All of a sudden, the air crackled—static, electric, sharp.
Helena stayed kneeling, her fingers clawing into the dirt as if she could bury the guilt with her nails.
But it was too late.
"I loved her," she muttered.
I froze.
"What?"
"I loved Selene. You weren’t the only one. I wanted to save her. I wanted to be saved by her. But she never looked at me like that. She looked at you."
A chill ran down my spine.
"This is what it’s about? Jealousy?"
"No. Not jealousy." She looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot. "Obsession."
There it was.
The truth I didn’t want.
"You were always the one who got to be the hero. The one she believed in. But me? I was just... a Lovecraft."
I couldn’t care less. Her last name meant absolutely nothing for me.
"I wanted her to stop seeing me as broken. So I made a choice—one I couldn’t undo."
"Don’t try to justify it," I said coldly.
"I’m not. I’m confessing."
There was something wrong with this. Something off. I couldn’t tell if it was a trick... or a goodbye.
The Transcription flickered—slow, deliberate. Like it wanted me to watch. No—needed me to.
There she was. Helena. Younger, dumber, with that same idiotic posture of someone trying to look innocent in a warzone.
Then her—Selene. Not the one I knew now. Softer. Hair longer. Laugh real.
God, she was beautiful.
They whispered names, fake stars, swapped promises under dim dorm lights. Touches trailing like questions. And when they finally kissed—
I didn’t breathe.
Not because it hurt.
Just—curiosity.
That’s all.
"Of course it was her," I muttered, mostly to myself. "Because why wouldn’t it be her."
They touched foreheads. Whispered secrets. One of them said something about the stars. That they weren’t Veylith or Alra—they were just them.
Then the kiss.
God. The kiss.
I scoffed. "Romantic. Juvenile. Predictable."
Not only they kissed, they also did those romantic stuff together.
However, my voice then cracked at the edges.
The door slammed open. Her father’s voice cut through, sharp as a surgical blade. Selene thrown to the ground, pulled by her hair. Still shielding Helena.
And Helena? Frozen.
No resistance. No apology. No confession of love.
Just a perfect silence. Like a coward rehearsing her trauma.
The memory faded. The silence didn’t.
I turned to Helena.
She was staring through me now, as if the past had bleached the present out of her.
"I didn’t mean—" she started.
"Save it," I snapped. "
You stood there and watched them drag her like a criminal. Like trash."
Her lips trembled. "I was seventeen—"
"Oh, poor baby. Seventeen and spineless. Do you want me to cry for you?" I stepped closer. "You say you loved her. Is that what you call love? Letting her get ripped apart for your convenience? That was a total betrayal!"
"I was scared," she whispered.
I sneered. "Then you should’ve run. Screamed. Done something."
Silence again.
I could’ve walked away. I should’ve.
But instead, I leaned in. Just enough for her to hear the venom I’d been swallowing this whole time.
"You don’t get to play the tragic heroine. You don’t get Selene."
Her eyes narrowed. "You think you do?"
Something in my chest twisted. Wrong.
"She chose me," I said. But it sounded hollow.
Because maybe she hadn’t.
Maybe she still looked at Helena behind those half-lidded, calculating eyes.
Maybe I was just a replacement.
I turned off the Transcription with a wave, watching the light die in her irises.
"I hope it was worth it," I muttered, backing away.
"Because whatever fantasy you’re clinging to—it’s long dead."
Soon after I put her to sleep like it was nothing, dismissing her entirely.
But deep inside, a bitter thought bloomed like rot:
If Selene knew the truth... would she still choose me?
The silence after Helena left wasn’t peace. It was residue.
She’d dropped her confession like a knife and expected me to bleed. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not yet.
I knelt before the basin and began.
Bone dust, blood soil, and fragments of things I shouldn’t have—hair, an old ribbon, a preserved tooth she once shattered biting down on a mana crystal too young.
I mixed them with care. Hands steady, breath tight. The clay was dense, reluctant. Like it knew what I was trying to do and didn’t approve.
"Don’t make this harder than it is," I muttered.
No answer. Just the pulse of old magic and cold guilt.
I shaped her slowly—hipbones, shoulders, the indent where her spine met her lower back. Every curve and corner drawn from memory. Not mine. Helena’s. Selene’s diary. School records. Photos I never deleted.
Selene was becoming real again in the space between my hands.
And that scared the hell out of me.
I hated that I wanted her back this badly. That I needed to win. That it felt like I was building not a girl, not a hero, but a cathedral to something I couldn’t admit aloud.
Her face was the last.
I saved it for last like a coward.
But I did it. I shaped her cheekbones, her crooked smirk, her brows always just a little too sharp for the softness beneath.
And when I pressed the core—the one I’d buried inside my own chest for months—into her clay sternum—
Still no breath.
No spark. No flicker of soul.
Just a beautifully useless sculpture of someone I couldn’t let go of.
I sat back on my heels. My hands were shaking.
And for a moment, I considered destroying it. Just to punish myself for thinking I could cheat death and win.
Instead, I leaned forward.
Pressed my lips to hers—cool, damp, unmoving.
It wasn’t romantic. Not really.
It was a hypothesis. A desperate hypothesis, sure, but still. If ancient fairytales could be warped into necromantic rituals, then maybe irony counted for something.
It was a hypothesis.
A desperate hypothesis, sure, but still grounded in pattern recognition, cause and effect, magical resonance, and a healthy disregard for ethics. I’d gone through every textbook, transcribed a hundred ancient rites, and tossed out everything that smelled like poetic metaphor dressed up as real magic. In the end, what I was left with was a mess of blood, clay, and a ridiculous idea that love—of all things—might serve as a magical catalyst.
Romantic affection as activation key. Sounds stupid when you say it out loud.
If ancient fairytales could be warped into necromantic rituals, then maybe irony counted for something. Maybe the narrative weight of a kiss—the old, tired, overused trope of ’true love’s awakening’—could serve not as some mystical force, but as a psychic anchor. The kind that says: You’re not done yet. You still belong here.
And maybe it didn’t matter if the love was messy or broken or stitched together by trauma. Maybe just the act—a kiss, given not as ceremony but as refusal—was enough to remind a soul where it belonged.
So I leaned in.
Pressed my lips to hers. Cool. Slightly grainy from the last layer of alchemic clay. No spark of passion, no flutter of lashes. Just stillness.
I pulled back slowly, like any sudden movement might crack me open.
"There," I whispered hoarsely, brushing my thumb under her eye. "A kiss. From Maleficent to Aurora."
I glanced down at her chest—still unmoving.
"Except ten times more clinical... and exponentially more illegal." My voice caught in my throat. "Pretty sure necro-resuscitation via emotional guilt wasn’t covered in med school."
Maleficent and Aurora then would have lived happily ever after. Leaving away their past, moving onto the future. The brightest one that they could ever get.
I exhaled sharply, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, or sighs of joy.
"Of all the scientific protocols I’ve defiled, this one’s getting me on a list."
I swallowed hard.
"And also, I’m not evil. Just emotionally deficient. That’s different."
Still no reaction.
I laughed. It cracked like glass.
"Figures. You always did prefer dramatic timing."
I looked at her again. Looked at what I made. What I’d called back.
"You better wake up soon," I said quietly. "Because I’m running out of terrible coping mechanisms."
And then—
A shudder.
Not mine. Hers.
Clay cracked like shedding skin. Magic peeled in ribbons. Her chest rose, shallow and sudden, like a gasp stolen back from the void.
My eyes went wide. I didn’t dare breathe.
Her fingers twitched.
"Kairi..."
Her voice was raw. Small. But real.
I stared.
Then covered my face with both hands and started to laugh—
Except I wasn’t laughing.
I was crying.
Big, stupid tears leaking through my palms, down my cheeks, onto the floor where magic still shimmered in the dust.
"Don’t ever do that again," I whispered, breath catching between sobs. "I just rebuilt you from mud and spite. I don’t have the energy to do it twice, you idiot."
Her hand reached weakly for mine.
And when I took it, I didn’t let go.