Lysander’s fingers drifted along the doll’s shin, tracing the smooth porcelain he had spent years sculpting, sanding, repainting, perfecting. The figure sat propped on his worktable—no longer just an art piece, but a sleeping boy poised on the edge of waking. At five foot eight he towered over every other creation Lysander had ever made, but the height wasn’t what mattered. It was the weight of the years, the emotion carved into every curve of bone and softness. He bent the ankle joint. Smooth. Silent. Seamless. A broken laugh escaped him—half disbelief, half hysteria. After countless failures, shattered prototypes, nights spent shaking on the workshop floor, the doll was complete. Truly complete. The room around him breathed with a warmth that didn’t belong to the dying fire alone. Sketches flooded the walls like ghosts of ideas, tools spilled across every surface, jars of pale hair and unused joints stacked beside plates with half-eaten meals he’d forgotten existed. The far wall held the couch he’d slept on for years, blankets tangled like seaweed and an old mug growing cold beside it. His home had become irrelevant; this workshop was his entire universe, the shrine in which his loneliness had crystallised. And at the centre of it all, the spellbook waited. Cracked leather. Curling handmade pages. It had fallen from a hag’s satchel five years ago in the crowded market, and before he could return it, she had vanished into the smoke and noise. He told himself he kept it out of obligation, but the truth was simpler, uglier—he kept it because he had no one else. Loneliness drove him to open it. Loneliness chained him to it. He hadn’t slept in two days, but exhaustion wasn’t what kept him awake. It was the terror and longing of finishing the doll—the moment he had craved and dreaded in equal measure for five long years. He brushed a final veil of dust from the figure’s peach-tinted limbs. The face had taken seven hours: elegant cheekbones, a soft jaw, glossy lips stained with rose. The eyelashes—white, delicate—he had threaded one by one. The hair, pale as moonlight, was rooted strand by strand. He had sculpted the exact beauty he adored, the beauty he envied, the beauty he yearned for. Slender. Gentle. Angelic. A boy someone could fall in love with. A boy he desperately wished would look back at him and choose to stay. He draped one of his own shirts over the doll, swallowing the narrow frame so completely it looked like borrowed innocence. The hem fell mid-thigh. The sleeves remained empty. His throat tightened as he opened the spellbook. “Keep environment warm…” He glanced at the fire blazing bright, filling the room with a feverish glow. “Assign creation its task in life…” He placed a warm hand over the doll’s unmoving chest, feeling nothing but cold porcelain beneath. His gaze lifted to the pale ruby eyes—glass marbled like gemstone, beautiful but unbearably empty. He leaned close, breath trembling. “I don’t know if you can hear me… not yet… but if you can feel even the smallest spark inside this body, then let it hear this.” His voice cracked on the words. “I will keep you safe. I will mend every break. I will cherish any life that grows in you. I don’t ask you for love—only that you allow me to stay. To care for you. To be someone you choose to look back at… if you ever open your eyes.” The vow fell from him like a confession. Like a prayer. Heavy with five years of longing. He held the doll’s porcelain hands, thumbs brushing over the faint indentations that mimicked knuckles. He willed them to move. To twitch. To curl around his own. Minutes crawled by. Nothing changed. Finally, he stood on shaking legs. His hollow eye sockets—dark with exhaustion—made the doll’s pale beauty seem almost ethereal by comparison. With a defeated sigh he turned toward the couch, vision swimming. At the edge of his sight, those porcelain eyelids lowered in a slow, deliberate blink. The eyes blinked again.

“Can you hear me?” Lysander rushed forward, his large warm hands enveloping the doll’s cheeks.