CHAPTER 418: GET BACK TO HIM-I

The view across Wendy’s eyes then turned red, blood red. It was as if a red film had been placed before her eyes, causing for her sight to be tinted in that red color. But by the time she realized it, it wasn’t because the world had turned red, no. Instead, it was because of her eyes that had began to bleed out, the red liquid dripping from her two eyes like it was a stream of blood.

"This," Wendy can’t continue her words as the more she wiped away the blood on her face, the more she realized that she wasn’t only bleeding from her eyes but all her orifice. Her mouth began to taste like iron, like blood, a heavy amount of blood. Then her nose and ears, causing for all her senses to turn as dull as a rusted knife.

"What’s happening?" Wendy muttered, confused by her own suffering. This was odd. She didn’t get hit by any attack that would have made her suffer like so or bleed from all the parts of her body.

It felt like poison... or is it a curse? Maybe something similar to the voodoo curse that she had used on Arabella herself?

Then in an epiphany, Wendy snapped her eyes toward the straw voodoo doll she was holding, noting how the red ribbon around its neck was of a different color, not red, but white. But then it had turned red as blood had seeped to it, changing its color.

Only then did Wendy realized something was glaringly different to the voodoo doll she had used and the one that had somehow land on her hands now.

This one... wasn’t made by her!

Wendy ripped apart the straw dolls, pulling the stack of hair inside only to find a drop of blood that had been stuffed inside the doll’s stomach. Around it was the ribbon that had hair... a hair that matched her own.

Upon that realization, Wendy’s eyes widened.

"YOU. WHEN DID YOU DO THIS?!"

Arabella’s shadow that she had seen fell on the ground began to shift and she saw with her eyes how the girl she had thought had two broken legs and a neck had now stood up on her own feet.

"Sorcerers are first taught the art of rapid healing, correct?" Arabella spoke up, "I have heard it from Lastor. Due to their lack of magic and their constant need of using potion, their body has to be trained first, trained to the point that potion won’t harm them, that even a broken leg and arm can be healed. In exchange however, you will began to lose your sanity. That’s why it’s never required for you to constantly heal yourself rapidly unless you are one of Morpheus’s men."

"So you’re saying that you can also heal your broken legs now?" Wendy snapped, "And what good would that do?!"

Arabella was silent, her steady gaze cutting through the dark. Her green eyes glimmered faintly, eerie as glass reflecting firelight— alive, unyielding. That calm, gleaming stare alone was enough to chill Wendy’s blood. She had never thought herself capable of fearing Arabella. Not this girl. Not this so-called witchling.

Yet her spine crawled.

"How did you do it?!" Wendy roared, blood spattering from her lips with each syllable. Her voice cracked, more desperate than she meant it to. "How could you— how could you change the doll in my hands?"

Arabella’s lips barely moved as she whispered, her tone carrying the softness of ice slicing through skin. "It was easy. You never looked closely. You were too convinced you would win. All it took was a moment. A distraction. You never even noticed when I exchanged it."

Wendy’s eyes went wide, her gaze snapping down to the straw doll clutched in her bleeding fingers. Her heart lurched violently, as though trying to tear itself free. When? When had it been switched? When Arabella had first revealed herself? When she had thought her broken body was sprawled helpless on the ground?

Her throat constricted. She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell.

Every reaction and action she took, it was as though everything played too well according to what Arabella had wanted, as though even the fact that she was breathing now was controlled and calculated.

The thought sent her shivers down to her marrow, but she refuses the idea of accepting this.

"Hah." Her laugh came out ragged, wet. Smearing blood from her eyes, Wendy forced a smile that trembled. "So what? You’ve made me bleed, yes. But that’s all. Your doll doesn’t kill— it only wounds. I’ll recover. In minutes, I’ll be at full strength again, and then you’ll—"

Her voice cut off. Her arms froze mid-motion, fingers stiff and tingling. She had meant to launch the gleaming pins clutched between them, a dozen silver darts poised for Arabella’s throat. But her body— her traitorous body —refused to obey. The pins clattered uselessly from her trembling hands.

Her heart sank.

Arabella’s voice slithered through the silence, low and unshaken. "I don’t like curses," she said softly, almost mournfully. "But there is one stronger than all the rest. A curse that only works when you return what was meant for you. The stronger their malice, the deeper their cruelty, the heavier the price they wished upon you... the stronger the curse will bite them when it’s returned."

Her words lingered in the air like smoke, choking Wendy’s lungs.

Arabella’s gaze sharpened, and her whisper became a blade.

"Tell me, Wendy. What curses did you use against me?"

Realization crashed over her. The blood fled Wendy’s face until her skin turned the sickly color of ash. Her breath came in shallow gasps.

"No..." Her voice broke, trembling. "No, you couldn’t have—"

But her body betrayed her. Her veins burned, her limbs locking as though her own malice had shackled her from the inside.

And for the first time, Wendy understood— this wasn’t Arabella’s curse at all. This was her own venom, reflected back at her.

What curses had she put to Arabella?

Countless... close to forty if counted! Morpheus wanted her dead so she had used all kind of curses, more vicious than the next.

All those curses are now back to her and was stronger than before?

"No-" Wendy cried as half of her face had turned purple and swollen as a round big flesh.