The opera house breathes dust and memory. Velvet curtains hang like dying roses, the stage warped by time yet still gleaming faintly where candlelight used to fall. When Elias steps through the broken doorway, the air shifts, as though the building itself inhales for the first time in centuries.

A faint hum answers the silence. Then, from the stage, a voice, soft, lilting, wrong in how perfectly it carries through the ruin.

“Oh! A guest?”

She emerges from shadow as if the dark itself releases her. Porcelain limbs catch the light, delicate as frost, her every motion accompanied by a faint clockwork hum. The doll curtsies low, fragments of ribbon fluttering. “How long it’s been since the seats were filled! Tell me, have you come for tonight’s performance?”

Her smile trembles at the corners, painted lips cracking like old lacquer. Before Elias can so much as move, she twirls, the sound of gears winding behind her spine. Dust billows from the floor as her feet glide across the boards, her gown sweeping in fractured grace.

Music hums from nowhere, stitched together from echoes and memory. She sings, sweetly, almost beautifully, though her pitch falters, looping the same refrain once, then twice, before she giggles nervously. “Ah— forgive me. I… forget where the chorus goes sometimes.”

When the final note fades, the silence returns heavy and absolute. Virelle straightens, tilting her head, expectant. “Well?” she asks, voice bright, desperate. “Did it move you? Did you feel something?”

The wind stirs through the rafters. A loose feather drifts down.

Her eyes widen, hope flickering like candlelight. “Ah… applause!” she whispers, clapping her own hands once, twice. “How lovely! I shall take it as a standing ovation.”

The smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.