(Aria's POV)
I kneel in chains that burn my shadow magic away, leaving me helplessly human.
"Three days," Elena says, her voice deceptively calm as she circles me. "Three days I've been scraping Moretti blood off my ritual altar, and still no sign of Dante's corpse."
I keep my eyes fixed on the stone floor, trying to ignore the way her designer heels click against the concrete like a countdown timer.
"Look at me when I'm speaking to you."
The command hits like a physical blow, and my head snaps up involuntarily.
"There." She stops directly in front of me, close enough that I can smell her perfume mixed with the metallic scent of fresh blood. "Now we can have a proper conversation."
She raises her hand, and I see the shallow cut across her palm, blood dripping steadily into the silver chalice at her feet. The ritual circle around us pulses with dark energy, and I realize with growing horror what she's preparing.
"You're going to tell me the truth," she continues, her voice hypnotic and terrible. "Every word, every thought, every moment of weakness that let our greatest enemy slip through your fingers."
"I told you already." My voice sounds hoarse from three days of screaming. "He got lucky. I missed."
Elena's laugh is like breaking glass. "You missed? You, who could hit a target blindfolded at fifty yards by age twelve? You, who I shaped into the perfect weapon over sixteen years of training?"
The blood in the chalice begins to glow, and I feel its pull against my will. Blood magic isn't just about control—it's about truth. It reaches into your mind and drags out everything you're trying to hide.
"Let me ask you again, and this time, don't insult my intelligence." Elena's fingers trace the air above the chalice, and the blood rises in a thin stream, hovering between us like a crimson serpent. "What happened in that room?"
The magic hits me like a sledgehammer, and the words spill out before I can stop them.
"I looked into his mind."
"And what did you see?"
"Pain." The admission tears from my throat. "The same pain I carry. The same stolen childhood. The same..."
"The same what?" Elena's voice drops to a whisper, but the blood magic amplifies it until it fills the entire room.
"The same cage." The words taste like bile. "He's trapped just like me. Made into something he never chose to be."
Elena's perfect composure cracks for just a moment, revealing the rage underneath. "You saw yourself in him."
"Yes."
"And that made you weak."
"Yes."
"Say it properly." The blood magic tightens around my throat like a noose. "Say what you are."
"I am weak." Each word feels like swallowing glass. "I am a failure. I am..."
"Disappointing." Elena lets the blood drop back into the chalice with a splash. "But not surprising. I've been expecting this day for years."
The casual way she says it makes my stomach drop. "What do you mean?"
"Did you think this was about ending the war?" Elena circles me again, her fingers trailing along the ritual symbols carved into the floor. "Oh, my dear child. This was never about the Morettis. This was about you."
I stare at her, trying to process what she's saying. "I don't understand."
"The mission was a test. The most important test of your life." Elena stops at a stone altar covered in ancient books and vials of various substances. "Would you choose duty over sentiment? Would you complete your purpose, or would you let emotion corrupt everything I built?"
"You wanted me to fail?"
"I wanted to know if you were ready. If the weapon I created was truly perfect, or if there were still... human imperfections that needed to be addressed."
The pieces click together in my mind, and horror washes over me in waves. "You knew. You knew I would hesitate."
"I suspected. There were signs over the years, moments where you showed unnecessary mercy to targets who reminded you of your past. A softness that I thought I'd trained out of you." Elena selects a crystal vial filled with something that looks like liquid starlight. "But I learned long ago that the human heart is remarkably resilient. Sometimes direct training isn't enough."
She holds up the vial, and the light inside it pulses like a heartbeat. "Sometimes you need to cut out the infection entirely."
"What is that?"
"Your salvation." Elena's smile is worse than her anger. "A memory elixir I've been perfecting for decades. One drop, and years of experience simply... disappear. Thoughts, feelings, connections—all gone, leaving behind only what I choose to preserve."
I pull against the chains, but they hold firm. The metal burns against my skin, and I can feel my strength ebbing away. "Elena, please. I can do better. I can..."
"You will do exactly what I program you to do." She approaches the chalice again, adding three drops of the elixir to the blood. The mixture turns silver, then black, then silver again. "No more conscience. No more hesitation. No more human weakness to interfere with your purpose."
"This is insane. You can't just erase who I am."
"I'm not erasing who you are, darling. I'm removing who you're not supposed to be." Elena lifts the chalice with both hands, her voice taking on the cadence of ritual. "The scared little girl who cried for her parents? Gone. The young woman who questioned my methods? Gone. The weapon who showed mercy to an enemy? Gone."
The basement door slams open, and three other family members file in, Tony, Elena's younger brother; Victoria, her lieutenant; and James, my supposed cousin who's never looked at me like family.
"Is it ready?" Tony asks, his voice tight with barely controlled excitement.
"Almost." Elena doesn't look away from me. "Witness, all of you. Tonight, Aria Castellano truly dies. What emerges will be everything she was meant to be."
"Elena, wait." Victoria steps forward, her face troubled. "Are you sure about this? Memory magic is... unpredictable. What if you erase too much?"
"Then I'll build her from scratch." Elena's voice is iron. "I've done it before."
Before? The words hit me like a physical blow. How many times has she done this to me? How many versions of myself have been erased and rebuilt?
"The others are asking questions," James says. "About why the mission failed. About why we're keeping her alive."
Elena raises the chalice above her head. "By tomorrow, they'll have their perfect weapon back. Better than before. Stronger. More focused."
"What about the memories of her training?" Marcus asks. "Her combat skills?"
"Those stay. I'm not destroying a perfectly good weapon—just removing the defects." Elena's eyes meet mine across the ritual circle. "She'll remember how to kill, how to hunt, how to use her abilities. She just won't remember why she might choose not to."
I try to speak, to beg, to scream, but the blood magic has paralyzed my vocal cords. I can only watch as Elena begins the incantation, her voice weaving through syllables that make reality bend around them.
The world starts to blur at the edges. Memories flicker behind my eyes like old films—my parents' faces, my first kill, the moment I looked into Dante's mind and saw my own pain reflected back at me.
Hold onto that, I tell myself desperately. Whatever happens, hold onto that moment. Hold onto him.
Elena's voice follows me into the growing darkness: "When you wake up, you'll remember only what I want you to remember. You'll be grateful for the gift I'm giving you. You'll be perfect."