Aran had always been the shadow prince—the overlooked prince, the bastard brother who smiled from the margins while Alden basked in birthright and glory. He never challenged or gave anyone reason to doubt him.
Even Alden, sharp as he was, considered him loyal—someone he didn't need to warn Aurenya about.
A grave mistake.
Long before she arrived, Aran's envy had already taken deep root in secret, slumbering. It wasn't just the crown or the court's praise that poisoned him. It was the way Alden seemed untouchable, as though the world conspired to give him everything.
But he never showed it, hiding behind the mask of a researcher who only cared for his golems.
And while no one looked, Aran searched for a weakness of Alden.
He found it in the dark thread.
The same thread that had once tied Alden to Antithesis—a living remnant of something chaotic, otherworldly.
Alden had tried to destroy it, but Aran stole it in secret. He spent months studying it, attempting to bind it in his golem. But the thread defied control. No metal could hold it. No alchemical chamber survived its chaos. The moment he tried to put it in any nonliving object, it corrupted it, turning it into disfigured shadow. Only living beings could hold it without immediate collapse.
And the thread? It remained inert, coiled like a curse.
Then one day, the girl Aurenya arrived at the palace holding Alden's hand.
And everything changed.
The moment Aran saw her, something within him twisted. It wasn't just envy anymore. It wasn't even about Alden.
It was her.
Could a human even have such looks? Even in her human guise, Aurenya was beautiful beyond reason. Her golden eyes were almost hypnotic; her deep golden hair was too rare and sublime for any mortal girl.
He must have her. She was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen—too perfect. She moved like light refracted through glass, too graceful for a human being. He wanted her, wanted to own that mystery, to see it shatter in his hands.
And one more thing. The moment Aurenya stepped into the mortal world, the thread began to shiver—an unexpected reaction too coincidental to ignore.
Aran didn't ignore it.
He waited.
Finally the opportunity he was waiting for arrived. Alden was summoned to the front lines of a war, the moment Aran could finally let his desire run free.
But he needed something stronger to bind Aurenya, who had Alden's protection. Alden's men were always on guard.
---
Limon was left behind to watch the palace and report to Alden immediately if anything unusual happened. The wall of protection seemed impenetrable—at least at first.
The first shield to fall was Limon.
Alden's aide was sharp‑eyed, loyal, incorruptible—the kind of man who would notice if Aurenya's guards were quietly replaced. So Aran set the snare a week after Alden was called to the front lines.
A summons arrived one crisp morning for Limon — a meeting at the Viremont estate. The cause? A complaint from the family of Alden's former fiancée, Lady Emmelyne. A petty matter, nothing worthy of concern, or so it seemed.
He went to calm the enraged family of Duke Viremont.
As usual, Lady Emmelyne poured tea, speaking bitterly of the prince's favoritism toward a strange girl. While Limon politely endured her rant, the drug in his cup took hold.
When he woke, it was to iron bars and a decree:
"You are charged with attempting to force yourself on the Duke's daughter."
Witnesses—the very guards he'd arrived with—swore to it. No investigation. No trial. Only a swift sentence of life imprisonment "in mercy" for his service to the crown.
The last thought he had before they dragged him away was a single word:
Conspiracy.
---
It was over in a day. With Limon gone, the first barrier was shattered, no one stood between Aran and the quiet dismantling of Aurenya's guard.
The work was methodical. Each loyalist was reassigned or removed under imperial orders. A few were tempted away with bribes.
For two months, the walls around Aurenya tightened without her notice.
The veteran guards who had sworn loyalty to Alden and her were reassigned quietly but deliberately. Each order came stamped with the imperial seal — legitimate, unchallengeable. It was a subtle pressure from Duke Viremont and other nobles, furious at the idea of a girl born of no name sitting in the prince's favor, "The crown must protect tradition," they said. "Aurenya's presence unsettles the court."
Those loyal to Alden found themselves dispatched to border posts, some to distant fortresses far from the capital's eyes. Requests for reconsideration vanished into cold silence. The shifts were framed as necessary reinforcements for the growing war on the frontier.
Bribes were slipped into the hands of less steadfast guards. A few who hesitated were swiftly silenced — no questions asked.
Aran's men moved freely now, and those who might have resisted were either bought, threatened, or replaced.
The palace believed Aurenya's protection was intact.
But the circle was poisoned from within.
Aran's plan at first was crude: frame her for a crime, enrage the Emperor, claim her for himself. But the chaos‑thread's reaction to her presence gnawed at him.
She carried herself with inhuman poise. Magic bent strangely near her. Animals went still when she passed. And always, the thread in his lab shivered when she was close.
He had tested hundreds of blood samples over the years—human, elf, dwarf. Nothing. Thread doesn't react at all to blood of living.
Still he wanted to check hers.
The first theft was disguised as an accident. A teacup "slipped" from a maid's hand during a stroll. As Aurenya knelt to gather the shards, porcelain sliced her finger. The maid pressed a cloth to the cut, murmured apologies, and later passed that cloth to a guard loyal to Aran.
It was only a drop of blood. But it was enough to try.
In his sealed chamber beneath the western wing, Aran prepared with meticulous care, watching from just outside. A ring of molten silver sat embedded in salt on the floor, runes carved deeply into the stone walls around it. One of his men held the chaos-thread carefully—its strange nature rendering it inert to human touch—while a chained golem handled the other samples, ensuring none came into direct contact with living flesh.
When her blood met the chaos‑thread, the room erupted.
The ward‑circle blazed. Glass cracked. The golem's stone arm shattered under the violent surge, while the man dropped the thread and stumbled backward, shielding himself from the blast. The thread multiplied, splitting into two writhing coils — and where they touched the air, the world split open.
A jagged tear yawned in the center of the chamber, its edges dripping shadow. Beyond it writhed an endless black — filled with countless grasping hands, skeletal yet fluid, reaching through the rift with hungry, jerking motions.
One coil lashed around the man's arm and dragged him forward. His scream barely left his throat before the hands closed on him. The pull was irresistible.
Aran stood frozen, breath caught in his chest, staring as the shadows swallowed the man whole. Then the rift sealed without a trace, leaving only one thrashing thread behind.
For a long moment, Aran simply stared at the empty space where the man had been. His fear was real — but sharper still was the question gnawing at him: Where had he gone?
If her blood could call such a thing into the world, then she was beyond mortal.
Owning her wouldn't just be desire — it would be victory. Power. The chance to hold something no king or emperor could even dream of. Fear gnawed at him... but so did hunger. I
"If her blood could open such a door... imagine what her body could do in my hands," Aran thought.
One thread was gone. The other he bound with his emergency sigil, locking it still.
The scorch marks it left in the stone would never fade.
She was not human. Of that, he was now certain. And that made him want her even more.
There was one more piece left to discover. If she is not human, what was she? Gone was his earlier lust for her beauty. Now the thought changed into the desire for power.
Weeks of quiet tracing led him to the last mystery: her necklace. It was Alden's work—and the true barrier to revealing her form. But he couldn't just remove it. Not while she was awake and unpredictable.
He needed more sample to study.
So he took more: a faint smear of blood from a paper‑cut in the library; a lock of hair torn "by accident" during a wardrobe fitting—its strands shifting in color before flashing like fire.
Piece by piece, he collected her.
After researching for a month while the guards were slowly being replaced, he devised a drug after several failures. Not meant for humans—tested to work only on her blood. One drop stirred into warm tea would send her into a dreamless sleep.
When everything in place, Aran staged a palace‑level emergency in another wing—a fire in the archives—to draw away every remaining true guard. Only his compromised men remained.
---
It had been more than two months since Alden left. Aurenya felt the walls closing in—an unsettling loneliness settling deep inside her. She no longer dared ask the maids the kinds of questions she once asked Alden—simple things like how to sleep properly—because Alden had warned her not to. Some questions could reveal too much about who she was.
Her freedom, once taken for granted, now felt like a cage. She grew restless and decided to take a walk through the palace grounds.
The faces of the guards changed little by little. Those who once spoke kindly to her or showed even the smallest care grew distant, or disappeared altogether, replaced by strangers with cold eyes. Alden's words echoed in her mind: "The people I trust..." But why were those people gone? Was this just human nature, or something else?
The eyes that watched her grew heavier, more clingy — not protective, but predatory.
One afternoon, as she passed the fountain, she felt the weight of a gaze burning into her back. She turned sharply, but saw no one. She tried to brush it off.
Another time, pretending to sleep in her chamber, she sensed someone hovering impossibly close. She snapped her eyes open, heart racing—but the room was empty.
Was she imagining things? Was she becoming paranoid?
Sometimes, after drinking the tea the maid brought, a haze clouded her mind. Suspicious, she asked if anyone else had come into her room while it was being prepared. The answer was always the same—no one but those Alden trusted.
She inquired about Limon too, but the guards said he had been dispatched on some distant mission. Yet she knew something was wrong. How could so many people Alden trusted vanish? Almost none remained.
So when Aran appeared—calm, familiar—she felt a sudden warmth, a surge of relief. Finally, someone else Alden trusted a lot had come back to her.
---
Aran came to Aurenya under the guise of offering company. She told the maid to serve tea. Aran seated himself on the balcony across from her, wearing a polite smile. The maid served the tea with practiced ease. Aurenya, seeing nothing amiss, asked about the border situation—how Alden was faring.
Aran began to drink, and Aurenya failed to notice the cold calculation gleaming behind his polite smile.
She took a sip, then blinked, a sudden dizziness washing over her. Her vision blurred, and her knees weakened.
Before she could cry out, she collapsed.
Aran caught her before she struck the floor, laying her on a velvet couch. His hands trembled—not just with desire, but awe and deep curiosity.
Slowly, he reached for the necklace.
The clasp came undone.
The moment it left her skin, the illusion shattered.
Light spilled from her skin. Her hair turned weightless, molten gold laced with fire. Wings of burning flame unfurled into the air, their glow bending space. Curtains smoldered at the edges. The wards groaned, fissures spider‑webbing through the plaster.
For a breathless moment, Aran could not draw air.
His mind reeled; his eyes widened in stunned disbelief. He stumbled backward, his knees buckling beneath him. The desire he thought had vanished, flared in his veins, tenfold.
Then—a laugh, low and unhinged, bubbled from his lips. Like a madman who had glimpsed a god and resolved to possess it.
His laughter shook the chamber, growing from a whisper to a roar over long minutes.
Finally, trembling, he reached out and placed the necklace back on her throat—locking the illusion over a truth too powerful to be seen.
"I need no more excuse to have her," he whispered, eyes blazing with revelation and resolve. "No more need for waiting."
The plan changed overnight.
---
[Aurenya didn't know it yet, but while beauty can be a blessing, a beauty like hers was a curse.
Hauntingly beautiful—so captivating it bred obsession.
Damn Alden. He believed he could protect her.
He believed his care, his kindness, would be enough.
But he was a failure. Unworthy of the task he'd been given.
And because of that, the world closed in around her.
What she truly needed wasn't shelter.
She needed something harsher.
A protection forged in cruelty—merciless and unforgiving.]