Chapter 2

2.

I was an orphan. Human traffickers had sold me to a farming family to be a child bride.

But those people were monsters. They were willing to sell my young self to an old widower for a single silver coin.

I escaped. When my sister found me, I was starving, eating the raw meat of a dead rabbit in the woods.

My sister, Lyra, was a genius healer. Her body naturally smelled like sweet herbs. She was the pride of our clan.

She took me in, a girl with no home. For the first time, I had a family.

But life wasn't easy. Our uncles were cruel to her, and the other disciples hated me.

I was at that age where I caused trouble everywhere. Lyra took many lashes on my behalf.

I loved making poisons and cultivating toxic plants. I loved the feeling of freedom that came with it.

But the old, rigid elders refused to let me leave the mountain. They banned me from alchemy and told me to submit.

They called me a disgrace to the clan and a plague to the world. They said I was born evil.

But the people I wanted to poison were the bad ones!

The corrupt officials who preyed on the poor, the bandits who burned villages, and the parents who sold their children for a handful of grain.

Was I really wrong?

I didn't think so. So why did they treat me like a monster?

Only Lyra believed in me.

Once, she risked her life to carry me back from the freezing snow. When I woke up, I saw her back covered in whip marks.

She was in so much pain her eyebrows were pinched together, yet she still smiled and asked if I was cold or hungry.

Lyra would bathe me in medicinal waters and apply ointments to my skin. I would cry, my heart aching for her.

She would just smile. "Don't cry, Vesper. It doesn't hurt."

Later, I learned to be quiet. I learned to be obedient. I even learned to smell like her, carrying that same sweet, medicinal scent!

But then, she left me forever.

Back then, the rumor spread that the heart's blood of a fragrant woman could preserve youth. The clan elders forced her to the capital to treat the Crown Princess.

Seraphina was known as the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. She valued her face above all else. Hearing that Lyra was an expert in beauty, she faked an illness to lure her into the estate.

When Lyra was finally thrown back to me, her skin was shriveled and white. Her body was riddled with holes, looking like dried straw.

She smelled of decay. The clan members were too disgusted to touch her. They dumped her body in a mass grave.

Not a single person cried for her.

Only I held her shriveled corpse, screaming until my voice gave out.

That night, after I buried her, I poisoned everyone in the clan!

Because every single one of them was an accomplice!

I wanted everyone who had a hand in her death to rot in hell.

I kept my sister's essence in a special vessel, turning her into a "Living Vessel."

Slowly, her features began to look like a living person again. Her cheeks turned rosy.

But I would never hear her call my name again.

She named me "Vesper," a name meant to represent a peaceful evening. I chose the name "Tumi," representing the dead end of a road!

The elders were right about one thing. I was born bad.

A monster with nowhere to go!