[Viewers' Discretion Advised]
10 Years After Vastarael's Death...
The room was a tomb of its own making.
Adelasta sat on the edge of the massive bed that once felt like a sanctuary. The velvet drapes were drawn tight, blocking out every sliver of Technographia's glow that filtered through the floating island of Dynasty Richinaria.
Empty bottles of Fedres alcohol lay scattered across the floor. Some had tipped over and stained the rugs. The air reeked of alcohol and unwashed fabric. Her crimson hair hung in greasy, tangled ropes around her face. She hadn't brushed it in days, maybe weeks.
Her eyes were dead fish eyes now.
It was exactly as the old healers described it. When loss hit too hard, too fast, the mind threw up every shield it had. Dissociation. The brain slicing itself off from reality so the pain wouldn't kill it outright. The freeze response locking the nervous system in survival mode, turning her face into a porcelain mask that couldn't even pretend to feel anymore. Emotional numbing so complete it left her with nothing.
Vastarael was gone. She had watched it happen.
One moment he was there and the next, his form had unraveled into glittering particles, scattering on a wind that shouldn't have existed in that place. She had screamed his name until her throat bled but the particles didn't care. They simply faded and with them carried every future she had dared to dream.
Adelasta's lips moved without sound at first. The counting started again, which she never got tired of saying.
"One… two… three… four…"
Her hand trembled as she raised the crimson dagger.
She pressed the point against the underside of her wrist. The first cut was deep. Her blood spilled over her tan skin, dripping onto the already ruined sheets. For one heartbeat, she felt alive. The sting grounded her. It reminded her body that it still existed. Body Reconstruction knitted the flesh back together. The wound closed. The blood stopped. The pain vanished like it had never been real. Adelasta stared at the fresh, unmarred skin with those dead eyes.
"One… two… three… four…"
She stabbed again but harder this time. The blade sank deeper, scraping against her skin. A wet, ugly sound filled the silent room. She twisted the dagger, gasping at the raw burn of it. Tears didn't come. They hadn't come in days. Her body had run out of them, or maybe it had decided crying was pointless too.
The healing began almost immediately. The warmth spread. Her skin sealed. The dagger slipped free as if her flesh rejected the violence. She laughed once. It was a broken, hollow sound that cracked midway and died.
"Why won't you just let me follow you?"
Ahe whispered to the empty room or the ghost that should have been sitting beside her, laughing at her stubbornness, pulling her into his arms and telling her the Dynasty needed its Grand Duchess.
But Vastarael wasn't here.
She thought of the others and how they had splintered apart.
Asenane had sealed herself in a frost domain on Cassandra Island. No one could get in. Elyonari and Narisva had retreated into their Overwrites, training like machines, punishing their bodies so their minds wouldn't have room to remember.
Edarea had thrown herself into ruling Ledatic Siliportem with iron authority, as if paperwork and decrees could fill the hole.
Phaenora… was presumed dead. Her system worked but it could function without her and her presence was gone. Even the spaceship where they thought she was said that she was already dead.
The siblings—Leon, Leones, Milliania and Anamorsia—had stepped up to hold Dynasty Richinaria together because none of 'them', the beloveds, were stable enough. The news of the Monarch's death was locked behind the highest seals. It secret that could shatter the Dynasty if it leaked.
Adelasta was supposed to be the strong one. The Grand Duchess. The one who stood tall beside the throne. Instead she was here, helpless.
She dragged the dagger across her palm this time.
"One… two… three… four…"
Blood ran between her fingers. It pooled in the creases of her hand before the body began its work again, erasing the evidence. Her body healed but her mind didn't. Each cut was a failed suicide note. Each healing was the universe spitting in her face, forcing her to stay.
Flashbacks came whether she wanted them or not.
The way Vastarael had looked at her that last time. The sound of his voice breaking through the chaos, calling her name. The moment his form destabilized played in her mind over and over again. She had reached for him but her fingers passed through empty air where his chest had been. She could still feel the absence against her palm.
"I was right there. I should have done something. I should have died with you."
The dagger rose again. This time she aimed higher up her forearm. Blood sprayed before her traitorous body started repairing the damage.
'Just let me go numb forever. Or let me die. One or the other. I don't care which.'
Somewhere outside the room, the Dynasty continued without its Monarch. Meetings were held in hushed tones. Alliances were maintained through careful lies. The siblings bore the weight because the beloveds had shattered.
Adelasta didn't care about any of it.
She picked up another bottle from the floor, one that still had a few swallows left. The liquid burned down her throat. It didn't help. Nothing did.
"One… two… three… four…"
The dagger flashed again.
She slumped back against the headboard with hair sticking to her tearless cheeks and her eyes staring at nothing. The blank stare would scare anyone.
Vastarael Richinaria was gone.
-----
The next night, Adelasta was in near-total darkness broken only by the faint crimson glow of her own blood seeping from half-healed cuts. She hadn't moved from the floor. Bottles lay around her. Her crimson hair stuck to her neck in damp strands, and the dead-fish eyes stared at the ceiling as if it might crack open and swallow her whole.
The other Adelasta appeared.
She stepped out of the shadows near the window. The alter ego carried a guitar, which was Adela's one musical instrument. She strummed a lazy chord and began singing in a mocking, lilting voice:
"Oh my darling, my Monarch, gone to dust so fine,
Left his pretty Duchess drinking poison just to feel the shine.
One two three four, stab it deeper, love,
Maybe this time the healing won't save you from above…"
Adelasta's blank stare twitched.
"Shut up."
The alter ego grinned and kept playing. Her finger plucked the strings with skill.
"He taught me this, you know. Out of fun. They were late nights when the Dynasty bullshit was done. We made a song together, something silly about love we got from a poem. He laughed so hard when I kept messing up the bridge."
"Shut up! Why can't you leave me alone?!"
The alter ego set the guitar aside.
"Because I am you, idiot. The part that still remembers what it felt like to be wanted."
She pounced.
The alter ego slammed into her, pinning Adelasta to the blood-crusted floor. The first stab went straight into her chest, right below the sternum. Adelasta gasped as the crescent blade punched through. Blood filled her mouth immediately. She coughed, spraying red across her own chin.
The alter ego didn't stop. She stabbed again and again. Over and over, the crimson dagger kept rising and falling. Each thrust produced a wet, meaty sound. Blood dripped rapidly beneath Adelasta's back, soaking into the rugs, spreading in a dark halo. It ran between her ribs, down her sides and matting her hair. Adelasta didn't scream. She barely made a sound beyond those initial choking coughs. Her dead eyes stayed open, fixed on the alter ego's face as the stabbing continued. Ten times. Fifteen. Twenty.
Finally the alter ego sat back, breathing hard, covered in Adelasta's blood. The wounds began to close slowly this time, as if her body was getting tired of the game. Flesh knit. Blood slowed to a trickle. She summoned two more crimson daggers and drove them through Adelasta's palms, crucifying them to the stone floor with sickening crunches. The blades pinned her hands flat, spreading her arms wide.
Adelasta exhaled shakily but still didn't yell. The alter ego wiped sweat and blood from her forehead and sighed.
"You really are far gone, aren't you?"
Adelasta managed to give her a weak, bloody smile.
"Thank you… This pain is good. It's really something."
The alter ego shook her head, almost pitying her.
"If you actually want to die, focus. Use Soul Sacrifice on your entire body. Burn it all at once. End it."
"I can't. I'm not a Royal Aeterium. That power isn't mine."
The alter ego leaned in closer. She traced using her finger through the blood on Adelasta's chest, drawing lazy patterns.
"Remember the first time you let him have you? Cold night in the Erna Isles. Wind howling outside that room like it wanted in on the secret. He finally opened up about the Obsidian Runic Spire—what he went through in there, the trials, the shit that nearly broke him and so on. You listened, and something in you just… decided. You told him you'd marry him right there. He agreed, smiling like the weight of the world had lifted for five minutes."
"..."
"You didn't even wait. The marriage ritual barely finished its fusion and you pulled him down onto that same damn floor, right where the runes still glowed from the ceremony. Clothes half-torn, your legs around his waist before he could say another word."
Adelasta's breathing hitched.
"He was so good. First time you ever felt true pleasure like that. You wondered out loud if he'd gotten all that experience from Greshina Emberforge back in his Earth past life. The way he laughed and didn't deny it… gods."
She dug a fingernail into one of Adelasta's closing chest wounds, making her flinch.
"You dug your nails into his back so hard you drew blood.. He healed them almost instantly, of course—his body always bounced back. But he left marks on you. Bites on your neck, bruises on your hips, scratches down your thighs that didn't fade for days. He claimed you properly. You woke up the next morning feeling… nothing sore. He'd used Body Reconstruction on you while you slept. He was gentle even after all that. Made you feel cherished and wrecked at the same time."
The alter ego sat back on her heels, still straddling Adelasta's pinned form and laughed.
"And look at you now. Grand Duchess of Nothing. Pinned to the floor like a failed sacrifice, thanking me for stabbing you because it's the only thing that feels real. He'd be so disappointed. Or maybe proud? Hard to say with him. He would see you now and not even intervene."
Adelasta stared up at her other self. Her palms throbbed around the daggers as her chest kept rising and falling in shallow bursts. The memories flooded in unbidden: the chill of the Erna Isles stone against her bare back, Vastarael's warmth above her, the way his voice had broken when he said her name during that first union, the pleasure that had torn a sob from her throat, the safety she had felt in his arms afterwards...
Now there was only the cold floor, drying blood and the mocking echo of what she'd lost.
The alter ego picked up the guitar again, strumming a few mocking notes over Adelasta's crucified body.
"Want me to play your wedding song? Or should I just keep stabbing until the healing gets bored?"
Adelasta closed her eyes for the first time in hours.
"Just… stay. The pain's good. Keep talking. Remind me what I had."
The alter ego smiled, sharp and sad all at once, and began another verse.
------
The alcohol had run out sometime after midnight. Adelasta hadn't noticed until she tipped the bottle back and got nothing but the smell of it. She let the bottle drop. It didn't shatter. It just rolled, clinking softly against three others, coming to rest against the leg of a chair no one had sat in for weeks.
That was when she saw her. Standing by the window, where the curtain let in one accusing blade of moonlight, was Adelasta.
It was not a reflection. There was no mirror there. She had the same crimson hair, except this Adelasta's hair was brushed and gleaming, pulled back in the elegant twist she used to wear to court functions. She had the same face, same amber eyes, except these eyes were bright and amused.
The other Adelasta smiled. It was Adelasta's own smile, and yet it was wrong. It was similar to the smile of someone watching an animal stuck in a trap and finding it, above all else, entertaining.
"Oh, don't stop on my account," the other Adelasta said, tilting her head at the empty bottle on the floor. "Really. Keep going. You're doing so well."
Adelasta blinked. The figure didn't dissolve.
"You're not real."
"Neither is he anymore and yet you talk to him too, don't you? Every night, I've heard you. 'Veneri, Darling, please, just come back, just for a second—'" She pressed a hand to her chest in mock heartbreak, batting her eyelashes. "Truly moving stuff. I'd cry if I weren't, you know, you."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
The other Adelasta pushed off from the window and strolled — she actually strolled with her hips swaying and utterly at ease — into the wreckage of the room, stepping over bottles like they were nothing more than décor she found tacky but tolerable.
"Oh, wow. Okay. This is — this is really something, Adelasta. I mean look at this place. It smells like a tavern floor. When's the last time you bathed? Be honest."
Adelasta said nothing. Her jaw was tight enough to ache. The other Adelasta perched herself on the edge of the vanity, crossing one leg over the other, completely unfazed.
"That's what I thought. You know what's funny? You used to be terrifying. Grand Duchess Adelasta Richinaria. People used to bow. Servants used to shake handing you your morning tea because one wrong word from you and their whole family's fortunes could change. And now, you're this. A ghost story. A rumor the maids whisper about. 'Don't go near the Grand Duchess's wing. She's not well. She hasn't been well in years.'"
"Stop."
"I'm you. I'm just saying what you're already thinking. I'm not cruel, sweetheart. I'm honest. There's a difference, though I understand the two can feel identical when you're this far gone."
She hopped down from the vanity. There was no exhaustion in her movements.
"Let's play a game. Let's talk about him. Vastarael. You saw him turn into particles, didn't you? Just, poof. Scattered like dust in the morning sun. Very poetic, actually, when you think about it. Very tragic-hero-in-an-epic sort of ending. Except you didn't save him. Did you?"
Adelasta's hands curled into fists in her lap.
"You were right there. You reached for him and you got a handful of nothing, and now you sit in the dark every night replaying it like maybe — maybe if you watch it enough times — the ending changes. It doesn't, by the way. I've checked. I'm you, remember? I have access to all the same memories. I watched it a thousand times right alongside you. It's always the same. He always disappears. You always fail to catch him."
"I didn't— I couldn't have—"
"Couldn't have what? Saved him? Sure. Let's go with that. Let's let you have that one."
The other Adelasta crouched now, right in front of her with elbows on her knees and her chin tilted up.
"But you also couldn't get up today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that. You couldn't open a curtain. You couldn't answer the door when Milliania knocked, and don't even pretend you didn't hear her. I heard the way you gasped. You couldn't do any of it. So maybe it's not really about him anymore, is it? Maybe you're just... this. Maybe this is just who you are now. Broken little Adelasta, drinking herself into the floor of a room that smells like a corpse's memory."
"He was everything to me."
"Was he? Funny, because Asenane seems to be handling 'everything' by turning an entire island into ice and keeping the whole world out. Elyonari's handling 'everything' by disappearing into her Overwrite and playing hidden protector. Edarea's out there actually ruling, doing the job she once left behind, holding an entire territory together with her bare hands. Narisva's training like her life depends on it. Even Phaenora... well. Phaenora's dead, so she wins the grief competition, I suppose. But you? You're down here counting to four and playing with a knife like a child who found her mother's sewing kit."
"You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly. I understand that you loved him so much you decided the correct response to losing him was to become someone he wouldn't even recognize. You think this is honoring him? Rotting in this room? He didn't fall in love with a corpse, Adelasta. He fell in love with the Grand Duchess who used to walk into a room and make the mood feel different. Where is she? Hm? I don't see her anywhere in here."
Adelasta's eyes stung. She hadn't cried in days — hadn't had the water left in her for it, she'd thought — but something hot and humiliating pricked at the corners of her eyes now.
"Oh, don't do that."
She kept reaching reaching out as if to brush a tear away, though her hand passed through nothing, because she wasn't there.
"Don't cry now. You didn't cry when it would have mattered. You didn't cry in front of his siblings, or Asenane, or anyone who might have actually caught you when you fell. No, you saved it all for me, for an audience of exactly one, who happens to be a delusion cooked up by your own exhausted, starving brain because you haven't let another living person talk to you for years."
"Please. Please just — leave me alone."
"I can't. I'm you. I don't go anywhere you don't go. I'll be here tomorrow night too, probably, and the night after that right up until you decide whether you're going to be the woman who ruled beside a Dynasty Monarch, or the woman who died in every way that matters the same day he did, except your heart kept beating out of spite."
She paused at the window, glancing back over her shoulder, and for just a moment, something that might have been real sorrow passed over her features.
"I really hope you pick the first one. I liked her. Everyone did."
Adelasta was alone again with the bottles and the dark and the dagger on the nightstand. She sat there a long time, not moving or speaking, staring at the empty space where she'd been standing.
"One... two... three... four..."