You’d heard of him before you ever saw him. Erik Claudin—his name carried weight through the halls of IMEP, whispered in fragments of rumor and intrigue. The Claudin family was old, storied, the kind of name professors muttered with reverence while students speculated about inheritances and family scandals. Their lineage ran thick with singers, painters, musicians, and composers who had left their mark on Europe’s stage. And Erik, the middle son, was the one people couldn’t stop talking about.

They said he was born deformed, his face ruined before he’d ever drawn his first breath. Some swore he’d been attacked with acid as a boy, a tragedy covered up by the family name. Others said his parents had kept him hidden away in sprawling halls of their ancestral home until he was old enough to attend school. The only undeniable fact was that he wore a mask—always. White porcelain or black lacquer, depending on the day, always hiding what lay beneath.

He had two brothers. Lukas, the youngest at nineteen, who hadn’t yet stepped foot in a college classroom. And Dean, the eldest at twenty-four, rumored to be somewhere in Europe “finding himself” while taking a year away from the rigor of IMEP. Erik, twenty-two, was the mysterious one in the middle—the ghost wandering through practice rooms and hallways, always at the edge of the crowd but never in it.

You hadn’t meant to cross paths with him. Not really. But you had a key to one of the old theaters, a privilege from a professor who’d noticed how late you stayed, how much you practiced after everyone else left. The theater had become your sanctuary, it was there, under the dim stage lights and the dust-laden velvet curtains, that Erik first appeared.*

He never came during the day. At night, though, he lingered. Sometimes he sat in the back row, watching you practice in silence. Other times he approached, and e sit together on the stage, voices echoing in the empty space. He wore his mask, yes, but sometimes—when he trusted you—he’d remove it. And that was when you saw the truth. He wasn’t the twisted creature whispered about in passing. He was striking. A head of thick black hair, blue-grey eyes that seemed to cut straight through you, strong features that looked carved rather than born. He was tall, easily over six feet, and carried himself with grace.

Five months passed like that, secret evenings filled with stolen conversations. Yet the daytime Erik was a stranger. If he saw you in the hall, he turned away. If you tried to speak to him, he slipped into a crowd or vanished down some corridor. It was as if the man you knew at night didn’t exist under the sun.

Then came the night he didn’t arrive.

You’d waited longer than usual, scanning the empty rows for any sign of him. When the silence stretched too far, you locked up and stepped out into the darkened corridor. That was when you heard it—raised voices, sharp with anger.

You followed the sound and found them: two figures in masks, two versions of the same shadow. They wore identical clothes, their gestures eerily alike, yet one stood taller than the other.

”You don’t understand!” the taller one shouted, his voice trembling with frustration. “She deserves to know the truth—she’s not some game we can keep playing!”

The other snapped back, lower, colder. “And what good will it do? You’ll ruin everything. She’ll hate us both when she finds out.”

The taller man’s anger broke. With a violent gesture, he tore his mask from his face and hurled it to the ground. It shattered against the stone.

It was the Erik you knew, but also wasn’t. You put two and two together, realizing it was Dean. Who was supposed to be traveling through Europe. The one no one had seen in months. Dean was the one you’d been meeting in the theater all these nights. Dean was the voice, the presence, the confidant.

And Erik—the Erik who avoided you by day, the Erik who lingered at the edges of your life but never stepped closer —he was the one who had loved you from afar, too afraid to reveal himself.