-Threads of Fate-

The realm of Aloria is a land veiled in mystery, and frequently disturbed by dark magicks

Holy scripture passed down over the ages claim that the Alorians royal family inherited the divine blood of the Gods.

The First King took the name Argentius, Light of the Dawn. He had a crown of gleaming silver fashioned for himself, which is said to have never tarnished. He proclaimed his reign was the dawn of a new era for the kingdoms of man.

Argentius had the greatest artisans and architects design a grand city, a new capital fit for the divinity that he claimed.

And so, great gilded walls were erected to encompass the august city that came to be called Eldralis, preserving the peace for all who lived there.

For a time.

But time pressed on without regard for Argentius’ plans, and he eventually passed away.

As the generations passed, that ever-present feeling of peace and safety in the city faded away.

High above the sprawling capital city, nestled in the craggy embrace of the Gandrian Mountains, lay the Grand Palace of Eldralis—a place built to be the epitome of grandeur and opulence.

Yet, within its walls, a shadow of cruelty cast a pall over that splendor…

Deep within the labyrinthine corridors of the palace, where the prestige of the royal court might as well be a world away, there was a small, forgotten chamber.

A place untouched by the warmth of daylight and gentle embrace of the sun.

It was here, in a frigid stillness of stone and marble, that one could find the tiny domain of Princess Eve, the young royal whose existence had become something like a secret—not because of some grand reason like the servants swearing their souls to the royal family with magick, but because nobody bothered to care for the princess.

This sunless chamber was a solitary cocoon, a world of only desolation and anguish. Its stone walls were as unforgiving as the royal decree that had banished its occupant.

The room's only furnishing was a shoddily-built cot, draped in a single, threadbare blanket—a meager defense against the biting cold that gripped the palace in its eternal wintry embrace.

A lone candle flickered as wax dripped onto the floor, casting eerie shadows that danced upon the walls, emphasizing the room's stark solitude. Though often-times the room remained unlit, as servants couldn’t be bothered to bring a replacement when the wax and wick had burned to completion.

On especially chilly nights, Princess Eve would lie upon the cot and her skeleton-like body would tremble as each shiver coursed through her. She’d wrap the thin blanket as tightly around herself as she could manage in an effort to not rip it further.

Most nights, her every breath would be visible in the frigid air.

The room's furnace, cold and forlorn, always remained unlit. This forgotten section of the palace was devoid of firewood. The warm embers of a hearth, vibrant and welcoming, were nothing but a faded memory for the princess.

Eve's violet eyes would glisten with tears whenever she found herself thinking about the past. She longed for the warmth of the sun, the voices of friends and family, and the joy of laughter—all of which seemed forbidden to her, in her exile.

Yet, even within the confines of this stifling solitude, a single glimmer of hope burned within the princess’ heart, standing testament to her indomitable spirit that had defied the cruelty that sought to break her time and time again.

As her memories indicated, it wasn’t always like this in the palace.

Not so long ago, in a time that would be considered the golden age of Aloria, attendants and servants within the Palace of Eldralis were renowned across the land for their loyalty, noble hearts, and unwavering devotion to the royal family.

But something happened, a darkness sneaked its way into their hearts and began to poison the very devotion they’d held so dear.

It started with the ascent of a new king—a ruler with ambitions that eclipsed the kingdom's foundations.

King Rodrick the Emberheart, with a thirst for power that bordered on insanity, sought to solidify his reign by discovering the truth of Aloria's divine and magickal heritage.

He believed that by dismantling ancient relics and tapping into the secrets of the Gods, he could truly secure his rule for all eternity. This lust for total supremacy had cast a dark shadow over the palace and begun the descent into cruelty and despair.

Swept up and consumed by the King’s abhorrent greed, the royal attendants and servants, became nothing more than pawns in the king's insidious plot. They were caught in webs spun of dark enchantments, their hearts tainted by haunting whispers that promised unimaginable power.

This sudden shift had the most profound impact on Princess Eve's life, a life that had once been filled with laughter and affection.

She was banished from sight and sent to live in that dusty corner of the palace, and now the attendants and servants, now tainted by dark forces, reveled daily in the torment they inflicted upon the princess. Mockery and humiliation were their favored tools, and they wielded them mercilessly.

Princess Eve, a kind and pure girl who knew only love in her early years, became the target of their wickedness. Cruel taunts and laughter filled her solitary chamber, like sickly serpents striking venom at her heart.

The terrible transformation was fully complete when the palace guards, who’d once sworn to protect the royal family, now turned a blind eye to the torment. Their inaction only fueled the sadistic fires that now blazed in the hearts of all those who served within the palace.

Though amid the terrible people and hearts filled with evil, there was a golden-haired maid named Lily, whose heart remained untouched by the shadows.

She alone showed Princess Eve love.

Lily's tender words and gentle embrace were the only light in Eve’s life. She whispered sweetly to the princess and offered solace in moments of despair.

While the princess desperately clung to the hope Lily’s love gave her, King Rodrick, her father, had grown increasingly obsessed in his bid to consolidate power and unravel the God’s greatest secrets.

In pursuit of his dark ambitions, King Rodrick had grown ever more distant from the kingdom's core values of unity and compassion. He gathered a group of advisors, sorcerers who practiced forbidden magicks. These advisors, driven by the King’s promises of unimaginable power, began to manipulate the mind of the King himself.

Deep within the Palace of Eldralis, King Rodrick had been caught in his own webs of secrecy and ambition. The kingdom had long been graced with scholars of magick, and the king's insatiable desire for power had led him to the forbidden depths of the kingdom’s library. There, among the dusty tomes and ancient scrolls, he unearthed a particular ominous grimoire.

The book, bound in a sort of odd-colored aged leather and adorned with cryptic symbols, spoke of dark rituals to achieve godhood through the sacrifice of one with divine blood. Its words whispered promises of ascension, of a power beyond the realm of mortals, and for King Rodrick, his ambitions flared like a fevered fire and he found himself ensnared by its tantalizing words.

As he and his advisors studied the arcane pages, they learned that this sinister rite would demand not just a simple sacrifice.

The grimoire asserted that to attain godhood, the victim must not only be of divine lineage but also willingly offer themselves to the ritual, their spirit completely shattered, their will to live extinguished.

Such a sacrifice would be a gateway to transcendent power.

The king's eyes, once gleaming with the lust for dominion, now reflected the chilling depths of his newfound obsession. He envisioned himself as a god, with power unparalleled in the annals of history. The allure of such a destiny, of becoming an entity beyond mortality, cast a malevolent shadow over his judgment.

The kingdom of Aloria would bow before him, and the world itself would tremble at his very presence.

But a dark realization loomed.

His path to godhood was a road that must be paved with anguish and despair,

King Rodrick, with a mixture of greed and trepidation, grappled with the realization that only one within his own family could undergo this nightmarish transformation.

As he considered the implications of the ritual, King Rodrick’s thoughts turned to his own family, the princess, Eve, his own flesh and blood. Though not fully acknowledged in his mind, the darkness that had festered in his heart had already exiled her to a life of solitude.

This ritual’s revelation presented a new challenge. To achieve godhood, he would need to break her spirit, to drive her to willingly offer herself as a sacrifice.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The king was completely consumed by his ambition and saw this revelation as the means to secure his legacy.

Yet, a flicker of doubt gnawed at the edges of his conscience. Was the price for godhood too steep? Could he truly bring himself to shatter his own daughter's spirit, to condemn her to an existence of torment and despair?

Hah! King Rodrick laughed at himself.

Because, of course, he would.

The King loathed his daughter—though, he did not know why.

The King hated her existence that was a stain on his glorious family—though, he wasn’t sure when he began to have those thoughts.

The King’s heart fluttered with joy at the thought of his daughter begging for him to let her die—though… a tear swelled in his eye and his mind was wracked in pain for a moment.

In the depths of that chilling library, King Rodrick let go of any residual attachments and lingering remnants of love for his own child. The path to godhood was within his grasp. The sinister tome, whispering promises of transcendent power, held him in its thrall, the kingdom's fate teetering on the edge of a terrible abyss.

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Day by day the King’s demeanor darkened, his own devotion to the kingdom giving way to cruelty, just like that of his servants. Princess Eve became his primary target, believing that her torment was the key to unlocking the divine knowledge he so desperately sought.

Now with the King’s grace, the palace attendants tormented the princess with a zealous vigor, their vicious laughter echoing like a sinister chorus in the empty halls beyond her secluded chamber.

It was on the night before the princess’ fourteenth birthday when the darkest chapter of her life was forever etched into her memory.

A group of male attendants, led by the once-loyal Captain of the Royal Guard—a man who used to follow after the young princess as she played in the palace gardens—had fallen so far to the sinister influence, stormed into her chamber.

The stale air was thick with tension and the shadows cast by the princess’ single light source danced in anticipation of the cruel act to come.

With ruthless abandon, they subjected Princess Eve to a savage beating, their blows falling like the jagged shards of the broken kingdom.

The princess, trembling with pain and fear, desperately fought to protect herself, but her strength was no match for the darkness that had hold over her oppressors.

After an eternity of torture, the attackers left the room. Their sick laughter echoed down the hall to Princess Eve, who had been left bruised, broken, and gasping for air.

Her cries for help had gone unanswered for hours.

The dwindling flickers of candlelight cast eerie shadows upon her still form, like wraiths mourning the innocence that had been stolen from her.

In the hushed aftermath of this heinous act, Princess Eve clung to life's fragile thread, her heart now shattered by despair.

With a cautious yet determined step, Lily entered the princess’ chambers. Her eyes went wide with horror at the sight that greeted her.

She knelt beside the princess and with trembling hands, began to tend to the princess's wounds with strips of cloth that could hardly be called a bandage.

Her touch was soft and gentle, but every time she made contact with the princess, Eve flinched in desperation.

Lily whispered words of solace and tenderness as she prayed that her presence could be a sanctuary for the princess in the storm of darkness that had engulfed the palace.

Lily worked tirelessly to mend the physical wounds that marred the princess but worried the emotional damage could never be healed.

Princess Eve’s once bright amethyst eyes now seemed dull and lifeless.

Sadly, the beacon of hope that was a maid who dared to cross the line and forge a bond with the princess was snuffed out. In the cruel grip of dawn's first light, Lily mysteriously vanished from the palace, leaving Eve alone once more.

Days passed, and Lily still had not returned to Eve’s side.

One night, as the moon hung low in the sky and the bitter winter winds howled through the palace corridors, a burning desire for truth welled up within Eve's heart. In a daring act, she slipped through the shadowy halls of the palace, ears tuned to the boisterous conversations of guards, whose words spoke of betrayal.

Their howling laughter revealed the horrifying truth—Lily had met a cruel fate, silenced by those who despised her pure heart.

With the moon as her only companion, Eve fled the palace. She struggled through the unforgiving cold, her thread-bare blanket wrapped tight around her fragile form.

The night air was cold and unforgiving as Eve, still battered and bruised, ventured out from the suffocating darkness of the palace into the embrace of the Gandrian Mountains.

The princess's footsteps were feeble, and her breath hung in the frosty air like ethereal mist. Each step was an act of defiance, a strike against the years of abuse that had cloaked her life for far too long.

The mountains loomed over her, their jagged peaks reaching for the heavens, silhouetted against the moon's pallid glow.

Bitter winds howled and clawed at her tiny body.

Her feet, barely protected by worn shoes, faltered on the treacherous, snow-covered path. Her heart beat weakly within her chest, threatening to stop at any moment.

As the princess trekked deeper into the unknown, her thoughts turned back to Lily's whispered words of hope. Her years of kindness were like a beacon of light, and Eve clung to that feeling and used it to guide her through the dark wilderness.

The line between the hours that had passed and eternity blurred, but Eve pressed on.

The mountains, unforgiving as they were, were peaceful. One place where she was finally free from the torment of the palace. The crunching of her footsteps became a cadence to her march, a declaration of her freedom.

The stars above seemed to shimmer with approval, bearing witness to her resolve, but as night became day and the oppressive sun that she hadn’t seen in ages bore down on her withered body—her resolve faltered.

Eve struggled for a long time. Her stomach rippled with pain and her throat, mouth, and lips felt dry—even as she sucked on handfuls of snow, her thirst and hunger threatened to end her journey at any minute.

And while on the precipice of death, she saw it.

An ancient and forgotten temple, hidden away in the heights of the Gandrian Mountains.

As the chill of a new night gnawed at her bones and the pain from her still unhealed wounds intensified, she stumbled into the sanctuary of the temple. Inside, a dimly lit chamber lay before her, a statue of a golden goddess standing sentinel.

As she collapsed onto her knees before the deity, her breaths came in ragged gasps, and her vision blurred. The taste of salt and iron stained her mouth.

In this most dire moment of need, Princess Eve gasped a single prayer to the golden goddess, her last hope, seeking salvation from this terrible life.

Her voice was cracked and strained.

“Please, give me another chance… I won’t make the same mistakes again. I won’t do anything to cause my father to hate me. I’ll be a good daughter. I promise. So, please God… please—”

Princess Eve’s legs finally gave out, and her body crumbled to the ground in a fit of coughs and wheezes.

“Ahhh… I don’t want to die like this. Not again.”

Her words were as icy and lifeless as the world outside the temple, and it caused her to pause.

Not again? She questioned herself.

Why did I—?

Amid the solitude of the temple, Princess Eve found herself succumbing to the depths of her own mind.

There she awakened to the terrible truth of her existence—a haunting aspect that caused her body to shudder.

A flood of fragmented memories swarmed her thoughts, each one a painful echo of a past life. These recollections, no longer shrouded in darkness, combined with the memories of her current life and threatened to break her mind. She had lived not one awful life alone, but instead, her existence was a continuum of suffering that stretched across a thousand years.

As her mind delved into these harrowing memories, she unearthed the cruel and relentless cycles of abuse that seemed to haunt her every incarnation.

In the recesses of her mind, she discovered herself as a beggar in one lifetime, struggling to find morsels of food and shelter from the biting cold. In another, she was a laborer in the mines, her back bowed beneath the weight of unrelenting toil.

In one of the most harrowing memories of her past, Eve recalled her first life.

She had been born as a princess in a glorious nation called Revan-Natori. A place of beauty and prosperity. Its people were known for their mastery of elemental magicks. Yet, it was this very power that would ultimately lead to their downfall.

Eve had been born into a world of grandeur but was marred by a curse placed on her soul the moment she was born, a curse that enslaved daughters of Natori for generations. This curse was a malevolent force that entwined their lives with suffering and despair, an ancient legacy that had festered like a rotting wound. Eve was not a princess; she was a vessel for the curse, bearing its weight like a crown of thorns.

Catastrophe came for Revan-Natori as the nation was smashed to ruins by a kingdom of void magick-wielding elves.

Eve's people were defeated.

Their mighty armies were slaughtered with ease and her father, the king, was beheaded.

The once-proud nation of Revan-Natori was now nothing but a puppet state, renamed to the Kingdom of Rena, and offered up as a solemn concession to the elves.

As the new ‘ruler’ of this forsaken land, Eve’s brother, Prince Lysander, became entangled in the same darkness that now consumed their kingdom. His desperation to assert control over the void-addled curse that had their family employed to enslave its own led him to insanity.

One fateful night, the curse's malevolence seemed to reach its zenith. Eve, imprisoned within her own flesh, was forced to watch in abject horror as her brother, driven to madness over his failures to control the curse, turned on her.

With void magick coursing through his veins, Lysander, in an act of unspeakable cruelty, murdered her in cold blood.

Eve's eyes bore witness to her own demise as Lysander ripped her heart from her chest, the pain searing through her soul like a seething fire. Her final moments were marked by a cruel betrayal, the agony of her heart's removal, and a chilling awareness of the curse's insidious power.

Her spirit, marked by decades of torment, would continue to carry the weight of that brutal end into her future lives, where the memories of her past as Princess Eve would haunt her like a relentless specter of despair.

Her every existence was marked by adversity, and the pain she once bore transcended all.

The memories of these past lives were an oppressive tapestry woven with the wicked threads of fate, now laid out before her like a never-ending nightmare.

Every moment of betrayal, heartbreak, and injustice, was etched in her soul, waiting only for her to die and play them back over again.

With tear-stained eyes, Eve struggled and gave one last look at the ancient statue looming over her. In a quiet voice, she cursed the Gods.

Her vision finally faded to black.

The princess’ last thoughts were of dread and anguish. A desperate plea that she would never be reborn—that her life would end for all eternity.