The night after the prom, Elian barely slept. The stranger's words looped through his mind like a haunting melody he couldn't silence. Each whisper clawed at him: sacrifice, inheritance, shadows. He wasn't just a student anymore. He was being hunted by something ancient, something inevitable.
The next morning, rain lashed against the windows with violent anger. It wasn't just any storm. It was the kind that seemed to bleed sorrow into the world itself.
Elian sat by the window of his tiny apartment, staring out into the gray wasteland of the city. Lena hadn't messaged him. No one had. It was as if, overnight, the world had begun to abandon him.
Then the letter came.
It was slid under his door without a sound. No footsteps, no knock, no shadow. Just the paper, lying there like a dead thing waiting to be picked up.
Elian hesitated before bending down to retrieve it. His name was written in deep black ink across the front—Elian Marrick—a name that felt heavier now than ever before.
Inside, the message was chillingly simple:
> "The price for your future must be paid. Come alone. Midnight. Edgewater Bridge."
There was no signature, no mark, nothing else. Just a demand that felt like a blade pressed against his throat.
---
The bridge loomed out of the fog like a dying beast, its iron supports rusted and broken in places. Elian arrived early, but he was not alone.
A figure stood waiting for him, cloaked in darkness, their face hidden under a black umbrella.
"You're early," the figure said, their voice a cold whisper.
"Who are you?" Elian demanded, clutching the letter tighter.
The figure tilted their head, as if amused. "The one who delivers the terms. The contract for your life."
Elian's stomach twisted. "What do you want from me?"
A second figure emerged from the shadows behind the first—this one dragging someone with them. It was a girl. A classmate. Mia. She was gagged, her eyes wide with terror, struggling against the bonds that tied her wrists.
Elian's blood turned to ice.
"You must choose," the figure said, voice gentle, almost kind. "Her life... or your freedom. If you refuse, both of you will suffer. If you accept, she will die, and you will step into the world that awaits you."
Elian felt like vomiting. The storm battered the bridge, the wind howling like a chorus of the damned. Mia's pleading eyes stabbed through him harder than any knife could.
"This isn't a choice!" Elian shouted. "You're monsters!"
The figure shrugged lightly. "Every empire is built on blood. Yours will be no different."
The second figure pulled out a long, silver dagger and placed it in Elian's hand. It was so cold that it burned his skin.
Mia struggled harder, sobbing beneath her gag.
"Do it, Elian," the figure whispered. "Or lose everything. Your family name. Your rightful place. Your life."
The world seemed to slow around him. The rain, the wind, the sound of his own breathing—it all became muted. There was only the girl kneeling before him, and the knife in his hand.
He dropped to his knees, the dagger clattering on the wet ground.
"I can't," he said, voice breaking. "I won't."
The first figure gave a slow, sad smile. "Then you will watch."
Without hesitation, the second figure stepped forward and drove their own blade into Mia's chest.
A choked scream tore through the night. Mia's eyes locked with Elian's one last time before her body slumped to the ground, blood pooling around her like a dark, blooming flower.
Elian recoiled, scrambling backward on the slick pavement. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. But he was frozen, paralyzed by horror.
"This," the figure said softly, "is the cost of innocence."
They left him there, on the bridge, with Mia's lifeless body and the storm washing away the blood at his feet.
---
Elian staggered home in the rain, soaked, trembling, lost. He vomited in the alley outside his apartment before finally collapsing inside his room.
He sat there for hours, staring at the blood still staining his hands.
He hadn't wielded the knife, but the guilt was a noose tightening around his neck.
And then came the second letter. It was already waiting on his bed.
No words this time. Just a symbol—a black serpent coiled around a crown.
It was the mark of the true rulers. The ones who had been pulling the strings all along.
And Elian, whether he liked it or not, was now a piece in their game.
A bloodstained piece.
There would be no redemption.
Only survival.
---