“What the fuck?” Rain yelled out, his voice sending bursts of echoes throughout the large cave before the sound slowly faded into the distant darkness.

  “Sunmarked Curse?”

  It seemed Rain had been right — it really was true that he had a curse that prevented him from stepping into the sunlight, and even though he had guessed correctly, he found himself wishing more than anything that he had been wrong, wishing that the words in front of him simply didn’t exist.

  In Rain’s world, there had only ever been two things he truly loved: sleeping… and the sun. His love for the sun might have sounded strange to anyone who knew him, considering he was mostly a shut-in who barely went outside, yet on the days when Rain didn’t want to sleep he would crack open his window and let the sunlight glare onto his body through the glass, feeling the soft breeze brush through his hair in a way that created a quiet comfort nothing else could match. To Rain, the sun had always been fascinating, and in a simple way that he could never properly explain, it had always been beautiful.

  But one line from the system’s message continued to bother him more than the rest.

  You have discovered one of your two curses.

  Not only did Rain have the Sunmarked Curse, but he had another curse as well, something unseen and unknown that he would eventually be forced to discover, and Rain had always hated things he couldn’t fully understand. Even in his old life uncertainty had always bothered him, which was why he hated watching sports since he never knew which team would win, and now in this situation that same discomfort returned in a far worse way because knowing that a second curse existed without knowing what it was made his thoughts wander endlessly through every possible outcome.

  What could it be… what could it possibly be? Rain wondered as he sat still on the cave floor, thinking back to the many films he had watched that mentioned vampires — their powers, their weaknesses, and the strange conditions they were forced to live with.

  It was obvious that Rain felt hunger constantly now, a quiet but persistent craving that seemed to linger in the back of his mind and pull his thoughts toward blood, yet that didn’t truly feel like a curse so much as an overwhelming desire, and because of that Rain quickly ruled the possibility out. Instead, he thought about wooden stakes and how vampires were usually killed by being stabbed through the heart with one, and then about fire, holy objects, blessed weapons, silver, and garlic, each weakness coming to mind one after another as he searched for something that felt right.

  But all of them seemed so… bland, too ordinary and too simple to truly be called a curse, and none of them even came close to the Sunmarked Curse, which would challenge Rain every single day and possibly for the rest of his life. Compared to that, the weaknesses he imagined felt minor and avoidable, and the more he thought about it the more certain he became that whatever his second curse was, it had to be something far worse than any of the possibilities he had considered so far.

  Rain activated his vampire hearing, focusing carefully on the faintest sounds around him, and after listening for a while and concluding that there were no creatures nearby, he slowly lowered himself onto the cave floor and stretched out on his back before closing his eyes and trying to fall asleep.

  Rain wasn’t actually tired; it was more that he wanted to sleep so the time would pass quicker, and also to refresh his head, since Rain had always believed that without sleep you couldn’t think properly and that eventually you would start doing things that were out of character or simply make stupid decisions.

  Rain concluded that if he could fall asleep, then maybe when he woke up he might be able to figure out what his other curse was.

  But even as Rain lay there in a sleeping position with his eyes closed, trying to think peaceful thoughts and clear his head from the situation he was trapped in, the tension in his mind refused to settle no matter how still he remained, and after nearly twenty minutes of trying without success, he finally gave up.

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  Rain sighed out loud in frustration.

  But as Rain thought about how he couldn’t sleep, his heartbeat began to quicken as a single thought slowly formed in his mind.

  What if…

  What if my second curse is that I can’t fall asleep…

  The more Rain thought about it, the more it started to make sense, because he hadn’t slept in multiple days now, which should have been impossible without feeling at least some amount of exhaustion.

  Maybe the curse system somehow connected itself to Rain’s favorite things — like the sun and sleeping — and maybe it had cursed both of the things he truly enjoyed just to make his situation harder.

  Rain clenched his shirt tightly over his chest as the idea settled deeper into his thoughts.

  As the minutes passed, Rain continued thinking about it more and more, turning the possibility over in his mind again and again until another thought suddenly surfaced.

  Why hadn’t the system said anything?

  Why hadn’t it shown something like:

  You have discovered 2 of your curses.

  It hadn’t mentioned anything about a sleep curse at all.

  So maybe… it really wasn’t his curse.

  But it was still true that he couldn’t fall asleep.

  Maybe it was just one of the downsides of being a vampire, the same way he seemed to have an endless hunger now, and maybe not being able to sleep properly was simply another one of those changes.

  Either way, the thought pained Rain both internally and externally.

  Hours passed with little change as Rain mostly sat still, drifting in and out of distant thoughts and fading memories while the silence of the cave stretched on around him.

  And finally… the sun began to go down.

  As Rain stood up, preparing to leave the cave and begin exploring, a sudden chill ran through his body, making him hesitate before taking another step forward.

  The wind outside was strong — very strong — but more than that, it felt unnatural.

  At first it had been subtle, nothing more than a light breeze brushing against his hair.

  But within a single minute the wind grew colder, far colder than before.

  And after only another minute had passed, snow began to fall outside — rapidly, almost violently — until it resembled a full snowstorm.

  Rain instantly stepped farther back into the cave, shivering heavily as the cold seeped into his body, a kind of cold he had never felt before.

  In the distance, the same large mountain he had seen earlier — once vast and beautiful — had already begun turning completely white, its slopes swallowed by snow until it looked similar to Mount Everest, only smaller.

  As Rain stared at the mountain from afar, a sudden quest window appeared across his status screen.

  Rain hadn’t even thought about the quest for this floor, possibly because he had been so focused on discovering the nature of his curse.

  Quest: Reach the summit of The Ashen Mountain

  Time Limit: 30 Days

  Failure Condition: Permit Residency

  Rain’s eyes widened as he looked at the mountain in the distance, his entire body trembling from the cold, though he knew that even without the freezing air he would still be shaking.

  From fear.

  Because one thought echoed through his mind.

  Would it even be possible…

  Possible to climb that mountain in thirty days?

  Rain’s thoughts quickly vanished as he stepped farther and farther into the cave while the snowstorm outside grew colder by the minute, the freezing air creeping inward until it felt like the temperature had dropped to at least negative ten degrees.

  Wearing nothing but a long-sleeve T-shirt, Rain felt brutally cold, especially since the thin fabric was riddled with small holes that let the freezing air reach his skin with ease.

  Rain wished he had worn a hoodie before being teleported into the Tower.

  Or at least asked Light for the hoodie he had been wearing before.

  As Rain slowly backed deeper into the cave, trying to escape the creeping cold, he suddenly heard a distant sound coming from far within the darkness.

  Unable to identify it, he activated his vampire hearing.

  It sounded like something was walking toward him from deep within the shadows of the cave, and whatever it was, the heavy thuds of its footsteps striking the stone floor seemed to send vibrations through the ground and straight into Rain’s chest.

  Rain’s body broke into a sweat which seemed impossible given the temperature. A deep sense of dread filled rain, because for some reason whatever was approaching felt profoundly inhuman, and everything inside him screamed that he needed to run the other way and escape as fast as possible.

  But when Rain looked around the cave, he saw nothing — no exits, no paths, nowhere to go — and while he could run out into the snowstorm, he knew with certainty that he would probably die almost immediately if he tried.