The Crimson Snow (A Realm of Chaos and Void #1)

Chapter 35

The Vengeful Fox

Pain wears many colors, blue and black,

Yet it shimmers in the white.

In life’s journey, darkened shadows

Turn to a ghostly light.

The purest brightness fades to night,

Pain, sharp as a needle’s sting,

Or sweet, like revenge’s bite.

Retrieved from Golden Tales from the Otherworld

by Galen Sorrowspring, Ch. 33, p. 105.

Day of the Incident

Evren Wraithwood

Once he stumbled upon Evren, Theron muttered angrily, “I even turned into a hawk, but everything looks plain. This is a dead end, Ren.”

Evren sighed, looking for Seraphine. “Why are you so moody, Theron? That is so unlike you.”

He peered behind some bushes, thinking it should be something obvious, but there they were, turning over rocks and hugging the trees as if they were playing hide and seek.

Theron huffed and kicked a tree. “It is painful to see her, Ren.”

Ah, it’s about Theodorah. Theron had fallen in love with her years ago and was lucky enough to have a supportive family. She was a creature from the Otherworld but far from what was expected for someone like him to fall in love with. Evren could relate to that. They had all been great friends, Theron and Theodorah, closer than most.

“Is it because of how she looks now or because of what she did back then?”

Evren was curious. What Theodorah did was an impulsive act of jealousy that ended tragically for all of them, but she also gave him and Seraphine a chance after centuries of suffering.

Theron sighed, looking defeated. “Both? It’s just that she could have done the right thing, and you too, Evren… Even if it hurts.”

If she had done the right thing, if I hadn’t asked for it, Seraphine wouldn’t be here. However, she wouldn’t have gone through that miserable endless loop of death and chaos she was still unaware of for centuries, either.

“And yes, it pains me to look at her and what she did to her,”

he finally said, and Evren could understand the mixed feelings.

“Maybe you should talk to her. I think she honestly cares about Seraphine this time. They’ve become friends, and—”

Screams echoed around them, and without hesitation, they ran toward the source. Was it Seraphine? He prayed to the ancients that it was just a mere banshee and not her.

“Here.”

Theron pulled Evren toward a cluster of trees. There was another scream, but he couldn’t tell if it came from Seraphine.

They reached a tall, thin tree with crimson leaves. Before it, a Bánánach—gaunt and ghostly, its hollow eyes burning with malice and its twisted limbs ending in claws sharp enough to tear through shadows—covered Seraphine’s mouth. Its very presence seemed to suck the warmth from the air, leaving a chill of fear in its wake. Beside her was Theodorah.

Theron was shocked. “What are you doing here, Theodorah?”

She smiled, but it seemed forced. Somehow, she looked younger. “Didn’t you hear my screams?”

Evren tried to approach Seraphine, but the monster pulled out a dark knife. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, prince,”

a voice behind the tree said. After centuries of disdain and decades in the cold, Evren had thought nothing in this world could make him shiver with fear.

However, seeing Malvrek, his father, holding Seraphine in his grasp once again, made him drown in it.

“Ah, you seem quiet. Things have changed indeed,”

Malvrek said, stepping out from behind the tree. “Cuff her.”

At his command, more guards appeared, dragging Theodorah forward and cuffing her wrists, pushing her to the ground. She hissed at Malvrek, “Monster.”

Malvrek laughed. “Monster? If I am a monster, what are you, Theodorah? Once again, you fail to make the right decision out of vanity.”

He crouched down and took Theodorah’s face in his hand. “Wasn’t that the deal? To regain your beauty in exchange for my son?”

As he spoke, Theodorah’s features smoothed, her hair became glossy, adorned with colorful roses and leaves, and her eyes turned green again. She was back to her original form.

Theron stepped back as if he had been struck, and Evren couldn’t find words. She had misled them again, and they had fallen for it once more.

“How could you, Theodorah?”

Theron said, sounding hurt.

Theodorah managed to grab Evren. Guards came to pull her away, but she held her cuffed hands on his cloak. “Evren, listen to me. This was the only way. You must trust me this time,”

she pleaded.

“The only way? What? To have all of us killed?”

The guards dragged her down, but she pulled herself up. “To save her,”

she whispered lowly before she kicked the guards. Theron was frozen, like he was seeing a ghost. “Get Lyra’s ring and find her again.”

Evren summoned his familiars, who jumped onto some guards. “Find who again?”

he demanded.

“Seraphine.”

“What do you mean by—”

Evren started, but a guard punched Theodorah in the head, knocking her out. His head was a swirl of thoughts and emotions, but he needed to focus on the most important thing: Seraphine’s safety.

Evren’s familiars were tearing guards apart, and Theron slowly blinked back into reality. Evren hoped he would turn into a hawk to escape this, but knowing him, he would not dare to leave Evren alone.

Evren turned to his father. “Let her go. She has no part in this,”

he said, pointing at Seraphine.

His father laughed. “Ah, but she does. I was surprised when I saw her. Seraphine, is it this time, sweetheart?”

Malvrek said, holding Seraphine’s face and smiling at her. “How delighted I was when my son killed you.”

The monster holding Seraphine’s mouth let her go. “What?”

she asked, confused and dizzy, likely from being hit. Evren’s rage rose.

Malvrek laughed harder. “Ah! What a twist of events. My son didn’t tell you?”

He looked at Evren. “You, my son, are quite the liar, even to this day,”

he said almost proudly, and Evren gritted his teeth.

Evren moved toward his father, ready to die fighting him rather than let him harm Seraphine. However, before he could move, he felt a slice on his back. Then, he saw Theron fall, blood on his back. Losing balance, he collapsed beside his friend.

Poison. Evren had been so focused on Seraphine that he missed that the guards encroached on them. Of course, my father would stoop so low.

“And so disrespectful,”

Malvrek continued. “Oh, did you know that my son killed you centuries ago because he wanted to marry you?”

He laughed even harder. “What a miserable choice.”

Seraphine stood up. “That is nonsense, you monster. You killed Seiren, not Evren,”

she snarled, looking for a way out.

Evren saw her removing her gloves while his father slowly pulled out a sword, a smile on his face. “You wish her to live a couple more minutes? Tell her. Let your lies be your undoing, son.”

His father moved the sword closer to her, and Seraphine closed her eyes.

No, no, no.

Evren put a hand on the ground. “Seraphine...”

he said, trying to push himself up. “You... He is not entirely lying... You were Seiren. You are... That was your first life.”

Seraphine Ashcroft

Seraphine looked at Evren. He was hurt and bleeding. It can’t end like this. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. The idea of killing sickened her, but she could not let anyone hurt him. Evren was hers.

However, time stopped, and her eyes fluttered open. “What do you mean by that?”

she asked, her voice cracking. Confusion filled her head and heart. What he was saying was impossible, unbelievable. It has to be a lie.

However, the look on Evren’s face and the way Theron shut his eyes, trying to avoid what was to come, froze her heart. Then, it all came back. Evren’s knowledge about me. The rooms, the dresses.

Even after what they shared and what they promised, he had lied. Seraphine let herself be tricked again, be used again.

Evren’s eyes blurred with tears. “I... when my father tricked me into killing you, Seiren... he turned you into a fox and asked me to hunt you to get his approval for our marriage,”

he uttered, his voice breaking. Then, a tear, white as snow, fell from his eyes. “Seraphine, I... did not know you were a fox, and I killed you. I—”

This isn’t happening. Seraphine was her own person. She was not the one he had killed. All his desires and love had never been for Seraphine. They had been for a version of her, an obsession with what he wished she could be.

“I even tried to poison myself to end my life. That’s why I knew about the frozen heart deal and poison elixirs,”

he said, crawling on the ground toward her.

Seraphine dropped to her knees, the ground having been swept from underneath her. At that moment, she could not help but ponder all those bizarre dreams, what the crimson woman had said, the signs. The fear I felt in my dreams had been memories of my past.

Malvrek looked at her with pity, disdain, and something akin to anger. “It was such an interesting death. What I never expected was to see you again. That I would like to know, son. Don’t you want to know, Seraphine?”

She couldn’t speak, her mind shattered.

“Crimson Eyes, listen to me. I... was so heartbroken that I asked Theodorah to help me before I was kicked out of the Otherworld when the veil was created. Her mother was a powerful hag, so she had that same type of magic in her. I asked her to bring you back, and—”

Evren broke, yet she held his head in her trembling hands. She needed to hear everything. I want the truth.

“Keep going, Evren,”

she muttered in his ear, and he shivered. She did, too, because he was the most dangerous being in the realm. Evren was a wolf, a hunter, her killer. For the first time, she feared him—what he had become and how he manipulated everything for his sake.

Another snow-like tear fell on the ground. “Theodorah hated you centuries ago. I didn’t know why, but she did. Yet, she promised to bring you back, and when I was sentenced to the human realm, I had no hopes of seeing you again. Years passed, and I wandered alone in the human realm. But then I saw you! Seraphine, I saw you, a version of you.”

He cried so hard that she almost felt pity for him. However, pity did not mean much to her anymore. “And I thought I would have my happy ending, but it wasn’t like that. You died on your 26th birthday.”

Theron, barely breathing, whispered, his hand signaling Theodorah’s body, which lay unmoving on the ground, “Theodorah brought you back, Seraphine, but as a curse, a loophole with no end. You will be reborn, your soul never to move on, and you will die on the same day, at the same age.”

She could barely breathe, but Evren continued, “I watched you die again and again, sickness, killed, all of them terrible deaths. And yes, every time, you were born in different circumstances, in different places, and in different families. I sometimes could tell you the truth, but in most cases, it was too late. But I always found you and... I tried to figure out a solution, but I was limited to the human realm and poor deals,” he said.

Seraphine remembered the list with the names, her names, all her lifetimes, all the times she had lived and died.

She closed her eyes, and a tear fell. The pain Evren had endured after watching her die so many times must’ve been tremendous, unimaginable. How much pain have I been enduring for a selfish wish? He should have let her die. “It is okay,”

she muttered, moving his raven hair out of his face, taking one last look at him and picturing it on an eternal canvas in her head.

Evren managed to pull his arm up and hold her face. “I... I decided to give a chance to a new plan, to make your life so miserable, to break your heart and world so you could ask me for the frozen heart deal just minutes before your 26th birthday. I did it because I couldn’t see you die again, and I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did!”

He smiled softly, caressing her cheek. “You lived. Your life clock stopped just before the cursed day, and that way, I found a loophole for you. If I had my full essence, I could—”

Seraphine was pulled toward the tree while Evren fell to the ground, guards cuffing him and dragging him far from her.

Malvrek looked at his son in a way that Seraphine could only describe as watching an insect being toyed with for amusement.

“You are a monster,”

Seraphine said.

“Ah, but so are you, my dear.”

He motioned to his guards, who carried Evren and Theron away.

Evren kept muttering things, but he seemed to be in a daze. She heard those three words she loved so much, and another tear fell down her cheek, crimson red like her eyes. Those three words are meant for a memory of what he wanted me to be… not for me.

“Well, this was certainly fun. Now, I will have the pleasure to kill you. Or torture you. Tell me, Seiren, what do you prefer?”

The king said in her ear, and she turned her head, disgusted.

You’re going to regret this.

“Seraphine,”

she sneered at him.

Malvrek looked torn, his smile turning rotten. “What?”

She took a breath. “I am Seraphine, not Seiren. Seraphine Ashcroft, you sad excuse of a king.”

Remember that name. Remember the name that will one day lead you to your doom.

At that, she spat at his shoes, and Malvrek slammed her head against the tree. Pain erupted through her, but she stayed on her feet while the king paced between creatures, barking orders, perhaps assuming Seraphine wasn’t much of a threat.

“Seren,”

Dorah muttered from the ground, looking dazzling, even covered in dirt. Seraphine had forgotten she was there—actually, she had forgotten about her the moment Dorah betrayed her. “Take out a ruby.”

Seraphine looked toward her wrist at the bracelet. She huffed at Dorah, “I am not naive enough to trust you ever again. You are not my friend. All of this is because of you. You could have let me know.”

Dorah flinched. “Please, Seren, this was the only way. They would have killed you and him one way or another. There is so much you do not know, the things I regret. In the past, I…”

She gulped and then choked on purple blood from her mouth, her eyes sad. “Please, for once, just... trust me this one time.”

Malvrek kicked her. “Wicked monster. Take her too. Alive,”

he muttered. Seraphine marveled at the chaos—crimson everywhere. Beyond that, she realized she no longer wanted to be the fox of the story. She wasn’t a wolf either. She could be something far greater. A smile crept across her face, her mouth dripping crimson, highlighting the devilish gleam in her crimson eyes.

I am tired of it all.

So, she took a leap of faith. Seraphine stepped back slowly, gripping the crimson tree. She watched as heart-shaped leaves fell around her, covering her—guarding her. Near the center of the tree’s trunk, she noticed an unusual hole.

No more nightmares.

No more chances.

No more feelings.

“Come, try to kill me. You didn’t have the guts the first time,”

she said to Malvrek, her eyes bright as a rose and sharp as a ruby dagger. She felt the tree moving behind her, and a buzz traversed her.

However, before she could see Malvrek’s reaction, she used her nails to pull out a single ruby from the bracelet on her wrist. Guided by instinct, magic, or perhaps something else, she placed it in the hole in the tree that resembled a mouth. Then, she smiled. Somehow, she could feel the tree smiling back at her.

Looking back at the chaos, her smile widened, full of promises and things to come. She might be on a leash with Evren now, but not for too long.

I will see you all drown in fear.

Malvrek stepped back, something akin to fear on his face, as he looked at the tree behind her, which seemed to grow and expand. Its branches were breaking and morphing, a rain of crimson around them.

Moving her hair out of her face, Seraphine winked at him and turned around to the tree, giving her back to the king, the chaos, her heart, and the sweet memories.

The hole in the tree widened, the wood twisting into the shape of fangs. It resembled a massive, gaping mouth, larger than her, filled with the potent scent of roses.

This time, she didn’t close her eyes, didn’t hold her breath, didn’t pray for the nightmare to end. This time, she knew the nightmare had just begun—and it was her. Seraphine smirked as the tree swallowed her whole.