'What the hell is happening?'
I knew who she was.
Evelyn Alaric.
The Pope of the Order of the Fallen Fla.
A Radiant-ranker under contract with the Demon Lord of Pride.
One of the most dangerous beings in the world.
And yet, as she stood there, fingers brushing against Rose's cheek, there was sothing wrong. Sothing that made my skin crawl more than her power did.
How was she connected to Rose?
There was nothing about this in the novel.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
"Did they treat you badly?" Evelyn asked, her voice like honey laced with poison, her fingers tracing over Rose's cheek with mocking gentleness.
Rose flinched. Not from fear. From sothing else. Sothing raw.
"Stop acting like you care about !" she yelled, her voice cracking. "Get out! Stop disturbing my life! Stop hurting people I like! Just… stop. Please."
Her breath hitched.
I could hear it. The sound of her sobbing.
Evelyn clicked her tongue, almost as if disappointed. "Daughter, daughter," she said, shaking her head. "I told you before. It's your fault for being weak."
Daughter.
I felt my stomach drop.
Evelyn's lips curled, and her hand didn't leave Rose's cheek. "If you weren't weak, you could have slapped my hand away, couldn't you?" She tilted her head, jade-green eyes shimring with amusent.
"But since you're weak… you are my treasure."
Her words slithered through the air like a blade against flesh.
What kind of relationship is that?
I gritted my teeth, barely stopping myself from lunging at her.
'Luna, I need to move!'
Luna's voice was sharp in my mind. 'She's too strong, Arthur. If you move now—'
I knew.
I knew that.
I was weak.
A single flick of her fingers could erase .
But I still had to—
Evelyn turned her gaze to .
"Oh?"
She stepped forward, studying with a gaze that felt invasive, like it was peeling back my skin and inspecting what lay beneath.
An unsettling smile curved her lips.
"What an interesting boy."
Her red-green eyes shimred, and she tilted her head, looking at like I was sothing rare.
"A human like you exists?" Her voice held a note of sothing—was that approval? Excitent?
"Wow… incredible." She sighed, almost wistfully.
"To think even I would feel envious."
A black rose manifested in her hand.
The petals shimred unnaturally, pulsing with a kind of magic that didn't belong to this world.
"You are dangerous," she murmured, her tone shifting—no longer playful.
Serious.
A predator acknowledging another predator.
"Talents are like seeds," she continued. "They are easy to crush when young. But when they bloom…" She twirled the rose between her fingers.
"They can be dangerous."
She stepped forward.
"So," she whispered, smiling.
"I will crush the flower before it can bloom."
I tensed, mana already surging through —but—
I couldn't move.
A chill rushed down my spine.
No, it wasn't a spell.
It wasn't binding magic or so technique I could break.
It was her presence.
The sheer weight of it made reality itself hesitate around her.
I couldn't move.
Cecilia couldn't move.
Rose did—or tried to.
Her voice was raw, desperate.
"No, don't!"
She reached out, but her body froze in midair—suspended like a marionette with its strings cut.
Evelyn didn't even look at her.
Her attention was still on .
"You are soone who could endanger them in the future," she murmured, voice soft. Almost fond.
Then she smiled.
"So, die for ."
She blew on the black rose.
The petals detached, gliding through the air like drifting embers.
They brushed against my mana—
And tore it apart.
A horrifying sensation spread through —like sothing fundantal inside had been unraveled.
Then, the petals touched my skin.
And in the next instant—
Pain.
Sharp, bright—and then nothing.
I vanished.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Rose Springshaper was born from a lie.
A deception woven so intricately that even those who lived it struggled to untangle its threads.
Her mother, Evelyn Alaric, was a woman of ambition—the Pope of the Order of the Fallen Fla, a Radiant-ranker bound to the Demon Lord of Pride. She had no interest in love, no desire for family. She saw people as tools, resources, pieces on a board to be manipulated.
And Count Levan Springshaper—a man of nobility, wisdom, and genuine affection—was rely another pawn.
Evelyn never loved him.
She didn't need to.
She only needed what he could give her: a child.
A daughter.
A potential heir.
One that she believed—hoped—would inherit sothing greater than herself.
She whispered lies into the Count's ears, wove illusions of affection, played the part of a devoted partner just long enough for fate to take its course. And when she conceived Rose, her act was flawless.
For the first few years, she remained, watching, waiting.
But the mont she realized Rose was ordinary—a child with no grand power, no earth-shattering Gift—she disappeared.
Not a word. Not a goodbye.
She simply vanished from Rose's life.
And for a ti, that was a blessing.
Her father, Count Levan Springshaper, was everything Evelyn was not.
Loving. Gentle. Devoted.
Despite being left with a child to raise alone, he never once showed resentnt. If anything, he cherished Rose all the more fiercely. He raised her with kindness, ensured she never felt the weight of being abandoned.
She grew up believing she was loved.
She learned magic—not the twisted, cruel spells of the Fallen Fla, but the pure magic of the Springshaper lineage. Magic that nurtured, healed, and protected.
And for years, Rose was happy.
Until she turned ten.
Until she awakened.
The first sign ca in the form of roses.
Black. Crimson. Pale white.
They grew where she stepped. They blood from her breath. They unfurled with every pulse of her mana.
And then ca the second sign.
She could feel reality bend around her.
At first, it was subtle. A flicker of sothing off. Shadows moving when they shouldn't. Ti stretching in ways it shouldn't.
Then she learned that she could undo things.
A cut on her finger? Gone, as if it never happened.A dropped glass? Reversed, whole again.A spell cast at her? Erased from existence.
Her Gift was stronger than even Evelyn's.
And Evelyn knew it.
Because the mont Rose awakened—Evelyn ca back.
And she didn't co alone.
Charlotte arrived first.
As if she had been waiting.
As if she had known Evelyn would return the mont Rose's power surfaced.
The battle that followed was one so destructive that the land around the Springshaper estate was forever scarred, reduced to glassed earth and crumbling ruins.
Evelyn, furious at the realization that her daughter was stronger than her, demanded Rose be given to her.
Charlotte refused.
The battle that followed shook the skies.
Charlotte, the greatest spellcaster in the world, fought Evelyn, the fallen prodigy turned monster.
Light against darkness.Creation against destruction.Sister against sister.
And though Charlotte won—she barely won.
Battered and bloodied, she stood over Evelyn's fallen form, her body screaming in exhaustion, her magic flickering like a dying ember.
Evelyn, weakened but not broken, only laughed.
"You won't be able to keep her from forever."
And then, before Charlotte could strike the final blow, Evelyn vanished.
Charlotte never forgot those words.
She knew Evelyn would return.
And so, Rose was hidden.
Rose was taken to the Tower of Magic.
Her Gift—too dangerous, too uncontrollable—was sealed.
Charlotte and the Imperial researchers worked together to suppress it, locking it away so deep within her soul that even Evelyn would think it was gone.
For years, Rose was made to believe that her power had been erased.
That she was nothing special anymore.
That she was normal.
It was the only way to protect her.
And it worked.
For years, Evelyn lost interest.
Believing her daughter was a failure, she abandoned her once again.
Rose, for her part, tried to move on.
She trained, she studied, she lived.
And then, she t Arthur Nightingale.
And for the first ti, she fell in love.
It should have been over.
The past should have stayed buried.
But fate is never so kind.
Evelyn had discovered the truth.
Sohow, so way, she had learned that Rose's Gift still existed.
And now—she had returned to claim her treasure.
Rose was powerless to stop her.
She could only watch as Arthur, the boy who had stolen her heart, the boy who had made her believe in sothing more, stood defiant before a force he could never hope to defeat.
She could only watch as her mother, cold and smiling, raised a single black rose and whispered his death sentence.
She could only watch as the petals touched Arthur's body—
And he disappeared.
Pain, unlike anything she had ever felt, ripped through her.
Sothing inside her broke.
A chain. A lock. A cage forged by magic stronger than she had ever known.
And in its place—
Her Gift awakened.
The air itself cracked.
Roses blood in the empty void where Arthur had once stood.
A pulse of unmaking rippled through reality, fracturing the very laws of existence.
Evelyn's smile widened.
And Rose, eyes blazing with power that should not exist, finally spoke.
"Give him back."
"Nobody will be giving anybody back," a male voice sighed. Then, the world paused.
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