Villain POV
Darkness breathed beneath the old chamber, thick enough to feel like a living thing. Torches crackled along the stone walls, their flames bending toward a single figure seated in the center , hooded, still, the kind of stillness that suggested patience… or predation.
Footsteps echoed.
A kneeling silhouette appeared at the edge of the room, trembling despite trying not to.
"My lord," the messenger whispered. "There's… news."
Silence.
Not the quiet kind but the suffocating kind.
"Speak," the hooded figure said.
The voice was neither male nor female. It scraped softly, as though shaped out of smoke.
"The girl with… with star-veins."
The messenger swallowed.
"She's alive."
A long pause.
The air vibrated as if the shadows themselves inhaled.
"Impossible."
The hooded figure lifted their head a fraction.
"She died. The prophecy required it."
"Y-yes, my lord, but… something interfered. She was seen at the Night Market. The silver glow…"
"Enough."
A hand rose — pale, elegant, inhuman — and the messenger's voice died in his throat.
The figure leaned back in the throne of ancient blackstone.
"So the lost star stirs again…"
They whispered it as if tasting the words. "As if the worlds weren't broken enough."
A faint sigh escaped — almost amused.
"She carries the things we buried for a reason."
The messenger dared to speak again. "Shall I send the assassins?"
"No."
Soft. Deadly.
The messenger blinked. "No?"
"She is not to be killed. Not yet."
A pulse of power shuddered through the room.
The torches dimmed.
"She must be retrieved."
The messenger's heartbeat spiked so loud even the stones seemed to hear.
"Retrieved…? But the prophecy says she is—"
"The One Who Ends Us," the hooded figure finished calmly. "Yes. That part remains true."
A pause.
"But the lines you know…"
Their tone sharpened, cold amusement dripping through.
"…are incomplete."
The messenger looked up, startled. "My lord?"
"There are verses missing," the figure murmured.
"Lines erased before you were born. Before most of your kind even learned to walk upright."
A soft tapping — a single finger drumming on the armrest.
"She is not a weapon of destruction."
A pause.
"Not only, at least."
The messenger's breath hitched.
"Then what is she?"
The hooded figure tilted their head slightly, as if listening to something distant — a song only they could hear.
"A key," they whispered.
"Or a catalyst."
"A seal… or a sword."
Their shadow stretched unnaturally across the floor, crawling like something hungry.
"And if she awakens fully, the chains I forged will break."
The messenger felt the temperature drop.
Something ancient and furious stirred in the dark.
"My lord," he whispered shakily, "what shall we do?"
A slow, eerie smile curled beneath the hood — unseen, but unmistakably felt.
"Bring her to me."
A beat. "Before the others realize she lives."
The torches extinguished all at once, plunging the chamber into perfect black.
Only the voice remained, whispering like a prophecy spoken in reverse:
"She returns to the world blind to her purpose… and if she chooses wrong…"
A low, terrible chuckle.
"…all realms will remember why we feared her."
Darkness swallowed everything.