How Willing Are You?

A full day had passed since Corere’s mother collapsed in the kitchen floor, the clouds above casting a grey hue across the landscape. A mirror to atmosphere in the village that hangs above everyone's heads.

That night had been a blur of panic, of half-screamed cries for help as he dragged her limp body across wooden floors, of neighbours jolting awake and lanterns flicking to life as the village flooded his home with noise and fear.

Now, by the time the morning sun had cast its strongest light across Custodia, that noise had died. The world had shrunk again. All that remained was the quiet. A quiet so heavy Corere felt it pressing against the back of his skull.

He sat in a wooden chair beside his mother’s bed, his body slumped forward as if trying to collapse into himself. The room felt smaller than usual, the air stuffy and warm from the fire burning in the far hearth. His mother lay under several blankets, though sweat still slicked her skin. Her cheeks had lost their colour...drained to a dull grey...her chest rose and fell with shallow, trembling breaths.

Her lips were dry and her forehead burned to the touch. Every few minutes, her fingers twitched as though grabbing for something just beyond her reach.

Corere watched her without blinking, his own eyes tinged with red from crying and exhaustion. She hadn’t stirred since last night...She hadn’t spoken. Maybe she heard him or maybe she didn’t.

He refused to accept the second possibility.

The village doctor, a woman in her late twenties with a thin braid of silver hair and a face lined from years of effort, hovered beside the bed. Her palms glowed faintly with traces of magic, casting soft lavender light across Corere’s mother’s body. She murmured quiet spells under her breath, shielding the words with her hand as if worried they might escape into the room.

Corere leaned forward when the light flickered.

“Is...is something wrong?”

he asked, his voice cracking.

The doctor didn’t respond as her focus sharpened, brow creased, breathing steady. Another glow drifted over his mother’s arms and then her chest where her heartbeat stuttered in slow, irregular thumps.

Corere swallowed hard, he didn’t realize he’d been clutching his own wrist until the nails dug into his skin.

The doctor inhaled sharply.

Then, slowly, she stepped back, the glow of her palms dying out like fading embers.

It felt like someone had stabbed a barbed hook into Corere’s stomach and pulled.

She didn’t speak, not yet. Instead, she pressed two fingers to her own temple, then lowered her hand with a heaviness that said everything before she did.

Corere stood so fast his chair nearly toppled.

“What? What is it?” he demanded. “Why do you look like that? Did you find something? Is she...is she going to be okay?”

The doctor’s lips parted, but no sound came out at first. She seemed to choose her words with excruciating care.

“I had feared this,” she whispered. “But I prayed I was wrong.”

Corere’s heart slammed against his ribs.

“Feared what? Tell me!”

The doctor exhaled slowly, too slowly.

“Corere… your mother is showing unmistakable signs of the curse.”

Corere froze. For a moment, nothing in the world existed except those words. Curse. That old story adults told children so they wouldn’t misbehave. That ridiculous tale with shadowy endings and warnings about jealousy and ancient cruelty.

His lips parted in disbelief.

“That’s...No. No, that’s not...You’re lying...”

The doctor didn't flinch as she’d expected that reaction.

“It’s not real,”

Corere continued, his voice rising from where it had sunk in his throat.

“It’s just a story! A bedtime story! A warning to scare kids! My mom...she just got sick. That’s all. So why...why are you lying?!”

The doctor frowned and looked down at corere’s mother

“I wish I were,”

the doctor said softly. Her answer quick and firm but only to try and ground his rising panic

Her expression didn’t waver. Not even when Corere’s hands balled into trembling fists which screamed of desperation.

She gestured to his mother’s form, her voice low, steady, and unbearably gentle.

“Her fever is too severe. And it came on too quickly. Look at the colour of her skin. The dilation of her pupils. The blood from her nose last night… these are all symptoms recorded in the village histories.”

Corere stumbled backwards until he hit the wall behind him. The impact sent a shiver through his spine.

“But...but the curse isn’t real…”

His voice sounded hollow even to himself.

The doctor pulled up a wooden stool and sat, folding her hands over her lap.

“Let me explain from the beginning.”

Corere wanted to cover his ears, but his arms hung limp at his sides.

“A long time ago...long before any of us were born. There lived a mage who lived at the edge of Custodia,” she began. “She was brilliant, but distant. Her mind was vast, but her heart was...never quite there. There are many versions of the story, but the one we keep is this: she fell in love with a man from this village. Loved him so deeply that the world made sense to her only when she was with him.”

Corere stared at her blankly.

“But the man she adored,”

the doctor continued, her voice solemn as she crosses her arms over eachother

“Fell for someone else. A woman who lived here. A simple Milk maid who had nothing except kindness and a smile that made him feel safe.”

Her voice softened.

“When the mage learned this, her grief twisted into madness. Her love curdled into hatred for the village that stole her only warmth.”

Corere’s throat constricted, each breath laboured and shaky

“So, she cursed Custodia,”

the doctor finished quietly followed by a small sigj

“Cursed the line of the woman who chose another. Every woman at a random time once they’ve reached thirty years old would begin to wither...slowly and painfully as punishment. The mage believed she was stealing back the years that were stolen from her.”

Corere’s breath shattered into pieces.

“That...that doesn’t make sense,”

he whispered.

“If this curse is real, why hasn’t anyone stopped it?!”

The doctor looked down. “Many have tried, Corere....None have returned.”

Corere’s mind reeled from the information. None have returned? From where exactly? Many have tried? What a joke...this can’t be happening, there MUST be something he can do

“The mage disappeared into the mountains after casting the curse,”

she continued.

“Nobody knows what became of her. But the curse remained, thats why we built the statue at the village centre to resemble the woman's envy and jealousy...a woman with a serpent’s head. We pray to it, hoping to slow the curse… even though it has never slowed its pursuit in suffering”

Corere’s jaw trembled.

The doctor placed a hand over his. “I am so sorry, Corere. Truly.”

He ripped his hand away as if burned.

“No… no, I don’t accept that,” he muttered, stumbling toward the door. “I won’t accept it!”

“Corere...!”

He didn’t hear her. He was already running.

The village blurred past him in streaks of colour and sound. His breath gasped in his throat, but he didn’t stop. Not until he reached the centre of Custodia.

The statue towered before him, silent and ancient. Its stone body was carved in the shape of a woman draped in robes, though her head was that of a serpent...long, smooth, and expressionless, with eyes that watched everything and nothing at once.

Corere collapsed to his knees in the dirt, pulling himself closer until his fingers scraped the base of the statue.

“Please…” he whispered.

His voice cracked under the weight of his emotions

“Please…please, I’m begging you… don’t take her.”

His forehead pressed against the cold stone.

“You can take anything else,”

he pleaded.

“My arms, My freedom, my...my life even. Just… not her. Please not her.”

The village had always been loud during the day with market stalls, chatter, the creak of wooden wheels, the occasional barking dog. But now…

Nothing.

The silence was suffocating. Unnatural. As though the world was holding its breath and refusing to answer him.

Corere’s heart thudded in his ears. Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping onto the stone.

“Why won’t you answer…?” he whispered weakly. “Why won’t you say anything…?”

Footsteps approached behind him.

He didn’t turn. He didn’t care.

‘’ANSWER ME!”

Corere screams out as he slams his fists back down onto the floor with such force that his hands become sullen with dirt.

A familiar voice spoke, low and steady.

“Corere...”

Corere looks over his shoulder.

Lux Tenebris stood behind him.

The warrior who had pinned down the raging ox with nothing but brute strength and a flicker of magic. Tall and broad with a cloak still dusted with straw from helping in the fields earlier. Sunlight caught the edge of his jaw, illuminating the faint scar running down from the corner of his eye.

His expression was unreadable, baring not anger, not pity but something heavier.

“You shouldn’t be kneeling in the dirt like that,”

Lux said quietly, stepping forward.

“It won’t change anything.”

Corere clenched his teeth. “You don’t know that.”

Lux knelt beside him. “I know you love your mother. Everyone does. She’s the heart of this village. But pleading to the statue… it only gives that vile mage strength.”

Corere looked away, tears falling freely again.

Lux sighed and his eyes softened as if he could relate to corere’s pain. He kneels to put his hand on corere’s shoulder with gentle care

“Do you really want to save her, Corere?”

Corere’s head snapped up.

Lux’s gaze was steady. “I mean truly...With everything you have. No excuses, no backing down....no running.”

Corere wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Of course I do.”

Lux nodded slowly.

“Then you need to know something.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “There is a way to break the curse.”

Corere stared with widening eyes, his heart beginning to fill with a sliver of hope

Lux rose to his feet. “Not everyone knows. Only a few of us were told when we were young. The village elders believed the knowledge itself would tempt people into danger.”

“What danger?” Corere asked breathlessly.

Lux looked toward the distant mountains, there peaks casting tall, dark and jagged shapes cutting into the horizon like broken teeth.

“A canyon,” he said quietly. “An entrance hidden in the mountains. Deep, deep below the earth. That’s where the counter-curse rests.”

Corere’s heart thumped so hard it hurt.

“The mage hid it,” Lux continued. “Some say she regretted what she did. Others say she placed it there to see who would be brave enough to face her creations. But either way… the counter-curse exists.”

Corere stood up so fast he stumbled, catching himself on Lux’s collar “Then I need to go. Take me there!”

Lux reached up and grabbed Corere’s wrists gently, surprising for a man of his stature and appearance.

“It’s not that simple.”

Lux drops corere’s hands which fall like bricks at his side, his body visibly freezing up.

Lux’s jaw tightened, memories flickering behind his eyes. “I once tried to enter the canyon. Years ago. I stood at the entrance for… I don’t even know how long. I couldn’t move forward. Every part of me felt like it was being crushed.”

He shook his head as if to wish away the bad memories

“That place is alive, Corere and it does not want visitors.”

Corere swallows his spit, the wind slowly coming to a complete stop which casts a heavy silence over the pair of them.

“But if you truly want to save her,”

Lux said,

“Meet me at the mountain pass tomorrow at sundown. Bring whatever supplies you can manage.”

Corere nodded numbly.

Lux placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Come prepared,” he murmured. “There is no light down there...No sound either. Nothing but darkness.”

His grip tightened.

“And... something inside it that has never let a single person leave.”

Corere’s breath stopped.

Lux stepped back, his cloak drifting behind him like a shadow.

“Sundown,” he repeated. “If you’re truly up for the task to save not just your mother....but the future generations to come”

Then Lux turned and walked away.

Leaving Corere alone with the statue… and the crushing silence of wind, as if itself has bated breath from the anticipation buzzing in the air.