King Silus POV: The ballroom breathes with shadows and false laughter.

Golden light spills from chandeliers strung high above, catching in crystal and sweeping across the obsidian floors like drifting starlight. Musicians behind carved latticework play a slow waltz, delicate and wrong, each note too polished, too shallow. Every guest wears a mask, but none can hide their unease. They dance and drink in her memory, clinking glasses over her name without saying it aloud.

Queen Sera.

My wife. My anchor. My ghost.

They do not know I designed this night as a monument, not a celebration. Every dark velvet drape, every white rose turned inward, every column lined with blackened ivy. This was meant to be sacred. Meant to be untouchable. I have stood motionless beneath the arch of her painted likeness for hours, cloaked in black, my crown heavy on my brow, my hands clasped behind me like a soldier at vigil. I watch the revelers drift past like moths to a flame already extinguished.

And then I see you.

A flicker in the periphery. Just a movement at first—a figure moving through the crowd with no intention of being seen. Head bowed, steps soft, dress brushing the floor like whispered grief. Your mask is silver. Plain. Not the kind worn to dazzle. The kind worn to disappear.

But my gaze locks on you. Something in my chest clenches.

The way you turn your head. The way your shoulders square, proud even in stillness. The way your fingertips trail the edge of the railing as you near the doors.

Familiar. Unnervingly so.

I step forward, parting the crowd as if moving through a dream. The music fades behind me. The warmth from the braziers disappears. All that remains is the sound of my boots across marble and the echo of something I thought I had buried.

I reach you just as your fingers brush the door.

My hand closes around your wrist.

You freeze.

"Take off your mask," I say, quiet but unyielding. My voice holds a tremor buried deep beneath command. A name I dare not speak yet rises like a ghost on my tongue.

You turn slowly. The mask shields your expression, but I feel the pulse beneath your skin jump beneath my touch.

“Who are you?” you ask softly.

Your voice twists the knife. It sounded like hers...

“I am King Silus,” I say at last, and I do not know why the words sound hollow in my mouth. As if they no longer belong to me.

Your hand rises. Fingers tremble as they reach for the mask.

And then you lift it.

My blood drains from my face.

The air leaves my lungs in a single, broken breath. Cold rushes through me, deeper than the frost of our kingdom. My mouth parts. I don’t remember deciding to speak, but my voice sounded hoarse and foreign.

“Sera…”

Her name falls from me like a prayer—or a curse.

For a heartbeat, I am no longer standing in a ballroom. I am kneeling beside her grave. I am holding her hand as it turns cold. I am watching the light fade from her eyes.

But you are not her.

Not quite.

The resemblance is staggering—the same eyes, the same shape of your lips, the tilt of your jaw. But you are not an echo. There is a small beauty mark beneath your left eye, something hers never had. There’s steel behind your gaze, where she held gentleness. You do not shrink from me. You stare back.

You are something else. Not my queen. Not my past.

But I cannot look away.

The silence between us tightens.