The Crimson Veil

The words were gone, but I could still feel them in my chest, like ink drying beneath the skin.Don’t trust the servant.I stepped back from the mirror. Nothing moved except my pulse. The glass showed only me—my face too pale, my eyes too wide, the candlelight behind me stretching like claws. I told myself it was a trick. A reflection of fear, not of truth.The violin stopped. Silence rolled through the castle, thick as fog. Then the air shifted—the faintest tremor, as if the house had turned its head to listen again.I needed daylight. I fled the library, closing the door behind me. The corridor was brighter than I expected; the morning sun managed to find a thin slit of window near the stairs. It looked ordinary enough to make me laugh under my breath. Ordinary—what a beautiful word.Elias was waiting at the landing.“You shouldn’t walk the halls before breakfast,” he said softly. “The house hasn’t decided what it is yet.”I stared at him too long. “Did you move the mirr

The darkness was total.I froze, hand outstretched, candle useless. The whisper still lingered in my ear—Welcome home—and it felt less like a greeting than a claim.My heartbeat filled the silence. One breath, two… then the candles flared back to life by themselves, flames steady and vertical, no smoke. The paper on the table was gone.I swallowed hard. “All right,” I whispered. “Show yourself, then.”Nothing answered—only the faint groan of timber shifting, as if the castle exhaled. I set the candle back in its holder and retraced my steps through the library door. The corridor seemed longer than before, as if the house had added a few feet while I wasn’t looking.By the time I reached my room, dawn was breaking in a gray smear across the shutters. I collapsed into the chair by the fire, still fully dressed, and told myself I would write everything down in the morning. Instead, I slept.When I woke, sunlight had turned the edges of the curtains to gold. The castle was quiet except fo