Liora stepped forward, her voice hardening as she stared into Veda's eyes, her presence overwhelming the room. Even Adrian, bound and watching, could feel the weight of the conversation—like a storm brewing just beneath the surface.
"Even then," Evangeline—once Liora—continued, her tone shifting into sothing almost regretful, "I didn't bla you as much as I blad myself. I spent months, years, questioning what more I could have done. But it wasn't until I discovered… that room."
Veda's eyes widened.
A cold, creeping sensation took hold of her chest, freezing her breath as Liora's words hit closer to sothing darker. Sothing she had kept hidden for far too long. Nobody aside from her and Liora knew...
Liora tilted her head, studying Veda's reaction, the faintest smile curling at the edge of her lips as she saw the recognition in her old master's eyes. "Oh yes, that room, Veda. Your secret room. The room where you practiced the arts everyone else calls 'forbidden.' I was completely shaken at first when I found it… But I was desperate, more desperate than anyone could understand.
I was willing to try anything."
Veda's throat tightened as Liora spoke.
She felt the walls of her carefully guarded past begin to crack. The room Liora referred to was a place Veda had once hoped no one would ever find. A room filled with knowledge, experints, and forbidden practices she had sworn to abandon long ago.
Liora's voice grew quieter, almost intimate, as she continued, "At first, I didn't know what to make of it. I couldn't comprehend what you were doing in there. I thought it was just more of your work—more of your endless, relentless search for cures. So, I started visiting it. Night after night. Hoping, praying, that sowhere among your practices, I would find the answer.
The answer that could save her."
Veda remained silent, her heart pounding in her chest.
"I thought I was being secretive," Liora continued, her voice thick with bitter amusent. "I thought you didn't know. But of course, you knew. You always knew. And you didn't stop . In fact, you encouraged .
You gave more ti, more freedom, all the while pretending you were too busy to notice."
She had known.
Of course, she had known.
She had felt Liora's presence in that room, sensed her desperation, her willingness to dive into the very practices Veda herself had forsaken. But Veda had let her be. She hadn't stopped her.
She hadn't even warned her.
Veda's lips parted, but the words felt heavy, stuck in her throat. She had hoped to steer Liora toward a resolution on her own. She had wanted to let her find so semblance of peace or solace. But she had never imagined it would co to this.
"But as ti passed..." Liora's voice took on a darker edge, her expression shifting into sothing more haunted, more pained. "I found out about that. And...
"...That's when sothing broke inside ."
Veda's heart stopped. She knew what Liora ant. She knew what was coming next, and the weight of it felt like a crushing blow.
"That's right," Liora whispered, her eyes flashing with an intensity that made the room seem even smaller. "I found out that you had already found a way to cure my sister. Even before she died. You had the cure… and yet…"
"And yet..."
Veda's breath hitched.
There it was—the ugly truth, the one she had buried so deep, the one she had hoped would never see the light of day.
Liora's voice trembled with barely contained fury, her fists clenched at her sides. "Yet you did nothing. You let her die, Veda. You could have saved her, but you didn't. You let believe it was hopeless. You let suffer."
Veda couldn't breathe.
She could feel the walls of her world closing in, the weight of her past mistakes suffocating her. She had thought she was protecting Liora, shielding her from the cost of using the forbidden arts, from the sacrifices that would have co with using such a cure. But now, faced with the raw, unfiltered hatred in Liora's eyes, Veda realized just how deeply she had failed.
"I… I couldn't use it," Veda finally managed, her voice barely a whisper. "The cost… it was too high. It would have destroyed her."
Liora's laugh was cold, empty. "Destroyed her? She died anyway, Veda. She's *gone*. And you—you—had the power to stop it. You lied to .
You told to push harder, to focus on my training, to believe that I had a chance… all the while knowing that the one chance I had was locked away in your secret room."
Veda's knees felt weak.
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She had made the wrong choice.
The choice to protect Liora from a future that would have been filled with darkness, but in doing so, she had shattered any trust or hope between them.
Liora's voice trembled with emotion, her final words echoing through the room. "You took that choice away from . You took her away from . And for that… for that, Veda, I will never forgive you."
The silence that followed was deafening, a cold and suffocating stillness that pressed down on them all. Adrian, still a witness to the confrontation, felt the weight of years of pain and betrayal hanging in the air.
'...Every villain has their own story... Guess this is hers...'
Veda's eyes stung, but no tears fell.
There was nothing she could say.
Nothing she could do to undo the choices she had made. She had thought she was doing the right thing, but now, she stood at the edge of a chasm she had helped create.
And there was no going back.
Again... No one could control ti...
Liora took a step back, her expression hard and unforgiving. "I swore to make you pay for that, Veda. One way or another… I'd make you pay."
"!"
Liora stood in the suffocating silence for a long mont, her gaze never leaving Veda's face. The tension in the room was palpable, crackling like electricity, as her eyes flickered between pain and anger, grief and fury.
Adrian remained bound, watching the scene unfold, the weight of their shared history pressing down on him like a heavy fog. Every breath felt labored as if the truth revealed in the room could crush the air from their lungs.
Finally, Liora broke the silence, her voice quieter now, but no less venomous.
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