Lyon, France — where snow falls like judgment and the nights stretch longer than memory. The air was thick with damp stone and forgotten sins. Between shuttered windows and crooked alleyways, this city harbored ghosts. Some with names. Most without.
And then there was me.
My feet were torn. My soul, hollow. I wasn't here to hide.
I came to remember who they tried to erase.
The name Fathya died with my father's scream and the flames that devoured my mother. In Lyon, I became myth. They called me The Hollow Wraith — a whisper among bounty hunters and black market spellcasters. A shadow with no face, no mercy. But the ones who dared look closer… they knew:
La Reyna still lives.
I wasn't strong enough to fight them back then. So I disappeared.
But pain made a map.
And I followed it here.
Corrado found me first — half-dead behind his wax shop. He said nothing. Just fed me, healed me, and watched me like he'd seen my end before I began.
"You're still breathing. That means the world still owes you something."
That was the first truth I chose to believe.
I broke into places no one dared enter — catacombs, cursed libraries, blood-sealed archives. I didn't seek power. I wanted names. Truth. Proof of the blood that betrayed mine.
The first three years in Lyon were silence and study.
Then I met Selene Moreau.
Exiled Blood Council witch. Seller of cursed charms and protection brews. But in the back of her shop, we rebuilt what my family had lost — the forbidden archives of House El'Raez.
"You still bleed, La Reyna," she told me one night.
"Vengeance won't heal you. But if you wield it right… it can crown you."
And I smiled.
Because in my scars, I carried names: Maeryss. The Lyon family. Blood Council traitors. Each one would answer. One way or another.
Year four, I unlocked my grandfather's final spell — a soul-bind forged during the Old Magic Wars. Not just sorcery. It was legacy inked in blood.
I struck a deal with a shadow-being that had no name. In exchange for glimpses of the future, it took half my memories. What I lost in past, I gained in vision. I could now see lies through a smile. Truth in a twitch. Aura through silence.
I trained in the dark. Fought illusions born from grief. Crafted spells that combined my bloodline with underworld curses. And every wound I took screamed one name:
Maeryss.
Corrado still visited. Brought food. Never questions. Until one night, as snow whispered against the shutters, he asked:
"When the revenge is done… who will you be then?"
I couldn't answer.
Maybe I wouldn't be anyone at all.
That night, I stared into the candlelight.
And for the first time, I realized:
I wasn't just hunting vengeance.
I was hunting the parts of me they buried.
Year five. A message came.
Branded in blue flame. Signed by a ghost:
Lucien Veyrhal.
Once my shadow. My protector. My weakness.
Now in Milan.
And waiting.
"Don't make me your enemy, Reyna," his message said. "I still remember your hands shaking at the gala… and how you steadied the blade."
"Lucien," I whispered to the fire, "you're not my enemy. But if you stand between me and what I'm owed… I'll make the world forget your name."
Seven years had passed.
I returned to Milan.
Not as a girl betrayed.
But as La Reyna.
Blood-forged. Shadow-bound.
And this time, I wasn't seeking revenge.
I was starting a war.