The moment Jacob stepped foot into the Black Forest, he noticed the obvious lack of sunlight.
"It really is an endless night," he muttered aloud.
The canopy here was much thicker than the trees on the other side of the mountain. It was almost like being inside a house—a very large, uncreatively designed house.
Who designs their house in all black?
Thick, crooked branches wove into each other above, strangling any attempt the sky made to shine through. Even the air felt stale, as if it had been stuck here too long.
The occasional feral howl echoed through the trees, but Jacob kept walking. He had a goal.
'I have someone I need to get back to. I can't quit.'
Then came a sound—not quite a roar, not a growl. Twisting. Gurgling. Wet and alive. Wrong in every way.
It was close.
Jacob dove into a dense black shrub, its brittle branches scraping against his face, barely breathing as he peered toward the source of the sound.
A black blob of slime slid into view, glistening under what little light managed to pierce the canopy. Its shape shifted with each step, its body rippling like boiling tar. Several twitching red eyes floated freely within its formless body, bobbing like buoys on an angry sea. It oozed forward without a sound.
Then, without warning, a cursed hawk screeched from above. Wings sharp as blades, talons even sharper. It dove—its claws sinking into the slime creature's body and lifting it a few feet into the air before its form began to splatter and drip.
Before Jacob could register what was happening, a streak of fur darted in from the side. A fox. But not quite. Its jaw opened wider than it should have. Its teeth were all wrong. It leapt and bit the hawk clean out of the sky.
All three—the hawk, the fox, and the melting mass—crashed into the underbrush in a flurry of shrieks and wet tearing sounds.
Jacob blinked.
'How disorganized… they're just like normal animals. Except most of them are much more bloodthirsty.'
It had been three days now.
Jacob sat crouched behind a moss-covered log, its wood soft with decay. He watched as a cursed deer—its limbs too long, too thin—gored a batlike creature with jagged antlers. Then the deer was ripped apart by a hissing swarm of lizard-like things, each no bigger than a loaf of bread, but armed with claws that left glowing scratches on the ground.
What he'd noticed on that first day, he was now certain of.
'Cursed are really just crazier animals.'
They didn't move in swarms. They didn't plot or stalk in formations. No tactics. No strategy. Just instinct and madness. Half the time they tore each other apart before even noticing him.
To his left, a cursed bear with spider legs roared at a twisted wolf-thing whose skin looked stapled together. Before either could pounce, something worse dragged them both into the shadows. Jacob didn't dare look too long.
The cursed weren't an army. They were nature redrawn by insanity. A jungle without rules. A food chain without logic.
He kept his head down.
The chaos was terrifying—but it was also the only reason he was still alive.
Every time something screeched or snapped a tree in half, he thought about running. But then her face would come to mind.
Adira.
His sister. Small, stubborn, always the loudest in a room—until the White Masks left her and everyone in their village dead, missing, or worse.
She hadn't spoken since.
Jacob clenched his teeth and forced the memory back. He didn't have time for it now.
'I didn't join the army to be a hero,' he thought bitterly. 'I joined because I was broke, and she needed help.'
The army gave him pay. Pay meant food. Medicine. A future.
That was it. That was the deal.
Now here he was—back broken under the weight of a half-conscious stranger, ducking from things that shouldn't exist, in a forest that never saw light.
A cursed stag bolted across the path ahead, antlers tangled like roots, snarling at something only it could see before vanishing again.
Jacob crouched lower, waited. Then moved.
He wasn't trained for this. He didn't have Nero. But he had a reason.
And in a place where everything else was mad or dying, that was more than most.
Then came footsteps—heavy, crunching through damp leaves. And light ones, too. Sharp, fast. Not human. Not one creature. Many.
His body tensed.
The cursed were moving in a group.
'That's not normal.'
This had gone against all of what Jacob had figured out from cursed. Then, as if a lamp turning on he finally concluded.
'Crazies don't team up... unless there's a scarier one to fight, or a scarier one telling them what to do.
Both were equally worse, because they led to the same origin. A leader or a conqueror. But still a cursed strong enough to bring order to madness.
He crept behind a thicker tree, heart thumping as the sound grew louder. A group of cursed came into view, but this time, they weren't attacking each other. They walked in a rough formation, loosely spaced but purposeful. Bears with scales. Monkeys with two faces. A snake taller than a man. All of them moving together.
And leading them was an albino lion, larger than any Jacob had seen—even in cursed form. Its fur was pure white, but its eyes burned red like embers. It didn't growl. It didn't look around. It simply walked, and the others followed.
'Is that the one they're united under? Or is it just a mini leader?'
Jacob didn't get the same overwhelming pressure he'd felt when he saw the green-leafed tree god. His chest didn't seize. His vision didn't blur.
'So it clearly isn't at the fiend level. Meaning it can't be the big bad behind them.'
He watched as they stopped near the bush he was hiding behind. The lion sniffed the air, and the cursed scattered in a loose pattern.
Then slowly, calmly, like whatever they were hunting had vanished—like it had hidden in a bush—they turned and began to head back the way they came.
Jacob let out a silent breath.
And just as quietly as the organized group of cursed left… the chaos returned to the forest.
Worms began to crawl from the soil—long, black, and pulsing. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. They twisted together in a wet squirming mass, shaping into something vaguely human. A grotesque mimicry of form. It raised one hand, and from it, a pulse of Nero blasted forward.
The bush Jacob had hidden behind exploded—he and the unconscious man on his back sent flying through the air.
The cursed all turned. Instantly. Like one being.
They had united… to hunt Jacob.
He landed hard, pain flaring across his ribs. No time to recover. No time to think. He quickly put the man on his back and bolted off.
Bears, monkeys, worms, alligators—things he didn't even have names for—chased him through the dark, broken woods. The trees loomed like teeth, each shadow a potential death.
On his back, the dirty-haired man began to mutter.
"…Nero… Power… Danger… Instinct…"
Jacob shook his head, trying to focus. It was clearly nonsense. Or maybe it wasn't nonsense—just nonsense to him. Whatever the case, now wasn't the time.
The man continued,
"Foolish… Young… Man…"
Jacob faltered, confusion flashing across his face.
'Why would he say that now?'
The cursed were behind them. Why waste breath mocking him?
He shook it off.
"Well, 'wise young man,' we're both going to die if you don't do something."
The man fell silent again.
'I almost forgot—he plays rope with consciousness.'
They were gaining.
Jacob glanced back. Claws slashed at the air behind him. Snouts snapped. Eyes glowed like fireflies in hell.
Then the man's body trembled.
A bluish-white light burst out from his chest, brighter than anything Jacob had seen in days. But the light didn't radiate outward—it flowed backward like a stream against time.
The cursed were swallowed by it.
They didn't scream.
They didn't even move.
A second later, the light faded. And when Jacob looked back, there was nothing but footprints—black on black, darker even than the forest floor. The air smelled of ash.
Then hunger hit him—sudden and gnawing.
He pulled a black fruit from his bag and bit into it, the taste sour but tolerable. Over the last few days, he'd observed the man carefully. No signs of poison. No illness. So far.
He laid the man down by the base of a tree and pulled out more fruits—red and black, red and black, like everything else here.
'Who am I kidding? It's just black and blood.'
His mind wandered.
That man—whoever he was—was a walking bomb.
'If he ever fully released his Nero… what kind of destruction could he unleash?'
Jacob smiled faintly and shook his head.
'A broke soldier like me, trying to analyze powers I can't even measure. What a joke.'
He quickly packed up. The light would draw more cursed, and he wasn't about to count on the sleeping nuke beside him to bail him out again.
Even a broke kid had his pride.
He reached down to lift the man—
And then the man opened his eyes. Wide. Clear. Awake.
He grinned like it was all a game.
And with a voice far too cheerful for the circumstances, he said,
"Fiorde. Fiorde, the righteous slayer of all evil."