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[color=a187be]Time:[/color] It’s hard to tell in the dank, dark castle dungeons
[color=a187be]Location:[/color] Alibeth is telling her offspring the story: the flashback itself is in a shantytown in Krasivaya.
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[h1][center][color=red]FLASHBACK[/color][/center][/h1]

The girl who returned months later was not her sister.

Perhaps by blood, by name, by bone…But not in the way her gaze darted, not in the strange, weightless fall of her hair, not in the stillness in her face.

That evening, the town had been silent. Their father was already there.

He stood with his hands folded behind his back. He did not turn when Alibeth approached. Polina stood in the square’s center, barefoot on the stones. The black lines along her forearms were not smudges nor dirt… They were her [i]veins[/i], branching beneath skin in a pattern as if poison had taken root in them.

A crowd was beginning to form—slow at first, then all at once. Doors cracked open and figures drifted from alleys and thresholds, drawn by the rumor of Polina’s return and the uneasy thrill of seeing the strange made real. Their voices stayed low, clustered into mutters that thickened the evening air.

Alibeth’s stomach felt knotted. She couldn’t stop staring at the thing wearing her sister’s face—her features were hollow, as if Polina had been drained out and only the shell had been sent back. 

The plea tore out of her before she could stop it. [color=#A187BE]“Polina… please.”[/color]

Polina’s mouth softened as if she meant to be kind. She didn’t manage it. [color=#F4C2C2]“You came anyway.”[/color] Her voice was warm on the surface, but there was something off about it… An excitement that didn’t belong in a starving place. [color=#F4C2C2]“Good. I didn’t want you hearing it from someone else.”[/color]

A few townsfolk tried to back away. Their bodies moved; the air refused to let them. It felt like walking through deep water. Alibeth watched an old man struggle toward his doorway and falter, suddenly dizzy, a dark trickle appearing under his nostril as if the square itself had punished his attempt.

Polina lowered the book to the stones and set a stub of black candle atop it, careful and reverent in her movements. She spoke without raising her voice.[color=#F4C2C2]“Umbrae regnant, lux pereat.”[/color]

The change was immediate and sickeningly calm. The shadows deepened, pooling at people’s feet. Alibeth felt it crawl up her calves. Someone sobbed, and the sob seemed to get swallowed before it could properly exist.

Black liquid slid from the corner of Polina’s eyes. It fell slowly, mapping her cheekbones in dark lines. A bead gathered at her nostril, then fell, too heavy to be ordinary blood. 

[color=#A187BE]“Stop it. You’re frightening them. You’re—”[/color]

Polina’s attention drifted past Alibeth, bored by the words. [color=#F4C2C2]“They should be frightened.”[/color] She lifted her hand, and her hair stirred as if something unseen had brushed beneath it. She muttered something unintelligible again. 

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQlW7rSdHVM&list=RDwQlW7rSdHVM&start_radio=1[/youtube][/center]

Then she rose.

Polina lifted a foot off the stones, then another, then drifted higher until her toes hung above the square. Her hair lifted into the air in weightless strands, spreading around her head like she was suspended in water. 

Polina’s veins darkened further, crawling up her throat. One of her fingernails loosened with the smallest shift of her hand. The nail fell, tapping the stone. Polina’s thumb dragged through her bloody nailbed, tracing something against her own palm before she lifted her hand again.

Alibeth covered her mouth. She couldn’t swallow nor breathe properly. She watched Polina sway slightly in midair. The entire town had become a held breath.

Polina turned her head toward the nearest alley, [color=#F4C2C2]“Aculei Umbrae, surgite in defensionem meam.”[/color] And the shadows answered with brambles.

They erupted from the ground in a ring around the square, black thorns, writhing and hungry, rising high enough to block the exits. A boy tried to dart through a gap, and the brambles snapped toward him like lashes. He shrieked and fell back, clutching his arm where the dark had kissed his skin, leaving an angry welt.

A man in the crowd, one of the ones who used to jeer at them when they passed, shouted something Alibeth couldn’t fully hear. He raised a stone as if he really thought he could strike Polina down with it. Polina’s gaze found him, and his bravado faded fast.

She didn’t even flick her wrist. She only whispered.

[i][color=#F4C2C2]“Umbrae Tendere, Constringere, et Frangere.”[/color][/i]

Shadowy tendrils unfurled from the darkness at her feet and shot across the square. They wrapped the man’s torso, his arms, and his throat, and then he lifted off the ground, his feet kicking uselessly. The tendrils tightened as if they were living things that wanted to savor him.  His shoulders jerked; his elbows bent the wrong way, each accompanied by a crack that made the crowd recoil as one body. 

Alibeth couldn’t stop herself. [color=#A187BE]“Polina, stop this, you’re dying! … Look at you.”[/color]

Polina’s eyes swung to her, red-black matter turning slowly within. For a second, Alibeth saw something familiar there: exhaustion, and the smallest tremor in her lower lip.[color=#F4C2C2]“I was dying before,”[/color] she said softly. [color=#F4C2C2]“This just makes my death mean something.”[/color] She raised her hand again, higher this time.

[color=#F4C2C2]“Mens Teneat, Corpus Cedat.”[/color]

A few people lifted. One woman rose with a cry, her limbs jerking. A man came up next, eyes bulging, mouth opening and closing around air that wouldn’t satisfy him. A child floated a foot off the ground, screaming for his mother.

Polina’s fingers curled slowly. The floating bodies reacted like marionettes whose strings had been twisted. The woman’s spine bowed. The man clutched at his abdomen. Someone’s arm snapped back at the shoulder. Polina’s breathing hitched as the black veins along her throat pulsed. For a moment, her expression faltered, and Alibeth’s heart lurched with a terrible hope until Polina whispered again, delighted by the sound she was making the world produce. [color=#F4C2C2]“Ossium Frangere.”[/color]

A man dropped to his knees even though nothing touched him. He screamed as if his bones were being shattered one by one, hands scrabbling at his own arms, his own chest, as though he could hold his skeleton together by force of will. 

Then Polina tilted her head and looked almost curious.[color=#F4C2C2]“Sanguis lacerare, cruciatum meum exalta.”[/color] She flicked the black blood from her fingertip toward the woman like a blessing.

Blood began to seep from a woman’s pores, darkening her collar. It slid from the corners of her eyes and out of her mouth in trembling strands. She gagged, coughing, and the sight ripped a cry from the crowd that finally broke the silence into something like panic. People pressed backward into each other, hands over mouths, eyes wide, some whispering prayers.

Alibeth stood rigid, shaking so hard her teeth clicked. She could not decide whether to run toward Polina or away from her. She could not decide whether the girl in the air was her sister or a thing wearing her face.

Their father finally moved. He walked beneath Polina with the steady pace of a man approaching an animal that had already been wounded. He didn’t flinch at the blood. He didn’t look at the bodies hanging in invisible hands. His gaze stayed on Polina’s face. [color=#9aa0a6]“Enough.”[/color]

Polina’s head snapped toward him. The red-black matter in her eyes churned faster. [color=#F4C2C2]“Don’t,”[/color] she breathed, and the word came out small and almost childish. Alibeth thought she heard her sister in it.

Their father lifted his hand anyway. [color=#9aa0a6]“Clausa ianuam.”[/color]

The air [i]sealed.[/i]

It wasn’t a visible wall—more like the square suddenly became a locked room, and Polina was the only thing inside it that mattered. The shadows around her snapped taut, cinching like a net. Her levitation stuttered, not from fatigue, but from resistance.

Polina jerked midair, hair whipping, mouth opening on a sound that broke into a wet cough. Black liquid burst from her lips and dotted her chin in thick droplets. Her hands twitched as if she meant to cast again, but the motion snagged, interrupted by the seal tightening around her. For the first time, fear flickered on her face. [color=#F4C2C2]“Father—”[/color]

He stepped in directly beneath her as she dipped lower, forced down slowly inch by inch, until she was close enough now that if she fell, he would be there. His other hand moved with the decisiveness of a man who had killed before and never allowed himself to pretend it was anything but necessary. Then he put the blade where it had to go.

Polina’s body jolted once. The red-black movement in her eyes stilled as if something had been cut off from its source. Her hair sagged and fell around her face in ordinary strands. The black veins did not vanish; they simply stopped advancing.

The brambles around the square collapsed into smoke and sank into the stones. The invisible grip on the crowd released and bodies fell.

People hit the ground hard—coughing, sobbing, clawing at broken limbs and bruised ribs. The square filled with the ugly sounds of survival: retching, prayers, someone screaming a name over and over like repetition could bring the dead back.

Their father caught Polina as she dropped and lowered her to the stones with a tenderness that made Alibeth’s stomach lurch. He eased her down as if she were only asleep. 

Polina’s eyes stayed open, staring up at nothing at all.

Alibeth didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted salt. [color=#A187BE]“You killed her.”[/color] 

Their father wiped his blade on his sleeve like a man cleaning a tool after work. When he looked at Alibeth, his expression was mild. [color=#9aa0a6]“She would have died soon anyway.”[/color] He paused, as if searching for the least cruel truth to hand her. [color=#9aa0a6]“This spared her the slow part.”[/color]

Alibeth stared at Polina’s face—at the hollow cheeks, the stained mouth, the nail missing from one finger.

Her hands clenched until her nails bit her palms, and she understood in that moment—[i]truly understood[/i]—that Polina had been dead the moment she opened the book.

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