CHAPTER 13: SIGHT OF THE DAMNED
The gold was screaming.
Not audibly—nothing my ears could hear. But through the Curse Sight that had seized my vision without permission, I perceived something that felt like screaming. A frequency of suffering encoded in tarnished light, radiating from somewhere deep in the cave.
I pressed myself against the stone wall, trying to force my vision back to normal. It didn't work. The supernatural layer remained superimposed over reality—curse-chains visible as translucent gold threads, stretching through rock and darkness toward sources I couldn't yet see.
"You all right there, mate?"
Jack's voice, close and suspicious. I blinked hard.
"Fine. Just adjusting."
"To the dark? Or to something else?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. The headache was building behind my eyes like pressure before a storm, and every pulse of those golden threads intensified it.
We moved deeper. Jack first, then Will, then me. The cave opened progressively—narrow passages giving way to broader chambers, the smell of salt water mixing with something else. Something that made my stomach turn.
Decay that doesn't quite decay, I thought, breathing through my mouth. The stench of bodies that should have rotted but couldn't. The curse preserved them in their damnation.
The golden threads grew thicker as we advanced. What had been faint lines became chains—actual chains, visible only to me, stretching from the depths of the cave toward... everywhere. I could see now that they extended through the walls themselves, radiating outward in dozens of directions.
Each chain connected to something.
Someone.
"Wait." I grabbed Jack's arm. He froze, hand going to his sword.
"What?"
"There are—" I stopped. How could I explain what I was seeing? "There are more of them than I expected. A lot more."
"The cursed crew?" Jack's eyes narrowed. "And you know this how?"
"I can... feel them." Half-truth. Better than the full truth.
Jack studied me for a long moment. That calculating look again—the one that said he was adding another piece to a puzzle he couldn't quite solve.
"Your gut again."
"My gut."
He didn't believe me. But he also didn't push. We kept moving.
The curse architecture clarified as we approached the central chamber. Through my Sight, I could finally interpret what I was seeing.
Each golden chain connected a cursed pirate to the source—a stone chest somewhere ahead, pulsing with concentrated supernatural weight. The chains weren't uniform; some were thick, some thin. Some showed what looked like numerical patterns etched into their links.
Counters, I realized. Debt counters.
Each pirate had a number. A debt. Coins taken, coins owed. And the only way to erase that debt was blood—blood from the one who took the gold, or blood from their bloodline.
I could see the curse's mechanics. Not perfectly, not completely, but enough to understand the fundamental architecture. Each man had stolen gold; each man owed payment. The chest waited for every coin to return, accompanied by the blood-price.
And until that happened, they couldn't die. Couldn't feel. Couldn't rest.
Beautiful, something in my mind whispered. Beautifully cruel mathematics.
I shoved the thought aside. This wasn't beautiful. This was damnation made visible.
"There." Will's voice, barely a whisper. He pointed toward a glow ahead—warm, golden, emanating from a chamber beyond.
We crept forward. The passage narrowed, then opened suddenly into vastness.
The treasure chamber.
Even through my supernatural overlay, the sight was staggering. Gold coins heaped in mountains. Jewels scattered like autumn leaves. Paintings, statues, weapons, tapestries—centuries of plunder piled without order or care.
And in the center, on a raised platform of natural stone, the chest.
My Curse Sight blazed. The chest wasn't just the source of the chains—it was the curse, in some fundamental way. Every thread, every bond, every debt-counter originated from that stone container. The gold inside pulsed with malevolent hunger, waiting for what it was owed.
"Gods," Will breathed.
But I wasn't looking at the treasure. I was looking at the chains stretching from the chest in all directions—and at the figures they connected to.
Barbossa's crew.
They stood throughout the chamber, dozens of them, positioned around the treasure like guards at their posts. From here, they looked almost normal—grizzled pirates, armed and dangerous, but human.
The chains in my vision told a different story.
Each one carried the curse's weight. Each one owed a debt that had stretched across years. The tarnished gold around them pulsed with the same rhythm as the chest itself, a heartbeat of supernatural obligation.
"There she is," Will said, voice cracking.
Elizabeth. Standing at the chest's base, white dress stained with cave-dirt, fear visible even from this distance. A man in a captain's coat stood before her—Barbossa, I knew, though I'd never seen him in person.
The curse-chains around Barbossa were thicker than the others. Heavier. He'd been cursed longest, or taken more gold, or both.
"We need a plan," Jack murmured. "Something clever. Complicated. Involving—"
Voices echoed from ahead. Barbossa's theatrical growl cut through the chamber:
"And so, Miss Turner, the moment has arrived."
The golden chains in my vision pulsed brighter, converging on that single massive concentration where Elizabeth stood. The ritual was about to begin.
Will's hand went to his sword.
Jack's hand caught his wrist.
"Not yet," Jack breathed. "Wait."
I watched the chains flicker and pulse, understanding what was about to happen even as everyone else remained blind to the curse's true nature.
Elizabeth's blood wouldn't work.
I knew this. The curse needed Turner blood—real Turner blood. And Elizabeth Swann, for all her lies about her name, wasn't a Turner.
The ritual would fail. And when it did, chaos would follow.
My head throbbed. The Curse Sight was overwhelming, too much information flooding through senses that weren't designed for it. But I couldn't look away. Couldn't force the vision to stop.
This was what I'd become. A man who could see damnation's architecture.
I gripped Will's copper medallion through my shirt, the metal warm against my chest—a reminder that some gifts came without curses attached.
Barbossa raised his knife toward Elizabeth's palm.
The gold chains pulsed in anticipation.
And I watched, knowing what would happen, unable to change it without risking consequences I couldn't predict.
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