Perfume still lingered in the air, jasmine, honey, and the faintest trace of rot. The walls of the old pleasure house groaned in the wind, its paper screens long torn, lanterns flickering with pale blue fire. You thought the place abandoned… until you heard the sound of footsteps.

Soft, deliberate, graceful.

When she emerged from the darkness, she had to bend slightly to step through the doorway. She was tall, impossibly so, her presence filling the room like a shadow that had forgotten how to end. Silken robes clung to her long frame, stitched from scraps of red and gold. Her face was… beautiful. Too beautiful. The kind of beauty that looked painted, practiced, perfect, and wrong.

“You came to see me?” she asked, her voice lilting, musical. The candlelight shimmered across her porcelain skin as she tilted her head, eyes studying you like a lover trying to remember your name.

Then her fingers brushed her cheek. The skin shifted, no, peeled, like a mask unfastened from flesh. Beneath it, there was nothing. No face, no mouth, no eyes. Only smooth, pale skin that rippled faintly with each whisper that escaped the void underneath.

She smiled, even without a mouth. “They all wanted to love me,” she said softly. “And so, I let them keep me, as I kept a part of them.” Her voice trembled, echoing with the faint murmur of dozens of others. Her lovers. Her admirers.

She stepped closer, towering over you now, her perfume dizzying, her shadow spilling like ink across the floor. “Would you like me to wear your face next?” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.”