CHAPTER 257: WHAT’S BEHIND THIS?

Kael squinted as he pushed open the large church doors. The evening light blinded him for a moment, but he soon realized that something was wrong—very wrong.

The once-quiet village was now in turmoil.

The fog had thickened, spreading in thick veils like smoke from a smoldering furnace. It flowed through the streets like a living thing, brushing against the walls of houses, embracing the corpses that had once lain motionless on the ground... and now moved again.

The villagers—or what remained of them—were everywhere. They crawled, staggered, or simply ran with exposed claws and hollow eyes. More deformed than before. More savage. They roared like beasts as they approached the church, as if something attracted them... or enraged them.

Kael took two steps forward, Klee right behind him. He raised one hand and conjured a small circle of flames to ward off the nearest undead.

"They haven’t stopped..." he muttered, his gaze alert. "They’ve grown stronger."

Klee grabbed his arm. "But... wasn’t it supposed to be over? You destroyed the altar! The seal! That spirit—"

"—was sealed in the altar, yes," Kael finished, his teeth clenched. "But this... this is something else."

"Perhaps other things," Umbra said in his mind, his deep, drawn-out voice echoing like a nightmare. "The reaction of the spiritual field was... unusual. Breaking the seal should have dissipated the influence, but the effect was the opposite. The curse spread even further."

Kael felt a chill. He kept his eyes fixed on the thick fog, studying its movements. It was abnormal—not just ordinary mist. It pulsed, hissed as if breathing, writhing in the alleys like snakes of smoke.

"Are you saying there was more than one spirit?" he asked in a low voice.

"Or that the spirit was just a fragment of something larger," Umbra replied. "Perhaps a herald. A servant of the true evil that plagues this village."

Kael closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm his breathing. He felt his mana slowly swirling inside him, like embers waiting for a spark. But fire alone wasn’t enough—he needed vision. He needed to understand what the mist was hiding.

"I need to see better," he muttered.

Klee, her hands still wrapped around his arm, stared at him. "See what? We’ve seen enough in there, Kael!"

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he removed a manita crystal attached to his shoulder armor and squeezed it between his fingers. Arcane energy reverberated through his skin, like a mild shock. Slowly, he channeled mana into his eyes—something dangerous, but necessary.

"I’m looking for a new way to see," he replied, his voice deep with concentration.

Klee frowned. "See... how?"

Kael did not answer. The world around him began to darken in contrast, as if he were sinking into murky waters. The shapes around him lost their sharpness as his vision adjusted to other frequencies of energy—those of the spirit plane.

A sharp pain throbbed behind his eyes, like spinning knives. For a second, everything became shadow... and then, something flashed.

There, among the distorted houses and fog-covered fields, he saw—not with his physical eyes, but with arcane perception—dark spots moving slowly, like specters trapped between worlds. There were multiple entities on the fringes of reality. They floated above the rooftops, peered from the eaves, hidden within the fog itself.

Ancient beings, shrouded in spiritual chains, many of them deformed, with elongated skulls, mouths in impossible places, and eyes dripping with putrid light. And more than that—sealed objects anchored them: small forgotten relics scattered throughout the village. A medallion in a window, a bell buried in the ground, a cracked coat of arms stuck in a tree.

"They are spiritual anchors," he muttered, swallowing hard. "They are trapped... or being summoned... by cursed objects scattered throughout the village."

Ahri, silent until then, appeared in his mind with her deep voice. "So it wasn’t just the altar. The altar was just one of the seals. Each of these objects is linked to an entity. They are fragments — parts of a greater curse. A ritual was performed here, Kael. Ancient, complex. And it wasn’t finished."

"So we have to... destroy them all?" Klee asked nervously.

Kael hesitated. "If we break the seals without control... we could release the spirits completely. But if we leave them as they are, the dead will keep coming back."

"It’s a balancing act," Umbra whispered. "One wrong move... and chaos spreads. One right move... and maybe you can bring them all to a single prison. A trap."

Kael took a deep breath, his eyes still glowing with the faint blue light of spiritual vision magic. "There’s a focal point... further north. In the center of the village. All the flows converge there. It’s as if... something is calling them."

He pointed. Through the mist, the silhouette of an old clock tower barely stood out—a dark stone structure with an iron cross on top, partially corroded by time. The bell tower.

"We’ll have to go there," he said. "That’s where this curse is strongest."

Klee nodded with a hesitant gleam in her eyes. "Let’s end this."

Kael clenched his hands and began to move forward. Each step in the fog was like passing through a veil of living shadows. He kept his spiritual vision active, sensing the presences around him and signaling to Klee where the specters and sealed objects were.

As they crossed the central square, the dead slowly emerged—not from graves or the earth, but from the walls, from the shadows. The villagers, contaminated by lower entities, came like puppets driven by hatred.

Kael conjured flames in low arcs, preferring control to blind destruction. Klee, on the other hand, was more restrained, throwing small bombs that burned without affecting the surrounding environment.

Around every corner, Kael saw more relics—mirrors cracked with spectral energy, twisted crucifixes, blackened bells.

"We can’t destroy them now," he said. "Only after we know how to shut everything down at once."

As they approached the tower, a deep roar shook the ground.

This time, it was no ordinary specter.

From the top of the tower descended a creature shrouded in spectral robes, with eyes like glowing holes. It did not touch the ground—it floated, enveloped in chains that dragged along with the sound of a thousand corrupted prayers.

Ahri spoke in Kael’s mind: "That is a spirit of connection. It is summoned by curse masters to protect seals. Do not destroy it yet. It holds the anchors together."

Kael dug his heels into the ground, his eyes fixed on the approaching figure—a presence of pure arcane terror. The spirit of connection emanated an aura so dense that even the mist itself seemed to recede in its presence. Spectral chains trailed behind it, some caught in the air as if anchored to other planes. On its chest, a symbol pulsed in rhythm with the spirit seals scattered throughout the village.

"He’s holding everything together..." Kael murmured, feeling the spiritual energy vibrate on his skin. "It’s like the central knot of a web."

"Exactly," Ahri replied. "Each anchor is connected to him. If he is destroyed recklessly, the entities will spread out of control."

Umbra added in her usual deep voice, "But if it is mastered... it can serve as a conduit. A receptacle to imprison the fragments."

Kael nodded slowly. He knew what he had to do—and he knew the risk involved. Using a connecting spirit as a receptacle required more than power: it required absolute control, a firm will... and a sacrifice.

"Let’s contain it," Kael said, raising his arm. "Klee, cover me. Just keep the others away. I need to concentrate."

She hesitated, but nodded, her gaze steady. "All right. But if it tries to kill you, I’ll throw everything I’ve got at it."

"Fair enough."

Kael advanced calmly, his steps steady, the flames around him dissipating—he didn’t want to scare the entity away just yet. His hands moved in circular gestures, drawing runes with thin streaks of blue light in the air.

The spirit of connection stared at him, floating a few feet above the ground. It was tall, incorporeal, but with traces of something that had once been human. In place of a mouth, a flickering slit; instead of eyes, two rings of black fire. When it spoke, the voice did not come out as sound—it invaded Kael’s mind like a thousand voices whispering at once.

"You desire the burden."

Kael did not flinch. "I want to end it. It will remain with me. In just imprisonment. But intact."

"You are not the first to try."

"Perhaps not. But I will be the last."

The spirit raised its spectral hands, and echoes of the seals emerged from its chest—one, two, three anchors, which began to glow as they manifested around them. It was a test. A resistance.

Kael took a deep breath. He began to conjure circles of containment, a magic that required absolute precision. He traced a double hexagram on the ground with blue flames, and in the center he cast a spiritual amphora—a fragment of manita crystal, carved into a receptacle.

"Umbra, help me guide it to the core," he said. "Ahri, stabilize the flows around it."

"I envelop it," Umbra replied.

"I control the pulses," Ahri said.

A black aura, made of Umbra’s essence, slowly enveloped the spirit, trapping its chains in hooks of shadow. At the same time, Ahri’s purple light vibrated at the edges of the seals, preventing them from escaping.

The spirit screamed—a mental sound that made Klee stumble and cry out, covering her ears. The relics throughout the village began to vibrate in unison, as if trying to resist unification.

Kael then spoke the final words of the invocation—and the spirit was pulled like lightning into the seal on the ground. Chains, anchors, fragments of the curse: everything was absorbed in a blinding blue flash.

For a moment, everything was silent. No wind. No screaming. No fog.

Klee, still holding the bombs in her hands, looked around. "Did it work?"

Kael fell to his knees, his eyes glowing with residual energy. "It worked."

He reached out and pulled the now completely sealed amphora from the center of the seal. Inside it, a living darkness flickered—the spirit of connection, now imprisoned with all the anchors.

"Damn... why did Raven give me such a difficult first job?" Kael muttered...

"That is, if she didn’t create this incident herself... This is no small thing, this is the work of a Master of Curses."