"Till Death and After"

A Horror Love Story

I. The Girl in the Woods

The villagers of Edevane spoke of her in hushed tones, voices trailing off when the wind shifted. Liora. A name carried by the wind like a secret, wrapped in sorrow. Some claimed she had been born under a blood moon. Others swore they had seen her whisper to shadows and flowers that bloomed out of season.

Elias Gray was not one to believe in superstition. A blacksmith’s son, his world was made of steel and fire, not phantoms and fairy tales. But the day his horse bucked near the edge of the forest, sending him tumbling into a thicket of thorns, his life twisted like fate around Liora’s name.

She found him bleeding, delirious. Her hands, pale and cool, touched his wounds. She carried him to a weathered cottage nestled in the heart of the woods—a place that didn’t exist on any map.

Her eyes were the first thing he noticed—pale grey like ash after a fire, rimmed with lashes dark as midnight. Her voice was calm, melodic, but carried a sadness that felt centuries old.

"You should not be here," she whispered, binding his arm.

"You saved me," he replied. "That must mean something."

II. The Courtship of Shadows

Elias returned the next week, and the week after, inventing reasons to visit. Liora, despite her resistance, began to smile. Her walls crumbled slowly, like frost melting under a hesitant spring. She told him of dreams she couldn’t escape, voices she heard at night, of a lover long ago who betrayed her trust and left her to die.

Elias thought it was metaphor. A woman broken by loss.

Until he saw her talking to the mirror.

It whispered back.

He told himself it was a trick of the wind, the way old wood groans, how solitude plays tricks on the mind. He loved her. Deeply. Irrevocably.

Still, every time he touched her, her skin was cold. And sometimes, when she thought he wasn’t watching, her reflection didn’t move with her.

III. The Curse of Liora Vale

One night, beneath the full moon, Elias took her hands in his and asked, “Will you marry me?”

Liora stared at him, trembling. “I am not meant for love,” she said. “My heart is tethered to a curse. I died once already, Elias.”

He laughed, nervous. “Then you came back to me.”

She did not laugh.

“I was murdered here,” she said, voice hollow. “By the man I loved. He feared me. Feared what I was becoming. He drove a knife into my heart and buried me beneath the ash tree behind this house.”

Elias stepped back.

“But I woke,” she continued. “With soil in my mouth, and hatred in my chest. I cannot leave these woods. I cannot die again, not truly. My love is a binding force. And if I love again... if you love me back... I’m afraid you’ll never leave either.”

Elias, heart pounding, said only: “Then let it be so.”

IV. The Burning

The wedding was simple—just them beneath the ash tree, Liora in a black lace gown, Elias with a ring made from twisted iron. When he kissed her, the forest went still. Birds stopped singing. The wind died.

That night, as they lay together, Elias awoke to a voice murmuring in his ear. Not Liora’s. Something ancient. Malicious. It told him to run. That his soul had been claimed.

He tried to leave, boots crunching the leaves just beyond her door. But the trees closed in. The path curved endlessly back to the cottage. And the air grew thick with rot.

When he returned, Liora stood waiting.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You tried to leave me.”

He said nothing. He couldn’t.

The storm rolled in. Thunder cracked the sky. The ash tree groaned as wind lashed its branches. Lightning struck—first the tree, then the cottage. Fire erupted, hungry and swift.

Villagers saw the flames from afar but arrived to nothing but charred wood and silence. No bodies were found. Just scorched earth and ash.

V. Forever

Years passed. Decades.

Children who wandered too close to the ruins returned changed. Eyes hollow. Voices quiet.

Travelers spoke of a couple glimpsed dancing in the clearing during full moons. She, in a gown of shadow. He, with rusted chains around his wrists. Always dancing. Always watching.

If you venture into the woods of Edevane today, they say you can hear the music—the haunting waltz of love that defied death, cursed to play forever.

And if you hear her whisper your name, don’t look back.

Because if you do… you’ll never leave.

Want me to build a sequel or turn this into a mini-series format?

"Ashes of Edevane"

Sequel to "Till Death and After"

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I. The Gravekeeper's Daughter

Twenty-seven years had passed since the fire that consumed the woods of Edevane. Time buried memory, as it often does—but some stories refuse to rot.

Clara Whitlock had never believed in ghosts, though she grew up in the shadow of the ruins. Her father, the village gravekeeper, warned her often:

"Stay away from the ash tree. It doesn't sleep."

But Clara was curious. Her dreams were plagued by a woman in black, her veil soaked with tears. Always dancing. Always whispering:

“He’s still here. He won’t wake.”

One dusk, drawn by something she couldn’t explain, Clara crossed the tree line, boots crunching on brittle leaves. Fog spilled through the forest like breath. And there, in the clearing, she saw the ruins—half-buried stone, a skeletal staircase, and at its heart, the ash tree, blackened but alive.

She touched the bark.

The earth trembled.

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II. The Awakening

In that moment, beneath the roots, Elias stirred.

His eyes opened for the first time in decades, and he screamed—but no one heard. Buried in the soil, his soul tethered to a loop of agony, bound by Liora’s love.

But something was changing. Liora hadn’t danced in days. She stood motionless, watching the ash tree, her expression unreadable. Her power, once sealed by ritual, was unraveling—because someone new had touched the tree. Someone who resembled her.

Clara.

Not just a stranger.

Her descendant.

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III. Bloodline and Bone

Clara’s mother had died young. Her father never spoke of her. But the deeper Clara wandered into the ruins, the more she began to remember things that weren’t hers—dreams of dancing, of betrayal, of waking beneath the dirt.

She found an old book buried in the roots—a journal, bound in cracked leather. It bore Liora’s name.

“He loved me. He tried to leave. So I kept him.”

Each page told a piece of the story. But one entry stood out:

“If a child of my blood touches the tree… the bond will break. And so shall I.”

Clara's veins chilled. She wasn’t just a visitor. She was the key.

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IV. The Shattering

That night, the village shook. Screams echoed through the hills as mist rolled into homes and mirrors cracked without warning. The veil between the living and the dead had thinned.

Liora appeared in Clara’s room.

“You wear her face,” Liora whispered. “But you are not me.”

“I’m not here to save you,” Clara said. “I’m here to free him.”

The specter hissed, her face twisting into something monstrous. But Elias—pale, hollow-eyed—emerged behind her, whispering Clara’s name like a prayer.

“I don’t want to love her anymore,” he said. “Let me go.”

With the journal in hand, Clara performed the ritual by the ash tree under the blood moon. The ground split. Shadows screamed. And then—

Silence.

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V. Afterlight

Elias was gone.

Liora, too.

The tree remained—but now it bore white blossoms. The forest no longer whispered.

Clara returned to the village, carrying the journal. Her dreams were her own now. But sometimes, when the wind shifts, she still hears music in the trees—a waltz played just once, for the dead to say goodbye.

And in the spring, the ash tree blooms again—its petals pale as mourning veils.

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Would you like a third part? We could take it even darker—Clara haunted by what she unleashed, or perhaps Liora didn’t vanish, just… changed.

"Liora Reborn"

Book III in the “Till Death and After” series

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I. The Withering Spring

One year after the ash tree bloomed, the village of Edevane began to rot from the inside.

Livestock were born without eyes. Wells turned black. People whispered of figures watching from mirrors and heard lullabies drifting through locked doors.

Clara Whitlock felt it first.

The journal she had hidden away—the one Liora had written—was changing. Pages once blank were filling themselves in with red ink. And in every entry, one phrase returned again and again:

“I let him go. Now I am empty.”

Clara, once a skeptic, was no longer sure if she had done the right thing. She had freed Elias—but what had she left behind?

The ash tree now stood taller. Its blossoms, once white, had turned crimson. Beneath it, flowers grew with petals shaped like mouths.

Something was growing.

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II. Hollow Birth

The dreams returned.

Clara would wake with dirt beneath her fingernails. Her reflection would smile when she didn’t. And always, she heard a voice from behind the veil:

“I gave you your life. Now give me mine.”

She sought help from an old priest, the last relic of the village's fading faith. He listened, and when she showed him the journal, his hands trembled.

“This isn’t a haunting,” he whispered. “It’s a gestation.”

Liora hadn’t died.

She was becoming.

Using Clara’s blood. Her body. Her soul.

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III. Liora Reborn

The transformation began slowly—Clara’s shadow moved on its own, her voice echoed twice when she spoke. She began waking in strange places, drawn to the forest like a moth to flame.

And one morning, she found herself pregnant.

There had been no lover. No moment. Just a single dream, where Liora’s spirit entered her through a kiss of smoke and sorrow.

Nine nights later, under a lunar eclipse, Clara fell unconscious beneath the ash tree.

The villagers heard a scream that shook the sky—and then silence.

When they came, they found Clara alone, her body cold… but breathing. In her arms was a child.

A girl.

With grey eyes and a heartbeat that pulsed in reverse.

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IV. The Return

The girl grew unnaturally fast. By age three, she spoke in full sentences. She didn’t blink. She never cried.

She called herself Lyra.

And she didn’t call Clara “mother.” She called her “Vessel.”

At night, Lyra would hum the same waltz Liora once danced to. And in her drawings—always in blood red—she depicted a shadow bride holding hands with a faceless man beneath a bleeding moon.

Clara tried to love her. But Lyra didn’t need love.

She needed a kingdom.

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V. The New Bride

At sixteen, Lyra stood beneath the ash tree, now taller than the steeple in town, its blossoms whispering secrets only she could hear.

“I remember,” she said aloud, “what he did to me. I remember the blade. The betrayal. The fire.”

She turned to the forest—and it bent to her will.

Clara, aged beyond her years, watched from the edge of the clearing, tears frozen on her cheeks. She had birthed the curse anew.

Liora had not just returned.

She had been reborn in blood, body, and memory. And this time, she would not be bound to one lover.

She would bind the world.

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To Be Continued…

Want to go all in for a fourth part? Maybe take it global or apocalyptic—Liora’s cult, the ash spreading beyond Edevane, or Clara trying to find a way to destroy her daughter?