There was once a man who danced between the shadows and the flames—a man who belonged to no side, no cause, no kingdom. He was an assassin, a mage, a ghost that whispered death into the ears of kings.
His name was Quinn.
He had once stood among the strongest, fighting on the side of the leader—the ruler who had sought to bend the world to his will. Quinn was not just a soldier; he was a blade honed to perfection, a weapon with no equal. His magic was neither grand nor flashy, but it was precise, surgical—the kind that ended wars before they began, the kind that made empires shudder in the dark.
Yet, even the sharpest blade is feared by its wielder.
The leader turned on him.
Perhaps it was paranoia. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was simply the nature of power—to erase anything that could one day challenge it.
Quinn was to be eradicated.
They sent assassins. They sent armies.
And one by one, they vanished. No one knew how he did it. No bodies were found, no blood was spilled in public. But the message was clear—Quinn could not be hunted.
And so, he disappeared. He did not beg. He did not plead. He did not curse the name of the leader who betrayed him.
He simply left.
But he did not vanish into nothingness. No, Quinn was too valuable, too dangerous to fade into obscurity. He became something else entirely.
In the underworld, whispers of his name became legend.
If you were weak, if you were desperate, if you had nothing left but the weight of your own failures— Quinn was the man you sought.
Strength? He would give it to you.
Revenge? He would carve it into the bones of your enemies.
Power? He would make it yours, for a cost.
Quinn was a genie—not one of myth and magic, but of blood and steel. A wish granted, so long as you could pay the price.
And make no mistake—the price was never cheap.
To some, he was a savior. To others, a nightmare draped in human skin. He had no loyalty, no kingdom, no friends.
He was not good, nor was he evil.
He was simply inevitable.
And now, after years in the dark, after whispers of his existence faded into half-believed myths—
Quinn had returned.
The chamber was dimly lit, a single candle flickering at the center of a heavy wooden table. Four figures sat around it, cloaked in shadow, their faces hidden beneath deep hoods.
No names were spoken. Only code names.
The one seated at the head of the table, the Chairman, finally spoke. His voice was heavy, deliberate, like the weight of his words could shatter stone.
"A vote must be cast."
The others remained silent. Outside, the faint sound of rain tapped against the old stone walls.
Another figure, the Whisper, leaned forward. "Are we certain? This will change everything."
The Hound scoffed, arms crossed. "The moment we entered this room, everything had already changed."
The fourth member, the Raven, spoke with an eerie calm. "We should not be so hasty. Once this is decided, there is no turning back."
The Chairman did not move. He never attended these meetings in person, yet his presence ruled over them all. His voice, though distant, carried the weight of an iron fist.
"It does not matter what you want. It matters what must be done."
The chamber fell silent once more.
Then, one by one, the votes were cast.
The candle flickered violently, as if the air itself had sensed the shift in fate.
The house was small, the wooden walls brittle with age. It smelled of damp earth and sickness, of something rotting beneath the surface. The roof leaked in places, water dripping into small pots placed beneath the holes. A single candle flickered weakly, barely holding back the darkness.
A young man stepped inside. His clothes were worn, patched in too many places. But his eyes—his eyes held something fierce, something unbroken.
On the straw bed in the corner, his mother lay trembling.
Her skin was no longer just human. Purple swellings pulsed grotesquely across her body, stretching her flesh into something unrecognizable. Her fingers had twisted, elongated unnaturally. Her breath was weak, strained, as if the simple act of breathing was a battle she was slowly losing.
The moment she saw him, she pushed herself up with what little strength she had left.
"No," she rasped, her voice barely human anymore. "Don't come near me."
He didn't listen. He never listened.
He knelt beside her, taking her disfigured hands in his. She flinched, as if expecting him to recoil. But he didn't.
He never would.
Tears welled in her swollen, bloodshot eyes. "You'll get sick."
He shook his head. "You're my mother."
She wept.
It was called The Black Curse.
A sickness that did not just kill—but transformed. It twisted flesh, deformed bones, erased humanity from a person's body piece by piece.
It began with small, dark swellings—easy to dismiss as an ordinary fever. But then, the body would swell unnaturally, purple and black masses crawling across the skin like tumors given life. The fingers elongated, the face distorted, the bones stretched in ways that no human body was meant to endure.
It did not just kill. It erased the very existence of a person, leaving behind something that was neither living nor dead.
No one had ever been cured.
Not even Jina, the greatest mage, could heal it.
It was this very sickness that took Arthur's mother away.
And since that day, he had searched for a cure.
Through science. Through alchemy. Through forbidden magic.
He had torn apart ancient tomes, dissected creatures affected by the disease, experimented in ways that would make the gods themselves look away in disgust.
But nothing.
Nothing worked.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not stop it.