Reverse Run Through the Rain Veil

The storm shattered the sky into glass shards. Ayla's boots wailed through mud as the cellar door loomed ahead, its rusted hinges screeching with Odile's laughter: "Darlings, you're running the wrong way!"

(Lightning struck the mansion spire. Lucas' spinal vents spewed cerulean steam, coalescing into his teenage self shielding five-year-old Ayla—blood from his branded back dripping onto her ceramic angel wing)

"The cellar!" She grabbed his sleeve embedded with last Christmas' shattered angel. "The curse source is in Mother's lab—"

Lucas pried her fingers loose. Rain sluiced his collarbone wound where black rose roots throbbed, drinking storm's fluorescence: "They want the memory worms in my spine—run!"

As they diverged, raindrops froze mid-air. Ayla's periphery caught left-side droplets reflecting Eric cradling an infant—humming Odile's girlhood requiem, the swaddled Ayla's neck gleaming with the sakura pendant. Right-side droplets showed Lucas chained at fifteen, Odile crushing his stolen sketches of Ayla's hairpin—identical to her current earrings.

(Their shoulders brushed. His prosthetic pinkie scorched her palm scar)

A music box rewound near the cellar. Ayla breached the iron door as rains reversed upward, suspended droplets forming endless mirrors—each reflecting Lucas at seven receiving cybernetic spine, at fifteen hoarding her portraits, at twenty branded in dungeons. All mirrored Aylas watched from outside time.

"Who do you think you're saving?" Odile's voice bled from each raindrop, vinyl static warping her words. "What squirms in his spine isn't memory—it's your mother's curse incubator!"

The cellar tilted as Ayla touched the lab vault. Shattered rain-mirrors reformed new visions—Mother handing infant Ayla to fifteen-year-old Odile, the sakura pendant's inner engraving matching Lucas' heart code: No.21.

(Lucas' scream tore through thunder)

Reverse-falling rain sliced Ayla's earlobe. Blood hovered, merging with his twenty-year-old bloodspatter to form holographic diary fragments: "1988.3.21st vessel successful. Sakura ash-vampire fusion rate 97.8%..."

Eric's watch chain snared her ankle as gears roared below. The fading photo inside revealed Odile's human lover—Lucas' pre-prosthetic face.

"Save him!" Ayla screamed into the maelstrom, nails clawing the vault's iris carvings. "Save that fool who always chooses wrong!"

The vault sprang open. Desiccated sakura petals in Mother's specimen box swelled, revealing layered baby footprints—left stamped "Lucas 1988," right "Ayla 1999."

The mansion imploded. All raindrops detonated. Ayla saw twin time vortices—Lucas rushing towards his tortured child-self, she towards Odile's infant phantom.

Their paths crossed. His prosthetic finger hooked her silver hairpin.