Once upon a time, after the "happily ever afters" had been bought with the blood of the defeated, the victors grew cruel in their peace. King Beast did not just exile the villains; he orchestrated a slow, generational execution. He gathered every soul deemed "unworthy" and herded them like cattle onto the Isle of the Lost.
Underneath a shimmering, suffocating dome, the Great Evils were stripped of their divinity. Without magic, the gods of chaos became nothing more than shivering wrecks.
Beast declared them exiled forever.
"Forever" is a word used by tyrants to justify a slow death. It had been twenty years since the barrier rose not ten. Twenty years of breathing in the soot of a dying rock. To a sorcerer who once commanded the tides or a queen who spoke to mirrors, living as a mortal in a slum was a psychological flaying.
The cruelty of Auradon knew no bounds.
They had reached into the underworld, pulling villains back from the sweet release of death only to chain them to this rotting pier. These legends the voice-stealers, the child-hunters, the usurpers were reduced to "ordinary." They spent their days eking out a pathetic existence, selling grey slop and trading insults in a language that once commanded demons.
It was against this backdrop of filth that a celebration was held: the sixth birthday of a blue-haired princess. In a place where hope went to die, such opulence was an insult.
The bazaar, a labyrinth of decaying wood and rusted iron, had been draped in the funeral finery of a party. Vultures had hand-delivered the invitations—dropping them like omens onto every doorstep. Every child on the island was summoned to witness this display of "wickedness."
Every child, except for Mal.
On a balcony that smelled of damp stone and ancient resentment, six-year-old Mal watched. She saw the birthday girl, Evie, sitting on a throne of scrap, laughing. It was a sound that made Mal's teeth ache. Below, the "Greats" had become sycophants. Shere Khan purred for scraps of attention; Captain Hook played the fool with a crocodile for a toddler's amusement. They were shells of men.
Mal's heart didn't just turn "green"; it hardened into a shard of volcanic glass. She didn't want a "baddie bag" or a pet hyena. She wanted the power to make them all scream for the invitations they forgot to send.
"Mother," Mal whispered, as a coldness sharper than the island air settled over her.
Maleficent stepped out of the gloom. She was no longer a towering dragon, but she was still a nightmare. Her voice wasn't melodious; it was the sound of a blade scraping a tombstone.
"What is this pathetic display?" the Mistress of All Evil hissed.
She looked down at the Evil Queen and her blue-haired brat. She looked at the Gaston twins—empty-headed meat-shields—and the pathetic shadow-puppets of Facilier. Maleficent despised them all, but mostly she despised their contentment. How dare they find joy in a cage?
"The Evil Queen and her wretched spawn will pay for this slight," Maleficent vowed.
Once, Maleficent had commanded the forces of Hell. Once, she had ended dynasties with a breath. Now, she had only her spite. As if the universe itself remembered who she was, the sky cracked. Thunder roared—a "wicked coincidence" in a land without magic—and a freezing rain began to wash the filth of the party into the gutters.
Maleficent stepped to the ledge, her silhouette a jagged scar against the lights of the distant, glittering Auradon.
"The celebration is over!" she screamed into the wind. "Flee, you vermin! And you—Queen of Nothing! You and your daughter are dead to this island. You are ghosts. If I see your faces again, I will ensure your second death is much louder than your first!"
The crowd broke. The "grandeur" was trampled into the mud as parents grabbed their children and fled into the dark. Mal watched the blue-haired girl tremble before being dragged away.
Mal didn't smile. She let the rain wash the envy from her face, leaving only the cold, hard resolve of a monster in training. If Auradon made the Isle a prison, Mal would make it a kingdom of shadows.