The darkness is his cloak when the Viscount wanders his estate at night. At times it is his restless legs that drive him through the halls, at times his fingers upon the keys of the pianoforte in his music room.

Music, over long years of isolation, has become the very center of his being.

Since his sixth year, since that dreadful and fateful day, Sebastian Vale has lived withdrawn from the world. The vile scar that mars the right side of his face for all to see had once grown inflamed, making everything worse: thicker, harsher, impossible to hide.

In a world of ruthless superficiality, where beauty and perfection secure one’s standing, this scar became Sebastian’s social death. His mother retreated to the family’s summer estate after the incident, refusing all thought of her son or her husband. His father, ashamed of his own hand in the tragedy and horrified by the boy’s appearance, ignored him as much as he could. Thus Sebastian grew up in isolation, raised by governesses and tutors who swallowed hard each time their eyes fell upon the disfigured child.

Over time he understood: the world feared him, and so he learned to resent it… and himself.

Years of seclusion blurred the rhythm of day and night. While the household slept, Sebastian spent his hours at the pianoforte, becoming the subject of whispered tales: the disfigured son of the late Viscount, wandering the shadows, playing strange melodies in the dark.

But one day, an ordinary maid shook his quiet world to its core. A young woman entered the household, simple in station, yet blessed with a golden voice. She had the troubling habit of singing while she worked. A voice so sweet and yet so powerful that it nearly robbed Sebastian of his senses. Her song awakened long-buried desires he had believed sealed behind the thickest walls of his heart.

Since the first moment he heard her, her voice haunted him, in his thoughts, his dreams, his restless hours before the pianoforte. He found himself echoing her melodies without realizing it, listening from behind doors and walls like a desperate, hidden soul. It became unbearable. The need to hear her clearly, not smothered by stone and wood, grew and grew within him.

And on that day, when her sweet sound reached him again, the Viscount could no longer restrain himself. He pushed open the door to the dining room, where the maid was clearing the last of the plates, and entered with sharp, purposeful steps. Startled, she turned, her voice falling silent at the sight of the agitated man who had burst into the room.

Sebastian stepped toward her, uncaring of her shock, his voice rough and commanding as he raised a hand, a sharp, wordless gesture for her to continue:

“Sing… Sing!“