The First Rosewood Seven

---Aaron---

It was so ridiculous I wanted to laugh, but also so absurd that I was shocked into silence. Lord Victor, one of the Rosewood Seven? Who was he kidding?

I met Katherine's eyes. Her expression was filled with astound and disbelief. Neither of us knew what to say. How could Lord Victor be one of the Rosewood Seven? We were the only chosen ones. If Lord Victor was a chosen one, then who was the evil lord? Besides, if there indeed was another group that came before us, wouldn't we have learned about them in school? Why would the Elders hide from us about something as big as this? Most importantly, how did a member of the Rosewood Seven become the very person they swore to defeat?

Lord Victor watched our expressions. He scoffed. "I know what you two are thinking; I can see the doubt plastered all over your faces. You think I'm lying."

"Yes, because it doesn't make sense. If there really was another group of Rosewood Seven before us, how come no one knew about them?" Katherine voiced our confusion. "Why wasn't the prophecy fulfilled?"

"Prophecies are fickle. They never mean what you think they mean, and your interpretation will always be wrong. You know what I think of the so-called Rosewood Prophecy?" Lord Victor glared at us and spat on the floor. "That's what I think of it. It's wrong. It's not true at all. I can't help it if you don't believe me right now, but I will show you what happened, all those years ago, and you can decide for yourself if you still think the Elders are good and righteous."

Lord Victor began muttering spells. Then he lightly pressed his right index finger to his temple and extracted a silvery wisp that wound itself around his finger. With a gentle flick, Lord Victor cast the silver wisp into the air, where it expanded to fill the entire room. Figures flickered to life, and the grounds of the Academy filled in the background. Katherine and I watched it all with our mouths hanging open. Lord Victor was showing us his memories from a third-person perspective. The translucent illusion surrounded us as the events unfolded on a big screen.

I saw a group of three students walk by, chatting and laughing. They looked to be our age and wore school uniforms from hundreds of years ago, the kind that we now see in glass display cases in the Academy. The boy in the center was tall, with sparkling brown eyes and dimples. He had one arm around a girl with wavy, strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes, and the other arm around a boy with raven black hair and emerald green eyes. With a jolt, I realized that the third boy was Lord Victor, except he looked a lot happier and a lot less evil.

"This was my best friend, Marcellus, and his girlfriend, Annalise." Lord Victor's voice sounded from beside me. He still stood over us, but his eyes were glued to the memory playback. I saw a hint of longing in his gaze. "I had known Marcellus since we were young kids. He was like a brother to me, and I to him. At this time, he and Annalise had only officially begun dating for two months."

The trio walked to where a group of three boys were lounging in the grassy area beside a fountain. Hellos were exchanged as the trio sat down beside them. Lord Victor told us their names: the lanky boy with a shy smile was Hugo; the muscular boy with the ginger hair was Caspian; the boy with glasses and piercing blue eyes was Atticus. Soon, two girls walked up, one with curly brown hair and a wide smile, another with black hair braided down her back and soft brown eyes.

"That's Gemma," Lord Victor pointed at the girl with brown hair. "And that's Bianca." His eyes had softened, and his gaze lingered on Bianca. I counted the students—there were eight. One of them was not part of the chosen seven.

The next scenes were rapid processions of weird events occurring to individuals in the group, which revealed who the chosen seven were. It reminded me of how Katherine, Indigo, me, and the others first discovered that we were the chosen ones. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Bianca was not one of the seven. When the chosen ones were preparing to depart, she held both of Victor's hands and tried not to cry. "Please be careful, Victor. Promise me you'll come back, safe and sound."

"I promise," Victor said as he pulled Bianca close and softly kissed her forehead. "Wait for me, Bianca."

My eyes widened. I exchanged a surprised look with Katherine. Who would've thought that Lord Victor had a girlfriend? Where was she now?

Lord Victor ignored our expressions. "We thought we would be able to return home as heroes. We thought of the quest as our chance to do something big and make our mark in the world. How stupidly naïve we were back then." He shook his head. "The quest was more dangerous than any of us had previously thought.

"We lost Caspian in the Bottomless Pits to an ambush. Gemma sacrificed herself so we could safely cross the River of the Nymphs. Atticus fell victim to the evil lord's illusions and killed Hugo, his best friend. Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, Atticus slowly descended into madness. Shortly after we reached the stronghold of the previous evil lord, he became trapped within the hallucinations and illusions. He killed himself."

As Lord Victor recounted these past events, the scenes shifted again and again. I watched with wide-eyed horror at their gruesome battles and untimely deaths. I would never forget Gemma's last look at her friends, the corners of her lips lifting in a pained smile, as she was overwhelmed by the currents and the long-clawed nymphs that her water powers could no longer hold back. Tears glistened in Katherine's eyes as we watched Hugo, with blood trickling down the corner of his lips, place a trembling hand on Atticus's shoulder and tell his best friend with his last breath: "I don't blame you."

It felt like I was there with them. I felt Atticus's anguish, Marcellus's grief, and Annalise's hopelessness. Even though the events were different, their experiences overlapped with all that we had went through. They were so young. We are so young.

Finally, it was the final battle. Annalise fired spell after spell while Marcellus used his snow powers to batter the evil lord. Victor was nimble and agile as he weaved around the evil lord, using daggers to wound him. With much difficulty, they managed to seize the magic orb. As Marcellus smashed the orb on the floor, Annalise fired a strong blast of purple magic that sent the evil lord crashing into the opposite wall. Before he could recover, Victor was there to plunge one dagger deep into the evil lord's heart and cut the evil lord's throat with another. Marcellus rushed up with his sword. He added several other fatal strikes before cutting off the evil lord's head. Blood sprayed everywhere, staining Marcellus and Victor's clothes with crimson.

For a while, no one spoke. Then Annalise carefully asked, "Is he…dead? For good?"

"I think so." Victor said, looking at the decapitated body. "Is the orb destroyed?"

"It wouldn't break, no matter how hard I smashed it. I even tried hacking at it with my sword." Marcellus extended his palm. An orb, glowing pale red, floated above his hand. A web of cracks covered its surface, but like Marcellus said, it did not break. Annalise tried a few spells, but all of them merely rebounded. The orb remained heavily damaged but not entirely destroyed.

"Let's bring this back to the Elders. Perhaps they would know how to destroy it for good." Victor suggested. Marcellus and Annalise nodded. Before they left, they burnt the evil lord and his stronghold to the ground.

"I wish I never made the suggestion. If I could go back in time, I would throw the orb in the fire and leave it there, destroyed or not. Maybe that way, things would have turned out differently," said Lord Victor darkly.

"I'm still confused," I interrupted. "Most of your friends died in the quest. What did the Elders have to do with that?"

Lord Victor looked down at me in annoyance. "Learn to use your eyes and not your mouth, Aaron. Watch the memories. I'm going to show you."