The Origin’s Sacrifice
1440 Words
The black liquid didn't burn. It didn't sear my flesh or boil my blood. It froze.
It felt like a thousand tiny shards of jagged obsidian were racing through my veins, hunting for the "White Origin" spark with a predatory hunger and snuffling it out like a candle in a howling storm. My vision began to blur, the brilliant, divine white light of the laboratory fading into a dull, sickening grey. I felt my knees hit the cold floor, but I couldn't even feel the impact.
"Elara! Stay with me! Look at me!" Malachi’s voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep, dark well, echoing and distorted.
I felt his arms wrap around me—warm, solid, and desperate. Under any other circumstances, his touch would have sparked a wildfire in my blood, a recognition of the bond we had forged in fire and secrets. But now? It felt cold. Everything felt cold. I was slipping away from myself, my memories dissolving into a dark, viscous ink.
Beside him, the woman I had just pulled from the stasis pod—my mother—was screaming. Her voice was thin and raspy, the sound of a ghost trying to find its lungs after twenty years of silence. She reached for me, her trembling fingers brushing my cheek, but her touch felt like a stranger's.
"The... the Void..." she whispered, her crystalline blue eyes wide with a terror that surpassed death itself. "They used the Void-Strain. They actually did it."
"What is it? How do I fix her? Tell me how to save her!" Malachi roared, his hybrid form flickering like a dying television screen as the psychic connection to my power snapped and died.
"It doesn't kill the body," my mother choked out, her strength failing as she slumped against the cold metal of the lab floor, her eyes dimming. "It kills the wolf. It... it erases the Origin. She won't remember the fire. She won't know the King. She won't even know her own name."
The last thing I saw was Malachi’s face a mask of pure, unadulterated agony before the absolute darkness of the Void claimed me entirely.
THREE MONTHS LATER
The University of Arts looked different in the height of summer. The Gothic arches were covered in lush green ivy, and the students moved through the stone quad with a lazy, academic grace that felt peaceful and right.
I sat on a weathered stone bench, a sketchbook open on my lap. I was focused on the way the afternoon sunlight hit the ripples of the Thames, trying to capture the fluid motion with my charcoal pencil. My name was Fiona at least, that’s what the official documents in my dorm room stated. Fiona Harry. A promising orphan on a full scholarship for the gifted, sponsored by the Board of Directors.
I had no memory of a life before the University gates. The doctors, kind and professional, told me it was a traumatic amnesia caused by a tragic "lab accident" during my freshman orientation. They were very patient with my confusion. Professor Lang, especially, had taken me under her wing, guiding my studies and ensuring I had everything I needed to succeed in my new life.
"You have a rare gift, Fiona," Lang said, stepping into the warm sunlight beside me. She looked elegant and composed in her charcoal suit, her sharp eyes hidden behind spectacles. "But you must stay focused on your art. Your blood pressure has been... irregular lately. We don't want another episode."
"I'm fine, Professor. Truly," I said, forcing a polite smile that didn't reach my eyes. But as I looked at her, a sharp, stabbing pain flared behind my eyes. For a split second, I saw a flash of a silver mask. I smelled the phantom scent of sandalwood and mountain rain.
"Good," Lang said, patting my hand with a cold, dry palm. "The Board of Directors is very pleased with your progress. We have a special gala tonight a 'Thank You' to our biggest private donor. I’d like you to be there as a representative of our scholarship program."
"Who is the donor?" I asked, my pencil accidentally sketching a jagged, violent line across the page.
"A very powerful man from the North," Lang murmured, her voice unreadable. "A philanthropist named Malachi."
The gala was a glittering sea of silk, champagne, and lies. I wore a simple, sleeveless black dress, feeling like an interloper among the elite of London. My skin felt tight and itchy, as if it didn't quite belong to me, and the air in the room felt heavy with secrets.
"Fiona, come," Lang said, leading me toward the center of the ballroom where the most important guests had gathered. "I want you to meet him."
I turned, expecting a stuffy old man.
He was standing by the tall window, a glass of dark red wine in his hand. He was dressed in a charcoal suit that fit his broad shoulders perfectly, his dark hair swept back. He looked every bit the billionaire. But when his eyes met mine, the glass in his hand shattered.
The wine spilled across the white marble floor like a fresh pool of blood.
He didn't move. He didn't seem to breathe. He just stared at me with eyes that were a haunting, swirling violet eyes that seemed to recognize parts of me I didn't even know existed.
"Elara?" he whispered, the name vibrating in the air like a forbidden prayer, a name I had never heard but that made my heart skip a beat.
"I... I'm sorry?" I blinked, feeling a sudden, violent surge of heat in my chest that made me lightheaded. "My name is Fiona. Fiona Harry."
Malachi stepped forward, his presence so overwhelming that the other socialites seemed to vanish into the background. He reached out a hand, his fingers trembling with a raw emotion as they neared my neck, where a strange, faint scar was hidden beneath my hair a scar I had been told was from the lab accident.
"You don't know me," he said, his voice a jagged edge of grief that threatened to cut through my composure.
"I've never met you in my life, Mr. Malachi," I said, taking a wary step back.
Behind him, a woman with silver-streaked hair Hera watched the exchange with tears in her eyes. And beside her stood a woman who looked so much like me it was like looking into a haunted mirror. My "Mother." But she was dressed in a University uniform, her eyes vacant and glazed, a silver collar cinched tight around her neck.
"She's a Specimen, Mr. Malachi," Professor Lang said, stepping between us with a sharp, warning look. "Fiona is a student. Please, do not confuse the two."
Malachi looked at Lang, and for a second, I saw a flicker of the "Monster" the legends of the school whispered about. The air in the ballroom grew heavy, the lights overhead flickering as if a storm was passing through the building.
"She is not a student," Malachi growled, his voice dropping to a frequency that made my very bones ache with a phantom memory.
He looked back at me, his gaze boring into my soul, searching for the girl who had once burned down a pack house and shattered a Moon-Pool.
"I will wait a thousand years if I have to," he whispered to me, ignoring Lang’s protests. "I will make you remember. And when you do... we are going to finish what we started."
He turned and walked out of the room without another word, leaving a trail of broken glass and the lingering, intoxicating scent of sandalwood.
I stood there, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I looked down at my sketchbook, which I had been clutching to my chest. Without realizing it, I hadn't been drawing the Thames.
I had been drawing a massive, white wolf standing triumphantly over a fallen King.
The pain in my head returned, stronger than ever before. Phase Six: The Reset, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. It sounded exactly like the late Director Marian.
But as I watched the "Donor" disappear into the night, the White Wolf trapped inside the "Void" let out a single, muffled growl. She wasn't dead. She was just waiting for a reason to bite.
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