royal summons could mean only one thing. A curse had breached the gilded walls of the Citadel, a place supposedly protected by the most powerful wards in the kingdom. And it had to be a malady of such a high order that the Royal Mages were left completely blind.
She took the scroll, her fingers breaking the pristine seal. The calligraphy was sharp and perfect, the words cold and commanding.
…to attend to a matter of grave and immediate threat to the Crown and the continuation of the Royal Line…
…His Royal Highness, Prince Cyrus…
The name hit her like a physical blow. Prince Cyrus. The Sun Prince. Heir to the Sunstone Throne. She, like everyone in the kingdom, knew of him. He was the golden child, beloved by the people for his easy charm, his sharp mind, and his infuriatingly handsome face, which graced more than a few commemorative coins. He was the symbol of their kingdom's bright, prosperous future.
…afflicted by a crystalline petrification of unknown origin. His Royal Highness… hardens.
The final word was a chilling, sterile blade of a word. Hardens. Isra's blood ran cold. She had mapped hundreds of curses, from inconvenient hexes to lethal malignancies, but she had never heard of anything like this. A curse that turned a living, breathing man to crystal. It was a terrifying, elegant, and impossibly cruel fate.
"The carriage awaits," the Herald said, his voice impatient. "You will be given tonight to gather your necessary tools. You will be housed in the Citadel for the duration of your work. The nature of your commission is a matter of absolute state secrecy. You will speak of it to no one. The consequences for doing so will be… severe."
He didn't need to elaborate.
He left without another word, the guards falling into step behind him, their armor clanking down the wooden stairs. Isra was left standing in her doorway, the heavy, official scroll clutched in her hand. The scent of sweet bread suddenly seemed cloying, sickening.
She looked around at her small, safe fortress, at the familiar charts and the strange, comforting clutter of her trade. She knew that by accepting this commission, she was leaving this sanctuary behind. She would be stepping into the gilded cage of the royal court, a world of politics and intrigue that she had spent her entire life avoiding. She would be placed under the microscope of the most powerful people in the land, her strange gift scrutinized, her every move watched.
And she would be brought into the intimate, terrifying orbit of a dying prince.
A prince whose affliction she would have to chart, day by day, as he turned from warm flesh and blood into cold, silent stone. A tremor of fear, sharp and unfamiliar, ran through her. But beneath it, another feeling stirred. The insatiable curiosity of the cartographer, the unyielding drive of the puzzle-solver. This was the greatest challenge of her life.
She closed the door, the click of the latch sounding like a final, fateful choice. She walked to her worktable and began to select her finest vellum, her most potent inks. She was afraid, yes. But she was the only person in the world who could map the geography of a dying prince. And her journey into the heart of the kingdom, and into the heart of the star-charted curse, was about to begin.