Beneath The Bells Of Hell: 3

Malachi Delacroix does not believe in sanctuary.He believes in possession, penance, and the sacred beauty of revenge.And somewhere beneath Notre-Dame, hidden behind stone walls and iron doors, the cursed child his mother tried to cleanse still kneels before an altar-silent, bleeding, and waiting for the entire city to confess.She is the abandoned daughter who stitched her own face closed. She is the starving girl who turned shame into spectacle and made powerful men pay for the privilege of watching her. She is the masked dancer who refuses to be owned and the scarred woman who rescued a creature everyone else had chosen to abuse.Her mother tried to destroy her beauty.Instead, she gave it teeth.And somewhere in the darkest corners of Aveline's memory remains the little girl who sang through a cracked window, never knowing that her voice traveled farther than her body ever could-never knowing that, for a few stolen moments, her song once comforted another wounded soul in the distance.