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The dust of the nascent world clung to everything, a fine, golden powder that coated the leaves of the wild fig trees and settled in the folds of their simple tunics. Bella felt it differently than her brothers. Her difference was a quiet, humming energy in her bones, a physical consequence of the apple's sin. It was as if the dust itself hummed with a primal energy around her, a faint, insistent thrum that no one else seemed to notice.
She watched Cain and Abel wrestle in the sun, their laughter echoing in the vast, untamed landscape, and a pang of something she couldn't name twisted in her small chest. They were whole, in a way she wasn't. Yet, in her heart, she held a love for her Creator, an ancient, serene bond forged by the quiet wonder of a world untouched by sin, where she had witnessed His power firsthand. Her skin, though soft, carried a faint, almost imperceptible tension, a readiness that wasn't present in Abel's carefree movements or Cain's restless energy. Her senses were sharper; the scent of damp earth after a rainstorm, the distant cry of a predator, the subtle shift in the wind – all registered with an intensity that often overwhelmed her.
As they grew into young adults, Bella remained unchanged. While their parents' faces began to show the lines of passing time, and her brothers' bodies became stronger, Bella stayed the same, a silent, ageless observer. This difference created a quiet tension between them. The argument began one day in a field, a bitter disagreement over their offerings to God. Bella, sensing the dangerous shift in the air, followed them. The air grew thick with a tension she could feel vibrating in her bones. The blow was swift, a flash of motion with a rock, and then Abel was on the ground, still and silent. Bella froze, the world narrowing to the single, horrific image of her brother’s blood staining the clean earth. It was as if a part of her soul was ripped away, a bright, gentle light extinguished forever. Bella ran to Abel's side, falling to her knees in the dust, a grief so fierce and absolute it felt like a physical wound tearing her apart. It was in that moment, seeing the life stolen from his eyes, that she truly understood loss. It was not just a passing absence, but a permanent, gaping hole in her world. While she would always carry a tormented love for her brother Cain, a fierce and unrelenting sorrow for Abel became her constant companion. This was her new burden, a grief that would follow her through millennia. But the horror was far from over. As Cain stood over Abel's lifeless body, eyes wide with a mixture of terror and defiance, a thunderous voice boomed from the heavens, shaking the very ground beneath them.
"What have you done?" the voice demanded, full of righteous fury. "The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!" Cain recoiled as the voice cursed him, condemning him to be a restless wanderer, forever marked. As the divine words echoed away, a terrible transformation began. His skin, once flushed with life, became cold and pale, stretched taut over his features. His heart, Bella knew, still beat for a moment, but it was a hollow, desperate thump, quickly fading into an eerie stillness. His eyes, which had held anguish, now blazed with a terrifying, unnatural crimson that seemed to drink the light. He was no longer just Cain, her brother. He was something else entirely, something undead, a chilling testament to the original sin and the bitter fruit of murder.
Cain looked at Bella, his new eyes wide with confusion and horror at his own altered reflection. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a low, guttural groan escaped, a sound of agony and loss. He turned and fled, a blur of unnatural speed, leaving Bella alone with the dust, the lingering scent of blood, and the crushing weight of two irreplaceable losses.
****
Bella's journey began with a desperate flight from the family she had lost. She walked for what felt like an eternity, a ghost in a world of mortals, watching humanity grow from scattered tribes into great civilizations. She saw the rise of empires in Mesopotamia, the slow construction of pyramids in Egypt, the glory and eventual fall of Rome. The hum in her bones grew stronger, a silent pulse in a world of fleeting lives. Her werewolf nature remained dormant, a potential power she did not yet understand, but her senses were her guide through the endless passage of time.
Centuries became millennia, and the grief she carried for Abel was a constant, dull ache. But her thoughts were never far from Cain. She wondered what had become of him, the brother whose curse she had witnessed. Was he truly a monster, or just another victim of a fate neither of them chose? It was on a windswept plateau, high above a valley in the Middle East, that she finally found him. The sight of his pale, unmoving form startled her, but his eyes, though a deep, unnatural crimson, were filled with a familiar, weary sadness. He was sitting on a large, flat rock, watching a caravan of merchants wind its way through the pass below.
Bella approached him without fear, her own heart aching with a complex mix of love and sorrow. She sat beside him on the rock. They did not speak at first, the silence between them filled with the weight of ages.
“You have seen much,” Bella finally said, her voice a soft, low hum. Cain looked at her, and his gaze seemed to hold the weight of all the centuries he had lived. “I have seen them fall. Over and over again. They build, they conquer, and then they disappear. They are so fragile.”
“And you?” she asked, her voice gentle. “What have you learned?” “I learned that the curse is not the hunger,” he said, his words slow and measured. “The hunger is merely a consequence. The hunger is the constant pull, a low whisper that will not leave me. But the curse is this,” he gestured to the world around them, “to watch them live, to yearn to be a part of their world, and to know that you never can be. You are a ghost, forever on the outside looking in.”
“I have learned the same,” Bella admitted. “But I have also learned that even in their fragility, they have a remarkable spirit. They create art that lasts longer than they do. They love with a ferocity that can move mountains. Their lives are short, but they are so full.”
****
For a long time, they sat in silence, two immortal siblings bound by a tragedy and an endless existence, watching humanity pass them by, one transient generation after another. The wind on the plateau grew colder as the sun began to set.
Cain had been silent for a long time, his crimson eyes fixed on the distant caravan. Suddenly, he flinched. The low, distant hum in the air had changed, growing sharper, more insistent. A human—a young, arrogant man with a traveler's pack and a sharp sword at his hip—stumbled into their secluded space, clearly lost. He saw them and his eyes narrowed, filled with a look of suspicion and disdain.
"What are you doing up here?" the man demanded, his voice ringing with a false authority. "You look like a ghost," he spat, taking a step back but not yet running. "A cursed spirit, maybe." Cain's body stiffened, a low growl rising in his throat. His face, which had held a weary sadness, now contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. Bella's hand shot out to stop him, but it was too late. The insult, the arrogance, the accusation of being a cursed thing—it was a red-hot blade to a wound that had festered for millennia. In a flash, he was on the man. It wasn't a fight; it was a furious, one-sided assault. Cain’s speed was blinding. He pinned the man to the ground with a raw ferocity that stunned even Bella. As his rage peaked, a new, unbearable hunger rose within him, a burning, gnawing void. He opened his mouth and bit into the man's neck, the act driven by a desperate, instinctual need he didn't even know he had. The man's scream was cut short as his blood filled Cain's senses. When Cain released him, the man lay motionless, his body beginning to tremble uncontrollably.
"What have you done?" Bella whispered, her voice barely audible. Cain looked at the man, then at his own shaking hands. A fresh wave of agony and despair washed over him. He watched, horrified, as the man’s skin turned a sickly pale white and a low moan of pain escaped his lips. The man's body began to burn from the inside out, his muscles spasming as the venom took hold, a painful fire consuming him. It was a terrible, agonizing transformation that would take three days to complete.
He had created another. And this one, this first, was Marcus Volturi.
Bella watched, horrified, as a dark fascination flickered in Cain's eyes. The agonized screams of the transforming human were a symphony to him now. The despair that had defined him for so long was suddenly eclipsed by a new, intoxicating rush—the thrill of power. "He feels it," Cain said, his voice a low, excited whisper. "The hunger... it is nothing compared to this. The power to create, to transform life into something new and terrible." Over the next three days, as the man convulsed and burned, Cain’s grief was completely consumed by a growing, arrogant pleasure. He saw what he could do, and he wanted more.
He created more vampires, turning ambitious warriors from the Empires and gathering them into a powerful coven, a secret army. He ruled over them for centuries, a tyrannical god, drunk on his own creation, believing himself untouchable. But he had miscalculated. His followers grew to resent his reckless tyranny. They desired the power he wielded without his volatile, ancient grief.
Eventually, they rose up, destroyed their creator, and took control of the vampire world, enforcing a new law and erasing the truth of their origin. Bella watched it all from a distance, her heart breaking for the brother she had lost twice—once to death, and once to a power that twisted him into a monster. She was now truly alone, a ghost in a world haunted by her brother’s terrible legacy.
The grief consumed her. The loss of her family, the destruction of her brother's soul, and the rise of the monsters he created was an unbearable weight. It was in that moment of absolute despair, with nothing left to lose, that the ancient, dormant energy within her surged to life.
Unbeknownst to her, a vampire—Caius Volturi—was hunting her, knowing she could destroy him. Having already destroyed Cain, Caius was now tracking his lineage, knowing the ancient stories of a sister and fearing her unbridled, original power. He followed the whispers of her existence, until he witnessed the incredible sight of Bella's own transformation.
The sight of a being turning into a massive, powerful wolf was so alien and horrifying that he recoiled in fear. Horrified by the existence of a creature that could not only transform but was tied to the old bloodline, Caius fled, carrying the knowledge of her existence.
Bella did not notice Caius’s presence. She was consumed by her sorrow. She did not transform in a fit of rage, but in an agony of sorrow. Her body stretched and shifted, bone and muscle rearranging in a violent, painful expression of her heartbreak. The first werewolf was born from a profound, eternal sadness.
In her new form, primal instinct overwhelmed her. She was a creature of the wild now, and she fled into the deep forest to hunt. Her senses, honed by millennia of dormancy, guided her toward the scent of a magnificent elk. She stalked it, a blur of power, and lunged. But her target was not the elk. She recoiled in mid-air, a low whine of confusion escaping her throat.
Pinned beneath her was a human. He smelled of rain and something she now recognized as fear. In the chaos, she unintentionally scratched his arm, and in that brief touch, her curse was transferred. The primal hunter within her screamed to finish the hunt, but her human consciousness reasserted itself with a horrifying jolt.
The warmth of his skin, the frantic beat of his heart against her chest, the memory of Abel’s stillness—it all rushed back in a single, agonizing wave. The monster was not him; the monster was her. She scrambled back, her claws scraping against the ground, and looked at her paws with a mixture of horror and revulsion. She had become the very thing she had fled from. A creature of violence, a predator of men.
****
That human, forever changed by the scratch, would go on to create other beings, hunted to extinction by Caius and the Volturi. The children of the moon—werewolf packs that roamed the wild—were hunted and killed without mercy by the new vampire regime, for Caius wanted no knowledge of Bella's existence to ever be in the world and feared her power. He systematically eradicated them all, leaving only a few scattered tribes with a vague, half-forgotten legend of a curse.
Desiring to escape a world that had become haunted by her brother's legacy and her own monstrous nature, Bella retreated to the highest, most isolated peaks she could find. There, high in the silence of the mountains, she entered a deep, protective slumber. Eons passed as civilizations rose and fell below her. She slept through the birth of a new vampire hierarchy, the rise of mortal empires, and the long, slow march of history. She would not awaken until the world was ready for her again, until her story was needed to set a new course for the creatures of the night.