Valley of Shadows and Roses | ONC 2024

Chapter 23

The princess, actually Queen Luna, spent the next few days cleaning the castle. She dragged the corpses, one by one, to the courtyard, where she subsequently burned them. She stacked them in high piles, poured the rest of the alcohol she found and extinguished them with a match. There was already enough fire, but this was necessary. And when the corpses were gone, all that was left was to clean up the blood-soaked floors. Usually, someone like her would have no idea how to rid a white marble of red blood, but thanks to her father's punishments, she had no problem with it. Whenever she disobeyed the orders of her king, the servants received royal help. It was humiliating then and now, even when no one was watching. She knelt down and scrubbed the ground from the blood.

It took a while, but Luna returned the castle to its original beauty. Her life was suddenly empty. All days were filled with silence and solitude. Only the whisper of the wind and a whiff of the past could be heard in the air. She mentioned how it used to live there, and now it was kind of dead. She will be alone. Only she with ghosts. The never-ending conversations died down. The parties have come to an end. Queen Luna began to realize that her kingdom had indeed fallen. All her life, she wanted the crown to prove she was better than everyone claimed, but in the end, she had no one left to rule over.

It's Luna's birthday. She was waiting in that tower, the only place where her soul was calling that word "home". The crickets did not sing their songs. The moon has turned its back on the world. The stars were hidden behind a cloak of dark clouds.

On this day, Luna was usually visited by the Shadow Lord and asked if she had finally changed her mind, but today for some reason, there was no sign of him. She waited and waited, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he forgot, she thought. And maybe she stopped entertaining him; she wasn't lying to herself. Luna was still waiting, but he didn't come. She felt him. She felt his closeness, but he was far away. He did not forget the princess. He made that decision consciously.

He never came. Year after year, the queen waited at the top of that tower, and the Shadow Lord never appeared. She wanted to play a game, and he played it better than she did. He can't lose if Luna is the only one to suffer. He appears when Luna calls him to announce his victory. That made Luna even more determined that she would not give in to him. She will never break. Let him not think that if he leaves her alone, she will run to him and beg for his mercy. She will endure, and it will be the Shadow Lord who will fall to his knees.

You would probably say that they are both incredibly stubborn, and that would be true. They were. Neither of them was willing to give in to the other. They wanted to win at any cost, even at the cost of destroying themselves. They found in each other perfect opponents.

Luna had to deal with the loneliness that filled her days. No one was left in the kingdom. The Kingdom of Rose Valley no longer existed. Luna decided to read all the books in the royal library. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of books. Her teacher said that one person would need more than one lifetime to read them all, and she had plenty of time to try.

The years gradually passed and Queen Luna slowly lost her mind. She seemed to see ghosts. The court came alive again, in the dark sense of the word. Whispers carried through the corridors and halls. The figures of the dead courtiers were appearing and disappearing. Reality mixed with dreaming.

"Shut up!" she was screaming at the voices, haunting her day and night.

She knew he was to blame. It was his power that brought the dead back to life to torment her. It was destroying her, but she wasn't going to give up. Even that couldn't break her.

"You think you're going to make me give up like that?" Luna shouted into the void, hoping the Shadow Lord would hear her. "It's just an illusion. You won't make me submit to you with your illusions. I will never bow down to you."

The more she resisted, the worse it got. At first, it was only ghosts walking through the castle's corridors and whispers echoing through the vast space. Then they focused on her. They told her words she didn't want to hear.

"You're monster covered in blood."

"You caused so many deaths. So many died for your hand. By your hand."

"Your mother and father died because of you."

Her worst fears were attacking her.

"He will never come. You're waiting in vain. Even he sees the monster you are"

"He hates you just like everyone."

"You're not cursed. You are the curse."

Luna couldn't stand it there anymore. She was trying to run away. She saddled her horse and raced through the remains of the burnt forest. The blackened bodies of the trees stood at attention. Their bare branches reached up to the heavens like insatiable hands, desiring to devour them. The destroyed forest was beginning to come back to life. Green buds grew through the layer of ash and dust. Green grass grew. The wind blew the meadow flowers there. Creepers climbed the trunks of the trees.

Luna raced as far as time would allow. The sun dipped low over the horizon. Twilight has crept into the world. She didn't stop. And when midnight came, the curse called her back to that tower from where she fell and fell.

Luna tried to escape every day. She got as far as the Dark forest went. She passed beyond the borders of the Rose Valley kingdom. The road took her all the way to the coast. She was standing on a high cliff. She looked into the distance and saw only the dark waters of the sea. The rays of the setting sun reflected on the surface of the water. It was falling lower and lower until the water swallowed it completely. Millions of stars twinkled in the black skies. Waves breaking on the rocks roared in the deep below. A strong feeling of melancholy overcame Luna. Such a different country from the one she grew up in. She has never been to the sea.

When midnight called Luna to her, she told herself that this time she would die her way. Before the curse could pull her back into the tower, she turned her back on the sea, took a step back, and fell over the cliff's edge. Let the waves swallow her body.

To her horror, she woke up in the morning again at home. Luna lay surrounded by rose bushes. The plants that were dead were dotted with dozens of colorful flowers. Mourning flowers. Red petals floated in the breeze. Above her stretched the highest tower in the castle, which represented her end so many times. She survived and was back where it all started. Her fate was spinning in circles.

From the moment she woke up in the morning until the last second of the day, she rushed as far as possible from that castle, from the memories, from the Shadow Lord, but she never managed to escape. There was no way out. She was chained to that castle. She always ended up back at the beginning, back at her castle. She was its prisoner. She could choose where her day ends, but never its beginning. Luna believed that perhaps there was a certain limit where his power would not reach. She will cross that imaginary border and be free.

There was no way, no distance that would free her from that curse.

It was forever.