The Curse of Areeott

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No one agrees on where the Curse of Areeott begins. Maybe it was the land itself, locked in time, its rivers never shifting their banks, its mountains never crumbling to dust, a land that refused to break even when the world around it shattered. Or maybe it was the ruler—one man, one dynasty, one unbroken thread woven so tightly into the bones of the kingdom that neither time nor death could sever it.   But all the stories agree on one thing: Areeott does not change.   There are those who say the kingdom was built on a bargain. That a desperate ruler—some name him Corvyn Seinrill, some say his name is older than history itself—stood on the edge of ruin and struck a deal with something that does not barter lightly. The terms are never the same in the telling. Some say he asked for victory. Others claim he begged to save a single life. The cruelest versions say he asked for nothing at all—that the bargain was never his to make, that someone else paid the price, and that the land itself refuses to let him forget.   And so Areeott endures. Unbroken. Unchanging. Bound.   The signs of the curse are not obvious to the passing traveler. At first, Areeott seems nothing more than a kingdom of quiet efficiency, of gleaming streets and watchful order. But then the unease sets in. The weight of something unseen, pressing down on the capital of Venlin like a hand against the back of your neck. The way the noble houses never fall, their lineages unbroken, their heirs always just so—as if history itself refuses to let them fail. The way foreign dignitaries come and go, but the Baron of Areeott himself is rarely, if ever, seen outside his own borders.   There are stories of the dead that do not rest. Not ghosts, exactly—nothing so obvious as a whisper in the night or a shape at the end of a darkened hall—but a presence. An absence. A weight.   In Venlin, there is a house where the windows are always dark, yet someone unseen keeps the gardens immaculate. In the mountains, travelers have come across men in antique armor, standing at the edges of the road as if watching for an enemy long since turned to dust. Some say the curse is not a curse at all, but a mercy. That Areeott exists in perfect balance because it must. That if the old bargains were ever broken, if time were allowed to move freely again, the land itself would crumble beneath the weight of all the history it has refused to bear.   Others say it is a prison. That something within Areeott—or someone—was never meant to leave, and so the land bends to keep it whole.   And then there are the ones who refuse to speak of it at all. Who smile when the subject is brought up, who shake their heads and say, Areeott has no curses.   Only history.   And history, here, is a thing that does not let go.

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