In a world where magic, money, technology, and soul affinity ruled all, Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade was never the main character.
Not even a supporting role.
She wasn't a villainess nor a sidepiece. She existed only as a name in someone else's story.
She lived too innocently if that word could ever describe someone born into a mafia family. Her father, Domonic Nightingale Nightshade, was the second son of the Nightshade family. Her mother, Salena Rhowshen Hall, was a former high mage of the South with a terrifying reputation.
Seraphina died at the hands of the second male lead in the main story—her stepbrother. After losing the female lead to the male lead, he killed the entire clan—her included—and then took his own life.
Time did not rewind for the world. It turned only for the souls lost within it.
Long before the main story began—weeks before the first page, before the first death, before the first betrayal—she slept.
In the Asleep Garden, she lay still on a silken moss grass bed deep in the forest, where butterflies dance. And trees bow low with memory, Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade slumbered in a dreamless myth.
Today, she turned sixteen.
The day she sealed her magic.
The day she sealed her soul.
But birthdays had meant nothing to her since she was seven, the year her mother died. The year she decided never to feel again.
Her long hair, as soft as forest grass and tangled with shimmering vines, spilled across a bed of flowers. Her lashes fluttered open, revealing deep forest-green eyes—cold, death-haunted, yet glowing strangely warm, as though morning light lit the sleeping woods.
Butterflies perched upon her, one on her hair, one on her hand, welcoming her like a child of the forest as their mother returned.
She wore an off-shoulder pale green gown, clinging like woven leaves to her figure. Her pearl-pale skin glowed under sunlight. Her earrings shimmered with soft green energy—delicate as tears in moonlight, alive with power.
Her lips curved like two ripe orange slices, red as rose petals.
She smelled of roses. Her scent layered with lemon—a heart of rose, a top note of citrus. She was the mystery of nature. Serpentine and divine. Her blood was void, her soul grey—not dark nor light, forgotten, like an old green goddess carved in moss-covered stone.
And now, after the great rewind, Seraphina frowned.
She felt it.
Her spell had broken.
She had returned.
But why? How could the soul spell break? How could she return?
Only one could answer.
Asher Renan Hall.
Her maternal cousin.
Heir of the South Mage Tower.
Her fiancé.
Her Asher.
She rose and cast a teleportation spell to his office, leaving behind a forest that sang softly at her awakening.
Nightshade Main Manor~
Meanwhile, in the story's current thread, Dimitry Domonic Nightshade, the second son of House Nightshade and the second male lead of the main story, had prepared a celebration.
A celebration of his step-sister's sixteenth birthday.
He stood by the hallway window, gazing toward Seraphina's distant private mansion. Moonlight bathed him, silvering his long, messy, pale green hair. His shirt hung unbuttoned at the top, revealing sculpted lines of his chest and the elegant sharpness of his collarbone. His skin was pale, deathless, like a cursed prince.
There was wildness in his green eyes, a forest fire veiled beneath long lashes. A harmless smile curved his lips as he emptied glass after glass, wine kissed with bitterness and longing.
His long legs shifted restlessly. Red-tinged lips gleamed faintly with a drink. His black earrings caught the candlelight, mirroring the darkness coiled in his heart.
He had planned every detail. Silver lanterns lit the garden, soft music floated like wind, and the lavender-honey cake sat untouched beneath a crystal dome.
But Seraphina never came.
She hadn't left the private mansion she'd built far from Nightshade Manor. The servants whispered she hadn't spoken all day. Others murmured she was in her soul forest.
Dimitry waited. He waited until the last candle burned out. Until the silence grew longer than his patience.
She never appeared.
Later that night, he soundlessly sat with Setaro Celestra Hall, the fifth male lead.
The untouched wine sat between them, souring in the glass. Setaro's white hair floated like moonlight on water. A white T-shirt clung to his sculpted form, half-covered by a daring black leather coat. His legs crossed lazily. A silver butterfly tattoo shimmered on his pale neck—fragile yet fearless.
He looked like a dream carved in cloud and fire.
His lips were blood-red, soft, and perfectly shaped. A single silver earring dangled from one ear. He wasn't the strongest of the Halls, but he was the purest in magic.
His dreamy, half-lidded blue eyes held the weight of oceans—deep, secretive, timeless. Wind obeyed him. Secrets sought him.
They called him Mystan.
The silence between them was thick with unsaid things.
Then, softly—half-laughing, half-broken—Dimitry whispered:
"I love her. I love Seraphina."
Setaro blinked. "As a sister?"
Dimitry laughed, drunken, mocking.
"The dark sky longs for the moon," he said, voice slurred. "Just as the moon aches for Polaris. Always close… yet forever out of reach. A cruel dance of light and distance."
Setaro looked down into his wine, swirling it once, though he never planned to drink. His fingers gripped the stem tightly, knuckles whitening.
He felt the weight of truths he had buried—profound, cold truths that could shatter a heart already splintering.
It seemed they were doomed. Setaro could see himself in Dimitry—the same restless longing, the same silent ache.
If only Dimy knew that the flower he so casually admired was anything but indifferent. There was someone who could make her bloom anew, like a fresh bud unfolding, yet she remained unreachable for them both, for the whole world, except for one man.
Unfortunately, that same man's blood also ran through Setaro's veins. In that sense, Dimitry was the luckier one.
From childhood, there were days Setaro truly hated Asher Renan Hall. Why him? Why was he the chosen one? Why did the gods have to be cruel to favor him and not me? Setaro often wondered, bitterness rising like bile in his throat.
It almost seemed as if Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade was a curse on the Hall and Nightshade bloodlines—a beautiful, inescapable curse neither family could outrun.