Chapter 1: The Curse Begins
914 Words
The first time Aelira saw a fairy burn for love, she did not understand why everyone was screaming.
The girl was beautiful.
Golden wings caught the light like sunlight trapped in glass. Silver hair flowed down her back, trembling with each unsteady breath. Her smile was soft, fragile like something already breaking even before it was lost.
She stood in the center of the Sky Court, surrounded by watching eyes, her gaze fixed only on the male fairy before her.
"I choose him," she whispered.
Her voice was not loud.
But in Lythralis, it did not need to be.
The world itself seemed to hear.
And then she began to die.
Not quickly.
Not mercifully.
It started with a fracture light cracking through her chest like shattered glass, spreading outward in jagged lines that glowed too brightly to look at. Her breath hitched, her body arching as the magic inside her turned violent, unstable.
Her wings burned first.
Golden feathers dissolved into ash before they even touched the ground, scattering like dying stars. Her scream tore through the sky raw, unbearable echoing against the silver towers of the court.
Fairies turned away.
Some wept.
Others fell to their knees.
The male fairy reached for her, desperation etched into every movement, but his hands passed through her fading form, grasping nothing but glowing dust.
"No…..please……. he choked, his voice breaking as she vanished before him.
And then she was gone.
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Aelira watched it all.
Silent.
Unmoved.
Unfeeling.
"Why are you not crying?"
The voice beside her trembled. An elder fairy stood close, her expression twisted with horror not at what had just happened, but at Aelira herself.
Aelira blinked slowly, her gaze shifting from the space where the girl had been.
"Should I be?"
The elder recoiled as if struck.
Because every fairy knew the truth.
Love was death.
And only monsters could watch it… without feeling anything.
Years later, they called her exactly that.
Monster.
Defective.
Empty.
Aelira learned to live with the words, as she did with everything else without reaction. They slid off her like water, leaving no mark, no wound.
She did not feel insulted.
She did not feel pain.
She felt nothing at all.
And yet, she functioned perfectly.
She trained. She obeyed. She existed exactly as she was expected to.
Which made her more unsettling than broken.
Because even fear was a kind of feeling.
And Aelira did not even have that.
Now, she stood at the edge of the Sky Court, her wings still and pale against the rushing wind.
Below her, far beyond the floating cliffs of Lythralis, the human world stretched endlessly vast, chaotic, alive. Lights flickered in uneven patterns, cities breathing with movement and noise.
It was messy.
Uncontrolled.
Full of things fairies had long abandoned.
Emotion.
Aelira stared at it without expression.
"Beautiful," some would say.
"Dangerous," others would whisper.
To her, it was simply… there.
"You have been given a task."
The Queen's voice echoed behind her smooth, commanding, impossible to ignore.
Aelira did not turn.
"Speak."
There was a pause, brief but deliberate.
"A traitor walks among the humans. A half breed."
The word lingered in the air like something distasteful.
"A being born of fairy magic… and human weakness."
Aelira's gaze did not shift.
"He has defied the curse."
That made her turn.
Not curiosity.
Not interested.
But something else.
Something unfamiliar.
A flicker.
Small. Barely there. Gone before it could be understood.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
The Queen stepped closer, her presence cold and sharp as winter frost. Her lips curved into a smile that held no warmth.
"Find him."
A breath.
"Make him fall in love."
Aelira tilted her head slightly.
"And then?"
The Queen's eyes gleamed.
"Watch him burn."
That was the moment everything should have remained simple.
A task.
A mission.
A purpose.
Find him.
Break him.
Kill him.
Aelira had done far more complicated things without hesitation, without doubt.
This should have been no different.
But there was one thing she did not know.
One thing no one had prepared her for.
She had never felt before.
Until the moment she saw him.
The human world was loud.
Rain fell in uneven sheets, soaking the streets and blurring the glow of artificial lights. Voices overlapped. Footsteps rushed. Life moved too quickly, too chaotically.
And yet…
He stood still.
Untouched by it all.
As though the world bent around him instead of through him.
His dark hair clung to his face, damp from the rain. His wings were half hidden, barely visible but unmistakably real. Torn. Frayed. Like something that had survived a war and refused to fall apart afterward.
He did not look lost.
He did not look afraid.
He looked… certain.
And then….
His eyes found hers.
Instantly.
Like he had been waiting.
Like he already knew she would come.
Aelira stilled.
Something in her chest shifted.
Not pain.
Not fear.
But something tighter.
Something… unfamiliar.
And then he smiled.
Not gently.
Not kindly.
But like a man who had already ruined himself once
…and wasn't afraid to do it again.
"You're late," he said.
The words were simple.
But they landed.
Aelira's chest tightened.
Just slightly.
Just enough to matter.
For the first time since she had drawn her first breath…
She felt something.
Something forbidden.
Something deadly.
And far away, in the hidden magic that bound all fairies
The curse stirred.
It had begun..
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