The Withering

The Withering

“May corruption and death spread through your lineage, may the bloom wither and die from of this existence into the nether."
The Withering has, through the ages, been a most terrible and disturbing curse, bestowed upon the enemies of nefarious sorcerers. It destroyed whole families clans and wiped them out of existence. To start the curse, the first victim has to be fed with a small, specially prepared ball of mould, tasting all wrong and foul. This mould seeps through every pore, leaving a taste rot and decay that lingers and can be smelled in the body odour of the victim.
He has now become contagious, but only to his blood relatives. Touching the victim or smelling him will let the curse take hold in the newly doomed person, starting the cycle all over again. Once the curse progresses, rotting exanthema starts to appear that slowly spreads across the skin of the victim. The centre of this just dissipates into thin air as if no flesh ever existed. At the same time, people start to forget about the victim, starting with those most removed from it. After about two weeks, the victim has faded completely away under agony, forgotten by all.
This does not mean that there is no mention of him in medical records or business papers. It is just that no one can put a face to the written words any more, or remember ever speaking to the person. The victim is effectively wiped from remembrance.
All blood relatives hear an eerie whisper in their minds, a whisper that becomes more insistent the closer they are to an infected victim. It is always on the edge, always raising doubts as to whether it really exists. But it does, and it tells tales of death and despair, driving the listener mad in time. The whispering stops when all the infected victims have died and the curse has run its course.
The withering curse is a terrible weapon as it spreads through the ones you most love and wipes them from existence, even the ones that survived and did hold you dear. But it comes at a cost for the occultist using it. For every victim taken by the curse, a bit of life is drained, making him weak and feeble over time. They never fully recover from this, and it is said that their life is significantly shortened.