Her brothers shouted, but the guards held them down. Even the doctor stepped back slightly, watching in fascination as her transformation began.
"Maya!" Fahad cried out, struggling against his chains. "Stop this! She's dying!"
The doctor's smile widened, cruel and radiant. "No," he said softly. "She's being reborn."
The veins beneath her skin turned black. Dark light coursed through her body, every pulse a violent flash that shook the air.
Her breathing quickened, shallow, frantic — and yet still she made no sound. Her body arched backward, her head thrown toward the ceiling as if she were trying to breathe through stone.
The marble beneath her cracked. Thin fissures spread outward, glowing like molten veins.
Her hair fanned out around her head, suspended as if underwater.
Then came the voice — not hers, but the hum of power awakening, low and immense, filling every corner of the hall.
The chandeliers began to swing. Candles guttered and went out. Darkness pressed down like a physical thing.
It began as a pulse inside her chest, faint at first, like the flutter of a second heartbeat. Then it grew stronger.
Her eyes shot open, glowing with two circles of pure darkness rimmed in faint silver.
From her back, a faint shimmer of energy unfolded — like wings of shadow and mist.
Her brothers screamed her name again, but their words drowned beneath the roar of the unseen storm.
The doctor watched, trembling between terror and triumph. "Yes," he whispered. "The energy signature is aligning. Her cells remember. The vessel accepts it. She's perfect."
But the perfection was unraveling him. "The containment is broken. Her power is coming out."
Maya's body lifted from the floor, slow at first, then steady — floating, suspended by nothing but the force inside her.
Her hair lifted around her face, weightless, caught in an invisible storm. Her arms hung limply at her sides.
Her eyes opened. They were black — not the color of shadow, but of absence, of a void so deep it swallowed every reflection.
The runes along her skin flared. Symbols crawled across her shoulders and down her spine, alive with ancient light. Her veins burned like rivers of starlight through the darkness.
The sound was unbearable now — not heard but felt, vibrating through bone.
Fahan, kneeling beside Farhan, could barely breathe. "She's not herself," he gasped. "She's something else."
The guards stepped back, fear cracking their discipline. One dropped his weapon and fled toward the door — only to be pulled backward by an unseen force.
His scream was short, cut clean. His body hit the floor, eyes wide, empty.
Maya had not moved.
But the air around her pulsed, invisible hands closing on all things living. The darkness within her began to pour outward, silent and endless — a river of energy that filled the room with pressure so great that even the air seemed to kneel.
The guards staggered back, shielding their faces.
The chandeliers above shattered one by one, raining glass like frozen rain.
The marble cracked wider beneath her, spiderwebs of black and silver light spreading in all directions.
The doctor's voice shook slightly.
"Control sequence, seventeen-beta," he said, raising a small black device. "Override — stand by!"
He pressed the button.
The machine hissed and sparked — nothing.
"Seventeen-beta!" he shouted again, panic rising. "Respond!"
Maya's head turned slowly toward him. A movement so quiet it made the air tremble. The black light reflected off her skin like oil on water.
Her lips parted, and for the first time since she drank the vial, she spoke — her voice soft, distant, stripped of warmth.
"I am not yours."
The doctor froze. The words were simple, but they did not sound like defiance — they sounded like truth carved in stone.
"You don't understand what you're saying," he whispered, taking a step back. "You're under my—"
The rest of the sentence vanished.
Her power erupted.
It was silent, yet deafening.
A pulse of darkness rippled outward, bending light, shattering glass. The chains binding the prisoners broke like thread.
The guards were thrown against the walls; several did not rise again.
The chandeliers above exploded, raining a thousand burning shards.
Her brothers shielded their faces as wind and shadow tore through the room.
Maya floated higher, her hair a storm of black silk. Every breath she took seemed to draw the air from the world itself.
The doctor stumbled, clutching his chest. He could feel his own heartbeat echoing inside her pulse.
It was as if the universe had shifted — as if she were now the center and all else revolved around her.
"No…" he gasped. "It's impossible. The Darkness was supposed to enslave you!"
Her gaze met his again, those bottomless eyes calm and cold. The glow beneath her skin brightened until her figure was a silhouette carved from light.
The old scars had become symbols — maps of energy, veins of the abyss made flesh.
She raised one hand — slowly, as if remembering how motion worked.
At her gesture, the air rippled. The man's control device shattered in his palm, its fragments melting into dust.
He screamed — more in disbelief than pain.
"You can't! I made you!"
Her expression did not change. The floor trembled. The marble split completely, a circle of darkness expanding outward from where she hovered.
Every candle went out. Every shadow bent toward her, as though in worship.
Her brothers clung to each other, their eyes wide, their hearts torn between terror and awe.
Even the remaining guests fell to their knees, some praying, some too numb for prayer.
The doctor staggered backward until his spine struck the wall. His voice was a whisper now, cracked with horror.
"What are you?"
Maya's reply was almost soundless, carried more by the trembling air than her lips.
"What you made. What you feared. I am the Rose of Death."
And then the storm consumed the hall.
Black fire tore through the room in spiraling waves. Windows shattered, sending diamond rain into the night.
The chandeliers fell, one after another, their broken arms burning like falling stars. The ground itself seemed to breathe — exhaling centuries of buried light.
Through it all, Maya stood untouched, her figure steady amid ruin.
Her face remained expressionless, but something vast and wordless moved behind her eyes — not emotion, not thought, but memory of power long denied.
At last the surge began to fade.
The air cooled. The thunder within her chest subsided.
She descended slowly, her feet touching the fractured floor.
The marks upon her skin still glowed faintly, like embers after a storm.
The silence that followed was not peace; it was aftermath.
The doctor lay half-collapsed against the wall, his breath ragged. "You survived," he rasped. "You shouldn't have… You weren't meant to."
And then the doctor lay unconscious on the floor.
Maya looked at him, and though her face was calm, the air around her hummed with the weight of inevitability.
The Darkness of Hell had not broken her.
It had freed her.
The hall stood in ruin — a cathedral of destruction, lit only by the faint silver of moonlight through shattered glass.
The guests trembled; her brothers watched her as one might watch a god neither good nor evil.
And in that vast stillness, Maya remained unmoving, her hands at her sides, her gaze distant.
The experiment was complete.
But the creator no longer controlled the creation.
For the first time in her existence, Maya was untethered — no strings, no code, no command.
Only silence.
And the darkness that once sought to enslave her now waited, quietly, for her to command it.