[Vanessa’s POV]
It always began the same way.
The girl was five years old again.
Not the Violet that the world now knew. Not the quiet, cautious girl wrapped in layers of falsehood. But Vanessa Eldrienne, the second daughter of House Eldrienne, heir to a name still whole, still proud. A child untouched by consequence was dreaming in a place where time had not yet taken anything from her.
The sun spilt softly across the white-stone courtyard of the Eldrienne manor. The garden walls, high and ivy-kissed, held in the laughter of that morning.
Vanessa was walking with her tiny bare feet. The silk of her colourful dress dragged behind her, far too long for her small frame, tied in a lopsided knot by a servant too indulgent to correct her.
Her hair… darker than it would later become, bounced behind her in loose waves, catching hints of violet only when the light struck just so.
And across from her, laughter rang again.
“Too slow, Nessa! You’ll never catch me like that.”
Anastelle Eldrienne, three years older and far more graceful. She slipped between the marble columns gleefully. Her steps were maddeningly light as she veered towards the garden.
Just before vanishing behind a veil of ivy, she glanced back for a second, just enough for Vanessa to see the familiar brilliance of her amethyst eyes… caught the sun just right, gleaming with a mischief too sharp to be innocent, too beautiful not to chase.
'Pretty...'
“Not fair, Anna! You said no magic!”
“I didn’t cast anything,” Anastelle grinned.
Their mother watched them from a cushioned bench inside the manor, shaded by trailing silk curtains.
Vivienne Eldrienne was tall, poised, and regal even in casual garb. She watched them with a tight-lipped smile and slightly narrowed eyes, a look that blended wry amusement with the restrained sigh of someone dignified.
A glass of cold fruit drink rested in her hand. Her other hand cradled a book she hadn’t turned a page of in over ten minutes. “Damien,” she called lightly toward the man approaching from the far hall. “Your daughters are running over our garden again~"
Lord Damien Eldrienne, a broad-shouldered and dark-haired nobleman, chuckled as he stepped closer, a faint scar near his brow creasing slightly with the motion.
“Haha, let them be,” he said, his voice a steady anchor to the lightness of the scene.
He walked towards them outside through the door and knelt beside little Vanessa as she finally collapsed into a puff of giggles. Vanessa buried her face against his chest as she hugged him.
“She’s cheating, Papa, no fair!” she whispered with a dramatic pout.
Damien gave a slow nod, eyes twinkling. “Then we must teach you how to cheat better.”
Vanessa gasped. “No! That’s not very noble!”
They all laughed contentedly. Anastelle joined them moments later, throwing herself across the grass in mock exhaustion. Vivienne watched them all, her eyes softened.
Vanessa remembered how warm the world felt then.
How whole.
The perfume of roses in bloom. The soft friction of her father’s tunic as he held her… and the quiet hum of safety in her sister’s presence. And when it is nighttime, her mother would gently brush her hair, humming some old lullaby from the North.
It was a vivid dream.
Too vivid.
One, she always wished it would last just a little longer.
'This again...'
Then, the sky had shifted to a gentler shade by then. Afternoon trailing into that golden hush between hours. The garden, still alive with bloom and breeze, fell briefly quiet… until the petals began to stir in a different rhythm.
Little Vanessa, sitting cross-legged beneath the central blossom tree, blinked in wonder.
Above her, the air danced faintly.
A slow current moved through it. One by one, petals rose from the ground, lifted by invisible force, turning in delicate spirals. Some caught the light and glittered, others spun like slow-moving stars caught in orbit.
Anastelle stood at the edge of the courtyard, her arms raised, fingers spread open like she was conducting the breeze itself. Her concentration was serene, effortless…
Vanessa could feel it in her chest, that soft thrum that came whenever Anastelle’s magic danced too close around her. “Anna…” Vanessa whispered, breath stolen.
Anastelle’s eyes flicked to her little sister, still glowing with residual mana. She smiled, and the petals gathered in front of Vanessa like a swirling crown before slowly scattering around her, brushing against her hair and cheeks.
“You’re so pretty when you do magic…” Vanessa said, awestruck.
Anastelle chuckled and walked over, sitting beside her with an easy fold of her legs. “That’s because I’ve practiced a lot. Or maybe because the petals do most of the work,” she teased.
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Vanessa shook her head earnestly, clutching the hem of her sister’s sleeve. “No. You’re really pretty. Like a storybook fairy. I like it. Will I… will I be able to use magic like that too, one day?”
Anastelle leaned her head against the tree trunk, looking up at the canopy as it swayed. “Of course you will, Nessa. You’re my sister. I can also teach you!”
“But…” Vanessa hesitated. Her voice shrank into the space between them. “I’m scared. Doesn’t being a mage mean getting hurt a lot? You always come back with bruises… and sometimes you look really tired. I-I don’t want to get hurt… I don't like getting hurt...”
There was a quiet silence.
Then, Anastelle turned to her completely. She reached over, brushing Vanessa’s hair with a touch that was warm and… familiar. “Vanessa,” she said gently, but with a confidence that cut through doubt like a promise, “you don’t have to be afraid. You can learn slowly. And I’ll be there. You won't be in pain.”
Her smile softened.
“Because I’ll always protect you! As your sister... I'll always be there when you need help, Nessa.”
Vanessa looked into her sister’s amethyst eyes—so steady, so sure—and for a moment, all the fear inside her melted into something gentle. She nodded slowly, her small fingers still holding tight to her sister’s sleeve, as if anchoring herself to that warmth.
“You pinky-promise?” she asked, extending her pinky finger.
Anastelle leaned down, wrapped her pinky finger with her little sister's and kissed her forehead.
“Pinky-promise, Nessa.” Her voice was soothing. And in that quiet courtyard, under the golden sun and petals, the two sisters stayed there a little longer before coming inside the house.
Vanessa still remembered that moment for years.
And then, it always ended the same way.
'....Why this again?'
The warmth began to drain before she noticed. The marble floor beneath her bare feet, once sunlit and almost tender to the touch, cooled into something stark and unfeeling.
Vanessa blinked terrifyingly. Her eyes fluttered rapidly in sheer denial. Her nightgown, once colored in soft lavender and woven through with violet flowers, bled of its colours. Slowly, until all that remained was a pale and lifeless white. A ghost of itself.
The lavender scent, once sweet and calming, dissolved into dry and metallic. The faint trace of blood and smoke.
She turned, but the garden was no longer there.
The eerie silence pressed in.
Then… clang!
A sharp, deliberate echo from far away. The sound of metal boots meeting stone. Then again. Louder. Closer. Steady as a clock, but without mercy.
Vanessa breathed heavily. Her feet began to move on their own. Pattering across the stone floor of the manor, frantically as the cold began to bite. Her step grew louder than the last. As though the house itself was shouting her presence to whatever thing marched in the distance.
“Mom?” she called, her voice uncertain.
No one answered.
“Papa…?”
Still, only the sound of boots.
Her voice cracked. “ANNA?!!!”
But there was no answer. The warmth in her chest, the certainty that someone would always come when she called… vanished entirely.
She ran faster now, her breath coming in thin, frightened bursts. The corridor stretched longer than it should have. The familiar archways of the Eldrienne manor twisted subtly wrong.
She felt it.
The paintings on the walls, once portraits of smiling ancestors and family, had changed. Their eyes were no longer painted; they were empty holes, leaking black ink that dripped in slow, glistening trails.
And even without pupils, they were… watching her.
Watched her run.
Still, she ran. Her voice broke with each name she called. Each plea rang thinner than the last.
"Anna… I’m scared, where are you?" Her voice quiet now.
Why was her heart pounding like this? Why did it hurt? The emptiness stretched. The halls no longer welcomed her. The home… her home felt hollow. As if the people she loved had been peeled away from it. Stripped out, leaving only shadows and dust behind.
Then, she found the courtyard door open.
Vanessa’s feet halted before her mind could comprehend why. And her eyes, they were open now. They would not close even though she wasn’t supposed to see this. Beyond the archway, clinging to marble railings, stood a stone platform.
And on it—two figures, kneeling.
Chains rattled as the wind swept past. Their clothes were torn and bloodied, backs bowed beneath the weights. Their heads hung low out of exhaustion and pain. Vanessa’s eyes turned wide as the wind shifted, lifting dark hair tangled with filth… revealing their faces.
Her father’s face. Damien Eldrienne, proud and tall, now slumped as though the world had pressed too heavily upon his shoulders. And beside him—Vivienne. Her mother. Her beauty dimmed by bruises, her hands bound behind her, yet still holding herself with grace… until their eyes met.
And that was when time slowed for her.
Vanessa couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t even breathe properly.
"What's... happening?'
They both looked at each other. Vanessa didn't look away, because… she felt like she was going to regret this if she looked away now.
Somehow, through everything, through the grime, the agony, the coming end… they managed to see her daughter for the last time. Their youngest. Their little star. And in that one fleeting moment, something passed between them.
Something wordless.
Her heart tightened. Vanessa doesn't like this feeling.
Her father’s lips moved, almost imperceptibly.
-Vanessa…
-I’m sorry…
A whisper she couldn’t hear, but felt.
Her mother’s tear-lined gaze softened.
Then a voice, unfamiliar and sharp, tore through the courtyard. “Lord Damien Eldrienne, by decree of the Crown, has been found guilty of high treason—”
Treason?
“—and will receive execution at first light.”
The words were meaningless to her. She didn’t understand back then. What was treason? What law had her father broken? What crime had her mother committed? None of this made sense. It couldn’t.
Her father taught her how to ride a horse. Her mother braided her hair each morning. They gave bread to the poor. They smiled at their servants. They never raised their voices in anger, never held cruelty in their hands. So, what's going on here? What's going to happen to them?
‘I’m scared. Someone... help, please stop it. Please stop them.' She opened her mouth to cry out… but no sound came. Her thoughts are still trying to process.
‘No, please. Don't—’
But the executioner’s blade was already in motion. A single, gleaming arc fell. Then, the sky turned crimson and Vanessa’s world became red. A spray of blood fanned across the stones with a precise, elegant curve.
Their heads fell and rolled until…
They stopped inches from her bare feet, their eyes still open, still seeing her. Vanessa collapsed as her knees gave way, and she crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her voice broke the silence at last. Not a scream, but a sound rawer than that.
“P-papa…?”
She crawled forward with shaking limbs, reaching with small, trembling fingers.
“Mo-mother…?”
Her hand brushed against the ends of her mother’s hair… still warm, still soft.
‘No. No. They're just sleeping…. Papa’s only tired. He’ll get up… he always does. Mama as well.’ Tiers slid silently, her gaze trembled and unfocused, clinging to shapes she no longer understood, as though searching for her parents’ faces in the blur.
She did not want to believe it. She could not.
'Please... this isn't true.'
If she admitted what her eyes told her, then the world would end here, at her bare feet. If she accepted the truth, then Papa’s laughter and Mama’s gentle voice would be nothing more than ghosts, and she would be alone in a silence too vast to survive.
Then, the guard seized her. Rough hands yanked her from the ground as though she were nothing more than a scrap to be discarded.
Vanessa screamed desperately.
“PAPA!!! MOMMAA!!!!”
“Quiet!!” the man snapped. “You’ll be dealt with later.” She screamed again, struggling, kicking, but her strength was nothing. Her cries were unanswered. And in her final glance, before the black swallowed her whole, she saw it:
The manor… her home—was burning.
All of it drowned in fire, eaten alive by flame and smoke. Everything that had belonged to her, everything that had once made her world warm, safe and whole…
Was gone.
'Anna.... where are you?'