Nero walked through the shattered streets of the cursed clan's village.
The air thickened with every step, a miasma of sorrow pressing against his skin, crawling into the cracks of his mind.
Not even the warmth of his own magic could drive it back for long.
It wasn't like Lyra's faint, passive despair.
This was a flood.
A relentless tide of agony pressing in from every direction.
The collective despair of an entire people.
The closer they got to the heart of the village, the harder it became to breathe.
Grief.
Loss.
An ocean of despair so vast it could drown the world.
We hate you!
You don't belong here!
Despair!
Die!
Nero stopped, chest rising and falling with sharp, shallow breaths.
The voices clawed at his mind like jagged nails, each word a splinter digging into his skull.
His vision blurred at the edges, black spots blooming like rot.
He closed his eyes and focused.
His Occlumency barriers flared, pushing back against the flood of negativity, but it wasn't enough.
The pressure pressed harder, bleeding into the cracks, seeping into his thoughts like ink in water.
So he switched tactics.
Nero raised his wand and tapped his temple.
He summoned the same defense he'd once used instinctively against his father's mental attack, but this time, he shaped it consciously.
He wove Void magic through his barriers, forming a second layer of protection.
A Void Barrier.
The effect was immediate.
The oppressive emotions dulled, like voices muffled through thick glass.
The weight on his chest lifted, and his heartbeat steadied.
Void didn't erase the influence, it consumed it.
The negativity dissolved against the barrier, sinking into the void like raindrops into an endless sea.
Nero exhaled, opening his eyes.
Lyra watched him, her gaze wide. "How... how can you stand it?" she whispered. "Even I feel it, and I'm used to it..."
"I had my own curse," Nero muttered, adjusting his grip on his wand. "I just turned it into armor."
Lyra blinked, her fingers curling tighter around the blanket Nero had conjured for her.
She didn't understand what he meant, but she didn't ask.
She just followed.
The village itself was more of a graveyard.
Cracked stone buildings leaned precariously against each other, their roofs caved in or missing entirely.
The streets were littered with debris, remnants of a life abandoned. And the people...
They watched from the shadows.
Men, women, and children peered from broken windows and behind crumbling walls, their faces gaunt and expressionless.
They didn't speak. They didn't move closer.
They just watched.
Their eyes were empty.
Nero understood now why Malrik's men didn't simply storm the village by force.
The aura of despair here was more than just a feeling, it was a weapon, strong enough to shatter the mind of anyone unprepared.
Without powerful magical defenses, entering this place was slow suicide.
The Black Talons must have relied on artifacts like the cursed lantern to blunt the worst of the curse, giving them just enough protection to snatch victims and retreat.
But even with such tools, the experience would have been brutal, each raid eroding willpower and sanity, leaving scars that no magic could heal.
Malrik either needed these people desperately, or he simply didn't care how much it cost his followers.
Either way, it was a risk only the ruthless or the mad would take.
At the heart of the village rose the Hollow Tree.
A colossal, gnarled trunk that towered high above the ruins, its massive branches clawing at the sky.
From a distance, it had dominated the landscape; up close, its true size was overwhelming, as if an ancient god had planted it here to watch over the broken city.
Its bark was blackened and twisted, wide enough to swallow a house, riddled with hollows that oozed a faint, sickly light.
Pulses of dim magic crawled along its surface, veins of dying energy that throbbed in time with the heartbeat of despair saturating the air.
Here, the aura was at its strongest, a crushing, suffocating weight that pressed down on Nero's senses, threatening to drown out thought itself.
The closer Nero got, the more pressure slammed against his barriers, pushing at the edges of his consciousness.
His Void Barrier held, but it strained, rippling like a glass dome trying to contain a raging storm.
The tree seemed to breathe.
Its bark shuddered, and Nero swore he heard faint whispers emanating from within it.
Not just sadness. Something... older. Deeper.
And beneath the tree, an old woman sat in a wooden chair.
She was frail, skin like parchment stretched over brittle bones, her hair a tangle of white threads. But her eyes, dark and sharp, tracked Nero the moment he stepped into the clearing.
Lyra froze. "Grandmother..." she whispered.
The old woman lifted her hand, crooking a finger toward Nero. "Come closer," she rasped.
Nero did.
He stopped a few feet from her, wand still in hand but lowered.
"You brought her back," the old woman said, her voice thin as paper. "Why?"
Nero studied her. "Because she needed help."
She tilted her head, watching him with sharp, dark eyes. "And what do you need?"
Nero didn't flinch. "Answers."
A faint, wry smile touched the old woman's lips. "Everyone who comes here wants answers," she murmured, leaning back in her chair. "They all die screaming."
Lyra whimpered, shrinking behind Nero.
"I'm not like the others," Nero said quietly.
The old woman's gaze lingered on him, measuring, as if searching for a crack in his composure. "No. You aren't. You're still standing."
Her eyes narrowed, suspicion returning.
"You took her back from Malrik's men. Why didn't you use their lantern to shield yourself from our curse?"
Her tone was cautious, edged with a survivor's wariness.
Nero shook his head. "Because that artifact doesn't just shield, it feeds on your clan. I have no intention of making your burden worse. I kept it sealed and out of reach."
The old woman studied him in silence for a moment, then gave a slow, almost respectful nod.
"Tell me, boy. How do you survive our curse without the lantern?"
Nero tapped his temple. "I built a cage for it," he said. "And fed the despair to something worse."
The old woman's eyes sharpened, a hint of surprise flickering in their depths.
"You understand more than most," she said, voice quiet. "But not enough. Not yet."
She leaned forward, her body trembling with the weight of memory.
"It started long ago," she whispered, voice carrying the weight of centuries. "With a man who tried to create a creature that could devour despair. To destroy sadness itself. But magic doesn't work that way. You can't erase pain..."
Her eyes opened, and they were hollow.
"...without giving it form."
The tree groaned, its branches creaking as if in response.
Nero's grip on his wand tightened.
He had a feeling he was only beginning to understand just how deep this curse ran.
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50 chapters ahead on Patreon (Suiijin): Chapter 198: The Verdict