Third Person’s POV
Altheria observed the curse carefully for a few monts, and after she confird sothing in her mind, she gave a slow nod.
Then, raising her gaze, she t Nyx’s golden eyes directly before beginning to speak.
"About a few hundred years ago," she said calmly, her voice steady but carrying a hint of old mory,
"I ca across an ancient parchnt in a small pawn shop located in the capital city of the Empire of Abyssal Dominion."
She paused briefly, as if recalling the strange coincidence.
"I had just gone for a random stroll in the demon region after I had beco too bored in my castle, and it was nothing more than a complete accident that I obtained it.
At the ti, it had looked ordinary—aged, blank, and almost worthless, though at that ti, I had had an instinct that it was sothing unordinary.
Yet to tell you the truth, its true nature... was only revealed to today."
The statent made both Nyx and Isha react imdiately as faint flashes of shock flashed across their faces.
However, before either of them could question her further, Altheria lifted one hand and retrieved an old parchnt from her storage space.
The parchnt appeared blank at first glance, but the mont she allowed it to hover beside Ethan’s body, sothing strange happened as thin dark lines began to appear across the paper on their own.
The markings ford slowly, as though invisible ink were surfacing from beneath the surface.
Stroke after stroke erged until an entire set of characters filled the parchnt.
Looking at it, the three won didn’t have to struggle to decipher the script as it was written in the ancient magical Aegaryn script.
It was a language that everyone who was a well studied mage could read, recognize, and use its divine and mysterious power along with elental mana to manifest their spells in reality.
As the last lines manifested, the parchnt began to emit a faint yet unmistakably foul aura.
The atmosphere in the room changed subtly as they could feel that the aura was eerily similar to the dark curse etched across Ethan’s body.
However, there was sothing even more unsettling about it.
The energy radiating from the parchnt clearly belonged to the elent of darkness, yet it didn’t contain the essence of pure darkness.
It seed twisted and contaminated by another force—an unknown elent that none of them had encountered before in their long lives.
The unfamiliarity of that energy made the air feel colder.
"That day when I obtained this scroll," Altheria continued, her tone reflective,
"I only suspected that it might be special in so way as on that day, sothing about it had felt unusual to ."
Her fingers brushed the floating parchnt lightly as she spoke.
"But I never discovered what that ’sothing’ was."
She shook her head faintly.
"I investigated it through every thod available to at the ti.
I searched for references, examined the material, tried to decode its magical traces, even consulted several archives."
Her crimson eyes narrowed slightly.
"And yet I found absolutely nothing."
With a soft exhale, she continued.
"Eventually, I stored it away inside my spatial storage as a mysterious addition in my collection and forgot about it completely."
Her gaze then shifted toward Ethan.
"But today... after the battle ended, and after you chased Dajjal into the Shadow Realm, I sensed a sudden disturbance from the scroll after I started examining his body myself and ca in contact with this foul curse energy."
The mory was still fresh in her mind.
"It reacted."
Her voice lowered slightly.
"And it was then that I realized that the parchnt had finally revealed its purpose.
Still, I had waited until you returned before examining it properly."
As she spoke, Altheria guided the parchnt with her mana.
The scroll slowly unfurled itself in midair and floated in front of the three of them.
The mont the parchnt fully unfolded before them, the air in the room seed to grow colder.
The foul aura radiating from it intensified slightly, and the dark lines written in the ancient Aegaryn script glimred faintly as if the text itself was alive.
Alongside the text were nurous intricate diagrams.
They depicted various creatures, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and other crawling insects, with each of them being drawn with unsettling precision.
Their bodies were elongated, twisted, and unnaturally detailed.
Yet what made the images particularly disturbing was how they were positioned.
In every single diagram, the insects wrapped themselves tightly around the sa central figure that was a shadowy humanoid silhouette.
Its form was barely defined, but the aning of the illustrations was unmistakable.
The insects clung to the figure’s body like parasitic guardians, their limbs coiling around its arms, torso, and head as though feeding upon it and parasitizing it.
The resemblance to the curse on Ethan’s body was impossible to ignore.
Seeing their reactions, Nyx’s golden eyes narrowed slightly while Isha leaned a little closer to the hovering parchnt.
Her cerulean gaze moved slowly across the symbols and diagrams inscribed upon it, studying each line with growing seriousness.
Altheria observed the two dragonesses quietly for a mont before raising her hand and pointing toward the upper portion of the floating scroll.
"This scroll," she began slowly in a asured tone, "as you both can clearly see, seems to call itself the Abyssal Curse Codex."
Her crimson eyes flickered faintly as she spoke, reflecting the dim glow of the parchnt.
"Interestingly enough, it does not appear to contain the curse spell itself... nor does it provide any technique or instruction describing how one might learn, practice, or actively use the curse."
She paused briefly, her gaze sweeping across the text once more.
"Instead, it resembles sothing else entirely, i.e more like a record."
Her voice lowered slightly as the implication of that statent settled in the room.
"A record of the innate divine curses carried within the royal bloodline of the Abyssal DominionEmpire."
The parchnt rustled faintly in the air as dark runic lines continued to shimr across its surface.
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