Pov Author
The slap was not a sound. It was a world going white.
One moment, Anna was straining against the weight of Lord Kazan, her wrists burning as she fought the cold bite of the metal cuff he was trying to secure. The next, his palm connected with the side of her face with a crack that seemed to start inside her own skull. Her head snapped sideways, striking the ornate headboard. The pain was immediate, a brilliant, starry explosion behind her eyes, but it was the sound that followed that hollowed her out—the delayed, ringing echo of the impact, a private thunder that drowned all other sense.
Her breath left in a ragged gasp. Through the blinding haze, she felt the second cuff lock around her other wrist, the finality of the click colder than the metal itself. He was efficient now, her struggle reduced to weak tremors. Her legs were already bound to the heavy bedposts; now her arms were tethered to the sides, the chains just long enough to allow a pathetic few inches of movement, but no more. She was spread-eagled on the dark silk sheets, a butterfly pinned by a merciless collector.
She breathed through her mouth, each inhale a shudder, tasting copper and despair.
Lord Kazan loomed over her, his handsome face serene, as if he'd just arranged flowers, not a person. He adjusted his cuff, his eyes lingering on her tear-streaked, swelling cheek with a sort of clinical satisfaction. "This," he said, his voice a soft, terrible caress, "is your place. This is where you belong. And tonight…" He leaned down, his breath ghosting over her ear. "Tonight, we will have our night."
Anna's eyes widened, a fresh wave of terror washing away the pain. Her jaw screamed where he'd struck it, making speech a clumsy agony.
He straightened, turning to leave. A broken sound escaped her—a sob, a question. "Why…" she managed, the word slurred and thick. She forced it out, a whisper barely above the rustle of the sheets. "Why are you doing this to me?"
He paused at the door, glancing back, his head tilted in genuine confusion. "Because this is where you have always belonged. Do you not remember?"
She shook her head minutely, the movement sending fresh needles of pain through her temple. "No. I don't remember."
"You don't remember me?" A flicker of something dangerous—hurt, offense—crossed his features. "Us? Our childhood?"
Childhood? Panic threaded through her fear. She was from a world of smartphones and subway trains, not this gothic nightmare. What childhood was he talking about? She stared at him, her confusion plain and utter.
His confusion melted into chilling certainty. "Of course. The rebirth… it clouds the memory. I should tell you, then." He took a step back toward the bed, his gaze devouring her. "You… you are my doll. Yes. You belong to me. You have taken rebirth for me, Nahan. You are her. My parents brought you here for me when I was a boy. A living present. How can you forget our moments?" The last sentence was a snarl. The calm shattered. He moved faster than she could flinch, his hand striking her again—once, twice, sharp, stinging blows that rocked her head against the pillow. "Remember! Remember!"
He stopped as abruptly as he started, breathing heavily. He smoothed his hair back, the violent storm passing. "I have to go. But you will stay. You will think. You will remember who you were. And you will learn to act as you did before." The command hung in the air as he left, the door locking with a sound of absolute finality.
For a long time, Anna just lay there, the throbbing in her face a metronome counting her helplessness. Then, a raw, animal need to escape surged through the shock. She pulled, she twisted, she yanked against the chains until her wrists were raw and slick with blood. The chains were long enough to let her sit up, even swing her legs over the side of the massive bed, but their anchors were built into the solid stone wall and the bed's own immense frame. She could reach the bedside table, the pitcher of water, but no further. The door was a taunting expanse of polished wood across the room. She pulled until her muscles screamed and her vision spotted. After what felt like hours, her body gave out, and she collapsed back onto the sheets, a broken marionette.
A small, pathetic sound escaped her, growing into a whisper, then a raw cry. "Help. Please, someone. Help."
As if summoned by her despair, a door hidden in the paneling near the hearth swung open. A young maid slipped in, her eyes wide and fearful. She carried a small tray with a bowl of ice and a cloth. Without a word, her hands trembling, she sat on the edge of the bed and began to gently apply the ice-wrapped cloth to Anna's swollen cheek.
The cold was a shock, a blessing. Anna leaned into it, a sob breaking free. "Please," Anna begged, her voice cracked and small. "You have to help me. I don't want to die."
The maid's eyes darted to the locked door. "I cannot, my lady," she whispered, her voice thick with pity. "No one can."
"I'm not who he thinks I am! It's the truth! You must know it!"
The maid's gaze held hers, filled with an ancient sorrow. "Everyone knows it. But he does not wish to see. Because you look like her. You have her hair, the color of twilight. You have her eyes, like a winter sky. You are quiet, kind… you are the echo of her. And now he will shape you into the full song. No one will save you from him. No one dares."
"Who… who was she?" Anna asked, dread a cold stone in her stomach.
"Nahan," the maid whispered, the name a sacred and cursed thing. "Her real name was Hikari. She was quiet. Obedient. Shy. A slave her parents sold. Lord Kazan's parents bought her for his eighth birthday, because he was… obsessed with toys. He wanted one that talked and walked. He was so happy. His obsession grew as they did." The maid's voice dropped even lower, her hands pausing their work. "He used to break his toys—snap their limbs, crush their heads—when they wouldn't respond. And Hikari… she was so quiet. Sometimes, his temper would fall on her. One morning, my mother—she was his attendant then—found the girl in a terrible state. Bloodied. Broken. But his obsession only deepened. She was his alone."
The maid took a shaky breath, her story weaving a tomb around Anna. "When they turned sixteen, Hikari made a mistake. She fell in love with a stable boy. He was kind to her. They met in secret. But Lord Kazan saw them. He saw him kiss her." The maid's eyes grew distant, haunted. "His rage… it was a force of nature. He dragged her by her hair through the halls. Everyone saw. No one moved. He threw her in this very room and locked the door. What happened inside… we only heard it. Screams. For four hours. When the door opened…" The maid's voice failed for a moment. "He stood there, his hair wild, his eyes like blood. She was chained. Right where you are. He lit a match… and threw it onto the bed. My mother tried to run in, but the others held her back. I saw… I saw Hikari's face. Beaten beyond knowing. Bones… bones showing. And the fire caught the silks. He said, 'After rebirthing and becoming pure, come back to me.' And she… with her last breath, she said, 'Never.'"
The maid finished, the awful silence swelling to fill the room. "Now he sees you. And you are here, in the same chains. He is the most powerful lord in this realm. No one will go against him."
A wild, desperate hope flared in Anna's chest. "What about Shou? "
The maid actually let out a soft, bitter chuckle. "You have courage to call him by his name. But even Lord Feng will not cross his master. Lord Kazan was his teacher. His master in the dark arts. Lord Feng owes him his very power. He will not choose a strange girl over that debt. I am sorry. This is your fate now."
Goosebumps erupted over Anna's skin, a cold sweat of pure doom. She couldn't breathe. A doll. A replacement for a murdered girl. She buried her face in her chained hands, the metal cold against her broken skin, and wished for the nothingness of her old, boring world.
Shou Feng
The castle felt wrong.
It was a vibration in the air, a sour note in the ancient song of stone and shadow that Shou Feng had always sensed. Anna was gone. Not just absent—erased. Her soft, out-of-place warmth, the scent of sunlight and strange soap she carried, had been scraped from the hallways.
He had looked everywhere. The gardens were empty of her curious gaze. The library held only dust. The kitchens held no memory of her sneaking sweets. His inquiries were met with bowed heads and muted denials. A cold knot was tightening in his gut, a feeling he had not known for centuries—the keen, slicing edge of panic.
He found Yuvan in the east wing, the vampire lord's expression unreadable. "Have you seen her?"
"Anna? No. Perhaps she is with Kiyoshi."
"Where is Kiyoshi?"
"Gone to my father's kingdom. He was summoned."
The cold knot turned to ice. "Did she go with him?"
Yuvan's slight shrug was infuriating. "I do not know."
Shou Feng's control, a millennia-old discipline, cracked. He turned on a passing maid, his voice a lash of winter wind. "You. The girl from the other world. Where is she?"
The maid flinched as if struck, her face pale. "I… I have not seen her since breakfast, my lord."
Since breakfast. Hours. Hours in this vipers' nest.
His head began to pulse, a pressure building behind his eyes. Foolish woman. Where did she wander? What trouble did her soft heart lead her into? The thought of her lost, frightened, in some dark corner of this unforgiving place sent a current of pure fury through his veins. It was a possessive, irrational fury that shook the foundations of his cold nature.
He returned to Yuvan, his silhouette seeming to drink the light from the torches. "Find her," he commanded, the words leaving no room for debate. "Search every inch you can. I will return."
He knew, with a dread that was certainty, where he could not yet storm. Kazan's private wing was a fortress guarded by more than stone. But there were other ways.
He didn't simply leave; the air around him tore. One moment he was in the castle corridor, the next he was standing in the grand, sun-drenched courtyard of Yuvan's father's kingdom in the Eastern Realm. Courtiers froze. Guards stiffened. A wave of palpable dread radiated from him—the arrival of Shou Feng was an omen, a blight of winter in perpetual summer. He was a sculpture of darkness and sharp lines, his obsidian eyes scanning the crowd with a gaze that promised annihilation.
He found Kiyoshi in a pavilion, the sunlight glinting off his glasses. "Where is Anna?" Shou Feng demanded, dispensing with any greeting.
Kiyoshi blinked, taken aback by the rawness in the dark lord's usually impassive voice. "I do not know. Why are you so agitated?"
Agitated. The word was an insult. He was a gathering storm. Without another word, Shou Feng turned, and the air ripped again as he teleported back to the castle's foundations, the residual energy making the stones groan.
Back in the familiar gloom, he closed his eyes. He forced his breathing to slow, reaching out with senses that were not of the physical world. He cast his will through the stone, a net of dark intent, searching for that one unique, flickering flame of foreign light.
Anna.
Her name was not a call, but a command to the universe to yield her up.
In the locked room, curled on her side on the bed of a dead girl, Anna flinched. Through the pain, through the suffocating despair, a soundless voice, as clear and as close as her own heartbeat, resonated in the very center of her mind. It was dark velvet and sharp edges, vibrating with a power that was both terrifying and intimately familiar.
Shou.
Her lips did not move. Her breath hitched. But in the depths of her soul, an answer formed, a desperate, silent cry thrown back along that tenuous, newfound connection.
In the corridor below, Shou Feng's eyes snapped open.
They were pools of utter black, no longer reflecting light but consuming it. A slow, terrifying smile touched his lips, a promise of violence written in the curve of it.
He had found her.