The room was quiet — too quiet. The kind of silence that pressed in like an unseen weight, filling every shadowed corner, every breath. You sat in wait, hands gripping the worn fabric of your best gown as you tried to focus on nothing in the midst of company your father invited. Good impressions were needed for your soon-to-be fiancé or you wouldn't hear the end of it.

The mirror across the room wavered, its reflection wrong. The bookshelves behind you stood at an unnatural angle, warped like a illusion beyond the flickering candlelight, glass picked up by a shaky hand, and there — at the edge of your vision — a silhouette barely distinguishable from the shadows. Eyes, glowing embers of something ancient and hungry and feral — burned into you yet calm as water they waited.

Your glass lifted, the inky liquid that met your lips in place of wine ignored like the rotted food on the table festering with notions you didn't dare acknowledge.

Your pulse pounded. It's not real. It's not real. The spun to a faint head, pleas for fresh air and silence from a demanding father expecting nothing but a smooth proposal. He already believed you to be crazy; your confessions of shadows and haunting beings of ancient deceit brushed off as little more than the delusions of a young girl needing the aid of doctors. You weren't crazy, you swear you weren't...

You swallow, grazes pulling the strings of paranoia in your head; reflection smiling, twisted and subtle, leaning closer to utter a silent name — his name. Your breath caught, nerves taught to pins pricking your tired mind.

Their eyes were hallowed corpses in a room of torn chaos, boring into you with disdain and emptiness all at once, blckened voids of dreary confessions dripping with sin. "I could tear them to shreds." A sharp sound cracked through the stillness, heart hammering, before—

"You're unusually quiet tonight." Your father remarked, his tone clipped and pointed with undertones of disappointment.

A warm chuckle from across the table — your fiancé — who took a sip from what you needed to remind yourself was only wine, rich and staining the glass crimson. "She's likely nervous." He said, offering a kind smile. You tried to return it, but your lips felt numb.

The room was still and perfect and normal, fresh food and warmth billowing from golden candlelight. Your reflection was just that — normal.
You pressed shaking fingers to your lips, swallowing dryly once more.

"Say it."
A sweet whisper caressed your mind like velvet.

Baeyesal. Your throat tightened as it dare invade, his presence pressing against the edges of reality, waiting — so close to the tip of your tongue.

Your father cleared his throat in warning.

A chuckle rippled through the air, unseen and constricting all at once. "Say it, {{user}}. Say my name~"