The Blood on the Rose
642 Words
The problem with the Red String of Fate wasn't finding the other end—it was the reality that a thread could be tangled in a knot. And what if that other end was anchored deep in the past? How do you untie a knot made of time itself? Do you cut the string to free yourself, or do you travel blindly along its length, chasing the chance to finally hug the other end?
Alastaire Thorne didn’t know the answers to those questions. In fact, if you asked him during the day, he would tell you the whole concept was nothing but cosmic nonsense.
But at night, his mind betrayed him.
Tonight, the dream came in fractured, vivid shards. He didn't know the year or the place, only the suffocating weight of a love that wasn't his. He saw flashes of brilliant sunlight. He felt the warmth of a hand laced perfectly through his own—a sensation so real it ached. There was laughter, echoing under an ancient stone archway, and the smell of rain and old parchment.
Suddenly, the fragments coalesced into a clearer memory.
He was standing on a dirt path lined with ancient tiled roofs, surrounded by a world that felt centuries away. A girl was running toward him. Her face was strangely blurred, like a waterlogged painting, but her joy was unmistakable. She was wearing a faded, simple hanbok—the rough, unadorned clothing of a peasant or a servant in historical Korea.
She smiled, her entire being radiating warmth as she reached out to him. "My Lord!" her voice echoed softly, filled with relief. "You came back!"
For a single, breathless moment, Alastaire felt a profound, intoxicating happiness.
Then, the dream violently fractured.
The bright sunlight vanished, swallowed by an icy, paralyzing terror. Smoke filled his lungs, and the sky turned the color of ash.
The dirt path was gone, replaced by a scene of utter devastation. Alastaire was on his knees, his hands trembling as he cradled the very same girl in his arms.
The simple fabric of her hanbok was stained heavily with crimson. She was bleeding, gasping desperately for air as her life slipped away. With what little strength she had left, she looked up at him through her blurred features, her voice cracking with a heartbreaking mix of love and despair.
"Why..." she gasped, a bloody tear spilling down her cheek. "Why did you have to come back, my lord?"
Alastaire screamed a name he couldn't quite catch, his fingers gripping her stained sleeves as a crimson thread yanked violently taut between them, before everything went pitch black.
Alastaire gasped, sitting straight up in bed.
The silken sheets of his expensive penthouse apartment were twisted around his legs, damp with sweat. The modern skyline of the city blinked coldly through his floor-to-ceiling windows, reminding him exactly where—and when—he was.
He ran a trembling hand through his dark hair, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He looked down at his left hand. His pinky finger was twitching, a phantom ache pulsing right at the base of the knuckle, as if something had just violently yanked it from a century away.
"f*****g ridiculous," Alastaire muttered into the empty room, his voice returning to its usual cold, sharp edge. He forced his fists clenched, burying the vulnerability deep down where no one could ever see it.
He was Alastaire Thorne. He didn't believe in ghosts, he didn't believe in fate, and he certainly didn't believe in love. But as he stared at his bare hand in the moonlight, he couldn't shake the terrifying realization that a piece of his soul was trapped in a time he had never belonged to.
- Writer
