Something strange was happening.
The symptoms of the curse started to fade all of a sudden, and no one could understand the reason. At first, there was confusion, more fear, more doubts, but the worries dimmed within a few days.
Every morning, the city people grew in number, and every night, the city was immersed in euphoria. The Pleasure City was still far from how it had once been, but softly, it was coming alive―and Alyssane watched it all unfold with an uneasy heart.
'Everyone died last time.'
The Nightmare Curse had ended along with the cursed.
Alyssane anxiously shifted her eyes back to the book she was reading.
Two days ago, Luke had regained consciousness, and since then, Alyssane couldn't feel at ease around him. She was still not allowed to wander the tavern freely.
She was still not allowed to step out, still not allowed to be free, and with every moment, the weight of her reality drowned her deeper into a sea of dread.
Alyssane had never felt a more painful desire to see someone so badly before. She wanted to speak with him, ask him what he meant, what he was doing. But he was never there.
'What did you mean when you said I was innocent, Kazmun? You do not treat me as such.'
And so, she closed herself off in her room.
Alyssane did the only thing she could do. She religiously read the books and texts he wanted her to read. There was no end to them, and there was no end to her troubles, but she needed a distraction.
The texts varied in topics: some were scholarly books, some were memoirs, some were journals and even newspaper clippings. Each equally exhausting to read—the subjects ranged from politics to medical sciences, history to culture.
The pattern remained the same. Mass tragedies with mysterious origins and mysterious ends.
'Is Kazmun trying to understand the Nightmare Curse?'
On her fourth evening, Alyssane discovered two strange things.
The first was a scroll written in an ancient language she could not decipher, but there were a few peculiar illustrations in it.
It started with a detailed image of a beautiful princess, and perhaps the rest of the scroll was about her life. The second illustration was an anatomical view of her brain and its deterioration over three fortnights.
First, there were faint traces of rot, and she was dazedly looking at the blood on her fingers that trickled down from her nose. In the following illustrations, she fainted as the ailment progressed. The bleeding worsened.
At last, the blood stopped.
She did not wake up, but her sleeping face was shadowed with grief and pain. The gilded royal room was split in the illustration, with its other half becoming a dark cage of ghouls and demons, each one of them trying to tear her apart.
The illustrations had the princess wasting away while trapped in her nightmare. Her body shrunk from starvation. No one was ever there for her in the illustrations.
A huge part of the scroll after that could not be interpreted because the ink was washed away. But the final illustration showed the princess standing in the middle of her kingdom's ruins.
Somehow, she had survived.
"Was there a cure?" Alyssane wondered out loud, and her confusion grew further because everyone believed that the tragedy a decade ago was the first recorded instance of a Nightmare Curse.
Was this really the Nightmare Curse?
'What happened to her kingdom?'
Alyssane placed the scroll aside with a heavy sigh. She would share it with Kazmun if he met her, and perhaps she might find some other records of that time that could shed light upon the curse―the moment that thought came to her mind, she cursed herself.
'I will not be with him for longer.' Alyssane promised herself.
The second strange thing was an old journal, maintained roughly a decade ago in meticulous handwriting, but the ink had bled out on its pages too and once again the damage was from water. On the first page, Alyssane could only make out the words: walls stained in crimson, deaths, and the night of madness. But the following page was readable.
I saw a ghost.
Standing amid the bloodshed, he wore feathery white, his face hidden behind a wooden mask, and as everyone was driven to the edge of insanity—taking their own lives, or those of others—he silently stared at me as though we had always known each other.
But then suddenly, there was a chilling shift I could feel in my soul.
Mother stepped in before I could react, as if she too sensed the danger and she collapsed in an instant. Her eyes were vacant and lost, sudden tears streamed down her eyes and she kept whispering 'I can't… forgive me…'
She could not hear me as I begged her to come with me. We had to leave. But she only asked me to run, holding my hand firmly as her own hands trembled. Her words were too desperate…
The ink was bled over the following pages as well.
But the writing was comprehensible.
The mother had tried to resist. She forced a smile, assuring her son it would be all right, he should just run to a safer place, and she would be with him soon, but her breaths were not right, her skin was colder than ice.
She was trembling beyond any reason, and soon the mask of her smile faltered as she broke down into sobs and tears, all while her trembling hands pried out a knife from a deceased man.
She dug it straight through her heart, and she could never stop plunging the blade inside her again and again even as all her strength waned and she was barely able to move.
She could not hear her son's cries, she could not hear his words, and he was too small to make her stop—too weak to save her.
"What are you doing?"
Kazmun was behind her, standing so close his sudden voice startled Alyssane. He raised a brow seeing her pale expressions.
She nervously shifted away from him, trying hard to steady the sudden racing beats of her heart, and no words came out of her mouth. Her mind still lingered on those haunting words from the diary that unearthed painful memories from her past.
'Too weak to save her.'
Kazmun took the diary from her hands.
"I have not finished reading—!" She tried to say, but her words were cut off when she noticed Kazmun pause near the fireplace, his expression unreadable.
She curled her fingers and said nothing more.
The journal was not hers.
But when his gaze lingered on her, as if to wonder why she cared so much for something like that, she silently pleaded with him to not do what he was going to.
Kazmun looked away, "He killed his mother." His voice was devoid of any emotion.
Alyssane silently stared as he threw the small journal into the fireplace, and for a moment she could not move her eyes from the flames engulfing the yellowed pages.
'Why keep something you wanted to destroy?'
"It was useless," Kazmun said, his tone dismissive as the journal slowly turned into ashes.
"What brought you here?" She asked Kazmun in a hollow voice, trying to mask the turmoil of her emotions.
"I heard you wanted to meet me," he said, closing the distance between them, "That you had questions." He stopped in front of her, tall and as coldly handsome as ever, sending a ripple of tension through her heart.
"I did…" Alyssane lowered her gaze, and said while forcing her voice to be still, "But I am not sure if they matter."
With those words, she tried to move away, create more distance between them but then he told her to stop. His voice was colder and yet seemed strangely soft.
She froze, and never before had she desired more to be away from him, from all the confusion and the chaos he brought into her life, and from all the things he made her question. But Alyssane said nothing out loud.
Kazmun frowned.
He leaned closer, his presence overwhelming, and then pressed his hand against her forehead. His touch was surprisingly warm.
"You're burning up with fever," he said, his voice low and deep.
"I... didn't realize," Alyssane murmured, turning away from him. "I should rest then, goodbye―"
Before she could take a step, Kazmun's strong hand grasped her chin, gently but firmly making her look at him. His eyes were intense, filled with a mix of concern and something unreadable, something darker.
"Why is it that, every time I see you," He wiped a small trickle of blood from her upper lip with his thumb, "You are falling apart?"
Her breaths fell silent.
Alyssane closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath to calm the sudden racing of her heart, and the rush of heat coursing through her veins.
But her mind was a whirlwind of confusion, and emotions she could not understand. When she opened her eyes, she could hardly see anything.
'It feels too wrong…'
The room seemed to blur around as her steps faltered, and the weight of the fever pulled her deeper into a state of drowsiness, and back again through the pages of the journal. An old buried memory opened like a festered wound.
'Forgive me, dear… you have to see mother like this.'
The world dissolved into darkness.