The Extra's Rise - Chapter 455

Chapter 455: Alyssara Velcroix (2)
The girl stared back at me from the mirror, pink hair spilling over her shoulders like a rose-hued waterfall, eyes the color of cyan glass with hints of green—familiar yet strange.

I was Alyssara Velcroix, Chief Advisor to the Lord of the Southern Sea Sun Palace, wielder of power that made Immortal-rankers tremble, Cult Leader of the Red Chalice.

I was also…someone else.

My hand pressed against the cool surface of the mirror, as if trying to reach through to that other self that hovered at the edges of my consciousness. The memories came in fragments lately—disjointed scenes, emotions without context, a face with blue eyes that made my heart ache with a longing I couldn’t understand.

Arthur Nightingale.

His name sent ripples through my mind, disturbing the careful order I’d maintained for decades. When I looked at him, something inside me recognized him—not as prey, not as a pawn, but as something essential that I had lost.

“Ridiculous,” I whispered to my reflection. “You are Alyssara Velcroix. You bow to no one.”

Yet the memories persisted, growing stronger each day since his arrival. I closed my eyes, allowing them to surface, curious what they might reveal today.

A sterile government building. Fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows. Arthur sitting across from me at a metal table, expression unreadable, calculating. His intellect was palpable—a quiet, resolute genius whose mind worked in ways that fascinated me even at fifteen. The agency had sent me to recruit him, but something unexpected happened. I saw beyond his mind to something deeper—something that made my young heart flutter when his eyes met mine.

I opened my eyes, my breath coming faster. That wasn’t my memory. It couldn’t be. I had never worked for any agency, had never been tasked with recruiting anyone. And yet, I remembered the nervous anticipation as I’d prepared to meet him, the file I’d memorized detailing his extraordinary achievements, the way my superiors had emphasized his importance to our work.

The memories were becoming more detailed, more specific. No longer just emotions or glimpses, but full scenes of a life I had never lived. A life as someone named Emma Cassel.

Emma.

The name tasted strange on my tongue, yet familiar. It unsettled me, this invasion of self by another. I was Alyssara, shaped by blood and cruelty, forged in flame and shadow. These memories of structured order and adolescent infatuation had no place in me.

Yet they persisted, growing stronger with each day, each encounter with Arthur.

I pushed away from the mirror, moving to my private chambers where ancient tomes lay open on my desk. Research into memory, soul transference, reincarnation—topics I had dismissed as irrelevant until now. Nothing in them explained what was happening to me, this slow fracturing of identity.

A different memory surfaced then—not Emma’s past but my own dark beginnings.

I was seven years old, standing in a dimly lit chamber beneath my father’s mansion. My small hand was engulfed in his larger one as he led me forward, his voice gentle but firm.

“You must learn, my little rose, what true love means,” he said, guiding me toward a large iron cage.

Inside, a woman wept—beautiful despite her tears, her long hair tangled around her face. She looked up as we approached, her eyes finding mine with desperate intensity.

“Alyssara,” she whispered. “My sweet girl.”

My father’s grip tightened painfully on my hand. “Your mother has been making poor choices, Alyssara. She thought she could leave us. Leave me.”

The woman—my mother—shook her head frantically. “Revan, please. Not in front of her. She’s too young for this.”

My father knelt beside me, turning me to face him. His eyes, so like my own, burned with something that frightened and fascinated me. “She’s never too young to learn about love. Real love. The kind that consumes everything.”

He snapped his fingers, and from the shadows came two figures, bound and gagged. An elderly man and woman, their eyes wide with terror. My mother screamed, lunging against the bars of her cage.

“No! Please, no! Not my parents!”

My father’s hand settled on my shoulder, warm and heavy. “Watch carefully, Alyssara. This is what happens when someone you love tries to escape. You remove every other attachment they have. You make yourself their entire world. That is how love endures.”

What followed was a lesson in blood and screams, in power and possession. My mother’s parents died slowly, their lives extinguished as she watched, helpless to intervene. When it was over, something had broken in her—a light extinguished, replaced by empty obedience.

“Do you see now, my rose?” my father asked, wiping blood from his hands. “She’ll never try to leave again. She has nothing left but me. That is love in its purest form—complete possession.”

I gasped, the memory receding like a tide leaving jagged shells on the shore. My father’s lessons had continued throughout my childhood—lessons in control, in breaking rather than nurturing, in equating love with absolute dominion.

Such memories should have brought shame, or horror, or regret. Instead, they twined with Emma’s memories of Arthur, creating something new and terrible. A desire not just for connection but for possession. A love warped by my father’s teachings yet infused with Emma’s genuine emotion.

I wanted Arthur. Not just physically, not just emotionally, but completely. I wanted to own him, to break him, to reform him in the image of my desire. To make him mine in ways that transcended normal understanding of the word.

“This isn’t right,” I whispered, Emma’s voice momentarily stronger than my own. “This isn’t what love should be.”

But Emma’s influence was fragmented, weakened by the decades I had spent as Alyssara. Her memories offered glimpses of healthier attachment—the flush of first love at fifteen, watching Arthur work through problems no one else could solve, the quiet pride when he acknowledged her insights despite her youth—but they couldn’t override the fundamental nature my father had cultivated in me.

I moved to the window, gazing at the Red Sun hanging in the night sky. Its crimson light bathed my skin, reminding me of the power I commanded, the cult that bowed to my will, the vampires who feared and respected me.

Another memory surfaced—more recent, a conversation overheard between the Vampire Monarch and Cassius.

“The Gates of Transcendence,” the Monarch had said, his voice weak but determined. “They exist beyond the boundary of High Radiant-rank. They are the threshold between merely powerful and truly divine.”

Cassius had scoffed. “A myth. No one has crossed them in ten thousand years.”

“Because no one has possessed the raw ability,” the Monarch replied. “Not even I could cross them. But there is one among us who might.”

The Gates of Transcendence. My recent studies had uncovered references to them—a threshold that separated the highest Radiant-rankers from those who had ascended to pseudo-godhood. Not a barrier of philosophy or detachment, but one of sheer, overwhelming power and will.

I understood now why I had been drawn to Arthur, why these memories of Emma had been surfacing. They were a test—a challenge to overcome. If I could harness this pure, young love Emma had felt for Arthur and twist it into the consuming possession my father had taught me, I would be fueling my ascension with the most powerful emotion possible.

Arthur was my key to the Gates of Transcendence. By breaking him, by claiming him completely, I would achieve what even the Vampire Monarch could not. I would cross those gates through my sheer ability, enhanced by the purity of Emma’s love corrupted by my will.

The realization sent a wave of pleasure through me, a certainty that crystallized my fractured thoughts into singular purpose. I had arranged for Arthur to access the central chamber tonight, to discover the Vampire Monarch. What happened after would determine both our fates.

If Arthur tried to expose what he found, I would need to act quickly. The ritual to absorb my blood contract with the Vampire Monarch was already prepared. In his weakened state, he couldn’t prevent me from taking what was rightfully mine—the power, the cult, the future.

And Arthur? Arthur would be mine as well. Not as an advisor or an ally or even a lover in the conventional sense. He would be my possession, my conquest, my living proof that I had the ability to cross the Gates that even the Vampire Monarch could not.

Emma’s memories whispered protests—the eager fifteen-year-old’s heart, open and vulnerable, seeing in Arthur not just his genius but his humanity. But they were growing weaker against the tide of my determination.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” I whispered to the fractured presence inside me. “But this is who I am now. This is what love means to me.”