Chapter 1: [Initiating Curse]

“We're about to open the gate!” a man shouted from a raised platform inside the dungeon.

He wore long purple robes. Symbols stitched and emblazoned across the fabric marked him as high nobility. His voice cracked like a whip through the cavern, loud enough to drag every last pair of eyes in his direction.

I was close enough that the sound made my ears ring. I flinched, blinking hard, trying to piece together where I was.

In front of me sprawled an encampment. A sea of tents stretched across the cavern floor in the hundreds, maybe thousands, packed so tightly the paths between them looked like veins cut through pale cloth.

My first thought was that the students had built them.

The young men and women surrounding me wore almost identical robes, differentiated only by color and a few rank insignias. The theory felt even more solid when I took a better look at the tents. They were… bad. Sloppy seams and sagging lines. Half of them looked like one good gust of wind would fold them in on themselves.

Yet I was the only one looking at any of it.

Tomb-like structures and carved symbols dotted the cavern walls and jutted out of the stone in places, ancient and deliberate, but the students paid them no mind.

Every eye was locked on the colossal gate. So huge that if you stacked thirty people on one another’s shoulders, you still wouldn’t reach the top. It looked like it had been forged from a single slab of metal, seamless and impossibly thick. Its surface was packed with thousands of runes and glyphs that braided together like living script.

What unnerved me most was that it reacted.

Whenever someone drifted too close, the symbols shimmered. One after another, they lit. Colors shifted and swirled across the metal, reflecting off the cavern walls and painting everyone in a dim glow.

The whispers around me all circled the same question.

“What lies beyond the gate?”

No one had an answer. Least of all me.

The man standing atop the platform stepped down, walking in my direction and weaving through the students. When he saw me, he curled one side of his lip and wrinkled his nose.

“Kaspar. Don’t just stand there, you piece of shit,” he shouted, his voice almost bursting in my ear.

Kaspar? Is that who I am?

The more I tried to hold onto it, the stranger it felt.

Inside my head, conflicting memories pushed and pulled, two distinct lives overlapping like shadows cast from different angles.

One set felt sharper, more real. It had faces, smoke, and sirens.

Fire.

I remembered a father vanishing into flames again and again, dragging strangers out as if his own life was a thing he could spend. I remembered a boy who might have been me, watching and thinking that heroism looked an awful lot like suicide.

And then… nothing.

I had died.

At least until earlier today, I thought, and my gaze slid back to the gate and the mass of bodies surrounding it.

The other memories were hazy, fragmented. Bits of unfamiliar faces, places I didn’t recognize, conversations that didn’t belong to me. I couldn’t tell if they were mine at all or the leftover pieces of someone else’s life jammed into my skull.

“Don’t stand there! All of you, get to the gate!”

He shouted again, snapping me back.

“But, professor, what if there’s something dangerous?” a boy called out. His voice wavered, fear bleeding through.

“Use your magic!” the professor barked. “You have trained for this, spent the last three years at the Academy preparing for such moments. Apply what you’ve learned!”

“Three years? We’re first-years!” the boy shot back, scrambling for support in the murmuring crowd.

The professor’s expression tightened, anger grinding into something uglier. “Don’t give me that. You’re the ones who asked to be here. Now you are, and if anyone gets the shitty idea of trying to run—” He drew in a deep breath, like he was trying not to explode. “Expulsion and exile won’t be enough. I’ll beat you myself. So get in the fucking line and march.”

My stomach turned. Academy, three years, first-years. None of it fit. I had no memory of the Academy, or of volunteering to be here.

Without thinking, I took a few steps backward, trying to separate myself from the press of bodies.

It was pointless.

Soldiers ringed us on all sides, keeping the formation tight, herding us forward with the casual certainty of men who knew no one would resist.

Against ordinary soldiers, I could find a way to slip past.

But I couldn’t stop staring at the others.

The ones in armor.

They wore heavy plate that looked otherworldly, etched and inlaid with glowing runes and symbols. Their helmets were closed, faces hidden, and sometimes the only thing visible through narrow slits were their eyes, cold and unreadable. They carried shields nearly as tall as they were in one hand, and in the other they gripped staves crowned with blue crystals that caught the cavern light like trapped lightning.

The way they positioned themselves left no gap to run.

I can figure out who I am later. When I’m back at my tent. When this is over.

The ground sloped downward as we advanced, funneling us deeper into the cavern, closer to the gate, closer to whatever waited beyond it.

“It’s opening!” a boy shouted, pointing ahead.

A hush fell, heavy and immediate, as we reached the lowest point of the cavern.

At the foot of the gate, a man stood alone.

His hair was obsidian-black, and his arms were outstretched. In each hand, he wielded three rings of swirling cerulean energy rotating so fast I couldn’t make out the writing inside them. Strands of light snaked outward from him and latched onto the monumental door.

I couldn’t look away.

Energy filaments struck the gate, and the cavern filled with the sound of metal grinding against metal. A narrow crack appeared between the massive doors, then widened, slowly, reluctantly, like the metal itself didn’t want to let go of what was sealed inside.

Darkness leaked out.

A void so complete it swallowed light instead of blocking it.

My pulse slammed against my throat.

“They had to summon a Sixth Circle Mage to open it,” someone whispered near me, voice tight with fear.

The murmurs around us thickened. “A Sixth Circle Mage and Magik Armors, assisting the Academy? That’s unheard of!” Another student sounded half-awed, half-terrified.

“Shut the fuck up and start casting protection spells,” a boy in a more worn robe snapped. He sounded older, upper-year, maybe. “This is why I didn’t want to be stuck with the first-years.”

As we moved, some of the students around me began to glow. Blue rings formed around their arms. Circles that pulsed as they chanted in low, rhythmic tones.

I stood among them, lips moving to mimic the chant, trying to look like I knew what was happening.

Nothing worked. No ring formed around my arm, and I had no idea what to do.

A shout thundered from ahead.

“It’s open! Charge!”

The command slammed into the cavern walls and came back twice as loud.

The doors were open, yawning wide like the mouth of some beast.

Despite the ominous black beyond, the procession began to move. Thousands of us advanced as one. Some kept chanting with their eyes closed. Others clutched talismans and whispered prayers.

Some looked like they were about to cry.

I went cold between the shoulders.

I glanced back.

Ahead of us, more of the armored soldiers marched with bold steps, as if walking in first could make the rest of us braver.

I matched a mantra to my feet, one more step, then another, and forced myself to keep pace with the crowd.

I should have had a weapon, anything, and I still didn’t know what waited beyond those doors, let alone who I am.

As the last of us crossed the threshold, a blinding light exploded from above.

I threw an arm up to shield my face, but the glare forced itself through the gaps between my fingers.

Flames poured from the ceiling in violent torrents. The heat was immediate, brutal. Scorching air rolled over us in waves that made breathing feel like swallowing fire.

Something moved above. Huge shadows cutting through the light, winged and fast.

“What’s happening?” I choked out, but my voice vanished under the roar of the inferno.

An acrid liquid rained down.

It splattered against the stone and ignited on contact, blooming into sheets of flame that crawled outward. Fire licked at the edges of cloaks, kissed boots, devoured anything it touched.

Around me, students survived it.

A shimmering aura wrapped around them. A bright barrier flared and held the burning liquid back. Their shields of magic glowed like living glass, flexing with every impact.

I had no shield.

The first splash narrowly missed me and ate into the stone at my feet with a hiss and a hungry flare. Instinct drove me down into a crouch, trying to make myself smaller, trying to vanish.

My moment of shelter didn’t last.

I looked up and saw them.

Large shapes soared overhead, bathed in firelight. Wings beat hard enough that I had to brace a hand against the ground.

Wyverns.

The word lit up in my mind. From the sharper life I remembered a game, something with monsters like these. From the other, hazier life, I remembered a book, a saga, stories where creatures like this burned villages into ash.

One of them turned and locked its gaze onto me. Opened its maw and poured fire straight at where I crouched.

I didn’t have time to move before the inferno hit me.

Pain consumed everything. My robes ignited instantly, fabric going up as if it had been soaked in oil. The burning liquid sank into the cloth and clung to my skin, refusing to let go.

I screamed.

The others kept moving.

Their shields held and their chanting never broke. Not one of them looked back. I might as well already have been dead.

“Help me!” I tried to shout, but my voice came out broken, strangled by smoke and agony. The battle sounds swallowed it whole.

My skin blistered and peeled. Every nerve burned with a pain so complete it made my thoughts stutter and break apart. My vision blurred, darkening at the edges as smoke invaded my lungs.

Not again.

Is this how it ends? Each second thickened.

As my sight dimmed, symbols appeared before me.