The Luna's Revenge

Chapter 3: The Basement

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the cold. The cold seeped through my skin and wrapped around my bones, causing me to shiver uncontrollably. My body ached from the beating, and when I attempted to move, a sharp pain shot through my side, causing me to gasp.

It was thick and heavy, with the smell of damp stone and mildew. Slow and steady water dripped somewhere nearby, echoing through the basement like a mocking clock. Drip… drip… drip.

I blinked into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything at first. The kind of darkness that swallowed everything whole; it was pitch black. The only light was a thin crack beneath the door at the top of the stairs, a faint golden strip that was so far away it might have been on another planet.

“Where am I?” I already knew the answer, but I whispered it anyway. Magnus had thrown me down here. The basement. A place where the family had forgotten to dump. I remember the place no one ever went if something wasn't broken, unwanted, or needed to be hidden. Like me.

My throat was as dry as sandpaper. I attempted to swallow; it just made my neck hurt more. Magnus’s claws still stung my skin. I could hear my father’s furious voice.

“They told you, ‘You need to learn your place.’”

I winced and pulled my knees to my chest. I wrapped myself up in my arms, trying to keep warm, but to no avail. The cold had already seeped into me.

Time passed slowly. I had no idea how long I'd been down here—an hour, a day, maybe longer. There were no windows, no clocks; the world outside ceased to exist. The dark, the cold, and that faint dripping sound that filled the silence were all there was.

My mind pulled me back to the past. Painful and uninvited, memories floated to the surface, like ghosts.

I remembered my childhood, or what little of it I could remember. It happened when I was so small, almost three years old. I was chasing butterflies in the sunlight, in the backyard, one moment... and then everything went black. Months later, when I returned, nobody ever told me where I had been or what had happened to me. I just knew that I was different after that. And so was my family.

“What are you staring at, freak?”

The cruel memory of Orion’s voice echoed in my mind years ago. He was a boy then, but the words still hurt. I was five years old, sitting in the corner of the living room, playing with toys I didn’t know. He had glared at me, treating me as if I were a stranger, even though I was actually my brother—my biological brother.

My parents weren’t any better. Magnus and Seraphina had stopped calling me pet names. They stopped smiling at me. Best-case scenario, they ignored me, and worst-case scenario, they looked at me like I didn’t belong. I felt like I was an intruder in my own home.

And then Calista came.

Calista. The golden child.

I coughed bitterly, but it came out as a harsh laugh. The motion made my chest heave, and pain shot through my ribs, but I didn’t give a s**t.

Calista had been adopted when I was nine. This was supposed to be a day for celebration and new beginnings. I'd tried to be excited; I'd even dressed up in a pale blue dress, hoping my parents would notice me. The moment Calista entered the house, however, everything changed.

My parents thought Calista was perfect—well, perfect, or at least, that’s what I thought. Charming, beautiful, and graceful. She had always been there, or at least it seemed like that. She was doted on, loved, and showered with attention and gifts. And me? I became invisible.

In the darkness, I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. How could they do this to me? Why did they leave me so easily?

I whispered hoarsely, “It’s not fair.” My voice was small and fragile, no more than a breath.

The hunger came next. It started as a dull ache in my stomach, something I could easily ignore, but it got worse, sharper. At some point, all I could think about was this. My limbs trembled whenever I tried to move; my body was weak. I pressed myself against the wall, letting the cold stone bring me up, and tried not to think about food.

But my mind betrayed me.

I thought of freshly baked bread, warm and soft, with butter melting on top. I thought of the crunch of an apple, the sweetness of honey, and the saltiness of roasted meat. I groaned and curled into myself, my stomach growling loudly.

I shook my head and muttered, 'Stop it'. “Stop thinking about it.”

My throat ached, too. There was nothing; I would have given anything for just one sip of water. The dripping, as if to mock me, was the only sound.

“Drip… drip… drip…”

I let my head loll back against the wall. My eyelids were heavy, and I considered for a moment releasing myself to the darkness. I closed my eyes every time, but the voices came.

Whispers.

I thought at first they were real. The first time I jerked awake, my heart racing and sure that someone had come to rescue me.

“Hello?” I yelled, my voice echoing through the room.

There was no answer. Just silence.

But then I heard it again. Voices so soft I could hardly hear what they were saying.

“They… don’t… love you.”

My eyes widened. “Who’s there?”

“They never did.”

Whispers swarmed me, louder and louder. They weren’t cold, and they weren’t cruel, and yet they were... familiar, as if they had always been in the corners of my mind, waiting for this moment.

“You’re nothing to them. Forgotten. Weak.”

“Stop!” I put my hands over my ears and screamed. But the whispers didn’t stop. They wove around me like snakes, slithering into my thoughts, filling the emptiness.

“Revenge…”

The word settled in my chest, and my breathing slowed. Revenge. It was a word, a spark, and I clung to it like a drowning man clings to a lifeline. Seraphina, Calista... they had taken everything from me. My family. My happiness. My life.

Why should they get to win?

I didn’t know how long it had been. My body was too weak to move, and my mind was a blur. I lay on the cold floor, curled up, blankly staring into the darkness. My breaths were shallow, and my lips were cracked. I knew I didn’t have much longer. Perhaps that was what Magnus wished—for me to vanish without a trace, without a sound. Just like I always had been forgotten.

One tear fell from my eye.

I whispered again, “It’s not fair.” I wasn’t sure I’d even spoken; my voice was so faint.

I closed my eyes and relaxed my body. It would be easier this way, perhaps. Perhaps it was better to just let go.

But then…

I saw it through my blurred vision. A faint light. I thought it was just in my head at first. The voices were a hallucination. But no—it was real. The darkness began to cut through the light, and eventually it was the only thing I could see.

For the first time in days, hope sparked to life inside me, and my heart stuttered.

“Please…” I whispered, my voice breaking.