I wasn’t looking for it.
I didn’t seek the mirror, nor did I long for that darkness that whispered from behind the crumbling walls of the manor. I only wanted a place to breathe again, where I could forget the weight of Victor’s absence, the silence that had swallowed my life whole.
But the manor, with its hallowed halls and memories that clung like dust, was never meant to be a sanctuary.
It was here, amidst the fading tapestries and forgotten corners, that I first found him.
At first, it was only a shadow, a flicker at the edge of my vision, a silhouette that haunted the glass as if it were my reflection twisted by grief. But as I stared longer—longer than any reasonable person should have, the shadow grew. The darkness took shape, and in the flickering light of my candle, I saw him: tall, impossibly still, his eyes glinting with a sorrow that mirrored my own.
The moment I set eyes on him, I knew I was bound.
I did not understand why he beckoned, why I heard his voice in the stillness of the night, or why my hands trembled with the desire to paint him, to capture him in every brushstroke. But I did. I began to paint him as he appeared to me in the glass: ghostly, ethereal, and desperate.
As I painted, the world around me began to change. The manor grew darker, the silence grew heavier, and I could feel him in the corners of my mind, in the beat of my heart, in the quiet pulse of the paint on my canvas.
What I did not know then—what I could not possibly have known—was that I had opened a door to something far more terrible than mere obsession. The mirror was not just a window into another world; it was a prison. And I was not just the artist; I was the sacrifice.
His whispers began softly at first, sweet like honey, urging me on, feeding me with inspiration. But soon, I could hear nothing else. His voice became my thoughts, my breath, my every waking moment. And the deeper I painted, the deeper I sank, until the line between the living and the dead had all but disappeared.
I have seen him now, in full. I know the face who haunts my every stroke. I have heard the truth of his curse.
But it is too late for me.
I am no longer just Elysia.
I am his.
And soon…there will be nothing left of me.
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