Chapter 13

Part I: The Green Flame That Ignited the Portal

“La sorella del fiore nero non morirà mai di fame.”

The large window in Frankie’s boudoir was completely shut, which made him even more nervous when the candles flickered—flaring a dark green flame that danced as if in a voodoo trance from 1700s Congo Square. The flame shifted colors to an eerie, shimmering jade reminiscent of darkness. Still, there was no one near the candles to light them. No spark, no match—yet they burned in unison, as if summoned by a memory older than the house itself. As if the French Quarter was alive with tales of Madame Lalaurie.

Mylene did not speak. She simply observed Frankie. Her eyes narrowed, pupils dilating into a cutting gaze, as if she were about to slit him into pieces. The diary Frankie held tightly to his chest began to vibrate, distilling gold dust into the air, while the echo of Paganini’s violin filled the room with its vibrato and crescendo. The diary began to whisper in tongues:

“Ricordati di me, restituiscimi la vita.”
(Remember me, return me to life.)

The violin kept playing, as if Paganini himself were in the room. The walls began to spin. The diary flung itself open to pages containing an incantation to awaken her violin, which groaned louder through the parchment as if being played by an invisible bow. Each note felt like a haunting—a waltz fit for Versailles, drenched in opulence—depicting Mylene dancing in the arms of a blond man.

The diary spoke again:
“Ricordati di me. Io ti ricordo bene, amore mio.”
(Remember me. I remember you well, my love.)

The low, haunted notes across the strings felt intoxicating, making Aimee almost faint. Frankie’s eyes began to twitch, and once more he reached for the wall behind him, trying to steady himself.

That’s when the air shifted.

Not a gentle freeze. Not a gust of wind. A violent glide through time and space.

The scent of orange blossom, clove, and something ancient—ash, perhaps, or rose petals rotting on a tombstone—began to swirl like sand. The candle’s green flame, iridescent, grew larger and split into a couple dancing to the sound of drums. Three tongues of fire cast shadows:

• One flickered dark green,
• One flickered gold,
• And the third pulsed crimson blood.

Aimee’s eyes widened, staring directly into it. Mylene’s shadow lengthened and lifted, reshaping the world.

There were no screams, no warning sounds—only a deadly silence—as Le Cour Noir melted away and the ritual walls of the Gallier House emerged around them.

The French Quarter had vanished. The stench of rotting rose petals thickened the air. Bones lay scattered near the ground, as if something had eaten the corpses and discarded the remains.

Then a voice was heard—the last voice Frankie expected.

A cough. Then soft footsteps.

From the shadows beyond the altar—surrounded by black candles, rose crowns, and thorned bushes—Sirah Cabernet stepped forward, eyes widened as if he had seen a ghost. His skin was pale, sunken, and his expression stricken with worry.

Frankie immediately snapped, fury crawling up his throat.
“YOU READ IT, YOU LYING SCUMBAG! I knew you did… You smelled like her.”

Sirah didn’t reply. He didn’t deny the accusation. He only looked down, consumed by something worse than shame.

It was guilt.

Because he was now spiritually owned by her.

Then he managed to say, “Look, Frankie… I had to. You don’t understand—you never will. She was always meant to rise here.”

Mylene didn’t flinch. She moved slowly around the altar, barefoot and silent against the cold cobblestone, her fingers tracing the edge of the ritual basin. The room began to breathe—as if it remembered her. The scent of the past returned in the form of a cat.

Aimee stepped forward.

The jade aura shimmered faintly across her chest, flickering in rhythmic unison, as if dancing flamenco. She didn’t look at Frankie. Her eyes locked on the altar.

The three flames returned—but this time, they burned as ritual candles:
One for the body. One for the soul. One for the price.

Part 2: Le tre fiamme

The three candles pulsed with unnatural rhythm, as if they were swinging gypsies driven mad by jazz euphoria. The candle that was crimson red shifted into the shape of a Romani woman seductively luring her prey to descend into chaos—just like Megara tricked Hercules into giving his strength for a day. Time stood still, as if it wanted to bear witness to the enigmatic tale of the phoenix rising from the ashes.

The three candles shifted shape again, as if caught in a tango belt accompanied by Sonata No. 2 in E minor—body, soul, price—each flame flickering a silent oath to the old gods still lingering beneath the stones of the Gallier House.

Aimee stepped closer to Mylene, the jade aura hovering above her head like a halo. Gleaming with fear but also with readiness, she reached for Mylene’s hand and held it tight.

“I am ready, ma’am—for whatever it is that you are offering.
I am not prey. I choose my fate.”

Mylene held her hand back, a faint smile drawn on her lips.
“No, mia piccola sorellina, not anymore. No man or woman will hurt you anymore.”

Frankie stood there, watching in silence, unable to speak. He knew what came next—he had read the pages beforehand. He had mistakenly assumed that Aimee would be a lamb, a sacrifice to appease the Greek gods as in ancient rites. But what stood before him was something else. Not a girl, not a victim, but a mirror of Mylene’s pain and hunger—reborn into something else.

Sirah, who had ventured deep into the rabbit hole like the dedicated scholar he was, whispered the names of those figures he had read in dark academia. He knew what was coming—her aura curling through his spine long before the portal ever opened its doors to anyone. Now, he was powerless… merely a spectator to the birth of the first sin.

“Verde come l’avidità.” (Green as greed.)

Mylene moved toward Aimee as threads of aura followed her—gold, black, and jade—moving slowly with the wind, weaving a veil that laced around Aimee’s chest like a corset. Then, it turned into stitches pulled by spectral hands. Aimee did not cry out. She stood tall, chin held high, her veins glowing in the darkness as if a green river was flowing inside her.

Mylene looked at her and offered her hands.

“Do you accept?” Mylene asked in a soft, velvety voice.

“I choose this. I choose to live—
and not to be humiliated,
nor preyed upon.”

The central flame flared back.

Part 3: La Nascita della Fame

(The Birth of Hunger)

The candle that was meant to burn out in the exchange—the one for the price—suddenly flared back, its hue shifting into a golden flame dancing in heat before turning ash-black, like a heartbeat collapsing into silence.

Aimee arched slightly, breath caught in her throat as if she were being strangled by fate itself. But her throat didn’t close. It burned—as though she had swallowed kerosene.

She didn’t fall. She didn’t scream.
Instead, she inhaled.
Each breath deeper than the last.
And for the first time, she felt alive.

Her eyes narrowed, then changed color—into the most haunting, fairy-green gaze one could imagine. The room seemed to lift into the air, trembling with unseen force, as her body began to levitate. The violin groaned violently and then twisted into tango belts—each more aggressive, more fevered in rhythm.

Aimee reached for the thorned roses beside the altar. She squeezed them hard. Blood bloomed in her palms. She turned to Mylene and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Victim I am no more.”
Then she looked at Frankie.

“You… You tried to save me by ending me?”
But her eyes held no anger—only the slow ache of understanding. She saw now what Frankie had offered her: mercy, not malice.

Mylene answered before Frankie could speak.
“You gave me what no one else dared to, or wanted to give.”

Sirah stood silent, head lowered. His lips trembled—not from fear, but from the weight of witnessing history unfurling at last.

The jade glow pulsed from Aimee’s chest to her fingertips. Each time the candles flickered, her aura danced—liquid green, vivid and sharp. Not the sin of excess, but the hunger born from a life where there was never enough.

She wasn’t a little girl.
She wasn’t a fragile black flower.

She was gilded hunger in human form.

Part 4: The Pact Reshaped and Its Price

The Shadow Man emerged from the edge of the candlelight, his silhouette cloaked in smoke, incense, and memory. He had been there all along, lurking in the cracks of the Gallier House.

Enjoying the spectacle.
The tragedy of false choice.

Ah, poor mortals—believing that choice is a privilege.

But Mylene turned to him before he could speak.

“You came for her mortality. But she has offered me something far more valuable—her free will.”

Papa Legba laughed, amused.

“She walks now. No longer yours to barter with. And you…”
Her voice dropped, low and defiant:
“…you will not touch her soul. It does not belong to you.”

The Shadow Man tilted his head, intrigued.
Who was this creature that dared to defy him, to speak to him as if he were some trembling mortal?

Mylene stepped fully into the candlelight, letting him see her.
As the scent of orange, clove, and cinnamon reached him, he exhaled a knowing breath.

Then smiled.

“So be it. She is yours. And now… she is no one’s.”

He stepped back into the darkness between bone piles and candle flame, allowing the light to reveal his full figure—tall hat, white gloves, a burgundy vest soaked in the blood-wine of broken pacts, black shirt and pants like midnight stitched from secrets.

“Princess…” he purred. “You know what you are doing. Let’s strike a deal.”

“I get the ones whose souls she drains. A body for a soul…”

And as his form dissolved into curling smoke and drifting dust, his voice echoed—

“One sin now walks. Six sins wait to wake.”

The air shifted. Again.
The scent of tobacco, sweat, and old incense filled the chamber.

Aimee stood beside Mylene, voice barely above a whisper.

“Thank you… for not letting him take me.”

To which Mylene replied:

“Sorellina mia, ora sono la tua protettrice. Sei al sicuro con me.”
(My little sister, I am your protector now. You are safe with me.)

Aimee looked down at the citrine glass in the flame. Then back at Mylene.

Mylene asked softly,
“What would you like to be called?”

Aimee’s voice did not tremble.
“Greed.”
A pause—
“Not for gold… but for life.”

And so, the first capital sin was not crowned—
but born.

Not as punishment—
but as prophecy.

Part 5: Il Fiore Nero (The Black Flower)
The flames calmed, but the air did not. It vibrated, echoing its bloody past, drenched in present memory, as the scent of clove and molten gold rose like incense from the floor.
The diary made its way to Mylene’s hands—then transformed into a black raven.
The raven flew to Mylene’s shoulder, and she said,
“He is also your protector. Think of him as your big brother.”

Mylene kissed the black raven’s beak and whispered:
“Trovarmi un’iris nera, poi portamela.”
(Fetch me a black iris, then bring it to me.)

She turned to Aimee, now cloaked in the aura of jade and midnight. Her voice softened—not out of pity, but out of recognition.
“Mia sorella del fiore nero.”

As soon as the words left her lips, the black raven returned with a single black iris. Mylene clipped it into a delicate black onyx pin, shaped like a wilting rose. Ancient. Tasteful. A beautiful jewel carved in forgotten rites.

She lifted Aimee’s chin gently, fixing her hair without ceremony—yet the gesture felt heavier than a crown.
The jade aura pulsed once more, then dimmed… bowing in reverence.

“This pin is your crown, my queen.
This is your eternal vow:
to yourself,
to me,
and to the coven that will rise from the ashes of everyone they tried to erase from history—
and bury in the melancholic sound of the forgotten.”

Aimee let out a few tears, her voice trembling.

“I will never be prey again.
Not to them.
Not to society.
Not to men.
Not to hunger.
Not to fear.”

Mylene smiled and kissed her on the chest.
The candles flickered in agreement.

And beneath them, the cobblestone floor began to hum—alive with the echoes of covens long vanished and delayed vendettas.

“Soon, we will rise.”

Sirah said nothing, but the tears on his face caught the candlelight like pieces of fallen glass.

Frankie had turned away, shrugged into his own shame—not at Aimee’s power,
but for ever thinking she was meant to die for Mylene.

She hadn’t been a sacrificial lamb.
She was the flame needed to ignite the awakening.

🕯️ Felt the pull? Let her haunt someone new.
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One soul. One shadow. One whisper.
Mylene remembers the ones who speak her name.

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