Hauntspire High,
May, 2025.
The air on the rooftop was a chilling blend of ash, ozone, and the metallic tang of fresh blood. A relentless, dirty wind whipped Lumira Duskbane's silver hair around her porcelain face, her crystalline purple eyes fixed on the indifferent sky.
Her body was a wreck, every muscle screaming from the demonic fight, her soul stretched thin and nearly snapping with each weakening pulse.
At her feet, the immense spell circle, etched in her own spilled blood, still held a faint, purplish light, its runes guttering like a dying heart.
She had done it... now the breach was sealed, the demon horde had been banished, and the academy - and perhaps the world - had been saved.
Then came the heavy sound boots rushing up the stairs to the roof.
Alpha Jaxon's entrance was a violent tear in the fragile silence. His heavy, armored steps thundered up the final stretch of the ruined stairwell, and the steel door was flung open with a deafening crash.
He was the golden Lycan Prince, a vision of potent, devastating fury. His ceremonial leather and gold-trimmed silks matched his striking golden-brown hair, and his amber eyes, usually a beacon of command, were blazing now, not with relief, but with a terrifying, white-hot suspicion.
His Beta, Mason, and Gamma, Caleb, flanked him, two massive wolves in human form, their power radiating in waves that suffocated the air. They were the image of a tribunal, not a rescue party.
Lumira turned slowly. Every move was a painful deliberation against the exhaustion that dragged at her limbs.
Yet she managed to lift her chin, offering the faintest, most pathetic smile.
"You came…"
The words were raw, an admission of a desperate, foolish hope.
Jaxon's voice, when it finally broke the heavy quiet, was a cold, sharp blade.
"What game are you playing, witch?"
His golden gaze raked over the blood-soaked scene, dismissing the sealed portal, the demonic residue, and fixing solely on her.
There was no sign of gratitude, no hint of concern for the deep, bloody gashes marring her skin. There was only the cutting merciless interrogation.
"Was this your scheme with the demons in order to gain my affection?" he demanded.
The sheer cruelty of the accusation was a physical blow, worse than any demon's claw. It struck the already fragile core of her being and shattered it.
Her weak pulse stuttered, and her chest constricted as though an invisible, icy chain was tightening around her ribs.
Even now, at the point of her absolute self-sacrifice, he believed the worst of her.
Caleb, the Gamma, stepped forward, his face a mask of revulsion.
"You reek of corruption," he spat, the words dripping with undisguised venom.
"Admit it. You bargained with the demons to ruin the mating ritual of the future Luna of the Bloodvale Pack."
The ritual... Of course that was all that mattered.
Jaxon took a heavy step toward her, his disappointment a palpable, crushing weight that settled upon her.
"I still had high hopes for you, after all the atrocities you committed against my saintess…"
His voice was low, yet his eyes gleamed with a cold, unrelenting fire.
"But betrayal… I cannot forgive. You are nothing more than a curse on this academy."
His final words stole the remaining air from her lungs. Her knees gave out beneath the overwhelming weight of his judgment and the sheer physical effort of standing.
She sank, catching herself against the crumbling concrete railing. A violent, rattling cough seized her, and a mouthful of dark, viscous blood spilled across her pale, trembling hands.
Hot tears, burning like acid, blurred her vision, but she fought them back. She tilted her face upward, searching for the indifferent, distant stars, as though they might serve as her witnesses, her only remaining proof.
"I saved you all…" Her voice was a ragged whisper, a ghost of its usual strength, trembling under the immense force of despair.
"And still, you hate me?" She gripped the railing, her knuckles white. "Was this what you've always seen me as? A monster?"
For a long, agonizing heartbeat, a genuine silence descended.
Then, Mason, the Beta, a flicker of humanity in the golden group, lunged forward. His brown hair was windswept, his face pale with a raw, agonizing anguish, and his voice rough with desperate pleading.
"Your Highness, Lady Duskbane saved us! She saved us! She closed the portal! If not for her, we all would have—"
"Silence."
Jaxon's command was a slicing sound, colder than polished steel. Mason froze, his body rigid, the grief in his eyes shattering into hopeless fragments.
Lumira swayed, her hands slick with her own blood, and a bitter, jagged laugh escaped her lips. It was a sound devoid of mirth, just broken despair.
"So that's it. Even now, when I've given everything… you won't believe me."
She met Jaxon's golden eyes, trying to burn one last image of him into her fading memory.
"I thought I had a place in your heart. I thought maybe - just maybe - you'd look at me and see something more than your enemy."
Her mouth curved into a fragile shape, halfway between a painful smile and a broken sob.
"But if all I'll ever be is a monster in your eyes… then what's the point of life? What's the purpose of a heart that only beats for someone who despises it?"
Mason, his face a contorted mask of horror, lunged again, reaching out a desperate hand.
"Lady Lumira, don't - please! Don't say that!" His voice was a frantic shout. "Lumira, come down!"
But she was already beyond listening.
Her body, heavy with exhaustion and finality, tipped backward. The world pitched violently. Her silver hair streamed out like a silver comet's tail against the dark night.
In the single, earth-shattering moment of her fall, she saw a flicker in Alpha Jaxon's expression - something close to true fear, a momentary falter in the golden gleam of his eyes. It was a small, agonizing crack in his perfect composure, but it was not enough to stop her.
It was too late... it was always too late.
The air shrieked past her ears, the sound of the wind rushing to greet her.
Then, a crushing impact, as a sickening, bone-jarring crack echoed in the night. The White Witch of the West, the savior and the curse, was broken on the cold, unforgiving stone below.
High above, Alpha Jaxon turned away. He didn't spare a second glance at the ruin she had become.
He adjusted the fine ceremonial leather on his shoulder and walked with a steady, decisive stride toward the firelit gym, where Selene, his chosen Luna and Saintess, waited with a soft, adoring smile.
His golden eyes, so cold a moment ago, softened only for her, reflecting the orange glow of the celebration she was hosting.
Lumira's blood pooled across the jagged pavement, a dark, spreading stain. The White Witch of the West died, unmourned and utterly forsaken.
The End? A chapter closed, but a future, perhaps, still waited.
----
Meanwhile,
Rina's Room,
New York.
The aggressive, pale blue glow of a phone screen was the only light that fought back the gloom in Rina Vale's cramped, dark bedroom.
With a frustrated sob, she hurled the device onto her mattress. It landed with a jarring thud that made the cheap lamp on her bedside table rattle precariously.
Her chest heaved in ragged, breathless bursts as fat, hot tears streamed down her cheeks, washing streaks through the makeup she hadn't bothered to remove.
"She died… for nothing?" Rina whispered into the suffocating darkness, the injustice a physical ache in her soul.
"Not even a 'Thank You'? Not even a moment of doubt? Not even a goodbye?"
The final, brutal sequence of the webnovel replayed endlessly behind her eyelids: Lumira, standing alone, bathed in the cruel silver moonlight, bloodied and broken, her trembling heart laid bare, only to be branded a monster.
And then the final, lonely fall. The last scene of three hundred and twelve chapters. The absolute, unceremonious end of her favorite character - the girl who had silently carried an impossible weight on her small, fragile shoulders and still chose to save the very people who despised her.
For what ultimate reward? Scorn, rejection, and the crushing, final dismissal of the person she loved most as the "curse on this academy."
On the novel's public forum, the comments section was a ceaseless, brutal torrent, a flood of knives plunging into the wound.
User23: "Lumira deserved it. That witch had it coming for years of trying to manipulate the Alpha."
SilverWolfFan: "Good riddance to bad rubbish. Couldn't stand her smug, entitled face."
MoonlitReader: "The author did us all a huge favor by killing her off. Now the real story can begin with Selene."
WitchKiller101: "Why is anyone even defending that monster? She was the villain all along."
"No! She deserved better!" Rina's grip tightened on the edge of her duvet, her knuckles white.
More tears blurred her vision, yet her conviction burned brightly through the despair.
"She saved them all, why can't any of you wretched people see it!"
Her silent, anguished plea was swallowed instantly by the relentless, mocking tide of online cruelty. The collective venom of the forum pressed down on her until she could barely draw a breath.
She was only nineteen, a first-year student barely scraping by as a part-time cashier in a dead-end neighborhood in New York.
In every corner of her real life, she felt invisible, forgettable. She had no friends, no meaningful savings, and no clear future beyond the next paycheck. But online, she had this one story, she had Lumira.
"She's not a villain, she's desperately lonely and misunderstood… why can't they see that complexity?" Rina whispered, her fingers flying across the screen to type out another defense. But was just another desperate attempt to make them understand the character she loved.
The merciless replies were instantaneous, tearing down her carefully constructed argument before it could even be fully posted.
"Lol, WitchVale's defending her again, go back to your basement."
"Forget Lumira! She's trash, and so are you for liking her."
"Vale—girl, stop embarrassing yourself. Get a life."
"Seriously, why do you care about a fictional witch? Are you one too?"
Rina's chest tightened painfully, and her throat burned with unshed tears, yet she continued to type. She knew that silence would be a greater betrayal. To stop defending Lumira was to let the collective hatred win, to let the lie become the truth.
"Rina!" Her mother's voice, sharp and demanding, sliced through the thin bedroom door from the kitchen.
"Stop crying over those silly e-books and get yourself out to the market before it closes. We need fresh vegetables for dinner."
"Yes, mom!" Rina flinched instinctively, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve, desperate to hide the evidence of her emotional breakdown before her mother could see her tears.
Her secret world of fantasy was always a source of scorn in her real, mundane life.
-----
Outside, the late evening air was cool and damp, carrying the faint, stale scent of city pollution.
The asphalt of the streets was slick from an earlier drizzle, reflecting the fractured, distorted glow of neon signs and the lonely flash of passing car headlights. Rina walked quickly, her head down, lost in a furious replay of the final chapter.
Her phone, still clutched tightly in her pocket, felt like it was burning against her thigh with the heat of her suppressed rage.
On a half-dead fan site she'd stumbled upon months ago, someone had once leaked a cryptic number, rumored to belong to the anonymous author of the novel. Nobody had confirmed if it was real, but Rina had saved it anyway, as a tiny useless contingency.
Now, as she stepped back out from the brightly lit greengrocer's and into the damp, shadowy night, her thumbs flew across the screen, her fury finally finding a directed target.
"Why did you kill her like that? Did you have to make her so completely alone? She saved them all! She burned her entire life away for those ungrateful wolves, and you gave her nothing but contempt! Don't you think she deserved at least one single chance at happiness, at a real, loving life? You're a coward for ending her that way!"
Message after furious, despairing message poured out, a chaotic, unedited stream of grief and outrage directed at the silent, rumored number.
Rina kept walking, expecting no reply, ready to delete the number and try to forget the whole frustrating ordeal. But as she rounded the next corner, a single sharp notification chimed.
A message had arrived; the text was brief, simple, and impossibly unsettling.
"You also feel that Lumira died an unjust death, just like me? Then let's see how you change the story."
Rina stopped dead under the fractured glow of a streetlamp, the bag of vegetables slipping from her suddenly numb fingers. The message wasn't a denial or a threat.
It was an invitation, a challenge, delivered with a strange, impossible intimacy. She stared at the glowing screen, her heart hammering a wild, frantic rhythm against her ribs.
'Change the story?'
How could she possibly change what was already written?
The street suddenly felt colder, the shadows deeper, and the air crackled with a possibility that defied all logic, all reality. The novel was finished. Her hero was dead.
Yet, this message suggested a door had just been opened to a world she thought was forever closed.