Golden Melody (Editing)

Chapter 101

Chapter 101 – The Other Future

Everything ached.

Miexha tried to move, but even the slightest twitch lit her nerves on fire, pain crackling through her like lightning through brittle bone.

Her eyes fluttered open.

The light was red and dim, unnatural, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.

This wasn’t the hospital.

This wasn’t Dom Mansion.

She lay on a monstrous bed draped in black silk, drowning in cold, slippery sheets. The walls were obsidian stone, carved with crimson grooves that pulsed like living veins. Shadows leaked from the corners.

Her ankles were chained.

She turned her head, muscles screaming, and realized her body was smaller. Her arms, thin. Her skin was pale and clammy.

She looked up and froze.

Across from the bed, a tall mirror reflected someone who wasn’t her.

Silver hair. Chubby cheeks. Luminous green eyes that glowed faintly in the dark.

Her lips parted. No sound escaped.

That girl in the mirror had no age. She looked ancient and young all at once.

She raised a trembling hand.

On her finger, where her silver wedding ring used to be—

Something moved.

A parasite, coiled tightly around her skin like a living band, pulsing softly. It breathed. It twitched. It fed.

Her arms were blotched with bruises. Thin red lines marked her wrists, her collarbones.

The door creaked.

A man entered—tall, red-haired, and monstrous in presence. His eyes were shadowed, his body broad and scarred. He carried a tray of food like a mockery of care.

Miexha’s lips parted on instinct. “Ron…?”

The tray rattled in his hands. Then he laughed.

A sick, guttural sound. Like something human pretending to be.

“Fuck. I missed that voice.”

He placed the tray down. His steps toward her were slow, deliberate. She recoiled, dragging the chains across the bed, breath shallow.

He wasn’t Ron.

He wasn’t her childhood friend.

The boy she once trusted when she still wore pigtails. The boy who made her laugh.

Now, he was the thing her nightmares couldn’t have imagined.

He grabbed her wrist too tight, too rough.

“Wife,” he said, voice fraying with obsession. “You belong here.”

Her voice cracked. “Wife? What about—what about Jayson?”

His face twisted into something feral.

SLAP.

Her head snapped sideways. Heat bloomed across her cheek like a scream beneath her skin.

“If you don’t remember,” he snarled, “I’ll be happy to recount the tale of the Hero Jayson Dom. But not now. I’m not in the mood for your selective amnesia.”

From the darkness beside the bed, something slithered into view.

A black sludge-creature. Shimmering. Pulsing. A slime-thing shaped like grief. It crawled toward her, leaving a trail of filth in its wake.