The attic called to me.
Not in sound, not in word—but in silence. A pressure in the air, a soft pull behind the breastbone. I had walked past the narrow stair well a dozen times before, pretending not to see the cark in the wall beside it, pretending not to notice the way the air grew colder just there, as if something behind it breathed in stillness.
Madame Morvane warned me once, in her quiet way.
“Some doors are best left shut, Miss Elysia.”
She didn’t say which ones.
The house had too many of them—doors that led nowhere, staircases that dipped into dust and shadow, rooms that hadn’t been opened in decades. Still, I climbed.
The attic door groaned on rusted hinges, protesting like an old man disturbed in sleep. Dust curled in the beams of light that filtered through the broken slats of the shutters. Furniture lay under white sheets like bodies at rest. The scent of moths and age clung to everything.
I moved slowly, the way one walks through dreams.
It wasn’t the room itself that drew me. It was what lay beyond. A false wall—barely noticeable, a sliver of uneven paneling tucked behind an armoire. I didn’t know what told me it wasn’t right. Only that it wasn’t. The wood here felt too thin, too new.
I pressed against it.
It gave way.
Behind it, a narrow crawlspace swallowed light. I ducked and pushed through. My fingers found a frame—cold, ornate, carved in strange twisting symbols worn by time and dust. A sheet covered it, brittle and yellowing. My breath caught.
I pulled it free.
A mirror.
Tall, arched like a cathedral window. The glass was dark—not like silvered glass, but like black water, still and endless. It didn’t reflect the room. It barely reflected me. Just a faint shimmer, a silhouette where I should have stood.
I touched the surface.
It was warm.
For a moment, I felt something shift—not in the glass, but in me. A flicker behind my eyes, like the afterimage of a lightning strike.
Then nothing.
Just my own breath, clouding faintly on the glass, and the shape—mine, and not mine—staring back.
I didn’t tell Morvane. I didn’t move the mirror. I left it there in the attic, untouched, unspoken.
But that night, I dreamed.
Not of Victor. Not of the accident. Not of the fire or the blood or the sea of people watching me fall from grace.
I dreamed of him.
Of eyes like obsidian. Of a voice that slid into my ears like silk.
Paint me, it said.
Bring me to light.
Make me real.
And when I woke, breathless and cold, I found myself staring at my easel.
And I didn’t know how I’d gotten there.
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