LIROIDS

The Vengeance of Evilside

Eyela’s POV.

The night after Ciria’s sacrifice, I wandered the forest with fire in my veins. Every step shook the earth, and wherever my feet fell, lilies erupted, purple, dark-veined, dripping with ichor that gleamed like blood. I should have been horrified. Instead, I felt powerful.

The girl who had been Eyela, afraid of her father, clinging to Seyal’s promises, was ashes now. In her place stood something new, something forged from grief and fury.

I reached the edge of the forest by dawn, and before me lay Glen Manor, sprawling and arrogant, its banners snapping in the wind. Rage boiled in my chest. I remembered his hands, his laughter, the arrow that stole Seyal.

My fingers curled. The ground shuddered. From the soil, roots burst forth, snaring the walls. Flowers bloomed along the stone, their perfume sickly-sweet. Guards rushed forward, shouting, crawling, but the lilies opened wide, spewing a black mist. Screams split the air as men collapsed, their skin mottled, their eyes rolling back into their skulls, for death had come to claim them.

I walked through the chaos as though it were a garden. Their blades clanged uselessly against the vines that wrapped them tight. One man begged me for mercy. I looked into his eyes, and for a flicker of a moment, I saw the face of the 300 men who took my soul that fateful night. My heart lurched, then hardened. With a wave of my hand, the vines crushed him to silence.

When I entered the manor, Glen was waiting. He had donned his finest armor, gold-etched and gleaming. His sneer faltered when he saw me.

“You…” he whispered, his sword trembling in his hand. “You should be dead.”

“I was,” I said. My voice sounded strange, echoing, as though two beings spoke at once. “Now I am more.” I loved the way I was feeling at the moment, for he was now at my mercy to do with as I pleased.

He lunged, his blade aimed for my heart. The metal barely grazed my skin before the lilies writhed up from the ground, coiling around him like serpents. He thrashed, cursed, and screamed.

I stepped close, the air between us humming with power. “Do you remember Seyal?” I asked softly. “The boy whose love you mocked? The boy whose blood you spilled?”

His eyes widened. He tried to speak, but the vines tightened, gagging him as he struggled to break free of the hold he was under.

“You took everything from me. So now I take everything from you.”

With a thought, the roots crushed his body. His scream ended in a wet crack. The lilies bloomed around his corpse, their petals drinking in his blood.

For a long moment, I stared at what I had done. My hands shook, not with guilt, but with exhilaration. Justice was mine. I was a god and no one could touch me.

But as I turned from the manor, the goddess’s warning echoed in my mind: Love cannot live in the heart of one who carries such gifts. Seyal’s face flickered in my thoughts, and for the first time since Ciria touched me, pain pierced the armor of rage.

I did not return home. Not yet. But the pull of Cellon was too strong. At night, I crept to the outskirts of the village. From the shadows, I saw my parents. My father stood tall, still, though the years weighed on him. My mother's hair was streaked with silver. They laughed with neighbours, their lives unbroken by what they had done to me.

Bitterness burned in my heart, and my throat felt sore. They had given me to Glen like livestock. They had abandoned me. And now they lived as though nothing had happened.

I wanted to step into the light, to confront them, to make them see what they had created. But another part of me longed to hear my mother’s lullabies again, to feel my father’s strong hands steady me as they once did.

I wept in the shadows, torn between fury and longing. My tears dripped onto the earth, and where they fell, lilies bloomed. The flowers betrayed me, glowing in the dark. My mother’s head turned, her eyes catching the faint light.

“John,” she whispered to my father, pointing. “Do you see that?”

He frowned, stepping forward, but by then I had fled into the night. My heart was shattering all over again.

Back in the forest, Ciria’s voice returned, coiling around me like smoke. “Why do you weep, Evilside? Did you think vengeance would fill the void?”

“Leave me,” I begged, pressing my hands to my ears. “I did what you asked. I took my justice. Isn’t it enough?”

“You did what you wanted,” she spat back.

Her laughter was low and cruel. “Justice is never enough. Power craves more. You are bound to me now, my powers are yours, and your story has only begun.”

The lilies around me pulsed, their roots tangling at my feet. I fell to my knees, screaming Seyal’s name into the void, but only the goddess answered.

In that moment, I understood the truth: Eyela was gone forever. I could never return to the fields, to laughter, to love. I was a weapon now, a curse given flesh.

The world would tremble when my name is mentioned, and people would cower at my shadow.

“Was this really what would become of me?” I whispered as though anyone could hear me, even if they could, they would never have an answer.

My beauty had become a curse, and my heart turned to stone because of the greed of men. Ciria had made sure to remind me of that.

And though I hated Ciria for it, part of me thrilled at the thought.

A goddess was dead, so I could be born of pain and grief to control men and bind the world to my whim.

I am Terror, I am Void, I am EVILSIDE

If I could not be loved, then I would be feared