{Believer Equinox, you have been bestowed a Story Memory, and have merged with the Accursed Child, Nox.}
STORY: The King of Nocturni, a ruler feared, abhorred and yet respected, was cursed by his hundreds of suffering subjects. Those countless curses were then manifested into his own kin.
At this discovery, the king of Nocturni had no choice but to end the child's life, hence eliminating all those gathered curses at once. But the Accursed Child's mother opposed.
With the hopes of finding a miracle to eliminate the curses without killing her child, she dared to disturb even the Foundations of Creation, the Axioms and unfortunately... woke up the Sleeping One.
Withal, the tenacious mother of the Accursed Child managed to convince the Axioms, albeit, still having to forfeit her soul as a price for screeching to the heavens.
She gave up her soul, never to see her precious child grow up. Nevertheless, in her place, the caring Sleeping One promised to take care of the Accursed child in her place.
The Axiom willed: The curses in the Accursed child will remain in its body but will be sealed to later be loosened after it receives its Mark of Virtue.
Because just as the night that is dark and blows with winds of terror is still beautiful, the Accursed child must learn to see beauty in the blessings of life and wield those curses into Virtues.
The Truths of existence often do not give what mortals want... but what they need.
Totem Wielders are granted one Virtue, one ability to help them overcome their very first Ordeal. Equinox's was called Seed of Nyx - Man was molded from clay, Nox was born from curses, so the essence of Sins nourishes him like water. But there is hate he must bear with this gift, hate that will fall upon him like a conscious hailstorm.
———
With a grunt, the Captain of the knights pushed the scythes pressing down on his great sword forward and knocked the spirit off him. Pulling it down, he then swung the weapon upwards, sending the spirit sliding a few more meters back.
He dropped down his sword heavily and wiped the blood sliding down the corner of his mouth.
'Curses! How is this beast still alive?!'
The Captain was on his own now, bruised and battered. Because, although not at full strength, the spirit was still really strong. This was even more so after it had eaten out the life essence (crystals) of the Knights' fallen comrades.
Nevertheless, the spirit was not without scars of its own. One of its scythes was almost broken off and a human leg was gone, oozing black blood. There was even a tired look seemingly hiding beneath the guise of a confident eerie smile.
'Where is that boy?' The Knight glanced at his environment, keeping one eye on the spirit. But he still couldn't find who he was looking for.
The spirit lunged at him again, swiping a scythe at his head. The Knight stepped back, avoiding the attack and then sliced upwards again. However, his attack was also fruitless as one of the spirit's legs blocked it, shooting his arms aside.
Gritting his teeth to not let go of the sword from the terrible force behind the spirit's hit, he lifted one hand from its hilt and then pulled out a short sword strapped to his waist.
With a frightening roar, he sliced at the spirit's face and surprisingly drew out black blood from the side of its cheek.
Looking forward with an unwavering flame of tenacity in his eyes, the knight struck again.
———
A thud echoed throughout the inside of the spider spirit's cave. The Accursed prince sat with his back against the wall as he clenched his teeth in pain, panting in the darkness.
He couldn't do it!
No matter how much he blamed them for his unfortunate fate, he couldn't bring himself to plunge his hands into the bodies of other people and then eat out their hearts. Not even if the crystals could heal his body up to more than enough to stop his bleeding. Or suspend the curse that was about to pour out of his body.
Equinox had pondered about the unclear prophecy of his new Virtue and eventually deduced what it could do.
His acquired Trait gave him a body similar to the Sins in the Realm of Augury. Not only was his body more resilient compared to regular humans, but he could also absorb essence from essence crystals, as efficiently as Sins could. But one major step above regular Sins was that this Virtue granted Equinox exaggerated healing capabilities that Sins can only harness under certain extreme conditions, as well as improves Equinox's body's resistance to whatever harm his body had healed from in the first place.
Alas, with this insane reward, was an equally inhumane drawback.
That Virtue of his would also release the countless curses that were deeply rooted in his being and allow them to take form as defects or deformities on his body.
The curses are released in patterns he did not know of yet, but Equinox had found out that his body seemed to be more stable when consuming spiritual essence, via crystals. So, it was most likely that those crystals somehow prevent or at least delay impending curses.
The knights were Sins with crystals, but still, doing what he had thought of, was wrong in more ways than simply being repulsed by killing people.
'Who knows, maybe... maybe this won't... kill me.' He tried to hold a self-righteous smile with his bloodied lips but could only cough out blood, unable to remove the pungent taste from his mouth.
With each grueling second towards the curse, Equinox's sense of regret grew more. The knights are dead, aren't they? They are non-living matter now... objects! Use them, Nox! Or...
Alas, the brief time of contemplation those tiny crystals had bought him was soon over. A dreadful feeling overcame him.
It felt like his heart was collapsing, while a blade's rough edge was being dragged gradually and forcefully across his skin. The anguish and pain were so immense, anyone else would have chosen death.
But the torture wasn't eternity, it stopped after the longest thirty minutes of his life.
{You have...}
Equinox's tired eyes blinked open as voices of those who had suffered by the hands of the king cried into his ears.
———
The mountains around this area were high and scattered to form wide flowing patterns with rivers of water swirling and curving around them. The mountains and the ground were covered in green plants and beautiful flowers.
The flowing rivers, if traced back to the source, all originated from the same place at the center of the mountainous lands, a wide lake. At the center of that ever-pouring lake was a floating mountain, shifting slightly, almost unnoticeably, due to the movement flow of the water.
It was unnatural.
A mountain of an irregular shape and uneven weight distribution — any mountain at all should not be able to float on water. Yet, this one was.
It was only when one looked at the bigger picture that they would realise that this wasn't the only floating mountain in the area. The rivers stretched far away into other distances, either pouring into wide lakes or pouring out of them. And each of these unusual lakes all had their own mountains, with their own individual weather and habitat as they floated above the enormous lakes.
Yes, the regular mountains were all green, but the ones on these lakes were of as many environmental variants as there were floating mountains; an awful lot.
Unlike the other blue lakes, the one surrounding a peculiar black mountain and its separate cloudy sky, was black as ink. And it remained that way because this lake was not connected to the network of other rivers and lakes, making it secluded and unchanging.
At its summit, this mountain had a spacious ground with a single plant growing out of its surface.
The plant was a towering sunflower with a thick black stem, roots running along the summit and then the entire surface of the mountain before going into the water. It also had branches with white leaves on them, black ray-florets and midnight colored disc-florets which were spinning very slowly under the dark sky patch above the mountain.
The spinning disc-florets atop the massive flower soon stopped turning, as the entire mountain quivered above the dark lake. Water visibly ran into the thick translucent roots covering the mountain up to the sunflower itself.
With the plant shivering, as if sentient and from the satisfaction of drinking the bottomless black water...
{CURSE YOU!}
The voices cried out in Equinox's head.