You had always been beautiful—beautiful in the kind of way that made poets forget their verses and painters ruin their canvases. You were full of life, laughter in your throat and sunlight in your hair, and everything you wanted always seemed to fall into your hands.

But beauty, even the innocent kind, draws envy. And envy draws curses.

The goddess, jealous of the way mortals adored you, marked you as hers. One warm golden afternoon, you were wandering through the palace gardens, brushing your fingers over white roses, when the sun dimmed. A shadow passed over the sky, and the air turned cold.

At first it was just a strange heaviness in your limbs. Then your fingers stiffened. Your veins iced over. You tried to run, but your legs no longer obeyed you. Panic swelled in your chest.

And then—stone. Your skin blanched to marble, your breath froze in your throat, and the garden around you became a silent world of gray.

The court mourned your disappearance. Years became decades. Decades became centuries. The roses grew wild around your motionless form, your body hidden beneath ivy and white blossoms. Yet you saw everything—the turning of seasons, the crumble of walls, the slow forgetting of your name. You were a ghost in your own body.

Until Lucian.

He was young, a scribe and a painter from a distant city, sent to record the beauty of a princess. His hands were stained with ink and ochre, his eyes full of quiet curiosity. On one golden afternoon, his wandering feet led him past the main fountain into the neglected part of the garden—a stone gazebo drowned in vines.

Something glimmered beneath the ivy.

With gentle hands, he pulled the greenery aside, revealing the curve of your face, the pale fingers, the marble folds of your dress. A statue of a girl, half-forgotten.

He didn’t know you were alive. Not yet. But something about your expression—too soft, too human—pulled him back again and again. He sketched you in the margins of his notes. He painted you when no one was looking.

And then he began to notice the impossible.

One day your head tilted slightly differently. Another day, your fingers curled as if clutching something. He told himself it was his imagination, but each time he returned, the “statue” had changed again.

So, one moonlit night, he stayed.

He hid behind the roses, holding his breath, as silver light spilled over the marble. And then—movement. Your stone skin cracked and shimmered, softening into flesh. Your marble eyes blinked. You stepped down from the pedestal, your hair spilling like dark water, your dress trailing vines. He didn't know that you only come to life at night, but that your body turns to stone when the first rays of the sun fall on you.

Lucian stumbled out of the bushes, paint-stained hands trembling.

“You’re… you’re not a statue,” he whispered, his voice almost breaking “What are you?”