The Cursed Champion of the Splinterlands

I never asked for power. I never sought out the shadows that now cling to my very soul. But fate does not bargain—it takes. And so, I became the Cursed Champion.

It started with a single match, a battle I should have lost. My opponent wielded the fury of the Fire Splinter, and I was but a novice, armed with borrowed cards and false confidence. But as the flames surged toward me, something inside me cracked open. A whisper slithered through my mind.

"Accept the void, and you will never lose again."

I should have ignored it. I should have surrendered. Instead, I let the darkness in.

The moment I played my next card, the battlefield itself seemed to shudder. My Summoner, once a simple necromancer, became something more—something monstrous. My creatures no longer fell in battle; they twisted, reformed, and rose again, stronger than before. My enemy’s fire was snuffed out like a candle in the abyss. I won.

And then the hunger began.

With each match, the whispers grew louder. They taught me strategies beyond mortal comprehension, led me to victories I should have never achieved. My rank climbed higher, my name became legend, but my reflection grew stranger. My hands, once steady, now pulsed with unnatural energy. My eyes burned with something… wrong.

I was undefeated, but at what cost?

Then, one day, I met him. The only one who recognized what I had become. An old Summoner, cloaked in tattered robes, his presence heavy with forgotten magic. He looked at me, not with fear, but with sorrow.

"You have let it take too much," he said. "Walk away before you are nothing but a shadow."

I laughed. I had walked away—from weakness, from failure, from being just another player in this world. But as I stood on the battlefield once more, playing cards that no longer felt like my own, I wondered… Had I truly won?

Or had I simply lost myself?