Music Recommendation: Drive you insane by Daniel Di Angelo
A few weeks after Seraphielle handed over her mother's keepsake, a magnificent decree arrived at the Caelthorn estate, sealed with the King's own crest: Lady Seraphielle Caelthorn was permitted to marry the Beastman Kaelen Veyrith freely.
Seraphielle felt a giddy, dizzying surge of relief and triumph. All the insults, all the pain, all the sacrifice—it had been worth it. The marriage was happening.
Rain started falling with an immediate, drenching intensity the moment the royal messengers departed. Seraphielle was ecstatic. She needed to find Kaelen immediately. She searched the main house in vain until a guard offered a careless tip: "The Beastman went toward the abandoned gazebo, my Lady."
Her handmaiden, Tiriane, rushed forward, cloak and umbrella in hand. "My Lady, let me follow! You'll be soaked."
Seraphielle, her face split by a wide, radiant grin, waved her off. "No, Tiriane, this is my news to deliver." She snatched the umbrella and ran, not bothering to open it, letting the icy rain kiss her skin.
She reached the gazebo—an overgrown, decaying stone structure—but found it deserted. Her happiness drove her on, searching. She continued walking, her silk slippers splashing through mud, until she saw a high, crumbling stone wall, marking the edge of the estate's wild lands.
Just as she approached it, a sound stopped her heart: a low, primal moaning, followed by a choked laugh.
Then, she heard the unmistakable, honeyed voice of her step-sister: "Oh, Kealen…"
Seraphielle froze, the umbrella still unopened, the weight of the water suddenly crushing. No. It must be a trick of the rain, a hallucination. The sounds continued: heavy breathing, kissing, and Kaelen's deep, familiar chuckle.
When the sounds finally ceased, the words that followed shattered the final vestiges of her denial.
"Do you love me, truly?" Evelaine cooed.
Kaelen chuckled again, closer now. "Of course, my sweet viper." He kissed her. "Always you."
"What about Seraphielle? My foolish, foolish sister?"
Kaelen scoffed. "Wasn't it you who told me to accept the idiot's confession? To play the part of the devoted pet?" He was laughing, the sound ringing with a mockery that clawed at Seraphielle's soul.
Evelaine giggled, a sound of pure malice. "It's such a pity. My stupid sister thought the man she would give her life for was actually using her. That he'd been using her from the start." She paused, her voice hardening with self-satisfaction. "Seraphielle is such a dumb fool, isn't she? Giving up something as important as the key to the long-lost secret dimension just because she couldn't bear to see you hurt when you were just faking it."
The words struck Seraphielle like lightning, leaving her cold, despite the frantic racing of her heart. She wasn't cold from the rain anymore; she was paralyzed by a frost that came from within. The lie was so monstrous, so complete.
"Just thinking about it makes me want to pity her!" Evelaine shrieked, delighted.
Dizziness hit Seraphielle—a wave of nausea and vertigo—but she used the last of her strength to step forward. She pushed past the stone wall.
Seraphielle's vision swam. There they were: Evelaine, wrapped snuggly in a thick, dry cloak under a small stone overhang, leaning against Kaelen. The umbrella slipped from her numb fingers and struck the muddy ground with a dull thud, finally alerting the couple.
Their eyes, when they turned to her, held no guilt, no remorse, no shock. Only surprise at her appearance. And once that fleeting emotion faded, Kaelen stared at her as if she were dirt beneath his feet.
Evelaine unwrapped an arm from his embrace and smiled. It was the smile of a predator. "Sister, you've finally found out. Well, that's good, because I was so sick of secretly being with Kealen." She turned to the Fox Shifter and pecked his lips. "Kealen, we can finally be together openly."
Kaelen ignored Seraphielle and returned the kiss with a brutal, deep passion that made her want to scream. Evelaine pushed him away.
"You bit my lips bloody," she whined coyly, rubbing her mouth.
"Sorry," Kaelen muttered, his voice devoid of sincerity.
"You will let me ride you as an apology," Evelaine said in a ridiculously sultry manner, her eyes twinkling.
"You can ride me as long as you want."
She turned back to Seraphielle, who stood drenching and shivering. "Oh, you're still here. Kealen, what do we do with her?"
Kaelen finally looked at Seraphielle. The warmth that had been her anchor for years was gone, replaced by a crystalline coldness she'd never known existed.
"Since we've gotten what we want from her," he said, his tone utterly flat, "then I don't see any other use for her."
Evelaine widened her eyes in mock shock. "Oh? Are you saying what I think you are saying? She cared for you, you're so cold!"
"Yes, what, you don't want to? Weren't you the one who always complained that you couldn't wait for the day we would get rid of her?" He then smiled thinly, tucking Evelaine's hair behind her ear with an expression so intense, it was a terrifyingly genuine passion that dwarfed the fake devotion he had once shown Seraphielle. "Your father will probably be looking for ways to get rid of her soon.
"Alright," Evelaine conceded, moving away from his hold. "Go do what you want to do."
Seraphielle watched, dazed, as they spoke about her as if she were a broken tool, its usefulness surpassed. Kaelen stopped in front of her. She searched his face, desperately hunting for any flicker of the kindness she'd known, only to be met with that jarring, empty coldness.
Tears, warm and immediate, slid down her cheeks, mixing with the frigid rain. Her soaked dress clung to her, and the chill spread deep into her bones, but she couldn't feel anything other than the yawning void in her chest.
Finally, she forced a word past her cracked lips. "Why…?"
Kaelen didn't reply, his silence a final, brutal insult. He didn't deem her important enough to answer her question.
"I don't feel like touching you, so I will be ending your life in another way. Don't worry, it won't be painful."
With that, he started casting an illusion. She had known he meant to kill her, yet she couldn't even fight back—how could she, when she couldn't sense mana, much less circulate it? Without a core, without an affinity, she was a lamb before a blade. Her only resistance was two trembling steps backward—pathetic, desperate, and utterly useless against the spell that came for her.
Seraphielle felt herself being forcefully pulled away from reality, her mind trapped in the terrifying, endless cycle of a hundred deaths.
But her agony did not end there. As her mind was imprisoned, Kaelen channeled a slow, corrosive stream of Dark Mana into her Veins. The poison worked its way through her body, eating away at her veins and slowly destroying her Soul Essence, the very cradle of her life force.
The crushing internal pain was searing and immediate, tearing through the distraction of the illusion. Seraphielle collapsed onto the wet, muddy ground.
She didn't feel the gentle hand Kaelen used to pull the corrupted mana shard back out, a move performed to eliminate evidence, but she felt the corrosive energy rupture what little vitality she had left, shutting down her organs from the inside out.
The rain beat down on her face, mixing with tears of blinding, unadulterated pain. Her eyes blurred, but she fought the agony, dragging her gaze upward just in time to see the hem of Evelaine's dry cloak and the expensive boots of Kaelen Veyrith retreating. They walked away together, not sparing a glance for the broken fool they left behind.
She was dying, excruciatingly and slowly, her physical body suffering a corrosive hell that matched the mental torture he had cast. Every muscle screamed, every breath was a razor blade. He lied. He used me. I gave him everything, and this is how I die.
To her, the deaths inside her head lasted years; the pain in her heart, an eternity. Her actual death, caused by the venomous Dark Mana, took only a few torturous minutes.
Seraphielle Caelthorn, Marquis Adrast's disowned daughter, perished alone in the mud and the relentless, unforgiving rain.