Location: The Cursed Rosehall Palace, Kingdom of Lysvare
I woke to silence so thick it pressed against my eardrums like cotton soaked in blood.
Dust danced like dying fireflies in the dim shafts of light filtering through the torn curtains. My body ached — not from injury, but from time. My muscles had the texture of forgotten silk, and when I sat up, the brittle bedsheets crumbled in my hands like dry leaves. My throat tasted like rust and roses.
Where… am I?
I was in a room — large, royal, once beautiful, but now wilting under the weight of time. The bed canopy was draped with silvered lace, but cobwebs clung to every thread. The walls, once adorned in soft cream and pale lavender, were faded to a ghostly hue. Paintings stared down at me, their subjects blurred with age and peeling varnish. A shattered perfume bottle lay on the floor, its scent long lost to memory.
I swung my legs off the bed and gasped. Vines—thick, thorny ones—had crawled through the floorboards, winding around the legs of the furniture like ancient serpents guarding forgotten treasures. They pulsed faintly, like they were breathing.
My feet met the cold stone, and something inside me shifted.
I'm awake.
But I didn't remember falling asleep.
There was no pain, no spinning wheel, no cursed spindle prick. Just… a lullaby. A voice. A whisper. And then darkness.
I wrapped a thin velvet shawl around my shoulders and stepped toward the grand window. The heavy drapes groaned as I pulled them aside. Daylight streamed in — not warm sunlight, but pale, winter light that stretched long shadows across the dust-covered floor.
Outside, the palace gardens lay in ruin.
The hedges had grown wild, curling in on themselves. Statues stood cracked and headless. What once must have been roses now hung in blackened knots, their petals stiff as ash. A fountain at the center of the courtyard had frozen mid-flow, its basin dry and cracked, vines choking its stone cherubs.
Everything was still.
Too still.
I turned to the ornate mirror near the bed, its surface fogged and blotched. My reflection stared back — a girl in a pale nightgown, barefoot and bruised by sleep. My hair, once golden and soft, now hung in long waves streaked with silver at the ends, as if frost had claimed them. My eyes, once wide with wonder, were dimmed with something I couldn't name.
Who… am I now?
The palace was called Rosehall. I remembered that, suddenly. It was mine. I was… Aurora.
Princess Aurora of Lysvare.
Cursed.
Forgotten.
I stepped into the hallway, the door creaking like an old mourner. The corridor was grand, lined with red carpets now moth-eaten and stained. Chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling, many shattered. Tapestries fluttered in the cold wind that seemed to whisper through the stones, though no window was open.
The silence was unbearable. No servants. No birdsong. No footsteps.
I passed empty suits of armor with cracked visors. Their gauntlets had fallen to the floor. One held a broken sword. At the far end of the corridor, the great stained glass window depicting my christening lay shattered across the floor, the image of three godmothers fractured into jagged pieces.
I reached the throne room doors. My heartbeat fluttered.
They were ajar.
I pushed them open.
What greeted me was not splendor, but a mausoleum.
The grand throne hall, once a place of feasts, dances, and songs, was draped in shadows. Long tables stood overturned. Banquet platters held rotten food petrified by time. Goblets had spilled across the marble floor, staining it with wine that had dried into rust-colored streaks.
And at the far end—The thrones.
Empty.
Except…
There was something on the queen's seat. A bundle of dried flowers. A letter. And a long strand of black lace.
I approached, my steps echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
The letter was sealed with my family's crest — the Rose of Lysvare entwined with a star. But when I reached for it, something behind the throne groaned.
My breath caught.
A body.
Not quite a skeleton, not quite whole. Draped in royal robes, its face hidden beneath a silver mask. Vines had grown through its ribcage, blooming from the center of its chest. Its hand was outstretched, clutching something — a shard of mirror.
I didn't scream. I couldn't.
Instead, I took the shard.
And when I looked into it — I saw not my own face, but a hallway of mirrors, flickering with faces I didn't know. A girl with red eyes and a red cloak. A boy crying in a dark forest. A masked man whispering through glass.
A war.
A curse.
And me — in the center of it all.
Suddenly, the air around me shifted. The hall groaned. The mirrors cracked.
And a voice echoed from the corners of the room — not from my ears, but inside my skull.
"She's awake."