It was beautiful. Sickeningly beautiful. The kind of beauty that made you question everything you'd ever been told.
Back in Ashveil, the tales were clear: the people of Aurel were monsters. We'd been told they wore human skin like costumes. They were said to smile while setting cities on fire, to laugh as they watched the Undercity rot. We were taught to fear them, hate them, envy them. They were the puppeteers of fate, the architects of suffering. They had the money, the knowledge, and the power.
But now I stood among them. And they were… normal. Too normal.
They laughed. They danced. They complimented each other's masks and gowns like it meant something. One woman cried over a broken shoe. Someone offered me a drink and called me beautiful.
Because if they weren't monsters… then maybe we were. Maybe Ashveil had built its hatred out of envy. Maybe we'd cursed them because it was easier than admitting we'd been left behind.
I smiled—sincerely, out of happiness—for the first time in ages, and lifted the drink to my mouth. But Darius snatched my other hand and led me to the dancing terrace, where people were dancing violently—spinning, stomping, colliding. It was a frenzy.
The drink had started to make me dizzy, high on something sweet and strange.
And I started to dance with him. My body moved on its own, like the music had slipped beneath my skin and rewired me. I couldn't tell if it was the drink, the rhythm, or something in Darius's grip—but I stopped resisting.
His hands slipped from my hands to my waist and they were starting to go down. Euphoria.
I was drunk on Euphoria.
He smiled, but somehow it felt off. Like he was staring at me with a strange, unreadable look—half amusement, half calculation.
Then the music shifted. Slowed. Twisted. The air changed. Laughter turned sharp. Lights flickered. And suddenly, everything went black.
I reached out, blindly, hoping to touch someone—anyone—but my hands met something cold. Smooth. Like a wall made of glass.
"You wanted power," he said, his voice echoing from somewhere I couldn't quite decipher. "Then earn it."
The floor beneath me shifted. Symbols lit up. Alchemical runes I didn't recognize pulsed with heat. The drink in my veins felt like it was burning through me, unlocking something I hadn't asked for.
I tried to summon light—just a flicker, just enough to see. And that's when I realized: the surface I'd touched was a glass box. I was inside it.
But when I lit that spark, it didn't stay small. It multiplied. A hundredfold. And everything burned. The fire didn't just light the box—it consumed it. Consumed me. My body trembled, overwhelmed by the heat, the magic, the unraveling. So I had to turn it off. Or maybe… it turned itself off.
"Not that easy, my butterfly."
What?
The voice slithered through the dark like silk. Then, one by one, the moonlanterns flared to life—in white. Cold, sterile white. It gave the place an eerie glow, like moonlight trapped in glass. Shadows stretched unnaturally. The air felt thinner, sharper.
Everything had changed. It was as if I'd been transferred to an entirely different place.
The caraval was no longer warm and chaotic. It was quiet. Too quiet. No one was no longer around. Petals fell from nowhere, dissolving before they touched the ground.
Then a figure appeared.
Darius.
But his mask was different now—sleek, silver, feathered at the edges like wings. He was wearing a white and silver robe that shimmered with translucent threads, flowing like mist caught in moonlight. The shoulders had what looked like white wings.
He clapped his hands behind his back. "Hello Darling, are you ready for our game?"
"What kind of bullshit is that?" I hit the glass once, twice. It didn't crack. It didn't even echo.
"Well, well," he singsonged, tilting his head. "I remember you were so eager to learn alchemy. Have you changed your mind?"
I didn't reply.
He stepped closer, the silver mask gleaming under the pale lantern light. "Oh, have you forgotten? You asked for power. And power, my butterfly, never comes without a price."
He spread his hands, and the moonlanterns flared brighter—cold white light spilling across the space like frost. Figures began to stir behind him.
Two mechanical dancers twirled in the foreground, their silver limbs jointed like marionettes, skirts of silver flaring with each spin. One had a clock embedded in its chest, ticking loudly, as if counting down to something unseen. Above them, floating clocks drifted in slow orbit—some shattered, some melting, all out of sync.
High above, figures swung from crimson silk swings, their bodies arched in impossible poses. However they didn't seem human at all.
At the far end of the hall, a raised stage loomed. Three regal silhouettes stood beneath a velvet curtain, watching like judges. Their faces were masked, their hands gloved.
"I'm Darius," he said, his voice smooth and theatrical. "The exiled king. King of Games."
He clapped his hands behind his back again. "You might have asked the wrong person to teach you alchemy, butterfly."
Shit!
He raised a finger, his tone amused and cruel. "Game ONE"