I was born with a cursed mouth. Whenever I spoke of something bad, it came true. When I was four years old, I dropped a single grain of rice at dinner. My grandmother flew into a rage, yanked me by the arm, and dragged me toward the old outhouse behind the house.

Chapter 12

The sound of my laughter drained the color from the room.

Even Master Hale’s face changed.

“How…” he whispered.

I rose to my feet.

The bodyguards nearest me backed away on instinct.

The broken pendant lay against my chest. The abbess had blessed it before I left. Whatever dark art the old monk used, it couldn’t survive contact with something truly holy.

I wiped the blood from my face, looked at the monk, and said coldly, “You call yourself a master, but you use crooked methods to protect the cruel. You are no servant of heaven. You are a parasite in robes.”

Then I turned to the men around me.

“Anyone who touches me from this point on,” I said, “will lose the use of that hand.”

Every single one of them let go immediately.

At the same moment, Vivian screamed again.

Her wrist twisted a second time, even worse than before.

Master Hale rushed toward her, muttering prayers and hand signs, but this time nothing changed. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

I calmly straightened my torn robe and smoothed my hair back into place.

Only when I had composed myself did I look up again.

“Master Hale,” I said, “you have committed evil under the eyes of the divine. Kneel and confess your sins, or you will lose your sight first… and your voice next.”

He sneered, trying to recover his authority. “You little girl. You think you can frighten me?”

He reached into his robe, pulled out a bronze bowl, and began chanting as if he planned to trap me like some demon from a folktale.

He waved it, shook it, invoked every trick he knew.

Nothing happened to me.

Instead, he staggered backward and grabbed his face.

“My eyes!” he cried. “Why can’t I see clearly?”

I smiled.

“You still have time. Kneel in that corner and confess. If you refuse, blindness will be the least of your problems.”

The old man collapsed to his knees.

All arrogance vanished from him.

Shaking, sweating, unable to meet anyone’s eyes, he crawled to the side of the room and began confessing everything—every lie, every scam, every family he manipulated, every ritual he staged for money, every life he helped bury under silence and fear.

I took out a phone and started livestreaming it.

No one tried to stop me.

At this point, no one in that room remembered how.