---
The red chains coiled around my wrists like living serpents. Cold, slick, and pulsing as if they breathed. I struggled, but the harder I fought, the tighter they constricted. Pain lanced through bone.
In front of me stood Darshana Valeria, unmoving, a thorned crown atop her head that seemed forged from molten bone. Her eyes reflected the color of old blood—dark and deep like a swamp that hid the dead.
"You are my weakest reincarnation, Elara," she said with disgust. "Did you think love could erase the sins of blood?"
"I'm not Elara," I shouted, teeth clenched against the pain. "I am Seraphine... and I choose my own path."
Darshana laughed softly—not insane, but drenched in scorn.
"A name is just a skin. Your soul still belongs to me."
Aldric shouted from beyond a sliver of light, trying to pierce the barrier between the spirit world and the real one. His body shimmered faintly, and I could see the wound in his palm deepening, his blood used to hold the collapsing gate.
"I'll come in if I have to!" he cried, desperate.
"No!" I yelled back. "She'll trap you too!"
Darshana turned toward his voice, narrowing her eyes.
"Ah, the little guardian. The loyal man always at Elara's side… even when she destroyed the world."
Aldric didn't flinch. "Then let me be the one to destroy you now."
"Such bold words, from one who carries my blood," Darshana floated closer, her gaze piercing. "You think you can guard a curse you never understood? You are merely a successor of duty, not the keeper of truth."
Aldric drew his dagger—not just any blade, but one carved with symbols of blood and time. I knew it. The dagger used by the Astoria line to temporarily halt the curse, once every generation.
"I know this won't kill you," he said to Darshana. "But if I can wound your shadow—I can steal time to save her."
Darshana smiled, and suddenly the world around me slowed. Her voice cracked like a broken realm.
"Try, child of Astoria. And see who shatters first—her, or you."
Aldric lunged.
---
Everything turned to slow motion. The glowing blade sliced through the spiritual plane, tearing into Darshana's shadow—and for a moment, the grip of the chains around me weakened. I gasped, reaching for the light.
But Darshana twisted, and with a single motion, swung her arm of blood toward Aldric.
A crimson beam lashed out.
"Aldric!" I screamed.
He was thrown from the rift of light. I heard his body hit the ground—hard. The light tethering me to him dimmed, then vanished.
Darkness again.
I collapsed to my knees, chest heaving. The chains cinched tighter. But this time, there was heat—not just pain. As if something was fusing with my blood itself.
Darshana floated closer now, her tone final. "Playtime is over. It's time you learn who you truly are."
"I know who I am!" I shouted, breath ragged.
"You only know half." Her hand touched my forehead.
And suddenly, everything shattered.
I was hurled into memories that weren't mine. The world turned to scorched desert, a sky of blood-red, and in the center stood a woman clad in armor—young, beautiful, and merciless. Elara.
But not me as Elara.
This was the original Elara.
She stood amidst a battlefield, surrounded by corpses. Behind her stood a man whose face looked like… Aldric, but wasn't. His eyes were silver, his smile ice.
"Elara," he said, "we can end this. The world bows to your blood."
Elara nodded. But her expression was hollow. As if her soul had already died.
"What do you want now?" she asked.
The man—the first guardian, perhaps—spoke softly, "I want you to live… just long enough to witness what you've begun."
Then, Elara took a dagger—the same dagger Aldric now held—and drove it into her own heart. Her blood splattered, not onto the ground, but across a massive stone seal.
In an instant, the sky split.
The curse began.
I screamed inside the memory. "Stop this! I don't want to see it again!"
But Darshana stood behind me.
"You must see it, for this is where everything began. The blood curse. The betrayal. The love that failed. And the vengeance… that endures."
I was ripped from the memory.
My body trembled.
"I'm not her," I whispered.
"You are her reincarnation."
"I'm different."
"But your blood is the same."
I looked at my hands. Beneath the skin, deep red veins began to glow faintly. The cursed blood… it was either awakening me, or killing me—I couldn't tell.
Then a gentle voice entered my mind. Familiar. Steady.
*It is not your blood that defines who you are, Seraphine.
Elara.
The real one. Her voice... from somewhere within. She embraced me from inside.
"You are not me. And that is why you can break this chain."
I took a long breath. Closed my eyes.
"Then… let me do it."
I gripped the chain in my hands. Let the cursed blood seep in. But instead of resisting, I embraced it. I would no longer deny the darkness in me. I wouldn't drive it away. I would own it.
The chain quivered.
Cracked.
Darshana screamed, her voice shaking the realm like an earthquake.
"Fool! You're opening the full legacy of the curse into your body!"*
"Then I'll bear it. And end it."
My body began to glow—not ordinary light, but a fusion of gold and red. The blood symbol on my forehead blazed, shifting shape. From a seal, into a radiant sun.
The chain shattered.
The void began to collapse.
But—
Just as I was about to return to my body—
Darshana grinned. And she whispered:
"You did it, Seraphine. But you were too late."
I froze.
"...What do you mean?"
"Look at your guardian's body."
---
I awoke. Back in the real world.
Lying on a stone altar, my body weak, but my soul whole.
Then I saw him.
Aldric.
Unconscious on the floor.
Blood pooled around him, forming a symbol that should never exist.
The symbol of *soul sacrifice*.
I crawled toward him. "Aldric... wake up. Please..."
His face was pale. His pulse—barely there.
I sobbed, shaking him. "No. Don't do this to me…"
Darshana, in her final echo within my mind, laughed.
"You chose to break the curse's chain… and he paid for it with his life."
---
Seraphine manages to free herself from Darshana and embraces the darkness within her. But when she returns to her body, she finds Aldric dying, having secretly sacrificed his soul to open a path for Seraphine to escape. Darshana may be defeated for now—but the cost of their love might be too high to bear.
---