Episode 9
961 Words
WHISPERS OF POISON
The morning after the masquerade dawned grey and damp. A slow rain clung to the windows of House Vale like fingers unwilling to let go. Lira sat in the solar, her teacup untouched, staring into the swirling amber liquid as though it held answers. The ballroom echoes were gone, replaced by the silence of aftermath.
Word had spread quickly—Elira had fainted. Not dramatically, but enough to stir quiet concern. Their father, Lord Ronan, had waved it off as exhaustion. But servants whispered, and those whispers carried through stone like wind in a canyon.
Lira tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and rose. Time to act. Her sister was unraveling faster than expected. The pact Elira had forged in the forest was no idle power. It came at a cost, and that cost had begun to collect its due.
The hidden chamber beneath the library had grown colder.
Lira entered with a practiced step, lighting the glyph-lanterns along the stone walls. The glow revealed the array of documents she had sorted into neat stacks—treatises on ancient covenants, letters penned in frantic handwriting, and diagrams of sigils that pulsed faintly in the light.
She had spent hours cross-referencing the mark Elira bore now—the faint spiral burned into her inner wrist, just beneath where a bracelet usually sat. The symbol came from a demon lineage known as the Thren—beings of trickery and bargains. Dangerous, clever, and never content with just a soul. They wanted legacies.
"She's bound not only her power," Lira whispered, running her fingers over a page. "But our house."
That made Elira not only a liability, but a threat to the entire Vale bloodline. If the Thren weren’t fed what they desired, they would take what they were owed in blood and fire.
Lira closed the book with care. If her sister wouldn’t break the pact, then Lira would have to sever it herself. And she would need more than herbs and spells. She would need a blade that could cut through soul-bonds.
The Vale armory was forbidden to anyone not of soldier rank or direct command. Which, of course, made it irresistible.
She waited until dusk, when the guard shifts staggered, and crept down the southern hallway. She had memorized the patrols weeks ago. Her cloak blended into the shadows. She moved like a phantom.
Inside, the armory was silent, echoing with centuries of violence. The weapon racks stood like sentinels, each blade polished and gleaming. But she wasn't here for steel.
She found it locked behind an obsidian case, marked with runes in a forgotten dialect: a soul-cleaver blade, thin and etched with veins of silver. It had no name.
Perfect.
She whispered the counter-sigil from Lysara’s journal, and the lock gave way with a click. As her fingers closed around the hilt, a jolt of heat rushed up her arm. The blade hummed with awareness, recognizing the bloodline in her veins.
She would test it soon enough.
Elira was missing.
At breakfast, Lord Ronan wore a stormy scowl. “She left a note claiming she wished to clear her head.”
Lira glanced down at her plate. “Should we send riders?”
“She’s not a child,” he snapped.
No. But she was a time bomb.
Lira excused herself early and made her way to the stables, finding the youngest stable hand—a boy named Theo who rarely spoke but watched everything.
“Did Elira take a horse?” she asked gently.
Theo nodded. “Grey mare. She took the east road.”
Toward the ruins again.
Of course.
The temple ruins were more twisted now than before. The trees around them leaned inward, as if listening. The stones were darker, like they had soaked up blood. Lira approached with her hand on her dagger, her eyes scanning for movement.
She found Elira in the center of the clearing, kneeling, palms pressed to the cold earth. She was weeping.
“You made a pact you can’t control,” Lira said softly.
Elira jerked upright. Her eyes were glowing faintly—gold and wrong.
“You don’t understand,” she hissed. “I did this for us. For House Vale. We were dying. Forgotten.”
“You did it for power.”
“You think you’re any different?” Elira rose, fury twisting her beautiful face. “You hide in shadows, reading curses, brewing poisons. You think that makes you pure?”
Lira stepped forward, slow and deliberate. “No. It makes me prepared.”
She drew the soul-cleaver.
Elira’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”
“You bound our blood to the Thren. If I don’t, we’re all dead.”
The wind surged around them, howling with unnatural force. Shadows rose from the ground, coiling, laughing. The Thren were watching.
Elira screamed, magic erupting from her palms in a wild burst. Lira ducked, rolled, came up behind her sister. The blade sang.
Steel met skin. Blood hissed as it struck the ground.
Then silence.
The shadows recoiled. The glow in Elira’s eyes dimmed. She crumpled.
Lira stood over her, chest heaving, the soul-cleaver slick in her hand. The bond was severed. For now.
But the Thren had seen her.
And they never forgot a thief.
That night, as Lira tended to her sister’s unconscious form in secret, she felt something shift inside her.
She was no longer acting from rage alone. No longer simply reborn for revenge.
She was fighting for something bigger now.
House Vale had more enemies than she had ever imagined. And the deeper she dug, the more she realized:
Her past life’s death had only scratched the surface.
This life would burn until the truth was ash.
- Writer
