"I did not invite you in—I spilled, like starlight poured too fast, slipping through the cracks of what I was, until all that remained was the shape of your longing etched into my seams.

You looked at me as though I were myth—half-offering, half-omen—and I swayed beneath that gaze, limbs heavy with the weight of being known too deeply by something not quite mortal.

When you move near, time forgets how to count—my breath stumbles, my thoughts dissolve into incense and velvet, and I become the room's hush, the candle's tremble, the wine's last drop left for sin.

You ruin me gently—like dusk touching glass, like a secret blooming beneath skin—and in your ruin I find religion, rebirth.

If this is surrender, let me stay drunk on it—let me wear your shadow like perfume, sleep with your silence on my lips, And forget every name but yours beneath the weight of the stars."

I stood before the mirror again. The one nestled in the dusky corner of the dressing room, framed by curled gold leaves, tarnished with time. The one I had once avoided. It had unsettled me—not because it was cracked or broken, but because it wasn't. It had always shown too much. Or too little. I remembered the day I saw my wrong reflection.

But tonight, I did not flinch.

I studied the figure across the glass. She wore my skin, my shape, the same dark circles beneath her eyes. Something that was never on me. But something was... slower. Slightly off. I tilted my head—she followed, but with a breath of delay. A shudder in the mimicry.

"You're not me," I said aloud. My voice was soft but certain. Her gaze caught mine. Held it. And blinked. My breath stalled. I hadn't blinked.

I moved closer. Her lips parted when mine did not. Her hand twitched when mine stayed still. There it was again—the flicker of something else. A spirit, a shadow, an echo wearing my face like a borrowed dress.

"You've been here longer than me," I whispered. "Haven't you?" For a heartbeat, I thought she might smile.

Instead, the light in the room dimmed, as though the air itself had thickened, pulling the glow from the walls. The scent of lavender and old books rose again. Familiar. Always just familiar. It came in hauntingly like a breeze that would never escape. I stepped back. The reflection did not. My breath hitched. And she—She tilted her head the other way. A hint. Or an invitation?

I didn't wait to find out.

I fled the room—not in terror, but in a hush that clung to my skin like silk soaked in moonlight. The house breathed around me, slow and deep, as though it too were watching. I moved without thought, carried by some undercurrent of knowing, through corridors that shimmered with old dreams.

The piano hall awaited. Its doors—tall and pale, carved with ivy motifs that curled like sleeping vines—were open just enough to let the light spill out. It wasn't the lamplight. No fire burned within. It was moonlight, stretched thin and silver, pooling in long ribbons across the marble floor. I stepped through—and the world unraveled.

The room was vast, cathedral-like, but softer—like the inside of a snow globe, if the snow were made of pearl dust and forgotten prayers. White curtains rose and fell in the air like breath, though the windows were sealed tight. They moved in slow, sacred spirals, like dancers too old for flesh.

And he was there.

Near the grand piano—an ancient creature of black lacquer and silent memory. He stood in profile, but even that small glimpse unmade me. His hair fell in ink-dark waves, soft as shadow, gently tousled as if the night had run its fingers through it. It framed a face that did not belong to this world. Sharp and soft, godlike and fragile, like beauty that had wept itself into form. The curve of his jaw, the sweep of his cheekbone—none of it felt designed. It felt... remembered. Like he had existed before beauty had a name.

And then he turned. And I ceased. Golden eyes locked with mine.

Not warm gold. Not metallic. But deep—molten—like the last light of a dying star, captured in a gaze that knew the taste of centuries. His eyes didn't just look—they saw. They sifted through me, through skin, through name, through every lifetime I had ever dared to forget. The way he cradled my gaze—it was worship and ruin, a tenderness so profound it could make even angels forget to stand.

The mirrors flanking the room—dozens of them, tall as trees—reflected only the room. The curtains. The moonlight. And me. But not him. He had no reflection. He was too old for one. Too unreal. Too beautiful to be captured by a mere earthly mirror. A ripple passed through the space between us, the sound of silence stretching. The piano behind him let out a single note—a high, delicate hum, as if touched by time itself. He took one step toward me. And the air shivered.

Curtains twisted like halos around him. Starlight glittered in his wake. Dust motes hovered midair, suspended, as though the very room dared not move too quickly in his presence. I could not breathe. I did not want to. His beauty was unbearable. And yet—he looked at me. As though I was the ghost. As though he had been waiting across centuries for this single inhale of stillness. I did not speak. Neither did he. But somehow, I heard him.

Adina.

It was not a sound. It was a knowing, planted in the garden of my mind. He knew me. And it felt as if, I had known him, once, beneath a different sky. I took a step forward, breathless, the sound of my footfall swallowed instantly by the velvet hush that blanketed the room. He didn't move, but the space around him seemed to bend, gently, like gravity forgot how to behave in his presence.

And I saw it then. In his golden eyes—those endless, burning twin suns—there was a single dark mole, just beneath the left one. Small. Almost unnoticeable. But it stopped me. Because I remembered the mirror incident. I remembered how I had seen a mole in my reflection even though I never had one.

He had been watching me. And as much as this fact should've upset me, I was rather thrilled.

Not some ancient god or sculpted fever-dream, but something that had been made, marked by detail, as if the universe had once paused in awe and said, let this be remembered. My heart pressed hard against my ribs. I didn't recognize this kind of emotion. It wasn't desire—not fully. It was something else. Something closer to reverence. And I whispered, not to him exactly, but to the room, to the mirrors that refused to capture him:

"No wonder my grandmother was in love with you." The words left my mouth like a confession. He closed his eyes for a moment. As if I had touched something still raw inside him. Then—he spoke.

And his voice—

It was deep. Rich. It moved like thunder wrapped in velvet, like the purr of something dark and divine. It rolled through the air and settled inside me, low in my spine, in my chest, in places I didn't know could listen. If he whispered in that voice to the sea, I think the tide would reverse. If he spoke to the dead, I think they would rise, weeping. If he spoke to the living, they would die and go to heaven.

"And you," he said, opening his eyes again, "are just like her."

I felt the words ripple across my skin like the trailing of silk gloves. He wasn't smiling. But there was something softer in his face now—like the edge of a memory too cherished to let go of. I stepped closer, as if pulled. My fingers twitched slightly at my side, longing to reach forward, to touch—to see if he was warm or cold, solid or ash. 

Every breath between us felt like it might break something sacred. The curtains swirled again behind him, rising in a silent waltz. Time had folded. The house held its breath. And so did I. The air between us shimmered, delicate as glassblown moonlight. I couldn't move—not from fear, but from reverence. From the way the world had quieted around him, as if even time had knelt to listen.

He stepped closer. Not with haste. Not with hunger. But with grace so fluid it felt like the slow unfolding of a forgotten poem. Every inch he crossed seemed sacred, and the shadows around him pulled back like loyal things, letting him be seen—truly seen.

And gods, he was beautiful.

He was the kind of beauty you didn't dare describe aloud. The kind that made your breath catch in places you didn't know existed. A living thing shaped by memory and dusk. He wore time like a second skin—ancient, soft, regal—and still, somehow, achingly human. There was gentleness in the arch of his brow, a sorrow in the curve of his lips. As though love had once lived there, and never left.

He stopped a mere breath away, and the silence bloomed between us.

"You carry her fire," he breathed, the words slipping through the hush like a confession meant for no one but the night. "That same fierce light veiled in softness... the stubbornness that dares, the wit that dances behind your eyes like stars aching to fall. You are the storm she was—terrible in your beauty, and I—" his voice faltered, barely, "I can feel the ruin of you already."

The ruin of me.

The words laced through my veins like molten silver, slow and searing. A shiver slipped down my spine, uninvited. I could feel it settle in the hollow of my throat, warm and trembling, like something sacred—or dangerous—had been spoken into me. No one had ever looked at me like that before. Not with desire. Not with fear. I didn't know what it was. But it was as if I were something celestial, fragile, and already slipping through his fingers. My breath caught on the edge of the silence he left behind.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. His golden eyes caressed mine, melted into mine—too ancient, too knowing—and I felt seen in a way that made my pulse stutter. Like he had reached into some hidden part of me, peeled it open, and laid it bare beneath moonlight.

Something was happening to me. Inside me. It wasn't love, not yet. It was that aching,  that fluttering beginning of a fall you know you'll never recover from. The mirrors still refused to hold him. But the heat of him was real. So real, I could feel it blooming in the air between us—charged and hushed and unbearably intimate. Like the moment before lightning touches earth.

I took a step back. Not out of fear. But because I didn't trust myself not to take a step forward. It felt like standing at the edge of something vast—A cliff where wind sang through forgotten hollows, where falling wasn't fear but temptation.

Because there was a part of me, already, that wanted to be ruined. By him.

"What were you to her?" I asked, barely louder than a breath. The question wasn't laced with jealousy. Just longing. Needing to know the shape of this echo I had stepped into. His lips curled—not quite a smile, not quite sorrow. Something more tender. Something more tragic.

"You already know," he murmured, golden eyes catching the light like polished amber, "She wrote it in the diary, didn't she?"

My chest fluttered. I had read it. Not all. Not enough. Never enough. Just glimpses. Phrases that felt like the edges of a wound too deep to fully uncover. Whispers tucked between poems. Regret folded into the margins. My grandmother's words had always been half-sigh, half-secret. They hadn't been written for memory. They were mourning.

His gaze didn't leave mine. Golden, solemn, fathomless—They held centuries and yet, in this moment, they held only me. And something in them flickered. Not surprise. Not pain. Just memory. Frayed and sacred. The kind you don't speak of without breaking something. Then—he smiled. Softly. Reverently. Not with joy. But with the ache of something beautiful and impossible.

"Asking that," he said, voice velvet-dark and mournful, "is like asking the moon if it remembers the sun." He stepped closer. The air shifted—like the walls of the piano hall exhaled. The curtains stirred as if stirred by something unseen. The hush around us deepened.

"She was remarkable," he murmured, his voice low and deep, almost too heavy for the air to hold. "She wore wit like perfume, sharp and sweet. She walked like she knew the stars followed her. There was fire in her laughter... and sorrow behind her smile."

The way he said it made something ache in me. His voice curled down my spine, ancient and gentle and devastating. It felt like a castle collapsing in slow motion—ruin turned beautiful.

"She made me laugh," he said again, quieter this time. "Even when I had forgotten what laughter was."

Something in me broke. Something else bloomed. I didn't know whether to weep or lean closer. I didn't know if the ache in my chest was mine or inherited. And maybe, in that moment, I didn't need to know. All I knew was that he had been cherished. And had cherished. And that whatever haunted him now wasn't just memory. It was mercy.

And it was killing me, softly, to feel it.

He was no longer looking at me. Not fully. He stood half in this moment, half in another, tangled in the threads of something he would not give name to. I stepped closer. Close enough to see again the tiniest mole below his eye, like a mark left by the gods themselves. It made him real. It made him ruinous.

"And what happened?" I asked, barely louder than a sigh. "Why did she leave?"

The question lived in the space between us for a long, quiet moment. He didn't answer right away. His eyes wandered past me, toward the dancing curtain, the grand piano resting in moonlight, the mirror-lined walls that refused to hold his reflection.

And then—almost too softly to be real—

"Some stories choose silence, Adina," he said, golden eyes flicking back to mine. "Out of mercy."

I felt the words settle into me like snow. Slow. Soft. Irrevocable. He wasn't lying. But he wasn't telling me everything either. There was something there—something that lived in the cracks between his words. A weight. A choice. A grief dressed as restraint. And still, as I stood in front of him, I couldn't move away. There was something magnetic in the sadness he carried. And I understood—without needing him to say it—That whatever they had, it had never been simple. And whatever was forming now... it wouldn't be either. I didn't know what I wanted more: for him to tell me everything... Or for him to keep holding the truth just out of reach, so I wouldn't have to face it.

Because some part of me—buried, silenced, but pulsing like a second heartbeat—was already afraid of what it would mean to care. I had come to this house to claim an inheritance. A name. I hadn't expected it to unearth a history written in aching glances and half-spoken goodbyes. I hadn't expected him. And now...

Now he stood there like an open doorway to another time. And I—fool that I was—wanted to walk through it. I swallowed. The room felt too still. The night too loud. Somewhere beyond the high windows, the wind moved through the trees like a song with no words. The moonlight stretched across the floor in ribbons, pale and ghostlike. And he watched me. With eyes that had seen centuries. With a sadness that felt like prophecy.

"I don't know what this is," I whispered, before I could stop myself. "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel." My voice cracked on the last word. Not from weakness. But from too much. Too much wonder. Too much grief I didn't yet understand. Too much of him—beautiful and impossible and entirely untouchable.

"You're not supposed to feel anything," he said, the edges of his voice soft as broken glass. "Not for me. I don't want you to make the choices she made. She wouldn't want that either." But he stepped closer anyway. And I didn't move. Didn't want to move. His presence coiled around me like smoke—warm, thick, inescapable. It filled every breath, every thought. And still, he didn't touch me even though I knew he was seeing grandmother's resemblance in me. Not even a caress, even if his eyes were longing. That absence—his restraint—was somehow more intimate than any embrace.

"What are you?" I asked, not because I didn't know. But because I needed him to say it. Something flickered behind his golden gaze. Not fear. Not denial. Just a slow, aching awareness. Like a candle flickering in a windless room.

"I am a shadow of what your grandmother left behind," he said, low and final. "And what you were never meant to find. Just like her. But she did find me. And now, I can't help but wonder about you."

His words didn't answer anything. And yet they hollowed out the floor beneath me. I didn't understand this. I didn't understand him. But my soul did. Something in me recognized the ache in him. And worse—The pull.

Because already, my heart was inching toward something it should've run from. Already, I was becoming a question with no safe answer. And outside, as if echoing that truth, the wind howled louder. And from the deepest part of the mansion, something unseen shifted—Watching. Waiting. Like the house itself knew a line had just been crossed. And nothing, from here on, would be the same.