No trial. No prayer. No goodbye.
Only the stink of burned skin, blood-soaked straw, and the soft, steady scuttling of rats beneath the floor.
Lady Elira Rothermere—daughter of Duke Aldren Rothermere, once the apple of courtly favor, born beneath a blessed eclipse—was now nothing but a condemned heretic.
Her limbs trembled, thin and fevered, under a shift soaked in filth. Her wrists were bound in iron, flesh swollen and raw where chains had bitten for days. The room had no window. The only light came from a hole above the door, where food used to be pushed through. That, too, had stopped.
She couldn't remember when. Time meant nothing in this place.
"Please…" she croaked into the dark. Her throat cracked like dry paper.
No answer. Only the breathing silence of the prison beneath the palace.
She turned her head, eyes half-lidded, and saw a trail of black mold reaching across the wall like creeping veins. Even the stone was sick.
"They're wrong," she whispered to no one. "I didn't bring the curse. I tried to stop it."
The memories clawed back through the fog of fever:
The coughing children in the lower ward.
The servants with shadows clinging to their backs like leeches.
The dead birds that rained down from the rafters during High Mass.
And the prayers—whispers to the New Sun—that came back hollow, with grinning teeth.
She'd gone to the only one who listened.
A mage.
A kind man with steady hands and soft eyes.
He siphoned the death out of her veins once, and smiled when she didn't flinch from his touch.
"Truth is rot in this place," he told her, days before the pyres came.
"But rot is honest. Fire is not."
They caught him, burned him, and paraded his ashes as proof of purity.
Then they came for her.
She heard it before she saw it.
A wet slosh under the door. The smell of it—syrupy and floral—filled the room in seconds.
Elira's breath caught. Her eyes widened.
"No. No—" She crawled to the corner, shackles clinking. "No please—"
There were no voices. No ceremony. No priest to offer a final blessing.
Only the hiss of a torch dropped into a puddle of oil.
Then—
Fire.
It roared to life, hungry and wild, climbing the walls like a thing unleashed.
The stone screamed. The iron glowed white-hot.
Elira writhed, coughing blood, as heat melted the air around her. Her skin blistered. Her hair curled and snapped. Her throat tore from screaming.
"PLEASE—" she sobbed, curling into herself, "PLEASE, NO—"
And the fire… paused.
It didn't devour her.
It watched her.
In the rising smoke, something shifted. A shape, or the idea of one.
Eyes bloomed along the blackened walls—unblinking, inhuman, ancient.
She heard it then.
A voice that slithered inside her skull like silk soaked in rot.
Not loud. Not kind.
Amused.
"Right pawn."
"Wrong play."
"Let's try again."
And then—
Oblivion.
>>>
Elira gasped.
Air flooded her lungs—not smoke, but sweet summer air, tinged with lilacs and warm stone.
She sat bolt upright, eyes wide, chest heaving.
Her back wasn't burned. Her hands weren't shackled. Her skin was smooth. Whole. Unscarred.
She clutched the sheets. Silk. Not straw.
Her bed canopy swayed gently in a breeze from the open window. Outside, birds chirped. Somewhere below, a fountain gurgled.
"No," she breathed. "No, this isn't—this isn't real."
She stumbled from bed on shaky legs. Crossed the room barefoot, heart pounding in her ribs.
She reached the tall silver mirror.
Looked into it.
Stared.
The face that stared back wasn't a hollow-cheeked heretic.
It was her—but younger. Seventeen. Pale and breathless and alive.
"No," she whispered again, pressing her fingers to her cheeks. Her skin was soft, unmarred by the spreading Curse that once bloomed there. eyes back normal to amber. "This isn't possible…"
Her eyes darted to the window.
The garden below stretched in full bloom. Roses. Koi pond. The lemon trees she used to climb as a child.
And there—passing beneath the arch—was a servant in brown dress, laughing softly to another.
Everything was right.
Everything was wrong.
Her bedroom door creaked open.
Elira spun.
A girl stepped inside, barefoot and silent. Hair pale as milk. A plain dress survent. A calm, unreadable face.
Lira.
The quiet maid. The one Father took in a years ago, from some ruined province no one cared to name.
She blinked at Elira, tilting her head slightly.
"You cried out," she said softly. "A nightmare?"
Elira stared at her. Her pulse thudded.
In the prison—no, the past—this girl had always been there. Silent. Watching.
Something tight coiled in Elira's chest.
The fire's voice echoed once more in her skull:
"Right pawn. Wrong play. Let's try again."
Elira's voice shook though eyes sharp as she spoke:
"I know WHERE are you from."
Lira didn't blink.
She just smiled—small, faint, harmless.
But her eyes stayed empty.
"Do you?" she asked.
Not moving.
Too still.
Her posture was perfect, hands clasped just below her waist, head slightly bowed in the way every highborn maid was trained to behave.
But there was something wrong.
It wasn't in the way she stood—
It was in the way she waited.
Like a portrait that had been watching you the whole time.
Elira felt her spine tighten. A chill prickled beneath her skin, despite the summer heat outside. Her breath fogged the air, just faintly—why was it so cold in here?
Lira smiled.
Not large. Not strange.
Just a soft, polite, human smile.
And somehow, that made it worse.
"Are you alright, my lady?" Lira asked, voice quiet, careful. "You look pale."
Elira's mouth opened, then closed.
Her pulse thudded in her ears. She took a single step back, eyes never leaving the maid's face.
That face. So familiar.
Too familiar. but can't recall how.
"You…" Elira whispered, then stopped. She blinked, hard. Get ahold of yourself.
Maybe she was wrong.
Maybe she'd only dreamed the fire. The pain. The voice in the smoke.
Maybe this was some kind of shock or illness.
But… no.
She remembered it too clearly. The taste of blood in her mouth. The way her chains had glowed.
And the thing in the fire that had whispered—
"Right pawn. Wrong play. Let's try again."
She looked at Lira.
This was before.
Before the trial, before the mage's execution, before the curse bloomed under her skin.
She was seventeen again.
Which meant Lira was still—what? A maid? An orphan? A girl of no importance?
Before becoming BARON's daughter. Before being betrothed to 2nd prince in my place.
A girl with no past. No family. No record.
She had appeared at the estate a years ago, found wandering the ruins of some borderland village after a fire, silent and blank-eyed. Duke Rothermere took her in out of pity. Said she was no older than fifteen.
But Elira remembered her now—remembered her at the very end.
The same white hair. The same dark eyes.
Smiling through someone else's face
Wrapped in vines. Wreathed in smoke.
Watching her burn.
"Should I bring you tea, my lady?" Lira asked again, stepping forward.
Her voice was gentle. But too gentle. As if she were waiting for something behind Elira's eyes to break.
"Yes," Elira said quickly. "Chamomile."
Lira curtsied with flawless grace.
"Of course."
She turned, bare feet soundless on the plush rug, and walked away—so smoothly she could have been floating.
The door shut behind her with a soft click.
Elira stood frozen in place, staring at the door. Her breath was shallow, rapid.
Then she moved. Fast. She crossed the room in a rush, shoved the latch into place. Locked.
She leaned against it and exhaled hard.
"What is happening to me…"
She ran a hand through her hair. It wasn't matted. It wasn't falling out in clumps like before. Her scalp was whole. hairs soft as silk.
Her body didn't ache. Her skin wasn't weeping blood.
She turned to the mirror.
There she was.
Elira Rothermere, seventeen years old, untouched by flame. She touched her cheeks. Her neck. Her lips. No blisters. No boils. No white lotus blooming beneath the skin.
"I died," she whispered to the mirror. "I burned. I remember."
She moved to her writing desk and yanked open the second drawer.
Just like before—there it was.
The journal. Brown leather, tied with a blue ribbon.
She untied it with shaking fingers and flipped through the pages.
The entries blurred together at first—her careful, looping handwriting, filled with worry and suspicion:
"Maren said another servant collapsed today. Coughing black."
"Birds again. The rafters are littered. The priests won't speak of it."
"Father said the Second Prince is visiting again next week. I can't shake the feeling something is coming with him."
Then sketches:
A ring she'd seen on a courtier's hand. A coiled serpent, eating its own tail.
A strange sigil found scratched into the stone beneath the chapel altar.
And then… a name.
Written in ink, again and again, in growing desperation:
The White Lotus
The White Lotus
THE WHITE LOTUS
Elira stared.
She had thought it was a symbol of peace. The emblem of a quiet foreign noble girl who barely spoke at court. once years back.
But then she saw it again—years later—carved into bone. Burned into skulls beneath the palace.
It wasn't a crest. It was a mark.
A sign of sacrifice.
The symbol of the last princess of the fallen empire. Not long ago.
The one they executed in secret.
The one they said could speak to crows.
The one whoes death cursed her entire empire to sleep in ash.
An EliteBlack Mage. Princess of Virellium.
And Elira had believed the Second Prince was the one trying to bring her cult back. In Lira's body sacrefising her soul in exchange. But rather was it mine? They say he grew fond of dead princess when reading and hearing about her.
But now—
Its differnt-
"No," she breathed. "It wasn't him. It was—"
Lira.
She saw her through the fire. Watching. Smiling.
"She was there," Elira whispered. "She was there at the end. She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just—watched."
A knock at the door made her jump.
She grabbed the nearest thing—her candleholder—and hissed, "Who is it?"
A familiar voice answered.
"It's just me, my lady!" came the chipper tone of Maren, her regular handmaid. "You're up early! Thought you'd still be sleeping."
Elira crossed the room and opened the door slowly.
Maren stood there in blue livery, hair in messy curls, balancing a breakfast tray with sugared toast and melon.
"Breakfast in the rose room?" she asked brightly.
Elira hesitated—then nodded. "Yes. That would be fine."
As she followed her down the hallway, her voice dropped to a whisper:
"Maren… where's Lira from?"
Maren blinked. "Lira?"
"The maid. The pale one."
"Oh, her?" Maren laughed softly. "No one really knows. She just… showed up, I guess. The Duke said she was from some ruined town near the northern borders. Found her wandering alone. Barely said a word. Looked half-dead. But he took her in. Gave her a name, a room, a uniform."
"No family?" Elira asked.
Maren shook her head. "Not a soul. She's just… always been around. You know?"
Elira swallowed hard.
A girl with no history. No voice. No self. Just empty space… ready to be filled.
They stepped into the morning light. The halls were warm and golden. The birds chirped outside. The staff bustled as if nothing was wrong.
But Elira knew better.
She was walking through a garden of ghosts… and none of them knew they were already dead.
Once___