The night pressed close against the palace walls, heavy and watchful.
Moonlight spilled through the corridors like cold silver, tracing the marble floors where no servant dared to walk.
Ryo moved through that silence like a ghost.
Every step echoed too loudly, every flicker of a torch felt like an eye.
He knew someone followed him — not by sound, but by instinct. The same instinct that now lived beneath his skin, humming with the faint crimson pulse of the curse.
He didn't turn. Didn't look back.
He just walked — deeper into the old wing of the palace where no one went anymore.
Caro had begged him not to leave his room that night.
But the message he'd found at dusk still burned in his mind.
"They fear you because they took what was yours. Find the chamber beneath the chapel."
No signature. No seal. Just those words, written in red ink that shimmered faintly, as if alive.
He didn't know who sent it — only that it felt like truth.
At the end of the west corridor stood the palace chapel — silent, holy, and long abandoned after the last priest vanished. The great glass window showed the faded figure of a goddess no one worshipped anymore.
Ryo pushed the door open. It groaned softly, and dust swirled through the air like forgotten prayers.
He lit a single candle from the altar and walked toward the statue at the far end.
It was cracked, its stone eyes hollow.
But behind it — half hidden beneath torn tapestries — he saw it: a faint seam in the wall, a vertical line too straight to be natural.
Ryo pressed his palm against it.
The mark on his chest flared once — and the wall trembled.
A hidden door slid open with a hiss of cold air.
Beyond it lay a narrow staircase spiraling down into the dark.
The air grew colder, heavier with every step. The candlelight flickered against walls carved with runes and old sigils — symbols that pulsed faintly when Ryo passed them.
At the bottom, he found a heavy iron door. Its lock had rusted, but the sigil on his chest pulsed again — and the metal cracked open like ice.
Ryo stepped inside.
It was not a dungeon.
It was a library.
A forgotten archive of the royal bloodline.
Rows of stone shelves stretched into shadow, filled with scrolls, wax seals, and ledgers so ancient their ink had bled into the parchment.
Cobwebs hung like curtains. The air smelled of dust, ink — and something faintly metallic, like dried blood.
Ryo's hand trembled as he pulled the nearest scroll free.
The script was faded, the handwriting familiar — the royal archivist's.
"Subject of experiment: The newborn heir. Binding procedure completed. Result — unstable."
"Source essence: Blood of the divine relic retrieved from the eastern ruins."
"Witness: His Majesty the King."
Ryo froze.
The words blurred before his eyes.
The newborn heir. That was him.
He dropped the scroll and tore open another one. It was signed with the royal seal.
"By command of His Majesty, the ritual is to remain unrecorded. The curse is to be named a divine punishment — never an experiment."
Ryo's breath caught.
The curse… wasn't born. It was made.
He staggered back, knocking over a stack of brittle ledgers. They fell with a sharp crack, echoing down the corridor.
And from the darkness behind the shelves — a whisper.
"Curiosity is a dangerous trait, Prince Ryo."
Varen stepped into the light, silent as smoke.
His eyes glinted beneath his hood, sharp and cold. "His Majesty warned you once. Yet here you are, digging into graves better left sealed."
Ryo straightened slowly, his heartbeat thundering.
"You've been following me."
"I watch what the King commands me to watch," Varen said calmly. "Though I admit, you make it interesting. Breaking into the forbidden archives? That's treason."
"Then arrest me," Ryo hissed. "If that's what you came for."
Varen's smile was thin. "Oh no. I came to see how far the curse has spread."
Ryo's veins pulsed crimson under his skin — faint, but visible.
Varen's gaze flickered toward the glow. "So it's true. It responds to emotion. To rage."
"Stay back," Ryo warned.
"Or what?" Varen took a step closer. "You'll burn me alive like the stories say? Go ahead. Show me what you really are."
The words struck like sparks on dry wood.
Ryo's pulse surged — the candlelight flared, wind howled through the chamber, and the sigils on the walls ignited with red fire.
The curse woke.
Varen shielded his face, eyes wide.
Ryo's voice came out hollow, distant — layered with something not entirely human.
"You call it a curse… but it remembers."
The shelves shook. Scrolls burst into flame.
For a heartbeat, Ryo saw a vision flash across the fire — a younger King standing over an altar, holding a crying infant as crimson light wrapped around them both.
Then it was gone.
The curse flickered, then dimmed. Ryo collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.
When he looked up, Varen was gone — vanished back into the shadows.
By dawn, the forbidden archives had burned.
The guards found nothing but ashes — and a single melted royal seal.
In the throne room, Varen knelt before the King.
"Your Majesty," he said, his voice low. "The archives are destroyed. But I saw it with my own eyes. The power inside him — it's growing."
The King's face remained unreadable, but his fingers tightened around the armrest of his throne.
"Then it has begun," he murmured. "The seal is weakening."
"What are your orders, my liege?"
The King rose slowly, the crown casting a shadow over his eyes.
"If the curse awakens again," he said, "kill him before it remembers why it was made."
That same morning, far from the chaos, Ryo stood by his chamber window, pale and shaken.
Caro entered quietly, her face full of worry.
"You're hurt," she whispered. "What happened?"
Ryo didn't answer. His gaze was distant, haunted.
Finally, he said, "I know the truth now, Caro. The curse isn't my burden… it's my creation."
He looked down at his trembling hands, the faint red glow beneath his skin pulsing like a heartbeat.
"They made me this way — to bind power they couldn't control. And now it's breaking free."
The candle beside him flickered — the flame bending toward him like it recognized its master.
Caro took a step back, fear and sorrow mixing in her eyes.
"Then what will you do?" she whispered.
Ryo turned to the window, where the crimson dawn was rising again.
"I'll find the rest of the truth," he said. "Before they decide I'm no longer worth keeping alive."
And as the light touched his mark, it flared once more — brighter, sharper, alive.
The curse had awakened.
And this time, it would not sleep again.