Karina

They told me not to open the western door.

They didn't scream it. They didn't bolt it shut. They whispered the warning like superstition-soft and sharp, like the whisper of a blade in the dark.

"Nothing grows there anymore," one of the younger maids had said, her eyes never meeting mine. "Nothing that should."

But something had changed in me since crossing the Frostline. I was no longer the quiet daughter they sent away like an unwanted coin. I wasn't some doll to place on an altar and hope the gods would take kindly to the offering.

Something inside me had awakened.

And it wanted answers.

So, long after the hearths dimmed and the halls fell still, I followed the frost-laced corridor west.

My footsteps echoed, the sound swallowed quickly by the weight of stone and shadow. Every inch of this castle breathed secrets, but the air here felt different. Denser. As if it remembered things I wasn't meant to know.

I reached the door.

It was taller than any other I'd seen in the keep-arched and etched with creeping vines that wrapped through curling runes. The iron handle was so cold it burned the moment my fingers closed around it. I winced, but didn't let go.

The mark on my collarbone flared beneath my gown, humming softly under my skin.

It wanted me to go through.

So I did.

The door creaked open into a garden long lost to time.

Moonlight poured through broken arches overhead, cascading across twisted stone paths, skeletal trees, and thorn-choked statues. The remains of once-beautiful flowerbeds curled in on themselves like fingers closing around secrets. Snow dusted everything, but it didn't melt. It never would.

The cold here was ancient. Not of weather-but of memory.

Still, I stepped inside.

The moment the soles of my slippers touched the moss-slick path, the mark on my skin pulsed. A soft light bled through the fabric of my nightgown-silver, delicate, alive.

And then... the garden shifted.

The dead vines trembled. The trees groaned. From the base of a cracked rosebush, a single bloom unfurled, silvery and trembling as if waking from a long sleep.

My breath caught.

The frost didn't cling to me. It moved with me. Around me. The garden reacted-like I belonged here.

I wandered deeper, through an arch strangled by black ivy, into the heart of the ruin. At its center stood a fountain, long dry. At its core rose a statue of a woman carved in a way that made my stomach twist.

She wasn't stone.

Not entirely.

She looked... real. Frozen mid-scream, her mouth open, hands raised toward the sky as if trying to grasp something already lost. Her skin was grey, cracked, dusted in frost-but she wore a gown like mine, silver silk now turned to ash. And carved into her collarbone, barely visible through the decay, was **the mark.**

The same one burning against my chest.

I stepped closer. "You were a bride," I whispered.

My fingers stretched out instinctively, drawn to her like she might understand. Might speak.

"Don't touch her."

The voice was deep. Steady. Familiar.

I turned, already knowing who I'd find.

Rhydan stood in the shadows beneath the ivy-wrapped archway, the fur of his cloak catching the moonlight, his golden eyes glowing like embers in a dying fire.

His expression was unreadable, but his body was tense. Like a bow pulled taut.

"I didn't mean to-" I began.

"She was the first," he said, voice low. "And she should have been the last."

I looked back at the statue. The air around her was heavier. Denser. As though grief had made it permanent.

"What happened to her?"

"She was sacrificed," he said after a long silence. "Just like all the others."

My mouth went dry.

"All the others?"

His gaze never left the statue. "Every hundred years, one is sent. And none return. The kingdom calls it tradition. A sacred bond. But it's a curse. A lie dressed in ceremony."

I swallowed, throat thick.

"Why didn't you stop them?"

"I tried."

His voice cracked like a frozen branch underfoot. And for a moment, I saw the man beneath the title. Not the Beast King. Just Rhydan.

He took a step closer to me. The garden didn't react to him the way it had to me. The frost stayed cold. The vines didn't stir.

He looked down at my collarbone. At the mark still glowing faintly.

"You're different," he said.

"You keep saying that," I whispered. "But you won't say why."

Before he could answer, a gust of wind curled through the ruin, trailing the scent of burnt roses. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

"Did you feel that?" I asked.

He didn't move. But his jaw clenched.

Then I heard a soft Feminine sound.

"Karina..."

I turned sharply.

She stood behind the fountain.

A woman in a gown of torn silk, her hair long and black, her skin pale as snow. She wasn't the statue. She wasn't stone.

She was ghost.

I couldn't breathe.

Her face was familiar-not from memory, but from the dreams. The voice. The flicker of sorrow that always lingered at the edge of my nightmares.

She lifted a hand and pointed-past me. Toward the edge of the garden.

Toward a path I hadn't noticed before.

"Follow."

"Karina-don't," Rhydan said sharply. His voice was tight. Strained.

But the mark on my skin pulsed again, stronger now. Not in pain-but in recognition.

"She's calling to me," I said.

"She's a shadow of pain," he replied. "That path leads nowhere you'll want to go."

But I had to go.

I stepped past the statue, past the fountain, and onto the hidden path. The ghost waited, just ahead, always a few paces beyond reach. The garden narrowed. The air grew colder. The silence sharpened.

Finally, I reached a door carved into the base of the castle's western wall. Ivy had nearly consumed it. The ghost stood beside it now, her head tilted.

She didn't speak.

She didn't need to.

I reached out and opened it.

The chamber inside was dark, round, and quiet.

But as I stepped in, torches flared to life along the walls-blue flame licking at ancient stone. Light flooded the room, revealing row after row of portraits. Women. Regal. Pale. Every one of them dressed in silver. Brides.

My blood turned to ice.

Each frame bore a name.

Yvaine of Eldenmere.

Aneliese of Solmarin.

Liora of Harrowind.

All royal and all marked.

And across every painted throat, a crimson slash had been drawn.

My heart stuttered.

They were all dead.

Every single one of them.

And then I saw it.

At the far end of the chamber, mounted on its own pedestal, hung one final portrait.

Its frame was gilded in gold.

Its canvas was blank.

But in the center, faint and ghostlike, a face was beginning to take shape.

Mine.

"No," I whispered.

The ghost turned to me, and for the first time, she looked afraid.

"Stop the wheel," she said. "Or be its end."

I backed away, but the chamber was spinning now. My pulse thundered. The air grew thick.

Suddenly I heard a noise again from another angle.

The door slammed shut behind me.

Now I wasn't alone.