For two centuries, the City of Light had not merely existed; it had beamed.
It was a testament to human thriving, a beacon of enlightenment where the concept of a "dark night" was banished by the glow of eternal lanterns and the radiance of a beloved monarch. Queen Athena was not simply a ruler; she was the collective mother of a million souls. In the psyche of the city, she was the moral anchor. She represented everything that was good in the world.
Her death triggered everything wrong with it.
The bishops, in their calculated betrayal, had stripped away the only glimmer of light that kept the people going. They underestimated one variable: the ferocity of grief.
When the news broke, whispered first by fleeing servants, then shouted by guards, then screamed by the very wind, it did not result in submission. It resulted in a collective psychotic break. The panic curdled instantly into a rage so pure it felt holy.
The City of Light began to burn.
It was not a strategic rebellion. It was a tantrum of the bereaved. Merchants who had never held a weapon picked up one. Mothers who had shielded their children from the blast now marched into the teeth of the bishops’ phalanxes. Every sword thrust by a soldier was met with a hundred desperate hands clutching sticks and stones, and every sword broke, overwhelmed by the crushing weight of the mob.
In this crucible of despair, the boundary between reality and the supernatural thinned. The thing that thrived the most was not reason or wits, it was emotion, negative emotions that took over hearts, making them black, bitter, and most of all, desperate.
The riots kept rising, and with each minute the flames intensified, flames of fire, flames of hearts. And curses started appearing.
One, two… thirty-two. Five hours after midnight, the City of Light had witnessed the birth of thirty-two curses.
In a burning alley, a scholar who had been a cripple with boneless legs since birth screamed for salvation. The Devil answered. His withered, boneless legs cracked and lengthened, knitting into strong muscle and sturdy bone. He stood up for the first time in forty years, weeping with joy, towering over the chaos.
But as he took his first step, he realized his mind, the brilliant, sharp mind honed by years of stillness and observation, was dulling. The curse gave him legs to run, but took the ambition and intellect that had taught him to fly. He stood perfect and hollow, a man who had finally gained the ability to walk just in time to have nowhere to go.
And other than him, thirty-one more followed. Deals made in blood and panic.
From the cobblestones, from the sewers, from the cracked foundations of the palace, roots emerged. But these were not the green shoots of spring. They were grey, slick, and pulsing with a gluttonous heartbeat.
In the market square, a mob of three hundred rioters was charging a line of palace guards. They were screaming for justice, their faces twisted with hate. Suddenly, the cobblestones beneath them bulged upward.
There was no time to run. The street simply exploded.
A massive root, thick as a cathedral pillar, erupted from the earth. It didn't strike like a snake; it expanded like a grotesque balloon. The front line of the mob, fifty people, was instantly crushed against the surrounding buildings. Bodies popped like grapes, the sound of snapping spines and bursting organs drowned out by the wet, tearing noise of the wood growing.
The rioters in the back froze, their anger turning to primal terror. They turned to flee, but the side streets were already gone. Roots wove together overhead, blocking out the sky, turning the wide avenue into a claustrophobic tunnel of grey bark.
The roots began to constrict.
"Open the gate! OPEN THE GATE!" a woman screamed, clutching her baby, pressing herself against a shop window as the wall of wood advanced.
The glass shattered. The root surged forward, it pressed the woman into the shop, then into the back wall, then into the stone itself. Her scream was cut short, replaced by the sickening crunch of the building collapsing in on itself.
It was happening everywhere.
In the residential district, families huddled in basements, believing the stone foundations would protect them. They were wrong. The roots came from below. Stone floors cracked open, and tendrils the size of pythons whipped through the dark, seeking warmth. They wrapped around ankles, waists, and throats, dragging people down into the soil. A father tried to hack at a root with a kitchen cleaver; the wood was hard as iron, and the root simply pulsed in response, wrapping around his arm and twisting it until the bone snapped, before dragging him into the earth.
The beautiful bridges of the city, those marvels of engineering that defied gravity, were pulled down. Roots coiled around their pillars and squeezed. The stone shrieked, a high-pitched grinding sound that echoed across the water, before the bridges shattered, sending dozens of fleeing citizens plunging into the river below. Even the water offered no safety; roots churned beneath the surface, a tangled net waiting to catch the falling bodies.
High upon the ridge overlooking the dying metropolis, Malthane watched the carnage with the weary expression of a man cleaning a stain from a rug.
Next to him, Evelyn knelt in the dirt, not by choice.
Roots had erupted from the earth, coiling around her legs, her torso, and her arms, binding her in a mockery of an embrace.
"Evelyn," Malthane said, his voice carrying the tragic cadence of a father’s disappointment. "Do you know why I decided to kill your mother? Why I had no choice?"
Evelyn fought against the bindings. Her muscles screamed, her veins bulged, but the roots were immovable. She felt a burning sensation in her chest, not just rage.
The deal. The Leftover Weapons.
She didn't just pull against the roots physically. She reached into that cold, dark place in her soul. She felt it there, the heavy, warm hum of the first weapon in her arsenal.
A blade of pure white light began to materialize in her grip. The air around her hand shimmered, the heat of the blade searing the bark that held her wrist.
Malthane didn't even look at it. He merely twitched a finger.
A massive root shot up from the ground and crushed Evelyn's wrist against the earth. The impact was shattering, instantly breaking every bone in her hand. The concentration broke instantly, and the white light flickered and died before it could fully form.
"Don't," Malthane said softly. "You are a child playing with a knife."
He turned back to the city, ignoring her gasp and screams of pain.
"Your mother, for me, was a hypocrite," Malthane said. "People who rise to power are either monsters or hypocrites. She loved her people, or so she claimed, but then she decided to sacrifice them for the greater good. She knew how it would turn out, but her mind was corrupted with righteousness."
"You... absolute monster..." Evelyn choked out, the air squeezed from her lungs.
"I could have imprisoned her. But I chose her death, for I renounce her ideals. She couldn't see the bigger picture. And these people..." He gestured to the screaming city below. "These poor souls will die for a person who sacrificed them."
The roots were not merely plants. They were the manifestation of Brock the Root, an Eldritch Beast's heart.
In the classification of power that was made by the Utopian nation as an attempt to assess and reason the power of the eldritch beasts, this heart was a Diamond-Tier.
But looking at the valley, the distinction felt meaningless. Malthane held a City Grade heart, and the reason for the name was terrifyingly literal, his roots alone were spreading through the entire metropolis, stripping away its flame, crushing its buildings, and silencing its heartbeat.
The riot's anger turned into silence. The barrier at the city walls held firm, woven so tightly that not even air seemed to escape.
"I cannot let them live, Evelyn," Malthane said softly. "Many curses will be born inside this city now, and they will be dangerous for us. I will eliminate everyone. The original curse might be down there. Eliminating him now would solve every problem."
Evelyn opened her mouth to scream, to unleash the primal sound of a daughter watching her home die.
A root shot up from the soil, wrapping over her mouth, sealing her lips.
"Mmph! Mmmphhh!"
"I am sorry," Malthane whispered. "It pains me to hear your desperate voice now, my daughter. I will let you speak once this is over."
The fires had died, not because they had run out of fuel, but because they had been suffocated.
The City of Light, once a beacon that mocked the night, lay in a darkness so profound it felt like the bottom of the ocean. The screaming had stopped. The riots had been crushed beneath a subterranean tide of grey timber.
High on the ridge, Malthane surveyed his handiwork. He did not look like a monster who had just devoured a metropolis; he looked like a bureaucrat who had just finished a tedious stack of paperwork. He adjusted his cuff, brushing a speck of dust from his sleeve.
He glanced at Evelyn. She was on her knees, the roots that had restrained her slowly receding back into the earth, leaving behind bruises that would fade long before the scars on her soul.
"It’s time we move now," Malthane said, his voice devoid of theatricality. "The other bishops have already left their positions. We are the last."
Evelyn remained silent. The physical gag was gone, but her voice had been stolen by the atrocity she had been forced to witness. Her mind was a shattered mirror, reflecting only the crushing of stone and the snapping of bone.
"You are..., you just killed two thousand people at least" she whispered, her voice cracking like dry parchment
Malthane looked at the horizon. He looked hurried, impatient.
"It doesn’t matter. More parties shall arrive soon. I don't want to get involved in the cleanup," he said, turning toward the waiting cart. "I did enough of a job. The print I left here shows clearly that I intervened. I killed the Queen, and I destroyed the city's infrastructure as an 'attempt' to harm the original curse holder who might have been hiding there."
He paused, looking back at the ruin. "We should be in the clear now. They will see the destruction and know Malthane was loyal. That is all that matters. Let’s go to your new home."
Evelyn stared at his back. The realization hit her colder than the night air.
It wasn't just about ideology. It wasn't just about the "greater good" or the inevitability of the Epochs. It was administrative. He had slaughtered thousands of people, his own people, to create an alibi. He had burned an anthill to prove to the boot that he was on its side.
He was not a conqueror. He was a coward with the power of a monster.
She stood up, her legs trembling, and walked toward the cart.
She climbed into the iron-reinforced carriage. The door slammed shut, sealing her in darkness, and the wheels began to turn, carrying her away from the graveyard of her childhood.