When they came, they butchered everyone in the village - every man, woman, and child. The witch, the last of her family, bound her vengeance into a crystal tuned to resonate with a single bloodline – the lineage of her family’s killer. As she labored through her final breath, slumping upon his blade in her chest, she pressed the crystal against the killer’s face. Flesh was seared. His eye collapsed, and the crystal sank through the sludge. Jagged tendrils erupted from its surface – penetrating the surrounding tissue and rooting itself into the bones of his skull. The marauder died screaming with the witch’s last words haunting him: “You took everyone from me. Now your line will never rest.” His contorted body collapsed as the light within the crystal faded. For a moment, the world was still. And then, the crystal flared once more. And thus, the curse has been carried for generations. When the bearer dies, the lattice collapses and flares again, pulling another soul—ancestor or descendant, past or future—through the crystal and into its prison of flesh and bone. The cycle is endless. Death is not release…it simply resets the pull. But now, the crystal hums irregularly. Instead of summoning a single essence, it has assembled a patchwork of multiple eras, fractured and twisted into mania. Naraka mutters memories of wars waged centuries apart, faces he claims he has yet to meet, and ruins no one else has seen. He stalks and kills with erratic delight, driven by instincts developed and honed across countless disjointed lifetimes.
