Mark of the Cursed DE Get the Book

Mark of the Cursed · The World

One year after the fall

One year after the fall

Our world. Just without a tomorrow.

No castles, no knights. Roads, bridges, power lines, cities you know. Except the shadows have come loose from their people, and ever since, something has been crawling out of them that no longer has names. Only purposes: to feed, to hunt, to lure.

The standing sun

A black disc with a burning rim. It doesn't set, it doesn't rise. An eye without a lid, watching.

Ink drawing of an open hand with shadow tendrils growing from it

The shadows

They follow no one any more. Whoever can call the darkness pays for it, every time, with a piece of themselves.

Ink drawing of an old museum with columns

The museum

The order has barricaded itself inside an old museum. Boarded windows, catacombs, consecrated relics. Whoever stays follows the rules.

Ink drawing of a city inside a glowing warding circle

Morgena

The city that didn't fall. A warding circle holds it, and the women who draw it let no one in uninvited.

The great hall of the museum: columns, statues, light falling through boarded windows
Walls, rules and bread. And beneath them, the catacombs.
Ink drawing: the museum's pillared hall under the black sun
Chapter 8The Rules
Ink drawing: a high wall with a watchtower and a flag
Chapter 12The Man Who Stayed
Ink drawing: a fenced camp with a watchtower
Chapter 20The Reckoning at Greifenau
Ink drawing: stairs leading down into a dark cellar
Chapter 18What Happens in the Cellar

From the book's interior

44 chapters, 44 ink drawings

Every chapter opens with its own drawing. Here are the first few, spoiler-free.

A dead street in the rain, a streetlight, a chapel in the distanceChapter 1Control or Pain
A dark ruined city under the black sunChapter 4What the City Kept
Four small figures with overlong shadows at the edge of a cityChapter 5The Long Shadows
A long country road with toppled power linesChapter 6The Road East
An old museum with columns, a guard at the gateChapter 7False Walls
Rows of small cots in a museum hallChapter 9The School of Fear
Three notches and a handprint on concreteChapter 10The First Count
An open hand with a shadow rising from it on its ownChapter 13The Shadow Hand
A courtyard after the rain, a plant growing out of the concreteChapter 15A Good Day
An abandoned village in thick fogChapter 21Voices in the Fog
An intact city on the horizon behind ruinsChapter 23The City That Didn't Fall
A city inside a fine red warding circleChapter 24City of Witches
In progress

Planned: a spoiler-free glossary, the map with its places, the order and its rules, the relics.