AURELİA: The Sealed Soul

CHAPTER 4: SHROUD AND SWADDLE

On the night of the ritual, the crimson sky above the capital had taken on the color of congealed blood. Not a single breeze stirred, and not a leaf moved in the city; it was as if nature itself were holding its breath, waiting for the coming atrocity. On the palace’s highest terrace, the ancient stone altar was surrounded by torches. The black smoke rising from them mingled with the religious chants murmured by the priests.
King Varian stood a few paces from the altar, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword. His face was as impassive as a stone mask, but beneath his ribcage, a battlefield raged. His eyes drifted to Elin, who had been brought by the priests in white ceremonial robes. Her hair had been brushed, and she was dressed in a spotless white tunic. She was so delicate and frail that when she was laid upon the cold marble of the altar, she seemed to vanish against the stone.
Varian was gripped by an internal contradiction. One part of him remembered the agony he suffered as a slave child beaten in the stables and wanted to scream, "Stop this atrocity!" He saw his own helplessness in the child before him. But the other part heard the whispers of Aethelgard and the arrogant nobles standing behind him, sharpening their eyes in anticipation of the storm. "A concubine's son cannot be king," those voices said. "If you show weakness, they will destroy you." To protect his throne and his life, Varian had to stifle his own humanity upon that altar.
When High Priest Malakai raised his sharp ritual blade into the air, the chants intensified. Elin lay upon the altar, gazing at the sky. Her hands were not bound, for she had not even attempted to flee or resist. Her eyes found Varian, who stood at the edge of the terrace. One last time, without a sound from those sealed lips, she looked into the depths of the King’s soul with her water-colored eyes. There was no hatred in that gaze; only a profound, heartbreaking sorrow for the helplessness of humanity. Varian held his breath, forcing himself not to turn away.
The blade descended.
As Elin’s white tunic was painted crimson in seconds, the little girl’s body trembled slightly; her fingers clutched the edge of the marble altar one last time and slowly went limp. Her blood flowed through the grooves on the marble, trickling down toward the parched earth. Malakai threw his arms toward the sky with a frenzied cry of triumph: "The sacrifice is accepted! Awaken, O Sky!"
But the sky did not awaken.
Not a single roll of thunder was heard, nor did a drop of rain fall. The air grew even heavier, and the crimson haze wrapped the city like a shroud. As Varian looked at the child lying lifeless on the altar, he felt the ache within him suddenly turn to ice. A s*******r had been committed, but the Gods had not saved the kingdom. As Aethelgard laughed softly in the shadows, Varian felt colder than he had ever been in his life, even beneath his armor.
Three years had passed since Elin’s death. Through three winters and three summers, the kingdom had endured hell. The sacrifice ritual had been in vain; instead, the curse had deepened. The rivers had dried up completely, leaving only beds of poisonous mud. The people were now tearing one another apart in the streets from hunger, throwing stones at the palace walls and shouting, "King Varian is cursed! The Gods did not even accept the sacrifice!" Fearing the wrath of the people, High Priest Malakai and the priests had locked themselves within their temples. Aethelgard, meanwhile, was counting the days to fuel the rebellion alongside the nobles he had gathered behind him.
King Varian, walking the palace corridors, was now twenty-four, but his face in the mirror resembled a wreck that had weathered thirty years. When no one saw him, when he locked the doors of his room, his cruel, hard kingly mask crumbled to dust.
He had not slept a single night in three years. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the little girl in the white tunic in his dreams. In his dreams, Elin never spoke; she only looked at Varian with those clear eyes. Varian would bolt from his bed in a cold sweat, staring at his hands. There was no blood on them, but he knew his soul could never be cleansed of that blood. By day, he struck terror into the nobles in the palace halls, drawing his sword at the slightest sign of disobedience; for he could only mask the colossal guilt and weakness within him with further cruelty. To the world, he was as hard as rock, but inside, he was spiraling further into madness every day between the gears of remorse.
"You forced me," he would whisper to the walls of the empty room, as if Elin’s ghost were there. "I had to protect my throne. I had to survive..." But the walls remained silent. Just like the girl he had sacrificed.
At the end of the third year, there was a different kind of agitation in the palace bedchamber. Varian’s wife, who was pregnant, was writhing in labor pains. Outside, thousands of hungry and furious people had reached the palace gates with torches in their hands. The guards had pointed their spears at the crowd, struggling to hold back the gates that were on the verge of breaking. Aethelgard stood behind the guards, enjoying the anticipation of the moment the rebellion would seize the palace and Varian would be beheaded.
Varian listened to the screams of the rebellion outside and the moans of his wife inside as he waited at the door of the birthing chamber. It was all coming to an end. His kingdom and his throne were slipping through his fingers. The curse was about to swallow him whole.
Suddenly, the screams from within the room ceased. After a few seconds of deadly silence, a tiny, high-pitched infant cry rose from the room.
The moment that cry echoed through the palace corridors, a massive roll of thunder erupted in the sky above a kingdom where not a leaf had moved for three years. It was a roar so powerful it shook the cracking marble. Immediately after, the clouds, which had been shrouded in a crimson haze for three years, were torn asunder. And the first heavy raindrop fell to the earth.
Within seconds, the sky seemed to empty itself. The torrential rain, longed for for years, began to beat against the palace windows and wash the dust and dirt from the rebellious people outside. The people in the streets dropped their torches and fell to their knees, turning their faces to the sky, weeping as they began to drink the rain. The fury that was about to break down the gates turned into divine gratitude in an instant. "A miracle!" the people shouted. "The King’s child has brought luck! The Gods have forgiven us!"
Varian stared at the raindrops hitting the windows in disbelief. He rushed into the birthing chamber. His wife lay exhausted on the bed. The midwife respectfully handed him the infant wrapped in a swaddle.
Varian took the tiny baby into his trembling arms. It was a girl. The baby slowly opened her eyes. The moment Varian looked into his daughter’s eyes, he thought his heart would stop.
His daughter’s eyes were the color of clear oceans and pure sky beneath that newly started downpour. They were the eyes of Elin, the mute girl he had sacrificed with his own hands three years ago. Varian’s breath hitched; the remorse and fear within him collided with that sudden, colossal love he felt for the baby’s innocence. This baby was both his miracle that saved his throne from rebellion and the very embodiment of that sealed past that would crush his soul.
As a single tear fell onto the baby’s cheek, he whispered: "Aurelia... Let your name be Aurelia."
While the rain was bringing the earth back to life outside, a murderer was holding his victim in his arms within the palace. And fate had struck its first seals to play its greatest game.