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The Seal Beneath Her Skin

Author: Holland Ross
last update Last Updated: 2025-06-29 04:06:06

Arielle

The world was breaking.

The Rift bled through the fault line in jagged pulses of light and smoke, vomiting horrors that did not belong in any realm—not ours, not theirs, not the space between. Cadets fell in screams and sobs, blades clashing, magic cracking like whips through the blood-mist.

I could barely see through the carnage.

But I saw it.

That thing rising from the wound in the earth. A creature forged of smoke and ruin, its ribcage glowing with runes that twisted in midair. Its head split down the middle, no mouth, no face, just a void that sang in a thousand voices.

And somehow, I knew—

If that thing stepped fully through the fault, the world would never close again.

I felt the bond between Lucian and me snap like a pulled thread. It didn’t break—it clenched. It seared.

Lucian fell to one knee, gripping his chest like he couldn’t breathe.

And I… I heard it.

The voice beneath the Rift.

It didn’t speak in words. It spoke in feeling. In memory. In some old, godless rhythm
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  • Her Enemy, His Curse   What the flame remembers

    ArielleThe chamber they gave us wasn’t a room.It was a sanctum.No walls. No doors. Only smoke and starlight—and the endless hum of power that came with belonging to the Tower now. The Trial Masters were below, beginning their descent into ruin or glory. The Tower had made its choices.And so had I.Lucian stood with his back to me, half in shadow, half in light. The ash-slick rune on his spine still shimmered, pulsing to the rhythm of a second heartbeat—mine.The bond hadn’t quieted. If anything, it had deepened into something… breathless. Not painful, not yet. But close. Like we were both holding something inside we didn’t yet know how to name.“You haven’t said anything,” I whispered.“I don’t know what it would be,” he said without turning. “Words feel… too mortal.”“They are.”He finally turned to face me.And my heart did something ancient.Because he wasn’t just Lucian anymore.His eyes still held the storm I loved. But the edges of him had hardened, shaped by something colde

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   The heartless and hopeful

    LucianThe Tower had no heart. But it had memory.And in the dark between one stair and the next, it remembered me.It knew what I was.What I’d done.What I would become.I’d thought the dagger was the price. I was wrong. The price was me.Each step of the climb had peeled back a layer I thought I'd buried deep: my rage, my grief, my guilt. Each stair made me bleed in ways that had nothing to do with skin.I no longer knew what waited at the top only that she was there.ArielleThe moment Lucian crossed the threshold, the world staggered.Not trembled—staggered. As if it had held its breath for too long and was only now remembering how to exhale.The Tower dimmed. The torches flared, then snuffed themselves one by one. Darkness did not fall. It descended—like royalty.Lucian stood at the top of the stairway, silhouetted in it. Raw. Ripped open. His shirt was gone, and across his chest, ancient symbols burned like firebrands. Not from magic. From meaning.He wasn’t just carrying the d

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   The blade between us

    LucianThe path back wasn't a path at all.It was memory.Pain and power braided together like the twisted strands of the dagger’s hilt. Every step I took echoed with something ancient, something watching. The blade hadn’t stopped whispering since I claimed it. It didn’t speak in words anymore.It remembered.Every betrayal ever carved in bone.Every lover turned weapon.Every king who fell to his knees before it, and every god who bled because he didn’t.It wasn’t just judging me now.It was teaching me.And I—I was listening.The door reformed behind me when I emerged, not with stone, but with silence. The kind that pressed against your chest and demanded reverence. The Tower was waiting.But not for me.Her.Arielle.I didn’t have to see her to feel the shift. The air above was burning cold, the kind of heat that scalded from the inside out. The kind that transformed.My heart stuttered. Then beat again, harder.She was choosing her court.And if they failed—They’d die for it.Th

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   Temperance of the Dagger

    LucianThe door didn’t open.It breathed.A pulse—slow, ancient, wrong—throbbed through the obsidian surface like a heartbeat with no body to house it. The runes beneath my feet lit dimly, one by one, as if some old language was remembering how to speak again. I didn’t have to touch the stone.It touched me.The burn started in my palm, racing up my veins like fire laced with ice. Not pain. Not quite. But the sense that if I let go, if I gave this magic an inch—It would take everything.“Why are you here?” the woman asked again, voice deeper now, layered with something not human.Not even divine.“What do you seek in the belly of gods?”I stared at the crescent-marked door and said the only thing that mattered.“Arielle.”The shadows parted.The door did not open in the usual sense. It simply... ceased to exist.And beyond it—darkness.Not absence.Presence.The kind that watched.I stepped inside.The scent of iron grew thick. Not fresh blood.Old blood. Sacred blood. Spilled in sac

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   The first trial

    LucianThere are thirteen of them.Thirteen masks. Thirteen blades. Thirteen chances for death, disguised as opportunity.The stone ring thrummed with old magic, the kind that crawled beneath the skin and whispered your secrets to the dirt. I kept to Arielle’s right—close enough to shield, not close enough to smother. She wouldn't allow that anymore.She moved like shadow given form, like the war she was born to wage. And as the contenders circled, I couldn’t help but watch the way they watched her.Like wolves at the scent of blood.And she?She offered them her throat with a smile."Let the Trials begin," Arielle said, voice cutting clean through the cold.A tremor moved through the circle. Magic rippled. Torches flared blue.And then—Chaos.Two contenders clashed instantly—steel on steel, no hesitation. Another dropped low, attempting to sweep a third’s legs before disappearing in smoke. One masked figure didn’t move at all, just watched Arielle the way I did.Like they knew her.

  • Her Enemy, His Curse   Book Two-Chapter One: the blade below

    LucianThe first time I saw her, she was nothing but defiance and blood.The second time, she was fire.Now—She’s something else.Something worse.Or better.Depending which side of the blade you stand on.She stood in the center of the tower chamber, robes soaked in light and shadow, and I couldn’t breathe. Not from fear. From the weight of knowing—She wasn’t mine anymore.Not entirely.She belonged to something older now. Older than courts. Older than kings. Older than death.And they knew it, too.The Hollowguard.The assassins beneath the court.The mirror that cracked without being touched.Even the gods hiding in their ruined temples—they knew.The Queen had returned.But she hadn't come back to rule.She’d come back to finish what the fire started.And if I was honest with myself—A part of me was afraid.Not of her.But of what I’d do if they tried to take her again.Because I’d seen the dagger. I’d felt it through the bond—venom-coated obsidian, forged under a blood moon.M

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