Charlotte's POV
By the time I arrived, it was too late.
Bodies littered the floor—silent, cooling remnants of a battle I hadn't been part of. The metallic tang of blood hung heavy in the air, mixed with the acrid sting of smoke and scorched fabric. My breath caught as I stepped over a broken chair leg and into the center of the room where it had all happened.
There, kneeling beside the unmoving body of a man, was Elena. Her hands trembled as she reached up and pulled away the blood-soaked mask, revealing the hollow face beneath.
Uncle Liam.
The blood drained from her face like someone had flipped a switch. Her mouth parted slightly, eyes wide with a sick realization that mirrored my own. My stomach twisted violently.
Liam—my father's twin. The man who had vanished from our lives after the funeral, only to resurface as something monstrous. I remembered flashes of him from my childhood: a shadow in photographs, a name whispered like a curse. The mask confirmed what I'd feared. That symbol etched across the fabric, the same one I saw all those years ago…it wasn't a coincidence.
He was one of them.
The truth hit me like a hammer. Uncle Liam had killed before. He might have killed Elena's father too. That's why she looked at me like poison. That's why she hated me with such bitter clarity.
But none of that mattered now.
Not when I couldn't see Kimi.
I stepped forward, cold anger threading through the panic in my chest. "Where is she?" My voice cracked like ice.
Elena turned to me slowly, her face a mess of rage, shock, and something else—pain. "Gone."
"Gone where?"
She hesitated, then finally said it, her voice quiet, but laced with venom. "She remembered nothing. Not you. Not what you were. Nothing. I brought her here... because she forgot you."
The words knocked the breath from my lungs.
She forgot me.
Kimi, my constant, my tether to something good in a world that had always been dark. Gone from her memory like I never mattered. Like we never existed. A weight settled on my chest, suffocating, cold.
"Why would you bring her here?" I demanded, my voice raw.
Elena didn't answer. Her silence said enough. This wasn't about Kimi to her. It was about blood debts and pain passed down. About revenge.
I looked down at Liam's lifeless face—so similar to my father's, it made me sick. My bloodline, tainted. I was born from this violence. And now, Kimi had paid for it.
She forgot me.
But I would not forget this.
I turned on my heel, fury and grief blazing behind my eyes. Whatever it took, however broken the path was, I would find her again. And I would make sure no one ever laid a hand on her in my absence again. Elena, Liam, the Serpent Queen hunters—anyone who dared stand between me and Kimi would learn what I truly was.
Let the world burn.
I was done running from my blood.