There was a beat of silence.
Then Vyan laughed—quiet at first, a dry exhale from his nose, but it bloomed into something darker. Not amused, but amused enough. "A curse?" he echoed, voice like velvet stretched over a blade. "That's rich."
He leaned back into his seat, eyes glinting with quiet thought. It was possible, he mused. But only in theory. At least in my case.
A soul left broken after so much failure, so much loss—wasn't it natural for despair to cling to its remains like fog? He imagined it: his soul, tattered and ravaged after all that loss, screaming out in a final moment of despair. Maybe the remnants of who he'd once been had cracked under the weight of betrayal, grief, and hopelessness.
Maybe the darkness had answered—not because he summoned it, but because he no longer had the strength to keep it out.
But then again, he wasn't just any sorcerer. If he had truly wished to drag the empire into oblivion, he wouldn't have needed dark magic or whispered incantations.
