Chapter Text
Every single person in this world is born with markings on their backs.
At first, they’re undefined, strange, a cluster of barely distinct drawings and shapeless streaks of color.
But as the years go by, as a person grows and experiences life, those mindless shapes begin to take form. Flashes of vague markings become less blurry, more defined, more theirs.
What was once a strange haze of colors and faint, uncertain lines becomes the markings that define who they are, and who they’re destined to become.
They change, twist, and evolve alongside the one who bears them, until they’re formed enough to become real—until they’ve merged so deeply with the person’s essence that they can leave the shell of the soul and emerge into what they truly are.
They become the wings that will carry them for the rest of their lives.
The first thing Rumi remembers about her own wing markings is Celine’s stern voice.
“Not this, too.”
It didn’t make sense to Rumi back then.
Why not this, too?
What else was there?
But she soon figured it out. And this time, she didn’t need Celine to voice it for her to understand.
Not when the woman who was supposed to love her like a daughter looked at her with such disdain—with such distrust and fear.
The patterns on Rumi’s right arm are the reason Celine looks at her that way.
They mean unholiness in every possible sense, a stain on her skin as deep as the memory of her mother’s death in Celine’s mind.
How is it that something so wicked is branded onto her flesh when she was born from the light of her mother’s soul?
It doesn’t make sense to Rumi, that the same vile, fiendish markings carved into demon skin also twist across her own, curling in corrupt, razor-sharp edges that pulse faintly beneath her flesh, the faint glow rising whenever her heartbeat stutters, as if the markings themselves breathe with her.
So Rumi hides them. Rumi blames them.
Those scandalous, profane parts of herself that Celine makes her promise, over and over, not to show anyone.
And still, still, it isn’t enough.
Even buried beneath layers and layers of fabric, compression wraps, long sleeves, harsh soap that burns, and concealers thick enough to suffocate her skin, Celine still won’t look at her—not really.
And that’s all Rumi wants.
For Celine to look at her the way she looks at anyone else—the delivery lady who drops off supplies, the security guard at the gate, the helpers from the kitchen.
Celine looks at all of them differently, with varying shades of kindness and warmth, but she looks at them.
Celine notices when someone is down because of trouble at home.
She notices when someone comes to work limping after an accident, and she takes care of them.
Celine notices.
But she doesn’t notice Rumi.
When Rumi cries in the dark because Celine took away her night-light, terrified that the demons might come for her, that her father might be waiting in the corner, ready to drag her back into the demon realm where she supposedly belongs—Celine doesn’t look at her.
When Rumi falls during training, skinning her knees and staining the floor crimson, Celine looks—but she doesn’t see.
When Rumi disappears for three days, desperate for Celine to notice her, to react in any way, anger, worry, anything— Celine doesn’t even realize she’s gone until their next training session.
Still... there are moments when Rumi swears she sees something else in Celine’s eyes besides indifference. Something fleeting, thin as a breath, there and gone so quickly that Rumi later wonders if she imagined it.
Imagining that Celine was looking at her with… something soft. Not the cold distance she’s used to, not the clinical detachment she’s learned to stand under. Something unnamed, something that makes her think, for half a heartbeat, that Celine does see her.
That the days when Celine notices Rumi is already too tired and lets her leave training early, that tiny glint of something in her eyes, isn’t some calculated decision about efficiency, but a quiet, reluctant form of care.
That the evenings when Rumi opens the fridge to find leftovers from a business dinner Celine attended alone, carefully packed and labeled, aren’t accidents or habit, but Celine watching out for her from a distance, offering what she can in the only way she knows how.
But, even then, those moments are so rare and uncommon that Rumi doesn’t know if she’s maybe just seeing too much into something, maybe hoping for something that isn’t actually there.
Maybe she’s mistaking exhaustion for softness, efficiency for care, coincidence for intention. Maybe she’s just so desperate to matter to Celine, even a little, that she’s building entire meanings out of traces, shadows, the way those pale eyes linger for a second too long before turning away.
And so Rumi learns to live with it, she forces herself to.
She learns to survive through Celine’s indifference, through her raw apathy and immense disregard for anything and everything Rumi does
Learns to swallow the ache in her chest when Celine walks past her without acknowledging her existence, when the woman who raised her treats her presence like an inconvenience, a flicker in the corner of her vision she wishes she could snuff out.
Learns that when Celine does look at her, it’s only with a sadness so deep it burns Rumi’s skin.
Not metaphorically.
It burns.
The more Rumi tries to hide, the more she tries to fit into Celine’s impossible mold—to make Celine finally see her, to please, please look at her —the more her patterns burn.
The more they grow.
And the more Rumi hates herself.
They slither around her skin like poisonous snakes, forcing their way through her flesh with pain and agony, pulsing in stinging waves, pounding in shame-soaked, excruciating cramps that convulse beneath her soul in torment-inducing disgrace.
Each throb a reminder that something inside her is wrong, corrupted, unfixable
How is it that her skin is part of her mother’s exquisite poetry of a soul, and yet it doesn’t speak in balladry nor rhyme? It doesn’t sing in verses nor poesies—it wails, in a symphony so hideous and abhorrent it twists her stomach; it howls and roars in a loathsome, monstrous composition that carves a haunting, macabre piece of hollowness inside her.
It’s not the delicate harmony of her mother’s self—not the steady rhythm of Celine’s spirit.
It’s a demonic tempo inside her soul that fattens when shame grows and fades only when pride flickers— something that rarely happens, because the more Celine refuses to look at her, the more the patterns grow, branching, curling, tightening like a noose beneath her skin.
Worse still—the more her patterns grow, the more Celine hates her too.
And the more Rumi hates herself for it.
It’s an endless cycle—one Rumi doesn’t know how to break.
In the dead of night, when she can’t sleep, she locks herself in the bathroom and strips down, standing naked before a mirror that haunts her more than it should.
Every time, her patterns are larger and longer, darker and more painful.
Still, there’s a part of Rumi—a part that, no matter what she does, refuses to fade.
A part that thinks it’s… beautiful.
A piece of herself that can look through her eyes and see lines of beauty and edges of grace drawn into her skin.
That can see they aren’t shaped only by shame, but by pride, too.
A small, stubborn shard of her soul that watches the delicacy of the purple fade into something else when it surfaces, someone who can look in the mirror and not see a monster.
As if it’s… happy.
Happy that it is no longer being treated as something unholy by the eyes of its own host.
As if it’s grateful that, finally, finally, Rumi can see it for what it truly is: a part of herself, as much as breath, as much as heartbeat, as much as the memory of her mother’s arms.
And on those rare days, the patterns pulse not with purple, but with silver. With white, with a rainbow haze—silver reflecting beauty and a quiet grandness buried deep inside her soul.
So deep that Rumi can finally look at herself and see her mother, see pieces of the woman in herself, too.
Still, that part of Rumi is barely there. Most days, it’s purples of fear, violet of shame, and magenta of hate. And the markings on her back, the ones that aren’t the source of her shame, slowly start to change too.
What was once a soft, velvety shimmer of delicate, graceful shapes—wings markings that once looked almost ethereal —now grows twisted, corrupted, wrong.
They begin to resemble the rest of Rumi.
Rotten.
And she wonders, not for the first time, what her mother would think.
What her mother’s markings looked like.
What her wings looked like.
The markings are sacred, holy, a part of one’s self that once was never meant to be shown.
Or, at least, it used to be that way.
Now there’s a growing misconception surrounding their saintlike nature, and more and more people show them openly, parade the bright testaments of their souls on the streets like artwork—and, Rumi thinks, there’s nothing wrong with that.
She’s a private, lonely person, but she doesn’t mind when others have no shame in baring the ink of their souls.
Sometimes, she wishes she could do the same.
Wings, however, are different.
Wings are still pure, seraphic representations—a physical manifestation of one’s essence, something angelic and serene and intimate. Something shown only to one’s soulmate, one’s cherished, dearest missing piece.
An act of intimacy and trust so profound that it breaks language, culture and history, a truth known across the entire world since the beginning of time.
Rumi never had the chance to see her mother’s wings.
There are no pictures, no drawings, no descriptions from someone her mother may have loved long ago, there is only Rumi’s imagination.
So, as she stands naked in front of the mirror, staring at the abomination her soul-markings on her back are becoming, Rumi collapses onto the cold tile floor, sobbing until her throat aches, begging for someone— anyone—to help her.
Begging for Celine to help her.
But Celine won’t look at her.
Rumi says nothing about what she’s found.
She keeps it pressed tight against her chest, buried as deep as she can manage, muzzling every thought about it, swallowing every plea that rises to her tongue.
Please, help me. I don’t know what to do.
Words that should leave her lips, but never do.
She forces them down with the same strength Celine uses when she pushes the wooden training sword against Rumi’s ribs and shoulders, demanding she “stand straighter,” “move faster,” “take the hit.”
Rumi censors her pain. She gags every whimper that threatens to escape every time Celine looks her way— because even then, Celine still doesn’t see her.
And Rumi refuses to give her another reason to look away.
As the years pass, the markings on her back grow more and more like a demon’s—like the very thing Rumi swore to destroy, like the thing Celine taught her to despise, like the thing Celine trains her to kill.
More and more, they become something monstrous.
And Rumi still says nothing.
She doesn’t tell Celine.
But when Celine finally finds out, it’s far worse than anything Rumi could have imagined.
They’ve been training harder lately.
Celine pushes more each day, she has to train harder and faster and harsher and so much more.
And Rumi forces herself to keep up, to meet Celine’s impossible standards. She forces herself to be quicker, stronger—better.
But not today.
Today, her back burns the same way her patterns do when she faces her reflection and what stares back is shame and agony.
Her movements are sluggish, her reactions dulled. Everything feels slower, heavier.
It feels… it feels as if her own skin isn’t supposed to be there—as if it’s draped over her muscles like a costume, touching what it shouldn’t, fitting where it shouldn’t. As if the hairs on her head aren’t hers, as if the nails on her fingers belong to an impostor wearing her hands, as if even the sweat on her skin was shed by someone else entirely.
Nothing feels like her anymore.
There’s something—there’s something wrong.
Something beneath this borrowed skin that sears and flickers every time she moves, something that ignites just below the surface and blazes through her muscles, consuming every failed strike, every stumbling step.
Her back burns.
Celine’s blades find her skin more easily than ever. Her defenses are clumsy, her strikes weak. Rumi sweats beneath the burning sun, beneath the stifling layers of clothing she wears to hide her patterns—to protect Celine’s eyes from the vile markings on her skin.
Her grip trembles around her blade and Celine notices, she always notices Rumi’s failures.
But she says nothing, she just charges forward.
And over and over again, Rumi loses.
She hits the ground face-first, the rough stone scraping her skin, bruising, bleeding.
“Get up.”
She does.
Again and again.
She dodges Celine’s slashes, leaps over a surprise side kick, shoves Celine back when she can —but it’s never enough.
She always ends up on the ground, gasping for air.
“Get up.”
She does.
She pushes herself upright with trembling, collapsing arms. Every movement drags fire across her back, the pain rising in a crescendo so loud and sharp that Rumi can barely hear what Celine is saying, the ringing in her ears swallowing every word, every breath, every thought.
Still, she steadies her base, readying for Celine’s next attack.
No longer she’s in offensive, no longer she’s launching attack after attack on the woman, but she waits— because she can barely move—she watches —because her vision keeps blurring—she readies herself for Celine’s flurry of relentless attacks—because she can no longer lift her own training sword, her entire body wailing in agony.
When Celine comes again, even though Rumi readies herself, she’s not ready.
Celine’s too fast, too strong. She sees Rumi’s openings before the half-demon can even understand what’s happening, before she can even breathe through the pain rippling under her skin. Once more, Rumi lands heavily on the floor, breath torn from her lungs, sword thrown somewhere far away from her weak, slipping fingers, face scraped against the scorching concrete beneath her skin.
“Get up.”
And she gets up again.
And again.
And again.
Until she can’t.
Rumi tries to push herself off the floor —and even though her arms tremble as if an earthquake were tearing through her bones, even though her vision wavers and blurs like melting glass, even though sweat, tears, and blood mix in her mouth as she spits red onto the stone—it's not one of those things that stop her from getting up.
It’s the sudden, scorching, searing agony in her back that does.
Rumi doubles over, gasping, one hand clawing at her side, trying desperately to reach her back while the other scrapes against the floor, barely keeping her from falling face-first again.
She opens her mouth—to scream? to beg? to plead for Celine’s help?—she doesn’t know.
She’ll never know.
Because what comes out is a strangled gasp, a choking sound as she drowns on her own breath.
Her back is on fire. Her back is freezing.
It feels as if something inside her is trying to claw its way out—something tearing through her flesh, shredding muscle and bone, forcing itself out in violence and blood and a pain so deep and excruciating Rumi doesn't think she’ll ever forget it.
Her wings.
She realizes it through tears and broken sobs.
Her wings are manifesting.
It’s the only thing that makes sense—and yet, it doesn’t.
Rumi’s nails dig into her own skin as another burst of pain rips through her back. Something warm trails down her sides, thick, heavy and unmistakably blood.
It doesn’t make sense, because Rumi has read how wings manifest.
It’s supposed to happen in soft, glowing light, surrounded by warmth, by peace and joy.
Not like this.
They’re supposed to emerge with laughter and proud faces, gentle touches and congratulations.
Not with choking screams and burning tears.
Not with stone scraping against open wounds, torn fabric clinging to her bleeding skin.
Not with agony screaming through her spine.
Whatever symphony she thought her soul had, whatever haunting melody that wrapped around her spirit and refused to let go—it’s nothing compared to now.
There’s a weeping composition being made with the sobs leaving her mouth, a tune of broken pleas and tearful gasps tearing through her throat.
A concerto of sorrowing, howling despair making itself physical as her soul finally makes itself known.
It’s no longer delicately cursed, no longer a fragile thread of uncanny demonic aspects—it’s a raw tune that slithers and fuses with a brutal chord, all blood made sound, agony made music.
Rumi's screams become an orchestra.
It thrums against her bones, rattles inside her lungs, claws its way up her spine until even breathing feels like being dragged across shattered glass.
She’s so lost in her own pain—she's suffocating, she's trembling, she's barely breathing— that she doesn’t notice when Celine kneels beside her.
There are hands on her now. Long and thin fingers, steady palms. They pull her, push her, trying to move her from where she’s collapsed.
Rumi tries to tell her to stop, to beg her to stop touching her, because every touch burns worse than the last—but then, Celine does stop.
A hand presses against the back of Rumi’s neck. Another circles her waist, and her head falls against something warm.
It takes her a moment—through the blur and pain, through the gasping and agony —to realize that Celine is holding her.
Celine's cradling Rumi against her chest, knees on the floor, curled around the half-demon, and it’s something Rumi doesn’t think she’s ever felt before.
The arms around her aren’t tense with discipline or violence, they’re tense with fear.
With concern.
Celine’s voice trembles near her ear—
“It’ll be over soon.”
Through the suffocating haze in her mind, through the oppressive sharp edges carving themselves inside her chest, Rumi thinks—she’s never been held before.
Is this what it feels like?
“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.”
Rumi can’t answer.
All she can do is clutch blindly at Celine’s shirt, pulling and twisting, trying to hold onto something solid as the pain rips through her again and again and again. Something warm slides down her sides, down her back. Celine’s hands grow slick with it.
Rumi wants to throw up, she wants to scream, she wants to disappear—she doesn’t.
The agony tethers her to here, to now, to Celine’s steady arms around her.
And then—the pain, the unbearable pain that’s been consuming her for what feels like hours—becomes worse.
So much worse.
When she once thought her skin was tearing apart, now she knows.
Her skin is being torn apart.
Her wings are forcing their way through her flesh—ripping and splitting, bursting out in a mess of violence and agony so raw Rumi can do nothing but scream.
So she does.
She screams until her throat shreds, until the sound turns jagged and broken, until it tastes like iron and blood.
Had she bitten her tongue? Are her lungs collapsing?
It feels like they are.
Each scream tears through her throat the same way her wings tear through her back—wrecking every sense of self Rumi has ever had, crippling every logical thought as she digs her fingers deeper into whatever she can hold on to.
The concrete floor.
Celine’s shirt.
Celine’s skin.
What had she done to deserve such punishment?
What had she done to deserve such torture?
She doesn’t understand.
The sound that escapes her isn’t human, it’s guttural, wet, something that should never come from a living thing, something almost demonic. It echoes off the stone walls, a choked, bubbling howl, soaked in blood and terror.
Once more, she claws at anything she can, at her own skin, raking her nails down her sides, trying to reach the inferno on her back; at Celine’s arms, the ones holding her tight, whispering words that melt into static against the sound of her own pain.
Nothing helps.
Oh God, nothing helps.
It's too much.
There’s a wet, wrenching sound, a sick, tearing crack, as the agony erupts through her spine.
Her vision fractures; her breath catches; crimson floods her mouth, dripping past her lips.
Blood runs down the entirety of her back, starting to pool beneath her scraped knees, and her fingers, once more, scrape across the floor, against Celine, nails splitting, grasping for something, anything to hold on to—anything to make it stop.
Make it stop, make it stop.
Please, please, make it stop, please.
PLEASE.
And then, with one final, nauseating rip, a sound like flesh giving way, like her own skin being marred and demolished and disfigured and—
The pain fades, almost entirely.
It’s still there, still flaring across her skin, still slithering through every trembling muscle, but, compared to the deafening screams from seconds ago, it feels silent.
Rumi collapses deeper into Celine’s chest, gasping for air, lungs freezing and burning at the same time, body heaving, spasming, her mind barely present.
Her hands shake, vision warping and her lungs burn.
Everything hurts. Everything is too much.
She can barely see. Blackness tunnels through her vision, threatening to swallow her whole, but she sees anyway, head pressed against Celine’s chest, her own sweat mixing with the woman’s. Both their shirts are stained, crimson streaks marking Rumi’s lips and the fabric alike.
Her fingers twitch where they rest—one desperately, weakly gripping Celine’s white shirt, the other clawing at the floor, nails split and bleeding from the battle with concrete.
As her vision sharpens and her hearing returns, she hears Celine whispering soft words in ways she’s never heard before. Slowly, Rumi begins to feel her body again.
No longer it feels like she's invading someone else's skin, no more her flesh crawls with agony. Her flesh is her own again.
Her scraped knees and elbows from falling again and again during training, her body wrapped in the clothes she chose for herself—clothes now torn and shredded from the relentless drills, her single braid unraveling, strands stuck to her skin with sweat and blood.
And, most important of all—
Something heavy presses against her back—pushing through the shredded remains of her training attire, through the shredded remains of her skin.
Her… wings?
Rumi feels the warmth of her own blood clinging to her skin, the sting sharp but somehow grounding, alongside the chill of air brushing against the exposed edges of her back through the tattered fabric.
Her wings had torn through them, it seems.
She should be happy, shouldn’t she?
She should.
Her wings had finally manifested, finally. After years of doubts and fears and nightmares and-
They were finally here.
She should be happy.
But she has no strength left to feel it.
And Celine is holding her, for the first time in forever.
The woman’s arms feel like a safe harbor, solid and grounding, an anchor in the middle of a storm Rumi can’t escape.
Celine didn’t leave her, didn’t tell her to get up, didn’t strike.
She stayed.
She held Rumi through the agony—through the screams, through the choking sobs, through bloodied lips and shuddering breaths. Held Rumi as her wings manifested in violence and blood, not gentle lights and caring smiles.
Fear and pain still pulse through Rumi’s chest so hard she’s afraid her heart might burst. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but the only thing that comes out is a pitiful, trembling whine.
“It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
Celine’s voice is soft, too soft, as the arms around Rumi shift, sliding higher.
They move through blood, over torn cloth, over the raw, trembling flesh of her back. Her newly born wings, bruised and tender, so painfully alive, twitch under Celine’s touch.
Rumi gasps, the contact so sharp it borders on unbearable.
“You’re going to be fine, Rumi.”
And that single phrase is enough for rumi's heart to freeze and melt at the same time-
Because she can’t remember the last time Celine called her by her name.
It breaks her heart.
Her wings flutter again as Celine’s fingers brush them, a fragile, involuntary movement, and just as Rumi starts to catch her breath, she turns her head, trying to see.
But Celine’s arms stop her.
A hand cups her cheek, firm and gentle at the same time, forcing Rumi’s gaze back into the woman’s chest.
"Don't look."
And even though no one has ever held Rumi like this before—ever, in her entire life—she knows something isn’t right.
She knows there's something ...wrong.
She can feel the honmoon. It doesn’t appear, it never does, but it moves now. It slithers around her fingertips, a pulse of energy crawling up her arms and down her spine, leaving shivers in its wake.
Like it’s warning her.
But Rumi is so tired.
She's so, so tired.
Every breath feels like dragging shards of glass through her lungs. Her back is shredded, fragmented, torn open by her own soul.
She tries to move a hand, just to shift a little, but her fingers barely respond; when they do, they brush against one of her wings, dragging on the floor, and the touch sends a violent pulse of pain up her spine.
The wings are bruised and raw, still wet with blood, the skin around them burning as if it’s being eaten alive from the inside. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to exist, and she can feel the weight of the wounds pressing against her ribs with every labored inhale.
Her back is slick with blood, thick and hot, and she can feel more of it trickling down her sides, finding the curves of her waist, painting trails along the skin that her own wings had torn apart. The air smells of iron and sweat and something sour that might be fear.
Celine’s arms are still around her, solid and unmoving, holding her tight against her chest. Rumi lets her eyes fall closed for a moment.
Just a moment.
Because, for the first time in her life - Celine looked.
She tells herself it’s all she needs, to rest, to feel warmth, to pretend that this embrace means what she’s always wanted it to mean. Even though it wasn’t how she imagined it, even though it hurt more than anything she’s ever done, more than the burning of the patterns that snake across her skin, Rumi lets herself wonder.
She wonders what her wings look like.
When they stop hurting, when she learns to control them? Will they be beautiful?
Will they shimmer the way she imagines Celine’s does when the light catches them?
Will they finally make her something worthy of being seen?
The honmoon brushes against her fingers again, an invisible current that runs beneath her skin, colder now, more insistent, almost trembling. It feels nervous, anxious, like it’s trying to tell her something—something urgent.
Rumi blinks, forcing her heavy mind back into focus.
Celine’s arms tighten around her.
The movement is slow, almost careful, grounding at first, and Rumi can’t help but melt into it. A small sob escapes her mouth—she can’t help leaning further into that touch, into the arms of the woman she’s always fought to have notice her, to have her love.
“Celi—” she can’t even speak properly, blood coating her tongue, her back blazing in pain. “-Ce-Celin-ne.”
She curls deeper into the woman’s hold, feeling the warmth of Celine’s chest against her cheek, the gentle rise and fall of it steadying her, the fabric wiping away the tears streaming down her face.
Celine doesn’t say anything, only hums softly, a low, steady sound that rises and falls with her arms as they wrap Rumi’s neck in a tight, encompassing embrace.
It feels so good.
Tears slip freely down Rumi’s cheeks—it feels so good.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Celine says, and there’s something in her voice, something… sad.
Rumi should have noticed.
Celine’s arms tighten further, grounding Rumi even more, holding her to here, to now.
“Celin—”
But then it keeps going—firmer, closer, until Rumi can feel the woman’s heartbeat pounding against her ribs.
“I’ll take care of you,” Celine whispers.
Something in the tone is wrong.
Too soft.
Too desperate.
It drips with something that isn’t comfort—it’s resignation, it’s sadness, it’s pity, maybe something darker.
The honmoon reacts instantly, its energy crackling against Rumi’s nerves, pressing at her fingertips and crawling up her arms in frantic waves. It feels like it’s trying to pull her awake, trying to warn her.
Why? Was it her wings? Was the honmoon sensing her pain, trying to soothe her? Or was it reacting to Celine—to the hunter’s blood, to the danger that Rumi can’t quite name yet?
Rumi tries to speak, to tell her that something feels wrong, to warn her about the honmoon’s strange behavior, but her voice catches in her throat.
And then she understands.
Celine’s arms don’t loosen.
They tighten again.
And again.
And again.
The pressure around her chest grows unbearable.
Her breath catches, then stops halfway, her lungs unable to fill.
The embrace that had felt so steady, so warm, becomes a cage of flesh and bone closing in around her.
Because Celine is choking her.
Rumi’s body jerks once in surprise, a strangled sound escaping her lips as panic flares through the exhaustion.
Her hands try to push, to claw at Celine’s arms away from her throat, but she’s too weak, too drained, and the world is spinning too fast.
The honmoon’s pulse becomes frantic now—wrapping around her hands, crawling up her wrists like a living shadow. It’s screaming at her, though it has no voice.
Rumi’s vision swims. The blood drying on her lips cracks as she tries to speak again, to say Celine’s name, to ask why.
To beg.
But Celine’s arms only tighten further, pressing the air out of her body until her lungs burn.
Between her own gasps of pain, her own desperate, breathless attempts to inhale, Rumi notices she’s not the only one crying.
Celine’s crying, too.
"I'll take care of you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"
And Rumi doesn’t see anything anymore—no blood on her shirt, no sweat on her skin, no dirt on her attire. There’s nothing, because her vision goes dark.
No longer do her limbs flail or spasm in fear, no longer do they fight for survival, for Celine has taken that breath of will away.
No longer can she claw at the woman’s chest, push her away, for Celine drained every ounce of resistance from her.
And no longer do her wings twitch in fear, sending jolts of blazing pain through her entire body, for Celine muzzled every gasp of life from them.
And as darkness begins to swallow her whole, Celine’s arms tightening around her body, slowly suffocating the half-demon, Rumi realizes with perfect, unbearable clarity—the woman she wanted to save her is the one who’s killing her.
Rumi's eyes close, and she fears they will never open again.