An Eldritch Legacy: Sin & Sacrilege

Irina could barely react when a sudden kick to the head made her brain rattle and her teeth quake, pain exploding against the back of her skull like a sledgehammer. She would have spat out another mouthful of blood—if she hadn't already bled dry. More than once, she had been forced to bleed through, but now her body had nothing left to give. And yet, she was never near the verge of death, as she wished to be. At least then, she wouldn't have to wait for the assigned time to end.

And of course, for that blood to leave through her mouth in the first place came with more consequences. The threads that held her lips together—earned in an act of defiance—had to tear into the flesh to make room for the blood to seep out. Though they were far from normal threads, that didn't change the nature of their punishment. Now, she was realizing just how troublesome some decisions could be in the long run. Their movement drew out another bout of pain that blurred her mind more than any of her sisters' brutality.

She was quickly coming to regret ever deciding to have them in the first place, but something in her mind refused to acknowledge that fact. So she pushed the thought aside and focused on staying alive—or at least, staying not quite so wounded—until this farce of a mock combat trial finally ended.

Following the kick that she felt would have cracked her skull was a fierce punch to her nose, and she found herself stumbling to hardened ground below. There was nothing graceful about the way her sister fought, and the power behind her attacks was nothing to scoff at. Irina almost felt like she was being hit by a mountain of a man.

From the very beginning, it had all just been a way to make her suffer. A punishment she felt she did not deserve.

She had become nothing more than a vessel for her sister to vent her frustrations on. At least, that's what her mind told her. And one could say this was a weakness she carried and nurtured within herself, never seeing more than what she thought was the truth.

For she could not even begin to understand why anyone would set a mortal to fight against a being who had stepped beyond mortality—who had become something else entirely.

Her sister Lysandra—now called The Velvet Rose—seemed to throw all notions of what it meant to be a princess or woman of nobility, even royalty, out the window. The way she carried herself was a stark contrast to the delicate image her body projected.

Whenever people spoke of the Duchess's daughters, any stereotypes they formed were shattered by Lysandra alone. Not that the others fit those stereotypes either.

But for those Irina had known, she saw none of what made them noble.

No. That wasn't entirely true.

Lysandra looked like a delicate beauty—but only to those who had never glimpsed what lay beneath the roguish, heavy robes she wore. One would say the young woman was in a phase, or rebellion, where she sought to go against the norms of her upbringing.

But Irina knew that none of it was faked.

She had the frame of a girl raised in the clouds, drinking heavenly dew and basking in the light of the holy flame. But Irina knew better. She had seen the tightly packed muscles her sister carried, the strength hidden beneath that deceptively fragile build. Lysandra somehow struck a balance between being a warrior who had never once left the battlefield and a princess whose beauty could be both sensually deadly and disarmingly graceful.

That contrast always made her suitors all the more curious.

She bore the characteristic sunset skin of the Southern Flame bloodline, but that was where the similarities ended and the differences began. Her hair was almost silver, streaked with gorgeous blacks. Even without styling it, it managed to look both groomed and wild, like the mane of a graceful beast. How she pulled that off was something Irina had always wondered about.

She stood neither tall nor short—at 5'10, a height that, for a female, was notable but unremarkable in a world filled with such diverse races and bloodlines. The South alone had enough variation from crossbreeding, evolution, and mutations from the Walker's Path alone, not considering how malleable some mortals were when they met with circumstances that changed them from their very roots, that people no longer bothered to track species variation. It was never surprising for a new race or species to be born every other day due to some random circumstances. Identity rested solely on bloodline—and more importantly, whether a person was mortal or not.

With a small, fox-like face and eyes that could only be shaped with a menacing and cunning bewitching beauty, Lysandra's eyes were emerald but laced with hints of ruby and pink, a contrast that enhanced her beauty. Her skin was marked with delicate black tattoos, almost tribal in nature, speaking of a past steeped in shadows. She radiated a warmth that reminded Irina of a caged, raging flame. That was the aura Lysandra carried with her.

Why she was called the Velvet Rose was beyond Irina's comprehension. Something so delicate could not be named for this beast of a sister.

Her figure was well-proportioned—neither too much of anything nor lacking in any regard. She was the type of beauty none could fault, balanced perfectly between unreachable majesty and intimate allure. A balance anyone would admire.

Irina was so lost within the world of her mind that she failed to hear the almost sultry chuckle that came from Lysandra.

Then the question came: How could Irina describe all this if she had sworn never to open her eyes to the world again?

Irina would simply tell you she heard what the music, the wind's secrets, and the laughter of the spirits told her.

She was an anomaly—even her mother could not fully understand her. But then, she hadn't understood any of her daughters. Mutations were given when crossing races, and considering that each of their fathers was always chosen from the most extreme, unique stock, their bloodlines intermingled with the royal lineage to create children the world could neither categorize nor predict.

It was also curious how she had never borne a son—but that was a mystery for another time.

Even among the twenty daughters, Irina stood out as something strange—and not the interesting kind. The frustrating kind... and maybe the reason she was treated with no amount of leeway was all because her mother was trying to figure her out, something that had not borne fruit, as the Duchess was forced to engage more brutal means to force the result she wanted.

Still, Irina had never needed her five senses to navigate the world. Perhaps that was part of what led her to make such drastic decisions in the past. But, being as delusional as she was, she'd never acknowledge any of those truths, even if she were forced to confront them.

Lost in thought, she failed to react in time as she was swept off her feet and slammed into the ground that she had just managed to get up from. Her bones rattled, her organs quaked, and the air was forced from her lungs.

Her heart pounded in its cavity, desperate for the very air she'd been denied—but it was never enough.

The world began to blur. Her vision swam.

And all she could see—well, she did not need to see it; she could feel it, taste it in the air around them and the burning scent of her sweat and blood—was that arrogant, almost dismissive smile from Lysaandra, who now stood over her, her foot firmly planted on Irina's chest—delivering the most humiliating blow of all.

Anger surged through her.

Only to be ruthlessly drowned out by the memory of her mother's scornful gaze.

She could not afford to let her emotions show here.

She had lost. And she had to accept that.

To lose was one thing. To refuse to accept defeat was to invite mockery—and Irina could not afford to be looked down upon more than she already was.

So she tried to keep her expression neutral as her body failed her further.

She could no longer see Lysandra's face. The wind had long since abandoned her. Even her hearing had dulled; her sister's wild, rampaging aura suppressed the world itself in ways Irina would never understand—unless she entered that world herself.

Everything was collapsing around her, and she had no idea what to do anymore.

Her sister had only recently awakened. Now, Irina was little more than a training dummy—a body to help Lysandra get used to her newfound power.

Everything had spiraled out of control, and for the first time, Irina understood that the world was not fair.

Lysandra—the Velvet Rose...

Born from another man, like all twenty of them were, she might as well have been a stranger she lived with under the same roof, related by only a single tie, which was their mother...

They were called the Sisters of the Southern Flame, but all Irina saw was a fragmented family pretending at unity. A hollow image painted for the world's benefit.

Among the twenty sisters, she was the last.

And while the rest were supreme talents who made even the heavens cower in awe of their power, beauty, and grace, she... only carried beauty.

Beauty she had marred with scars.

Her lips were sealed with thread. Her ears were mutilated beyond recognition.

She had done it to herself.

And for it, she had earned nothing but more scorn from the ones she was supposed to call family.

To be worthless was an understatement, as she was of no use to her family.

If she had kept her beauty then at least she would have been married off for political power, but with the state of things she would be lucky if she ever stepped out of the Duchess Castel and people did not call her an abomination.