Darkened Enchanted•||KTH||•

The beginning

Darkened Enchanted
Part 1:The beginning

The metallic hum of something alive, yet not quite human, filled the air. Aria stood still, her breath barely a whisper in the darkness.

The dim glow of red eyes flickered to life, cutting through the shadowed room like a warning.

“It’s time.”

The voice wasn’t hers. It wasn’t anyone’s. It belonged to the creation before her, still incomplete, still yearning for something it couldn’t name.

Aria’s hands trembled as she reached out to silence the machine, her fingers brushing cold metal. The connection between them was palpable—something forbidden, something more than just creator and creation.

But she couldn’t linger here. Not now.
𓍯𓂃𓂃𓂃𓍯𓂃𓂃𓂃

The sun was barely rising when Aria pulled herself from the darkness of her basement lab, her secret still hidden beneath the floorboards of her ordinary life.

Upstairs, everything was as it always was: the scent of breakfast, the muffled sounds of her stepmother’s voice drifting from the kitchen, and her father’s usual shuffle toward the dining table.

But Aria’s heart was racing. The morning light felt foreign against her skin, too bright, too real.

Her mind was still tangled in the shadows of her late-night work, where the lines between machine and human had begun to blur.

She moved through the house like a ghost, silent, unnoticed, though her stepmother’s eyes tracked her every movement.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” her stepmother greeted her, her smile as polished as ever. The perfect wife. The perfect mother—at least when her father was looking.

“Morning,” Aria mumbled, forcing a half-smile. She could still feel the weight of her stepmother’s gaze on her back as she slipped into her seat.

Her father, oblivious to the undercurrents that swirled in their home, smiled warmly at her. “Did you sleep well?”

Aria nodded, though the truth lay far deeper. There had been no rest, only the quiet hum of machinery, the spark of life in something that shouldn’t have had it.

Her creation was becoming more than she had imagined. More than she could control.

And no one knew. Not her father. Not her classmates. Not her stepmother.

But soon, they would. Soon, the world would see what she had been hiding.

The spoon slipped from her stepmother’s hand just as the soup splashed across the table, a clumsy accident that wasn’t quite an accident at all.

Hot liquid splattered across Aria’s arm, but she didn’t flinch. She had learned long ago how to wear her armor, how to hide the pain that simmered beneath the surface.

“Oh dear,” her stepmother cooed, her voice dripping with false concern. “I’m so sorry, Aria. My hand must have slipped.”

Her father glanced up, concern flickering across his face, but Aria’s silence kept him from asking questions.

“It’s fine,” Aria whispered, brushing the burning liquid off her skin. She would endure this, just as she always had.

But in the back of her mind, the hum of her creation was growing louder.
𓍯𓂃𓂃𓂃𓍯𓂃𓂃𓂃

The rest of the morning passed in a blur, her stepmother’s gaze lingering longer than usual, as if she could sense the shift in Aria’s world, though she would never know the truth.