The wind had risen without anyone really noticing. The breath of spring slid between the cemetery stones, carrying the scent of damp earth and new blossoms. Nicolas stood motionless before Annabelle, as though struggling against some invisible weight.
"You want to see Amandinne…? Who is this woman?" Nicolas asked, his voice strained as he looked toward his sister's grave—a sight he never thought he'd face now.
Annabelle didn't answer. She didn't truly know why she wanted to see her, only that she needed to.
Why wasn't she simply here? She should have been the first to arrive.
Meanwhile, Georges had quietly stepped closer to Éléna's grave and rested his hand where Annabelle's had been during the funeral. She looked at him, and something flickered briefly in her eyes.
Nicolas sighed, gaze averted. Slowly, he reached inside his coat, unbuttoned the top, and searched the lining pocket. His fingers trembled against the fabric before drawing out a folded slip of paper, yellowed with damp.
"Your mother… she—she mailed this to us more than a week ago."
He removed his tall hat, turning toward his brother, tears beading in his eyes. Georges looked back, less shaken, his memories of Éléna already faint and scattered.
Annabelle froze. She recognized the handwriting instantly—the slanted, tight, almost nervous strokes.
She took the letter with a trembling hand and opened it without hesitation.
Dear Georges, my brother, it has been so long since we last saw each other. If you are reading these words, then I am no longer of this world. I ask you to take care of my daughter, Annabelle. — Éléna.
That was all. Not a word more.
Annabelle turned the page over. Nothing on the back. On the envelope, a name, an address, and a handwritten note: Manor of the Black Fleures.
Her fingers tightened; the paper crumpled. The world caved in around her without a sound. She couldn't understand—how could her mother have… foreseen her own death?
"How… how could she do this?" she whispered.
Nicolas tried to speak, but no words came. Annabelle's breathing quickened. The tears, held back for too long, finally broke free.
A cry rose—wild, raw.
The cry of a beast in agony.
The sound cut through the graveyard, struck the stone crosses, and fell back into the soil. The crows scattered.
And beneath her dress, something began to burn—a sharp pain, a bite against her skin. A necklace she had long forgotten.
Annabelle clutched at her chest, gasping for air.
Then everything tilted. The world twisted into a spiral, dragging her mind into its pull.
Darkness took her.
◆ ◆ ◆
Two weeks earlier.
Before the funeral. Before the inevitable.
The storm raged above Annabelle's house, howling as if to rip the trees from their roots. The wind forced its way through the cracks and made the shutters moan.
The young girl stood alone in the hallway, the cold seeping into her skin. Lightning bleached the window, and thunder followed, shaking the walls.
She stood before the front door, unsure why, bare feet on the frozen wood. Through the roar of rain, she thought she heard a dull thud on the porch. Her heart stopped.
She opened the door in a sudden rush.
A blast of wind and rain hit her full in the face. On the threshold—nothing. Nothing but a red stain on the steps and the shadow of a branch swaying against the wall. Her heart pounding, she closed the door and turned slowly.
A faint light flickered upstairs—the light from Éléna Vance's bedroom.
A scream broke the storm. Sharp, human, unbearable.
Her stomach knotted instantly.
Without thinking, without control, Annabelle ran.
She threw open the door to the room.
Everything stopped.
"Mama…?"
Her voice was lost in the narrow hall.
Éléna stood in the center of the room. Her nightgown clung to her skin, stained red. Around her, the family mirror lay shattered into a thousand shards. The black wooden frame, carved with an ancient seal of unreadable letters, still hung crooked on the wall.
She held one fragment in her hand, blood dripping onto the floor.
Annabelle's breath caught. The pieces of glass reflected the lightning, multiplying her mother's face into endless copies—still, eyes open, lifeless.
Éléna whispered to something Annabelle could not see:
"It writhes… it crawls everywhere… It's searching…"
Her voice quivered like a string about to snap. The words tangled with the thunder.
Annabelle tried to step forward, but fear rooted her to the threshold. The shards of the mirror quivered, trembling as if alive. In one of them, a reflection moved.
It wasn't hers.
Beneath the glass, something rippled—a black filament, fluid, alive. It twisted slowly, feeling along the cracks, probing the world through the mirror like a blind creature. Its texture seemed made of oil and sinew, its motion precise, deliberate. A worm.
It slid against the old frame, caressing the carved symbols, the worn-out letters. Then it lifted what might have been a head—eyeless, yet intent.
Annabelle's necklace flared with heat. Pain tore through her chest. The worm recoiled inside the shard, emitting a thin hiss, a breath that wasn't air. The glass cracked.
Another bolt of lightning struck outside. The worm's scream rang out—not in the room, but inside her skull. Everything drowned in light.
Reality shattered like the mirror.
When she came to, she was on her knees on the wooden floor. The wind had gone still. The mirror stood whole again, though its cracks remained.
Éléna stood unmoving, staring into nothing, the shard still in her hand.
Annabelle tried to speak, but her throat closed. Her fingers brushed the necklace—still hot.
She had seen.
And something now knew she had seen it.
◆ ◆ ◆
Back in the present, in the graveyard.
The wind had died. The twilight sky stretched above her. Annabelle blinked. The damp grass beneath her knees, the soil, the smell of rain—they felt painfully real.
Nicolas held her by the shoulders, leaning over her. Georges, behind him, stared at the necklace she clutched to her chest.
"Annabelle? Can you hear me?"
She nodded slowly, unable to speak.
The crumpled letter lay in her hands.
Annabelle looked down at the stone of the necklace, glowing with a deep violet streaked with lilac. The tarnished silver chain clung weakly to it.
Nicolas opened his mouth to speak, then froze. A cold draft swept over their faces—from nowhere.
Annabelle lifted her gaze. On the gravestone, a dark trace slid downward, like a fleeing shadow.
"It's gone," she whispered.
But she knew it wasn't true.
The thing had stayed behind. And it was watching.
⟡ ⊶— ❖ ⟅⚜⟆ ❖ —⊷ ⟡
Abel Maria : Royal Road & Webnovel