Gehenna’s origin: Cemetery angels 🫀🕷️

*This story is under my folder titled “Cemetery angels”. Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33[2]”. Enjoy!*

In the 1800s, there was an eleven year old girl named Gehenna Marwood, who lived in a mansion with her mother, father, two year old sister, Briena, and her whole extended family.

For the most part, living with her whole family brought joy to Gehenna’s heart, for she did not like the silence of being alone, but on starry nights like the night she was experiencing at the moment, she preferred not to join the rest of her family outside. On starry nights in the town of Ashelain, the Starlit Angels, three humanoid creatures made of the stars came down from the sky to feast upon the children of Ashelain. It was the job of the Marwoods to capture the children, for any Marwood child was safe from the Starlit Angels.

Her parents often told Gehenna that what they were doing would save them as a family and give them many wonderful things, but Gehenna didn’t see it. What wonderful things? Everything stayed the same! The only thing she saw come out of what her family was doing was children dying in gruesome ways, taken from their families and left to suffer.

Which was why Gehenna was at home with Briena, who was asleep in her bed. How Briena could sleep so peacefully was beyond Gehenna’s understanding, for when she sat on the window seat of the sitting room, staring out of the window and into the garden, where the Starlit Angels would materialize, all she could think of were the children that were dying, the children that she could not save no matter what, the children-

What was that? Rustling in the bushes? It could have just been an animal, but Gehenna thought that she saw a flash of human skin amongst the leaves, as though someone were hiding, but that could not be so, because why would someone want to hide in her family’s garden? What would be the rhyme or the reason? It simply did not make sense!

Nevertheless, Gehenna got up from the window seat and walked over to the door, opening it so that she could see what lurked in the bushes.

She knew that the Starlit Angels wouldn’t attack her, but Gehenna still felt unease swirling inside of her as she approached the bush, the feeling of being watched, of someone calculating their next move in the shadows, of-

“What are you doing here?! Don’t you know what happens at this kind of night?! You should be home!” Gehenna cried out, for what hid in the bushes was just as she feared, a human. Specifically, a human girl who looked to be around Gehenna’s age, with long, blond hair, freckles dotting her peach-toned face, and in a rose-pink dress.

The girl blinked at Gehenna as though she were surprised, but why should she be? Didn’t she know of what happened to kids on starry nights? Wouldn’t she be wise enough not to come to the Marwood backyard?

“I do know, but I also want to know more about you! Aren’t you lonely in that mansion? Don’t you want to talk to somebody your age? I mean, I know about the history, but you still deserve a friend, right?” The girl said with a smile.

Gehenna sighed, pushing away all the words she wanted to yell at the girl. Sure, Gehenna would love to have a friend, but not at the cost of any lives! What if the girl was found by Gehenna’s family? What if she was the next victim? What if…but wouldn’t it be rude to tell her to go away? After all, Gehenna couldn’t deny the bit of warmth that flowed inside of her upon seeing a girl her age among the rose bushes, a girl with a pink dress that bloomed around her like a flower, a girl who not only had the looks of a Princess, but possibly the soul of one, too. Gehenna didn’t want to sulk in the shadows again like she did every starry night, her sister fast asleep, too young to understand it all. She often wondered what it would be like to talk to other kids, to live knowing more than what the malls of her mansion gave her, to not feel like she was wandering for an eternity.

“You must be Gehenna Marwood, the only Marwood who doesn’t go out and hunt for children. I’m Taliyah and I would like to be your friend, if it’s okay with you.” Taliyah beamed.

And when she smiled, her freckles seemed to multiply more throughout her face, the real stars, not the blindingly bright creatures from the sky, so Gehenna joined Taliyah in the bushes, thinking that maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad to make friends with her.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Taliyah was a girl who loved not only flowers, but fairytales, mostly the ones about Princesses. Every night that Taliyah visited, she would tell Gehenna all about how she wished that she could run off to a place where everything seemed to sparkle like a river and the colors glowed like watercolor paint. Gehenna didn’t talk much about her own dismal life and took to listening to Taliyah instead, for her stories of a faerie-touched world were much better to hear than the screams of children and the bone-jagged words of her parents telling her that killing them was necessary.

Sometimes, she and Taliyah would pretend that they were Princesses who had been kidnapped from their true families when they were very young and so, they would dig a hole in the bushes with their hands so that they may make a tunnel to get back to them. They’d find flowers deep in the dirt and collect enough flowers to intertwine them into crowns, then give them to one another. Gehenna thought she herself looked nice, but the vibrant flowers looked better in Taliyah’s cornstalk hair than Gehenna’s night black hair.

Taliyah made Gehenna feel like she was soaring higher than the stars, in a place safer than the stars. Her heart would spin in circles on the inside and so, Gehenna took to calling her “Tessa”, for a name as simple and sweet as that seemed more befitting for a Princess of a girl like her.

Gehenna could feel her heart and soul swirling with so much love that it felt like merely calling Tessa a friend wasn’t enough, like it was too rigid of a word. A sister, maybe? But Tessa seemed ethereal beyond sisterhood, calling her a sister didn’t sound appropriate.

The two of them kept seeing each other, in fact, they were still seeing each other at sixteen years old and it was one night in the garden where they were making flower crowns that seven year old Briena had decided to go outside and stumbled upon them both. Gehenna, scared of Briena altering their family to Tessa’s presence, as it was not a starry night and everyone was home, warned her to be quiet and that Tessa was a “very special person” in Gehenna’s life and she “didn’t want anybody else to know about her”.

Briena had looked at Gehenna with a puzzled expression on her face, but seemed to sense Gehenna’s desperate urgency of wanting things to be kept quiet, so she took Gehenna’s advice and said in a soft-toned voice:

“Okay then. I think she’s very pretty, by the way. Like a Princess.”

Because Briena seemed like she really, really didn’t want to go to bed, Gehenna let Briena make flower crowns with them, thinking over Briena’s words and glancing over at Tessa’s freckled face when she wasn’t looking.

Yes, Tessa was very much like a storybook Princess.

………………………………………………………………………………………

A starry night had befallen Ashelain once again. Gehenna was sitting on her bed, fiddling with her dress skirt, knowing that eventually, she would have to go outside and see Tessa, only, she suddenly got an onslaught of thoughts about the terrible things her family did and wondered how she could go on and continue talking to Tessa, how she could pretend like everything was wet, rain soaked roses and fairytales, how she could go on with her life while the children died, their bodies-

“Have you ever seen a Starlit Angel before?!”

Gehenna flinched at the sound of Briena’s voice, caught a little off guard by her arrival, but she took a deep breath and said:

“No, I have not. Why?”

Gehenna listened to Briena walk from the door over to the bed, then watched as she crawled over to the side of the bed where Gehenna was sitting, so that Briena may sit next to her. Watching Briena kick her legs carelessly as she seemed to try to think of a response, Gehenna couldn’t help but feel a sickening sense of dread as to why she would ask that question, why she would even care.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think about the Starlit Angels and wonder if they’re really pretty, like the angels I read about. You’re older than me, so you probably saw them…right?” Briena asked with a hopeful smile.

Gehenna swallowed hard. She could feel her eyes burning with tears, but she blinked them away, for she wouldn’t dare cry in front of her sister. There Briena sat, thinking that the Starlit Angels were like the angels she read about, for she had never actually seen the children get taken before and assumed that they were living in paradise, but really, who was Gehenna to tell her all of that? Briena must not have understood her the first time. Maybe if she repeated herself, Briena wouldn’t ask again. Maybe she could even get Briena to leave and go to her room. It’d take a lot to convince her, but maybe Gehenna could try to get Briena to go to sleep, so that she may dream all of her sunshine-glow dreams, so that-

“Briena, you’ve been chosen to see the angels.” Father’s voice said, breaking through Gehenna’s own tormenting thoughts.

“Chosen? But I thought Marwoods wouldn’t get picked!” Briena said, her eyes alight with surprise.

“You’re special, I think. Come now, we shouldn’t keep them waiting.” Father’s voice responded.

Briena then got up from the bed and ran over to Dad excitedly, all the while Gehenna sat still, absolutely speechless. Chosen? Chosen?! But that couldn’t be right! Briena wasn’t supposed to be chosen, she was a Marwood, she-

No. No. Maybe it didn’t work last time, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t try again.

Gehenna got up from the bed and chased after Briena, begging her to stop, warning her that she would burn, but Briena was getting farther and farther from her, she couldn’t hear a single word. If she did, then the echoing words were so distant that they were misinterpreted. Either way, she went right to the parlor room, where the windows shone with the stars, where the whole family was waiting and watching, where the Starlit Angels would descend from the sky, to the garden, then through the windows, but maybe, if Gehenna got to Briena fast enough, she could pull her away. Maybe she could saved the other children if she was faster, if she didn’t take any breaks, if she-

Gehenna found that she couldn't move, for a cousin was holding her close to him so that she could not run. She kept struggling to get out of his grip, but she yelled out in case she was unsuccessful:

“Briena, I know that everybody tells you that the Starlit Angels are good, but they’re not! They’re going to burn you alive once they come down! Please run, I-“

The cousin had covered her mouth with his hand and Briena had only looked at Gehenna with a confused expression before three glowing, blue-white silhouettes descended from the window and into the parlor room, setting their star bodies onto Briena and burning her, just like Gehenna said, blistering her skin, seeping into her bones, Briena’s screams melded in with the roar of the flames as a grotesque symphony that sounded like Gehenna’s piercing thoughts if they had a sound, if they had a voice, if they-

Gehenna tried her best, but her best was not enough.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Gehenna couldn’t shake the image of Briena’s burning body off her mind, for it haunted her in her dreams and in the next day, accompanied by the words of: Why did they pick Briena? Why do we do this at all? Why is it that when I fight for the children, I always lose? Am I not looking hard enough? Am I not trying enough? Are they suffering because of me?

And so, Gehenna had joined Tessa in the garden when night fell, hoping that maybe, the sorrowful thoughts would slip from her mind, but no, they had grown stronger with seeing Tessa’s concerned face, with seeing her so worried about Gehenna, who didn’t know what to say or how to say it.

But she knew that she must say something, so Gehenna stifled her tears and said:

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around last night. I…my sister was taken.”

Gehenna brought her legs up to her chest, because maybe if she curled herself into a ball, then she could compress all of her tears, all of her guilt.

“Taken?! You mean, they TOOK her?!” Tessa cried out, her eyes wide with fright. Tessa knew that when the Starlit Angels took children, they took the children to a place where their screams would not be heard.

Just like Gehenna, she knew of their unjust pain.

“I tried to stop it, but they held me down…made me watch…I tried, but…maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I should have fought more. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe…maybe…”

But Gehenna couldn’t keep her tears down anymore, for they came rushing from her eyes in rivulets, her chest shook with sobs that were so strong it felt like they’d break her ribcage. It was her fault, her burden to carry, she didn’t deserve peace, didn’t deserve-

“No, no. It’s not your fault. It never WAS your fault, okay? You tried your best, what more could you have done? If anything, I should have at least broken into the house and tried to help the children escape. Who cared if they found me? I was too much of a coward to even-“

“Don’t you DARE say that, Taliyah. It was right of you not to come over. I don’t think I would have been able to handle it if they took you, if they snatched you away. It wasn’t your responsibility to save them. It was mine, all mine. All of this is…it’s my fault. All of it.” Gehenna said, for it was sweet that Tessa would try to console her, but it wasn’t deserved. Tessa wasn’t involved, nothing that Tessa could have done would have saved them. To imagine Tessa trying to do that twisted Gehenna’s heart even more, because what if Tessa died along with them, the Starlit Angels swooping down to-

“You could never be as horrible as them, Gehenna, because I know you. I know how much you care. I know how big your heart is. I know that you’ve tried and that you’re still trying now. You’re a good person in a bad situation. I know you and for that, I love you, much more deeply than I ever could as a friend. You don’t have to feel the same way, I just want you to know that there’s always going to be someone out there who has you in their heart no matter what happens.” Tessa said, bringing Gehenna close into a hug, wiping away her tears.

Did…Did Tessa really mean that? Could she really love a creature like Gehenna? Somebody who couldn’t save the neighborhood children or her sister? Her tone sounded genuine, Tessa would never lie about things like that, her arm held Gehenna in a way that was so gentle it did not seem possible, and when Gehenna looked up into her glimmering brown eyes…

She saw all the sincerity of an angel in the autumn-brown sheen of those eyes and right then and there, Gehenna knew.

“Oh, it’s a relief to know that you love me as deeply as I love you! Maybe we can run away together and search the world for solutions! There’s got to be hope for those children! If you can love someone as wretched as me then maybe the Starlit Angels can be ended! Tessa, your words have opened the doors to roads of rainbow iridescence, the kind of cheer only found in fairytales! And here I sat, only moments ago thinking that I would never feel any kind of joy ever again…but first, a kiss? For our love and all the good things that we’ll do together?” Gehenna asked, for with that proclamation of love, Gehenna felt that she could do anything, that maybe saving the kids wasn’t impossible, if only she had Tessa at her side.

Tessa beamed, placing a velvety hand on Gehenna’s cheek, bringing her closer, closer, closer and-

“What are you two doing?! Who is this girl, one of the unenlightened townspeople? Gehenna, you can’t kiss anyone who lives here! They’re only good for sacrifices!” Mother cried out, grabbing Tessa from the bushes, the thorns scarring her arms a little.

How could Mother have thought to go into the garden? More so, how could she say that it was wrong for Gehenna to date anyone who lived there, when her older family members were married to people from other towns? If the unenlightened were only good for sacrifices, then wouldn’t that apply to anybody from other towns who didn’t know about the Starlit Angels beforehand?

But that didn’t matter at the moment. Gehenna had to get Tessa back, she couldn’t let Mom take her away, it was unfair and it didn’t make any sense!

“Mother, you can’t take her away! I love her, I really do and I…I’d never be happy again if you took her! And if you are cold enough not to care that I love her, then consider this: She’s too old to be sacrificed! She’s a girl of sixteen! You wouldn’t give away a sixteen year old, would you? I lo…Please, mother, let her go. Don’t give her away.” Gehenna pleaded, feeling very much like a small child, incapable of saving loved ones and only falling farther and farther into the horrors.

But Mom was unyielding and said:

“We’ll talk about this later. Come on, Aurelius. The Starlit Angels are waiting.”

Gehenna noticed that her father was standing in the distance and then, Gehenna chased after the three of them.

She couldn’t let Tessa slip from her fingers.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Gehenna ran towards them, the fear in Tessa’s brown eyes telling her that she couldn’t stop, that she at least had to try-maybe she could try to think of a spell to do! She had just had to search her brain for the right spells to stop the Starlit Angels! Gehenna read a few spell books and heard about different spells from her family, so maybe she heard of a way to stop them.

Gehenna felt herself being pulled away by her Aunt, but she had to think of something, a spell, something that she could do to help Tessa, something-

The Starlit Angels were beginning to form into humanoid silhouettes. Tessa tried to run, like all of the other children besides Briena, but where the moonlight hit the large window, there created a barrier of which those captured could not escape. Even if Tessa was able to escape from the barrier, she wouldn’t be able to do it for long, for her family would use their magic to keep her in.

There must have been some kind of magic that kept Gehenna from running, because her Aunt surely couldn’t be that strong. Gehenna just had to break out of her arms, find a spell that would save Tessa, do something, help her, just-

The Starlit Angels were getting closer, their terrible bright forms were coming into light, Gehenna was running out of time, Tessa couldn’t run at all-

They burned through her flesh, her screams joined the stars.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Gehenna’s Aunt let go of her, but already, it was too late. Her dearest love, Tessa, was nothing but a burned corpse, bits of her peach-toned skin sticking into her soot-stained skeleton.

“I know you’re upset now, but you’ll get over it. You’ll have centuries to get over it. Because really, what would a human in this town understand about the Starlit Angels?” Mother’s voice asked within the crowd.

Gehenna didn’t even understand the Starlit Angels. She supposed that she never would understand, but why? Why did her family ever get involved with the Starlit Angels? Where did they come from? Where-

Gehenna could feel her body twisting and contorting into something else, something grotesque. Two of her front teeth felt like they were searing into her tongue, her fingers felt like they were growing, thinning, changing into-

“You’ll live as a vampire forevermore and think over your actions. Maybe then you’ll learn what real misfortune is.” Mother said, her voice soft like a hiss.

So that was what she was becoming? A vampire? A being that sucked the life out of innocent creatures just to survive, just like the Starlit Angels? Oh god, she was going to be just like them, only she would be more of awful-looking creature, just like her inner soul.

Gehenna stood there, already the taste of blood starting to feel appealing to her, watching as her family began to walk away without a single word of comfort, leaving her with Tessa’s mangled cadaver, her once full smile dirtied teeth, her brown eyes nothing but deep, black sockets, all the magic of her kindness disintegrated, rotting in the universe. There was nothing left of Tessa but a husk, left to lie in the moonlight, her body taken-

She ran towards Tessa’s body and out into the garden, because maybe if she buried her body in a place with the flowers, Tessa would be at peace. If spirits existed, then maybe Tessa could rest better in the garden of dew-dropped flowers, where they both imagined to be Princesses together.

Gehenna set Tessa’s body on the dirt and began to dig through the grass, her claws helping her dig faster, faster, until there was a six foot hole, so deep that she could see the roots and the sticks. In fact, she saw one stick that was big enough to impale somebody and-

An idea sprang to life in Gehenna’s mind, something so fantastical that she was grateful to have thought of it.

She reached into the hole and grabbed the stick that seemed to be far too big to be real, then she turned over to where Tessa lay and pulled her dried-up, blackened heart from her rib cage and pushed it into the middle of the stake. Gehenna saw that there was still a glittering diamond necklace on her neck, so she unclasped it from her neck and wrapped it around Tessa’s heart. Gehenna then placed the stick with Tessa’s heart on the ground and gently laid Tessa’s body in the dirt, burying her so that no one would be able to see her.

After she was buried, no trace of her left behind, save for the stick with her heart and necklace, Gehenna reached into her own chest and pulled out her own heart, placing it too on the stick, beside Tessa’s heart. She took off her sapphire necklace and wrapped it around her own heart.

Gehenna kissed both hearts, making a wish to the moon that Tessa would return one day, in any lifetime. It was a ritual that would bring her back to Gehenna, only it may take many centuries and once Tessa came, she would only be able to stay two days.

It would merely be two days, but Gehenna would make it count. She would place the stick-the stake-with both of their hearts under a desk in her room, hidden by her family, where the moon would always shine, awaiting Tessa’s arrival.

After all, it was Tessa who made Gehenna feel truly alive.