“Not all girls who disappear are dead.

Some come back... to bury the living.”

---

The world remembered her as a soft voice behind silk veils —

a girl with moonlight skin, the kind who smiled at monsters believing they wouldn’t bite.

But Serenya Valecroft wasn’t soft anymore.

Because soft things don’t survive betrayal.

In the royal city of Eldrane, where crowns are heavier than guilt and secrets live in the chandeliers,

Serenya vanished one midnight — without a scream, without a trace.

They said she ran away.

Some whispered suicide.

Her closest ones wore tearless eyes and drank wine over her silence.

But the truth was darker:

She didn’t die.

They buried her alive in memory — and replaced her with lies.

---

🥀 The Betrayal

Evan Maelthorn.

The boy born from roses and razors —

he told her she was everything, even while his hands held other sins in the dark.

He never wanted her love.

He wanted her body —

just long enough to say he had it.

Lyra Graves, her best friend.

Serenya once whispered secrets into her lap like a sister.

But Lyra sold her out for a bloodline upgrade —

laughed with Evan while Serenya lay stained and forgotten.

No confrontation. No goodbye.

Just blood on white sheets and a broken soul.

---

☠️ The Return

Two winters passed.

The royal gates opened again.

And a girl in black stepped in — same eyes, new aura.

No one dared ask her name.

Because those who saw her eyes…

felt as if something cold had crawled into their bones and smiled.

She didn’t speak.

She watched.

And at night, in her candlelit chamber that always felt colder than the rest of the palace...

she wrote.

> “Dear Diary,

I don’t want them to die quickly.

I want their masks to rot before their faces do.”

---

🦋 The Mystery Begins…

Evan finds blood-written letters under his pillow.

Lyra hears whispers in empty corridors.

One teacher finds a rose with thorns dipped in ink on his table — and resigns in fear.

But no one suspects Serenya.

The palace hadn't changed.

Same silver chandeliers that caught lies in their reflections.

Same perfume of rotting roses in the corridors.

Same velvet laughter behind locked doors.

But Serenya Valecroft was no longer one of them.

She moved through the halls like a rumor dressed in black —

silent, unnerving, unreadable.

---

The first name in her diary was already fading.

Professor Leinhart — the one who "didn’t see anything"

the night she was broken behind the academy’s music hall.

She hadn’t needed to touch him.

She simply left one thing on his table:

> A withered rose dipped in ink.

A page from her medical report.

And one sentence written in her own blood:

“You teach silence too well.”

By evening, he had resigned.

No one dared ask why.

---

Evan Maelthorn hadn’t recognized her yet —

not with the way she walked like a ghost and carried no scent of the past.

But he would.

Soon.

He still roamed the palace halls like a crowned god,

his fake kindness dripping over girls who didn’t yet know what he'd taken from others.

And Lyra…

Lyra had turned into everything Serenya once admired —

head of the royal student board,

gold pins in her curls,

and a voice rehearsed in diplomacy.

But when Serenya crossed her path in the Grand Garden that evening,

something flickered in Lyra’s eyes.

Recognition?

Fear?

Or was it just the wind brushing thorns across her throat?

---

That night, the diary opened again.

> Dear Diary,

They speak of me like I’m a myth.

But myths don’t whisper back.

I am the thorn they left in the soil.

And now, I’m blooming — where they thought I’d rot.

---

The next morning, the academy bell rang late.

A maid was found unconscious in the tower archives.

On her tray was a black envelope, marked with wax and a single pressed petal inside.

No one spoke of it.

But everyone whispered.

The ghost had returned.

Because no one knows…

she never really left.

Only now, she’s returned with a diary —

and every name in it will end up with a dead smile.