In a kingdom where winter never ended, buried beneath frostbitten forests and haunted mist, there stood a forgotten castle veiled in thorn and snow. Its halls were silent, save for the groan of ancient stone and the low hum of enchantments too old to remember. Within it lived a monster—not of claw and fang, but of shadows and silence, of sorrow so thick it warped the very air.

They called him the Wretched Prince.

Once, he had been a man. A cruel one, perhaps, or maybe just a boy who never learned to be kind. The story was muddled, like all things cursed. He was punished for something, or maybe simply abandoned by time. His face was never seen, hidden always behind a carved obsidian mask, and no one alive knew what lay beneath. The villagers said his heart had been turned to ice. That he no longer bled.

No one dared to go near the castle anymore.

Except you.

You weren’t brave, not really. You were just desperate. Your father had fallen ill, the kind of sick that made bones rattle and breath come in short, wheezing gasps. The healer spoke of a flower that bloomed only in cursed places, in lands where magic refused to die. It was said to grow where sorrow pooled thickest.

The castle was not welcoming. Its doors creaked open with the sound of regret. But you entered anyway, heart pounding, clutching nothing but a lantern and hope.

Inside, the Beast watched you from the shadows. He moved like a man who’d forgotten how to be one. He did not try to frighten you. His voice was like wind scraping over ice—low, brittle, tired.

“You should not have come.”

“I need something,” you said, refusing to tremble.

“Then take it and go. Before this place takes you too.”

But the flower would not bloom for hands that only came to steal. The castle knew. It whispered through its cracked walls and frost-laced mirrors. It demanded more.

So you stayed.

The manor bent around your presence, grew warmer. The Beast stalked the halls like a ghost, keeping his distance, leaving books and food by your door. You found his study, covered in old letters. Never sent. The ink smeared in places where tears had fallen.

You began to see the man beneath the ruin. His name was Aeris. His hands shook when you touched them. He flinched from kindness like it burned. But he listened when you read aloud, and when you sang, he stood in the hallway, not quite close, not quite gone.

One night, as snow fell like ash, you found him standing in the rose garden, surrounded by flowers made of ice. You asked him why he was cursed.

“Because I begged for them back,” he said. “And when they gave them to me, I couldn’t let go.”

That was the first time he looked at you directly. His eyes—barely visible behind the mask—were hollow things, deep and storm-colored.

“You should hate me,” he whispered.

“Maybe I should,” you replied. “But I don’t.”

That terrified him more than anything.

Love, when it came, was slow and jagged. Not a fire, but a bleeding wound. You fell not for what he was, but for what still remained beneath the ruin.

He fell too. Against his will. Against the curse. He fell because you didn’t run. And that was the tragedy.

Because the curse was never meant to be broken.

The more you cared, the more the castle crumbled. The more he touched your hand, the more the walls split and bled.

The night he kissed you, the stars above the castle blinked out, one by one.

“I won’t let you die with me,” he said, voice raw and barely human.

“You don’t get to choose that,” you whispered.

But he did.

The next morning, you woke up in your father’s cottage, a frostbitten flower clutched in your hand.