Chapter 1: The Wedding of Thorns

The chapel was too quiet.

Not the kind of silence that brought peace.

This was the silence of endings.

Elira Hale stood at the altar, the hem of her gown soaked in centuries-old dust and something darker she didn’t want to name. Her hands trembled beneath sheer lace gloves, and her breath fogged in the cold air. The black dress she wore clung like a second skin — woven with silver threads and ancient runes that pulsed faintly with every heartbeat.

The walls loomed high around her, scarred by time and forgotten prayers. Candles floated in the air, flickering weakly against the heavy darkness above. There were no guests, no music, no whispered blessings. Just shadows... watching.

And him.

The Devil stood at her side — silent, still, and terrible.

His face was hidden beneath a dark hood, but his presence filled the room like smoke. She felt it pressing against her skin, sliding down her spine, curling into her thoughts. Her instincts screamed to run.

But she had no choice.

This was the price of saving her sister.

Two weeks ago, Liora had collapsed — cursed by a spell no healer could undo. Her body was sealed inside a glass coffin, breathing shallowly, suspended in a twilight between life and death.

No priest, mage, or scholar could break it.

Only him.

The Devil had offered a deal. A single, terrifying promise: "Marry me, and I’ll bring her back."

So here she stood.

At the end of the world.

Becoming his bride.

She glanced down at her bouquet — black roses with edges dipped in silver flame. Even the flowers were cursed.

“Do you, Elira Hale,” the officiant asked, his voice dry as parchment,

“take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.

“I... I do,” she whispered.

The Devil turned to her.

Slowly, deliberately, he pulled back his hood — revealing a face too perfect to be human. Pale skin like moonlight, lips curved in something between amusement and sorrow. His eyes... they glowed like embers, and behind them burned a knowledge older than death.

She gasped. Something flickered in the back of her mind — a memory she didn’t recognize.

He reached for her hand.

When their skin touched, the runes on her dress flared gold, and magic surged through her like a firestorm. Her breath caught. The ground beneath them pulsed once.

The pact was sealed.

A soft cracking sound echoed behind her.

She spun around — and saw the glass of Liora’s coffin glowing. Then, miraculously, her sister’s chest rose. A slow inhale. Color returning to her face.

Elira’s heart clenched.

It had worked.

And now... she was his.

The Devil leaned closer. His breath brushed her ear.

“This time,” he murmured, voice smooth as silk,

“I won’t let you leave me.”

Elira’s blood turned to ice.

Because she saw it in his eyes now —

He remembered her.

And that meant…

This wasn’t their first wedding.

The castle doors groaned open with a sound like thunder, their heavy timbers creaking in protest. A cold wind swept through the darkened entrance, carrying with it the scent of old stone and damp earth. Flickering torchlight spilled across the ancient floors, casting long, jagged shadows that seemed to writhe and twist in the dim glow. My breath caught in my throat as I crossed the threshold, the weight of the door shutting behind me like a promise — or a trap. My heart pounded wildly against my ribs, its frantic beat almost drowning out the eerie silence that enveloped the vast, shadowed space.

The Devil walked beside me, his footsteps soundless against the stone. He said nothing. His cloak billowed around him like a dark cloud, shifting with every movement. The silence between us was suffocating, oppressive, as though it were not just the absence of sound, but the weight of something ancient and terrible pressing in on me from all sides. His shadow stretched long across the walls, a monstrous thing that seemed to follow me, watching my every step.

I should have been terrified.

But all I felt was... cold.

It seeped into my bones, curling around my heart, chilling me to the core. A coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. A coldness that came from somewhere deeper — something far older than the walls of this castle, older than the earth beneath my feet.

The hall stretched on, winding and twisting like a labyrinth. The further we went, the darker it became. The air grew thick with dust and the scent of decay, and yet the Devil moved through it as if it were nothing. He was no longer a figure, but an entity — a presence that was woven into the fabric of this place, as much a part of it as the stone itself. My breath quickened as I tried to make sense of it all, but nothing about this place made sense.

At the end of a long, spiraling staircase, the Devil stopped. His hand reached out, resting against a massive door. The symbols carved into its surface seemed to twist and writhe as though they were alive. When he pushed the door open, it groaned with the sound of a thousand years of secrets being unlocked, revealing a vast room beyond.

The air inside was thick with the scent of velvet, of something old and rich, like forgotten memories. Crimson curtains hung in heavy folds, their edges pooling on the floor like blood. The floor was made of black marble, its surface gleaming with an unnatural shine. In the center of the room stood a large canopy bed, draped in deep red silk that shimmered like firelight. The bed looked too luxurious, too grand — and yet, something about it made my skin crawl.

It was a prison. My prison.

The Devil turned to face me, his face half-hidden beneath the hood of his cloak. The shadows obscured most of his features, but the flicker of torchlight revealed the sharp lines of his jaw, the unnatural beauty of his face. His voice, when it came, was smooth, low, and unsettlingly calm.

"You may sleep here. No harm will come to you... tonight."

"Tonight?" I whispered, my voice barely audible. It felt foreign to me, like I was speaking in a dream, not fully aware of the words coming from my mouth.

The Devil didn’t answer right away. He only regarded me with those eyes — those endless, sorrowful eyes. There was something ancient in them. Something that made my insides twist with an emotion I couldn’t name. And then, as if it were the most casual thing in the world, he flashed a smile. But it wasn’t a smile. It was something sharper. Something crueler.

It was a smile that tasted of broken promises.

I wanted to ask him a thousand questions — to scream, to demand answers. What happens tomorrow? What do you want from me? Why do your eyes look like they've seen me before? But the words died in my throat. My mouth was dry, my tongue heavy. My legs trembled beneath me, threatening to give way. The weight of this moment, of this place, crushed down on me until I could barely breathe.

As he turned to leave, the door creaking shut behind him, I found my voice.

"You promised to save my sister," I said, the words slipping out in a breathless rush. "You fulfilled your side. What about mine?"

The Devil paused, his hand resting on the doorframe. His posture was unnervingly casual, but I could feel the force of his presence in the very air around me. His voice, when it came, was low, almost tender, as though he were speaking to someone he knew all too well.

"Your soul is mine, Elira. That is the bargain."

My name. He spoke it with such aching familiarity that it sent a shiver down my spine. It was as though he had been speaking it in his sleep, in every nightmare I had ever had. As though he knew me — knew me better than I knew myself.

Had we met before? In dreams? In nightmares? Had he always been there, lurking at the edges of my mind?

The Devil glanced over his shoulder, and for the first time, I saw his face fully.

Not a monster. Not a beast. A man.

A man with eyes the color of bleeding skies. Eyes that held centuries of sorrow, fury, and something far deeper — something infinite. His gaze was so intense that it felt like he could see right through me, into the very core of my soul.

"Rest well," he murmured, his voice like velvet, but with an undertone of steel. "You’ll need your strength."

The door closed softly behind him, and I was alone.

But even as the silence settled around me, I could still feel him. His presence lingered, woven into the walls, the air, the very fabric of the room. It was like the castle itself was alive, breathing with him, waiting for something. For me? For him? I couldn’t say.

I tried to sleep. I lay on the crimson silk sheets, my body tense, my mind racing with a thousand unanswered questions. But sleep wouldn’t come. The castle whispered to me — a low, persistent hum that seemed to vibrate through the stones. The shadows on the walls shifted, twitching as though they remembered something. Forgotten sins. Lost names.

Then, I heard it.

A melody.

Soft, haunting. It drifted through the air like a ghost, a mournful song woven with sorrow. The notes were strange, out of tune, as though the very sound was weeping. It was a song I didn’t recognize, but something about it felt familiar — like a memory I couldn’t quite place.

I couldn’t resist.

I rose from the bed, my bare feet brushing the cold marble floor. My breath was shallow, my heart racing in my chest. I followed the music, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, my steps faltering as I moved deeper into the darkness.

Down the hall, a single door stood ajar. A faint glow pulsed from the crack between the door and its frame. Not light — but memory. It beckoned me, pulling me forward.

I reached for the door, and with a soft groan, it opened. Inside was a small room, cluttered with the detritus of time. An old music room, filled with dust and forgotten things. A harp sat in the corner, its strings silent but aching with the weight of years. Books were scattered across the floor, their pages yellowed and fragile.

And in the center of the room stood a cracked mirror.

I stepped closer, my reflection shifting in the shattered glass. But the face that stared back at me... it wasn’t mine.

It was me, but not me.

A woman with my face, but different. Her eyes were empty, hollow. Her lips twisted into a smile that wasn’t kind — it was something darker. Something predatory. She wore a crown of thorns, her dress burning with fire, a fire that would never go out.

And then, she spoke.

“You came back,” she whispered, her voice like ice scraping across glass.

I stumbled backward, my heart racing. But before I could make sense of what I was seeing, the mirror shattered. The sound was deafening, sharp as the crack of thunder. Pieces of glass rained down, reflecting a thousand broken versions of the room, of me.

And in the silence that followed, I felt it. The weight of something watching. Something waiting. Something ancient, and it was closing in.

Chapter 3: The Mirror of Heresy

The shards of the mirror glittered like starlight across the floor. I stood frozen, staring at the place where the reflection had been — my reflection, yet not mine. A ghost? A memory? Or something far worse?

Behind me, the castle groaned as though it too had seen the impossible.

Then came the footsteps.

Not hurried. Not loud.

But deliberate.

I turned, and there he was — the Devil himself — standing in the doorway of the music room like he’d always belonged there. Moonlight haloed his silhouette, but no light touched his face.

"You shouldn’t be here," he said.

His voice was calm, but the air trembled around him.

"I heard music," I whispered.

"No one has played in this room for centuries."

I stepped away from the broken mirror, heart pounding. "There was someone inside it... she looked like me. She knew me."

"You saw what the castle wanted you to see," he said quietly, stepping into the room. "This place remembers everything. Every soul it’s ever swallowed. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it screams."

He crouched beside the shards, and for a moment, I expected him to gather them.

Instead, he touched a single piece.

And it bled.

I gasped. Crimson welled from the glass, staining the marble like it remembered pain.

"Was she real?" I asked.

He stood slowly. "She was... important."

"To you?"

His silence was answer enough.

I stepped back. "Why do I look like her?"

His eyes met mine. For the first time, there was no coldness in them — only a terrible grief, older than stone, heavier than time.

"Because nothing ever truly leaves this place. Especially the dead."

I felt the walls press in, the air thicken like fog.

"You didn’t bring me here to save my sister, did you?" My voice trembled. "This was never about a bargain."

He took a slow step forward. "I gave you what you asked. She breathes because of you."

"But you took me because of her," I said, realization blooming like frost in my chest. "The one in the mirror. She was the reason you made the deal."

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

I fled the room before he could speak another word.

The corridors bent around me like a maze — twisting, pulsing with memory. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had to move. To breathe.

To get away from him.

But the castle had other plans.

Every turn led to another corridor I didn’t recognize. Paintings followed me with their eyes. Statues turned to face me when I blinked. The chandeliers dripped wax that hissed my name.

“Elira…”

No. Not my name.

Her name.

The girl in the mirror.

I found myself in a tower — one I didn’t remember climbing. A window yawned open at the top, letting in night wind sharp as blades.

I leaned against the stone, catching my breath.

The stars outside burned red.

And below, the courtyard shifted — black roses blooming in real time, vines writhing like snakes.

“I hate this place,” I whispered.

A voice answered behind me.

“So do I.”

I turned. He was there again, this time without warning, without sound. Always just… appearing. Like a memory.

"You said nothing would harm me tonight."

"And it hasn’t."

"Then why does it feel like I’m being hunted by my own past?"

He stepped closer, slowly.

"This castle reflects," he said. "It shows truths dressed as dreams. It teaches you what you are by revealing what you were."

"And what was I?"

He paused, a long breath drawn into silence.

"You were mine."

My heart stopped.

He closed the distance between us, and this time, I didn’t back away. I couldn’t. His presence held me like gravity.

"In another life?" I whispered.

"In another death."

His hand hovered near my face, not touching — just trembling in the space between us.

"I buried her a thousand years ago," he said. "And still, the castle calls her back in pieces. Through you."

"But I’m not her," I said, voice breaking. "I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be anyone’s echo."

He looked at me then — really looked.

"No," he said softly. "You're not her. You're worse."

I flinched.

"Worse?"

"You’re alive."

Silence stretched, broken only by the wind through the tower.

I turned away, chest aching with a storm of thoughts I couldn’t name.

"Will I become her?" I asked.

"No. But you’ll carry her shadow. You already do."

I felt it then — deep in my bones. A cold weight. A grief I’d never earned.

"She loved you, didn’t she?"

He didn’t reply.

"Did you love her?"

A breath. A blink. An eternity.

"Yes."

"And now… me?"

His eyes finally softened, like something inside him cracked.

"I don’t know," he said. "You confuse the part of me that remembers love… and the part that devours it."

I left him in the tower.

This time, he didn’t follow.

Back in my room, I curled beneath crimson sheets, my mind a tangle of questions and broken glass.

And as sleep finally dragged me down, I dreamed of fire.

Of thorns.

Of a mirror.

And the girl inside it…

Still waiting.