The sixth day. The final sunrise I would never see.
In the crushing blackness of the cellar, the concept of "Roxy" had completely dissolved. There was only this, this breathing, breaking heap of meat. The chemical fire of the salt had finally burned itself out, leaving my legs in a state of horrific, static numbness. The flayed ribbons of my skin continued to weep a thin, translucent ichor, staining the salt crystals a sickly pink. My body was shutting down, the internal machinery grinding to a halt from the sheer weight of the trauma.
Hunger had moved past a sensation and into a form of madness. I didn't care about the stinging anymore. I spent those dark hours blindly sweeping my one good hand across the floor, gathering fistfuls of blood-soaked salt and grit. I shoved it into my ruined mouth, swallowing the jagged crystals that cut into my throat. The saltiness was agonizing, but it was something. When my fingers brushed against the squirming, soft shapes of maggots that had migrated from my rotting toes, I didn't recoil. I ate them too. They were a burst of copper and rot, a sickening extra flavor that my starving brain welcomed with a primal, terrifying greed.
I hadn't slept for one hundred and forty-four hours. Exactly six days of not sleeping, the yawning vanished and all I could see is black void.
My mind had become a fractured mirror, reflecting images of the Flower Manor onto the damp stone walls. I could see Mya preparing the lukewarm tea, and my sister Elicia who was butchering the remaining meat. I reached out to touch her shoulder, but my hand only met cold, slimy rock.
I heard Mochi laughing in the corner, the sound mixing with the steady drip, drip, drip of the ceiling. These were my reality. I was living in a haunted house built of my own memories, a hell where the people I loved were mere specters watching me rot.
"Roxy... Roxy... Roxy..." the voices whispered in a rhythmic chant that matched the drip, drip, drip of the ceiling.
The hallucinations were no longer visitors, they were my roommates. I saw the Flower Manor in the corners of the dark cellar. I saw Maine sitting at his desk, his back turned to me, refusing to hear my gargled pleas. I saw Mochi standing over my grave, her tears turning into salt as they hit the dirt.
Sometimes, I saw Marcel, holding that golden Bulbasaur card, but when he turned around, his face was just a jagged hole where the head-shears had been.
Every time the iron bolt outside creaked, my entire body underwent a violent, involuntary convulsion. My heart hammered against my ribs like a prisoner trying to escape.
This was the PTSD taking root—a primal, animalistic terror that turned the sound of a footstep into a death sentence.
My eyes were wide, bloodshot, and dry as parchment. I had forgotten how to blink. I just stared into the void, watching the phantom figures of Natalie and Ned move through the darkness, oblivious to the girl dying at their feet.
The Eirene they had buried in the town square was lucky. She was a name on a stone. She was a memory of a hero. I was the secret truth, the skinless, tongue-less thing that ate maggots in the dark.
I stared at the wall, my eyes wide, bloodshot, and unblinking. I started to laugh, but with no tongue, it was just a wet, huffing sound that sprayed pink foam onto my chest. I realized then that I wasn't Eirene Rynd anymore. Eirene was a girl who lived in the light. I was the salt. I was the maggots. I was the silence.
I looked at my flayed shins and saw not a wound, but a release. They had erased my name. They had erased my face. They had erased my humanity.
"One more day, One more day until the gallows. One more day until the dark finally stops flickering."
I thought, or perhaps the hallucination of the Manor leader whispered it into my ear.
The psychological trauma was a heavy, suffocating shroud. Even if they let me go now, I would never leave this cellar. I would always be tasting salt. I would always be feeling the cold weight of the sledgehammer. I was a ghost inhabiting a ruin, waiting for the executioner to finally finish what Dominik and Lara had started. The girl who loved sunshine was dead, only the thing in the salt remained.
The iron bolt screamed for the final time. The door groaned open, and a flood of torchlight, sharper and more cruel than ever, slashed through the suffocating dark of the cellar. I blinked, my eyes raw and crusted, unable to fully process the figures looming over me.
Bernard, Dominik, Lara, and a line of hooded executioners stood there. To them, I was a spectacle, a heap of flayed meat and salt-stained bone. To me, they were just shadows in a recurring nightmare.
I did something I hadn't done in years. I smiled. It was a jagged, horrific pull of my facial muscles, a blister of hope finally popping. The hope wasn't that I would be saved, it was the hope that the dark would finally stay.
Bernard stepped forward, his boots crunching on the dried salt and the remains of my toes. He looked down at me with a face twisted in pure revulsion.
"Eirene, I am disgusted by you. Truly. Six days of rot, and you still cling to life like a parasite. Your time is up. Tomorrow, the world is purged of your existence."
He leaned down and spat directly into my face. The warmth of his saliva was the first liquid my skin had felt in days. I didn't even wipe it away.
Dominik stepped up next, the heavy sledgehammer resting over his shoulder like a trophy. He looked at my ruined legs, the muscle still exposed and twitching, and let out a sharp exhale.
"Since your execution is tomorrow, the 'law' says we have to give you a final request. A last meal. So tell me, little flea... what do you want? Steaks? Wine? A sweet cake to remember the world by?"
I looked up at him. My throat was a desert, my mouth a cavern of scar tissue where my tongue used to be. I couldn't form words, but I moved my lips. The movement was slow, painful, and desperate.
Blood.
I didn't make a sound, but the lip-sync was unmistakable.
Dominik's eyes widened, then crinkled with a mixture of amusement and hatred.
"Blood, You flea! Even at the edge of the grave, you can't hide what you are."
He turned to the guards at the door, snapping his fingers.
"Guards! Bring this parasite a bowl of pig's blood. Let her drink her fill before we choke the life out of her."
Lara stepped forward, her silk dress rustling over the maggots. She clapped her hands, her laughter ringing out like a death knell.
"Blood? Really, Eirene? You have the chance to taste something delicious one last time, and you choose to be a parasite? You're not even a person anymore. You're just a leech in a maid's rags."
She leaned down, her face a mask of vicious mockery.
"You could have had anything, and you chose that? You really are just a tick, aren't you? A disgusting, red-eyed parasite living in the dirt."
She stepped closer, kicking a pile of salt into my raw shins up for dramatic effect.
"I hope you choke on it."
I was Eirene. I was a parasite. I was dead already. And as the bowl of cold, metallic blood was shoved toward my face, I realized I didn't want the blood to live. I wanted it so I would have enough strength to walk to my own death without falling.
A moment later, two guards staggered into the cellar, lugging a massive, heavy wooden barrel between them. The iron hoops groaned under the weight. They didn't bring a cup. They didn't bring a bowl.
"Here's your feast, monster!" the guard grunted.
They hoisted the barrel high. With a violent heave, they tipped it over.
A tidal wave of cold, thick, metallic-smelling crimson exploded from the barrel. It washed directly over me. The heavy liquid slammed into my chest, drenching my hair, stinging my raw, flayed legs, and filling my mouth and nose. I choked on the sheer volume of it, gasping as the iron-rich fluid soaked into the salt crusting my wounds.
I was drowning in the very thing I craved.
Lara screamed with delight, watching the blood splash against the cellar walls and pool around my shattered feet.
"Look at her! The Blood-Stained Hero, soaking in her own filth!"
As the guards tossed the empty barrel aside, I sat there, a shivering, red-drenched ghost. The blood was cold, but my curse sang. For a brief, flickering moment, the hunger subsided, replaced by the sickening reality that I was being seasoned for my own death. I closed my eyes, the crimson dripping from my eyelashes, as their laughter followed them out into the hall one last time.
The laughter of the guards and the cruel, melodic tittering of Lara echoed off the damp stone walls, a chorus of mockery for the girl who had chosen a barrel of blood over a final meal of dignity. They stood there, watching the thick, iron-scented liquid drip from my chin, coating the floor and soaking into the salt that crusted my flayed legs.
"Look at her! A blood-soaked rat in a hole! This is your legacy, Eirene!"
But as the blood pooled around my feet, the atmosphere in the cellar shifted. The air grew heavy, thick with a sudden, suffocating pressure. The mocking voices died down one by one as the torchlight began to flicker violently, turning a deep, bruised violet.
[Drain Activated Extraction Completed consumed two liters of blood]
Deep within my chest, the Blood Curse, the parasite that had been starving for a week, didn't just wake up. It roared. The blood they had thrown at me didn't just sit on my skin, it began to vibrate, reacting to the raw, unadulterated mana surging from my fractured soul.
[200L/200L= evolution for Phase 4]
[Successfully drank 200 liters, ready for fifth evolution]
Suddenly, a blissful sensation echoed through my body like a roller coaster, this feeling that I experienced in days, the pain goes numb and I felt a surge of satisfaction. Suddenly, a hope in my eyes viewed an icon.
[Evolution Completed: Phase 5]
Blood Capacity increased to 250 liters,
Make fangs grow longer for better drainage and consumption
Grows wings made of blood, able to fly in the air
Both Health and Mana will be greatly regenerated by consuming blood
Manipulate and shape your own blood at will
Invisible to mirrors and other reflective objects
Attributes obtained: +50 agility, +100 strength
The first thing they heard was the sound of metal screaming. The magic-dampening chains around my wrists and ankles began to hiss and glow a violent purple, struggling to contain the sudden, eruptive surge of power. But the curse was too strong. The iron groaned, the links stretching and turning white-hot until, with a deafening, metallic crack, they shattered. Shards of the dampening metal embedded themselves in the walls like shrapnel.
"What... what is this?" Bernard stammered,
Bernard aristocratic composure finally breaking. He stumbled back as the pool of blood on the floor began to defy gravity.
It rose in thin, spinning threads, spiraling upward toward my spine. My body arched, my head snapping back as a sound tore from my throat, no longer a gargled wheeze, but a piercing, ethereal shriek that shook the manor above.
Then, the mutation began. Two jagged, agonizing tears opened in the skin between my shoulder blades. I let out a sound that was no longer a scream, but a low, vibrating growl that shook the very foundation of the manor. From those gashes, my own blood erupted, but it didn't flow down my back. It defied gravity, hardening and knitting together into thick, translucent membranes.
The blood that had been splashed across the floor and walls began to crawl back toward me like living shadows, flowing upward and merging with the sprouting mass. Slowly, two massive, skeletal wings began to unfurl. They were magnificent and horrifying, shimmering like wet rubies in the torchlight. Veins of pure mana pulsed through the wings, and the edges sharpened into serrated blades of hardened ichor.
I stood up. My legs, once shattered and flayed, were held together by the surging, cursed energy. The maggots died instantly, incinerated by the heat of my rage. I looked up at them through the matted, blood-soaked curtain of my hair. My eyes weren't just red, they were glowing like dying stars.
The psychological trauma, the loss of my name, the memory of the salt, it all condensed into a single, razor-sharp point.
Dominik reached for his sword, his hand shaking uncontrollably.
"S-stay back! You're a corpse! You're Eirene Rynd! You're dead!"
I moved my mouth, the scarred, tongueless hollow and though no words came out, the air itself seemed to vibrate with my intent. I didn't need to be Roxy. I didn't need to be Eirene.
And as the blood-wings unfurled, casting a shadow of absolute death over my tormentors, I realized that the execution wouldn't be happening tomorrow.
I didn't need a tongue to speak my intent. The wings of blood snapped open to their full, oppressive span, brushing against the ceiling and dousing the torches in a spray of crimson. In the sudden, suffocating gloom, the only thing they could see was the glow of my curse and the silhouette of a deceased girl who had returned to claim her debt. Eirene was gone. Roxy was a memory. All that remained was vengeance.
It was happening right now.