The Curse of Hatred's form erupted in a wave of living shadow, cascading over Giona like a tsunami, swallowing her open hand, soaking into her hair, engulfing her whole.

She gasped, arms flailing as the darkness seeped into her clothes, her skin—binding her in its hateful embrace. She instinctively fought back, but against the Curse of Hatred's malice, she was powerless.

The shadows felt like a thousand needles pressing cold fire into her flesh, seeping warmth away until every nerve in body felt like numb ice.

But it was the betrayal that seared deepest. She had believed in Curse's kindness—had trusted that shapeless friend with her fears, her laughter, her very first words. Now, that same presence was strangling her, binding her limbs just like the bad men did so she couldn't escape. Its grin a razor's edge slicing through every cherished memory.

Tears blurred her vision as panic tore through her. Confusion and heartbreak warred within her heart. How could a friend become a monster? How could love morph into cruelty? Every tear that fell burned like betrayal's acid, akin to how her lungs began to burn from not being able to breathe.

Summoning her last shred of strength, Giona stretched that same hand—once an offering of friendship—toward Dama. "Dama!" She screamed as she met his horrified gaze, her voice cracking on the word, raw with helplessness and longing. It echoed hollowly in the void, swallowed by the shadows.

Across the black expanse, Dama's cry tore through his own pain. "Giona!" He shouted, half rising using the wall, his hand shooting out toward her. Each beat of his heart hammered with desperate need to get up, to run, to save her.

But Mumu's paw caught around Dama's waist, pinning him gently, but firmly, against his stitched fur. He knew one more blow from the Curse of Hatred and Dama's fragile body, already fractured and worn, would shatter entirely.

Beside them, Nini scraped frantic paws against an unconscious Saa'ir's legs. Her wide eyes pleaded; her whole body trembled. "Get up, please!" It was the fox's silent plea. "Only you can fight this! Help us!"

Nini's actions, combined with all the commotion, lead to Saa'ir to wake up from his brief respite. Groggy at first, he struggled on one knee, gray aura flickering erratically at his palms. Then, after regaining focus, he would come face to face with his worst fear in this scenario: The Curse of Hatred getting ahold of Giona, with the only thing Saa'ir can see left of her was her still out-stretched arm. He reached out, gasping, but his weight would not rise. "N-No…!" He choked, his voice ragged as the final vistages of Giona was dragged into the abyss.

From the center of the void, the Curse of Hatred grew more than double its original size, its hollow laughter boomed—deep, mocking, triumphant. "Foolish mortals," it intoned, each word dripping contempt, "now that she is mine, you will never leave this place! First, I will break your pathetic spirits, and then, sweet Giona's will, shattered under my embrace. Her body will rise again as a vessel for my rebirth in the world you so foolishly abandoned!"

Its grin widened impossibly, darkness rippling outward like an oil slick, and the black void hummed with the promise of their shared doom.

Saa'ir's chest heaved as he forced himself upward, knees cracking as he shifted into a battle stance. His gray aura sputtered to life around him, cloaking his form in a soft haze of soulura. "The Curse is right..." He thought, every muscle tensing in cold determination. "Without Giona, none of us will escape this place...!"

He remembered their first clash: how the Curse's very shape had flowed and melted like living ink, its limbs nothing but wells of shadow. When he used his Soulful Technique—Runic Vale—it had simply fizzled out, swallowed by its shadowed mass. Not to mention the strain using soulura puts on a user inside another's mindspace. Magic, here, seemed powerless against its void-like form.

The creature's laughter rolled around him, deep and hollow, yet the grotesque grin on its face didn't shift a fraction. Its white void of a mouth hung wide as a cave entrance, mocking him in perfect stasis even as the echoes of its delight filled the air. "Pathetic!" It seemed to sneer out without moving.

Saa'ir inhaled, forcing his racing thoughts to calm. "Nothing is without weakness," he told himself, "such power to negate magic must carry a cost—some flaw to exploit." The idea settled in his mind like iron anchoring a ship.

As that thought crystalized, his eyes closed and his soulura brightened, spilling outward in a steady, protective glow. The aura didn't tremble now—it pulsed with quiet confidence, as if readying his entire being for the next strike.

Across the void, the Curse's grin stretched wider, the edges of its mouth elongating in gleeful fury. It regarded Saa'ir with contemptuous joy, as though watching an ant muster its last strength before being crushed beneath a boot. The shadows around it writhed and curled, eager for the coming bloodshed.

Without warning, the Curse of Hatred lunged forward in a torrent of living darkness—its tendrils whipping like blackened whips, its body a churning mass of shadows.

Saa'ir's eyes snapped open. He dropped into stance on the solid stone bricks, the edge of the void in front of him, and brought his hands together in the same ancient seal he'd used before. His fingers wove through the motions instinctively, chanting a guttural syllable under his breath as runic glyphs sprang to life in midair.

A translucent barrier, crisscrossed with glimmering hieroglyphs, shot into existence between him and the oncoming horror. The Curse and its writhing tentacles smashed against it in a salvo of sound—like thunder on glass. Black miasma smudged the barrier's surface, and the creature's grotesque white grin flattened and smeared as if pressed against wet clay.

Then its voice boomed—inside Saa'ir's head—cold and mocking: "You think these symbols can confine me? I need not even deny your magic to pass through. Your barrier will shatter!"

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On cue, the surface webbed with cracks. Each fissure sizzled as though the very barrier resented its own existence.

Saa'ir's jaw clenched. He forced deeper focus into the seal, veins popping at his temples. His breath hitched, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain—pain born of the toll this realm exacted on his soul, compounded by the bruises and exhaustion already etched into him.

Farther back, Dama watched through half-lidded eyes. His chest heaved—his fractured ribs protesting as he panted, but his mind raced faster than his breath. Fear. Confusion. Dread. A chaotic storm of questions churned through him: "What is this place? Who is Saa'ir? Is Giona lost forever?"

He closed his eyes, willing it all to be a nightmare for a moment—one so vivid he would wake in Briarstone Village, safe and sound.

However...

Images of Giona twisted in the Curse's grip, her outstretched hand, her terrified scream, the desperation in her face—they seared into his heart, burning away any notion of falsehood.

Anger flared inside him like a bubbling volcano. He clenched the arm Mumu used to cradle him against his belly, but what really caught Mumu and Nini's eyes was the soft glow manifesting around Dama.

A faint golden glow, transparent at first, now pulsed with growing intensity. His emerald-green eyes reflected that light, brightening as his hair lifted on a breeze of power he didn't even notice.

Mumu's stitched features shifted into a look of awe. Nini's ears twitched, her eyes wide.

Dama took a ragged breath, steel-hard resolve settling in his chest. He turned and met Mumu's gaze, flashes of what Dominitus said about Mumu and Nini being helpful in a fight crossing his mind. "Mumu..." Dama began, gritting his teeth before instructing his companion, "help Mr. Saa'ir—and save Giona!"

As his words fell into the charged air, Dama's aura solidified—no longer a faint shimmer, but a radiant glow that seemed to push back the shadows around him. The golden light around the trio promising that this battle was far from over.

At the same time, Dama's grip tightened on Mumu's stitched arm, unyielding. Unknown to him, the golden aura pulsing around his body now coalesced in his hand, slipping through his fingers and into Mumu's seams with each pulse.

Mumu froze as the warmth flooded into him—an electric tingle that spread through his patched fur and stitched paws. His eyes went wide as he recognized this energy, this warmth—it was the same magic that had first animated him and Nini, the spark that gave them life.

His head tilted, ears perking as he processed the sensation. This was Dama's power, his will, willingly shared. As more of Dama's golden energy flowed in, a soft glimmer appeared within Mumu's dark eyes—a single spark of light, fragile at first, then glowing stronger with each pulse of transferred aura.

Dama's gaze burned bright—fierce, protective, laced with a steel-edged anger Dama had never felt before. Across from him, Mumu's black slit-eyes, at first widened into shadowy voids of shock, soon mirrored his master's.

With one final surge of light in those newly lit eyes, Mumu shared in Dama's resolve, standing ready to complete Dama's request. The blue vines on Mumu's body started to glow with a golden energy from within.

Back to Saa'ir, his vision swam as the barrier buckled beneath the Curse's relentless assault as it continued to bang and stab at it. His mind fought on two fronts—one half clung to the hieroglyph-lined shield, forcing every ounce of soulura into its fragile structure, while the other scoured possible tactics to save Giona, Dama, Mumu, Nini, and even himself.

But the Curse of Hatred would allow no respite. With a final, thunderous roar, it yanked its grotesque face from the barrier and flung its head back in a savage arc—then slammed it forward with bone-shattering force.

The barrier shattered like brittle glass. Saa'ir was sent flying backward, crashing onto his back before skidding and rolling into a staggered heap on hands and knees. Pain lanced through his side, each breath a knife's twist.

Through the haze, he looked up. The Curse of Hatred had stepped onto the solid stone bricks that bordered its shadowy domain—fully revealing its true form. It towered like a monolith of living pitch, an undulating mass of black slime crowned by three colossal clawed fingers, each severed from its amorphous body and dripping tendrils of shadow that pooled at its base.

From the darkness behind it, shadow-tendrils arched outward like serpents ready to strike. Saa'ir's heart pounded as he tried to rise, but the crushing weight of exhaustion pinned him in place.

Then the Curse's voice echoed—inside his skull like usual, colder and more intimate than before. "You fought well," it crooned, "but you're in my domain now."

Its tone shifted from amusement to bitter gratitude. "Out there in the real world, I was nothing but a whisper—sealed away, forced to watch. But here…here in the realm of minds, the realm of shadows, the realm of dreams, I can taste pain again—I can inflict it. After centuries of silence, my hands are finally free to tear flesh, shatter souls, and crush minds."

Saa'ir's hand clenched the stone floor. Each word dripped malice.

"And when I've broken you pitiful insects—when I possess Giona," its voice dropped to a sibilant hiss, "I will emerge reborn. In her body—warm, living—I will walk the real world once more. Then, and only then, will I be able to drown it all in Hatred and Shadows."

A murderous calm settled over the void as the Curse's tendrils tightened, ready to strike. Saa'ir ground his teeth, aura flickering weakly at his feet, desperate for even the smallest spark of hope.

The Curse of Hatred's jagged tendrils whipped forward in a deadly arc, poised to tear Saa'ir—and then the rest of them—to shreds. Saa'ir's arms snapped up in a feeble guard, aura sputtering around his wrists like flickering embers.

But before the shadows could strike, Mumu burst between them, planting his massive, stitched paws firmly on the ground and spreading his arms wide. His body became a shield in that moment.

Saa'ir's eyes went wide in shock. "Mumu—!? N—!" He began, but the words caught in his throat.

The Curse of Hatred's grin widened to monstrous proportions, its hollow voice laced with cruel delight. "How touching," it hissed, "the little bear would sacrifice himself!" Its tendrils arced higher, eager to tear Mumu limb from limb—like it had nearly done to Dama.

"If it weren't for that whelp, the boy would already be dust," the Curse thought with gleeful malice. "Three clean slashes right here, right in front of him."

But just as its mind reveled in the carnage to come, it recoiled. A flash of pain—and where its shadow flesh should have been seamless, three deep gashes now yawned, bloodless but seething with golden energy.

Before the Curse could comprehend this betrayal of its own darkness, a sickening crack echoed through the void.

Mumu's left paw, coiled like a hammer, had connected with the Curse's face. The blow landed squarely on its target, sending the tower of shadows toppling backward.

-

Next: (Chapter 68) Mumu's Battle

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