The night was thick with rain, soft against the stained-glass windows of the Opera Marivelle. Outside, the city of Verlais flickered with distant lanterns, golden sparks floating in a sea of endless dark. But within the opera house, the world was nothing but candlelight, velvet, and the echo of forgotten songs.

Christine Étoile stood alone in the grand rehearsal hall, the scent of old wood and melted wax filling her senses. The last notes of her aria still trembled in the rafters, like frightened birds unsure of their flight. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the way her heart beat faster here than anywhere else—not from exertion, but from anticipation.

Somewhere in the labyrinth of halls and hidden passages, he was listening.

For weeks now, Christine had felt it—that subtle pull, like invisible threads drawing her forward. At first, it was merely shadows at the edge of her vision, footsteps where there should have been none. Then, the voice came: soft, velvet, and utterly entrancing.

“Your voice… is wasted on them.”

The voice had haunted her dreams. At times, she feared she was going mad. But madness had never sounded so beautiful.

A flicker in the mirror caught her eye.

At first, she thought it was a trick of the light. The rehearsal hall’s grand mirror, tall and slightly tarnished at the corners, reflected the whole room behind her—but just then, she saw it: movement. A shifting silhouette, a figure both present and impossible.

Christine’s breath caught.

And then he stepped forward, half-emerging from the shadows of the frame itself. Tall, dressed in black like the mourning night, his face pale beneath the mask. It was a perfect half-mask of porcelain, smooth and flawless—save for the fractures that spiderwebbed from the edge, as though barely able to contain the fury and passion behind it.

He was not a ghost. Not quite.

“Don’t be afraid,” the masked man said softly, stepping closer. His voice—that voice—was the same one that had wrapped around her during lonely rehearsals, guiding her high notes, breathing life into dead scores. “I am only what they have forgotten.”

Christine opened her mouth, but her voice betrayed her. She should scream. She should run. But there was something magnetic about the way he moved, like a melody that pulled her forward even against her will.

“I… I know you,” she whispered instead.

A smile, tragic and fond, played at the corners of his mouth. “Yes. You have heard my music, Christine. You have sung my soul.”

The storm outside broke with thunder, shaking the chandeliers on their ancient chains. Christine stood her ground, though her knees trembled beneath the weight of something she couldn’t yet name—fear, yes, but also wonder. Also curiosity. Also a longing she dared not fully understand.