Chapter Text
Once upon a time, nestled deep in the lush, rolling hills of Tenebrae, a handsome, young prince lived in a breathtaking castle. Well-loved by his subjects, the prince was known both for his beauty and his kindness. Every fiber of his being exuded ethereal grace. He was a fair and just prince, just barely old enough for his throne, and his kingdom awaited his coronation with immense excitement.
On the eve of his eighteenth birthday, there was a party held in his honor. The castle’s ballroom was filled with his subjects. The sound of their laughter filled the air, despite the storm that raged on just beyond the castle’s walls. Their joy spilled forth like a ray of sunlight upon his land.
As the night began to shift to day, the castle doors swung open with a bang that rocked the entire building. From the cold, dark night came a man whose face was obscured by a large, ragged hat and torn collar.
The young prince approached the stranger, his heart leaping forth with the desire to help the surely freezing man. However, the chilling voice that spilled from the man’s bloodied and blackened lips stopped him in his tracks. He demanded the prince’s hand. He demanded the prince leave with him at once, less he risk the safety of his entire kingdom. He had admired the boy’s beauty from afar for quite some time, and has decided to take it for himself.
The prince refused, believing the man to be delirious from the cold. He offered, once more, a warm meal and time by his hearth, but once more, he was denied. This time, however, the man threw a blood red rose down at his feet and cast his hat aside to reveal the horrific face of a daemon. His crimson hair spilled down his shoulders like blood, and the ichor that leaked from his yellow eyes and mutilated mouth was thick and black as tar. He took a stumbling step forward, his hands shaking with anger as he snatched the young prince by his yellow hair.
He growled out a most terrible curse and the castle filled with the screams of the prince’s people, his eyes never straying from the boy that denied his hand. As punishment for refusing him, the prince’s kingdom would be consumed by the daemon’s own dark magic. He reached his hand in the young prince’s chest and dug his claws into his heart, sullying it with immeasurable darkness.
He transformed the prince into a hideous beast of a man – stained his once kind soul with mark of a daemon – and placed a powerful spell on the kingdom and all who lived within its borders. The enchanted rose he had thrown at the feet of the prince would bloom bright and red until the dawn of the boy’s twenty-first birthday. There was but one mercy – if the beastly prince could find a way to love and be loved in return before the last petal fell, the spell would be broken. If not, the prince would remain a beast forever, and the kingdom would fall further into its misery.
The daemon departed from this world with a sickeningly satisfied smirk, confident that his spell would hold. After all, who could ever love a beast?