As Old as Time

As Old as Time Plot Summary

Introduction

# Beauty and the Beast: The Enchantress's Daughter In the shadows of a forgotten asylum, screams echo through sterile corridors where madness masquerades as medicine. Dr. D'Arque moves between his patients with surgical precision, extracting something far more precious than sanity from those unlucky enough to possess magic in their blood. His greatest prize lies chained in the deepest cell—a woman whose golden hair has turned white from years of torture, whose emerald eyes still burn with defiant power despite everything he has stolen from her. Belle never knew her mother was an enchantress. She never knew that the quiet village where she grew up reading books and dreaming of adventure sat at the edge of a kingdom that had systematically murdered every magical being within its borders. When her father Maurice disappears into the dark woods, Belle follows his trail to a cursed castle where furniture speaks and a monstrous Beast paces through halls haunted by his own cruelty. But this Beast was once a prince, cursed by the very woman Belle has spent her life believing abandoned her. Now, as bone-white webs begin to consume the castle and rose petals fall like omens of doom, Belle must unravel a conspiracy of betrayal and genocide that reaches back decades, where the line between monster and victim blurs like blood in water.

Chapter 1: The Daughter of the Enchantress: Belle's Awakening

Belle's fingers closed around the enchanted rose before she could stop herself. The moment her skin touched the thorny stem, reality shattered like glass, flooding her mind with visions that burned like acid. A woman with golden hair and emerald eyes stood before a cowering child prince, magic crackling around her like captured lightning. The woman's face was achingly familiar—the same green eyes Belle saw in her own reflection, the same determined set of jaw she inherited. "There is no love in your heart," the woman declared, her voice echoing with supernatural power. "Until you learn to love another and be loved in return, you and all within these walls will remain cursed forever." The Beast's roar of anguish came too late. The rose crumbled to dust in Belle's grasp, its petals scattering like drops of blood across the stone floor. Around them, the castle shuddered as bone-white webs erupted from the earth, growing with terrifying speed to encase the walls in a crystalline prison. The curse was completing itself, sealing them all within a tomb of their own making. "You've destroyed everything," the Beast howled, his massive form towering over her. "My one chance at breaking the curse—gone." But Belle barely heard him. Her mind reeled with the revelation that cut deeper than any physical wound. The woman in the vision, the enchantress who had cursed this prince and his entire household—that was her mother. The woman Belle had always believed abandoned them had wielded magic powerful enough to transform an entire kingdom. She hadn't left by choice. Something terrible had happened to her. The Beast watched Belle's face cycle through shock, understanding, and finally a terrible resolve. In her green eyes, he saw an echo of the enchantress who had destroyed his life, but also something else—a fierce determination that promised either salvation or complete annihilation for them all.

Chapter 2: Shadows of the Past: Uncovering the Kingdom's Dark History

The castle's library became their sanctuary, a cathedral of knowledge where Belle and the Beast searched for answers among dust-covered records. Mrs. Potts, the enchanted teapot who retained memories of her human life as the castle's housekeeper, served them tea while sharing fragments of the kingdom's final days. Her porcelain form trembled as she spoke of times when magic flowed freely through the land. "Your mother came to the castle three times," Mrs. Potts revealed, steam rising from her spout like ghostly sighs. "First to bless you as a baby—tradition demanded it. The king and queen refused her blessing. The second time, she begged them to help during the plague that was killing her people. They turned her away at sword point." Belle traced entries in the ancient census books, her heart sinking as a horrifying pattern emerged. Names marked with strange symbols—les charmantes, the magical folk—simply vanished from the records. Not dead from plague or natural causes, but erased as if they had never existed. Her mother's symbol appeared next to a blank space where her name should have been. "Someone was hunting them," Belle whispered, her finger stopping on page after page of systematic disappearances. "All of them." The Beast leaned over her shoulder, his massive claws carefully turning brittle pages. Despite his monstrous appearance, his movements held surprising gentleness. "The third time she came to the castle, she was the last of her kind. Everyone she had ever loved was dead or missing. When she cursed me, I was all she had left to punish." Through the library windows, the bone-white webs continued their relentless growth, but now Belle could see they weren't just prison bars—they were memory vessels, each strand containing fragments of her mother's life. In their crystalline depths, she glimpsed flashes of a woman driven to desperate measures by a kingdom that had betrayed everything it once stood for.

Chapter 3: The Smuggler's Grave: Betrayal and Murder Revealed

The stables reeked of decay and buried secrets. The Beast's enhanced senses led them to a disturbed patch of earth in the largest stall, where his claws unearthed a horror that had festered for over a decade. Alaric Potts lay wrapped in rotted cloth, a surgical knife protruding from his chest with the precision of someone who knew exactly where to strike. Mrs. Potts' anguished wail echoed through the castle when they brought her the news. Her husband hadn't abandoned them as everyone believed—he had been murdered for his compassion. In Alaric's coat, they found his journal, pages brittle with age but still readable. The entries painted a picture of desperate heroism: Alaric smuggling les charmantes to safety through the night, ferrying them to a cottage across the river where a kind inventor and his enchantress wife provided shelter. "M's place," Belle read aloud, her voice catching. "Maurice. My father. They were part of the underground network." The journal's final entries spoke of increasing paranoia, of friends who could no longer be trusted, of a kingdom where magic had become a death sentence. Someone had discovered the smuggling operation. Someone close enough to Alaric to approach without suspicion, skilled enough with surgical instruments to kill cleanly and quietly. "The knife," the Beast observed, examining the murder weapon with grim expertise. "It's a surgical blade. Whoever killed him had medical training." Belle felt ice forming in her veins as the implications crystallized. The systematic disappearances, the surgical precision of Alaric's murder, the complete erasure of magical people from official records—this wasn't random persecution. This was genocide orchestrated by someone with the knowledge and authority to make entire populations vanish without a trace. Somewhere in this web of betrayal and murder, her mother had been the ultimate target. And Belle was beginning to suspect she knew exactly who had been pulling the strings.

Chapter 4: Breaking the Chrysalis: Escape from the Cursed Castle

The bone-white webs had consumed the castle like a chrysalis, sealing them inside walls of crystalline memory. Each strand pulsed with fragments of Belle's mother's life—her magic, her love, her growing desperation as the kingdom turned against her kind. The curse was pulling the castle into a forgotten realm where they would remain trapped forever, slowly fading from the world's memory. "We have to break out," Belle declared, watching the Beast pace like a caged animal. His humanity was slipping away with each passing hour, the wildness growing stronger in his eyes. "If we're going to save anyone, we need to find my mother." The Beast's servants gathered in the courtyard for what might be their final battle. Lumière the candelabrum directed the assault with military precision while Cogsworth the clock fretted over timing. Using war hammers and ancient swords, they struck at the crystalline barriers that imprisoned them. Each blow sent spider-web cracks through the magical prison, but the webs fought back, growing stronger with each break. "The structure is failing," Cogsworth announced, his brass hands spinning frantically. "If we don't break through soon, the entire castle will collapse into the void." Belle pressed her hands against the nearest web, feeling her mother's memories flow through her like electric current. In those visions, she saw the truth—the webs weren't meant to imprison them forever. They were meant to preserve them until someone came who could understand the full scope of what had been lost. Her mother had been preparing for this moment, waiting for her daughter to grow strong enough to finish what she had started. "Now!" Lumière cried as a section finally shattered under their combined assault. Belle dove through the gap, feeling sharp edges slice through her cloak. The Beast followed, his massive form crashing through like a battering ram. Behind them, the webs reformed instantly, sealing their friends inside the dying castle. They were free, but at the cost of leaving everyone they cared about trapped in an increasingly unstable magical prison.

Chapter 5: The Asylum of Horrors: D'Arque's Torture Chamber

The asylum perched on its hill like a cancer, all stone walls and barred windows that seemed to swallow light itself. Belle's capture had been swift and brutal—masked men seizing her from her father's cottage, dragging her to this place where screams echoed through antiseptic corridors. Dr. D'Arque, the asylum's director, greeted her with the cold smile of a man who had perfected the art of suffering. "I must be certain you carry none of your mother's contamination," he explained, strapping her to a metal table surrounded by gleaming instruments. His hands moved with surgical precision, each gesture calculated for maximum psychological impact. "Science demands absolute purity." The torture was methodical, clinical. D'Arque inserted needles into her flesh, drew her blood, forced chemicals down her throat while taking careful notes in a leather-bound journal. He had been doing this for years, Belle realized with growing horror—not just to the genuinely insane, but to anyone touched by magic. Les charmantes were brought here to have their power surgically removed, their minds broken, their bodies discarded like failed experiments. "Your mother lasted longer than most," D'Arque mused, adjusting his instruments with the care of an artist. "Such remarkable strength, even after I removed most of her magic. But everyone breaks eventually. Even enchantresses bleed." Belle's escape came through her mother's intervention—the last flicker of Rosalind's power used to loosen her restraints. As alarms rang through the asylum, Belle freed every prisoner she could find, unleashing chaos through the corridors. But the greatest shock came when she found Maurice in the upper cells, and learned the truth that shattered everything she thought she knew about their family's past. Her father hadn't been protecting her from the world—he had been protecting the world from her. Belle carried her mother's power in her blood, and D'Arque would stop at nothing to claim it for his twisted experiments.

Chapter 6: Mother and Daughter: Reunion in the Depths

In the deepest cell of the asylum's basement, Belle found what remained of her mother. Rosalind was barely recognizable—scarred, emaciated, her golden hair turned white from years of torture. But her green eyes still blazed with fierce intelligence, and when she saw Belle, tears of joy mixed with tears of rage. "My beautiful daughter," Rosalind whispered, her voice cracked from screaming. "I have lived for this moment alone." The reunion was everything Belle had dreamed of and nothing like she had imagined. Her mother was no fairy tale figure but a woman broken by suffering, yet still burning with the need for justice. As they helped each other through the asylum's corridors, Rosalind revealed the truth about D'Arque—once their friend, once a charmante himself, who had turned against his own kind in a twisted quest for what he called purity. "He was at your christening," Rosalind gasped as they climbed toward freedom. "He helped us save the others in the beginning. And then he betrayed us all for the promise of power over life and death." Maurice joined them in the upper levels, and for a moment they were a family again—broken, scarred, but united against the monster who had torn them apart. The asylum burned around them as the Beast arrived with an army of villagers who had finally learned the truth about D'Arque's crimes. But even as justice closed in, the mad doctor had one final card to play. "You think you've won?" D'Arque laughed as flames consumed his life's work. "I've already taken what I need from her. The enchantress's power flows in my veins now. I am become magic itself." The transformation that followed was an abomination—D'Arque's body twisting into something that was neither human nor beast, but a surgical nightmare of flesh and metal, powered by stolen magic and absolute madness.

Chapter 7: Sacrifice and Redemption: The Beast's Choice

D'Arque's monstrous form towered over them in the asylum's burning courtyard, his body a grotesque fusion of surgical instruments and stolen magic. The power he had torn from countless victims writhed beneath his skin like living cancer, transforming him into something that defied nature itself. When Gaston's blade finally found its mark, piercing the madman's heart, D'Arque's death scream shattered windows for miles around. But victory came at a terrible price. Rosalind, weakened by years of torture, possessed just enough magic for one final spell. She could either free the Beast from his curse or restore his servants to human form, but not both. The choice would determine not just their fate, but the future of magic itself in a world that had tried so hard to destroy it. The Beast didn't hesitate. "Save my people," he told Rosalind, his massive paws gentle on Belle's shoulders. "They were innocent when they were cursed. They deserve to be free." Belle's heart broke and soared simultaneously as she watched the transformation ripple through the castle. Mrs. Potts became human again, embracing the five-year-old son who had been trapped as a teacup for a decade. Lumière swept into elegant bows, his human form as charming as his candelabrum persona had been. Cogsworth fussed over his restored pocket watch, finally able to keep proper time again. The Beast remained transformed, but something fundamental had changed. His humanity was secure now, anchored by love rather than magic. When Belle looked into his eyes, she saw not a monster but a king who had chosen his people over his own salvation. "We'll find a way," Belle promised, taking his massive paw in her small hands. "We'll search the world for les charmantes, bring them home to safety. Together." Rosalind smiled as her magic finally faded, the last of her power spent on redemption rather than revenge. "Love always finds a way," she whispered, and Belle understood that some curses were meant to be transformed rather than broken, some monsters were meant to remain beautiful in their own way.

Summary

In the end, Belle discovered that the greatest magic wasn't in spells or curses, but in the choices people make when everything they love hangs in the balance. Her mother's curse had been born from pain and loss, but it was love that ultimately transformed it into something redemptive. The Beast remained physically unchanged, but his sacrifice had revealed the true nobility that had always lived within him, proving that some forms of beauty transcend the merely physical. The forgotten kingdom began to remember itself as les charmantes slowly returned from exile, drawn by whispers of a safe haven where magic was no longer feared but celebrated. Belle and her Beast-king would spend years traveling the world, gathering the scattered survivors, building something new from the ashes of what D'Arque had tried to destroy. And in the castle that had once been a prison, laughter echoed through halls where hope had finally learned to bloom again, proving that some stories are worth the telling precisely because they refuse to end where we expect them to, choosing instead to begin where love learns to see past the surface to the soul beneath.

About Author

Loading

Liz Braswell

Braswell interrogates the boundaries of classic storytelling through her innovative young adult fiction, focusing on reimagining familiar tales with fresh perspectives. Having initially pursued a degree in Egyptology from Brown University, she pivoted to a decade-long career in video game production. This foundation in creating interactive narratives laid the groundwork for her transition into writing, where she explores themes of identity and motivation, particularly within Disney's "Twisted Tales" series. By crafting "What If" scenarios, Braswell delves into the complexities of iconic characters, offering readers a deeper understanding of figures like Captain Hook and Ursula, beyond their traditional roles.\n\nWhile her early works, such as "Snow" and "Rx" under the pseudonym Tracy Lynn, established her knack for reinterpreting fairy tales, it is the "Twisted Tales" series that solidified her status as a bestselling author. This series challenges conventional narratives, providing an engaging experience for fans of the original stories who seek more nuanced interpretations. Her literary themes resonate particularly well with young adults, who benefit from her exploration of character motivations and moral ambiguities. The series' success has earned recognition, including placement on the New York Times bestseller list, highlighting Braswell’s impact on contemporary young adult literature.\n\nIn addition to her novels, Braswell contributes to the literary world through short stories and a column in the Wall Street Journal, where she reviews fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Her dynamic career path from Egyptology to video games and finally to writing reflects a dedication to storytelling in various forms, ensuring that each book she crafts offers a unique journey for readers. This bio captures the essence of Braswell’s approach, which continuously redefines traditional narratives and invites audiences to explore alternate realities and motivations within beloved tales.

Read more