In a world where magic, money, technology, and soul affinity ruled all, Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade was never the main character.
Not even a supporting role.
She wasn't a villainess or a sidepiece. She existed only as a name in someone else's story.
She lived too innocently—if such a word could ever describe someone born into a mafia family. Her father, Dominic Nightingale Nightshade, was the second son of the powerful Nightshade bloodline. Her mother, Salena Rhowshen Hall, had once been a high mage of the South—feared, revered, and long since gone.
Seraphina died at the hands of the second male lead of the tale—her stepbrother.
The tales told in cities and the underworld, in taverns and livestream panels, are always about the winners. Those who held power. Those who owned the spotlight.
In those tales, the tragic antihero—the one immortalized in ballads and novels—is Dimitry Dominic Nightshade.
After losing the female lead to the male lead, he slaughtered the entire clan—her included—and then took his own life.
The world never paused for her. Never asked what she wanted.
It never even remembered her name.
Time did not rewind for the world.
But it turned for the souls lost within it.
Long before the spotlight's story began—
Before the first betrayal.
Before the first death.
Before the first page.
She slept.
In the Asleep Garden, deep in a forest where butterflies danced and trees bowed low with memory, Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade slumbered in a dreamless myth.
Today, she turned sixteen.
The day she sealed her magic.
The day she sealed her soul.
But birthdays had meant nothing to her since she was seven—the year her mother died. The year she decided never to feel again.
Her long hair, soft as forest grass and tangled with shimmering vines, spilled across a bed of flowers. Her lashes fluttered open, revealing deep, forest-green eyes—cold, death-haunted, yet somehow warm, as if morning light had seeped into the woods.
Butterflies perched upon her: one on her hair, one on her hand—welcoming her like the forest's lost child, finally returned.
She wore an off-shoulder pale green gown, clinging like woven leaves. Her pearl-pale skin shimmered in the sun. Her earrings glowed softly, alive with magic—like tears suspended in moonlight.
Her lips, red as rose petals, curved like ripe orange slices.
She smelled of roses, layered with lemon. A heart of rose, a top note of citrus. She was nature's mystery—serpentine and divine.
Her blood was void. Her soul, gray. Not dark nor light. Forgotten.
Like an old green goddess carved in moss-covered stone.
And now, after the great rewind, Seraphina frowned.
She felt it.
The soul-seal spell had broken.
She had returned.
But why?
How?
Only one person could answer.
Asher Renan Hall
She rose and cast a teleportation spell to his office, leaving behind a forest that sang quietly at her awakening.
Nightshade Main Manor~
Meanwhile, Dimitry Dominic Nightshade—the second son of House Nightshade, the second male lead —had planned a celebration.
A celebration for his stepsister's sixteenth birthday.
He stood by a hallway window, staring toward Seraphina's private mansion in the distance.
Moonlight bathed him, silvering his long, messy pale green hair. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, revealing the sculpted lines of his chest and the elegant sharpness of his collarbone.
His skin was pale, deathless—like a cursed prince.
There was wildness in his eyes, a forest fire veiled behind long lashes. A harmless smile played on his lips as he emptied glass after glass, each sip of wine laced with bitterness and longing.
His long legs shifted restlessly. His red-tinged lips glimmered faintly. His black earrings caught candlelight, mirroring the coiled darkness within.
He had planned everything.
Silver lanterns lit the garden.
Soft music floated like wind.
A lavender-honey cake sat untouched beneath a crystal dome.
But Seraphina never came.
She hadn't left the private mansion far from Nightshade Manor. The servants whispered she hadn't spoken all day. Others murmured she was in her soul forest.
Dimitry waited.
Until the last candle burned out.
Until silence outlasted his patience.
She never appeared.
Later that night, he sat with Setaro Celestra Hall.
Untouched wine sat between them, souring in the glass.
Setaro's white hair floated like moonlight on still water. He wore a white T-shirt under a daring black leather coat. His legs crossed lazily, one hand resting near a silver butterfly tattoo that shimmered on his neck—fragile yet fearless.
He looked like a dream carved from cloud and fire.
His lips, blood-red and perfectly shaped, never spoke first. A single silver earring dangled from one ear.
He wasn't the strongest of the Halls, but he was the purest in magic.
His dreamy, half-lidded blue eyes held the weight of oceans—timeless, secretive. Wind obeyed him. Secrets sought him.
They called him Mystan.
The silence between them was thick with unsaid things.
Then, softly—half-laughing, half-broken—Dimitry whispered:
"I love her. I love Seraphina."
Setaro blinked. "As a sister?"
Dimitry laughed, drunken, mocking. He raised his hand to the sky, tracing an arc between the moon and Polaris.
"The dark sky longs for the moon," he said, slurred. "Just like the moon aches for Polaris. Always near, always distant. A cruel dance of light and distance."
Setaro stared into his wine, though he never intended to drink. His fingers gripped the stem tightly, knuckles whitening.
He felt the weight of truths he had buried—profound, cold truths that could shatter a heart already splintering.
It seemed they were all doomed.
Setaro saw himself in Dimitry: the same restless longing. The same silent ache.
If only Dimitry knew…
That the flower he admired from afar was not indifferent.
But she remained unreachable—for both of them. For the entire world.
Except for one man.
The glass in his hand broke. Blood dripped but he remain nonchaltant.
Unfortunately, that man's blood also ran through Setaro's veins.
In that sense, Dimitry was the luckier one.
From childhood, there were days Setaro truly hated Asher Renan Hall.
Why him?
Why was he the chosen one?
Why did the gods favor him?
Setaro often wondered, the bitterness rising like bile.
It almost seemed as if Seraphina Nightingale Nightshade was a curse placed upon the Hall and Nightshade bloodlines—
A beautiful, inescapable curse neither family could outrun.