[color=lightgray][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/R26JXiA.png[/img][/center] [center][color=a187be]Time:[/color] It’s hard to tell in the dank, dark castle dungeons [color=a187be]Location:[/color] Her Prison Cell [color=a187be]Attire:[/color] Prison Rags [/center] [hr] The dungeon did not change for her just because she had stepped backward in time. The iron at her throat remained cold, and the chain at her wrist still had its own language—every small shift of her hands answered by a metallic murmur. But Alibeth’s eyes were no longer on her children. For a long moment, she simply looked past them, and that familiar distance returned to her face. When she spoke again, it was not to the cell, or the gallows waiting above, but to the thirteen-year-old girl she had once been. — [center][h2][color=red]FLASHBACK[/COLOR][/h2][/center] Eikavaat had smelled like money. Not coins, more like wax and perfume. Bread that wasn’t stretched thin with sawdust. Even the mud looked different, packed down by carriage wheels that belonged to people who never walked anywhere unless they wished to be seen doing it. Alibeth remembered the road first, as if her mind could not help cataloguing evidence. Curtains on wagons, cloth swaying over the windows. A boy no older than she was, but clean, holding reins. It had been the first time she understood, in a single, clear moment, that there were entire lives lived without hunger as a constant companion. Her father did not let them stare for long. He moved through the streets with that same stride he brought into their room when he returned from months of absence—shoulders squared, eyes scanning through each and every shadow. He held Polina close, but not tenderly; more like an object he could not afford to misplace. Alibeth walked on his other side, matching his pace without being told, because she had learned early that falling behind meant being forgotten. They reached the apothecary in the late afternoon. Behind the counter, glass jars caught the sun, and dried herbs hung in bundles. There were drawers with labels in script with names that sounded strange to thirteen-year-old Alibeth. Alibeth watched her father speak to the man there. She watched the apothecary’s mouth form a line when he saw the state of their clothes. Watched his eyes flick once to the grime beneath Polina’s nails, then away as if it might stain him to look too long. Watched the shape of refusal form before the words ever left his tongue. Alibeth did not remember the exact words they shared. She remembered what mattered: the small shake of the man’s head, the way his hand never reached for the medicine, the moment he glanced toward the back room. And then she watched her father turn away as if it had been his choice. And Alibeth’s stomach had gone cold with it because their mother was dying and they had no medicine for her. They followed him back into the street, Polina silent, Alibeth silent, the world around them continuing with ease—women laughing with parcels in their arms, a man tipping his hat as if the day itself were something pleasant. Her father paused at the corner of an alley and looked down at them. [color=gray]“You will not repeat what happened in there,”[/color] he said. Polina nodded quickly, desperate to obey, but Alibeth did not nod. She simply looked at him and waited, because she already knew what came next. The man’s gaze sharpened. [color=gray]“Do you understand?”[/color] he asked. [color=a187be]“Yes,” [/color] Alibeth said, because she did. Then he had them continue walking through Eikavaat until they stopped beside a narrow lane between two shops. [color=gray]“Wait here,”[/color] he ordered. Polina’s fingers had twitched, wanting to hold his sleeve, but she did not dare. She stood with her chin lifted, trying so hard to be brave that it made her look even younger, and the girls watched him walk away. But he did not return. Minutes passed. Then more as the sun slid lower and the street grew colder. Polina began to tremble, not with fear at first, but with exhaustion. Hunger lived in her bones at this point. Alibeth took stock, because that was what she did when panic threatened to loosen her grip on the world. She counted exits. She marked where the guards on the main road stood. She listened to the cadence of footsteps, separating the heavy ones from the light. She watched men’s eyes, and she watched women’s hands, because either could decide to harm you. Then she looked at Polina. [color=a187be] “We are not going home without medicine,” [/color] she said quietly. Polina’s lashes fluttered. [color=#F4C2C2]“Father—”[/color] [color=a187be]“He is gone,”[/color] Alibeth answered, and even then, there was no accusation in it. It was the same tone she used when she told a sibling the bread was gone, or the water had frozen, or the baby had stopped moving. Polina swallowed. [color=#F4C2C2]“What do we do?”[/color] Alibeth’s gaze lifted to the far end of the street, where the Baron’s house stood behind iron fencing. They had passed it earlier, and she remembered it because Polina had stared at the windows the way starving people stare at food. [color=a187be]“We borrow,”[/color] Alibeth said. [color=a187be]“We take what we need.”[/color] Polina’s eyes widened.[color=#F4C2C2] “That’s stealing.”[/color] [color=a187be]“Our mother is dying,”[/color] she said again. [color=a187be]“You may call it whatever word makes you comfortable.”[/color] Polina’s mouth opened, then closed, and then she nodded. [hr] They approached the Baron’s property, the fence there was iron and tall. The lock, though, was what really mattered. Polina’s fingers shook as she produced the hairpin she had stolen from an older girl weeks ago, a thing taken in an alley after a fight. She held it as if it might burn her. [color=#F4C2C2] “I can’t,” [/color] Polina whispered. So Alibeth took it from her without comment. She crouched, back to the hedge, and set her shoulder against the gate to steady it. That steadiness had not been born from calm; it had been forged by necessity. One had learned very quickly that shaking hands kills people afterall. She slid the pin into the lock and listened. Not with her ears alone—but with her fingertips, with the tension in the metal, and then came the faint click. Polina exhaled. Alibeth pushed the gate open just enough for them to slip through. They did not run. They moved with the careful patience of children who had learned to be invisible to survive. Inside the yard, the world became unnaturally quiet. Gravel crunched beneath their boots, and Alibeth paused, waiting for a shout, for the bark of a dog, for the thud of footsteps. Nothing. The Baron’s house rose ahead of them. It was not a fortress, nor a castle, yet still vast enough to make them feel small. Polina reached for Alibeth’s sleeve, grip tight.[color=#F4C2C2] “You said this wasn’t dramatic,” [/color] Polina whispered, voice thin with panic. Alibeth glanced down at her. [color=a187be]“It isn’t,”[/color] she said. [color=a187be]“Stop making it dramatic.”[/color] And then she went to the servant’s door, and the latch there was simpler. Alibeth worked it open with the same pin, and the door sighed inward. Warmth hit her face first. And then she saw it. Beauty. The real kind. The kind that made her stomach twist because it wasn’t meant to be shared. Rugs thick and woven with beautiful designs, walls hung with exquisite paintings, hallways lined with brass candleholders. This was a place of wealth and indulgence. Alibeth felt something unpleasant rise in her chest. It was not awe, but rather resentment. Polina stared openly, eyes reflecting the candlelight. [color=a187be]“Do not touch anything you do not intend to take,”[/color] Alibeth murmured. [color=a187be]“You leave fingerprints, you leave stories.”[/color] Polina swallowed and nodded too hard. They moved room by room, not wandering but searching—Alibeth’s mind mapping out the space as they went. Bedrooms meant jewelry. Inside the grand bedroom the two girls had stuffed their pockets with small bracelets and rings. Kitchens meant food, but food would not stop the blood in a cough. There were servants inside anyway, so the girls could not indulge in any spare nourishment. The study meant papers, ledgers, locked drawers—places where medicine might be hidden for convenience, for a noble’s sudden discomfort. They found the study by accident, because Polina brushed too close to a panel and the wall shifted under her hand. She froze. Slowly, she pressed again. The wood gave, as if acknowledging it had been touched. Alibeth stepped in close, eyes narrowing. She ran her fingertips along the seam. There was a latch disguised in the carved molding. Of course there was. Rich people loved secrets. They just hated being caught having them. Alibeth lifted it, and the panel loosened and swung inward, revealing a narrow corridor behind the bookshelves. Polina’s breath quickened.[color=#F4C2C2] “We shouldn’t—”[/color] Alibeth cut her a look so Polina stopped. Alibeth took a candle from the sconce and stepped through first, because that was her role. The corridor smelled like dust and old paper. The air was cooler here. Sound was dampened, swallowed by the walls. They followed it to a door at the end. And the room beyond was a library, but not like the ones her father sometimes dragged them past in the city—public places where the poor could stare at books they would never touch. But his was private and personal. Shelves climbed the walls, heavy with volumes. A red rug lay over the floor. A desk sat near the far window with ink and quills arranged like ornaments. And there—almost hidden behind the desk, on a low pedestal—was the book. It did not gleam like treasure. It did not look expensive at first glance. Its cover was dark, plain, worn at the corners as if it had been handled often and not gently. It could have been any old volume… except for the emblem stamped into its front. The emblem was faintly luminous, and the air around it felt… wrong. Polina took one involuntary step forward and Alibeth’s hand snapped out and caught her wrist. [color=a187be]“Do not,”[/color] Alibeth said quietly, and there was something about her voice that made it sound as if it did not belong to a child. It sounded too much like their father. Polina stared at the book, mesmerized.[color=#F4C2C2] “It’s—”[/color] [color=a187be]“Quiet,”[/color] Alibeth warned, but she could not stop her own gaze from returning to it. Alibeth felt it too. There was a tingling that started in her palm as if her body recognized something her mind could not name. Alibeth approached, and she reached out. Polina made a small sound of protest, but did not stop her. Her fingers hovered a breath away from the cover—close enough that the tingling became a hum up her wrist, into the bone. The emblem’s faint glow seemed to throb in response. And then Alibeth touched it and the sensation was immediate. It was less a feeling and more a presence—like placing your hand on a door and realizing, too late, that something on the other side has been waiting. Alibeth swallowed. Polina whispered her name, terrified, but Alibeth did not answer. She lifted the book from the pedestal, and it was heavier than it should have been. Her mind moved quickly. They did not have time to open it. They did not have time to be curious. She wrapped it in cloth stripped from the edge of the desk runner, and shoved it into Polina’s hands. Polina blinked at it as if it might bite. [color=a187be]“Under your skirt,”[/color] Alibeth murmured. She obeyed, awkwardly, clutching the bundle close and tucking it beneath the fabric with trembling hands. She looked ridiculous, like a child trying to hide stolen bread. They slipped back the way they came, moving through the house with their breaths held. On the walk home, Polina kept leaning toward Alibeth, whispering through clenched teeth as if the book could hear her thoughts. [color=#F4C2C2]“It’s warm,”[/color] Polina breathed. [color=#F4C2C2]“Ali—do you feel it? It’s warm.”[/color] Alibeth stared straight ahead, jaw tight. She felt it was all right. She felt it like a fever under her skin. And even then, even as dread began to take its first root, she told herself the only thing that mattered was that this could be sold for medicine. They had something. And later, when Polina unwrapped the cloth in the light of their room, their siblings gathered the way starving children gather around a pot of soup—shoulders pressed together, eyes too big. Not because they understood what it was, but because it was new. Because for once, they had stolen something that felt like it belonged to a different world. Alibeth looked down at the book in her sister’s hands. She did not yet understand what they had taken. The book did not announce itself as evil. In the first hour, it did nothing at all. It let their mother cough in the corner without offering an answer. It let the baby wail until the sound turned thin. It let the room keep smelling like the sweet rot of too many bodies in too little air. And still, the children circled it. She did not like the way the book pulled attention from the room’s real emergencies—water, heat, mother. She did not like the way Polina’s fingers kept brushing the cloth as if soothing it would make it forgive them for stealing it. She did not like, most of all, that she herself kept glancing at it between tasks, as if the object had somehow become a new member of the household and required monitoring. They waited until their mother fell asleep. Alibeth made the older siblings lie down, because a room full of children awake at night is a room full of mistakes. She sent one to fetch water, another to keep the baby quiet with a finger dipped in broth. Only then did she and Polina sit by the candle. The flame made the walls ripple like something underwater. Polina unwrapped the cloth with reverence that irritated Alibeth on principle. [color=#F4C2C2]“Open it,” [/color] Polina whispered. Alibeth didn’t. She stared at the cover as if staring long enough would reveal the mechanism inside, the same way locks did. Alibeth turned the cover with two fingers. The first page was not written like any book she had ever read. There were symbols—some like letters, some like drawings, some like eccentric, angry scratches. The ink was dense and dark. When she leaned closer, the lines seemed to shift at the edge of her vision, not moving exactly, but refusing to sit still in the mind. Polina made a small sound. Awe, or hunger. It was hard to tell the difference between the children. [color=#F4C2C2]“This is for witches,” [/color] Polina breathed. Alibeth traced a symbol with her eyes. Polina looked down again and began to read, because that was what she did when the world presented something dangerous: she tried to understand it before it understood her. The words were not words, not truly. They were instructions. There were margins filled with notes in a different script, tight and sharp, as if someone had been arguing with the book. Polina leaned closer, shoulder brushing Alibeth’s. [color=#F4C2C2]“We could fix her,” [/color] Polina whispered, and nodded toward their mother’s shape in the corner. Alibeth didn’t answer. Not because she disagreed—because she did not like the way Polina said it. She turned another page. There were warnings too, though Alibeth did not understand them at first as warnings—phrases like cost, tithe, balance. Polina plucked a hair from her head and then plucked a feather from their pillow and held it over the page like she had seen scribes do in the market. Their youngest sister, the one with too-big eyes, had crept close again, drawn by the candle. The other children giggled in the dark, trying not to wake their mother. Polina lowered the feather as if it were a ritual. She read aloud—stumbling over words at first, then finding a rhythm, more earnest. And then the feather lifted. It rose a finger’s breadth above the page, quivering like a startled thing. For a moment, none of them moved. Not even the baby. Then the room exploded into muffled laughter, hands clapped over mouths, shoulders shaking. One of the sickly boys—who hadn’t smiled in days—let out a sound that was so close to joy that Alibeth felt something tighten behind her ribs. Polina stared at the feather as though it had chosen her personally. [color=#F4C2C2]”Again,”[/color] she whispered. Alibeth should have closed the book then. She should have wrapped it, hidden it, buried it beneath floorboards, done what their father would have done: remove the threat before it grew teeth. But their mother coughed in her sleep, wet and red, and the sound of it made all logic feel… smaller. In the face of that cough, the feather’s trembling lift became more than a trick. It became an argument. So Alibeth let Polina turn the page. They did not begin with fire. They began with things that felt like mercy. A pebble that rolled across the table on command. A thread that mended itself when Polina’s fingers traced a symbol above it. A bruise on a child’s knee that faded to yellow, then nothing, when a whispered line of script was spoken with enough belief. Each success made the next attempt feel less like a risk and more like entitlement. They practiced in stolen minutes—between errands, between hunger, between their mother’s fits. They did it in the hush of early mornings when the street was empty, and in the late evenings when the house was full of bodies sleeping. Polina started carrying the book tucked beneath her dress the way some girls carried prayer beads. She refused to leave it behind even when they went to fetch water. Alibeth watched her sister’s devotion harden. At first, Polina was generous with it. She used the little tricks to amuse their siblings, to buy laughter the way other children bought sweets. She made the feather dance and the youngest squeal. She made a coin spin on its edge and the boys gasp. She made their mother’s blanket warm for a few minutes and called it a miracle, eyes bright with triumph. Polina soon stopped laughing when the feather lifted. She stopped clapping a hand over her mouth to keep quiet. She began to scowl at the book when it did not give her what she wanted quickly enough, as if the book were an insolent servant. Alibeth noticed it in small ways first, because she noticed everything. Polina stopped sharing the book without being asked. When a sibling reached for it with dirty hands, she slapped their fingers away hard enough to make them yelp. When the youngest begged her to “make the feather fly,” Polina snapped at her to stop whining. [color=#F4C2C2] “This is not for you,” [/color] Polina hissed one night when one of their brothers tried to peer at the pages.[color=#F4C2C2] “You can’t even read.”[/color] He shrank back, stung. [color=a187be]“Then teach him,” [/color] Alibeth argued quietly. Polina’s eyes flicked up. For a second there was something in them that made Alibeth’s skin prickle. [color=#F4C2C2]“Why?” [/color] Polina whispered. [color=#F4C2C2]“So he can ruin it?”[/color] Alibeth stared at her sister across the candle. [color=a187be]“Because he is family,”[/color] Alibeth said. Polina’s mouth curled as if the word tasted naïve. [color=#F4C2C2]”Family doesn’t save you,” [/color] she murmured. It was the first time Polina said something that sounded as though it had not originated in her own mind. After that, the change sped up. Polina began to stay awake when the rest slept, hunched over the pages, shoulders drawn tight as if she were guarding the book from theft. Alibeth would wake in the night and see the faint light under the door, hear Polina’s whispering. Sometimes there was a second sound beneath it, so faint Alibeth wasn’t sure she had heard it at all: a low, almost-laugh in the back of Polina’s throat, as if she were answering someone. Polina’s temper shortened the more exhausted she became. She snapped at their siblings for breathing too loud, for stepping too close, for asking questions. She began to hoard food more openly, not out of hunger but out of control—breaking bread into portions and refusing to budge when a smaller child cried. When Alibeth confronted her, Polina’s eyes went strange with indignation. [color=#F4C2C2]“You think I’m cruel?” [/color] Polina whispered.[color=#F4C2C2] “I’m trying to fix it. I’m trying to fix everything.”[/color] Her voice shook, not with guilt, but with fury that the world had dared remain broken. Alibeth held her gaze.[color=a187be] “Then you do not get to break us in the process.. Are you ready to heal mama yet or not?”[/color] [color=#F4C2C2]“Not yet,” [/color] Polina stared at her sister as if she were the one who didn’t understand. And somewhere in those weeks, the book stopped feeling like an object and more like another member of the family. The air around it grew heavier when it lay open. Children who had once giggled now hesitated at the doorway, peering in as if the room belonged to someone else. Polina began to crave bigger proofs. The feather wasn’t enough. The coin wasn’t enough. Mending threads became boring. Healing bruises became beneath her. She turned pages faster, skipping warnings, ignoring the careful marginal notes, hunting for anything that promised more. One afternoon, she drew a circle on the floor with charcoal and commanded the younger siblings to stand back. Alibeth watched from the doorway, arms crossed, posture already braced for consequences. Polina spoke a line of script that tasted bitter in the air. The room went cold. Their youngest sister whimpered. Polina didn’t look at her. Polina stared at the circle with glittering intensity, hands outstretched, fingers trembling—not with fear, but with need. The charcoal line began to glow faintly. The candle flame bent toward it. And then a cupboard across the room rattled, violently, as if struck from inside. A pot toppled. A cup cracked. The baby began to scream. Polina’s face lit up as if she was almsot fevered. [color=#F4C2C2]“There,”[/color] she breathed.[color=#F4C2C2] “There—do you see?”[/color] Alibeth stepped forward and snapped, [color=a187be]“Stop.”[/color] Polina didn’t. The cupboard door burst open. Not outward, not as if pushed by a draft, but as if yanked by an unseen hand. The wooden hinge shrieked. The sound set teeth on edge. The room’s shadows seemed to stretch toward the circle. Their siblings backed away in a huddle, eyes wide with that old, animal terror that children get when the world stops behaving the way it’s supposed to. Polina laughed and it wasn’t like the bright laugh from the first feather. Alibeth crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Polina’s wrist. Polina flinched as if the touch offended her. [color=a187be]“You are going to wake Mother,”[/color] Alibeth hissed. Polina’s gaze snapped to hers. For a moment, Alibeth saw something raw behind Polina’s eyes—a flicker of the girl she knew, terrified and exhausted and desperate. Then it vanished. Polina leaned in close, voice low, venomously intimate. [i][color=#F4C2C2]”Mother is dying anyway.”[/color][/i] The words hit Alibeth like a slap, not because they were false, but because Polina said them. Alibeth tightened her grip until Polina hissed through her teeth. [color=a187be]“Close it,” [/color] Alibeth ordered. Polina’s lips parted. For a second, Alibeth thought she might obey. Instead, Polina whispered something else—something that wasn’t on the page Alibeth had seen. The cold deepened. The charcoal circle flared brighter. And Alibeth felt, very distinctly, the sensation of being watched—like eyes in the dark pressing against the inside of her skull, patient and curious. Polina’s pupils dilated until the amber of her eyes seemed swallowed. She smiled at Alibeth with a softness that did not belong on a child’s face. [color=#F4C2C2]“You don’t feel it?” [/color] Polina murmured. [color=#F4C2C2]”It’s listening.”[/color] And in that moment, Alibeth understood with a clarity that made her throat go dry: this was no longer a game they could put down. Something had gotten its claws into Polina—something bad. Behind them, their mother coughed in her sleep. Polina didn’t even flinch at the sound anymore. She only looked back at the book, and the look on her face was not wonder anymore. It was possession.[/color]