Sophie has been living as a normal college student in the forbidden cities for the past three years. While Sophie has been struggling to keep her straight A's, her friends in the Lost Cities live in unrest, trying to find their friend and bring Soph...
(I accidentally published this as I was writing the author's note again- sorry for the false alarm guys😭)
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Unknown POV
The petals of the arranged flowers bent and twisted in the harsh wind. Seven individual suspects lay on the warped wooden table, limp of detachment from soil and water for multiple hours.
Her gloved hand reached out, hesitant for a moment as she decided which flower to test next. The glove was worn, made of a heavy black leather that held tools only of use to herself.
The girl held the third flower in the lineup; the black petunia.
The dark petals of the plant blended into her black gloves, the only contrast being the thin stem and stark white folds of the flower.
The sole reason she had chosen this flower to inspect was its striking similarities in color to the mystery substance. The poison substance was capable of killing—and it was doing just that.
She had been tracking the strange and unexplainable taking place over the course of the past four weeks. They had begun slow and fairly harmless, but continuously became more frequent and violent, poisoning the nature and those living in it.
All of her documenting and tracking had led to one site. The Lost Cities.
It wasn't much of a surprise when the deaths had begun to build a pattern. When things died or fell apart, they tended to point towards the Neverseen. But with these recent incidents, they didn't lead to the Neverseen like she thought they would.
They led to the Black Swan.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Sophie POV
Sophie's dagger clattered to the ground for what felt like the hundredth time, thanks to Aelia's combat skills and Sophie's lack of them.
"How long do we have to spar?" Sophie asked between ragged breaths.
Aelia kicked her legs out from under her, "As long as it takes for you to get one hit on me."
Sophie gathered herself as much as one could while being on the ground before Aelia pulled her to her feet. She took up the fighting stance she learned about thirty minutes ago, wiping off the mud collecting on her training gear.
