The night my family sold me, the sky did not weep gently.
It split open.
Thunder rolled across the heavens like something vast and ancient was clearing its throat, and the rain did not fall — it struck the roof in violent waves, as if it wanted to force its way inside and witness what we were about to do.
I remember thinking that storms should frighten me.
But that night, the storm felt honest.
It was the only thing in the house that wasn't pretending.
The storage room smelled of melted wax and damp wood. Candles circled the floor in a pattern too deliberate to be decoration, their flames stretching tall and thin as if they were straining toward something unseen. Symbols had been carved into the boards beneath my feet — deep enough that whoever carved them had not cared about repairing the damage afterward.
My father stood at the edge of the circle, chalk dust clinging to his trembling fingers.
My mother would not look at me.
That was when I knew.
When your own mother avoids your eyes, something irreversible is coming.
Behind them, my sister cried quietly, her hands pressed so tightly over her mouth that her knuckles had turned white.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
But she did not step forward.
She did not stand beside me.
She stood behind them.
Safe.
"The pact demands a daughter," my father said, his voice hollow, as if the words were echoing up from somewhere deep underground.
A daughter.
Not my sister's name.
Not my name.
Just a daughter.
Something replaceable.
The air changed before I understood what that meant. It thickened, pressing against my skin until breathing felt like inhaling through wet cloth. The candles flared all at once, their flames bending inward toward the center of the circle.
Toward me.
I tried to step back.
I could not move.
It felt as though invisible hands had wrapped around my limbs and gently, firmly guided me down to my knees.
My sister took one step backward.
That was all.
One step.
And in that small movement, everything became clear.
It was never going to be her.
It was always going to be me.
"Take her instead," my father said suddenly, his voice cracking like old wood in a fire.
Instead.
The word settled into my bones like ice.
The floor beneath me split open with a sound like tearing fabric. Darkness poured upward from the crack, not like smoke, not like shadow, but like the absence of the world itself.
And then—
Silence.
Not normal silence.
The kind that arrives when something powerful is listening.
"You offer what is not promised."
The voice was calm.
That was the worst part.
It did not rage.
It did not roar.
It simply existed, vast and certain.
Cold fingers touched my chin and lifted my face as if I weighed nothing at all.
I forced my eyes open.
He was not fully solid at first. More suggestion than shape. A tall outline of darkness carved against the candlelight, crowned with something jagged and sharp.
But his eyes—
His eyes burned like molten gold held inside a furnace that had never cooled.
He studied me.
Not hungrily.
Not cruelly.
As if I were a question.
"This is not the one I marked," he said.
My heart pounded so violently that my vision blurred.
Marked?
My wrist burned.
I gasped as light flared beneath my skin, a crimson symbol igniting where there had been nothing before. The heat was not unbearable. It was intimate. Like something waking up.
And for a fraction of a second—
The creature before me inhaled sharply.
As if he felt it too.
Interesting.
"You would give me the second daughter," he murmured.
There was something beneath his tone now. Not anger.
Amusement.
The floor shattered completely.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
And the last thing I saw before everything vanished was my sister reaching toward me—
Not to save me.
But to steady herself.
When I opened my eyes again, the sky was wrong.
It was not blue. Not black. Not any color I had ever known.
It stretched endlessly above me, vast and oppressive, filled with slow-moving crimson stars that pulsed faintly like distant heartbeats.
The ground beneath me was warm stone the color of dried blood.
I pushed myself upright slowly, my hands shaking.
I was terrified.
Truly terrified.
But beneath the fear, something else had begun to stir.
Not courage.
Not yet.
Something quieter.
Something waiting.
"Stand."
His voice came from behind me.
I turned.
And this time, he was fully formed.
Tall. Impossibly still. Dark robes falling in clean, deliberate lines. A crown of blackened bone resting against hair darker than the sky itself.
He did not move toward me.
He did not need to.
The air bent around him.
"You are not what I was promised," he said, his gaze fixed on me with unsettling focus.
My throat felt tight.
"Then send me back," I managed, though my voice trembled despite my effort to steady it.
There was a long pause.
He stepped closer.
Not threatening.
Not gentle.
Simply inevitable.
"No."
The word closed around me like iron.
Fear rose sharply in my chest.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to beg.
I wanted to run.
But something inside me resisted.
If I broke now, I would never stop breaking.
So instead, I lifted my chin.
"Then you should be careful," I said, though my heart was racing so loudly I was certain he could hear it.
One of his eyebrows lifted slightly.
"Careful?" he repeated.
"If I am not what you were promised," I whispered, forcing my shaking hands to still at my sides, "then you do not know what you have taken."
Silence stretched between us.
The wind moved across the crimson plains, lifting the edges of his robes.
For a moment, something unreadable flickered in his golden eyes.
Not mockery.
Not anger.
Recognition.
"You will remain," he said at last. "Until I understand what you are."
Understand me.
As if I were something to dissect.
But as he turned away, something deep beneath the ground pulsed faintly in response to my presence.
And for the first time since the ritual began—
The fear inside me did not feel like weakness.
It felt like fuel.
They had given me away.
They had chosen her.
They had called me instead.
But standing beneath that endless crimson sky, I realized something slowly, quietly, like a blade sliding free of its sheath.
Exile is not the same as destruction.
And sometimes—
The second daughter burns hotter.