The rooftop was quiet, save for the whisper of the wind. Cold and relentless, it swept across the vast estate, rustling the treetops, stirring the still night into motion. But up here, above it all, Noor stood untouched, a solitary figure against the endless sky.
The moon loomed above, heavy and luminous, spilling silver over her skin. It kissed her bare face, traced over the delicate lines of her jaw, her high cheekbones, the bow of her lips—turning her into something ethereal. Porcelain, pale and perfect. Fragile, yet untouchable.
A breath escaped her lips, slow and measured, but it did little to steady the storm inside her.
Her obsidian eyes lifted to the heavens, reflecting the moon's glow like two dark mirrors, deep enough to drown in. For a fleeting moment, they softened, as if pleading with the silent sky for something—an answer, perhaps, or an escape. But the stars, distant and indifferent, gave nothing in return.
Her fingers, slender and trembling, reached into the folds of her silk dress, brushing against the cool metal of her flute. She hesitated.
Then, with a quiet sigh, she lifted it to her lips.
The first note spilled into the air like a whisper of grief. Slow, haunting, raw. It curled through the night like smoke, wrapping around her, seeping into the cracks of her silence. Each note dripped with something unspoken, something heavy—regret, longing, a sorrow too deep to name.
Her hair, dark as the night itself, spilled freely over her shoulders, cascading down her back in untamed waves. The wind toyed with it, lifting strands and brushing them against her cheek, teasing her skin like a lover's touch. Some strands clung to her lips, caught in her slow, steady breaths, but she did not move them.
She did not move at all.
The wind pressed against her, molding the silk of her dress to her form. The fabric, delicate and weightless, traced every line, every curve, as if desperate to hold her. It clung to her waist, her hips, the gentle swell of her chest, until it was no longer just fabric but a second skin. The moonlight deepened its shadows, accentuating the rise and fall of her breath, the way her body moved with the melody—slow, fluid, like water, like something divine.
And then, the butterflies came.
They rose from the darkness, their wings shimmering, white as snow, delicate as whispers. One by one, they drifted toward her, drawn by the music, by the sorrow bleeding into the night. They circled her in slow, lazy spirals, weaving between the strands of her hair, brushing against the bare skin of her hands.
One landed near the corner of her lips, delicate wings trembling as if listening. Another clung to her wrist, to the pulse that beat beneath her skin. More of them swirled around her, their pale bodies glowing in the moonlight, a constellation of living stars.
Still, she played.
Her fingers moved, light and precise, gliding over the flute with the grace of a dancer. The melody shifted, deepened, aching in a way that made the air itself feel heavier. A tear, silent and unbidden, slipped down her cheek, catching the silver light before vanishing into the night.
But she did not wipe it away.
She let it fall.
For she was alone. The world, the night, the very air around her could try to hold her, but no one—nothing—could reach her.
And in the distance, hidden in the shadows, someone watched.
Noor stood beneath the moon, playing a melody so cold, so devastating, it felt like the death of something sacred.
She was carved from sorrow, draped in silk that whispered against her skin, the fabric clinging to the shape of a body that had never belonged to the mortal world. The wind lifted strands of raven-black hair across her pale face, teasing against lips that did not part, against obsidian eyes that reflected the moon's glow like twin pools of still water—deep enough to drown in.
Her fingers moved over the flute with an almost sensual precision, slow, deliberate, her body swaying ever so slightly as if the music itself possessed her.
White, trembling creatures, their wings delicate as dying prayers.
To anyone else, it was divine.
To Zeyla, it was a warning.
The air was thick. Too thick.
Every instinct inside her screamed.
Run.
But she knew better. There was no running from this.
Because she had seen it before.
She had lived it before.
And now, as Noor stood there, playing that melody—that same melody—Zeyla realized the truth she had spent years trying to bury.
It had been her.
It had always been her.
And the moment the realization settled into her bones, Zeyla knew—
She had never truly escaped.
____________
She had woken to screams.
Not the screams of war. Not the screams of pain.
This was carnage.
The kind of sound that should never exist.
The kind of sound that meant something had stepped onto this earth that did not belong here.
Zeyla had been chained, half-starved, her body weak from weeks of captivity. She should not have been able to move. But when the screaming began, something inside her forced her upright.
Then she noticed.
The door.
Unlocked.
A hand clamped around her wrist.
"Don't."
The man who had been locked with her, his face pale, his breath hitched.
The door should have never been open.
That was the first warning.
Zeyla's pulse roared in her ears as she stepped forward, but the iron grip on her wrist yanked her back.
"Don't."
The man's voice was raw, broken, a whisper clawing its way up his throat. His face was drenched in sweat, his hands trembling. But it wasn't the fear of a man escaping captivity.
No.
This was something else.
Something worse.
"You don't understand," he rasped. His lips barely moved. "It's not safe."
Zeyla's heartbeat pounded, her body locked between instinct and insanity.
Then she heard it.
Beyond the door. Beyond the dying.
A piano.
Soft. Cold. A slow, deliberate melody floating over the echoes of agony.
The sound did not belong in this place.
It did not belong anywhere.
Her stomach twisted. A sick, suffocating feeling crawled up her throat, clamping down on her breath.
Something was wrong.
A flicker of movement caught her eye.
Something white.
A butterfly.
It drifted through the dungeon's stale air, pale and weightless, untouched by the nightmare unfolding beyond the doors.
It landed softly on the back of her hand.
And Zeyla knew.
Every nerve in her body screamed for her to run.
She did not.
She could not.
Because in that moment, she understood the truth.
The screaming would stop.
The piano would not.
And whatever was happening beyond that door—
It was not a battle.
It was a massacre.
----------
The Hall of the Dead
Zeyla sat there for hours.
Frozen.
Listening.
The music played on.
The screams did not.
When silence finally fell, it was not the silence of peace.
It was the silence of something erased.
The weight of it pressed down on her lungs, thick and unnatural, like the air itself had been hollowed out.
Something inside her whispered:
Do not go in.
And yet, at dawn, she did.
Her feet carried her forward, slow, unsteady.
She stepped through the open doors.
And the world ended.
Blood.
Everywhere.
The walls. The ceiling. The marble floors. The bodies, twisted, torn apart, sprawled across the ballroom like broken dolls.
Some of them had no faces.
Zeyla gagged, her knees buckling beneath her, bile rising sharp and acidic in her throat. The stench of blood was suffocating, thick and cloying, sinking into her skin, her lungs, her soul.
She tried to move.
Tried to force her body upright, to step back, to look away—
But her gaze was trapped.
Because there, amidst the carnage, untouched by the ruin around it, was a chair.
White. Pristine. Unstained.
Zeyla's breath stilled.
At the center of the bloodshed, there had been a seat.
And in that seat, someone had played.
The piano stood just beyond it, its keys still damp with red, its surface gleaming with something slick, something that smelled of metal and death.
Her stomach twisted, nausea clawing up her ribs.
And then, she saw it.
On the piano, resting on the blackened, bloodstained keys, was a single, delicate, weightless thing.
A white butterfly.
Zeyla's vision blurred.
She was shaking, trembling violently, her body rejecting what her mind was screaming to understand.
The melody.
The butterfly.
The chair.
Her.
She hadn't been there that night. She hadn't seen who had sat in that chair, who had played that haunting, beautiful, merciless song as an entire hall of men were slaughtered like cattle.
But now, standing in the shadows, watching Noor play beneath the moon—
Zeyla knew.
She had always known.
Her stomach dropped. Her breath hitched.
And beside her, Rael whispered, "She looks like an angel."
Zeyla's hands clenched into fists.
Her voice was a rasp of something cold, something heavy.
"That's what they all think."
Rael frowned. "Isn't she?"
Zeyla let out a slow, shuddering breath.
"She didn't just save us, Rael," she murmured. "She traded for us."
Rael stiffened. "Traded?"
"She didn't walk into the fire that night." Zeyla's voice cracked, something dark creeping into her tone. "She became it."
Rael took a slow step back. "What are you saying?"
Zeyla turned to him.
The weight of the truth crushed the breath from her lungs, made her throat close, made her ribs ache.
And when she spoke, the words cut through the air like a blade.
"She didn't just take us away."
Zeyla's vision flickered back to that ballroom. The bodies. The blood. The butterfly resting on the piano.
"She erased what came before."
Rael's breath hitched. His hands trembled. "She wouldn't—"
Zeyla laughed.
A hollow, dead sound.
"You only know Mother Noor."
Rael's pulse stopped.
Zeyla took a step forward, her shadow falling over him.
"You know the woman who held your hand when you cried as a child. The woman who gave you food, warmth, a home."
Her voice was low, slow, heavy with something final.
"But I know the woman who played a song while men bled out at her feet."
Rael staggered back.
The world was spinning, tilting.
His breath was gone, his heartbeat thunderous, his mind breaking.
For the first time, he saw.
The shadows beneath Noor's light.
The blood woven into the silk of her dress.
The thing that was neither angel nor monster.
Rael's breath was unsteady, but his eyes—when they lifted to Zeyla's—held no fear. Not anymore.
Zeyla watched him, waiting for him to shatter beneath the truth she had handed him. But instead, he straightened.
The moon carved shadows into his face, deepening the hollows beneath his eyes, sharpening the angles of his jaw. The wind tore through his cloak, whipping dark strands of hair across his brow.
His gaze slid past Zeyla, back to Noor.
Still playing.
Still lost in the abyss.
The butterflies clung to her, trembling in their devotion, as if they, too, understood what she had given.
Rael let out a slow breath. Then, his voice, low and even, cut through the night.
"Did you forget?"
Zeyla's lips parted, but no words came.
"Did you forget what they did to us?" His voice was quiet, but the weight of it crushed the space between them. "To the others?"
Her hands curled into fists.
Rael took a step closer, and Zeyla could see it now—the ghosts flickering behind his eyes.
The chains. The cold steel tables. The smell of rotting flesh and antiseptic.
The needles.
The screams.
The children.
Their bodies, torn apart in the name of science, their voices hoarse from begging, pleading, crying.
For weeks, Zeyla and Rael had been there.
And no one had come.
Not until her.
Not until the melody had bled through the walls, slipping through the cracks like mist, like death, curling into their cells, wrapping around their broken bodies.
Not until the screams had been drowned out by something colder.
Something final.
Rael's throat bobbed. "She didn't just take us away, Zeyla." His voice was softer now, reverent. "She pulled us from the jaws of hell itself."
Zeyla's breath hitched.
Rael took another step, closing the distance between them. "Those men… they weren't men. They were monsters." His gaze darkened, the memory rising like smoke. "Did you forget the way they laughed when they cut into us? Did you forget how they let the children starve just to see what would break first—the body or the mind?"
Zeyla flinched.
Rael's voice dropped to a whisper. "Did you forget what they did to you?"
Zeyla felt it then—the phantom of old wounds, the ache beneath her ribs, the bruises that never truly faded.
But Rael wasn't done.
"She walked into that place," he said, eyes never leaving Noor, "where no god had dared to look. And she erased them. Every single one."
Zeyla shuddered, the weight of the memory pressing down on her chest.
Rael turned to her fully now. "And you're telling me she's the monster?" His voice was gentle, but there was steel beneath it. "No, Zeyla. She wasn't the nightmare."
He exhaled slowly, letting the words settle.
"She was the mercy."
Silence.
Between them. Between the trees. Between the stars that watched from above.
Noor's melody carried on, stretching through the night, weaving into the marrow of their bones.
And then, as if on cue, she paused.
Just for a breath.
Just long enough to lift her gaze to the sky.
To something unseen.
And for a moment, just a moment, Rael swore he saw it—
The abyss staring back.
But before he could speak, before he could breathe, Noor lowered her gaze, lowered her flute, and let the silence swallow the world whole.
And Rael, standing beneath the weight of all they had endured, of all she had endured, closed his eyes.
When he finally spoke, his words were nothing but quiet reverence.
"She burned for us." A pause. "And we never even thanked her."