The stillness in the cottage was absolute. The snow that had blown in through the broken door hung suspended in mid-air, frozen like diamonds in a dream. Celestine could feel her heart slowing, the "Great Exchange" she had attempted lingering in a state of terrifying transition.
As she knelt there, her palm pressed to Jeremiah's, the darkness didn't just flow—it spoke. It wasn't a voice, but a flood of ancestral memory, the true origin of the curse she had carried like a hidden wound.
In the silence, Celestine saw them: the long line of women who came before her. She saw her great-grandmother, a woman of such fierce beauty that she had moved kings to madness. But the vision showed the truth behind the glamour. The family was not descended from sirens or demons, as the Church claimed.
They were the descendants of a forgotten daughter of the first garden—one who had witnessed the Fall and decided that if God would not provide comfort, she would steal it. She had woven the first love spell to ease her own loneliness, but in doing so, she had violated the sanctity of free will.
The "Curse" was the universe's equilibrium. To force a heart to love was to drain the life from the vessel. Over generations, the magic had mutated. It had become a hungry thing. If a woman of her line loved falsely, she took the man's power. If she loved truly, the universe demanded a balance—a life for a life.
"You cannot love," the ancestral whispers hissed in her mind. "To love is to consume. You are a void, Celestine. Let him go and live, or hold him and watch him ash."
Celestine looked at Jeremiah. The black veins were now glowing with a dull, thudding heat. He was so close to the end. The "Exchange" was stalled because she was still trying to control the outcome. She was trying to force the universe to take her instead.
"Even now," she whispered, her voice trembling, "I am trying to use magic to save him. I am still trying to pull the strings."
She realized then that the only way to save him wasn't through a ritual or a trade. It was through a total, agonizing surrender. She had to stop fighting the curse and stop fighting God.
She let go of the silver knife. She pulled her hand away from the "Exchange." She didn't try to pull the sickness into herself. Instead, she simply climbed onto the bed and pulled Jeremiah's head into her lap.
"I won't trade," she sobbed, the tears washing away the soot on her face. "I won't bargain. I just love him. If he dies, let him die in the arms of someone who finally stopped playing God."
In the corner of the room, the folding shadows began to glow.
Jeremiah's eyes, once clouded and grey, suddenly cleared. He wasn't looking at the ceiling anymore; he was looking at the entity standing in the doorway—a presence that felt like the sound of a million wings beating in unison.
"Father," Jeremiah breathed. It wasn't the way he addressed the Bishop. It was the way a child speaks to a parent they thought they had disappointed, only to find them standing at the bedside.
Celestine felt a warmth she hadn't known since she was a child. The frozen snow began to melt, falling to the floor as simple, harmless water. The suffocating weight of her ancestors—the voices of the manipulative, the lonely, and the cursed—simply evaporated.
The Divine wasn't there to judge the priest for his broken vows. He wasn't there to punish the woman for her spells.
He was there because the love between a fallen man and a cursed woman had become the brightest thing in the world. It was a love that had moved from a "spell" to a "sacrifice," and in the eyes of the Architect, that was the only law that mattered.
The black blood on Jeremiah's skin began to shimmer, turning from the color of oil to the color of pure, liquid silver. The curse wasn't being redirected. It was being rewritten.