Viktor was content as he sat down on his bed. If the whole situation had any sort of upside it would be how he could skip the hunting competition that his parents and grandparents usually make him attend. He sat down and read the letter Yue had sent. He wanted to respond immediately but he decided to wait since it would take a while for Yue to stop cultivating. He could stare at Yue’s handwriting for hours but he knew he should at least try practicing some magic spells or something since he couldn’t do too many physical activities while he was recovering.

He started flipping through his new grimoire, looking at the spells he had written in there. He still had a lot of empty pages in his new grimoire but he couldn’t think of what spells to write in there. Despite growing his hair for 10 years after his first grimoire was made, he hadn’t thought of which spells were worthy of his ‘Adult’ grimoire.

Viktor summoned his old grimoire into his hands and started looking through it as well. He remembers agonizing over which spells to write in it way back then too, but his parents actually helped him with the decision back then. Viktor smiled a little and rolled his eyes as he came across a fire spell in the book. It was probably the spell from the grimoire that he used the least but his mother had insisted that he add it for the sake of the memories.

Viktor first used the spell during one of the first few family hunting competitions he attended when he was very very young.

—

Elena held back a sigh as she watched her parents, Natasha and Andrei hunt in the snowy mountains near her hometown. She wished she could join them but she knew she couldn’t leave Viktor alone so she rode her horse behind them.

Viktor was warmly huddled in a thick white winter coat, sitting in front of her on the horse. He was only 3, almost 4 and he actually caught colds quite easily so he wore significantly more layers than everyone else. 

‘You’re more work than Tasha...but you make up for it cause you’re cute.’ Elena thought to herself and giggled as she watched Viktor holding the reins of the horse with her.

“Mama. We’re being left behind!” Viktor exclaimed and pointed ahead of them where everyone else was going on ahead after they tallied up who got the kill.

“It’s fine, We can slow down and just enjoy the scenery.” Elena giggled.

“Scenery? It’s all white…” Viktor murmured and looked around them.

“Hehe, I don’t think you should be complaining about that.” Elena laughed and touched Viktor’s fluffy white hair.

“You’d probably blend in perfectly.” 

Viktor puffed his cheeks up and pouted in response.

After a while of leisurely riding through the mountains Elena got an idea to cure her boredom.

“I’m going to teach you to hunt!” 

“Huh?”

Elena changed their direction so they would get off the trail and into the rougher terrain of the mountain. 

“You’ve already heard about the rules, no magic, no silencers, just this,” Elena said and handed Viktor her gun as they got off the horse. Viktor was very clearly nervous but he went along with her. He thought it’d be fun to be able to hunt with everyone so decided to try his best.

“Just hold it like this and take your time aiming and then shoot. There’s a reindeer coming so get ready.” Elena said and showed Viktor how to hold the gun and had him sit down on some snow. She had left the horse behind so it wouldn’t make noise and make the reindeer attack. The reindeer was not exactly a reindeer, it was closed was closer to being a monster, and would attack quite fiercely if aggravated.

Viktor tried to be as silent as possible as he saw the reindeer approaching the area and Elena sat high up on a tree, silently watching over Viktor to make sure everything went well. Viktor was a quick learner so she was sure he’d do well. 

Viktor tried to aim as carefully as possible as he found the place Elena had told him would kill the reindeer immediately. He steadied his hand and smiled a bit, he just knew he was going to hit it perfectly.

Until he pulled the trigger.

The reindeer moved the second Viktor pulled the trigger and the bullet went straight through a tree instead of the reindeer. The reindeer swished its head over to where Viktor was laying terrified and quickly ran toward him. 

Elena was going to immediately use magic to kill the reindeer so Viktor wouldn’t get hurt but when she used her fire spell to attack the reindeer, Viktor had the same thought and used the same spell. Viktor’s spell, unfortunately, missed. It was the first time he’d ever cast the spell so it was only to be expected. Elena’s spell killed the Reindeer before it reached Viktor but Viktor’s spell hit the snowy ground and created a small avalanche that sent Viktor rolling down the mountain.

It took Elena a second to realize what was happening before she immediately panicked and rushed down the mountain to get Viktor. She quickly caught Viktor before he fell even farther down the mountain and used a tree to stop the two of them from falling with the avalanche which had doubled in size.

Elena tested the ground before stepping down from the tree after the avalanche passed and checked on Viktor. Viktor was sobbing and wailing as he held on to Elena for dear life. He was shivering and he had snow all over his hair and inside his clothes. 

“I’m sorry Vitenka,” Elena whispered and used magic to heat Viktor up. She felt super guilty as she watched Viktor cry and continued to apologize as she walked with him back to the horse.

“I-I’m sorry for l-losing your gun, Mama.” Viktor stuttered as he started to calm down.

“No no no don’t apologize, baby, it’s fine I can just get a new one, I can't get a new Vitenka,” Elena said and kissed Viktor’s forehead as she continued to heat him up with magic.

—

“You two were really off your game this year. Is it because of Vitusha? You two really insisted on him sitting out this year.” Elena’s mother, Irina said as she and her husband walked with Andrei and Elena up to the Black tortoise temple.

“...We’ll tell you about it when we get inside…” Elena murmured and locked arms with Irina as they walked.

Elena’s followers wore thick black coats over gray clothes with black embroidery. They bowed to Elena and welcomed her and the others back to the temple. Elena led everyone to her bedroom in the temple, even the followers weren’t trustworthy enough to hear about the issue.

She sat down on a sofa in the room and sighed as Andrei closed the door after Elena’s father, Alexander, walked inside.

“What is wrong with him? He hasn’t been sick enough to skip the hunt since he was a child.” Alexander said and sat down beside Irina.

“...I’ll just explain it all…” Andrei murmured and sat down beside Elena.

“As you know, the founder of the Ivanov family, Vikentiy Ivanov, was a very strong mage but he never bothered to reach immortality. And almost all mages think that he really wasted his talent because of that because all of the heads of the Ivanov family have kept his reasons secret for all this time.”  Andrei explained.

“He had a reason? I thought he was just being cheeky.” Alexander chuckled.

“Yes… He didn’t reach immortality because he had a special ability he gained while in the dungeon he was stuck in. I don’t know the name of the ability but the former heads of the Ivanov family called it a blood curse. Through generations, one person inherits Vikentiy’s blood and it slowly increases as the person gets closer to the level Vikentiy was at. The curse essentially tries to create a body for Vikentiy to revive into. The person with the curse is usually the firstborn child but sometimes it’s not… either way, the person with the blood curse must be the next head of the family.” Andrei explained. 

“Viktor and I both have the blood curse. While I was still raising my core level I constantly had to have my blood drawn as more than 50% of my blood was being affected by the curse and was being turned into Vikentiy’s but that stopped when I reached my core type. My percentages were the highest that the heads of the family had ever recorded because of my legendary core but it was never enough to revive Vikentiy into my body because Vikentiy’s core was mythic and the gap even from legendary to mythic was too wide. But Viktor has a mythic core and at the rate that he’s increasing his core level... he’ll become Vikentiy in just a few years…and if he becomes Vikentiy...” Andrei faded off into silence as he spoke.

Alexander stood immediately, “Unenroll him from that academy! Immediately!” 

“We can’t do that.” Elena sighed, she knew her father would get heated like this.

“It’s called a curse for a reason… If you avoid having children in order to stop passing on the curse, the curse will start whittling away at your soul or at the souls of other blood-related family members. And if you avoid raising your core level when you still have space to grow it will do the same thing. Vikentiy Ivanov doesn’t care for anyone, he just wants to be revived and he’ll do anything to reach that point.” Elena said and motioned for her father to sit back down.

“The 4 beasts will all be meeting on the 31st so I can ask for a favor from them without revealing too much. But trying to deal with it without involving outsiders would be best.”  Elena murmured.

“I’ll have them prepare my lab,” Alexander said after taking a deep breath, “What is Viktor’s current core level?”

“Peak Palladium...He’s almost at Ember.”

“Well at least we have time to deal with it, if he had been any closer we would’ve had even more trouble,” Irina murmured.

‘...I’m starting to think we don’t have much time at all…’ Andrei thought to himself and looked down at his feet.

-

Viktor, Elena, and Andrei were silent at the dinner table during one of the first few days since Viktor was dragged back to Russia. Andrei was just observing Viktor’s condition for a while, not testing his blood or anything. He was starting to think that maybe he was overreacting. He even prepared himself to apologize to Viktor for ruining the plans he was whining about as he was dragged back.

Elena was quietly eating while a servant showed her a catalog for decorations. She was preparing the Belarusian New Years' speech that she did every year. She was a bit behind on choosing how to decorate the room she would be using to magically broadcast to the citizens of Belarus though.

“Viktor, I’m so—Viktor?” Andrei started before he looked up at Viktor and noticed he was frozen and staring blankly at his plate. As much as Viktor hated him, he always looked him in the eye when they spoke so Andrei was a bit puzzled.

“Vitenka?” Elena asked, noticing Viktor’s odd behavior.

Viktor didn’t react even when Elena spoke to him and Andrei immediately became much more worried. He stood from his chair.

“Viktor—?!” Andrei was shocked when Viktor finally reacted and turned to face him.

Viktor’s left eye was almost completely a very light blue color with only some of Its original gold color near his pupil which was slitted like Elena’s pupils.

The servants and Andrei and Elena were all silent as they stared in shock but all hell broke loose when Viktor’s nose suddenly started bleeding. Andrei rushed to get a handkerchief over to Viktor but before he could press it to Viktor’s nose Viktor fainted.

-

‘I’m afraid that will probably continue to happen… but there’s nothing I can do about it alone… I just don’t want to lose my son.’  Andrei thought and squeezed Elena’s hand a little.

—-

Aylin suppressed a sigh as she walked into her temple. She smiled at her followers and walked straight into her bedroom with her daughter, Lunara.

"I put off returning to the temple for too long. They probably have a bunch of questions to ask me since it's almost winter."  Aylin sighed and sat down on the bed in the back of the room.

"Well, Father can help you out when he returns from Portugal. And I can help you too." Lunara said and smiled.

"No...You should prepare for your fight with Viktor." Aylin said and grinned and nudged Lunara as she sat beside her.

"Hehe, you don't have to worry about that," Lunara said with a wide grin, she had a plan for fighting Viktor this year, and the fact that Viktor had a handicap made it all better.

Aylin smiled at Lunara for a while and then just looked down at her claws.

"Mother?"

"Hm? I'm fine, don't worry."