All right, no matter. So what if I’m in a loop? I can still carve the magic circle on my hand. Though what is worrying is the fact that my soul could just be snoozing on me while my execution date comes, and I get tortured to death or whatever these people want to do with me.

Hmm, the blessing was on for six days, and it took about nine to get the diseases to weaken the curse. Though, on five of those nine days, I was searching for new diseases, so I don’t know how long the nine days will be shortened to.

Whatever, I’ll think about it when the time comes. For now, I need to engrave the circle before my brain deflates.

Engraving it takes a long time, about two days, believe it or not, considering the size of my palm, my trusty spoon's untrustworthiness, the complexity of the circle, the constant headaches, and my decreasing sanity. The pain is unexpectedly bad as well, thanks to the abundance of nerves in the palm. Thankfully, I manage to carve it successfully on my first try, or else I would have been forced to use my left hand to carve the circle on my right palm. That would not have been fun.

Now, all that is left is to wait. And wait I do, for about four more days. This time I feel the blessing turn on. It’s odd and yet also comforting, which is bad, because I’m pretty sure these gods attached an irrational comfort to the damned blessing.

Whatever, I’ll open that can of worms later. For now, I want to look at my palm. Well, the soul hasn’t expanded yet, so not much has happened. I need to wait some more.

While I’m waiting on my haggard soul to do its job, a duo of guards comes in to give me the usual lacking food rations. I idly decide to ask them if they knew when my execution day would be because that damn Henbrick didn’t bother to tell me.

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I hear my raspy voice ask, “Excuse me, do you know when the next public executions will be?”

They look at me, likely not used to my vocality. One of them asks their fellow guard, “Hmm… don’t remember. Hey, Arne, how long ago was the last one again?”

“It was fourteen days ago,” the other one answers.

“Really now? I feel like it was longer.”

“That’s because you got so drunk that night, I had to drag you back home,” he shrugged.

The first one chuckled, “Yeah, sounds like me.”

“Lay off the alcohol, man. Every time I drag you back to your home, I have to hear your wife nag me to stop...”

At that point I start ignoring them, to think about more integral things, like my impending execution. given how long I’ve been in here and my crimes, it’s likely that the next execution session will probably contain me. Executions are staged every month, which also lasts four weeks here, but thanks to the extra days in the week, a month is thirty-four days instead of thirty. so I have twenty days.

It took six days for the blessing to turn on again, and it will last for five days, like last time. That means when the day comes the blessing will have two days left until it turns on, I sigh. wonderful.

thankfully there is a way to fix this, it simply requires getting more foreign bodies in me. That will shorten the time needed to turn on the blessing and lengthen the time to turn it off.

Though thankfully I can put getting more diseases off for now, thanks to the blessing getting any new diseases will be harder, so I’ll just wait until it is turned off for now.

It ends up taking a couple of hours for the soul to heal over the circle on my balm. And even so, I realize that after the thing got covered it still didn’t turn on. Apparently it took a weakened wave from the curse crashing into it to make it turn on.

I suppose it makes sense, the head wizard did forcefully turn the curse on when it was first applied to my body.

Though that’s irrelevant for now, what is relevant, though, is my palm because on its surface lies a purple light.

I walk over to one of the walls of my cell and put my left hand on it. I wait for about a minute or so before lifting off my hand.

There, where my hand used to lie, is left a ping-pong ball-sized dent in the wall.