Chapter 1: Asteria Csilla Auclair
[WARNING: DEPICTION OF VIOLENCE IS BEING MENTIONED, VIEWERS DISCRETION IS ADVICE. IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE, PLEASE SKIP THIS PART]
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William’s voice thundered through the room like a cracking whip before the real one even landed.
"Come here, you piece of shit!"
Asteria scrambled backward until her spine hit the cold wall, her small hands trembling as she raised them in a futile shield.
"P-Papa, please—have mercy!" The words tumbled out in broken gasps, each syllable drenched in the kind of terror that only years of conditioning could breed. She already knew they wouldn’t save her. They never did.
Mercy was a language the Auclair family never bothered to learn.
The first crack of the whip split the air, followed by the dull, sickening thud of a fist meeting her fragile ribs.
Then another. And another.
Screams clawed out of Asteria’s throat—raw, animal sounds that no person should ever make—until they dissolved into wet sobs and incoherent pleas.
"Please stop, I’ll be good. I’m sorry."
The words melted into each other, desperate and meaningless, because nothing she said had ever been enough.
Outside the door, the servants stood frozen in the corridor, their eyes fixed on the floor or the far wall—anywhere but the direction of that sound. The atmosphere had grown too heavy to breathe, too thick to move through.
A younger maid pressed her knuckles to her mouth, an old footman simply closed his eyes and counted the seconds, waiting for the storm to pass. None of them dared intervene. None of them ever did.
Because for the Auclair family, this was not tragedy. This was Tuesday.
Asteria had made another mistake. At yet another event. In front of yet another gathering of noble eyes that expected perfection. She had spoken out of turn, her current husband Felix, son of the Emre family, had chosen to divorce her in front of that gathering—but it hardly mattered because the result was always the same.
She had disgraced them again. And now she was paying for it the only way her father knew how to collect.
The beatings continued. And somewhere beneath the storm of fists and leather, Asteria stopped begging. Not because the pain had ended, but because she had finally learned what her family had been teaching her all along: that mercy was a word for other people’s daughters.
"I’m worried about Dad’s health," Marco uttered casually, thumbs still dancing across his phone screen. "He’s been punishing that stupid woman again."
Vilma, wife of William Auclair, lifted her porcelain teacup to her lips and took a slow, unbothered sip. "Don’t bother. Your father is also releasing his pent-up anger from business. Just let him do whatever he wants."
Her voice carried no concern, no hesitation—only the certainty of a woman who had long ago decided that some things were not her problem.
From upstairs, muffled but unmistakable, came William’s enraged screams and the broken pleas of Kihnreil between what sounded like heavy blows.
It was at that moment that Emmaline, Margaux, Frank, and Hannah descended into the living room, their footsteps unhurried, their faces betraying nothing fresh. The sounds from above reached them instantly, filling the space between heartbeats.
Emmaline tilted her head, listening for a breath. "Oh? What’s happening now?"
Frank shoved his hands into his pockets and let out a long, lazy sigh. "Boring..." He didn’t even look toward the ceiling.
Marco finally glanced up from his phone, a flicker of something almost like amusement crossing his features.
"Well, Asteria fucked up her third marriage this time."
Margaux pressed a hand to her chest, though her expression held no real shock—only a performative kind of disappointment.
"Oh my God. How ungrateful of her."
Hannah wrinkled her nose as another sob echoed through the floorboards. "Whatever. I’ll just go out again. Hearing her pleading like this disgusts me."
Emmaline nodded, already turning toward the door. "Yeah. I’m out of here."
And just like that, Emmaline, Hannah, and Margaux drifted out of the mansion once more, their heels clicking against marble like nothing at all was happening above them.
Frank, alone among the siblings, did not follow. Instead, he crossed the room to where Vilma sat, bent down, and pressed a kiss to her cheek—an act so casual and yet so deliberate in its indifference to the screams still raining down from upstairs.
"Mom, why don’t we go out? I’ll accompany you shopping," Frank asked, his tone light and easy, as if the screams filtering through the ceiling were nothing more than background noise—a distant construction site or a passing siren.
Vilma’s face softened instantly, her earlier composure melting into something theatrical and warm. "Oh, son! That’s a great idea." She set down her teacup with a delicate clink and pressed a hand to her chest, her eyes widening with mock hurt.
"Your older brother, Marco, didn’t even bother to think about my well-being."
Marco looked up from his phone and let out a short, genuine laugh—not defensive, not guilty, just amused. Frank chuckled beside him, shaking his head. Neither of them pointed out that Vilma had never once asked for company, nor that she had seemed perfectly content sipping her tea while Asteria’s pleas cracked through the walls.
"Wait," Marco said, slipping his phone into his pocket and pushing himself off the couch. "I’ll go with you guys."
And just like that, they all left—mother, sons, daughters already out the door—moving through the grand foyer and into the cool afternoon light without a single glance back toward the staircase.
No hesitation, no whispered word of concern, no servant dared to meet their eyes as they passed.
Upstairs, Asteria’s sobs continued, muffled by wood and plaster and the vast, indifferent silence of a family that had already decided she was not worth the trouble of listening to.
~~~•••~~~
"Papa~" Asteria’s voice cracked into a desperate, childish whine, dissolving instantly into a broken whisper. "I am begging you. N-No more~ please~"
William’s chest heaved. His arm froze mid-swing, the leather whip trembling in his grip before he hurled it away. It skidded across the floor with a dry, serpentine hiss. He turned on her, not with pity, but with pure, undisguised disgust.
"If only you didn’t just fail!" he roared, his voice bouncing off the walls. "But you disgrace me again! Three times, Asteria! Three times!" He spat the words like poison, each one landing harder than the last.
"You’re so fucking useless!"
Then his boot came down—not hard enough to break bones, but just enough to crush. His heel ground into the back of Asteria’s trembling hand, pressing her fingers against the cold, blood-specked floor.
Asteria did not scream. She did not yank her hand away. She had learned long ago that screaming only made it last longer, and resistance only made him angrier. So she just endured.
Her teeth sank into her lower lip until she tasted copper. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the sweat and grime, but she made no sound. Not a whimper. Not a plea. Just the soft, hitching rhythm of someone crying as quietly as their body would allow.
William stared down at her for a long, suffocating moment, watching her shake beneath his foot like a wounded animal too scared to run. Then, slowly, he pulled his breath into something resembling calm. He lifted his boot from her hand and crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and the rage still simmering under his skin.
"I will give you one last chance, Asteria." His voice dropped to a cold whisper—more terrifying than any scream. "If you fuck this up, I will make sure you’ll be picking your food and scraps from prostitution."
He let the words settle into her bones, watching her eyes go wide and hollow at the same time. Then he stood properly, straightened his collar, and walked out without another glance—leaving Asteria crumpled on the floor in a bad, battered state, her hand already bruising, her chest heaving, and the taste of blood and tears mixing on her tongue.
The door clicked shut behind him. And somewhere downstairs, the rest of the family had already gone shopping.
Asteria curled up into a ball on the cold, blood-flecked mahogany floor, her arms wrapped tight around her knees as if she could hold herself together through sheer pressure alone.
She was still shaking—deep, uncontrollable tremors that came from somewhere beneath the skin, somewhere the whip could not reach but fear could. The moment she heard the door slam closed, the heavy thud echoing through the room like a final note, her lungs finally remembered how to work. Air rushed in, ragged and desperate, and she realized she had been holding her breath for what felt like hours.
But even as her body drank in the oxygen, the fear did not leave. It never left. It lingered in her chest like a second heartbeat, always there, always pounding, always reminding her that this was not an accident. This was a pattern.
This always happened. The beatings, the screaming, the boot on her hand, the door slamming shut. The only difference this time was the severity. This was the worst beating she had ever received—not because William had hit harder than usual, though he had, but because of what had caused it. This was her third time being divorced by her powerful arranged marriage husband.
The first had called her boring.
The second said she was not good enough.
The third, the most recent, had whispered the cruelest cut of all as he walked out the door: she was simply too weak to be worth the trouble.
Three husbands. Three failures. Three times she had been sent back to the Auclair family like damaged goods that could not be returned for a refund.
And because of this, her family saw her as nothing but a useless womb. A vessel that had failed to seal a single alliance, that had proven itself empty and worthless time and time again. She had failed three marriages. She had failed to honor the Auclair name. And now she was paying for it in bruises and blood, lying on the floor of a room that smelled of leather and iron and old tears.
Asteria tried to stand up. She pressed her palms flat against the floor, ignoring the sharp sting from her crushed hand, and attempted to push herself upright. But her body refused. Her legs buckled immediately, her muscles screaming in protest, and she collapsed back down with a soft, defeated sob.
The whip wounds across her back were bad—she could feel them pulling and splitting with every shallow breath, the leather lashes having carved deep furrows through layers of old scar tissue.
Old scars were being replaced by new ones, the skin never given enough time to heal before it was torn open again. Her face was swollen nearly beyond recognition, her left eye clamped shut beneath a purple bruise that had swollen the lid completely closed. The right eye could still open, but only to a narrow slit, and even that sent daggers of pain through her cheekbone. Her lip was split in two places, and she could taste the metallic tang of blood every time she swallowed.
She lay there for a long time, curled on her side, breathing in shallow bursts, waiting for the shaking to stop but it did not stop. It never did.
After a while, the tears ran dry, and all that was left was the hollow certainty that tomorrow would be no different. And somewhere deep inside her, beneath the pain and the fear and the exhaustion, a small voice whispered that maybe her third husband had been right about her after all. Maybe she really was too weak for anything else.
The reason the Auclair family treated her this way stretched back to the very moment of her birth. They had labeled her a bringer of misfortune and disgrace from the first breath she took, as if her tiny infant lungs had inhaled nothing but bad omens.
To them, she was not a daughter or a sister or a child deserving of warmth. She was a plague. A disease. Something festering that they desperately wanted to cut out but could not, bound by the very laws they had written to protect their own legacy.
The Auclair family had rules—strict, unyielding, carved into the foundation of their name like scripture. Once a child carried the bloodline of an Auclair, legitimate or illegitimate, they shall be treated respectfully as an Auclair.
No exceptions. They could not throw her away, could not abandon her to the streets or disappear her into some forgotten institution. That would be admitting failure, and the Auclairs did not fail.
Instead, they kept her close and punished her for the things she could never control: the circumstances of her birth, the cruelty of her marriages, the simple, unforgivable fact that she existed at all.
Outside the door, the servants lingered in the hallway, their ears full of her sobs and their hands folded neatly in front of them. Not one of them bothered to check inside. Not one knocked, or called out, or even exchanged a worried glance.
Some had tried, in the early years, to show her small kindnesses—an extra blanket, a smuggled piece of bread, a whispered word of comfort. Those servants no longer worked in the Auclair mansion. The others had learned quickly. They didn’t care, or they had trained themselves not to, or perhaps they simply couldn’t afford to. Losing their jobs meant losing everything. And Asteria, for all her suffering, was not worth their livelihoods.
Asteria knew this. She had always known. Deep in her bruised and battered chest, beneath the ribs that had been kicked and the heart that had been stepped on a thousand times, she carried the cold, heavy truth: no one was coming to help her. No servant would open that door. No sibling would pause their shopping trip. No mother would set down her teacup.
She was alone in the same way the moon was alone in the sky—visible to everyone, but touched by no one.
But even knowing this, even feeling the fire of her whip-torn back and the throbbing of her swollen face, she gathered every shred of strength she had left.
Her palms pressed against the blood-slicked floor, her fingers slipping in the warm wetness of her own wounds, and she began to crawl.
Inch by agonizing inch, she dragged her broken body across the room toward the corner where a worn velvet sofa sat beneath a tall window. Her blood painted a dark, glistening trail behind her, staining the expensive mahogany floors of the punishment room—a room that existed for no one else in the entire mansion, a chamber built specifically and solely for Asteria’s pain.
When she finally reached the sofa, her arms gave out. She collapsed against its wooden leg, gasping, her forehead pressing into the rough fabric.
She breathed deeply, once, twice, three times, and then anchored herself by gripping the sofa’s arm with trembling fingers. The wood bit into her palms, but she held on.
"Haah~" A shaky exhale escaped her split lips. "I... I must do better this time." Her voice was barely a whisper, frayed at the edges like old rope. She squeezed her one functioning eye shut and tilted her face upward, toward the ceiling, toward the sky, toward whatever lay beyond.
"Please, Grandma and Grandpa, help me~"
She was asking the dead. Her grandparents had been the only ones who had ever shown her warmth, the only ones who had held her without flinching, who had called her sweetheart instead of disappointment.
But they were gone now, buried in the family crypt beneath marble angels that had never once looked down at her with mercy. Still, she whispered to them anyway, hoping that somewhere beyond the veil of death, they could hear her pleas and cries, her agony and her pain. Hoping that love could travel across dimensions even when it could not travel across a single hallway.
All her life, Asteria had done nothing but obey. She had been submissive when every nerve in her body screamed for her to run. She had been a tool, a punching bag, a maid, a pet—whatever her family needed her to be in any given moment. She had cooked their meals, cleaned their spills, endured their laughter and their fists and their cold, turning backs. She had done everything for them. Everything. And still, she could not get them to love her properly. Not once. Not even close.
The only strength she had ever known came from her faith. She prayed every morning and every night, her knees pressed into the hardwood of her tiny room, her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles went white.
She read from the old leather-bound Bible her grandmother had left her, the pages soft and worn from decades of use. She convinced herself, again and again, that if she was just a little better—a little quieter, a little more useful, a little more invisible—her family would finally see her.
They would finally give her a chance. They would finally love her the way she had always loved them.
That was why Asteria could not plant a single grudge against them. Not even now, lying in a pool of her own blood, her face swollen beyond recognition, her back carved open like a butcher’s meat. She should have hated them. Everyone else would have. But her love was more powerful than the pain they gave her—deeper, stronger, more stubborn than any whip or fist or crushing boot.
It wrapped around her heart like roots around stone, cracking her open from the inside but refusing to let go. She loved them still. She loved them despite everything.
And somewhere in the bloodstained darkness of the punishment room, that love felt less like a virtue and more like a wound that would never heal.
