Annabelle awoke to warmth. A fire crackled somewhere close, casting flickering light against the cavern walls. The air smelled of sulfur and something ancient, something wrong.
She tried to sit up, but agony lanced through her body. Every bone felt splintered, every muscle torn. Yet she was alive.
A shadow loomed over her.
Massive, horned, and wreathed in darkness, the creature sat before the fire, its crimson eyes fixed upon her. It was not human. It was not anything mortal.
"You should be dead," it rumbled.
Annabelle swallowed her pain and forced herself upright. "I'm not."
A deep chuckle. "No, you are not."
She examined the demon more closely. Its form shifted in the dim light—sometimes solid, sometimes smoke, like reality itself couldn't decide what it was. Clawed hands rested upon its knees, each finger ending in a black talon that could tear through steel.
"Why did you save me?" she asked.
"I did not," the demon said. "You landed on my doorstep. It seems fate has a sense of humor."
Annabelle exhaled slowly. Her father had left her to die, and yet here she was, not in the afterlife, but in the depths of something far worse.
"What do you want from me?"
The demon studied her, its gaze lingering on her deformed arm. "Tell me, child… What do you want?"
The answer came without hesitation. "Revenge."
The creature's grin was a row of knives. "Good."
(Years Passed.)
The girl who had been Annabelle Jane of House Eldrin no longer existed.
Under the demon's tutelage, she became something else. Something stronger.
She learned to wield the shadows, to command the unnatural strength her body had been cursed with. Her chitin-covered arm became her greatest weapon, able to tear through armor as if it were parchment. The demon taught her to fight, to deceive, to understand the world not as a noble's daughter, but as a predator.
And when she came of age—when the last traces of weakness had burned away—he made her an offer.
"Your body is mortal," the demon said. "But it does not have to be."
Annabelle met his gaze, unflinching. "What must I do?"
The creature's smile deepened. "A pact, my daughter. My power flows in your veins, but it is not yet yours to command. Pledge yourself to me, and you will no longer fear time."
She did not hesitate.
With her own blood, she signed the contract.
And in that moment, Annabelle Jane ceased to be a discarded noble.
She became a warlock.