"Welcome to my Curse Containment Facility, little bro. I'm sure you've heard a lot about me!"
Dr. Brighton screamed with his hands spread apart, but no one paid attention to him. Liam and Renginald were seated at the table, going through the personal details of the man on the other side of the one-way mirror.
"He murdered his wife and daughter due to paternity fraud? Oh dear." Renginald was shaken.
'What the hell is he doing here? Let him out!'
Rolling his eyes, Liam shifted his gaze to the man on the other side. It was a dark-skinned man in his underwear, covered in tattoos, with ridiculously long and filthy dreads.
"Roman…" he muttered the man's name.
"What do you see?" Brighton whispered into Liam's ear.
"A man kneeling in a puddle of blood, shackled down by chains," Liam said blankly.
Brighton glanced at the murderer, who was bound to the ground with chains, but there was no blood.
"Is that what you see on me?" he asked.
Liam chuckled and shook his head. "For you, the chains are covered in blood and latched to your back. That's because you've never taken a life. You have people do it for you."
Brighton fell silent, shaken by what he'd just heard. Liam didn't wait for him to recover. He took the initiative and walked out of the room. When he was informed about the arrival of a new ascendant capable of seeing a person's sin, he was fascinated. But seeing firsthand how Liam could tell a person's exact crime was terrifying. It felt like, in the presence of this youth, everyone's secrets were laid bare.
Upon entering the containment chamber, Roman's head snapped up. His fierce gaze met Liam's eyes. There was no fear or regret—these were the eyes of a man who had already died inside. The man was chained to the ground at the center of the room, with a chair placed some distance away.
Liam calmly took a seat with the tablet still in his hand. He didn't even bother looking at Roman at first. He just kept scrolling through the man's information for a minute or so before letting out a sigh.
He could see the man's sin, but that was it. His instinct told him something was missing. The sin existed, but there was a disconnection—something preventing him from reaching it.
The two sat there in silence for several minutes, just staring into each other's eyes. The silence persisted for over five minutes until the corners of Liam's lips stretched apart with a sickening curve.
"Moral Weight." His eyes gleamed with a sinister light.
Watching Roman's defiance in sin reminded him of the way his father used to look at him. The man's resolve in evil was what pushed Liam to kill him. His father believed his resentment toward Liam was justified, so Liam subdued him and tortured him for hours. He made his father see the errors of his ways, breaking him to the point of tears before taking his life.
Moral weight was what his father lacked—and Roman was no different.
"You know, I can understand why you killed your wife. If I had my way, I'd have you released. We say no to paternity fraud." Liam began. "But your daughter? That's where I draw the line."
Roman's eyes flared with anger. For a moment, it seemed like he was going to explode, but then he fell silent, saying nothing—just glaring at Liam with undeniable disdain.
'Not enough?' Liam tilted his head slightly to the left.
"The ten years spent with your daughter may have been a lie to you, but it was the only truth she ever knew. Have you ever considered that?" Liam continued with a mischievous smile.
He watched Roman's fists clench and brows frown.
'Now I know what to do,' Liam leaned forward.
"To you, you murdered another man's daughter. But to Racheal, she was killed by her father…"
BAM!
Roman yanked forward with such force that the chains rattled under his weight.
"You cursed bastard! Keep my baby girl's name out of your damn mouth!" he growled like an animal, but all he did was make Liam laugh.
"Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!"
Roman boiled with rage as he watched Liam laugh hysterically.
"Your baby girl? You mean the one you killed?" Liam mocked between laughter. "If there is someone who doesn't have the right to speak about her, its you!"
Bam! Bam!
Like a raging bull, Roman was fuming, his eyes bloodshot. He yanked the chains repeatedly with all his might, praying to reach Liam. He was already a dead man—killing another wouldn't make his situation any worse.
"She had to go! She had to go!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, tears streaming down his cheeks.
At this point, Liam wasn't smiling anymore. His attention was fixated on the vague black chains flickering in and out of existence. The chains bound every one of Roman's limbs, including his neck, and converged into a ghastly dark ring on Liam's index finger.
Liam's eyes turned pitch black as whispers echoed in his ears, preaching the secrets of his curse while the image of a man standing beside a deity, pointing at a kneeling woman, flashed before his eyes.
"9th Step of the Devil Curse: The Accuser," he gasped in realization.
Devil Curse.
This was his power.
Without hesitation, Liam grabbed the black chains and pulled. To Dr. Brighton and every other observers, an invisible force yanked Roman forward, snapping the physical chains holding him down. He fell at Liam's feet with a loud bang, like a heavy ball of steel.
For Roman, he was lost in a world of his own—drowned by the cries and pleas of his wife and daughter. Their gruesome murders replayed before his eyes over and over, driving him to the brink of madness.
"I had to do it… I must do it!"
"I had to do it… I must do it!"
"I had to do it… I must do it!"
Roman repeated the same words while struggling to pick himself up. The physical chains had snapped, yet he felt more tightly bound than ever before. It was as if a truck rested on his back.
Liam lowered himself to Roman's ear and whispered,
"You lost your wife, daughter, and your life, while her affair partner walks around unharmed and proud. In the end, you lost…"
"NO!" Roman screamed, unaware that his eyes had turned pitch black and dark veins were spreading across his body.
"If only you paused for a second to think, you wouldn't be here. Racheal would still be alive. You would have been free to build a new family…" Liam laughed sinisterly.
Brighton silently watched Roman struggle against invisible restraints, growing paler with each passing second, while little black runes inscribed themselves on Liam's body one after another. For more than two decades, he had worked in this facility and had witnessed the power of several curses firsthand—but none as strange as this.