The following afternoon, Arthur discovered an uncomfortable truth about inheriting a stolen life: the past didn’t simply stay in the ledgers. Sometimes, it came knocking on the front door.
He had barely returned from the city with Elena and Kaelera when Margaret approached him in the grand entrance hall.
Kaelera was still visibly trembling, her dark ears pinned flat against her head. She seemed terrified of the manor’s enclosed spaces, her eyes darting toward every shadow, actively avoiding standing with her back to any open doors. Arthur had made sure to give her space, understanding intimately that trust wasn’t something that could be purchased with a bag of gold.
Margaret bowed her head, her expression strained. "My lord, there are guests waiting for you."
Arthur stopped halfway up the staircase, his hand resting on the polished banister. "Guests?"
"A lady and her two daughters," Margaret explained softly, glancing nervously at Elena and Kaelera.
"Did they give you their names?"
Margaret hesitated. "They refused. They simply said they knew you personally and demanded to be shown inside."
Arthur frowned, a faint prickle of unease brushing against the back of his neck. That was not particularly reassuring. "Where are they?"
"The western reception room."
"Take me to them." He turned to ELena, keeping his voice gentle. "Show Kaelera to her room. Give her whatever she needs and lock the door if it makes her feel safer."
Elena nodded, placing a gentle hand on Kaelera’s shoulder to guide her upstairs, though she paused, looking back at Arthur with a cautious, lingering gaze. She could already sense the subtle shift in the air around him.
Arthur followed Margaret down the long, carpeted corridor, his footsteps muffled against the stone.
When She opened the heavy double doors of the reception room, Arthur stepped into a space saturated with the cloying scent of expensive perfume.
A woman sat elegantly on a plush velvet sofa. She appeared to be in her late thirties, dressed in a sweeping crimson gown layered with intricate lace, a small fortune in emerald jewelry resting against her collarbone.
Two young women, undeniably her daughters, sat on either side of her, mirroring her rigid, aristocratic posture.
The moment Arthur entered, the older woman looked up.
Her expression cycled rapidly through three distinct phases: sheer surprise, deep recognition, and finally, a chilling, absolute contempt.
"You’re alive," she said, the words lacking any trace of relief.
Arthur stopped in the center of the room.
The woman stood, smoothing the front of her crimson gown. "Edric."
Arthur’s expression remained perfectly blank, but internally, the name struck a strange, hollow chord. It wasn’t because he remembered it—he didn’t have a single memory of the man whose face he wore. It was because the woman’s voice carried the absolute, unshakable certainty of someone who believed she had total leverage over him.
Arthur slowly stepped fully into the room, leaving the doors open behind him. "My name is Arthur."
The woman frowned, her perfectly manicured eyebrows knitting together. "Don’t be ridiculous." She let out a short, condescending laugh. "You may have changed your clothes, and you may have lost some weight during this supposed ’illness,’ but you are still Edric Valen."
Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly. *So that was his name.*
The woman stared at him, confused by his silence. "What?"
"The previous owner," Arthur said smoothly, more to himself than to her.
The room became intensely quiet. The two daughters exchanged a confused glance.
"You knew him," Arthur stated, analyzing their posture.
The woman crossed her arms, the emeralds at her throat catching the afternoon light. "Of course we knew him, Edric. Stop playing these foolish games."
One of the daughters laughed softly, hiding her mouth behind a painted silk fan. "Mother, he’s pretending not to remember us. How incredibly childish."
The other daughter smiled, a sharp, cruel expression. "Perhaps all those rumors about his fever were true. It seems to have cooked his brain."
Arthur said nothing.
Deep inside his chest, something shifted in the dark. A faint, rhythmic pulse. *Violet.*
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, ignoring the sensation, and pushed the emerald mana downward to anchor himself. "Why are you here?"
The woman looked deeply offended by the question. "Why?" She gestured dramatically around the opulent room. "Because this estate, and your entire reputation, relies on people who know you. And you owe us." Follow the newest chapters on novelping . com.
Arthur raised a skeptical eyebrow. "How much?"
She named an amount of gold that would have comfortably purchased a small fleet of merchant vessels.
Arthur almost laughed. "You came into my home expecting me to hand over a fortune without a single shred of proof?"
The woman stared at him as though he had just slapped her across the face. "You dare question me?"
Her daughters immediately joined the assault, their voices overlapping in a practiced chorus of disdain.
"You really have become strange, Edric."
"I remember when you used to practically beg for our approval at the autumn galas."
Arthur froze.
The sentence hadn’t been directed at him. It was directed at the ghost of Edric Valen. Yet, somehow, the words bypassed logic and struck a raw, exposed nerve buried deep within Arthur’s own soul. It wasn’t a memory of this world. It was a phantom ache from his past life—the endless, exhausting desperation of trying to be seen, of begging for the approval of people who looked right through him.
The curse pulsed violently.
His chest grew searingly hot. The cold, violet energy uncoiled from the bottom of his heart, spreading rapidly through his mana pathways like spilled ink.
Arthur clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. "Leave."
The woman stared, her mouth falling open in shock. "What did you just say to me?"
"I said, leave."
She laughed, a shrill, ugly sound. "You think you can speak to us like this? After everything we’ve covered up for you?"
Arthur looked directly into her eyes, letting a fraction of the heavy, suffocating pressure in his chest bleed into the room. "My name is Arthur. And I don’t know you."
The woman stepped closer, entirely oblivious to the lethal shift in the atmosphere. "You may have forgotten your place in this society, Edric, but we haven’t."
One of her daughters smirked, standing up and brushing off her silk skirt. "Mother, let’s go. He’s clearly become completely useless."
The second daughter looked Arthur up and down with open, naked contempt. "Just look at him. He looks like a beggar who suddenly stumbled into a mansion."
That specific word echoed inside his head like a struck bell.
*Beggar.*
Arthur felt a distinct, terrifying snap.
It wasn’t a complete break. He was still in control. But the curse, which had been quietly accumulating pressure for days, suddenly surged. Every irritation at the city gate, every insult in the auction house, every spike of fear in the void—it had all been pooling in the dark. And now, it had found the perfect fuel to feed on.
Arthur looked at the three women, his dark eyes entirely devoid of light.
"Margaret," his voice was dangerously soft.
The maid stepped nervously into the doorway. "My lord?"
"Show them out."
The woman scoffed, snatching her velvet purse from the table. "You cannot possibly think this is over, Edric."
Arthur smiled. It was a cold, predatory expression that didn’t reach his eyes.
"No," Arthur said. "It isn’t."
The three women swept out of the manor, leaving a trail of furious insults in their wake.
Arthur remained standing in the center of the reception room. Absolute silence filled the space, broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hall.
Elena appeared in the doorway, having left Kaelera safely upstairs. She approached slowly, sensing the volatile energy radiating from him.
"Arthur?"
He didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the tall lattice window. The sun was rapidly descending, casting a thin, bleeding line of orange light across the horizon.
Arthur felt the curse fully awaken.
This time, he didn’t need to touch a dark symbol to trigger it. He could feel it moving freely through his veins. The violet energy was no longer a dormant puddle; it was a rushing current, circulating, expanding, and growing teeth. His emerald mana instinctively flared to push back, and the two powers collided inside his chest, creating a sickening, vibrating friction. Get faster updates on g.com.
Arthur grabbed the edge of the heavy mahogany table to steady himself. The thick wood groaned and splintered slightly beneath his grip.
Elena rushed forward, her eyes wide with alarm. "Are you all right?"
Arthur closed his eyes, his breathing heavy and ragged. "I don’t know."
That realization frightened him more than the magic itself. He had spent the last two days trying to draw a line in the sand—trying to determine where his own genuine emotions ended and the curse’s artificial amplification began. But right now, that boundary was entirely obscured by dark water.
He was angry. That was a completely real, human reaction to arrogant nobles invading his home.
But the curse was taking that spark of anger and pouring oil over it, warping it into something massive, sharp, and starving.
A foreign thought bloomed seamlessly inside his own mind.
*They humiliated you.*
Arthur opened his eyes. The orange light of the sunset was fading.
Another thought followed, indistinguishable from his own inner voice.
*Make them regret it. Break them.*
He knew it wasn’t a normal reaction. He knew it was the magic pushing him. But the sheer desire behind the thought felt so disturbingly natural, so deeply satisfying, that he stopped fighting the current.
Arthur let go of the table and whispered, "Fine."
Elena stepped forward, reaching out. "Arthur? Where are you going?"
He looked at her, his dark eyes reflecting the dying light. "Stay here. I have to settle something."
The three women had not gone far.
Arthur caught up to them near the outer gates of the estate, where their private, gilded carriage was waiting on the cobblestone road.
The mother had just placed her foot on the carriage step when Arthur emerged from the twilight shadows. She gasped, her hand flying to her chest in shock. "You followed us?"
"No," Arthur said, walking smoothly toward the carriage, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. "I came to collect something."
The woman’s face hardened, recovering her aristocratic sneer. "What could you possibly collect from us? You are still Edric. You are a coward."
Arthur shook his head slowly. "You keep making the exact same mistake."
He stepped closer, the temperature around the carriage plummeting. "I am Arthur."
Dark, violet energy began crawling up his right arm, tracing the veins beneath his skin like glowing, infected roots.
The daughters recoiled into the carriage, genuine fear finally breaking their haughty masks. The mother stared at his arm, her breath catching in her throat. "What... what is that?"
Arthur didn’t answer. He simply raised his hand.
The emerald mana responded first, brilliant and pure, wrapping around his fingers in a protective gauntlet of light. But a fraction of a second later, the curse answered. A swirling, violent darkness wrapped itself around the green glow.
The two forces did not destroy one another. They merged, twisting together in a mesmerizing, lethal dance of light and shadow.
Arthur’s own eyes widened in profound realization. He could control both. The angelic gift was still there, untouched by the corruption, yet the curse hadn’t consumed it. He had two distinct sources of power running through the same veins.
Arthur lowered his hand, letting the dual aura burn brightly in the dusk.
"I won’t kill you," Arthur said, his voice carrying an eerie, layered resonance.
The woman stared at him, completely paralyzed.
"But I will make absolutely certain that you never, ever come near me again."
He reached into his heavy coat and pulled out a thick stack of parchment. It was the bundle of documents he had extracted from Edric’s hidden study—the coded ledgers, the blackmail, the hidden agreements.
The woman’s face drained of all color. "You..."