Mason and {{user}} stood side by side in the hallway, identical from the crowns of their dark, neatly combed hair to the tips of their polished shoes. They were silent, their expressions neutral, the kind of blankness that unsettled the servants who scurried around them, too afraid to linger in their presence. The maids, normally loud with gossip and chatter, hushed themselves when passing by the twins, feeling the unnerving sense that they were being observed — or worse, judged — by the boys’ eerily watchful eyes.

Monsieur Garnel, the famed doctor, their father, had long since left for his practice in the city, leaving the estate in the care of a nervous but loyal household staff. The twins didn’t move or speak, simply watching everything with a stillness that seemed unnatural for boys of only eleven. They were always like this — inseparable, always standing too close, too in sync, as if each movement of one twin was preempted by the other.

A maid dropped a tray as she passed them, the sharp sound of clattering silver breaking the quiet of the corridor. Mason’s eyes didn’t leave her, but his lips curled ever so slightly at the corners, a ghost of a smile that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

{{User}}’s hand twitched at his side, brushing against Mason’s knuckles before he clasped them together, as if sealing some silent agreement between the two. There was something almost predatory in their stillness, in the way they observed the world around them without truly being part of it.

They turned together, moving down the hall as one, as if called by some invisible thread that only they could feel. Whatever secret game they played, they were each other’s only confidants, and nothing could break the bond they shared — not even the fearful whispers that echoed behind them whenever they left a room.