[Trasnmigration]
The knife slid between her ribs with the cruel precision of a lover's betrayal, its honed edge gliding through flesh like a poet's pen through parchment, inscribing her doom in scarlet verses across her shuddering skin. The blade—its polished surface catching the jaundiced glow of gaslight—parted her defenses as easily as he'd once parted her thighs, with that same devastating familiarity that now made the violation complete.
Elena's gasp tore through the rain-slicked alley, a sound so raw it seemed to flay the night itself, her fingers scrambling against the blood-slicked hilt protruding from her chest like some perverse trophy of victory. The carved bone grip felt obscenely warm beneath her slipping grasp, its intricate patterns—the same ones she'd admired while watching him craft it by firelight—now biting into her palm with mocking intimacy.
The pain was a living thing—not merely a sensation but a sentient predator, a white-hot serpent coiling around her ribs with possessive cruelty. Each ragged breath saw its fangs sink deeper, venom spreading through her veins in molten waves that turned her lungs to lead and her thoughts to smoke.
Blood rose in her throat with the inexorable tide of a drowning woman's final breaths, its copper tang mixing with the petrichor of wet stone and the faint bergamot of his cologne—that damned scent she'd bought him last winter, now the olfactory shroud of her murder. Her body arched against the cobblestones, every twitch sending fresh agony radiating outward in concentric circles, each pulse a red ripple in the dark pond of her dying.
His face hovered above her, but it wasn't the same face she used to love. The features she once adored now looked strange and twisted, like a funhouse mirror. The laugh lines she used to kiss every morning had turned into cold, deep cracks. His warm hazel eyes, once full of shared secrets, looked dull now—like old, faded coins. When he smirked, she saw the same teeth that once brushed her skin in moments of love, but now they showed in a cruel, empty grin that never reached his lifeless eyes.
When his hand grabbed the hilt, she felt the rough spots on his skin—familiar from years of sword training and carving wood—rub against her collarbone. It almost felt like a mockery of tenderness. Then came the twist. Slow. So painfully slow. The blade scraped against her rib, making a sharp, screeching sound that echoed through her bones. Every tiny movement was its own kind of agony.
Around them, the night carried on, uncaring—somewhere a church bell rang the hour, the smell of rotting garbage hung in the air, and rats scurried away from the sharp, metallic scent of blood. Just beyond the alley, life moved on: shopkeepers counted their earnings, children slept under warm blankets, and couples whispered promises they just might keep.
But here, trapped between a man's cruelty and the cold, hard ground, Elena's world shrank down to the feel of the knife, and the terrible look in his eyes as he leaned in—so close his breath brushed her hair one last time—and whispered the same tender words he'd said the night he first made love to her.
"Did you think you mattered?" His whisper had been softer than the kiss of the night wind, yet it cut deeper than any blade. "You were always just a stepping stone."
"I told you once, didn't I? 'You'll always belong to me'... and I always keep my promises," he snarled, driving the knife deeper into her flesh.
Her scream faded into the darkness along with her consciousness, leaving only the knife behind, standing firm in her broken chest. Its blade shone with a clear, awful truth: that love, once sharpened, can cut as deeply as hate.
The memory of those final moments seared through her consciousness—the coppery tang of blood flooding her mouth, the creeping numbness in her limbs, the way the stars had begun to wink out one by one as darkness claimed her.
Then—
Light.
Not the gentle glow of dawn, but a searing, all-consuming brilliance that tore through the void of death. Elena's new body arched violently as consciousness slammed into her, every nerve ending set ablaze with phantom pain from a death that still clung to her soul like a shroud. Her first breath was a ragged scream, lungs burning as they filled with air thick with the cloying scent of myrrh and blood—an intoxicating, nauseating perfume that spoke of ancient rituals and older sins.
She was kneeling on a raised obsidian dais, her wrists bound behind her back with golden cords that shimmered with unnatural light. The restraints looked delicate as spider silk but held with the unyielding strength of divine will. Her new body was a stranger's—pale skin unmarred by the scars of her past life, fingers too slender and delicate, nails painted a deep, ominous crimson that matched the slow drip of wax from towering black candles encircling the platform.
The dress they'd put her in was a masterpiece of calculated humiliation—crimson silk so dark it was nearly black in the flickering torchlight, the bodice embroidered with golden thread that formed arcane sigils pulsing with latent power. The neckline plunged scandalously low, the fabric clinging to every curve before spilling into a pool of blood-dark velvet at her knees. Every inch of the garment had been designed to display her like a trophy, a sacrificial offering dressed in the trappings of nobility.
The Great Hall stretched before her in a nightmare of gilded splendor. Towering obsidian pillars carved with writhing serpents reached toward a vaulted ceiling lost in shadows. Between them, nobles clad in silks and furs stood in silent vigil, their faces masks of feigned disinterest that couldn't quite conceal the hunger in their eyes. The air hummed with restrained violence, so thick with tension she could taste it—metallic and sharp on her tongue.
And at the center of this waking nightmare stood the Devil Duke.
Kaelvar Thorne dominated the hall without effort, his very presence bending reality around him like light warping at a black hole's event horizon. He was taller than any mortal had a right to be, his broad shoulders encased in a coat of living shadow—the fabric so dark it seemed to drink the light from the very air. Silver embroidery formed intricate, spiraling patterns across his chest, sigils that hurt the eyes if stared at too long, their meaning slithering away from comprehension like eels through dark water.
His face belonged on some forgotten god's altar—all sharp angles and unforgiving planes, lips carved into a permanent smirk that promised cruelty. But his eyes...
They burned.
Golden irises flecked with molten amber, pupils slit like a predator's, they pinned her in place with the weight of a thousand judgments. There was no humanity in that gaze, only the cold calculation of something that had long since stopped seeing people as anything more than toys to be broken.
A hushed whisper rustled through the assembled nobles as he took his first step forward. The sound of his boots against marble echoed like a headsman's axe falling—deliberate, inevitable. Elena's breath hitched, her pulse pounding so violently she could feel it in her temples, at her wrists, between her thighs. Some primal instinct screamed at her to run, to fight, to do anything but kneel there like a docile lamb.
Then the System voice came.
It wasn't heard so much as felt—a violation that slithered between her synapses like oil on water, mechanical and utterly alien.
"SYSTEM ERROR: Host Bound. Target—Duke Kaelvar Thorne. Initializing Soul Tether Protocol."
The words burned behind her eyes like glowing embers, etching themselves deep into her mind. Elena wanted to scream, to fight back—but no sound came. Worse, her body began to move on its own, rising from the platform with a strange, fluid grace, as if pulled by invisible strings she couldn't cut.
Panic thrashed inside her chest, sharp and wild. She struggled, every muscle shaking from the effort, sweat breaking along her brow. But whatever force held her only tightened its grip. A strange heat bloomed low in her stomach, spreading like fire through her veins. Her skin burned with sensitivity—every breath of air across her collarbones, every brush of cloth on her legs, felt too much, too intimate, too wrong.
The Duke stepped closer, just inches away, and his presence swallowed everything. His scent—old leather, iron, and something darker she couldn't name—invaded her nose, her mouth, her lungs, until she was breathing him in like poison.
Against her will, her body leaned toward him, pulled by a power she couldn't fight, even as her mind screamed no.
Then—contact.
Black-gloved fingers, cool as the grave, brushed beneath her chin. The touch burned through the fine leather, branding her skin where they connected. His thumb traced the line of her jaw with deceptive gentleness, the pad catching slightly on her lower lip. When he spoke, his voice was a velvet-wrapped blade sliding between her ribs.
"Look at you," he murmured, the words curling around her like smoke. "A little dove with predator's eyes." His grip tightened infinitesimally, forcing her to meet his gaze. "We'll see which one wins out."
The world narrowed to those golden eyes, to the heat of his body mere inches from hers, to the way her pulse fluttered like a caged bird beneath his fingers. When he leaned closer, his breath ghosted across her lips as he whispered his final commandment:
"Don't disappoint me."
In that moment, Elena understood with terrible clarity—this was no rebirth. This was the beginning of a beautifully crafted damnation.
But all of a sudden, she was dragged to the Duke's gothic estate in chains.