---
The dream began with golden light.
It streamed through a white marble hall with no end and no walls, only endless pillars that stretched into the sky. Petals floated on air that held no wind, and silence hummed like a lullaby.
And there, standing in the center of that divine place, was **Seraphina Elenora Vellareine**.
Barefoot. Dressed in white.
Opposite her stood a figure—neither man nor woman, face shifting like light on water. Cloaked in gold and shadow. Eyes like stars.
"The gods have watched your story," the figure said, voice echoing like a thousand bells. "You have walked a path stained with ambition… and sorrow."
Seraphina stood still. Her heart felt too calm for the moment. Perhaps she already knew what was coming.
"You have one year left to live," the figure continued, without mercy or regret. "Use it as you will. There will be no miracles. No extensions. When the year ends, so too will your life."
The dream shimmered.
"And… no one else shall know. This fate is yours alone to bear."
---
She woke in the dark, her hands clutching the silken sheets of her grand bed.
The fire in the hearth had long died, leaving only glowing embers. Moonlight filtered through the tall windows, casting long silver shadows on the velvet carpet.
Seraphina lay still, breath rising and falling with perfect poise.
No tears. No screams.
Only silence.
After a few moments, she sat up slowly, reaching for the nearby glass of water with a hand that didn't shake.
It made sense.
It all… made sense now.
The strange emptiness in her chest. The hollowness behind her eyes. The ache that no healer could find.
She wasn't cursed. She wasn't sick. She was simply—
**Marked.**
By the gods themselves.
"One year," she whispered, voice barely audible. "Three hundred sixty-five days."
She looked toward the gilded mirror on the far wall. Her reflection stared back at her: pale skin, sharp features, silver hair braided like chains, garnet-red eyes colder than winter frost.
**The villainess of the story.**
The future queen. The one fated to torment the heroine, cling to a loveless fiancé, and fall in disgrace or death.
But not this time.
Not anymore.
She rose from the bed and walked barefoot across the cold floor, standing before the mirror. She stared at herself—not as a noblewoman or puppet of fate—but as a girl.
A dying girl.
And she smiled.
---
The next morning, the palace was in uproar.
Lady Seraphina had missed her morning etiquette lesson. Her ladies-in-waiting found her strolling barefoot through the rose gardens in a simple silk robe, sipping tea and humming to herself.
That same afternoon, she appeared at the royal library, requested seven books on painting, herbalism, and commoner poetry, and left a stunned librarian in her wake.
She canceled her weekly private tea with the Queen.
She refused to scold her younger cousin for spilling ink on a priceless tapestry.
She even laughed—**laughed**—when one of the young noble suitors tripped over himself trying to impress her with bad poetry.
It didn't take long for the rumors to begin.
"She must be planning something."
"Is she giving up the crown?"
"Is it heartbreak? Madness? A new scheme?"
Even **Prince Kael**, her long-time fiancé and the kingdom's golden heir, seemed uncertain. He watched her with narrowed eyes during the next ball, standing beside the ever-pure heroine, **Lady Celestia**.
Seraphina noticed, of course.
But she didn't care.
Not anymore.
---
That night, lying in bed with a book of seaside poems she'd never bothered to read before, Seraphina looked at the stars from her balcony and whispered to herself:
"I've been so careful all my life. So perfect. So cruel. So proud…"
She turned a page. Smiled at a line about gulls and salt and first kisses.
"I have one year. Just one. And I'm going to live it however I want."
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time since she could remember…
She slept like a girl who was finally free.
---