Dawn broke with a pale, trembling light, revealing the battlefield strewn with remnants of shadows. Leah's knees trembled as she sank to the cracked earth, her blade still humming faintly with the echoes of the night's struggle.
But the silence brought no relief. Among the scattered darkness, faint symbols shimmered on the ground—arcane markings that pulsed with a hidden energy. Leah crouched, tracing the patterns with a trembling finger.
A memory returned, sharper than any blade:
Long ago, the curse had not been born from rage alone. It had been sealed—an ancient ritual performed to contain a being too cruel to exist in the world. The seal was imperfect, weakened over generations, until greed and betrayal had broken it. That night, the blood moon had risen above the broken seal, awakening the entity trapped within.
Leah's heart tightened. She realized the beast she had fought was only the beginning—a sentinel of something far older, something patient, something waiting for the right soul to awaken its full power.
And then, from the edge of the battlefield, a figure emerged. Hooded, silent, but with eyes that glimmered like the blood moon itself.
"You've done well," the figure said, voice both calm and chilling. "But do you know what you've truly unleashed?"
Leah's grip on her blade tightened. "I destroyed it… I stopped it…"
The figure shook its head slowly. "No. You fought the shadow, yes. But the curse… it remembers. It waits. And it chooses. Soon, it will call again, and next time, it will not be satisfied with the remnants of your light."
Leah's chest heaved as the whispering wind carried the faintest echoes of the voices she had freed—pleading, lingering, desperate. She had fought, she had won, but the weight of the ancient malice pressed down harder than ever.
The hooded figure stepped closer, extending a hand. "If you wish to end this… truly… you must seek the origin. The seal. The heart of the darkness. Only then will the echoes be silenced."
Leah stared at the hand, her mind racing with visions of forgotten rites, blood-soaked histories, and a destiny entwined with shadows older than memory.
Her whisper barely rose above the wind:
"I will… I have to."
And with that, the first step of a darker, more dangerous journey began—one that would force Leah to face not just shadows of the past, but the true horror waiting behind the curse.