🔥 Chapter 11- "The Cost of Survival"
1054 Words
(Liana’s POV)
The morning I decided to stop being Liana Ashwin was the first morning I’d breathed without falling apart.
I stood in front of the mirror for a long time.
My scars told the story before I could.
A burn mark curved along my jaw—ugly, twisted, a reminder that flames love to kiss and destroy at the same time. --
My hands…
God, my hands.
Pale patches, melted textures, scars that wrapped around my wrists like painful bracelets.
Some were faint.
Some were angry.
Some pulsed with memories of heat and smoke and the sound of my own screams.
My ribs showed where the burns had healed unevenly.
My left shoulder still held the imprint of a beam that had collapsed on me.
There were scars on my waist, on my thigh, across my back—
a roadmap of survival carved into skin that didn’t feel like mine anymore.
I pressed my fingers to the mirror.
“End her,” I whispered.
Her face.
Her past.
Her name.
Everything.
I wanted to become a stranger even my own bloodline wouldn’t recognize.
Like the world was whispering:
You don’t belong here anymore.
---
Isaac listened to every word in stunned silence.
“I can help you,” he said.
“But not here.”
My hands tightened at my sides.
“Where?”
“Abroad.”
He rubbed a hand across his face.
“People I trust—surgeons, professionals. They’ll change your appearance, restructure whatever you want. Your face, your scars… everything.”
My heart thudded so loudly I could hear it in my throat.
“How long?” I whispered.
His jaw tightened.
“Months.”
A pause.
“Maybe years.”
The word years tasted like metal.
Years… of surgeries.
Years… of loneliness.
Years… rebuilding myself from zero.
Isaac stepped forward and held my shoulders.
“Liana… listen to me.”
His voice cracked, something I’d never heard from him.
"This path will destroy you. You’ll suffer. From the pain. From the isolation. From waking up every day in a body you don’t recognize.”
I met his gaze steadily.
“And there will be no one to hug you. No one to hold your hand. No one to pull you out when you’re drowning in the dark.”
“I already lived through hell,” I whispered.“I buried everyone I loved. The world took everything from me. Everyone from me.”
My voice softened.
“Everyone except you, uncle Isaac.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Uncle Isaac… I’m glad I still have you.”
He pulled me into a trembling hug.
And for a moment—I let myself feel safe.
A moment was all I could afford.
---
When I packed, the weather outside was getting dark, the sky bruised with heavy clouds.
I took almost nothing.
Just a small handbag.
Documents.
Cash.
A single photo of Merel I couldn’t leave behind... and a new passport.
Alina Seraph.
Not Liana Ashwin.
Not the burned girl in the mirror.
Alina.
A phoenix name.
Seraph.
Meaning “burning one.”
This was who I would become.
Everything else stayed in the house I had bled in, cried in, survived in.
The house that held too many ghosts.
When I closed the door behind me, my chest tightened with something sharp and final.
This place had been a tomb.
A sanctuary.
A battlefield.
A beginning and an ending.
And now I walked away from all of it.
---
Before leaving, I called Isaac.
“I’m ready,” I whispered.
His breathing was uneven. Wrong.
“I can’t come,” he said. “I was driving toward you but… they’re on me, Liana. The Morettis are everywhere. If I lead them to you—no. I won’t risk that.”
My blood froze.
“Isaac—”
Cold fear ran through me.
“I called a taxi,” he rushed. “It’s waiting outside your door. Don’t wait for me—just go. NOW ”
“Please be careful,” I breathed.
“I’ll call you in again,” he said.
His voice broke.
“Just…go, don’t look back.”
The line went dead.
The taxi waited with its engine humming softly.
I closed the door of the house—
the house where Merel died,
where I recovered,
where I planned revenge,
where I learned how to breathe again.
It felt like burying a body.
Maybe mine.
I stepped into the taxi and didn’t look back.
As the city blurred past the windows, something inside me twisted.
Fear.
Not for myself.
For him.
For the man who saved me a hundred times in ways he’d never admit.
---
At the airport, just as I reached the terminal, my phone rang.
Isaac.
My heart nearly exploded.
“Isaac?”
His voice was frantic, breathless:
“Break your SIM and get on the plane. Right now. Don’t call me again. They’re closing in. They’ll take my phone—I’m going to destroy it.”
“Isaac, what’s happening—”
A violent crash exploded through the line.
Metal twisting.
Glass shattering.
Isaac’s breath tearing from his lungs—
“ISAAC!” I screamed into the phone.
No answer.
Only chaos.
Then silence.
“Isaac…?”
My voice trembled.
Nothing.
The call ended.
I tried calling again.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Every instinct screamed to run to him, search for him.
But his last words—his last command—hit me like a blade.
“Get on the plane. Now. Don’t look back.”
My vision blurred.
Slowly, painfully, I removed the SIM.
Snapped it in half.
Then smashed the phone against the floor tile.
The overhead announcement echoed:
“Final boarding call for Flight 302…”
My throat closed.
This was it.
The crossroads he warned me about.
I wiped my tears, lifted my chin, and walked forward.
Every step felt like betrayal.
Every step felt like survival.
I didn’t know if Isaac was alive.
I didn’t know if I’d ever hear his voice again.
But I knew one thing:
He risked everything so I could escape.
If Isaac died for this—
Then I would make damn sure the Morettis paid for it.
Alina Seraph walked onto the plane that day.
Liana Ashwin never walked off.
- Writer
