The Villainess Will Not Be Eclipsed Again

LEAH’S POV

It burns.

It doesn’t start as a sudden flare of light— it starts as an unbearable, suffocating weight that locks every muscle in my chest.

The heat licks at my ankles first—slow, creeping, and agonizingly deliberate—before rising like a wave of liquid iron.

And it hurts. It hurts so damn much.

My skin sizzles, bubbling into hideous pus-filled sacs before bursting open. Flesh melts away from the bone with a sickening sound, like a piece of tender meat falling off the bone.

I remember the smell—god, the awful, choking, copper-thick stench of my own body roasting in the dark, a foul greasy stink that coats the back of my throat until I violently gagged on smoke and cinder.

I couldn't scream. I couldn’t make my throat work.

My vocal cords had long since charred, crisping inside my neck as the air turned into liquid fire.

Every desperate gasp pulled the flames deep into my lungs, scorching my throat from the inside out while the world outside faded into a blinding, wave of fire.

It was slow, and it was torturous. It was an execution designed not just to kill me, but to erase me—from the top of my head to the soles of my feet—until nothing remained but ash and bone.

Then—

My eyes flash open.

I gasp violently, throwing my upper body forward off the mattress. My hands fly to my throat, fingers clawing frantically at my collarbone, searching for raw, open wounds and blistered skin.

But my fingers meet only smooth, cool flesh. My chest heaves in desperate, ragged gulps. The air rushing into my lungs is fresh and crisp, carrying the soft, familiar scent of lavender laundry detergent and distant rain.

No smoke. No soot. No burning flesh.

I sit trembling on the edge of the bed, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. My hands are shaking so violently I can barely keep them flat on my knees, but they are whole.

They are whole— No black scars. No charred bone.

I died.

The realization settles into my bones with a sickening, heavy clarity. I really died. It wasn’t flashy, and it certainly wasn’t peaceful. It was slow, fiery, and torturous—the worst possible way to go.

Why did I die?

No—that’s the wrong question. I close my eyes, pressing the heels of my palms against my temples so hard my knuckles turn white.

Did I ever even live?

A sudden, agonizing spike of pain drills straight into the core of my skull. It feels as though a hot needle is being rammed through my forehead, turning my vision into a blinding burst of white light.

“Ugh…”

I double over, clutching my head as a ragged groan slips past my teeth. Memory—or the shattered remnants of it—press against my mind like an heavy weight.

It hurts almost as much as the burning.

I try to reach backward into the dark, to force my brain to remember who held the torch, who locked the door, what name was spoken right before the flames took me—but the moment I push against that wall, a head-splitting migraine flares into a violent, throbbing pulse.

It feels as if a thick fog has settled over my past. My memory is spotty and fractured. It feels like I’m trying to read a book with most of the chapters missing.

“What the hell is going on…?”

My memory is littered with blacked-out gaps. The deeper I force myself to dig, the more my skull feels like it’s splitting in half.

I breathe through my nose, forcing my fingers to loosen their grip on my scalp until the violent throbbing gradually recedes into a dull, lingering ache at the base of my neck.

I look around the room. Sunlight filters through the wooden blinds, casting long amber stripes across the floorboards.

My luggage sits half-packed in the center of the room—leather bags, wooden herb boxes, and folded clothes laying in disarray.

I know this room. I know the small, drafty alcove near the window. I know the faded rug with the frayed edges.

This is the Rosante house. The small, cold room in the attic where they shoved me after my life completely fell apart.

I tumble out of bed, my legs trembling so badly I have to grab the bedpost to keep from collapsing onto the floor. I drag my feet across the room to the full-length mirror hanging near the wardrobe, pressing my ice-cold palms flat against the glass.

“This is…me?”

Dark hair hangs in messy waves over my shoulders. Sharp, dark green eyes stare back at me, surrounded by dark circles of exhaustion.

No blistered skin. No lingering smell of smoke.

I look fragile, sickly pale, but undeniably whole. I am eighteen years old again. I’m alive again.

I’ve somehow managed to go back, by exactly one year. One perfect year. I didn’t go back to the moment I met that bitch, but I went back to a year before I got roasted to death.

A manic, soundless bubble of laughter rises in my chest, breaking past my dry lips as a ragged gasp. I clap both hands over my mouth, but the sound slips out anyway—a choked, half-crazed cackle that dissolves into a silent, shaking sob before settling into stillness.

I’m back.

Two weeks before I’m supposed to leave for Eclipse Academy. Two weeks before the final sequence of events that pushed me straight into the fire.

Two weeks before that hellish first year.

“I’m back…I can’t believe it…I’m back?” I mutter over and over to myself as I stare at my eighteen-year old face in the mirror.

I’m alive again. I’m not dead. I’m not burning.

I’m breathing fresh air just like everyone else. How is this real? How is this even possible?

“Why would I have this chance?”

I step back from the mirror and sink onto the edge of the mattress, my head dropping into my hands as the bitter, agonizing weight of my past life rushes over me, pulling me back down into the dark.