Plague Diaries

Seraphina stepped back from the wedding bed, her pulse still erratic, a cold sweat clinging to her skin. The significance of what she had uncovered—the bed, once a symbol of union, now felt like a reminder of her cursed fate, tangled with Lyria's in ways she could barely grasp—seemed to press down on her chest like an iron weight. She had barely begun to process the haunting implications of that moment when the room around her seemed to darken, shadows creeping in, heavy and oppressive. The air grew still, suffocating, as though the very walls were closing in on her.

And then, as if summoned by her unspoken thoughts, something else rose in the darkness. A presence, not physical, but something more insidious, more tangible. A space, a place, where secrets had long been buried, waiting to be unearthed. It felt as though she had crossed some invisible threshold, into the unknown, where truths had been locked away for too long.

Her footsteps were soundless as she moved toward the desk, her eyes falling on Lyria's journal. Its worn leather cover seemed to whisper to her, an unspoken invitation to look deeper, to uncover more. Every instinct screamed at her to turn away, to leave the past buried where it belonged. Yet something urged her on, a force she could not explain, a curiosity that burned too fiercely to ignore. What had Lyria kept hidden in these pages? What would she find when she finally dared to read?

With trembling fingers, Seraphina opened the journal. The first page was filled with inked words, but as she read, something began to happen—something that defied all reason. The letters on the page twisted and writhed, bending and contorting as though alive, stretching and reshaping themselves into patterns that made no sense. The ink seemed to pulse with a life of its own, each letter a living thing, a reminder of the power that lay hidden within these pages.

She stared, captivated and repelled at the same time, as the words continued to change with every breath she took. The more she read, the more the ink seemed to respond to her very presence, bending and shifting like tendrils of smoke, as though the journal itself were a living entity, watching, waiting. It was not just a journal; it was a prison for truths too dangerous to speak, a place where the line between reality and nightmare blurred.

And then she found it. The heart of the darkness. A single phrase that made her blood freeze: The Blood Pact. Her heart skipped a beat as she read on, her mind struggling to comprehend the enormity of what lay before her. The pact, the bond between her mother and Lyria, was not simply a contract of fate. It was an offering—a voluntary sacrifice, a willing exchange that had forever bound their fates together, but at what cost?

A tremor ran through her body. Her mother, in her desperation, had sealed her fate with a choice, one that would reverberate through Seraphina's life in ways she could not yet understand. The truth was darker than anything she could have imagined. The pact was not just a symbol of loyalty—it was a bargain made with forces far older and far more dangerous than she could have ever dreamed.

As she read further, something else began to happen. The ink on the page began to bleed. Not like a simple smudge, but as though the very essence of the memory were bleeding into the world, seeping out from the paper and into the air around her. The room seemed to pulse with the liquid, and before she could react, the ink was no longer just on the page—it was alive. It spread across her fingers, warm and wet, and in an instant, the liquid began to take form.

Seraphina gasped as the scene began to shift. The room dissolved around her, the boundaries of reality stretching and warping until she found herself in the midst of a memory—a memory she never meant to witness.

There, before her, stood her mother, kneeling. Her face was pale, her features drawn tight with a mixture of fear and resolve. Before her, in the shadows, stood the figure. The figure whose presence she had heard spoken of in hushed tones, but never seen. The one with the mask—the bronze mask that gleamed with an eerie, otherworldly sheen, as though it had been crafted from the very essence of time itself.

The gears of the mask clicked, a soft, chilling sound that echoed through the air. Each turn, each click, was deliberate, a reminder that this was no simple transaction. It was a binding, a contract sealed in blood. Seraphina could feel the tension in the air, the weight of the moment pressing down on her. She couldn't hear their words, only the low hum of the mask's mechanical pulse, the turn of the gears that seemed to shape the very fate of her mother.

Her heart hammered in her chest. The deal was made. The pact was sealed. Her mother had offered herself willingly, but at what price? What had she given up in exchange for the power, the protection, the promise that had come with it?

The gears clicked again, louder this time, the sound vibrating deep within Seraphina's bones. And then, just as she thought she might lose herself in the memory, something else happened. The liquid memory shifted, warped, and with it, the rhythm of the mask's gears began to align with something else—a pulse, a rhythm that resonated in the very core of her being.

It was a sound she had heard before—the tide's pulse, the ebb and flow of the sea. The same rhythm that had haunted her dreams, the same beat that had echoed in her mind when she first heard the cradle song. It was the pulse of fate, the heartbeat of something far older, far more powerful than she could comprehend.

The memory pulled her further still, deeper into the darkness, and for a moment, she glimpsed herself. Not as she was now, but as she might be in the future. Or perhaps the past. It was hard to tell. This woman, older, weary, her face etched with the weight of a thousand unspoken burdens, was her—a version of herself that had already been shaped by the choices of others, by the very blood pact her mother had made. She wasn't free. She never had been.

Her breath caught in her throat. Was this it? Was this her fate, the design etched into her very being from the moment her mother had made that fateful choice? The pact, the mask, the blood—all of it had been written long before her birth. And now, as she looked at the empty pages before her, the question weighed heavy on her mind.

Could she break free? Could she change her path? Or was she simply a puppet, bound by invisible strings, her every move controlled by the gears of fate?

Seraphina closed the journal, the empty pages staring back at her. Her hand trembled as she rested it on the cover. The weight of what she had learned hung in the air, thick and suffocating, like a storm cloud on the horizon. She had no answers—only more questions, and a growing sense that whatever path lay ahead, it was no longer her own to choose.