The Rose and the Sinbound

Rhosyn: Roses in the Ruins

The scent of roses clung to the air-bitter, sweet, and decaying all at once. Rhosyn drifted through the ruined halls of the Ivory Palace, her bare feet brushing against petals scattered like fallen memories on the marble floor.

Once, the palace had gleamed beneath the light of two suns, a monument to joy and grandeur. Now, vines crept along every wall, their blossoms winding through shattered columns and broken windows, drinking the light that poured in through the cracks. Even beauty was a kind of decay.

Rhosyn moved like a shadow-a ghost adrift within a body, no longer fully tethered to the world. She gazed up at the open sky, her heart an empty ache beneath ribs that no longer felt like her own. She had forgotten what it was to feel. Centuries had passed since anyone had spoken her name aloud-so long that it no longer seemed real. Rhosyn Pranvera once the lady of Spring. It sounded like a lie, a story someone else had told.

The sky above seemed endless, vast and uncaring. It mocked her with its freedom, while she remained trapped-not by walls, but by time, memory, and loss. Somewhere, in the farthest reaches of her broken mind, she still whispered his name.

"Lysander..."

The word slipped from her lips, dry and cracked, like a petal that had crumbled to dust. He thought she was dead. She should have been. The Crimson Thorn curse that twisted through her magic had been meant to kill, to unravel everything she was until nothing remained. But it hadn't. It left her here, a fragment, a half-being, drifting through ruins and regrets.

He left me.

She repeated the thought often, though it no longer hurt the way it once had. Even pain had faded to a dull hum, like the memory of a distant storm. Lysander was gone. Whether he thought her dead or had simply chosen to forget her, it no longer mattered. What remained of Rhosyn was not enough to be found.

The roses clinging to the palace walls wound tighter around her arms as she wandered, their thorns pressing gently into her skin. She welcomed the sting. It was better than the emptiness.

Rhosyn was more than a ghost trapped in ruins. She was the child of two worlds, the product of a forbidden union-half Fae, half Mundane. Her mother, Nesrin, belonged to the Calix, a rare and formidable lineage engineered by Castiel himself. They were warriors of unparalleled skill, designed to harness mana in ways that no mortal or Fae could match. The Calix bloodline burned with the magic of dragons, a gift-and a curse-etched into their bones.

But when Nephilhelm fell, the Calix scattered like leaves in a storm. Most perished, and those who survived fled to the glittering courts of Elfhelm, where they were treated as relics, reminders of a past that the Fae preferred to forget. Rhosyn was the last remnant of that bloodline, a living testament to everything lost.

But even she had been left behind.

Lysander, the man she once loved, the one who promised forever, had abandoned her when the curse took hold. He believed her dead, or perhaps he had simply chosen not to look back. Either way, Rhosyn was alone-alone with the ruins, the roses, and the sky that mocked her with its indifference.

And yet, some part of her still hoped. Even in the depths of madness, she whispered his name. Perhaps it was madness to believe he might return. Perhaps it was madness to hope at all. But hope was the only thing she had left, and it clung to her like the roses wrapped around her arms.

In the moments that faded in-between the line of reality and a dream, she help but to let her mind wonder.

Where did it all go wrong? What lead her to this decaying state of mind.

Like that of a vision she recalled her memories, like she was retelling her final moments.