Every life has a thread of destiny.
Some shine gold. Some fade to grey.
But there are threads stained red,
threads tied to secrets, hunger, and blood.
She never asked to touch such a thread.
She never even knew one was waiting for her.
Not until the day it quietly wrapped around her fingertips…
***
"Don't look into their eyes," they said. "You'll be cursed!"
"What are you talking about?"
what are they talking about?
"Do you know the rumor about the Nivianes?"
Niviane?
"Niviane? Isn't that the nobility of the land?"
"Exactly! They say the Nivianes feast on humans alive. They capture young children and… drink their blood!"
…Drink their blood?
"…Do you really believe something like that?"
"It's true! Dad said the Nivianes have hair as dark as night and eyes as red as blood!"
Eyes as red as blood…
"There's no such eyes as red as blood. How would your dad even meet a noble, anyway?"
"I swear! Dad said he once traveled to the Count's manor for work!"
"You're making this up."
The conversation looped, childish and frightening in its own way.
Irene lingered at the corner, pretending she wasn't listening, but every word slid into her ears anyway.
Her fingers curled around her worn skirt.
…
"…"
"Oh look, speaking of monsters."
…Huh?
Several heads turned sharply toward her.
"Unlucky. It's the child witch."
Child witch…
Right. They're talking about me again.
Irene stepped back a little, lowering her head
Her mother was a lady of misfortune.
The woman who charmed every man she met… only to bring tragedy to them all.
And she, Irene, the child born from that witch, came into the world fragile, small, cursed from the very breath she took.
Fragile enough to take her mother's life the moment she was born.
Her father was an unknown man,
a stranger her mother met on the street,
a passing figure who left nothing behind but a child fated for misery.
It was written all over her.
The child of bad luck.
Her body was frail, the smallest among the children her age.
Her hair tangled easily, her eyes were too sharp for her thin face, her lips always dry and colorless.
Anyone who looked at her could tell,
there was something off.
Something that didn't belong.
Her condition was so weak that the villagers whispered she wouldn't make it to adulthood.
Not an assumption, a fate.
Irene was still very little when the priest first visited her home.
"The child of misfortune," he had said, staring down at her with pity.
"Such a fragile soul. It's a miracle it is still breathing."
His voice wasn't cruel, but it carried the weight of a prediction already sealed.
"At least say something, witch."
…Huh?
Irene snapped back to reality.
The children were still standing there, mocking her, their voices sharp like little stones thrown at her.
"…"
Irene said nothing. What was she supposed to say?
"Uhh… we might catch misfortune just being near her. Let's leave."
One of them spoke in a hushed panic, and the rest immediately agreed.
They stepped back slowly, as if she carried a sickness they could catch by breathing the same air.
Even while retreating, their gazes stayed glued to her, wide, fearful, and disgusted.
Irene remained perfectly still, her head lowered, fingers curled tightly at her sides.
Only when the sound of their footsteps faded did she finally lift her eyes.
She was alone.
…
A single petal, carried by the wind, drifted across the ground and passed through her field of vision.
…Right.
The basket.
The basket of wildflowers and grass she had picked that morning.
Irene turned slightly, feeling the light weight on her back. The woven basket was old and frayed, but it was the only thing she owned that could still carry anything.
She had spent hours wandering beyond the village, gathering whatever flowers were still in season, small, delicate things with thin stems and muted colors. Nothing special… but enough to make a bouquet.
Maybe she could sell them for a few coins.
Life hadn't been kind to her.
Ever since Irene was born into this world, it had been nothing but torture, nothing but misfortune.
She was the embodiment of it.
A walking omen.
A miracle that she was even alive to this day.
But miracles don't last forever.
Irene's days were numbered, tied tightly to a wall she could not climb.
And beyond that wall… there was nothing.
Only emptiness waiting for her.
Irene knew this.
She knew she wouldn't make it long.
Her body was smaller and frailer than any other child's, her limbs thin, her breaths shallow. Illness clung to her constantly, like a shadow that refused to leave. Some days she woke up coughing blood; other days she couldn't stand without trembling.
Still.
she held on.
Irene walked home, toward the torn little shack hidden within the woods.
That place wasn't much. Barely a shelter. But it was the only home she had.
She wasn't living there alone.
She had a brother.
An older brother who suffered the same misfortune she did, living like a rat in a forgotten corner of the world.
He wasn't her blood brother, not by birth.
Carlo had found her abandoned in a narrow alley when she was only a baby, cold and barely breathing.
Instead of walking past, he picked her up and raised her as if she were his own sister.
They were poor.
They had no wealth, no comfort, no promise of a normal life.
Even warmth and happiness, whenever they visited, never stayed for long.
They slipped through their fingers like water, leaving them with nothing but each other.
Irene pushed open the crooked wooden door of the shack.
The hinges groaned, and a breath of cold air slipped past her.
Inside, the room was swallowed in darkness.
"Carlo, I'm home."
"…"
No answer.
"Carlo? Are you still sleeping?"
She stepped inside.
Her footsteps echoed softly in the quiet of the woods, the silence far too heavy for a place that should've had someone waiting for her.
A broken piece of wood cracked under her heel.
Crack.
The sharp sound cut through the darkness
and something in the room responded.
Not with a voice.
Not with a movement she could clearly see.
But with a presence.
A shift in the air.
A slow, unsettling awareness that crawled along her skin.
Something was awake.
Something that didn't belong in her home.
Something sinister… devilish…
Something that would change her fate forever.