In realm of Transcendence, in Eldrathis continent. The world outside is too chaos.
In the crystalline spires of the Palace, lashed the towering walls, reinforced with unbreakable array.
Lightning veins across a bruised sky, ripped through the clouds over Eldrathis.
In the center of the Eldrathis, where the very air hummed with raw, untamed energy, the Crown family resided, their fortress a strong barrier against the storm's relentless fury.
Today is particularly a different kind of tension in the Palace.
Four women, their faces etched with somekind of emergency, moved with swift, silent efficiency inside the chamber.
Low moans, sharp gasps, and the chant of ancient spells wove through the heavy silence.
Outside the chamber, the member are waiting. They all have same features as same black hair as same soft grey eyes, looks like family. But today there is tension in atmosphere.
Aevin Crown, his frame as solid and unyielding as the palace's foundations.
His black hair, streaked with silver at the temples, usually swept back, now fell in disarray around a face carved from worry. Today, he seem be more father than the leader.
Akane, his wife, sat perfectly still on a bench, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles becoming white.
Her own black hair, a sleek curtain around her face, eyes that never left the ornate door.
Beside her, Siara Crown, their eldest daughter. A nervousness around her shows clearly, barely contained her anxiety, her eyes darting between her parents and the closed door.
The door creaked open, a sound that ripped through the tense quiet. A nurse, her face streaked with sweat, emerged, her breathing ragged.
"The Princess…" her voice was a hoarse whisper, "She has given birth. Twins."
A collective sigh, a fragile breath of relief, escaped through waiting family. Aevin stopped his pacing, his broad shoulders slumping slightly.
Akane's rigid posture softened, a faint smile touching her lips. Siara let out a small, choked sound, a mixture of joy and apprehension.
Her eyes, bright with unshed tears, darted back to the door, eagerness warring with patience.
"Are they… healthy?" Akane's voice trembled with the question.
The nurse nodded, a weary smile finally blooming. "Both. Perfect. The Princess is exhausted, but well. You may see them soon. Just give us a moment to clean up."
Relief, a warm happiness, flowed through the room. Aevin moved to Akane, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The storm outside seemed to stop, its roar momentarily muted by the fragile peace inside.
Then, a sharp, piercing voice came from the chamber. It was not the exhausted cry of a newborn, but sound of pure raw horror.
Everyone gasped. Aevin's eyes, which had just moments ago softened with relief, snapped wide, a primal fear tightening his jaw.
Siara, her face draining of color, was already lunging for the door. "What sound is this?"
Another cry, this one is sob, is like child cry, from within the room. They didn't wait for an answer. They shoved the door open, burst into the chamber.
Seraphina, their youngest daughter, lay pale and glistening with sweat on the bed, her hair clinging to her temples, her eyes closed, her breathing is shallow.
The nurses, their faces in expressions of disbelief and terror, stood frozen, like they see a ghost.
Two of them cradled infants. One, a tiny bundle wrapped in pristine white cloth, lay perfectly fine. The other…
A collective gasp choked the air from their lungs. The second infant, cradled by a nurse whose hands trembled violently, was a horror.
Its skin, a translucent film, seemed to melting from its tiny bones. Patches of raw, exposed flesh shows clearly beneath the dim light, and a faint sickly steam of red release from child body.
One eye, a dark, seemed to sink into the liquid tissue around it. It wasn't merely unwell; it was dissolving, a living being melting before their eyes.
"What is going on…" Akane's voice was stuck in throat as she said, like someone choked her.
Aevin felt his knees buckle. He stumbled forward, his powerful hands reaching, though for what, he didn't know.
The nurse holding the melting child recoiled instinctively, her eyes wide with terror.
"What is happening?" Siara cried, her voice cracking, tears already streaming down her face, her grey eyes wide with horror.
The nurses, awake from their shock, back into action, a full of desperate movements. They pressed cool cloths to the child's disintegrating skin, whispered ancient healing incantations, their voices laced with urgency.
One nurse produced a alchemy healing portion, green coloured liquid, attempting to stop the melting flesh, but the liquid seemed to boil on contact, evaporating into nothingness.
Family also get their strongest healing portion, but nothing worked, like it can't use on the child's body.
Aevin, also run to workspace his face a mask of profound agony, and came back with a pulled a small, intricately carved relic, a shard of pure, solidified other worldy light and reached for the child.
(The Relic of life, an artifact whispered to tend to even the most to most grievous wounds back to recover, pulsed with a soft, warm glow in his palm.) He pressed it gently against the child's dissolving head.
The relic's light flared, then dimmed, flickering weakly like a dying ember. A cold dread, a terror he had never known, seized him.
Then it start to change colour into dark black. As it changes child's body starts to reversing the process and reforming back to previously body. But tension isn't die.
After body healed Avein try to take back relic then body start to repeating and he have no choice to keep relic near him. So he make pendent of it and give it to child. And it healed back.
"Looks like until we find full cure we have to put this pendent on him. And don't let anyone to find about this. Everyone understood." Aevin said in a terrifying commendable voice and made tension more in the atmosphere.
Feeling his intense gaze toward them, nurse understood if they speak about this even inside, only this await them is their death. His aura so heavy that some of them already lose their consciousness.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing wail cut through the air. It was the other twin, the healthy one, her small face contorting, her tiny fists clenching and unclenching.
Her cries, initially soft, swelled into a crescendo of frantic, heartbroken screams, as if she sensed the unraveling of her sibling, a primal sorrow echoing the horror in the room.
The siara tried to soothe her, to stop her cries, but nothing worked. Her sound travel through the chamber, each cry melting their hearts and tension is still now everything can wait and it is time for joy.
"Ahh!" The sound, a low, pained groan, emanated from the birthing bed. Seraphina stirred, her eyelids fluttering open.
Her soft grey eyes, still clouded with the haze of exhaustion and pain, slowly focused on the frantic scene before her.
"What… what is happening?" Her voice was thin. "My children… where are my children?"