[SFX: the slow creak of drowned wood • distant bells tolling underwater • breath frosting in midair]
The Drowned Bride did not walk.
She unfolded.
Her veil of human hair rose like seaweed stirred by an unseen tide, revealing a mouth with no lips—only teeth arranged in perfect wedding rings, each tooth engraved with a different groom's name. The water around her hardened into black glass, trapping ankles, freezing motion, swallowing warmth.
Cassian charged first—of course he did.
His longsword flashed in a clean silver arc meant to split the Bride from crown to sternum.
The blade struck water as if it had hit a wall of iron.
Black tendrils whipped from beneath her dress, wrapped around Cassian's wrists, and yanked.
The swordsman laughed even while his shoulders dislocated with wet, meaty pops.
"Finally! Something worth cutting!"
Seraphine's wings detonated into existence—six wings of molten gold, every feather a shard of living scripture. Light roared across the nave, burning shadows into retreat.
"Cassian, fall back! Her curse is—"
Too late.
The Bride's head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees with a sound like bone china settling on a shelf.
Her hollow sockets locked on Cassian.
A child's voice, wet and sweet, filled every skull:
You promised me forever.
Cassian's grin trembled.
The water climbed his legs—ankles, knees, waist—turning translucent so they could all watch his skin peel away in perfect bridal lace.
He screamed once, high and young.
The sound cut short as the water sealed over his face like a veil.
[SFX: muffled screaming beneath frozen water]
Mira fired three arrows before the scream even faded. Each arrow pulsed violet with a script Leo didn't recognize. They struck the Bride's chest and stuck there—quivering, drinking the black water until they swelled grotesquely and burst into black roses.
"Physical damage is pointless!" Mira shouted. "She's a memory! We have to—"
The blind girl stepped forward.
Until now she had lingered at the fringes, small and barefoot, wearing rags the color of old bruises. Her eyes were pale cataracts, yet she tilted her head with uncanny accuracy toward the Bride.
She spoke for the first time.
Soft. Curious. Almost amused.
"Why are you still wearing his ring?"
The temperature crashed.
Frost crackled across Seraphine's golden wings.
The Bride froze mid-lunge.
Every candle guttered at once.
The blind girl—Rook, someone had called her—lifted a delicate hand and pointed at the Bride's left ring finger. A plain silver band glinted there, tarnished, engraved with two letters:
L. V.
Leo felt it like a blade sliding between ribs.
L.V.
Leo Valerius.
The Bride's head snapped toward him. The teeth-rings clacked open, shut, open again—tasting the air.
You promised.
Rook smiled. A tiny, terrible curl of her lips.
"He lied," she told the Bride, almost kindly. "He lies to everyone. Even himself. Watch."
Time hiccupped.
For the span of a single suspended heartbeat, the nave went perfectly still:
Cassian half-dissolved.
Seraphine's wings mid-flare.
Mira's next arrow trembling on the string.
Only Rook moved.
She stepped through the frozen moment—bare feet leaving no ripples—and stopped inches from the Bride. Gently, effortlessly, she slid the silver ring from the corpse-bride's finger like picking a flower.
The moment shattered.
Cassian's half-melted body hit the floor with a wet slap, screaming through a mouth no longer entirely human.
Seraphine's wings reignited.
Mira's arrow veered wide and thudded into a pillar.
The Bride shrieked—a sound like ten thousand wedding bells falling endlessly down a well—and lunged straight for Leo.
Seraphine intercepted.
Her golden wing caught the Bride's claws and sheared straight through them.
Black water sprayed like arterial blood.
"Leo, run!" she shouted—her voice cracking for the first time.
He didn't run.
He watched.
Watched Seraphine fight like a living cathedral—wrath and scripture made flesh.
Watched Cassian crawl, dragging ribbons of his own dissolving skin, laughing through blood-foamed teeth.
Watched Mira unleash arrow after arrow blossoming into chains of violet script.
And watched Rook—small, blind Rook—walk calmly behind the Bride and slide the stolen silver ring onto her own thumb.
The Bride convulsed.
Every drop of black water in the nave lifted into the air, forming a perfect sphere around them. Inside the sphere, the Bride's veil incinerated, revealing a face that might once have been beautiful before centuries of drowning had remade it into grief.
Her mouth opened—far, far too wide.
Rook tilted her head, listening to some private lullaby.
Then she asked, gentle as a sister tucking in a child:
"Would you like to be the one who leaves instead?"
The Bride hesitated.
Just for a breath.
Just long enough.
Rook leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead—soft, reverent, final.
The sphere collapsed inward.
[SFX: implosion of an ocean's worth of water • silence rushing back like a gasp]
When the ripples settled, the Drowned Bride was gone.
Only a single white wedding veil floated on the water—slowly sinking.
Cassian knelt in the black pool, skin knitting itself back together in ugly patchwork. His eyes were wild.
Mira stared at Rook like she was looking at a loaded bomb wrapped in a child's smile.
Seraphine's wings dimmed. Blood—red, human—dripped down her ribs from a fresh gash. She looked at Rook with awe wrapped in fear.
Leo looked where the Bride had been.
Then at Rook's left hand.
The silver ring gleamed on her thumb.
L.V.
Rook turned her blind eyes toward him and smiled again—sweeter this time.
"Don't worry," she said softly, for him alone. "I'll give it back. Eventually."
She tucked the ring against her heart and walked away, humming the same lullaby Leo had tasted in the water when he first arrived.
Seraphine approached, worry creasing her perfect features.
"Leo, are you hurt?"
He met her gaze, letting every ounce of grateful, shaken, harmless college boy fog his expression.
"I'm fine," he lied, just trembling enough. "Thank you. All of you."
Lie number twenty-seven, give or take.
Because the moment Rook had spoken his initials, something inside his chest had unfolded like a black flower and whispered a single truth:
The blind girl already knew exactly what kind of monster he was.
And she had saved him anyway.
Leo offered Seraphine a soft, perfect smile.
Far above, the heart in the glass bell beat once—slow, savoring, almost amused.
The black water rippled, erasing every footprint…
Except Rook's.
And somewhere in the dark, something older than the cathedral began to take notes.