Contains: Brain surgery, lobotomy, noncon f


The grand, ink-black hall of the mansion is choked with a suffocating, absolute silence. The long shadows of dusk have completely bled away, leaving the room trapped in an unnatural, magical twilight. Rue is pinned flat against the freezing stone floor, her body entirely paralyzed by an invisible, crushing weight. Her sleek, raven-black hair is splayed out around her head like the scattered feathers of a broken bird.
Standing over her looms The Raven, his massive silhouette blotting out what little light remains. Rue has failed to secure the Prince’s heart. She has allowed human weakness, doubt, and love to compromise her mission, and now, her foster father is executing her final, agonizingly slow punishment: a total, magical lobotomy.
He does not use a steel tool or a physical mallet. Instead, he channels the ancient, corrupting Crow Magic directly into the fabric of her mind.
Slowly, the dense shadows in the room coalesce above her face, twisting into a long, razor-sharp needle of solid darkness. Rue’s right eye is forced wide open by an unseen pressure, staring helplessly up at the point of the shadow-blade as it hovers mere millimeters above her pupil. It aligns perfectly with the soft, vulnerable recess behind her upper eyelid.
Father... please... give me another chance. I can get the hearts. I can make Mytho love me! Do not destroy me!
She screams the plea internally, desperate to fire the dark, defensive pride of Princess Kraehe. But the magic binding her down is the very source of her own power, turning against her. The tip of the shadow-needle sinks down, pushing past her eyelid. The sensation is one of absolute, abyssal cold—a frozen void that completely numbs the corner of her eye socket. The pressure is immense, a sickening, metaphysical weight that pushes deep into her cranium, splitting her internal vision into fragments of a shattering mirror.
The Raven’s voice echoes through her consciousness, heavy, cruel, and absolute. “You have proven yourself useless as a daughter, Rue. A puppet who feels is a broken puppet. I am removing the broken pieces.”
The dark needle drives deeper.
There is no physical clink, but a horrific, agonizing mental shockwave ripples down her spine as the dark energy punches through the spiritual bone barriers of her mind. It plunges two inches into the soft, silent geography of her left frontal lobe. Rue’s jaw locks, a muffled, breathless gasp trapped behind her teeth as the shadow-blade vibrates within her skull.
The Raven does not rush. He deliberately stretches out the agony, letting her awake, conscious mind feel every single second of its own systematic destruction.
Slowly, methodically, he begins to sweep the dark needle forty degrees outward.
Inside her head, the tip of the shadow-blade moves in a heavy, destructive arc. It plows through the delicate tracts of white matter, the glowing neural highways that carry her human thoughts and emotions. Millions of synaptic connections are sheared apart in slow motion.
With the first millimeter of the sweep, the memory of Mytho’s gentle eyes—the single anchor that kept her from drowning in despair—turns to gray ash. She desperately tries to reach for the aching, beautiful longing that usually defines her, but the pathway has been dissolved. The love has no bridge to reach her thoughts.
The Raven pauses, letting the tool of darkness rest in the bleeding, severed tissue of her soul. “Rue,” he commands into the suffocating quiet of her mind. “Count backward from ten.”
She tries to form a thought, but her mind is filling with a dense, heavy black ink. Ten... nine... eight...
The Raven swishes the dark needle forty degrees inward, completing the total liquidation of her left hemisphere's emotions.
The frantic, electric panic in her chest suddenly loses its steering wheel. The terror is still there, pulsing rapidly in her blood, but it is completely disconnected from her cognitive mind. She watches her own execution from a vast, clinical distance, as if it belongs to a stranger lying on a table far away. The vibrant, chaotic storm of jealousy, grief, and fierce devotion that had raged inside her for years is being systematically leveled into a flat, silent void.
The prince... she thinks, her internal voice losing its sharp, protective edge, smoothing out into something hollow, flat, and slow. The heart. Food for Father.
She can remember the name Mytho, but the sensory memory—the profound, aching love, the secret wish to be saved by him—has been cleanly, permanently deleted.
The Raven smoothly withdraws the dark needle with a cold, rushing wind, only to immediately realign the point over her right eye.
The pressure returns, double the weight of before. The right side of her mind holds her stubborn independence, her capacity to weep, and the last remaining fragments of the girl named Rue.
The shadow-blade drives in. Another sickening, silent pop inside her head as it penetrates the right frontal lobe.
The final, agonizingly slow sweep begins. Outward forty degrees.
Rue watches the phantom blade sway in the darkness before her face. Inside her skull, the remaining white matter is systematically liquidated. The threads of who she is are unraveled one by one, falling into a silent void.
I am Princess... I am...
The concept of Princess Kraehe loses its shape. It becomes just a collection of empty syllables, entirely devoid of meaning. Why did she want to be loved so badly? Why did she suffer so much? The reasons are being sliced away, falling like autumn leaves into a dark well where she can no longer hear the splash.
The Raven pivots the tool forty degrees inward, completing the final sweep. The remaining connections between her advanced human consciousness and her motor functions are cleanly, permanently severed.
The emotional tempest that had defined her entire life is violently, surgically silenced. The vibrant, chaotic colors of her mind are muted into a uniform, peaceful gray. The constant, buzzing ache of her tragic existence simply ceases to exist.
The Raven pulls the shadow-needle free, and the dark energy dissipates into the freezing air of the hall.
The invisible, crushing weight lifts from her chest. The leather straps of her destiny are broken, but the girl on the stone floor doesn't move to flee. She doesn't weep, she doesn't rage, and she doesn't panic. She just lies perfectly still in the pitch-black room, her wide eyes completely clear of the storm that used to live inside them.
“Stand up, Kraehe,” the Raven instructs.
Slowly, automatically, her limbs obey the voice. She stands up in the dark room, her movements perfectly fluid, graceful, and utterly robotic. She looks down at her hands, her face entirely smooth, empty, and quiet. She is no longer Rue, the girl who failed. She is only an empty, obedient doll, ready to dance exactly as she is told.