6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxYrZLG1eIy
Vinci
It always started with silence.
Not the absence of sound, but the stillness that came before a storm—inside his mind, behind his ribs. That quiet lull, when even his breath felt borrowed.
That’s when he came.
Vinci stood in front of the mirror in his studio, fingertips stained with charcoal and rust-red pigment. Behind him, the canvases loomed—grotesque, magnificent. Faces caught in fear. Eyes hollowed. Mouths gasping for mercy.
He told people his art was inspired by nightmares.
That was only half true.
Because Eon wasn’t a nightmare.
He was the dream that stayed.
“You liked her,” Eon whispered.
The reflection blinked, but Vinci didn’t.
“She’s dangerous,” Vinci muttered.
Eon grinned from the mirror. His hair was the same. His jaw. But the eyes were feral. Hungrier. “She’s perfect.”
“No. She’s a profiler,” Vinci said. “She’s watching us.”
Eon leaned closer to the glass. “She’s watching you. Me? She doesn’t even know I exist.”
Vinci turned away from the mirror and paced.
He remembered Ella's voice. Calm. Unafraid. The way she challenged him—not with arrogance, but with curiosity. Not a prey. Not a threat.
A trigger.
“Let her go,” Vinci said to the room.
The lights flickered.
“No one lets go of art once it begins to understand them,” Eon replied.
Vinci looked back at the mirror. It was empty now. Just his own tired face staring back.
But the presence lingered.
And the urge.
Eon always brought the urge.
—
Vinci stepped into the back room—the one only he entered. The temperature dropped like it always did, even though there was no explanation for it.
Three walls.
Seven photos.
Each framed in black. Each face blurred at the edges by melted wax.
The fifth one had been claimed already. A woman who smiled too kindly and ignored the darkness in her husband until it consumed her.
The sixth frame remained empty. Waiting.
Vinci opened the drawer.
Inside, a velvet pouch.
He took out the necklace—the one he had found tucked in the lost-and-found box of a public library. It wasn’t valuable. But it smelled of rosewater and desperation.
Attached was a name tag from a recent seminar attendee.
Clarisse De Vera.
Guest lecturer on trauma bonding.
“I didn’t choose her,” Vinci whispered.
Eon laughed somewhere inside.
“But you saw her,” he murmured. “That’s always enough.”
He stared at the name until it no longer looked like a name. Just a rhythm. A heartbeat waiting to stop.
—
That night, Vinci painted.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t eat. Didn’t hear the city screaming outside his windows.
He only painted her.
Clarisse’s wide eyes, frozen mid-scream. Her hair tangled in red brushstrokes. Her mouth—almost open, almost praying.
When it was done, he stepped back.
The portrait bled.
He covered it with a black cloth.
“She dies tomorrow,” Eon whispered, almost kindly.
Vinci shook his head. “No.”
“Yes,” the voice said. “She already did.”
—
Somewhere, far from the studio, Clarisse De Vera walked home beneath dim yellow streetlamps, her seminar notes clutched to her chest.
She paused at a corner, sensing eyes that weren’t there.
But it wasn’t paranoia.
It was a prophecy.
And behind her, in the shadows, a whisper moved.
Not a voice.
A name.
Eon.
ns216.73.216.208da2
