A faint whimper slipped past Aris’s lips as Laras pressed a damp towel to his brow. The room was thick with dread, the air heavy with the scent of antiseptic and fear. From the corner where the lamplight faded into shadow, the antique sideboard loomed, its carved doors closed against the secrets within. Aris’s vision blurred and sharpened in turns, each wave of pain cresting and receding, leaving him gasping on its shores.
His chest ached with a pressure that thudded against bone, as if the curse hunted for a way out—a rooting, writhing agony. He reached for Laras, catching her trembling hand. Her fingers were cold, slick with sweat, but she held tight, anchoring him to the world. In her eyes, he saw a mirror of his own terror, sharpened by helpless love.
He tried to steady his breathing, but every inhalation stoked that woody growth beneath his ribs. Splinters pressed outward, insistent, alien, a silent scream inside his skin. In the reflected glass pane of the sideboard, he caught sight of himself: pallid, eyes sunken, a man hollowed by something invisible.
“We have to do something,” Laras whispered, nearly pleading. The clock ticked, bloated and too loud. Shadows seemed to shift along the walls, as if the room itself were watching.
He thought of the toothpick—cold, innocuous, lying in the drawer as if nothing had happened. A curse, Laras would say, but it hardly mattered what words dressed the terror. It was a presence now, a parasite winding deeper each hour, his every heartbeat feeding it.
A sudden, sharp splintering inside his chest made him shudder. He bit back a scream, feeling wood grind against bone. The pain rippled through him, seizing his jaw, flashing down his arms. He could feel the swell beneath his sternum—a lump, solid, as if a branch were being born from his ribcage.
Laras moved closer, eyes wet with tears. “We should destroy it. The toothpick. Burn it.” Her voice trembled, but resolve flared beneath the fear.
For a moment, Aris clung to that hope—simple and desperate. But another voice, ancient and cold, seemed to whisper in the recesses of his mind, promising that the curse would not be so easily outwitted.
He forced himself upright, vision darkening at the edges. The room swam sickeningly. Everything inside him screamed to act, but the curse, whatever its origin, pulsed with a stubborn, malicious defiance.
A floorboard creaked. Wind pressed against the windowpane, rattling it in its frame. In the hush, Aris’s thoughts raced: destroy the toothpick, beg for outside help, or search the sideboard for some hidden clue about its origins. Each path shimmered with dread, the outcome uncertain and perilous.
Outside, thunder rolled. The lights flickered. Inside, the pain reached a crescendo, and Aris felt, for a split second, something splinter and shift just beneath his skin—a woody tip pushing closer to breaking through.