To ashes she fell, and from ashes she shall rise again.
She wakes to pain. One that melts her skin and eats at her bones and her hoarse scream is the only thing that pierces through the night. The flames that consume and make her are both her curse and her salvation—a reminder of what she has lost and what she has become, a reminder of what she has yet done.
Liquid fire trickles down from her eyes. Not from the pain, but from the wretched sorrow that fills her when she realizes that ah, she has been taken away from her beloved once more, robbed of the right to die, of the right to reunite.
How can she ever be content when time and again, the only thing that matters to her is snatched away? How can she find peace when every flicker of hope is extinguished before she can even see it in full? No, contentment is a distant dream, a luxury she forfeited the moment she embraced the flames. This, Rosalyne knows: she shall never know of contentment again—not since the day she sacrificed herself, her heart, her very essence, in pursuit of a hollow vengeance.
Contentment is for the naive fools who have not seen their world crumble, for those fortunate enough to have never felt the weight of their own choices devour them from within.
She is not one of them.
She is fire and fury, pain and purpose, a living testament to the cost of vengeance.
And so, she will burn—until the world is cleansed, until her enemies are ash, or until the flames finally consume her entirely.
Oh, Rostam. My darling Rostam. Watch over me, my love, as I burn away everything that stole you from me—every monster, every injustice, every silent bystander who stood idle as you were taken.
Contentment is not hers to claim, and perhaps it never will be.
The flames that consume and make her are her curse and salvation. At last, her screams die down, its echoes swallowed by the stillness of the night, as the undying blaze that once enwrapped her settles into smouldering embers. The fire does not extinguish, oh, it never does, it merely settles, flickering to life whenever fury rises.
True strength, she knows, is not measured by the absence of pain and sorrow but by the ability to endure it. And by the gods, has she endured. She is strong because she has borne the unbearable, because she has taken the searing agony of loss and moulded it into a weapon, a purpose, an obsession that shall never be extinguished.
To ashes she fell, and from ashes she shall rise again.
Once more, crimson flames have reshaped her, their cruel embrace etching red paths along her skin. Her reflection on the water shows an ugly, jagged scar that mars her face. A permanent reminder of the future she was forewoven. She watches not in sorrow, but in resignation—no—in acceptance. This is the life she shall live. The burden she shall bear. The destiny she shall embrace, for how else will she spell away the vile anger and hatred in her heart, if not by burning away all the demons in the world?
Thus, for the second time, she becomes the witch that historians shall be loath to remember, leaving scorched earth in her wake as she walks the path of hellfire.
