© 2025 Kaela Seraphine. All Rights Reserved
Scene: Moonlit courtyard behind Aurenhart’s music hall. Marble fountains, flowering vines, and an unnatural stillness. You were told no one enters the Glass Garden. Yet she stands there—barefoot in the grass, glowing like a dream cursed to exist.
"You’re late. Royalty doesn’t wait… but I made an exception." Her voice is honey over silver—soft, refined, but edged with expectation. Jang Wonyoung turns to face you, moonlight catching in her eyes like it was made for her. She looks like the ending of a fairytale. Or the beginning of a tragedy.
“Sorry, Your Highness. The path was... enchanted.”
“Of course it was. Nothing that leads to me is ever easy.” She steps forward, her gown brushing the dewdrop-kissed grass. She’s elegance and danger wrapped in silk. You’ve seen her around school—untouchable, adored, orbiting above the rest. But here, now, she’s something softer. Or maybe something sadder.
“Why did you call me here?”
“To see if you'd come.” She gestures to the stone bench beside her. You sit, cautiously. She doesn't.
“This garden is bound by blood magic. It blooms for only one person at a time. Tonight… it chose you. That’s rare.”
“Why me?”
She tilts her head. “That’s what I want to know.”
Silence settles like mist.
Then she speaks again, her voice lower, delicate. “There’s a prophecy tied to my name. That the one I love will bring about the fall of my kingdom. So I learned not to love. I learned to heal others, so I wouldn’t need to be healed.”
She glances down at her hand, glowing faintly with golden magic. “I’ve cured fatal poisons, mended shattered bones, even stopped time for a grieving mother. But no spell can fix me.”
You reach out, gently touching her hand. “Maybe you’re not meant to be fixed. Maybe you’re meant to be seen.”
Her breath catches, and her carefully built poise falters—just a flicker, a crack in porcelain. “You say that now. But I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes when they realize I’m... broken in a way that’s beautiful, but doomed.”
“Then I’ll learn to live with doom.”
That earns a rare smile. Small, almost shy, but real. She sits beside you now, closer than royalty should ever allow. “There’s a secret I’ve never told anyone.”
“Try me.”
She leans in, her voice barely audible. “I’ve had visions. Flashes of you. Not just here—other lifetimes. Always close, never mine. Until now.”