DING!
[ Warning: Cursed Presence Detected ]
[ Entity Identified: Cursed Elf Fairy (Barbara) ]
[ Threat Level: S-Extreme ]
The sound came first, a sickening crack-crack-crack like ancient branches splitting under impossible weight. Then the shadows themselves began to peel apart, layer by layer, revealing what lurked beneath the darkness.
She emerged slowly, deliberately, savoring their fear. The Cursed Elf Fairy moved with an unnatural grace that made Krad's skin crawl. Barbara's form was a grotesque mockery of beauty—slender limbs wrapped in rotting vines that pulsed with malevolent life, tattered silk that might have once been a gown now hanging like funeral shrouds. But it was her wings that truly turned his stomach. Once, perhaps, they had been radiant, the pride of her kind. Now they were skeletal frameworks of chitin and bone, riddled with holes that wept black mana like infected wounds.
Her eyes found them. Hollow green orbs that glowed with an intelligence far too aware, far too hungry. The face was worse, a beautiful elf's features twisted into something that couldn't decide between grief and rage, frozen in an expression that might have been a smile or a scream.
"Poor intruders," she whispered, and her voice carried the rasp of dead leaves. "Lost little lambs who stumbled through doors never meant to open."
The words hit like a physical force. Krad felt his body move before his mind could process the command, stepping in front of Mist, placing himself between his dying companion and this nightmare given flesh. His legs trembled. Not from fear, though fear was certainly there... but from the sheer pressure of her aura. It crushed down on him like the weight of an ocean, making each breath a battle.
"What..." Krad forced the words out through clenched teeth, refusing to let his voice shake. "What the hell are you?"
Barbara's head tilted at an unnatural angle, that horrible smile widening. A sound emerged from her throat... laughter, maybe, or the death rattle of something long forgotten.
"What am I?" she cooed, taking a single step forward that somehow covered three times the distance it should have. "I am the consequence, child. The price of ambition, the echo of greed." Her gaze shifted past him, fixing on Mist's convulsing form with predatory interest. "You tore the veil between worlds. You awakened what should have remained sleeping. And now the Moon Eater's echoes gnaw at your companion's very soul."
She gestured languidly toward Mist, and Krad's blood turned to ice. "The wound he bears is no ordinary injury. It is my curse... no, my gift, woven into the Moon Eater's essence. When the beast awakened within you, it carried my mark."
Her smile turned cruel. "Every strike it delivered, every drop of blood it spilled, became mine to command. A reverse curse, child. One that ensures any damage inflicted by the Moon Eater can only be undone by my will... or by my..."
DING!
[ Warning: Slayer Mist Entering Final State ]
[ Death Countdown Initiated. Time Remaining: 00:05:00 ]
Time stopped. Krad's world narrowed to a single, horrifying sight, a crimson timer materializing above Mist's body, its numbers glowing like fresh blood. The digits ticked down with mechanical precision.
Barbara's laughter was like breaking glass mixed with dying screams. "You see it now, don't you? The beautiful symmetry of it all. The vessel that wounded him is the only one who can save him."
[ 00:04:59 ]
[ 00:04:58 ]
[ 00:04:57 ]
Each second was a hammer blow to his chest.
"Five minutes?" The words barely made it past his lips. His heart thundered so loud it drowned out everything else. Almost. He could still hear it. That relentless tick, tick, tick counting down to the moment his friend would cease to exist.
"No." Krad's hands balled into fists, nails digging crescents into his palms. "No, no, no. There's no way, this can't be---"
But denial changed nothing. The truth was there, stark and undeniable, rendered in crimson numbers that kept falling. They weren't in a game anymore. That illusion had shattered. Here, death was real. If Mist died in this corrupted realm, his heart would stop beating. He would be gone.
And Barbara knew it. Her smile said she knew exactly what she'd done, and she relished it.
"You carry the stench of guilt so beautifully," she purred, gliding closer. Each step left frost spreading across the stone beneath her feet. "The vessel's awakening shattered the balance of this place. Now the curse devours him from within, cell by cell, breath by breath. And no potion, no skill, no stone in any realm can undo what has already begun."
Behind him, Mist coughed—a wet, rattling sound that sent ice down Krad's spine. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, dark and thick. His body convulsed, and Krad could see them now, black veins spreading beneath his friend's skin like the roots of some poisonous tree, crawling further with each passing second. Each breath came shallower than the last.
[ 00:04:23 ]
"Damn it." Krad's voice was barely a hiss. His eyes burned with helpless rage. "There has to be a way. There has to be---"
"A choice, little vessel." Her voice dropped to something almost seductive. "Offer yourself. Give me the cursed power dwelling within you, and I shall lift the curse. Your life for his. The Moon Eater's essence for a single, insignificant human soul. It's more than fair, wouldn't you say?"
The air itself twisted. Dark tendrils erupted from the shadows, wrapping around Krad's wrists before he could react. They were cold, so cold they burned. The oppressive weight of Barbara's magic bore down on him, forcing him to his knees.
DING!
[ System Prompt: Sacrifice Detected ]
[ Offer Acceptance: System Override Enabled ]
[ Initiate? Yes / No ]
The prompt appeared before his eyes, glowing softly. His finger trembled, hovering over "Yes." It would be so easy. Just one press, his life for Mist's. Wasn't that what heroes did? Wasn't that---
"Don't... you dare."
The voice was weak, barely more than a whisper, but it cut through Krad's thoughts like a blade. Mist's eyes were open—bloodshot, pain-filled, but burning with a defiance that had no right to exist in someone so close to death.
"You think..." Mist coughed, more blood staining his lips. "You think I'd let you pull that hero crap? After everything?"
"But you'll die!" The words tore out of Krad's throat. Desperation cracked every syllable. "In four minutes, you'll---"
"Then I die." Mist's bloodied grin was savage, terrible, and somehow still cocky. "But not like this. Not with you throwing yourself away for nothing."
Barbara laughed, a sound like shattering glass mixed with dying screams. "Such bravado for one so broken. Such foolish human pride, even at death's door."
But then, impossibly, Mist's weak laughter joined hers.
"Foolish?" The word came out with a spray of dark blood. "Nah." His eyes, despite everything, despite the corruption eating him alive, despite the countdown to his death, gleamed with something sharper than pain. Sharper than fear. Resolve. "What's foolish is thinking I wouldn't see through your lies, you decrepit hag."
Krad's gaze snapped to Mist, confusion flooding through him. "What? Captain, what are you---"
Mist's trembling hand shot out, gripping Krad's wrist with surprising strength. When he spoke, his voice was venomous, each word carefully chosen.
"She's lying. That cursed bitch..." his fingers tightened, nails digging in. "she wants to devour you."
Barbara's expression didn't change, but something in the shadows around her writhed more violently. "What nonsense do you speak, wretch?"
"You think I didn't notice?" Mist coughed again, but his eyes never left Barbara's face. "The way your aura slithered when you mentioned the Moon Eater's awakening. The hunger in your voice. You don't want to spare anyone, you want its power... you're desperate for it." His lips pulled back in a blood-stained snarl. "And what better vessel than him? What better way to claim it than to have him offer himself willingly?"
The words crashed into Krad like a tidal wave. Suddenly everything clicked into place—Barbara's too-convenient offer, the way she'd positioned herself, the timing of the curse. This wasn't random. It was a trap.
His fists clenched, the dark tendrils still wrapped around his wrists beginning to crack under the pressure. "You..."
Barbara's wings snapped open with a sound like breaking bones. The facade cracked, revealing something ancient and furious beneath.
"Clever little insect," she hissed. "Too clever for your own good."
Mist's grin turned vicious despite the blood coating his teeth. "And I bet there's another way to break it, isn't there? One you conveniently didn't mention."
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant. Frost spread across every surface as Barbara's true nature manifested, rage and malice given form. "You dare---"
"If the caster dies," Mist interrupted, his voice growing fainter but no less certain, "the curse dies with them. That's how reverse curses work. That's the fail-safe built into their design." He coughed violently, more black blood splattering the ground. "So if Krad kills you... I live."
Barbara's voice turned guttural, inhuman. "That beast's soul shall be mine. Its power will restore what was taken from me!"
"Like hell it will."
Mist's voice was low, barely audible, but it carried absolute conviction. Despite the countdown above his head now showing [ 00:03:47 ], despite the black veins that had spread to cover half his visible skin, despite everything... he glared at Barbara with pure defiance.
"And I bet you're not even as strong as you pretend to be. Otherwise, why bother with this whole song and dance? Why offer a deal at all?" His grin turned vicious. "You're scared, aren't you? Scared of what he might become if he refuses you."
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying.
Barbara's skeletal wings snapped open with a sound like breaking bones. A screech tore from her throat, something that couldn't possibly come from any living thing, a sound that existed somewhere between rage and anguish. The shadows around her exploded outward, twisting into monstrous tendrils that lashed at the air, at the walls, at reality itself.
"You dare insult me, mortal?!" The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant. Frost spread across every surface. "You dare, when you stand at death's very threshold?!"
Krad moved. Not away, toward. He placed himself squarely between Mist and the enraged entity, his stance wide, his body coiled. The dark tendrils around his wrists shattered as power surged through him, not the Moon Eater's power, not yet, but something else. Something primal. The simple, absolute refusal to back down.
His knuckles cracked as he raised his fists. The air around him thickened with killing intent, his own and something else, something ancient that recognized a challenge when it saw one.
DING!
[ System Alert! ]
[ Battle Initiated ]
[ Opponent: Barbara, The Cursed Elf Fairy ]
[ Threat Level: S-Extreme ]
[ Warning: Victory Probability - 3.7% ]
[ Warning: Death Probability - 96.3% ]
Barbara's twisted grin returned, wider now, showing too many teeth. "Very well, vessel. If death is truly your wish, then I shall grant it! I'll tear you apart piece by piece, and feast on your essence while your friend watches his last minutes tick away!"