It had all begun that night, the night Kafka seized the Church of the Lesser Demons. A night etched into Serafina’s mory as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
She rembered standing in the shadows of the old chapel, her body still and poised like the weapon she had been trained to be since birth.
The leaders of the Church, monsters in human skin, n and won who had raised her and the rest of her sisters as disposable tools, were gathered in arrogance, believing themselves untouchable.
And then ca Kafka.
In a single night, in front of her very eyes, he dismantled them. Every one of those figures she had once feared, who had lorded over her life with cold cruelty, were slaughtered without rcy.
He tore through them like they were nothing, like their power, their legacy, their cruelty was no more than dust under his feet.
And then, in the silence that followed, he declared himself leader. Sole ruler. And when his eyes swept across the survivors, across her, Serafina felt sothing she had never felt before.
Primal fear.
Even as a veteran assassin, raised in blood and cold discipline, she had never seen such rciless power. Not just skill. Not just calculation.
But raw, unflinching ruthlessness and power. In that mont, her bones trembled. She thought surely he would treat her and the others the sa way, like cattle to be worked until they broke, tools to be discarded when dulled. It was all she had ever known.
But then, everything changed.
Kafka did not chain them. He did not work them to the bone. He did not treat them like objects stripped of will.
Instead, he looked at them not as tools, but as people.
Girls. Humans with dreams and wounds and lives of their own. And with a voice that carried both weight and warmth, he told them sothing no one else had ever dared to say:
He told them they could change.
That they had been forced to kill, to live soaked in blood, to obey commands without thought or choice, but now, it was over.
That he would never again send them on assassinations. Never again command them to spill blood for his sake.
From now on, they would do the opposite. Protect. Guard. Shield. For once in their lives, they would live to preserve life instead of destroy it.
Their only duty: protect his family. Nothing more.
And to their disbelief, he kept his word.
Not a single assassination order ca from him.
Not once did he demand blood or cruelty. He gave them freedom. He gave them purpose. And little by little, their lives transford.
Serafina saw it firsthand. Girls who had never known how to smile now laughed. Girls who had only ever trained with blades now went to the movies, or to parks, or walked down the street without fear. They lived. They were happy. Because of him.
And because of that, Serafina’s fear slowly shifted.
From fear...to respect. From respect...to admiration. She began to look at him differently, not as the monster who had slaughtered her leaders, but as the man who had given her sisters a life they had never dread of.
But that wasn’t the end.
Her duty as the leader ant she was constantly monitoring him. Constantly aware of his every movent. His every interaction.
Reports flowed to her daily: word-for-word scripts of his conversations with his family, with strangers, with his won. She knew more about Kafka than anyone else in the world.
She knew how he soothed fears, how he encouraged, how he loved. She saw him not just as a commander, but as a man, compassionate, warm, endlessly giving.
At first, she told herself it was nothing. That she was just gathering intelligence. That she was only watching because it was her job.
But then...she realized sothing was changing.
Because hearing those words, over and over again, hearing how he comforted Olivia, how he teased Bella, how he cherished Camila, how he coddled Nina...how he even made love to Abigaille, it began to feel like she was there too.
Like those words and actions could have been ant for her.
It was the sa effect that had made Olivia’s heart shift from ice to fire. The sa charm that had made Abigaille lt into his arms. The sa quiet devotion that drew all of them closer.
But Serafina...she had experienced it in a way none of them had.
She hadn’t just felt one mont, one conversation. She had listened to them all. Every single word. Every single tender phrase. Every single act of kindness, strung together like an endless spell.
And how could she not fall?
The truth was, unlike Kafka believed, she didn’t hate him. She didn’t resent him. She didn’t even see him as just her leader.
She loved him.
Loved him with the kind of quiet, suffocating devotion that ca from watching too long from the outside.
Loved him in silence, so much so that she had even prepared a gift, hoping one day she could give it to him, a jump across the chasm she herself had built.
But when the mont ca, she faltered.
Why?...Well, it was because Serafina thought of herself only as a spectator in the grand story unfolding around Kafka. That was the role she had carved for herself, the role she believed she deserved.
In her mind, she wasn’t a participant, she was like soone clutching the worn edges of a book, reading page after page of a tale that pulled her deeper and deeper in.
And just like any reader who lost herself too far in a story, she had fallen in love with the main character.
But the cruel reminder that gnawed at her heart was that she wasn’t in the story. She had no right to step into it. No chance to stand by his side. She could only read from the shadows, forever outside of the pages, watching as others beca a part of his life.
Her sister knew, of course. Lyra had always known.
Serafina had confessed everything to her once, awkwardly, hesitantly, as if speaking the words themselves was an unforgivable sin.
And Lyra, ever the more expressive of the two, had wanted to help her sister bridge that gap, to take one brave step out of the margins and into the narrative. And so she ca up with an idea.
It was after overhearing one of Kafka’s casual complaints, spoken half-jokingly over a al, about how his favorite cooking knife had broken.
Serafina had seized on that small detail like it was fate itself.
She knew knives, better than almost anyone. Forging them, tending to their balance, understanding their sharpness was as natural to her as breathing.
And so, quietly, she went to work. She selected steel herself, shaped and tempered it, and engraved it with her own hands.
The knife was beautiful, functional, strong, and elegant, but with the smallest engraving near the hilt, sothing subtle yet deeply personal.
It wasn’t just a weapon or a tool. It was a gift.
Her gift.
And now it sat in her pocket, hidden, heavy with aning.
She had ant to give it to him. She had promised herself that she would. But when the mont ca, when Kafka’s eyes actually turned toward her, when the silence stretched and her heart pounded like a hamr in her chest, she faltered.
The thought of how he might see her, aloof, cold Serafina suddenly offering sothing so intimate, so personal, paralyzed her.
What if he dismissed it?
What if he thought it strange?
What if, by crossing that invisible line she had held for so long, she broke everything?
That fear was too great. And so she let the mont slip.
Now, sulking, with the knife still concealed against her thigh, she stood hollow and miserable, as though she had failed in the simplest of tasks.
Lyra noticed, of course. She always did. With a sigh, she shoved her sister’s shoulder and said.
"It’s alright, Sera, it’s alright. It was just one missed chance. There’ll be more. You’ll get another chance to do it."
"Really?" Serafina’s eyes lifted, hopeful yet uncertain. "Do you think...do you think I’ll truly be able to change this? To do sothing about it?"
"Well, the real question is if you really want to?" Lyra looked at her firmly, her voice unusually steady. "Do you want to change the way things are between you and him?"
"Yes!" Serafina said instantly, nodding fiercely. "Yes, I do. Even though I’m scared...I know I love him. I know it."
She lowered her gaze, her voice softening.
"It’s the first ti I’ve ever felt this way. I even...I even had to look it up. I read articles, dictionaries, everything, just to understand why I felt so strange whenever I thought of him."
"And the answer was...love. That’s what this is. And I don’t want to deny it anymore."
Seeing her heartwarming reply, Lyra’s lips curled into a smile, half teasing, half proud.
"Love really is amazing, isn’t it? I an, look at you. My serious, stone-faced sister, blushing like a schoolgirl...Honestly, it’s adorable. And it suits you."
Serafina’s blush deepened, her gaze falling to the ground, but there was a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth now.
"And it’s alright, big sis." Lyra went on gently, squeezing her shoulder. "If you’ve got that love in your heart, then soday, you’ll definitely find the courage to say it out loud."
"...You’ll change everything. You just have to give yourself the chance."
Hearing this, Serafina inhaled deeply, her lips pressing into a thin line as her eyes hardened with newfound resolve.
She thought of the other girls, those who had been broken, scarred by their pasts, yet still found ways to laugh and live again.
She could do no less. She would do no less.
But just as their sisterly mont reached its quiet peak, an ugly groan broke through the night.
Both of them froze, then looked down.
The man who had started it all, the one whose arm Kafka had broken, was still alive. Barely. His face was unrecognizable now, nothing more than a pulpy mass of crushed bone and torn flesh, one eye burst, blood oozing down his ruined features.
Sohow, impossibly, he clung to life. His trembling hand reached toward them, fingers twitching, voice a raw rasp.
"H-Help ...help......save from that monster...please..."
He thought he’d been spared. He thought salvation might co.
Instead, what ca was the flash of steel.
A sharp crack split the air as Lyra, irritated by the interruption, stabbed her blade clean through his neck. His plea ended in a wet gurgle before silence swallowed him whole.
She then pulled her knife free with an annoyed flick and glared down at the corpse.
"Irritating idiot." She muttered. "Can’t you see we were having a deep sister-to-sister conversation? No delicacy at all."
Serafina blinked in surprise at this sight. "I thought...I thought you wanted soone alive. Soone to torture. You were so upset that everyone died so quickly."
For a mont, Lyra just blinked back. Then her eyes widened.
"Oh. Oh! I forgot!" She slapped her forehead dramatically. "I didn’t even think about it. I was so caught up and..." She looked at the lifeless body at her feet and gave it a little kick, pouting. "Ahhh! Get up, you idiot. Get up so I can torture you. Don’t just die on now. Please just get up already!"
The absurdity of the mont made Serafina’s lips twitch. She, smiled, even giggled, watching her sister sulk over a dead man like a child robbed of a toy.
And she realized sothing then.
The reason she could laugh, the reason she could let herself be vulnerable, the reason her sister could express her darkest impulses freely without judgnt, it was all because of him.
Kafka.
And thinking about him her hand curled into a fist at her side, trembling with resolve. She lifted her eyes to the sky, heart pounding, and thought fiercely,
’One day...One day, I’ll tell him. I’ll find the courage. I won’t stay on the sidelines forever.’
He had given her a new life. It would be foolish not to live it fully.
And she knew exactly how she wanted to live it, by dedicating her heart, her strength, her everything, to him...
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