Chapter 1: [Initiating Curse]

“We are 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, or something close to it. 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 what—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.

How do I know that?

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

Yet, somehow, 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. Their attention wasn’t on the camp, or the carvings, or the oppressive feeling of being underground.

Every eye was locked on the colossal door at the far end of the cavern.

Calling it a door felt wrong. It was a gate, more like a monument than an entrance. 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 intricate symbols—runes, glyphs, spirals that intersected and 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, mystical glow.

The whispers around me weren’t about how beautiful it was.

They were all circling the same question.

“What lies beyond the gate?”

No one had an answer. Least of all me.

The man standing atop the podium 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, as if I disgusted him.

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

Kaspar? The name floated up in my mind like something half-remembered and misplaced.

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. Realer. Faces, smoke, 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—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! You all need to proceed 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.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Academy? Three years? First-years?

None of it fit. I didn’t remember attending anything. I didn’t remember volunteering to be here. I didn’t remember asking for any of this.

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.

When they were just humans, I could find a way to avoid them.

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.

They moved like an army marching into war.

The way they positioned themselves made it clear: there would be no escaping this crowd.

I can figure out who I am later, I told myself, forcing air into my lungs. 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 flowed like ink, and his arms were outstretched as if he were holding up the world. 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 world itself didn’t want to let go of what was sealed inside.

Darkness leaked out.

A void so complete it seemed to swallow light rather than merely block it.

My heart hammered.

What could be inside?

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