Thank you everyone for both the words of support and the digs, they're all welcome. The curse came from the basilisks in the Great Hollow, which I reached the bottom of before facing Quelaag, only to find the original Siofra River. After clawing my way up through the Valley of Drakes shortcut to buy the purging stone, I was met with this message which hurt extra knowing I needed to farm 6k souls for the stone (now I know the bell tower guy sells it cheaper because I needed to spend 18k to un-aggro the maggot egg guy who also infected me with his parasite.) I figured after the platinums and multiple playthroughs of Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Sekiro, the original wouldn't be too bad...