The Cursed Tattoo Novel (1)

The room had been closed for decades. The smell of mold filled the heavy air, and dust fell with every step I took across the worn wooden floor.

I inherited this old house from my grandfather, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances thirty years ago. No one in the family has dared to approach this place since.

As I was rummaging through the old drawers in my grandfather's library, I found a leather manuscript wrapped in a tattered silk rope. Inside were intricate tattoo designs with strange symbols. On the last page was a different tattoo: "The tattoo of an eye that looks at you wherever you turn the page."

I heard a scratching sound behind me, so I quickly turned around but found nothing.

I returned to the manuscript to find that the page had turned on its own, and written beneath the eye in dark red was:

"Whoever discovers the secret of the tattoo shall bear its curse."

I ran out of the house as fast as I could, the manuscript under my arm. A sense that I wasn't alone haunted my home. Under the light, I began studying the mysterious symbols.

It looked remarkably similar to the tattoo on my grandfather's back in old photographs.

In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a burning pain on my shoulder.

I rushed to the mirror to discover a small tattoo—an eye identical to the one in the manuscript—on my skin that hadn't been there before.

From that moment on, I began to have nightmares every night.

I dreamed of a dark room, my grandfather tied to a chair, and a man drawing the cursed tattoo on his back. My grandfather screamed in pain, and I heard whispers in an ancient language I didn't understand, but I knew they were cursing me.

I decided to visit my elderly aunt, perhaps she might know something about the secret of this tattoo.

When she saw the tattoo on my shoulder, her face turned pale and she whispered, "Your grandfather, the family curse has returned." Then she fainted.

While I was sitting in the hospital waiting room, a strange man wearing a black coat approached me.

"You bear the mark," he said with a frightening calm. "There are those who pay a great price to obtain this manuscript. Be careful of your shadow; not everything you see is real."

I fled the hospital, trembling, to return to the old house. I needed to know the truth. In the forgotten basement, I found my grandfather's journal hidden behind a loose brick.

In it, he wrote about a secret cult searching for the "cursed tattoo," which grants supernatural powers but takes the soul of its bearer.

Suddenly, the lights went out. I heard approaching footsteps and the sound of heavy breathing. In the dim light of the phone, I saw the shadow. It was mine, but it held a knife.

"You are damnation, and I am freedom," the shadow whispered in my voice before attacking me.

The Shadow's Struggle:

The shadow swung its knife at me, but my survival instinct drove me to roll onto the dirt basement floor.

The knife pierced the air where my neck had just been.

"You're not me!" I screamed, recoiling backward as the throbbing pain in my back intensified, as if the eye were waking up completely.

The shadow laughed at my voice, but it was distorted and filled with hatred.

“I’m saving you from yourself. Give me the manuscript, and the suffering will end.”

I suddenly remembered what the strange man had said in the hospital: “Be careful of your shadow. Not everything you see is real.”

He wasn’t referring to metaphorical danger; he was warning me about this literal being.

I pounced on my grandfather’s journal, which I had dropped on the floor. As the shadow prepared to pounce again, I randomly flipped to the first page under the dim light of my phone. There were drawings of ritual circles and words in an ancient language.

I shouted the first word I saw: “Adrigo!”

The shadow cried out in pain, as if the word were a whip of fire. It took a few steps back, its dark form trembling for a second.

The curse had rules, and the ancient language was the key to it.

I seized the moment and rushed up the stairs, clutching the journal and scroll like precious treasure.

My shadow roared from below, but it didn't follow me out of the cellar.

It was bound to dark places by the curse.

In my house, trembling, I immersed myself in my grandfather's journal.

I discovered the curse wasn't random. The tattoo was the prison of an ancient shadow creature, banished from another world, searching for a host to regain its strength.

My grandfather didn't flee; he sacrificed himself to complete the ritual and seal the creature within the tattoo on his back, preventing it from passing on to anyone else in the family.

But with his death, the magic weakened, and now, with the scroll and a blood heir (me), the curse began to awaken once more.

The shadow is not my shadow, but the being itself, trying to free itself from its skin prison to occupy my entire body.

My phone rang. An unknown number. I warned you. It was the voice of the strange man from the hospital.

They know you were home. They're coming. They don't just want the manuscript, they want the tattoo itself. They want the energy within.

Who are you? I whispered hoarsely.

Your grandfather was one of us. We were a group resisting them.

We tried to protect your family by hiding the truth, but now that protection is gone. Look for the 'Guardian' at the 'Story Monument.'

Only she can help you now, but hurry before the full moon.

If it's full and the moon is still full, the tattoo will feed on your energy and become powerful enough to break the prison forever.

The line went dead.

I looked out the window. The nearly full moon was filtering its cold light into my room. On the windowpane, lines of frost began to form, taking the shape of the same eye on my back.

Now the curse doesn't just follow me; it surrounds me, and the mysterious cult is at the door.

I must find the "Telling Monument" before it's too late.

But where is it? The answer may lie hidden in my grandfather's diary, between the lines he wrote with a trembling hand, knowing his fate was sealed.

The tattoo on my back beats steadily like a heart beating with evil. It grows, and I know that with every step I take toward the truth, the Shadow moves closer to freedom.

The nightmare isn't over yet...

Will our hero find the "Guardian" in time? Who is the real stranger? And what is the true power hidden within the cursed tattoo that everyone is fighting to obtain? Find out in the upcoming installments of "The Cursed Tattoo," as war erupts between the forces of darkness, and the hero discovers that his blood holds a secret more powerful than he imagined.