Selene Valtieri was born on a moonless night, when the winds howled like mourners around the ancestral Valtieri mansion. Her newborn cries were not met with tenderness. On the contrary—they were accompanied by the funereal silence of her father, Cassios Valtieri, who turned his face away in contempt the moment he saw her. Her mother had died in childbirth, and to Cassios, this was merely the first of many sins he would lay upon his daughter's shoulders.
From the very beginning, Selene was no ordinary child. Hair white as snow and heterochromatic eyes—one golden, one violet—marked her as a freak even among the necromantic clan to which she belonged. But it wasn't her otherworldly appearance that disturbed Cassios most. It was the omen. The elders had whispered that her birth would unbalance the shadows—that Cassios's daughter would open the gates to chaos.
And so, she was raised as a living curse.
Her childhood was steeped in nameless pain. By the time she was four, Selene was being dragged into the mansion's underground chambers—hidden laboratories beneath the catacombs, where Cassios conducted experiments on death and the soul. She was his favorite subject. Her small, fragile body was etched with ancient symbols, carved into her skin by force. Her blood was drawn into black crystal vials. Forbidden magics were tested on her, one after another.
She didn't die. She never died. And that, somehow, both infuriated and fascinated her father.
Selene learned early not to cry. Screams only encouraged the servants to punish her harder. Silence became her only form of resistance. Only one soul remained close to her with any shred of compassion: Ayla, the daughter of a servant—a girl her same age, who cleaned her wounds when no one was watching. Who brought her stale bread hidden in the pocket of her apron. Who called her "my moonlight" even when the world saw only darkness in her.
It was Ayla who held her hand the night Selene tried to throw herself from the tallest tower at the age of seven.
"If you die, I die too," the girl whispered, her eyes red from crying. And it was Ayla who stopped her.
But still, Selene begged.
"Let me go… please, Ayla… let me die…"
"No, Selene… you can't…"
"I don't want to exist anymore. I hate being alive. I hate this place. I hate my blood…"
Her eyes, that night, weren't the eyes of a child. They were the eyes of someone who had seen hell and come back.
With each passing year, more experiments followed. Selene's blood was mixed with the remains of creatures without names. She was placed in rituals where corpses whispered ancient secrets and crows watched her from the shadows, as if they already knew what she was becoming. Her body didn't age like the others—it grew with a strength bordering on the unnatural. But her soul… her soul was shattering.
By the time she was nine, the servants already feared her. They whispered that her eyes saw things that shouldn't exist. That sometimes, she spoke to the dead in the nameless garden. That even the darkness itself seemed to bow before her.
Cassios never praised her. He merely watched her as if she were a weapon in the making. He called her "my cursed legacy."
And then came the eleventh winter.
Snow fell in silence when Selene, cloaked in a heavy mantle, was taken to the grand reception hall. A meeting of the four clans was to be held. She was used to being hidden, but that night, Cassios wanted to show her off like a trophy. A cold, powerful child, immune to pain. The Mark of Pain already shimmered on her wrist—a magical seal that kept her from dying and bound her to the world of the dead.
It was there, on that quiet, frozen night, that she saw him for the first time.
Dante.
He was fourteen, with eyes as dark as a starless sky. One of the representatives from the Clan of the Silent Blade. Beautiful. Arrogant. Distant. When he looked at Selene, there was no awe in his gaze—only disdain. As if she were just another child deformed by power.
She didn't speak to him. He didn't speak to her. But that look remained, embedded in her mind like a dagger. For the first time, someone didn't fear her. Someone despised her. And that hurt more than any experiment she had ever endured.
After that night, Selene was never the same. Not because Dante meant something—but because she saw in his eyes what she hated most: that even to a stranger, she was nothing but a monster.
And the hatred grew. Not for Dante. But for the world. For herself. For the promise of a future where she would never be free.
At eleven years old, Selene carried more pain than most adults could bear. And still, she lived.
And that… that was what tormented her the most.
She was still alive.