Hex: Crimson Curse

When Heroca opened his eyes, the world felt warped. His head throbbed like a drum, the pain pulsing behind his skull with every beat of his heart. A cold sweat clung to his skin, and the sheets were tangled around his legs.

He sat up slowly, blinking through the haze, but something was already wrong.

A voice.

"Go to the jungle."

It whispered once. Then twice. Three times.

Again. Again.

Eleven times.

Each whisper pierced deeper into his mind, steady and unrelenting — until it stopped. The silence afterward was just as loud. The headache vanished the moment the voice did.

Panting slightly, Heroca looked around. Only a few minutes had passed since he blacked out.

The room was still dim with early morning light, his phone buzzing faintly on the side table. But it felt like he had been unconscious for hours... maybe even days.

Then he noticed it — the ring.

Still on his finger.

Its deep crimson color pulsed slightly, like it was alive. But more disturbing was the heat.

The skin around the ring was scorched.

Charred.

And yet... he felt nothing.

No pain. No sensation at all. Just heat. Pure,

dry, burning heat. It was only when he looked away — when his eyes broke contact with the ring — that the agony hit.

A wave of searing pain shot through his finger, and Heroca cried out, stumbling to the bathroom sink. He turned on the tap and shoved his hand under the freezing water, but it did nothing. Ice didn't help either — the freezer, the cold packs, everything failed.

His skin was already blackening. Peeling.

He bit down hard on his sleeve to keep trom screaming.

As he staggered out of the kitchen, heart pounding, he saw her.

His grandmother.

Lying still on the floor.

Blood pooled beneath her, soaking into the rug.

Heroca froze, his pain momentarily forgotten.

"No... o no no-" He fell to his knees beside her, but it was too late. Her eyes were open, lifeless. There was no wound he could see.

Just... death. Sudden. Silent. Wrong.

Tears blurred his vision. He clenched his burning hand and forced himself not to break down - not yet.

But then came the snap.

The bone.

The ring flared in color, and Heroca screamed as his finger cracked - skin tearing, bone exposed. His entire body convulsed as the finger detached from his hand, dropping to the floor in a small splash of blood.

Then, impossibly, the finger... regrew.

Flesh twisted over bone, muscle knit itself together, and the skin sealed over new nerves in seconds. The blood stopped flowing. The ring now rested perfectly again on a fully healed, newly formed finger.

He stared in horror.

This wasn't magic.

It was something worse.

His hand still dripped blood, but the pain was gone. No burning. No ache. Just fear.

Shaking, he rushed outside to find help — but the world outside had changed.

The sky wasn't blue. It was red.

Deep, suffocating crimson.

The clouds bled, thick droplets of red rain falling from above. The streets were silent, slick with blood. Bodies lay scattered — neighbors, children, familiar faces. No one moved. No one screamed. Everyone was dead.

Heroca ran.

He ran through the village, slipping on the soaked ground, his breath ragged. He didn't know why, but the jungle — the voice — was pulling him there.

And then... someone appeared.

A towering figure emerged from the edge of the trees — nearly 6'7, broad-shouldered and deathly silent. His body was clothed in ragged, dark garments soaked with old, dried blood. A tattered black hood draped over his head like a shroud, torn at the edges as if shredded by claws or time itself. His shirt, once white, was now stained and dirtied beyond recognition, tucked messily into dark pants wrapped in a wide black belt. His black leather shoes dragged faintly across the ground, also splattered with faint crimson stains.

But it was his mask that truly chilled the air.

The silver mask covered his entire face. The edges of the mask were lined with small, wicked spikes, and where the eyes should've been, there was only a cold darkness hidden behind barred slits — thin, metallic rods like a cage, hiding any glimpse of his eyes. The entire thing looked ancient, ritualistic… and built to instill dread.

A monstrous cleaver.

Its blade was thick and curved forward with savage weight, like it was made for tearing through flesh and bone — not slicing, but crushing. The metal was dark, scarred, almost rotten-looking, and around it flowed a sick, violent aura — black with veins of red, like smoke bleeding from a wound.

At the base of the blade, embedded where steel met wood, was a single blue diamond, glowing faintly like a cold flame. It pulsed slowly, rhythmically, as if the weapon itself were breathing.

The handle was rough, wooden, worn from age and use. Around it, black chains were wrapped tightly, some of them embedded, others hanging loose like vines — moving slightly even though there was no wind. Woven through the mess was a single brown chain, twisted into the grip like a vein under the skin.

The chains rattled softly, dragging behind him, whispering across the jungle floor.

The weapon wasn't just dangerous.

It was wrong.

Like it didn't belong in this world.

Heroca's throat closed. Something inside him — something primal — screamed at him to run.

He fell backward, trying to crawl away. But the man didn't walk.

He didn't walk. He glided — as if gravity didn't apply to him.

In the blink of an eye, he was above Heroca - foot crashing down on his leg, shattering bone. Heroca screamed.

The man didn't hesitate.

He grabbed Heroca by the throat and squeezed, lifting him off the ground. Heroca gasped, vision fading. The last thing he saw, far behind the man, deep within the jungle, was a temple.

Ancient. Massive. Covered in overgrown vines.

It wasn't there before.

Then everything went dark.

Death.

Heroca shot up in bed, gasping for air. His

throat ached. His body was drenched in sweat.

He was alive.

He looked around — he was in his room.

The table.

The ring.

Still there.

Still unmoved.

He grabbed the water on his nightstand and chugged it down, heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst. "Just a dream," he whispered.

But then — the voice returned.

"It wasn't a dream."

Heroca froze.

Trembling, he whispered in his mind, "Who are you?" But silence answered him.

The fear settled deep in his chest, but a strange calm followed.

Resolve.

If it wasn't a dream... then what he saw was a warning.

And if the voice kept returning, the jungle must hold the answers.

Slowly, he reached for the ring.

His hand shook.

He slid it onto his finger.

The metal was warm, then hot — but it didn't burn this time.

Just then, the voice echoed again.

"Wise choice."

Heroca's chest tightened. "Tell me who you are," he said, louder this time.

But the voice didn't reply.

No pain. No burning. No sleepiness. Just the low hum behind his eye — the faint sense that something had shifted inside him.

And then, for the third time that night, the voice came:

"Go to the jungle. You'll find all the answers there."

Heroca nodded slowly, calming himself. He threw on a jacket, checked the hallway — quiet — and stepped out into the night.

The village was still.

No blood this time.

No corpses.

Just silence.

The kind that wraps around everything like fog. The breeze that touched his face felt colder than usual, as if the night itself had been watching, waiting.

He stepped forward slowly, his shoes crunching faintly against the gravel. Every shadow looked deeper than it should. Every house darker. The once-familiar streets suddenly seemed… unfamiliar. Distant.

He walked past the bakery, past the old fountain in the center of the square. All dark. All silent.

It hadn't been a dream. He knew that now.

The pain. The voice. The burning ring. His grandmother.

He stopped walking.

His hands trembled as the memory flashed again — the blood on the floor, her still body. But when he'd come down after waking, everything had been… normal.

Too normal.

He turned back toward home, heart racing.

Was it a vision? A warning? Or something worse — something real, reset by time, as if the world itself had rewound?

When he entered the house again, everything was just as he'd left it. The front door creaked softly as he closed it behind him. He locked it. Twice.

Upstairs, he sat at the edge of his bed, staring at the ring on his finger.

It had stopped glowing.

No pain now. No heat. No whispers. But it still looked wrong on his hand — ancient and unnatural, with its twisting red pattern pulsing gently, like a heartbeat.

He clenched his fist and looked out the window. The jungle loomed at the edge of the horizon, dark and thick, like it had crept closer during the night.

"The jungle," he whispered.

The voice had said it. Twice. And something inside him — deeper than instinct, deeper than fear — was beginning to believe it.

That place had answers.

And maybe danger.

Maybe both.

But staying here wasn't going to fix anything.

Heroca exhaled slowly. His legs bounced nervously. His body was still exhausted, but his mind was wide awake. He wasn't sure what he was about to step into — but at this point, there was no going back.

He got up from the bed, walked across the room, and opened the drawer of his desk. Inside, a small flashlight. A pocketknife. A folded piece of paper with a roughly drawn map of the village.

He stuffed them all into his jacket pocket, hands steady now.

Then he turned to the window one last time.

No more voices.

No more burning.

No more illusions.

Just the truth waiting out there — hidden in the trees.

Heroca took a deep breath, then whispered to himself:

"I'm going to the jungle."