The night he fell was not supposed to be my last.
A man in a tailored navy suit, his tie loosened like the guilty noose it was, leaned too close to the woman whose perfume wasn't his wife's. I had been watching him for days, the perfect predator hidden behind red lips and black silk.
The camera in my clutch bag snapped his betrayal with the mercy of a blade. By the time I was finished, by the time the photographs slid through encrypted servers and into the trembling hands of his wife, I was already gone—smoke and shadow, a ghost the city could never hold.
That was my life in my world.
My name was Seraphina Vale. To the world, I was a model draped in shimmering gowns, my face splashed across magazines, my stride coveted on runways. They adored me, photographed me, whispered of my perfection. And they never knew me.
The camera flash was the last light of my world.
I had smiled then, the perfect curve of my lips, the practised tilt of my chin, the look that launched brands and broke bank accounts. The studio roared with applause, my manager barking in triumph. The world knew me as Seraphina Vale, the supermodel who owned the runways from Tokyo to Paris, the face on every magazine, the walking illusion of perfection.
Because I wore a mask. Always. They didn't know how much I enjoyed watching liars burn. That was my second life, the one I kept hidden behind the flawless mask of the golden girl. Seraphina Vale, the model, was adored, envied, and untouchable. Elara the hunter, the wolf in silk heels, was invisible.
I crafted my smile like glass, my kindness rehearsed, my laughter carefully measured. In front of cameras and colleagues, I was the angel they wanted me to be. But behind that porcelain mask, I was something sharper, darker.
I was the woman who exposed men like him—cheating husbands who thought themselves untouchable. I bled them of money not for myself alone, but for the wives left behind, for the children staring at doors that never opened at night. Half my payment always went into their hands.
The other half kept me untouchable. I was too careful to be caught. Too adored to be suspected.
The last man I exposed before my world collapsed was Damian Harker. A real estate tycoon with a smile like poisoned honey and a family portrait that graced the cover of "Fortune & Flame." His wife wept when she saw the truth, her hands trembling over the photographs.
I had left her with enough evidence to rip him apart in court. When I delivered the evidence, his wife's face crumpled—and then hardened with the steel I loved to see. She took the money I pressed into her hands, enough to start over without him, and she whispered,
"You're an angel."
I wasn't, but I let her believe.
I thought it was just another job. Just another mask. But that night, as I slipped out of the hotel where I had snapped his final betrayal, I felt something cold follow me home. A presence. A shadow I couldn't shake.
I should have ignored it. I should have locked the doors and curled into silk sheets, safe in the empire I had built on secrets. But instead, I woke up in fire. The air smelled wrong. Thick, heavy, metallic, like the world itself had been cut open and bled out.
I gasped, my body heavy, my lungs trembling, and realised I was not lying in my apartment at all. The sheets were coarse, the mattress thin, the walls stone instead of glass and chrome. My chest heaved. My hands trembled. And the mirror across from me did not show my face.
The reflection was pale. Hair black as midnight spilt in tangled waves. Eyes rimmed with smudges of sleeplessness stared back. Lips cracked and raw. The dress clinging to my body was nothing like the gowns I had worn for cameras.
It was a tattered black thing, frayed at the edges, embroidered with crimson thorns that curled like veins of blood.
For one awful moment, I thought I had gone mad. And then I saw it. A scrap of parchment on the floor, stained with wax.
I bent down, trembling fingers unfolding the brittle paper. The handwriting was jagged, desperate.
"If you are reading this, it means the ritual succeeded. My name is Elara Duskbane. I was born without mana. Do you know what that means in this world? It means trash. It means mockery. It means beatings and chains. They called me useless, cursed, a stain on my noble house. I thought if I could summon something greater, I could survive. So I brought you. I don't know what you will do with my body. I don't care. Just live, stranger. Live where I could not"
My hands shook. The edges of the note burned with old black ash. And in the corner of the room, I saw her. A small figure, no taller than a doll, hovering just above the ground. Her face was mine, and not mine. Sharp, fragile, desperate. Her body shimmered faintly, translucent, like a flame that refused to go out.
"Elara," I whispered.
She looked at me with hollow eyes and nodded. "You are me now," she said softly. "And I will never leave you. Only you can see me. Only you can hear me."
I staggered back, the world tilting. My breath caught in my chest.
I remembered my own life—the flashbulbs, the cold glass of champagne, the weight of money in envelopes. I remembered the wives' tears, the way they clutched my hands, whispering thank you through their sobs.
I remembered my own mask, the perfect smile I had trained myself to wear. And now, for the first time, I had no mask. No reputation to protect. No cameras to please. Only a body the world already despised.
"They call you villainess," Elara whispered. "Because of how you dress. Because of whispers, they never bothered to confirm. They hate you because you were born wrong. Because you have no mana." Her small hand brushed against the black-embroidered dress, the thorns curling like veins of shadow.
"They will call you wicked," she continued. "They will spit at your feet. They will smile in your face and twist the knife when you turn your back. But you—you are not me. You are stronger."
I stared at her, at the fragile ghost of the girl who had dragged me into her dying body, and something inside me shifted.
In my old world, I had hidden. I had played an angel. I had worn white when I wanted red, had smiled when I wanted to sneer. Here?
Here I could finally breathe, here I could bare my teeth.
Elara hovered closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You should know… I didn't bring you here out of kindness. I brought you here because I wanted vengeance. Because I wanted to see them suffer. I couldn't do it. But maybe you can."
Her eyes gleamed like black glass. And for the first time, I smiled without the mask. It was sharp. Dangerous. Real. That was the beginning of The Mask of Black Thorns. And though they called me a villainess, they had no idea what they had unleashed.