Chapter 80
Damian looked at Katrina.
Katrina looked back at him.
“I’ve found a way to break your curse, Damian.”
“……”
“Even now, do you still plan on keeping me locked up?”
Damian, hearing Katrina’s words, seemed to fall into thought.
“How do you know of such a method?”
His voice, flat and restrained, sounded as if he was suppressing any trace of emotion.
“Did my mother perhaps tell you something like that?”
“……”
As expected, he was quick-witted.
Damian realized it—there must be something in the book Arabella had passed down to Katrina.
“Yes. It was written in the book Lady Arabella left behind.”
Katrina spoke honestly.
She didn’t want to lie about something like this.
“To use my mother’s keepsake as a bargaining chip…”
A trace of sarcasm flickered across his blue eyes.
“Don’t you find that laughable?”
She had expected him to react this way.
That was why Katrina hadn’t wanted to use Arabella’s keepsake as leverage.
But since he was coming at her like this, what choice did she have?
At the very least, she needed to get out of here first.
“So, what exactly is this method?”
“Let me out first.”
“Tell me first.”
“What if I tell you, and you just walk away?”
Neither trusted the other.
So they ended up squabbling over the meaningless question of who should speak first.
“Damian, until you let me out, I’ll never say a word.”
“…Hah.”
Each had to think carefully about who had the most to lose.
“…Fine.”
And the one with the most to lose—was Damian.
“Damn it! Why the hell won’t that bastard go down?!”
Belek roared.
By all rights, Damian’s body should have been in tatters.
He should have been a wreck, unable to ever stand again.
When he had collapsed, coughing blood, Belek had been certain that was the end of him.
But instead of dying…
That bastard had gone and won glory for capturing the Sun Society.
Truly vicious.
“Hey!”
Belek barked at one of the Sun Society priests.
“Yes, Lord Belek.”
The priest bowed and scraped before him.
And for good reason—if not for Belek today, he would’ve been trapped and killed in the chapel.
He owed his life to Belek’s intervention.
“You lot—did you lie to me?”
The moment Belek saw the priest, his anger boiled over.
“You said that curse would leave him unable to even move! Then why is that Damian brat walking around just fine?!”
For it was Belek himself who had ordered that curse cast upon Damian.
“We—we carried it out without error! There’s no way the curse failed!”
The priest stammered in a panic.
Lately, the capital had been in uproar over the string of three consecutive murders.
All of them, the work of the Sun Society.
They had started a new “project” to draw in followers: commit horrific crimes one after another, spread fear throughout the land, and then prey on the terrified with promises of salvation.
Belek had been funding this Sun Society, and he had ordered them to do the same thing to Damian.
“Make sure he collapses right before me! I want to see that bastard clutching at my trousers, begging for his life!”
Belek dreamed of whispering in Damian’s ear, just before he died—
“It was me. I’m the one who did this to you.”
“M-maybe we could try this instead, Lord Belek…”
The priest carefully attempted to placate him.
“By now, he must be suffering unbearable agony. It’s just that—it doesn’t show, because he’s enduring it.”
“What? That’s possible?”
“…I’ve never seen anyone endure it this much before, though.”
Never before.
The other three victims of the curse had been unable to withstand the pain—they had taken their own lives.
But Damian Abitche… was different.
That monster.
All of them thought the same thing.
“So, what do you suggest?”
Belek asked.
The priest smiled faintly.
“If he can endure physical pain… then next, we’ll strike at his mind.”
“…So you’re saying the way to break my curse is—this?”
Though it was Damian who was cursed, it was Katrina who broke out in a cold sweat.
That look of distrust in Damian’s eyes only made it worse.
“It was Lady Arabella’s words.”
Katrina hurriedly mentioned her name.
A name that could restore broken trust like magic.
“…Are you sure it was really my mother who said this?”
“If you want, I can show you.”
“Show me.”
So she showed him.
And Damian let out a low breath.
For what was written there… sounded utterly absurd.
[The Realization of Desire.]
That was what Arabella’s notes said.
And she had even explained why.
[The process of a doll-based curse is this: First, craft the doll from peculiar materials, then breathe ‘selfhood’ into it—make it believe it is a human being. Only then can the curse take hold.]
[But there is a flaw in doll-based curses: once a doll believes it is human, it cannot withstand contradictions to that belief.]
[And nearly all curses, at their final stage, aim for the ‘mind.’ Mental curses almost always stir up traumas: regrets, unfulfilled desires, painful memories—everything buried within.]
[Therefore, by realizing one’s desire, the doll falls into confusion. For its memories are nothing but shadows of trauma…]
That was Arabella’s kindly written explanation.
“So, I don’t know what your desire is, but… if you fulfill it, the curse might break.”
But Damian looked back at Katrina, his face stiff as stone.
“What’s wrong?”
“……”
Without a word, Damian closed Arabella’s book.
“I don’t have any such ‘desires.’”
“Then you won’t be affected by mental curses, right? If you’ve no regrets, no longings, nothing of the sort…”
But could there truly exist a person like that?
Katrina studied him.
That man, detached from all things.
Maybe such a person really could exist.
“I’ll be going now.”
Damian rose from his seat.
Before Katrina could say anything, he had already left.
She let out a long sigh.
Does he really have nothing he wishes for?
With Damian, perhaps that was possible.
She had never once seen him yearn for anything.
Always so detached, indifferent.
She had done everything she could.
The rest was up to him.
Would he free himself and survive…
Or end up like the other victims.
Damian stepped out of Katrina’s chamber.
The realization of desire?
What a joke.
One needed to have desires in the first place, to realize them. And Damian had never once longed for anything.
—Impossible.
Suddenly, a chilling voice whispered behind him.
Damian turned.
Nothing.
No one.
—You must have one.
The whisper still slithered into his ears.
The curse had entered its final stage—
The curse that devoured the mind.
