It was the middle of the day.
Elise knew it. Not from a clock, nor the town bell's chime—those were silent today, as if afraid. No, she felt it in her bones, in the strange rhythm of her blood. The sun should've been overhead, painting the world gold.
But the sky… the sky told another story.
Above her, an ocean of black and purple choked the heavens. Not a soft stormcloud or a rolling gloom, but a devouring mass—thick, gluttonous, with violent veins of violet lightning crawling across it like cracks in the sky itself. The clouds heaved as though alive, and when the thunder roared, it wasn't just sound—it was a bestial growl, low and ancient, echoing from the depths of some forgotten void.
Elise stood still beneath it, her red eyes reflecting the pulsing purple.
"This is my luck," she muttered, forcing a breath between her clenched teeth. "Middle of the gods-damned day… and this."
She didn't know how she knew it was midday—only that something deep inside her, some tethered clock buried in her chest, had told her so. A clock her awakening had perhaps made louder, sharper. Since the stranger arrived, nothing made sense. Her parents wouldn't even look her in the eye anymore, brushing her off with gentle nods and distracted glances as if she were a broken mirror they were afraid to touch.
Didn't they see what was happening?
Didn't they hear the whispers?
A sudden stab of pain pierced her skull—sharp, blooming like a thorn bursting through bone. Elise gasped, grabbing her head as her vision blurred. Flashes bled into her mind: people she didn't know, places she had never seen, hands that weren't hers twisting the world into new shapes. Foreign memories clawed at her—uninvited guests trying to claim space in her soul.
"No—no—get out," she hissed, falling to her knees.
Around her, the world shimmered.
Invisible to most, threads—vile and malevolent—crackled into existence around her. They were purple, almost black, rippling like serpents in a sea of madness. They tightened around her like nooses, then—snap—shattered into dust as her eyes flared with light. The wind wailed louder.
Whispers.
She heard them again. Soft. Sweet. Soothing in the way rot can sweeten death.
Elise stood up, walking stiffly, dream-like, toward the village gate. The guards were there, unmoving, their eyes clouded. They didn't speak to her. They didn't see her.
And the whispers were louder now.
She followed them.
Past the watchtower.
Past the apple tree now scorched black by lightning.
Past the well that hadn't given water in three days.
She stopped.
A lone tree lay chopped near the forest's edge, its stump still bleeding sap. And there, seated casually beside it as if this were all a normal evening, was Theo.
He was smiling.
Not a child's grin.
Something was wrong.
His lips stretched far too wide, cutting almost to the edge of his cheeks. His eyes, once soft and sad, were sunken and gleaming with something sharp. And in his hands—
In his hands was a book.
To Theo, it must have seemed harmless: a pink cover embroidered with silver puppets and dancing strings, pages lined with cute sketches of marionettes, stars, and smiling children. The kind of book a stage performer or beginner magician might use to practice lighthearted shows.
Yes, Magicians- One of the worst of the worst. If Mages were known for their haphazardous habits of destruction, and Magi were known for their righteous endeavours, then magicians would have a personality one would call a chaotic neutral personality. On the one hand, they were the worst -Tricksters if that's what you would call them. On the other hand, they were the sweetest joys anyone could ever have.
-A magician's personality was solely reliant on the intentions of their being, the creator's will, or a contract, a Hearth contract. And if my guess is true, this is when it happens, the destruction of my village, which I so much wanted to prevent- Elise had seen this coming ever since the day he brother Daniel had died protecting her and Theo. The trauma had cost her to awaken her abilities, Tiresias, an ability that allows her to see the future and acquire knowledge through the eyes of the holder's future version. In the future, she had seen the pain she would go through and all her atrocities that she would commit, how the destruction of the village would play out, and the cause. She remembered, as she watched Theo with a hint of resentment. She didn't know how it would play out, the images were blurry. Just that Theo had somehow caused it.
She didn't know why, but she understood it now; it was her fault, all this was her fault. She watched solemnly at the pink book in the hand of the one who was once her best friend.
But Elise saw something else.
The pink hue peeled away in her vision, revealing a skin of pulsating flesh. Tentacles slithered from the spine, curling and twitching. A single, wide eye blinked from the center, fixated on her. Every page turned by Theo's hand gave off a wet sound, like a mouth chewing sinew.
Elise screamed.
"What the hell are you doing, you idiot?!"
She dashed forward, slapping the book from his hands. It hit the ground with a soft thud—a sound too wet for paper.
Theo blinked at her, confused at first… then his smile curled again.
"Elise?" he asked, his voice breathy, childlike.
"What is wrong with you?" Her fists trembled. "That book—do you not see it?! It's alive!"
Theo looked at the book, then back at her.
"It's just a puppeteering spellbook. For control. For fun. Look—" he bent down, picking it up again. But the moment his fingers grazed it, the tentacles slid back beneath the surface. The eye closed. It became pink and playful once more in his eyes.
To Elise, it was a monster pretending.
"Elise, you always get mad at the wrong things," Theo whispered, his smile twitching. "They all laughed at me. Kicked me. Burned my drawings. And now look at me. I can finally make them dance for real."
His voice dropped an octave, his gaze growing distant. "She showed me how."
Lightning forked across the sky again. The wind pulled Elise's hair back like grasping fingers. Thunder shook the trees.
Elise stepped back, her heart pounding.
"She?"
Theo looked over his shoulder… and for a moment, Elise saw her.
A silhouette in the shadows. A woman. Pale. Black hair cascading like ink. And eyes… bottomless eyes, wide and beautiful and wrong. Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Elise took another step back.
Something dark had begun. And no one else seemed to see it.
No one but her.
The silence was deafening as the black-haired woman stepped forward, her bare feet barely touching the withered grass beneath her. Her long hair dragged behind her like flowing shadows, the air quivering from her presence. Above, the sky cracked open with a pulse of thunder that rattled through the earth. The storm cloud above had mutated — a roiling sphere of black and bruised purple that oozed like ink, bolts of silent lightning stretching out like celestial claws. It wasn't merely storming; it was bleeding darkness into the world.
Elise's eyes—those cursed, radiant orbs glowing with blinding amethyst light—had broken through the illusion first. Her voice trembled with guilt as she faced Theo, who had, until now, been half-lost in that monstrous book's embrace. His expression was still twisted in that unnatural grin, tears and eldritch glee clashing violently across his young face.
"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, voice cracking like a mirror beneath pressure. "Theo... I blamed you for Daniel's death."
Theo blinked, the twisted smile faltering as Elise stepped closer.
"I blamed you because he went back to get you... And he never came back. But deep down—I knew. I knew Daniel would've saved you no matter what. That's just who he was."
The glow in Elise's eyes dimmed slightly as the pulse of her emotions seeped through.
"I knew it wasn't your fault," she whispered. "It was mine. I let him go. I didn't stop him... I didn't try hard enough to save either of you."
Theo's breath hitched. The corrupted book—still pulsing and twitching with fleshy veins and one enormous blinking eye—seemed to go silent, as if the moment itself was too sacred for its hunger. His tears spilled freely now, the twisted smile melting into something genuine. His knees buckled, and he knelt, clutching Elise's hand with trembling fingers.
"I'm sorry too," he said. "I just wanted to be strong... I didn't want to be weak anymore..."
But then, in the same instant their hands met, shadows formed behind them—stretching unnaturally, forming a towering feminine silhouette. The black-haired woman stepped forward with a cruel, radiant smile.
"Beautiful," she cooed, eyes shining with void-like hunger. "Just... beautiful. That's the apology I was waiting for."
Theo's eyes widened in horror. Elise snapped her head toward her, aura igniting defensively. But the woman raised one bloody finger, and from the earth and air, tentacles surged.
They came fast—faster than either of them could react. Black tendrils, layered with translucent flesh and veins glowing a sickly purple, shot from every shadow, every crack in the ground. They wrapped around Theo's arms and torso, lifting him off the ground, pressing tightly against his body with lewd precision—coiling over his chest, around his thighs, stretching his limbs helplessly outward.
Elise screamed, blasting mana in every direction. Her body glowed violently, purple threads ripping the very air around her apart in raw defiance.
The woman chuckled. "Oh, don't struggle so hard. You'll spoil the fun."
Elise lashed out with a blade of light formed from her aura, cutting through two of the tentacles, but they reformed instantly. More emerged, these ones slicker and more muscular, slapping across her legs and waist, tightening with a dreadful rhythm that made her body lock in place. She screamed again—not in pain, but in fury. They were puppets—she could feel the strings—but the strings weren't hers to cut.
"You—you can't do this!" Elise roared, straining against the tentacles wrapping her throat and waist.
"Oh, sweet little awakener," the woman whispered, brushing a hand against Elise's cheek. "You think your eyes make you powerful. But I know what's behind them. And I'll use it."
Elise gasped, eyes wide as saucers. "You—know…?"
The woman didn't answer. She merely smiled—smiled the way a predator does when the trap has sprung. "But first, my dears, you deserve to know why."
She turned to the sky, arms outstretched as the storm crackled and the forest trembled.
"Once, long ago, this pathetic land was a battlefield. A creature -no—no, a legend—died here. A draconic behemoth that devoured a baron-level beast and became something far worse... a Drake Ascendant. A creature that has ascended past its draconic features. I've been sent here to bring it back."
"Using... the village?" Theo's voice trembled, hoarse through the tentacles binding him.
"Yes," she sang, smiling like a maiden in love, drool falling down her face. "Your town. Every man, every woman, every child. A delicious offering to bring back such a beautiful work of art."
"You're... scum!" Theo cried, struggling, face twisted in grief and rage.
The woman merely snapped her fingers.
The tentacles turned savage. They slammed both children into the earth, pinning their arms and legs. The ground cracked beneath the impact, their mana flaring desperately against the crushing force. Elise's threads of power swirled violently, burning some of the tentacles away—but not fast enough. Not enough.
"I had another mission too, well, sort of a personal one," the woman added sweetly, walking toward Elise, bending down to stroke her face. "And it's about you."
Elise froze, every bone in her body screaming as the woman's cold fingers brushed her cheek.
"You," she whispered. "You're so very special. I wonder what your soul will taste like..."
The last thing Elise saw was the woman's eyes—two endless pits of darkness and stars—before her vision blacked out completely.
The woman turned, humming to herself. The tentacles lifted both children, unconscious, wrapping them in a cocoon of shadow and flesh. The sky above churned with wrathful energy as she stepped onto the path leading toward the village.
Behind her, the wind howled like mourning spirits. Her voice echoed through the air.
"Let's go, my darlings. Mommy has work to do."