Whispers in the Velvet Shadows

Time just melded into an unrecognizable blur for Ilyana Nightrose as the days afterward all tried their hardest to capture her attention with happenings outside of the mansion. That was simply because no matter how hard she fought, her mind wandered right back inside the mansion-and to him. Haunting her like some lost, melancholy tune that she could never quite remember, it was sharp in the brush of his hand and the hunger within his gaze-the dark calling out something deep within her.

She told herself not to go back to the mansion, but at night, the whispers of the Eclipsia Forest grew louder, and the memory of the iron raven's foreboding gaze filled her with unease. Yet the pull was irresistible.

Then, on the fifth night, the crescent moon silvered the forest so that she stood in front of the mansion gates-an iron raven atop to glare down-seemed to warn her of lurking evil. The beating of her heart grew faster, but neither was she to turn away: with a screeching groan of iron through stillness, the open gates swung onto the path ahead, to the looming silhouette of the mansion.

The great doors creaked open before she could knock. He was waiting for her.

"You came back," Zarvian Nyxar said in that low husky voice full of a disbelief that did not altogether mask the glow of relief in his eyes.

"I didn't have a choice," Ilyana confessed, her cheeks burning under the intensity of his gaze.

His expression softened, yet the shadows haunting his features were there to stay. "You always have a choice, Ilyana."

"Then I choose this," she said, stepping closer to him.

For a moment, he looked like he might argue, his jaw tightening. But then, with a resigned sigh, he stepped aside, letting her in.

"Do you even know what you're choosing?" he asked once they were inside, the door closing behind them with a finality that made her shiver.

"You," she said simply.

A bitter smile crossed his lips. "I'm not a prize, Ilyana. I'm a curse."

"Then curse me," she whispered, her voice trembling but steady.

Zarvian watched her for one long moment, his eyes of gold razing with a maelstrom of emotions unreadable by her. Then it was as if something inside him just snapped. In an instant, he closed the space that separated them, his desperate hands clinging to her waist, matching the storm raging inside him as he crushed his mouth down on hers. The intensity of it left her breathless as the air shifted around them.

"Once you cross this line, there's no going back," he warned, his lips just skimming hers.

"I don't want to go back," she replied with finality.

With no further explanation, Zarvian took her hand and deeper into the mansion. They descended a spiral staircase, curling endlessly down into the earth, until the air was cold, heavy, and the walls began to pulse with some strange, otherworldly light. They came to a cavernous room, buried far beneath the manor house.

Candles along the walls cast weird, dancing shadows as candles flared and sputtered in their holders. An immense mirror, its frame a glittering band of blackened gold, filled the center of the room; the surface quivered like water, but what it reflected was no chamber, and a starless blackness.

"This is where it begins," Zarvian said, his voice low.

"What is it?" Ilyana breathed, her fingers touching the rim of the mirror.

"A portal," he said, his voice low with an unnerving mix of awe and trepidation. "A doorway to the place where I was bound. If you step through, you'll be tethered to my world. To me."

Her heart racing, she didn't falter. "Take me with you."

Zarvian's eyes plunged into hers, his face a battleground of longing and torment. "You don't understand what you're giving up. Your freedom. Your humanity."

"I don't care," she said finally.

He let his breath out slow, his hand shaking a little as he held it out to her. She reached for it. And they stepped forward, through the mirror.

The world on the other side was unlike anything Ilyana had ever imagined. Everything was bathed in darkness, yet it wasn't the absence of light-it was alive. The air hummed with an energy that sent shivers down her spine, and the ground beneath her feet felt both solid and shifting, as though the realm itself breathed.

"What is this place?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"My prison," Zarvian said grimly.

She spun to him, and her breath hitched. Here in this world, he was different. His eyes of gold ablaze as fire from the crucible, his features sharper, otherworldly. The pure power seeping from him was amazing and terrorizing at once.

"Why are you bound here?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Because I loved someone i wasn't allowed to," he responded in a voice thick with the weight of regret. "I went against the laws of my race, and this was my penance."

"And now?"

"Now, I've brought damnation to you," he growled, clenching his fists.

Ilyana stepped closer to him, laying a comforting hand on his chest. "You didn't drag me anywhere. I chose this."

Zarvian regarded her, his face softening for the first time since they'd stepped into the Starfall Realm. "You're braver than you should be."

"Or maybe I'm just foolish," she returned with a small smile.

His lips quivered with a faint smile, but it didn't hold. "There's no going back now. You're bound to me, Ilyana. For better or worse."

"I wouldn't want it any other way," she replied.

---

Time blended into a tight, near-eternal breather, a period of learning and danger inside the Starfall Realm. With every passing moment, the attachment between Ilyana and Zarvian grew, but the darkness in this realm wasn't some sort of backstage; it was living, peering.

Whispers in darkness echoed in Ilyana's brain, her own thoughts alien there. Images come for Ilyana's regard: Zarvian's bloody hands, bloodied, took lives.

Wrapping themselves up in a flame of flickering purple and drawing near an encroaching black, Zarvian ended that silence one evening. "You fear me," he uttered quietly.

"Nah," she lied.

He turned to her, golden eyes slicing through all the defenses that held her intact. He cupped her face with firm hands, forcing her to confront him. "You should be."

"Then why did you let me stay?" she shouted back, shaking.

"Because I will not let you go," he vowed with an emotion-smothered hoarse voice. "Even when that alone dooms us both."

Ilyana placed her hand over his, her resolve firm. "I don't care about the cost, Zarvian. I've already given myself to you. I'm not afraid of the darkness or what it brings."

His gaze softened, but the torment in his eyes remained. "You don't know what you've done, Ilyana."

"Then show me," she said.

It was in this place that the pulsation of darkness around them made Ilyana realize she had crossed the Rubicon. She was tied with Zarvian, he with her. Their love was their curse and their salvation, their light and their shadow.

Standing beside him against the abyss, bound by love as much as by darkness-evermore.