Aster rushed toward the mansion, his heart pounding in his ears, drowning out the sounds of the city around him.
He knew the implications of what had happened. With their father dead and Aster himself declared a criminal by the entire nation, Lily would have inherited everything—the Thornwood wealth, the properties, the magical artifacts, the political connections. All of it would now belong to a sixteen-year-old girl.
Which made her incredibly valuable. Incredibly vulnerable.
The perfect target.
Aster reached the mansion's outer gate and didn't slow down. He vaulted over the iron fence with ease—his demonic strength making the eight-foot barrier feel like nothing. He landed in the garden, his boots crunching on the gravel path, and sprinted toward the front entrance.
The moment he crossed the threshold of the property, it hit him.
A wave of dark energy so intense it was almost physical. The air itself felt thick, contaminated, wrong. His Blood Sword responded to the presence, the blade humming with power even while still sheathed. The metal seemed to vibrate against his back, eager to be drawn, eager to cut through whatever corruption filled this place.
The temperature had dropped dramatically. Even though it was late morning and the sun was shining, the Thornwood mansion felt like winter had settled inside its walls. Aster's breath came out in visible puffs of vapor as he approached the front door.
And the smell—or rather, the absence of smell. Where a house should carry the scents of cooking, of wood polish, of lived-in spaces, there was nothing. Just void. Emptiness. As if the very essence of life had been drained from the building.
The front door stood slightly ajar, swinging slowly in a breeze that shouldn't have been able to reach it.
Aster drew his Blood Sword, the dark metal sliding free with a whisper of sound. The blade seemed to drink in what little light there was, becoming even darker, more substantial.
He pushed the door open fully and stepped inside.
The entrance hall was empty. Silent. The expensive furniture was still in place—nothing appeared disturbed or stolen. The chandelier hung overhead, its crystals catching the weak light filtering through the windows. Everything looked normal.
Except it wasn't.
Aster moved deeper into the mansion, his footsteps echoing too loudly in the unnatural silence. "Lily?" he called out, his altered voice sounding strange even to his own ears. "Is anyone here?"
No response.
He checked the ground floor first—the sitting rooms, the dining hall, the kitchen. In the kitchen, he found evidence that breakfast had been started. A pot sat on the stove, its contents burned and congealed from hours of neglect. Plates had been set out on the counter. A knife lay on a cutting board beside half-chopped vegetables.
Someone had been preparing a meal. Then they'd simply... stopped. Left. Vanished.
"Where did the voices come from?" Aster muttered, moving to the stairs. The screaming he'd heard from outside—it had definitely come from inside the mansion. But there was no sign of struggle, no indication of where the sound had originated.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor, checking each room methodically. His own bedroom—exactly as he'd left it yesterday morning, before everything had gone wrong. Lily's room—empty, her bed neatly made, her books arranged on her desk. The guest rooms, the bathrooms, the library—all empty.
No bodies. No blood. No signs of violence.
But also no people. No maids going about their duties. No Lily reading in her favorite chair. No one.
"The plague killed them?" Aster wondered aloud, though the theory didn't make sense. The plague victims had been found where they collapsed. They hadn't vanished into thin air.
He descended back to the ground floor, his mind racing. "If the maids are the cult, they would have done something with her. Taken her somewhere. But where?"
The Williams mansion. That was where the cult had been performing their rituals before. That was where the otherworldly skull had been, where the crimson candles had burned, where they'd tried to summon that corrupted phoenix-creature.
"I have to check there," Aster decided. "Tonight, when they're most likely to be active. But..."
He frowned, another thought occurring to him. Why hadn't Silas destroyed the Williams mansion after discovering the ritual? Surely the Mage of Light, upon finding evidence of active dark magic worship, would have burned the place to the ground and arrested anyone involved.
Unless Silas hadn't been able to find it. Unless the mansion was protected by wards that made it invisible or forgettable. Unless—
The wave of darkness hit without warning.
It wasn't physical. It was deeper than that—a presence that crashed into Aster's consciousness like a tsunami of pure malevolence. The temperature plummeted even further. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to deepen, to move with purpose.
And Aster felt *it*.
An evil presence far worse than anything he'd encountered before. Far more evil than the Eyes. Far beyond his comprehension. This wasn't just dark—it was *absence*. The negation of light, of hope, of life itself.
His thoughts snapped back involuntarily to the party. To that moment when the ring had fallen and the presence had entered his domain. This was the same feeling, but magnified a thousand times. As if whatever had brushed against him at the party was now fully manifesting, turning its complete attention toward him.
Aster spun in place, his sword raised defensively, searching for the source. "Who's there? Show yourself!"
But there was nothing. No figure emerged from the shadows. No voice spoke. Just that overwhelming presence, pressing down on him from all directions at once, suffocating him with its sheer wrongness.
And then, slowly, it began to fade.
Not disappearing completely, but withdrawing. Pulling back like a tide receding from a shore, leaving Aster gasping for air he hadn't realized he'd stopped breathing.
As the presence diminished, something else happened.
His thoughts began to blur. The sharp clarity of his purpose—why he was here, what he was looking for—started to slip away like water through his fingers.
*Why am I in this house?* he thought confusedly. *What was I doing?*
The memories were being eaten. Again. Just like what had happened with the party, pieces of his recent past were being excised from his mind, leaving gaps and confusion.
But this time, the exposure wasn't as complete. Whatever entity had touched his mind hadn't lingered long enough to do thorough work. Aster could feel the gaps forming, could sense the memories being corrupted, and that awareness gave him something to fight against.
He focused, concentrating on what he knew to be true. His name. His purpose. His sister.
*Lily. I'm here for Lily. She's in danger. The maids are cultists. I need to find her.*
The memories snapped back into focus, though they felt fragile, as if they might slip away again if he didn't hold onto them tightly.
Aster stood in the middle of the entrance hall, breathing heavily, his sword still raised even though the presence was gone.
"What was that?" he whispered. "What the hell *was* that?"
Whatever entity could erase memories, could cause that kind of overwhelming malevolent presence, could operate with such subtlety that even powerful mages like Silas couldn't track it... that was far beyond anything described in those books at the palace.
That was something new. Or something very, very old that had been forgotten.
Aster sheathed his sword with trembling hands. He needed answers. Needed to understand what he was really facing. The Eyes were terrifying, yes, but they were at least documented, known, studied. This other thing—this memory-eating, reality-distorting presence—was something else entirely.
And it was connected to everything. To the party. To the curse. To whatever had happened to his father. To the plague now spreading across the kingdom. All of it traced back to that night, to that moment when the ring fell and the nightmare began.
"How do I remember it?" Aster asked the empty air. "How do I know what really happened? How do I fix everything when I can't even trust my own memories?"
He paced through the mansion, his mind working through the problem. He needed information. Needed knowledge. Needed someone or something that could tell him the truth about what was happening.
Silas knew a lot, but even he was working with incomplete information. The royal archives might contain relevant history, but Aster couldn't risk being captured before he found what he needed. The cult itself knew the truth, but they were the enemy—they'd never willingly share their plans.
Then it hit him.
His eyes widened behind his helmet as the realization crystallized.
"I know someone," he breathed. "Someone who is all-knowing. Someone who can answer any question, no matter how complex. Someone who even knows the cause of this plague."
The thought was both hopeful and terrifying.
There was an entity—not evil in the traditional sense, but not good either. Neutral in the most dangerous way possible. An entity that existed outside normal reality, that saw all timelines, all possibilities, all knowledge past and present.
The Sage of Evil.
The name was misleading. The Sage wasn't evil itself—it was simply associated with evil because of the cost of accessing its knowledge. The Sage existed in a realm of pure information, a dimension where every truth that had ever existed or would ever exist was known and recorded.
And it could be contacted. Communed with. Asked questions.
But the price...
"The path to knowledge is too evil," Aster muttered, remembering the stories he'd heard. "Too risky. People who seek the Sage lose themselves. They become corrupted by the knowledge they gain. They go mad from understanding things mortals were never meant to know."
But what choice did he have? He was already branded as the Cursed King. Already hunted by the entire kingdom. Already carrying demonic power inside him. How much more corrupted could he become?
And if the Sage could tell him how to save Lily, how to stop the plague, how to undo the damage his father had caused... wouldn't that be worth any risk?
"There's a way to contact the Sage without losing myself completely," Aster said slowly, piecing together fragments of forbidden knowledge he'd read in various texts over the years. "I'd have to become part of the Sage's cult. Join them formally. Undergo their initiation rites."
The Sage of Evil had worshippers—people who served it in exchange for incremental access to its knowledge. Unlike the Cult of Evil, which sought to spread darkness and chaos, the Sage's cult was more... academic. They were scholars of forbidden knowledge, collectors of dangerous truths, seekers of understanding regardless of the moral cost.
They were still dangerous. Still corrupted by what they learned. But they maintained their sanity and their free will—at least for a time—by approaching the Sage's knowledge gradually, building up resistance to its reality-breaking revelations.
"That's the only way forward," Aster decided. "Without losing my sanity, without losing my own will, without getting completely corrupted... I need to join the Church of the Evil Sage."
The Church. Yes, that was what they called themselves. Not a cult, but a church. As if that made their pursuit of forbidden knowledge somehow more legitimate.
Aster knew where they operated—or at least, where their public face existed. There was a library in the capital's old district, a place called the Archive of Forgotten Wisdom. Officially, it was just a repository for rare books and historical documents. But those who knew the signs could identify it as a front for the Church of the Evil Sage.
He'd passed by it dozens of times during his studies at the academy, never really paying attention. Now it might be his only hope.
But first, he needed to prepare. Needed to understand what he was getting into.
Aster left the Thornwood mansion, the empty building standing silent behind him. Whatever had happened to Lily and the maids, whatever had caused that terrible presence to manifest, it was beyond his current ability to understand or combat.
He needed more power. More knowledge. More understanding of the forces arrayed against him.
And the Church of the Evil Sage would give him that—if he was willing to pay the price.
The sun was beginning to set as Aster made his way back through the capital's streets. The city was quieter now, most people having retreated to their homes in fear of the plague. The few who remained outside moved quickly, nervously, avoiding eye contact with strangers.
Aster pulled his cloak tighter around himself and headed toward the old district, toward the Archive of Forgotten Wisdom.
Toward answers, however dangerous they might be.
Behind him, in the abandoned Thornwood mansion, something stirred in the shadows.
A presence that had been watching. Waiting. Observing Aster's every move, every decision.
And in that presence, something that might have been satisfaction.
The pieces were moving exactly as planned.