The silence between us

Blood remembers.

Even when people forget.

Rain lashed against the windows of the Vizzini estate as thunder shook the night. Somewhere in the distance, church bells echoed midnight, swallowed almost instantly by the sound of gunfire.

Inside the mansion, chaos reigned.

Guards fell one after another. Marble floors that once reflected crystal chandeliers were now stained crimson.

"They're inside!" someone shouted.

"They've breached the east wing!"

A woman clutched a tiny girl to her chest, her heartbeat louder than the bullets outside. The child couldn't have been older than a few months, too young to understand why her mother's tears kept falling onto her tiny blanket.

"My love..." the woman whispered, pressing a trembling kiss to the baby's forehead. "If heaven is kind, you'll never remember tonight."

The bedroom door burst open.

A man stood there, dressed in black, a gun in one hand and death following behind him.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then the woman stepped in front of the crib.

"Please..." she begged. "She's innocent."

The stranger's eyes drifted to the child before returning to the woman.

A single gunshot shattered the silence.

The baby's cries pierced the room.

Outside, another man rushed in moments too late. His eyes landed on his wife's lifeless body, and something inside him broke.

"Take her!" he roared, placing the crying infant into the arms of his most trusted maid. "Run. Leave the country. Raise her as your own."

"My lord-"

"Go!"

The maid hesitated for only a second before disappearing into the storm with the child hidden beneath her coat.

Behind them, the Vizzini mansion burned.

The world would believe the family's only daughter died that night.

It was a lie.

Eighteen years later, the girl who was buried without a body would return.

Not as a victim.

Not as a survivor.

But as the beginning of a war no one would escape.

Because some stories don't end with a funeral.

They begin with one.