Casting the runes

The story follows Edward Dunning, a scholar involved in rejecting a manuscript by the occultist Julian Karswell. After the rejection, Dunning begins to experience increasingly disturbing phenomena: strange messages, eerie encounters, and the sense of being pursued by an invisible force. It is later revealed that Karswell uses a supernatural method of vengeance known as “casting the runes” — a ritual that transfers a fatal curse to its target through a cursed paper inscription. Once the paper is unknowingly returned to its sender, the curse is reversed, sealing Karswell’s own fate. The narrative builds toward a tense confrontation on a train, where Dunning and another scholar manage to trick Karswell into accepting his own cursed ticket case, leading to his mysterious death abroad.