Cursed Odyssey

Zephyr

It was still morning, yet all I saw was red.

Blood splattered across broken stone. Fire consuming everything it touched. It crackled with the cries of infants—fragile lives snuffed out before they could fathom the cruelty of existence.

Clouds ran overhead, but these were no ordinary clouds...

The market that once bustled with songs and merchant calls now echoed with shrieks, littered with bodies and shattered hearts.

Children, once bright with innocent dreams, lay reduced to hollow shells drawing final breaths. Trembling mothers clutched them close—faces twisted with fear, confusion, shock—before they too were cut down without mercy.

Zott and Human warriors moved like fevered zombies, weapons gleaming. Eyes glazed with vengeance, pupils dilated black as rot, veins pulsing map-red, mouths wide with chants of death.

Buildings that once sheltered peaceful lives crumbled into charred skeletons.

The plants I helped grow? The crops I helped yield? Ash in the wind.

The weapons I helped craft? Stained crimson.

Zotts and Humans clashed like waves against jagged rocks. Each had their reasons to fight, to win at any cost. No pity lived in their eyes, no grief for the enemy. This was human nature laid bare, and I was no different.

Amidst the chaos, there I was—silent, unnoticed, weaving through shadows.

I was the cause. I was the end.

No triumph filled my eyes. No sorrow either.

What is a human heart but a fragile vessel swayed by fleeting emotions? It loves, it hates, it hopes—but above all, it deceives itself. It seeks comfort in illusions, pretending morality is absolute, that righteousness has meaning. Strip away the facade, and you find only desire, fear, and selfishness.

I moved through shadows, and that was all I saw.

The human heart is a flickering flame—warm yet easily extinguished. It clings to bonds, promises, fleeting joy, and trembles at the thought of loss.

I was no different. Anyone claiming otherwise is a liar.

We yearn for bonds, affection, love... We feed upon them like a life source.

These people see me as devil, some as saint. To myself, I was merely a traveler on a path carved by my own desires.

There is no reason for hate.

This is nothing but a clash of desires.

Who is the true monster? The one who kills from rage? Or the one who, absent or all feeling, paves a road of corpses toward his goal? Perhaps the answer lies not in the question, but in hearts too afraid to ask it.

For me, there was no answer.

Only the path ahead.

---

*Snap*

Joseph moved like shadow made flesh, vaulting splintered fences, sliding beneath fallen beams, weaving silently through charred debris. His eyes shifted with impossible speed while his head barely moved. No sound marked his passage across scorched earth. Flames flickered around him, illuminating cramped spaces ahead.

*Snap*

His chains were broken, his temporal echo restored. Saving sounds and creating distractions let him blend through the most dangerous areas.

Even in black smoke, his vision sharpened. Through winding rubble, his steps quickened. A sort of nourishment in anguish—a feeling he expected, all too familiar. It happened during his prison escape, and it happened now. Something like a smile touched his breath. He'd had theories before, but now it was concrete.

More sand had dripped from that brimming hourglass.

The thought flashed briefly before he reached his destination.

A familiar hut—or what remained. Once surrounded by medicinal herb gardens, now little more than broken timber and stone. In the debris, he barely made out a face. Dry green scales, a crushed skull, limp arms with jutting bones, a painful expression frozen in death.

Alma the village healer. Joseph approached without reaction. The Zott woman who had tended his ailments lay dead, her distinctive emerald scales dulled with dust and blood. The same woman who healed injured Zotts and Humans without discrimination, brought down by the very people she'd likely saved.

Joseph stepped past and thrust his hands into her chest. Flesh yielded with surprising ease, soft as jelly against his hardened fingers. His hands squirmed, squishing and digging until—

There.

He pulled out a small green worm, no longer than his index finger. It pulsed with inner light, translucent body revealing intricate patterns flowing like liquid emeralds. Tiny filaments extended from its head, waving gently as though tasting air.

An arcane spirit. After an arcanist's death, their core congealed and the spirit released to the heart. The villagers wouldn't know this, so it waited for him to retrieve.

If he'd had more time during the prison escape, he would have taken spirits from the guards. He'd seen others do exactly that, but as the leader chosen by that 'demi-god,' he couldn't belittle himself before his followers.

Quickly, he pocketed the worm, feeling it writhe against fabric, emanating pleasant warmth spreading through his side. He cast one final glance at Alma's remains before slipping away through shadows, moving from cover to cover.

He passed the library—once magnificent, now rubble with books aflame. The librarian certainly wouldn't survive.

He looked away and refocused ahead.

Soon he reached her. What remained of her.

Baro lay like a crushed, trampled animal—black horns and scales shattered, jaw broken, face barely recognizable.

No words. No hesitation. He crouched and reached into her chest, pulling out what looked like a wisp of living shadow-a black, ethereal form that seemed to exist between states.

It felt simultaneously solid and weightless in his palm, as if he held smoke and iron at once. The spirit flickered at the edges of perception, there but not there.

It felt like an anomaly, not mere absence of light.

He stashed it in his pocket. Then, he looked down again.

He was the reason for her demise. They'd left her no room to defend herself—such was rage and hysteria.

But what face was he making? What did he feel? No spectator could tell.

He looked upon the chaos once more—flames consuming everything he'd helped build—before leaving, quickening his pace.

---

Lord Yrrell

Underground tunnel:

Disbelief. Utter disbelief.

Not simply the fall of a village, but the fall of an era. Centuries of peace, and for what? To be undone by two filthy outsiders we could have—should have—executed on sight? Not two outsiders. No! Just that one! That filthy white stain! To think I even saved his life and defended him! The very devil they now think is a saint!

Us Zotts, eat humans? Baro doing such a thing? So preposterous, yet they swallowed it whole! The thought of human flesh disgusts me to my very soul! How did that happen? How could that happen?

My brain throbbed with every step. HIS face emerged—not smiling or mocking, just deadpan as ever, which made it somehow more demeaning.

I, Yrrell, leader of the Zotts, reduced to a fugitive scampering like vermin through dank tunnels. Mold and earth filled my nostrils as I trudged forward, walking stick tapping rhythmically against stone.

"I TOLD HIM!" I hissed through clenched teeth. "I warned that soft-scaled Adrian about those outsiders! 'Execute them!' I said. 'Don't you dare interrupt—' I told him!"

My claws dug into the worn wooden handle. That wretched human lord with his "mercy" and "kindness." A man so blinded by perceived wisdom he couldn't see doom walking through our gates. He considered only his own kind after all. If those had been Zott children, he would have executed them instantly!

The outsider boy with pale skin and blood-red eyes—he was no child. He was a demon in mortal flesh, sent to test us, and we failed spectacularly. Every innovation he brought, every smile he offered, every word from his vile lips was poison. And we, like starving beggars, lapped it up and begged for more.

And Adrian! That fool! Letting the boy roam free! His influence spread like a plague!

As if my people hadn't warned him! As if they hadn't tried ending the threat when we had the chance! AND I, THE BIGGEST FOOL, BELIEVED HIM AND STOPPED THEM!

Was Lagos truly a hoax? An excuse after all?

Rumbling above shook loose dirt from the ceiling, dusting my horns and shoulders. I could hear them—screams, crashes, the unmistakable roar of collapsing buildings. My people. Adrian's people. Butchering each other while their world burned.

I tightened my grip on my wobbly crown, gritting my teeth as I pressed forward.

This tunnel—this blessed escape route—was never meant to harbor a fleeing leader. It was for our "meditations," secret journeys to the outside world that kept our village prosperous. We would return with goods and knowledge "bestowed by ancestors," maintaining the illusion that fed our authority.

What did it matter now? Truth had shattered everything we built.

Another crash above. More screams. Each one sent tremors through my aged body.

"Keep moving..." I screamed at myself.

I was alone.

My closest followers, my most trusted advisors... I'd seen the look in their eyes during that last congregation, how quickly doubt festered when the outsider spoke his poison.

My horns scraped the low ceiling as I quickened my pace. The tunnels were barely lit—I could hardly see my feet.

A loose rock struck my face. My scales bled red, my encrusted, heavy crown fell clanking. Yet I didn't look back. I couldn't. My heart threatened to leap from my mouth.

Above, another explosion shook the earth. Dust and pebbles rained down, speckling my shoulders. I didn't bother brushing them away. My eyes fixed only on darkness ahead, on that pinprick of light promising relief.

Everything behind me was useless now.

Revenge. The outsiders. Adrian. My very people. Their faces flashed through my mind, then dissolved like mist.

From years of knowledge and experience, my soul knew there would be time for retribution later. No evil in this world goes unpunished according to the lord. There would be time to rebuild. Time to—

*Snap*

I froze, body tensing.

What was that?

Silence followed. Just my imagination, perhaps. The strain of—

"HE'S UNDER US! THAT FRAUD IS UNDER US!"

My heart stopped.

Roaring voices above. Pounding feet. They knew. They KNEW!

My claws fumbled for my arcane spirit—but before I could grasp it, before I could even curse, the ceiling gave way.

Rocks, dirt, timber—the weight of everything I'd built and sacrificed to protect fell at once.

Pain flared white-hot for one merciful instant.

Then nothing.

As darkness closed in, my fading vision caught the faces of those I once led—my own people. All Zotts. Their eyes wild like animals, mouths twisted in triumph as they celebrated my demise. After everything I'd done for them...

In death, the soul opens up. The soul is honest—it sees past the cloudy fog of life and delusion.

The last sound I heard wasn't the praise I expected, nor ancestors welcoming me in their embrace, but the rasp of those I'd ruled for decades, those I'd once considered my very limbs. Were these truly the same people I'd so dearly cherished? Hard to believe, yet I knew it in my soul. How had they even found me?

HIS face appeared.

Why was his face the last thing I saw before it all went black?