CHAPTER 1: THE DAY THE BUTTERFLIES FELL

Firenze was happy, once.

She lived in a world she built out of dreams and soft illusions—a shimmering world where she held tightly to her father’s little finger and the universe seemed to spin just for her.

Sidewalks glittered like rivers of stars. Invisible bubbles floated through the air like magic spells.

Everything sparkled.

Everything except the silence that wrapped around her when she stood alone.

She had no friends.

Still, Firenze believed that if she just tried a little harder, smiled a little wider, then maybe her story would finally begin.

Like in the movies.

She’d be the main character.

The girl everyone loved.

What she didn’t know was that she was the main character...

Only in a story titled villainess.

It began quietly, innocently.

There was a girl named Daisy—sun-bright, golden, glowing like a god had sketched her with extra care.

Firenze sat beside her one morning, shy and trembling, her heart fluttering like a cornered bird.

Daisy smiled, and suddenly the whole world exploded into color.

They became inseparable.

Whispering during class. Sharing secrets.

Running through the garden hand-in-hand, chasing butterflies as their laughter echoed through the trees like some forgotten fairytale.

In those moments, Firenze wasn’t lonely.

She was seen.

She was alive.

Everyone loved Daisy.

She was the star of the academy—admired, adored, worshipped.

And Firenze?

She admired her too, not out of envy... but something deeper. Something warmer. Something that slowly curled around her ribs like ivy.

But one day, Daisy stopped speaking to her.

She had a new friend now.

Prettier. Louder. More polished.

A girl who already fit in the way Daisy did—effortlessly.

And Daisy gave no explanation.

No reason.

She simply turned away, as if the garden, the butterflies, and the laughter were dreams she’d woken up from.

Firenze asked herself, Why?

Her mind spun in frantic circles, trying to decode it.

But she was only eleven.

And the answer was too heavy for her tiny, breaking heart.

She never understood why.

Maybe, she thought, if she tried harder—if she just begged, just proved her worth—

Daisy would come back.

If only she knew what she did wrong…

She would fix it.

She would change everything.

But no answer came.

There was no answer.

Firenze, with her sensitive mind and paper-fragile heart, cried until her throat ached and her pillow soaked through.

And yet, even as she sobbed in the dark, she made herself a quiet, dangerous promise:

I will win her back.

Because I’m the best for her. Because no one will ever love her like I do.

What she didn’t realize was that her love was no longer pure.

It was twisting into something else.

Obsession.

A fragile madness blooming like a black rose inside her.

A love that would one day pull her apart from the inside.

But that reckoning...

That descent?

Was still far away.

For now, the villainess within Firenze merely slept—

curled up beside a memory of butterflies and a girl who never looked back.

Heartbreak didn’t soften Firenze.

It didn’t make her gentler.

It didn’t carve her into something easy to love.

No—

It carved her sharper.

Her smiles grew fanged, honed like hidden daggers.

And her once-bright hope?

It twisted into something monstrous—

something that could drown a kingdom if it ever broke free.

The garden where she once ran barefoot, chasing butterflies beside Daisy?

It wilted.

The laughter that once rang like music now echoed like a forgotten curse—

a ghost of joy that refused to die cleanly.

And deep within her—

in the broken gears and fractured glass of her aching heart—

something darker began to stir.

It didn’t cry.

It didn’t beg.

It whispered:

"You were never meant to be saved."

To the others, it was nothing more than a childhood friendship.

A sweet, forgettable bond meant to fade like scribbles on a school desk.

But to Firenze?

It was everything.

Love, maybe.

Or hate—born from the silence Daisy left behind.

Or perhaps it was neither.

Perhaps it was the question mark itself—

the jagged, unspeakable ache of why she was abandoned that haunted her more than the abandonment itself.

No explanations. No closure.

Just the brutal echo of footsteps walking away.

Firenze didn’t know what it was, not really.

All she knew was that Daisy was special.

Not in the way stars are special, distant and admired.

But like a secret—

a flame tucked too close to her heart.

And when it went out,

something inside her began to freeze.

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