They dressed me in white.
It wasn't a gesture of mercy or a nod to my supposed innocence. It was for the contrast. They wanted every drop of blood, every speck of filth from the dungeon floor, to stand out against the silk. They wanted the crowd to see exactly how a "traitor" was broken.
The fabric clung to my skin, cold and damp, as they dragged me onto the platform. The wooden stage groaned under my weight, already stained with the ghosts of those who had stood here before me. Above, the thick hemp rope swayed gently in the morning breeze. It was patient. It had all the time in the world.
I didn't.
My wrists burned where the rough cord bound them, but the pain was a distant hum—background noise to the symphony of the last three months. Interrogations that lasted until dawn, the suffocating silence of the hole, and the weight of a Crown that had once called me its "Jewel."
I lifted my head. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of a bowed neck.
The square was a sea of faces. Nobles sat beneath silk canopies, fanning away the heat of the sun, while commoners balanced on crates and rooftops to catch a glimpse of the fallen Lady Valen. Some watched with a morbid, hungry excitement. Others with flickering fear.
But some watched with relief.
That relief cut deeper than the iron shackles.
In the front row stood my mother. Her posture was a masterpiece of aristocratic grace, her hands folded calmly. She didn't look at me. She looked through me, as if I were a smudge on an otherwise perfect portrait. Beside her, my father stared at the cobblestones, his shoulders trembling—not with grief, but with the effort of distancing himself from my shame.
And then there was my sister. She sobbed softly into a lace veil, her delicate frame shaking. To the crowd, she was the picture of a grieving sibling. To me, she was a viper. I saw the way her eyes remained dry behind the silk.
She was very, very convincing.
Finally, my gaze landed on him. The man who had once knelt in a garden and sworn to be my shield. He stood beside the Magistrate, dressed in the somber black of mourning. His expression was a practiced mask of solemnity.
When our eyes met, I looked for a spark.
Hatred, guilt, even a glimmer of triumph—anything. But there was only distance. A cold, flat vacuum where a soul should have been.
In that moment, the frantic pounding of my heart went still.
The realization washed over me like ice water. This wasn't a tragic misunderstanding. This wasn't a failure of the law.
This was an agreement. My death was the ink that signed their new alliance.
"By decree of the Sovereign Order," the priest's voice boomed, amplified by magic to echo across the silent square, "Elara Valen is found guilty of High Treason against the Crown."
A murmur rippled through the crowd, a collective intake of breath.
Treason. A word heavy enough to bury the truth forever.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear the mask off my sister's face and spit on the man in black. I wanted to beg for a life I no longer even valued.
Instead, I laughed.
The sound tore out of my chest, jagged and sharp, slicing through the priest's prayer. Heads turned. The whispers turned into hissed curses.
A mad traitor to the end, they would say.
Possessed by demons, they would whisper.
The hood was pulled over my head.
The world vanished, replaced by the smell of rough burlap and old, copper-scented blood. My heart began to slam against my ribs again, a frantic bird in a cage, too loud, too fast.
If there is a God, I thought, biting my lip until I tasted iron to keep the sob at bay, then You are a silent witness to a lie.
The wood creaked.
The priest began the final rites, his voice a drone of empty promises. I thought of everything they had stripped from me. My name. My future. My dignity.
If I am given one more chance—
The trapdoor vanished.
Gravity reclaimed me. The rope snapped tight, a violent explosion of agony that felt like my spine was being torn in two. Air became a memory. My vision shattered into a thousand white stars as I kicked at the empty air, my bound hands clawing uselessly at nothingness.
—I will not die quietly.
The world dissolved into a gray haze. The pain began to recede into a dull, numbing cold.
So this is death, I wondered distantly. It's so… empty.
Click. Click. Click.
Footsteps echoed in a place that shouldn't have floors.
I turned—or thought I did—and saw a man standing in the void. He looked human, but his proportions were slightly off, his presence too heavy for the darkness. His eyes were ancient, swirling like galaxies that had watched a billion stars die.
"You were heard," he said. His voice didn't travel through air; it vibrated in the marrow of my nonexistent bones.
"By… who?" I tried to ask, though I had no mouth.
"By me."
Anger, hot and revitalizing, surged through me, incinerating the lingering fear. "Then send me back," I hissed. "Let me be the monster they claim I am. Let me destroy them all."
The man studied me for a long, quiet moment. Then, his lips curled into a thin, sharp smile.
"I can," he said. "But there is a price for rewriting the Book of Fate. You will forget."
A pocket watch appeared in his hand. Its glass was webbed with cracks, and its ticking was so loud it felt like a hammer against my skull.
"Every change you make," he continued, his eyes gleaming with a dark curiosity, "will cost you a memory. You may save your life, Elara Valen, but you may lose the very reasons you wanted to live it."
I didn't hesitate. I didn't care if I forgot my name, as long as I could see them burn.
"Give it to me."
The watch didn't go into my hand. It fused with my wrist, the metal biting into my soul.
The darkness shattered.
Time began to bleed.