Chapter Text
The tempest roared with relentless fury, tearing through the night as jagged bolts of lightning fractured the ink-black sky. Sheets of icy rain hammered the ancient stones of the lonely castle perched atop the craggy hill, its silhouette stark & forbidding against the tempest’s wild dance. Thunder growled like some great, wrathful beast, echoing through the jagged cliffs & deep valleys below.
At the crest of the hill, shrouded in the lashing rain & swirling mists, a solitary figure stumbled forward—a bent old woman, cloaked in tatters that flapped wildly in the merciless wind. Her face, lined & weathered, was drawn tight with desperation & exhaustion. She raised a trembling hand, knuckles white with cold, & hammered on the massive wooden door with a pleading urgency that was swallowed almost immediately by the storm’s cacophony.
“Please shelter from the storm.” her voice rasped, barely audible above the tempest’s roar. The soaked hem of her cloak clung to her frail frame as she waited, teeth chattering, eyes scanning the darkness for any sign of mercy.
The castle door loomed, ancient & unyielding, framed by twisted ivy & cold stone. For a long, tense moment, there was only the wild symphony of wind & rain—& then, somewhere within, a slow, deliberate step echoed.
***
The air in the grand hall shifted.
What had moments before been the presence of a frail, trembling woman in tattered cloth was now something else entirely. A crackle of unseen energy surged through the shadows as the old beggar slowly straightened—far too gracefully for someone of her apparent age. Her hunched posture melted away, bones clicking into place like clockwork, spine uncurling with uncanny poise. A gust of wind blew through the sealed hall, extinguishing half the candles in an instant.
The Doctor’s expression faltered.
Her cloak fell away in a shimmer of golden light, revealing not rags but flowing robes threaded with starlight, woven in colours that defied logic—shifting from dusk blue to solar flare gold with every heartbeat. Her face—once shrivelled & sunken—was now angular & arresting, with fierce, intelligent eyes that shimmered with the weight of centuries. She was beautiful in a way that unsettled, radiant & terrifying, like a supernova wearing a smile.
“You…” the Doctor breathed, recoiling slightly, his arrogance momentarily stripped away. “You’re not—”
“Not what I seemed?” she finished coolly, her voice like velvet draped over steel. “No. I am not. & you, Time Lord, are exactly what you appeared—vain, cruel, & incapable of kindness when it costs you power.”
His jaw clenched, anger flaring behind his eyes. “Who are you?”
“I am the Rani,” she said, & the castle seemed to groan beneath her words, stone & shadow vibrating with ancient recognition. “You turned me away when I came to you humbly. You judged me worthless because I offered nothing of status. You spat on mercy.”
Lightning forked behind her through the stained glass windows, casting jagged flashes across the room. The wind howled louder now, shaking the high arches, flaring the candles into furious flames.
“You dared test me?” he growled.
“I gave you a choice. You failed.”
She raised her hand—graceful, pale, marked with swirling Gallifreyan sigils—& the rose she had offered reappeared between her fingers. But now it glowed faintly, each petal caught in a slow, impossible dance of decay, falling inwards like a dying star.
“This rose is now your sentence,” the Rani declared. “It will bloom until the last petal falls. By then, if you have not learned to love—& earned love in return—you will remain what I now make you.”
A surge of golden light exploded from her palm & struck the Doctor square in the chest. He let out a strangled gasp, staggering backwards, clutching at his hearts—both hammering in panic. His limbs began to twist, stretch, reform—flesh & bone reshaped by forces far older than science. Not into a beast of claws & fur, but into something far more cursed.
A human.
A mortal. Trapped.
He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, his body suddenly heavier, slower. Mortal skin, fragile muscles. Gallifreyan biology stripped away like smoke in the wind.
“No!” he roared, voice ragged, cracking. “You can’t—!”
The Rani stepped past him coldly. “I already have.”
From the balcony above, cries echoed—his loyal servants, caught in the enchantment. Mickey's hands flared with candlelight before shrinking into curved brass. Jack’s limbs locked as his form stiffened, wood & glass replacing skin. Sarah-Jane, trying to shield young Luke, crumpled as porcelain crept across her surface like frost.
“No!” the Doctor cried, reaching up—too late.
The Rani turned at the threshold of the hall, her robes fluttering in the rising wind.
“Let’s see, Doctor, if a man so used to running can finally learn to stand still long enough… to feel.”
& with a final glance: piercing, pitiless. she vanished in a flash of burning white light, leaving only silence, & the fading echo of her curse.
***
A terrible stillness fell.
The final echo of the Rani’s curse had not yet faded when the castle itself seemed to exhale — a deep, mournful groan reverberating through its ancient stones. The high arches trembled. Dust fell like snow from the vaulted ceiling. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of chiming clocks faltered… then stopped altogether.
Outside, the storm raged on — but the wind no longer touched the castle.
From above the main staircase, a golden shimmer blossomed mid-air like sunlight spilling through cracks in reality. It pulsed once, twice, & then solidified, becoming a delicate glass dome suspended from nothing. Within it, a single rose — impossibly red, impossibly alive — hung suspended, its petals gently fluttering as if caught in a breeze that no longer existed.
The air around it hummed with energy. Time itself warped subtly, like heat over tarmac. The rose was beautiful — heartbreakingly so — but its beauty was threaded with sorrow. It pulsed like a slow, beating heart, & with each beat, the curse sank deeper into the walls of the castle.
Below, the newly-transformed Doctor staggered to his feet, still panting from the pain of his transformation. His once-commanding frame now felt alien, unsteady — flesh that bruised, lungs that burned, a single heart thudding anxiously in his chest.
“What is this?” he gasped, staring at the floating rose through the fractured light.
A voice, not the Rani’s, echoed from the shadows, soft & melodic, threaded with ancient power.
“The flower is your fate.” He turned sharply, but there was no one there. Just the rose, glowing gently in the hush. “Each petal that falls draws you closer to your end. Learn love or lose everything.”
As if in answer, the first petal drifted down, slowly, spiralling through the still air before resting silently upon the base of the dome. & then, the outside world forgot them.
In villages & cities, across meadows & markets, the names of the Doctor & his household faded like chalk in the rain. Letters unwrote themselves. Portraits blurred. The minds of friends & travellers who once passed the castle could no longer recall who had lived within its stone walls.
The castle, too, disappeared not from sight but from time. A shimmering veil spread across the forest like a web of starlight, cloaking the land around it. Days no longer passed as they should. Seasons grew confused. Snow fell & vanished. Leaves turned gold, then green again. The very sky above the castle dimmed, caught in eternal twilight, as if time itself now held its breath.
Inside, the Doctor stood still, jaw clenched, his gaze fixed on the rose that pulsed with the echo of his punishment.
Alone. Forgotten. Trapped.