It wasn't supposed to end like this.

  Tyler wasn't supposed to be bedridden at the age of twenty, working a dead-end job that he could barely even do. He had dreamt so long of leaving this hellhole. He had been on the cusp of making it out, despite everything working against him.

  The damp chill of winter was seeping into him from all sides, aggravating the rampant inflammation coursing through his body. His joints popped and groaned like rusty hinges, every shiver sending aches flushing through the red-hot network of flesh and bone.

  “Ugh.”

  He eyed the acceptance letters and scholarships hanging up on his wall. He'd been so excited for them back then, so certain that they would lead him to a bright future. Now the sight of them just made the pain sink further into his tired bones.

  Really, he thought the hope was what had made it hurt so bad. If he hadn’t been so ambitious, so hopeful, then the eventual crash back to reality likely wouldn’t have stung at all. Like the rest of his family, he could have grown numb to it.

  Heat was supposed to be good for pain. The fire in his belly had kept him going all those years — dreaming of a better future. But just like the uncontrolled inflammation flooding through his tender fingers and swollen ankles, it was also the source.

  His neck creaked as he eyed his cracked window. Snow was falling in heavy gusts outside, piling onto his windowsill in a little mound of fluffy white. He used to love playing in the snow, back before —

  WARNING: The Dimensional Storm is Coming

  He blinked.

  What the hell was that?

  He must have been even more sleep-deprived than he thought. It wasn’t like the text was a physical thing — it seemed to float more in his thoughts, like a stamp in the corner of his mind that he couldn’t quite wipe away. Just a couple of years ago, he might have been much more curious about the hallucination. As it was…

  Well, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  Boom.

  The crack of thunder rattled his bedframe, making him grimace as it aggravated his inflammation. Thousands of tiny impacts began to thunk against his window.

  Tyler sighed. A hailstorm.

  It looked severe enough that he should probably take shelter, at least according to the beeping warning on his phone.

  He could get out and get his cane, then limp over to the bathroom. He was the only one in the house. It was almost Christmas — his roommates would all be out visiting their families.

  Thunder cracked once more, the accompanying lightning bathing his room in illumination for just a split second.

  Tyler gritted his teeth, struggling to push himself into a seating position. His joints ached so much. After an agonizing moment, he slumped back down.

  Not worth it.

  What difference would it make if he got swept up in the storm? It wasn't like there would be anyone to mourn him. He briefly wondered how long it would take for anyone to realize he was dead, if his window broke and debris impaled him through the skull. His roommates wouldn’t be back for another two weeks, and they were far too busy partying to pay a bedridden prop any real attention.

  WARNING: The Dimensional Storm is Coming

  The message was beginning to flash like an urgent notification, and the clattering of hail seemed to grow louder as he pulled the blankets tighter and forced his eyes shut. He would stay in bed, just like he had the last hundred times he’d tried to dredge up the willpower to leave it.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  “God, fuck it all. Fuck. It. All.”

  Despite his limbs’ protests, he shoved the covers off, shakily pushing himself upright.

  He wasn't letting the universe beat him that easily. He was sure that it wanted to drag him back down to the depths of despair, but he wasn't going to let it, at least not without a fight.

  With a herculean effort, he pushed himself off the bed, grabbing his shoddy cane and hobbling step by step into the hallway. His knees and elbows screamed at him, not at all warmed up enough to handle such a task.

  So goddamn cold.

  How had the apartment lost heat so fast? It felt like just hours ago that he'd turned the thermostat up to as toasty as it could go, but now his toes felt numb as the chill injected itself directly into his unprotected skin.

  He slipped.

  “Shit.”

  He wheezed in pain as his knee knocked against the wooden floor. His cane caught him before he could fall further, but even the slight impact spread throughout his leg like lightning.

  The thunder was getting louder, and that stupid, half-real message was still lingering in his mind, flashing insistently in a way that just made him more annoyed.

  Whatever. He just had to make it to the bathroom.

  Tyler forced himself up.

  One step. Another. Another.

  Eventually, he made it through the creaky doorway and into the tiny little room. The freezing tile stung even more than the wood had.

  He looked in the mirror, grimacing as he saw just how decrepit he was. He was so emaciated at this point that he could hardly recognize himself. He looked more like an eighty-year-old on his deathbed than a twenty-year-old who was supposed to be just starting his adult life.

  Tyler clenched his fist, leaning against the sink as he hung his head.

  I can’t keep living like this. I can’t —

  The Dimensional Storm Has Come.

  The entire building lurched as a great boom shook the earth, purple sparks appearing midair one by one in a swirling hail.

  His forearms stung as they smashed into the edge of the sink.

  “Fuck!” He gasped, wincing as the sparks stung like tiny pinpricks of electricity on his skin. They seemed to linger there, melting like snowflakes on his bare skin.

  What was going on? Was he hallucinating?

  Crash.

  There was a rush of cold air behind him, and he slowly forced himself upright.

  What?

  There was a hole in his bathroom.

  Instead of stained white walls and a tiny bathtub, it was just a swirl of snow and darkness and crackling violet. A flash of lightning showered the world in color, and slowly, he began to piece together the scene.

  There was a hole blown into the side of his building. He was looking out into the street, obscured by a torrent of white and purple. But as the lightning flashed in and out, he glimpsed a pair of enormous wings flapping out in the distance.

  Flash. A swooping tail, and vicious scaled claws gripping at the side of a building.

  Flash. A mouth full of wicked fangs and slowly-building green light.

  A dragon. There was a fucking dragon.

  Light suddenly flooded the street, and a torrent of heat washed over him as the dragon belched flames of liquid emerald that flowed over the apartment complex just next to his. At the same time, streaks of razor-sharp red swarmed against it, smashing and stinging it in a whirlwind of crimson that he could barely see.

  But as the dragon battled the swarm with tooth and claw, Tyler's eyes managed to focus on one that was hovering near himself. It was a bird made of pure metal, dripping blood-red liquid and with feathers as sharp as knives.

  It screeched and shot back into the fray, immediately blurring as it crossed the air too fast for his brain to track. As it joined the tornado of death surrounding the enormous creature, another burst of fire tore through the sidewalk, leaving a trail of steaming concrete that instantly melted the snow pouring on top of it.

  It was so hard to see. It was so hard to comprehend.

  The swarm of birds flitted out into the distance before circling back to the dragon, swooping around rooftops and streetlights as they shredded everything in their path.

  The dragon tore and ripped and scorched its way through the flock, taking a hundred cuts to its scales but catching dozens of its foes with each strike. The two parties clashed in a delicate dance, the swarm of birds swooping in and out of the dragon’s range every couple of seconds — gathering in a group for just a second before splitting to avoid the dragon’s eventual lunge.

  One, two, three times they clashed, and every time the birds managed to split before the titanic creature tore into their numbers. They were taking many casualties, but they also seemed to be whittling the dragon down.

  The swarm reconvened once more, swirling in a veritable hurricane of black and red. They danced along cold concrete walls and dark alleys, a morphing mass of metal that eventually positioned itself in the yard outside of an apartment. Outside of his apartment.

  Tyler's eyes widened.

  The dragon turned towards the birds — towards him — and fire gathered in its jaws with a blinding corona.

  No, no, fuck this. I'm not going to die like this.

  He forced himself to turn, taking a feeble step back towards the hallway. The purple sparks grated against his skin more prominently than ever before, as if they were drilling into his very being. He could feel their energy coursing through him, meshing with him in some way that he couldn’t quite understand.

  I'm not going to die here. I'm not going to die here. I'm not going to die here.

  But it was too late. Green light shone against his skin.

  He turned.

  “No!”

  With every ounce of his being, he screamed in defiance, chucking his cane at the incoming beast.

  And then there was black.

  Purple.

  Swirling colors and morphing shapes in a kaleidoscope of meaning that he could scarcely comprehend. The world seemed to cradle him, like an infinite blanket cocooning his existence as the rest of reality trembled.

  An erupting volcano surrounded by blades of floating steel.

  An enormous tree reaching higher than the eye could see, knots of iridescent light pulsing along its branches.

  Images flashed by, one by one, flitting through his periphery like fractals dancing in a sea of thought. The sparks on his skin burned, but the sensation was so distant, like a long-forgotten dream.

  Armies at war, wielding brilliant magics and superhuman strength as they leapt over canyons and hillsides to clash in a burst of fire and lightning.

  The thriving silhouette of humanity’s greatest cities, suddenly flooded and besieged by monsters.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  The universe bent around him, spinning so fast and yet remaining perfectly still, every vision splitting and then splitting again, leaving him profoundly weightless yet rocketing through this sea of sensation at impossible speed.

  Five. Six seven eight. Nineteneleventwelvethirteenfourteenfifteen —

  “Gah!”

  Tyler gasped as he awoke upon a bed of warm sand.

  His ears were ringing. His vision was blurry. It felt warm. Pleasantly warm.

  The purple mist was still stinging him, effusing his surroundings in the same way it had in his apartment. There wasn’t a trace of snow to be found, save for the already-melting dusting of it that covered his body. The air tasted faintly of salt.

  Palm trees swayed pleasantly above him, casting their shade over the entrance of a large, craggy cave just a dozen feet over. He was on the beach.

  But things were off.

  There was a lush forested area just feet away, and the line where the sand and the grass met was abrupt — nearly jagged in appearance. The cave looked so out of place, compared to the rest of the environment. It was made of a different sort of stone than the rocks littering his surroundings — a smooth, almost orange thing that he felt should have been eroded away given how far it stretched into the beach. And the beach itself…

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Beautiful ocean waves lapped against the shore, but after just a dozen feet, the water faded entirely in favor of something stranger. A chaotic swirl of obsidian and violet, transparent as glass yet as opaque as the darkest night. Sitting perfectly still and yet furiously thrumming with every speck of its being.

  It was like this place had been scooped up and placed in a roiling cosmic soup. The substance that must have comprised the Dimensional Storm stretched out as far as the eye could see, swallowing the ocean and even the edges of the sky as those same purple wisps that clung to him misted off from its surface.

  Tyler swallowed. Had he been inside of that?

  His arms still hurt from when they’d smashed into his sink.

  He turned dumbly back to the other side of the island. Debris was beginning to appear out of nowhere. If he —

  Tyler nearly choked as he glimpsed a humanoid figure standing just feet away from him.

  He looked familiar enough from the neck down, sporting a long, intricately-decorated coat and a belt full of bottles and satchels. But two enormous gray horns curled upwards from his head, sticking at least a foot out from his mass of shaggy black hair.

  System Boon Engaged: Analysis

  Savadiere — Aspect of Reflection

  The ringing in his ears had died down now, and through the rushing winds he could just barely make out the fact that this person was talking.

  “WEJdgwaTad, KwgdvsefiyE Jwetdvadj ooi —”

  System Boon Engaged: Speech Attunement

  Tyler blinked.

  “Hmm, interesting. But still cursed with the power of the Storm.”

  The horned man now appeared to be speaking in perfect English, stroking his bare chin as he intensely examined something in his hand. A banana.

  “The readings seem normal, but the Curse is even stronger than I had expected it to be…”

  With a wave of his hand, a spinning mandala of crystalline light flickered into existence above the fruit, and then whooshed through the air as it passed through the object, keeping it floating midair.

  “How peculiar. Perhaps a consequence of the innate magic of the cave?”

  Tyler wheezed, forcing himself up onto his knees.

  The man ignored him, continuing to mutter under his breath as more debris began to swirl around them. “Yes, very strong. But even if one were suitable, the restrictions would be far too inconvenient. Useless. How unfortunate.”

  A road sign blinked into existence and crashed into a nearby tree before disappearing again, and a can of old soda flew off into the air, smacking the stranger in the arm. The sand was warm and soft beneath Tyler’s hands.

  “What’s… what’s going on?”

  The stranger turned towards him, as if he were just now noticing Tyler’s presence. “Ah. A sapient race. Have you encountered any extradimensional influence in the moments before you were transported here? Any creatures not native to your world, or forces not congruent with your native physics?”

  Tyler blinked at him dumbly. “Dr-dragon?”

  The man’s eyes lit up. Before Tyler could say anything else, he was standing over him, examining him with the same intensity he had been directing towards the banana. “Hmm… Carried through by the Storm, relatively intact. If the integration is already this deep, then it’s possible.”

  He began muttering to himself once more.

  A crystalline ball appeared out of thin air next to them, and the horned man manipulated it with a wave of his finger, projecting it upwards into the sky. He pulled out a knife and pricked his palm, squeezing out a drop of blood and sending it upwards to splash against the ball.

  The violet sparks seemed to be pooling from the cosmic sea, glowing like a swarm of mad fireflies as they spun around them faster than he could track. The stinging had subsided, for some reason. Now it was almost as if they were avoiding him.

  Magic. This was all magic. With all the shock he’d scarcely comprehended that fact.

  Tyler glanced back up at the alien man, taking in the myriad of spinning circles flashing in and out of existence around him. It was beautiful.

  “I’d suggest you prepare yourself.”

  “Huh?”

  Before he could say anything else, a deafening crack blasted through the air. Tyler's head snapped upwards just in time to see the massive dragon appear from the stormcloud in a blaze of green fire.

  System Boon Engaged: Analysis

  In the blink of an eye, the world seemed to slow. The sparks in the air stilled, and the plume of flame emanating from the beast was caught mid-blast, frozen in a beautiful corona around the bloody beast.

  Byuntog, Thousand-Year-Old Emerald Dragon

  The emerald dragons are not born the strongest amongst their draconic brethren. They do not have the abundant physical strength of their ruby counterparts, nor the powerful magical affinity of the sapphires. However, their diaspora rule over countless worlds due to their unmatched ability to grow.

  This creature has had a millennium to accumulate power.

  It looked even larger now in the daylight, its scaled leathery wings spanning the sky and plunging the island into darkness. It leveled predatory reptilian eyes upon them, and as time snapped back to normal, Tyler thought he saw a hint of desire as the dragon plunged downwards faster than he could track.

  Towards them.

  The horned man smiled beside him. “Wonderful!”

  With a snap of his fingers, the sphere unfolded into a giant, transparent matrix of crystal, which sang like tinkling glass as the dragon clashed with it. A titanic tail crashed into the shield with such force that it shook the surrounding trees.

  Faster than it’d ever come before, a river of liquid emerald blasted into the shield, so blindingly bright that even through his closed eyes spots were seared into his vision.

  But even as he heard the definitive crack that must have been the destruction of the crystalline barrier, all the man beside him did was laugh. The light suddenly dissipated, and Tyler forced his eyes back open, prepared to face his death for the second time in as many minutes.

  But in the seconds that the barrier had held, the stranger hadn’t been idle. A spinning sphere of light had formed around his outstretched hand, so dense so as to be almost solid. The magic crackled and fizzled as the world seemed to stretch around the technique, and as the dragon swept down with a claw that could have leveled skyscrapers, yet another message appeared in the front of his mind.

  Absolute Counter

  Tyler watched in slow-motion as the chaotic sphere bloomed outwards into a single, clean surface. A pane of pure transparent energy layered over the man’s palm, so thin and delicate that it looked like it could shatter into a million pieces at the slightest touch.

  When the dragon’s strike met the magic, it was as if reality itself shattered for just a blink. One moment the creature was throwing all of its strength into the attack, jaws open in a ferocious roar, and the next it was in a deep crater on the ground.

  The entire island trembled.

  Tyler desperately shielded himself, but he needn't have bothered. Even as the aftershocks crushed the nearby trees and sent a ring of dirt blasting around them, another magic circle appeared in front of him, blocking the tremendous shockwave of the impact.

  The horned man snapped another finger, and a cuboid black thing appeared high in the sky, half the size of the dragon itself.

  Was that a cauldron?

  Its pitted surface looked almost glassy underneath the slowly-dissipating purple sparks, and it seemed to bob in the air, as if it were floating on nothing but the wind. Carved runes gleamed a bright gold on each of its sides, and as the alien man snapped they seemed to burn with energy.

  The enormous cauldron shot downwards, tearing through the air and slamming the dragon further into the ground. Another rumble throughout the ground, another shockwave and spray of debris that splashed harmlessly against the magic circles in front of them.

  “Just for good measure,” the stranger hummed.

  Tyler coughed. It tasted like dirt.

  What just happened?

  The horned man was already floating above the corpse, more circles flashing through the air as he examined the gargantuan creature. “Hmm, the Growth was amplified by the Storm. Intriguing, intriguing.”

  He could still see its snarling head, opened in that terrifying roar that Tyler had been so sure would be the final thing he heard. But no sound came.

  He just killed a dragon.

  The magic circles around the dragon began to spin, slowly floating it into the awaiting cauldron that seemed to have grown even bigger as it slowly turned to its side. The mist was almost gone now, the thunder distant and faint. Glowing veridian flames slowly licked at the surrounding trees, contrasting with the remaining void-colored cracks that pulsed through the sky.

  That thing had destroyed his entire block, in its fight with the birds. It had rampaged through concrete and steel, and shrugged off attacks that must have been as deadly as gunshots by the hundreds.

  And then this man had slapped it aside like a fly.

  Tyler couldn’t stop replaying the scene in his mind — the warping of reality around them, the sheer weight of the monster’s attack colliding with this delicate film of magic. And then the blink — the sudden shift that seemed instantaneous even through the slowed time that this weird System Boon seemed to put him through.

  That was power. Real magic, the likes of which made everything he’d seen before look like parlor tricks.

  The stranger slapped the cauldron with both palms, causing it to disappear into thin air. “Came looking for a jewel and I stumbled upon the dragon’s hoard. Though in this case the hoard is the dragon itself, hah!”

  He isn’t even phased. He’s happy that a dragon got teleported right on top of him.

  The horned man indeed looked incredibly pleased with himself. “I'll need a couple higher tiers of cores than what I have right now. Hmm…”

  The man levitated himself up again, waving his hand into the cave and withdrawing a stream of devices and instruments that he proceeded to shrink down and pack into the array of bags and bottles at his waist. “I'll need to track down a kraken or two to make the best use out of this. Perhaps some will have appeared on the outskirts.”

  Tyler stared at him with an intensity in his eyes that he hadn’t felt in years.

  Tyler needed that. More than the air he breathed and the blood running through his veins — at that moment, he needed the power that he’d just been shown. The power to decide fate, to protect himself against anything the world could throw at him.

  The stranger dusted himself off, forming a circle under his feet that thrummed with energy.

  He’s about to go.

  “Wait!” Tyler shouted. “Please!”

  The horned man paused, the circle continuing to spin just a moment before its light began to dim. He slowly turned back around. “Yes?”

  Tyler forced himself to his feet. The motion felt like it was tearing his knees apart, but he grimaced and held the man’s gaze.

  “Please tell me how to do what you just did. That was incredible. I've — I've never seen magic before.” His voice caught, the sheer overwhelm of the last couple of minutes keeping him in a stranglehold. He didn't know what to say. But the stranger hadn’t left yet. He just had to keep talking.

  “I don't know where I am, I don't know what just happened, but I know that you have power. Power unlike anything I've ever seen before. I don't even know how I survived that dragon the first time — the best I could do was throw my stupid cane at it. And if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have survived just now. Please, teach me how. I’m tired of being so powerless. I want to fight for my own fate.”

  The stranger stared at him, a pensive expression on his face, and Tyler realized just how much of a risk he'd just taken. This was a man who could crush him with the flick of a finger — who wasn’t even really human. He didn't know anything about him. What reason did this man have to help him?

  Magic circles spun to life around him, and Tyler flinched.

  But they just passed through him without any impact, flitting around him just like they had done with the banana.

  The horned man floated towards him, stroking his chin in deep thought. “Stormborn? Perhaps…”

  A couple more circles whooshed through him, and Tyler exhaled, trying to calm his ferociously racing heart. He was still alive. That had to mean something, right?

  “You said that you threw your cane? At that dragon?”

  Tyler reddened. “It was stupid, I know. I just — I didn’t know what else to do. I had to try something. I wasn’t going to just stand there and take it. I…”

  He trailed off, cringing even as the words came out of his mouth. What was he even saying? The stranger was just looking at him, expressionless.

  Then the man dropped back onto the ground with a laugh, picking up the banana that he must have discarded some time during the fight. “What’s your name, stranger?”

  “T-Tyler. Tyler Thorn.”

  “My name is Savadiere, Saint of Shattered Reflections. I will not lie to you — your spirit is weak, and your body is somehow even weaker. There is an Aspect that is blooming within you, but you do not have the time to Awaken it naturally. This island is fairly mild, but you will still die within the day as you are.”

  Savadiere motioned to the banana.

  “This fruit is cursed with the power of the Dimensional Storm, meaning that it will spiritually shackle anyone who eats it. For most who consume it, it will hollow their soul from the inside out, leaving them dead within the day. And even if you survive, the restrictions upon your spirit are usually… severe. For a being like me, it would be unfathomably idiotic to consume such a thing.”

  He held up a finger.

  “But on the small chance that you do bond with the Curse — and on the smaller chance that your magic works with it synergistically — this fruit could give you the power you need to survive, and the potential to go far. Further, perhaps, than even those like myself.”

  He paused, staring pointedly at Tyler. “But potential is little better than hopes and dreams, you hear me? The odds are, even in the best-case scenario you don’t have the resources, or the mindset, or the luck to actualize it. So, tell me now. Will you take those odds?”

  Tyler barely understood anything that he’d had just said, and he was sure he’d have so many questions, as soon as the shock of it all faded. But he thought he understood enough. The potential to go far. Further, perhaps, than even those like myself.

  He clenched his fists. He was tired of living his life just barely scraping by. If he was fated to die to that stupid banana, then he would welcome it with open arms. He was almost grateful that the decision was already made for him. After all…

  Tyler swallowed. “The alternative is just letting myself die on this island, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I want it.”

  He looked into the eyes of the man who had single-handedly defeated a beast the size of a house. He still didn't know what was going on, but he knew that this was a second chance. He felt the burning in his limbs, the raging inflammation that had consumed his life for the past three years.

  Even if he could go back to living like that, he wouldn’t want to.

  Savadiere matched his gaze. “Know that even if you successfully consume it, this fruit is and will always be Cursed. You will be crippled no matter what — locked out of entire schools of magic, never able to do the things that even the most novice of Novices can master within their first week of Awakening.”

  At that, Tyler couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry. I just — sounds just like my life right now.”

  The horned man looked at him, then gave the slightest nod of approval.

  He waved a hand, summoning forth the sphere that had turned into that crystalline shield against the dragon. It was cracked and broken, opaque rather than translucent, and it seemed to be crumbling apart by the second. He tapped the sphere, and the entire thing shattered, leaving just one piece of transparent crystal floating midair. “Take that, then. It's broken to the point of being useless for me, but perhaps it could still hold up to the vermin that dot this island.”

  Faster than he could react, the small crystal slashed at his arm. It held itself there at the tiny wound, smearing itself with the drop of blood that had welled out.

  The Core of Protection has been attuned to you.

  “T-thank you. I —”

  Before Tyler could finish his sentence, another host of magic circles instantly peeled the banana, ripped out the seeds, and shoved the flesh into his mouth.

  Tyler swallowed, the movement more out of instinct than any conscious thought. It tasted strange, like pear and vanilla. The chewy substance tingled as it went down his throat.

  He let out a breath. Slowly, his fingers began to tremble. His heart fluttered, and jolts of electricity danced through his veins.

  System Boon Engaged: Analysis

  You have consumed a Storm-Cursed Treasure. Curse attuning…

  Tyler gasped.

  A wave of enormous pressure bloomed from the alien man, coming from a sense that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. It was like his eyes had been closed his entire life, and now he had opened them just to find himself staring at the sun.

  “You can thank me by surviving.”

  Savadiere stepped closer to him, and Tyler felt like he was being crushed from all sides as the horned man put a hand on his shoulder. “When Awakening an Aspect, it is recommended that you undergo a trial to strengthen the Resonance within you. This goes doubly if you’re going about it using a Storm-Touched Treasure — your soul will need to withstand the Curse within it, and consume it to make it your own.”

  Suddenly, the man pushed a circle onto Tyler, shooting him into the cave. Another circle caught his fall, sitting him down on the cool stone with a soft thump.

  “This is the cave of my ancestral peoples. If you survive, you may learn a great deal by examining their teachings.”

  The man stood outside the cave, more magic circles flickering around, and then gave him a brief smile. A final magic circle appeared, spinning around a thick log propped up against the edge of the cave. Slowly, the log lifted, and Tyler deftly realized that it was the exact shape of the small cave entrance.

  “Wait —”

  Thud.

  Suddenly, the cave was bathed in darkness. The soft glow of a table caught aflame by the dragon’s breath illuminated mesh sacks of fruit scattered around him.

  Something was chittering behind him.

  Tyler scrambled back with a shiver, catching glimpses of beady eyes and a trio of wicked claws in the dark.

  Savadiere spoke from outside the cave, his voice muffled by the heavy wood suddenly between them. “This Curse is extremely powerful, so much so that I wouldn't trust someone with even twice your potential to have a chance. But if you manage to survive…”

  The man laughed.

  “Well, the stronger the Curse, the stronger the benefit.”