Episode 3
1612 Words
WHISPERS BENEATH THE BLOOD MOON
The tomb didn’t move. Not really. But something in the air had changed.
After Lira’s blood touched the stone, the crypt had pulsed with ancient energy — not a sound or a flash of light, but a breath. A slow, heavy exhale that filled her lungs with the cold weight of forgotten power.
Lira stood, cradling her bloodied palm. She didn’t flinch at the pain. Pain, she had learned, was a teacher. A promise. She cleaned the wound with the hem of her cloak and stared at the tomb a moment longer, waiting for something more.
But there was only silence.
Still, when she stepped back into the night, the world felt different.
The wind whispered in her ears. The shadows pressed closer, like eager listeners. And the moon — red and round as an open wound — hung low in the sky like it had come to bear witness.
Lira raised her eyes to it.
“Watch me,” she said softly. “You watched me die once. Watch me rise.”
She returned to her chambers before the castle stirred, the old book clutched tightly in her hands. She lit only a single candle and pulled the heavy curtains closed. The flickering flame painted the pages in gold and rust.
The curse of House Vale had been enacted by a blood binding — an arcane seal woven from pain, betrayal, and the sacrifice of a willing heir.
But Elenore Vale had tried to undo it.
She’d begun writing the counter-ritual in secret, hiding it beneath false histories and code. Her warnings were marked by small symbols: the spiral-triangle carved by the hawk’s corpse. The looped hourglass scratched into tombstones. The mark of unbroken time.
Lira copied everything she could decipher onto parchment, filling pages with the fragmented truths Elenore had left behind. She circled one line over and over again:
“The marked child may awaken the blood — but only when bone, blade, and will align.”
What did that mean? Bone, blade, and will?
She glanced at her palm. The cut was shallow but still raw.
Was the blade already part of her?
She touched the necklace hidden beneath her collar — the only thing her mother had ever given her. A shard of obsidian, smooth and cold. Her mother had whispered, “For protection,” before vanishing forever.
It felt heavier now. Hungrier.
Maybe it had always been more than a trinket.
Over the next week, Lira studied relentlessly. She barely slept, and when she did, her dreams were full of crimson eyes and twisting roots. But her mind sharpened. Her resolve crystallized.
And her magic — whatever had stirred in that tomb — began to wake.
It started with flickers.
A candle that flared too high when she was angry. A book that fell from a shelf without touch. Her breath fogging the mirror when the room was warm.
Then one night, while tracing the runes Elenore had hidden in the margins of the book, she whispered the incantation aloud — and the ink began to glow.
She dropped the quill in shock. The page shimmered, then darkened, the words rearranging themselves into something new.
A spell.
Lira didn’t hesitate. She read it.
The shadows in her room curled like smoke. The candle blew out. And when she looked at her hand, the cut was gone.
The wound had healed.
But her skin thrummed with power, like something had nested beneath it.
She grinned, her breath quick with exhilaration.
She was no longer powerless.
Not anymore.
Now that she had magic, Lira needed knowledge — true magical knowledge, not the diluted nonsense fed to noble girls. And there was only one place in House Vale where that kind of knowledge still lived.
The forbidden wing.
East of the great hall, past the sealed doors wrapped in iron vines, was a library her father had sealed the year she was born. Rumors claimed it housed grimoires too dangerous to burn, cursed relics that whispered at night, and memories too sharp for mortal minds.
Lira waited until the moon was high. Then she crept through the servants’ passages, her fingers tracing the cold stone, her breath measured. At the door, she placed her bloodied palm against the iron vines and whispered the name etched in Elenore’s notes.
“Sevrin.”
The vines recoiled.
The door groaned open.
Inside, the air was thick with dust and magic. Shelves reached the ceiling, stacked with tomes bound in hide and chain. Jars glowed faintly on high windowsills, their contents floating and writhing. A suit of armor watched her from the corner, its visor gleaming faintly red.
Lira stepped inside.
She wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore.
She read until her eyes blurred. She copied runes, mapped energy flows, and marked each book she could unlock with a sigil of her own design. By the end of her first night, she had learned two new spells — one to cloak her footsteps, and another to make her voice unheard by those she chose.
But it wasn’t the spells that shook her. It was the truth buried in a grimoire bound in cracked black leather.
The blood curse on House Vale wasn’t just some ritual gone wrong.
It was intentional.
The founder of the house, Lord Alderan Vale, had offered the curse willingly — to bind a demon of knowledge and power to his bloodline in exchange for unmatched influence. The price: every third-born would feed the demon’s hunger.
That was the secret.
House Vale thrived by devouring its own.
Lira slammed the book shut.
“No more,” she whispered. “No more.”
She would end it. She would tear the demon from her blood. And she would take down everyone who had let it happen — starting with the sister who had watched her die.
Celestine had grown cautious.
Ever since the rumors about Lord Marek began circulating, she watched Lira more closely. Her smiles were tighter. Her words more measured. She no longer left her chamber doors unlocked.
But she couldn’t hide everything.
Lira followed her again through the hidden halls, slipping between shadows. She watched Celestine pass a sealed note to the same red-caped courier as before. She memorized the seal on the wax — a clawed ring encircling a sun.
House Vexor.
Why was her sister corresponding with them?
Lira waited until the next night, then intercepted the courier at the stables. A single sleeping spell, whispered behind a veil of silence, and the man slumped over his saddle. She took the letter, read its contents by moonlight, and smiled darkly.
It was a plan.
A trade.
House Vexor offered Celestine a relic — the Mirror of Severance — said to strip magic from any who looked into it. In exchange, they wanted a name. A target.
Lira’s name.
Her sister was planning to drain her of the magic she had only just awakened.
Typical.
And utterly foolish.
Lira didn’t destroy the letter. Instead, she replaced it with a forgery — same seal, same handwriting — but altered content. Her version promised the relic would arrive via an old ally at the masquerade in three nights' time.
It would be a trap.
But not for her.
For them.
The masquerade was held in House Vale’s grand ballroom. Velvet drapes lined the walls, gold chandeliers swung from the ceiling, and laughter echoed through wine-thick air. Nobles from all corners of the realm arrived in masks of bone, silk, and silver.
Lira wore black.
Her gown was simple, flowing like ink, with a veil of shadowed lace that obscured her eyes. Her mask was carved from obsidian — a gift, she imagined, from her bloodline’s darker past.
She moved through the crowd like a ghost, unseen and unbothered. The spell she whispered earlier blurred her features, made others look away without meaning to. She was present, but invisible.
Celestine stood by the dais, dressed in rose-gold silk, her mask glittering with jewels. She scanned the crowd, clearly searching. For Marek? For her contact?
No one approached.
Not yet.
Lira slipped past dancers, lifting goblets with soft fingers, whispering truths into noble ears. She made her way to the stage where the relic was to be exchanged — or, in this case, revealed.
Instead of a mirror, Lira had left something else beneath the silk-draped table.
A memory stone.
One infused with her final moments from her last life — pain, betrayal, and death at Celestine’s hand.
When the signal came — a clink of glass from the balcony above — Lira activated the stone.
A scream split the hall.
The image projected above the guests: Lira’s last breath, her body convulsing, Celestine standing over her, watching.
Gasps. Whispers. Then silence.
Celestine’s mask slipped.
“No — this is false—!”
But no one listened.
The nobles stared.
Some recoiled.
A few began to leave.
The stain had begun.
Celestine fled the room, face pale, fury seething from every step.
Lira remained in the shadows, heart racing.
This was only the beginning.
Later, she returned to the tomb. Not to speak. But to offer something.
She placed a dagger — the one she’d used to cut her palm — on the stone.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Tell me what comes next.”
The tomb pulsed again.
The wall behind it cracked.
And a hidden stairwell revealed itself.
Lira descended.
She did not look back.
She was no longer a victim.
No longer a girl pretending.
She was Lira Vale.
Marked by blood.
Forged by fire.
And her revenge was only just beginning.
- Writer
