Hauntspire High,
May, 2025.
The air on the ruined rooftop was a chilling blend of ash, ozone, and the metallic tang of fresh blood. A relentless, dirty wind whipped Lumira Duskbane's silver hair around her porcelain face, her crystalline purple eyes fixed on the indifferent sky.
Her body was a wreck, every muscle screaming from the demonic fight, her soul stretched thin and nearly snapping. At her feet, the immense spell circle, etched in her own spilled blood, still held a faint, purplish light, its runes guttering like a dying heart.
She had done it... the breach was sealed, the demon horde had been banished, and Hauntspire High had been saved.
Then came the heavy sound of boots rushing up the stairs.
Alpha Jaxon's entrance was a violent tear in the fragile silence. His heavy, armored steps thundered up the final stretch of the ruined stairwell, and the steel door was flung open with a deafening crash.
He was the Golden Lycan Prince, a vision of potent devastating fury. His ceremonial leather and gold-trimmed silks matched his golden-brown hair, and his amber eyes, usually a beacon of command, were blazing now with a terrifying, white-hot suspicion.
His Beta, Mason, and Gamma, Caleb, flanked him, two massive wolves in human form, their power radiating in waves that suffocated the air. They were the image of a tribunal, not a rescue party.
Lumira turned slowly, every move a painful deliberation against the exhaustion that dragged at her limbs. Yet, she managed to lift her chin, offering the faintest, most pathetic smile.
"You came…" The words were raw, an admission of a desperate, foolish hope.
Jaxon's voice, when it finally broke the heavy quiet, was a cold, sharp blade. "What game are you playing, witch?"
His golden gaze raked over the blood-soaked scene, dismissing the sealed portal and the demonic residue. There was no sign of gratitude, only the cutting, merciless interrogation.
"Was this your scheme with the demons in order to gain my affection?" he demanded.
The sheer cruelty of the accusation was a physical blow, worse than any demon's claw. It struck the already fragile core of her being and shattered it. Her chest constricted. Even now, at the point of her absolute self-sacrifice, he believed the worst of her.
Caleb, his Gamma, stepped forward, his face a mask of revulsion.
"You reek of corruption," he spat. "Admit it. You bargained with the demons to ruin the mating ritual of the future Luna of the Bloodvale Pack."
The ritual... of course, that was all that mattered.
Jaxon took a heavy step toward her, his disappointment a palpable, crushing weight.
"I still had high hopes for you, after all the atrocities you committed against my saintess…" His voice was low, yet his eyes gleamed with a cold, unrelenting fire.
"But betrayal… I cannot forgive it. You are nothing more than a curse to Hauntspire High."
His final words stole the remaining air from her lungs. Her knees gave out beneath the overwhelming weight of his judgment and exhaustion. She sank, catching herself against the crumbling concrete railing.
A violent, rattling cough seized her, and a mouthful of dark, viscous blood spilled across her pale trembling hands.
Hot tears blurred her vision, but she fought them back. She tilted her face upward, searching for the indifferent, distant stars.
"I saved you all…" Her voice was a ragged whisper, trembling under the immense force of despair. "And still, you hate me? Was this what you've always seen me as? A monster?"
For a long, agonizing heartbeat, a genuine silence descended.
Then, Mason, the Alpha's Beta, a flicker of humanity in the golden group, lunged forward, his face pale with anguish.
"Your Highness, Lady Duskbane saved us! She closed the portal! If not for her, we all would have..."
"Silence!" Jaxon's command was a slicing sound, colder than polished steel.
Mason froze, the grief in his eyes shattering into hopeless fragments.
Lumira swayed, her hands slick with her own blood, and a bitter, jagged laugh escaped her lips. It was a sound devoid of mirth.
"So that's it. Even now, when I've given everything… you won't believe me."
She met Jaxon's golden eyes, trying to burn one last image of him into her fading memory.
"I thought I had a place in your heart. I thought maybe - just maybe - you'd look at me and see something more than your enemy."
Her mouth curved into a fragile shape. "But if all I'll ever be is a monster in your eyes… then what's the point of life? What's the purpose of a heart that only beats for someone who despises it?"
Mason, his face a contorted mask of horror, lunged again. "Lady Lumira, don't - please! Don't say that!" His voice was a frantic shout.
But she was already beyond listening.
Her body, heavy with exhaustion and finality, tipped backward. The world pitched violently, as her silver hair streamed out like a comet's tail against the dark night.
In the single, earth-shattering moment of her fall, she saw a flicker in Alpha Jaxon's expression - something close to true fear, a momentary falter in the golden gleam of his eyes. It was a small, agonizing crack in his perfect composure, but it was not enough to stop her. It was too late.
The air shrieked past her ears, the sound of the wind rushing to greet her.
Then, a crushing impact, as a sickening, bone-jarring crack echoed in the night.
The White Witch of the West, the savior and the curse, lay broken on the cold, unforgiving stone below.
High above, Alpha Jaxon turned away. He adjusted the fine ceremonial leather on his shoulder and walked with a steady, decisive stride toward the firelit gym, where Selene, his chosen Luna and Saintess, waited with a soft, adoring smile. His golden eyes, so cold a moment ago, softened only for her.
Lumira's blood pooled across the jagged pavement, a dark, spreading stain. The White Witch of the West died, unmourned and utterly forsaken.
----
Rina's Room,
New York.
Rina's POV
The aggressive, pale blue glow of the phone screen was the only light that fought back the gloom in my cramped dark bedroom.
With a frustrated sob, I hurled the device onto my mattress. My chest heaved in ragged bursts as fat, hot tears streamed down my cheeks.
"She died… for nothing?" I whispered into the suffocating darkness. "Not even a 'Thank You'? Not even a moment of doubt?"
The final, brutal, sequence of the webnovel replayed endlessly: Lumira, standing alone, bloodied and broken, her trembling heart laid bare, only to be branded a monster. And then the final, lonely fall. The absolute, unceremonious end of my favorite character - the girl who had silently carried an impossible weight and still chose to save the very people who despised her.
For what ultimate reward? Scorn, rejection, and the crushing, final dismissal as the "curse on this highschool."
On the novel's public forum, the comments section was a ceaseless, brutal torrent:
User23: Lumira deserved it. That witch had it coming for years.
SilverWolfFan: Good riddance to bad rubbish.
MoonlitReader: The author did us all a huge favor by killing her off. Now the real story can begin with Selene.
"No! She deserved better!" My grip tightened on the edge of my duvet. "She saved them all, why can't any of you wretched people see it!"
My silent plea was swallowed instantly by the relentless, mocking tide of online cruelty. The collective venom of the forum pressed down on me until I could barely draw a breath.
I was only nineteen, a first-year student barely scraping by as a part-time cashier in a dead-end neighborhood in New York. I've always felt invisible, but online, I had this one story... I had Lumira.
But now... she's dead!
"She's not a villain, she's desperately lonely and misunderstood…" I whispered, my fingers flying across the screen to type out another defense.
The merciless replies were instantaneous, tearing down my argument:
"Lol, WitchVale's defending her again, go back to your basement."
"Forget Lumira! She's trash, and so are you for liking her."
"Seriously, why do you care about a fictional witch? Are you one too?"
My chest tightened painfully, yet I continued to type, because silence would be a greater betrayal. To stop defending Lumira was to let the collective hatred win, to let the lie become the truth.
"Rina!" My mother's voice, sharp and demanding, sliced through the thin bedroom door. "Stop crying over those silly e-books and get yourself out to the market before it closes. We need fresh vegetables."
"Yes, mom!" I flinched, scrubbing at my face, desperate to hide the evidence of my emotional breakdown before my mother could see my tears.
My secret world of fantasy was always a source of scorn in my real mundane life.
Outside, the late evening air was cool and damp, carrying the faint scent of city pollution. The asphalt of the streets was slick from an earlier drizzle. I walked quickly, my head down, lost in a furious replay of the final chapter.
My phone, still clutched tightly in my pocket, felt like it was burning against my thigh.
On a half-dead fan site, someone had once leaked a cryptic number, rumored to belong to the anonymous author of the novel. I had saved it as a tiny, useless contingency.
Now, as I stepped back out from the brightly lit greengrocer's and into the damp, shadowy night, my thumbs flew across the screen, my fury finally finding a directed target.
"Why did you kill her like that? Did you have to make her so completely alone? She saved them all! She burned her entire life away for those ungrateful wolves, and you gave her nothing but contempt! Don't you think she deserved at least one single chance at happiness? You're a coward for ending her that way!"
Message after furious, despairing message poured out, a chaotic, unedited stream of grief and outrage directed at the silent, rumored number.
I kept walking, expecting no reply, ready to delete the number and try to forget the whole frustrating ordeal. But as I rounded the next corner, a single sharp notification chimed.
A message had arrived; the text was brief, simple, and impossibly unsettling.
"You also feel that Lumira died an unjust death, just like me? Then let's see how you change the story."
I stopped dead under the fractured glow of a streetlamp, the bag of vegetables slipping from my suddenly numb fingers. The message wasn't a denial or a threat. It was an invitation, a challenge, delivered with a strange, impossible intimacy. I stared at the glowing screen, my heart hammering a wild, frantic rhythm against my ribs.
'Change the story?'
How could I possibly change what was already written?
The street suddenly felt colder, the shadows deeper, and the air crackled with a possibility that defied all logic, all reality. The novel was finished, my heroine was dead... yet, this message suggested a door had just been opened to a world I thought was forever closed.