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THE BETRAYAL

Author: ZIA
last update Last Updated: 2025-04-15 01:55:00

My heart thudded like a war drum against my ribs as the bus rattled through broken streets, carrying us back into the ghost town I never wanted to see again. I’d tried to forget this place. I’d tried so hard. But the echoes always found me.

The sun had just dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across the cracked pavement. Trees bent like watchers, silent and accusing. I sat stiffly beside Matthew, clutching my coat around me, trying to still the storm inside.

He glanced sideways. “You okay?”

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t think I ever will be.”

He didn’t press further. Just rested his hand beside mine on the seat—close, but not touching.

The silence between us had changed since I told him the truth.

“I lied,” I had confessed earlier on the bus. “About Tony’s death.”

His eyes had snapped to mine. “What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t just a victim,” I said, voice trembling. “He was a bully. He tried to force himself on me… again. I pushed him away, but then she came. She killed him. I d
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  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   FACE TO FACE

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  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   APOTHECARY IN THE WOODS

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  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   NO PLACE LEFT

    The room was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that clawed at your throat. I sat on the bed, my fingers clenched around the termination letter like it had personally betrayed me. The words blurred together under the dim light of my bedside lamp, but the sting of it was clear.You are hereby dismissed from your position…Effective immediately…Due to incidents of misconduct…What a joke.I let the paper fall from my hands and flutter to the floor like a dying bird. I wasn’t going to cry. Not again.Instead, I started to pack.Clothes. Toiletries. My books. My notebook with all the scrawled warnings and half-baked theories about the woman—the witch. A few faded photographs that used to make this place feel like a temporary home. Now it was nothing more than a reminder that I didn’t belong here. Not with the rest of them. Not in this sterile, fearful building that watched me like I might combust at any moment.I stuffed the last of my things into my bag, zipped it up, and threw on my

  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   EVICTED

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  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   SHATTER

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  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   THE ACCUSATIONS

    The whispers didn’t stop.They never really did, not even when the lab buzzed with fluorescent lights and the scent of coffee and latex gloves masked everything unnatural. The voices curled under my skin like smoke—soft, persistent, and impossible to ignore. Sometimes I caught pieces of words, names I didn’t recognize, hymns in a language I couldn’t understand. But most of the time, it was just... noise. A sound like breathing too close to my ear. Always there. Always watching.I didn’t tell Matthew.Not because I didn’t trust him. But because I did. And that’s what scared me the most.He was being too kind. Too present. Too much.We walked the halls of the lab like two normal interns working a long shift. He even handed me a cup of coffee with too much sugar—just how I liked it. I tried not to smile. He looked proud of himself.“You’re settling in really well,” he said as we entered the research bay. “Everyone’s impressed.”“Everyone?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.“Well… everyone but

  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   THE HALLUCINATIONS

    The world around me had begun to blur.I didn’t realize it at first—just a flicker in the corner of my vision. A shadow. A strange gleam in someone’s eyes. But soon, it was everywhere. People I’d never seen before walking past in outdated clothing. The faint sound of drums and chanting echoing through the corridors. And then, the banners—old, tattered things hanging from the ceiling of the hallway, stitched with sigils I didn’t recognize. Witchcraft symbols, curling in black and red thread, swaying as if they were alive.I stood there in the hallway of the dorm, gripping the railing tightly, trying to breathe evenly.Nope. Definitely not real. None of it could be real. Just more of the hallucinations. Or visions. Or whatever they were.Still, my body reacted before my mind could catch up. My skin crawled with goosebumps, and a shiver zipped down my spine.“Morning,” Matthew’s voice pulled me out of the spiral.I turned to see him, coffee mug in hand, looking frustratingly normal in hi

  • The Queen of The Rouge Blood   FACE TO FACE

    The hallway groaned around me like it remembered the pain. My breath didn’t hitch—it was completely gone. A steel band of terror wrapped around my chest, squeezing until my ribs protested. Every step I took deeper into that house made the air colder, heavier, like the walls themselves were inhaling my fear.I glanced over my shoulder. The door was gone. Or maybe it had never been there. Either way, I was trapped in a nightmare with peeling wallpaper and the stink of soot lodged in the floorboards.This was the house—the one I had seen in my dreams, in my visions. The house where I’d first met her."Matthew?" I called, my voice barely a whisper, but there was no response. Of course there wasn’t.And then the laughter started.It wasn’t the kind of laughter that made you laugh with it. No—it crawled along your spine, a rusty chuckle laced with sorrow, like the sound of someone who had laughed so long they forgot how to cry.I slapped my hands over my ears. “Stop! Just stop!”But the hou

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