Read Chapter 10: The First Vision

The dressing room smelled of dust and rosin, the air thick with decades of powdered makeup and dried sweat. Élodie had claimed the smallest room on the second floor—the one farthest from Laure’s triumphant laughter echoing down the corridor. She’d meant to rest her voice, maybe review the blocking notes, but her body betrayed her the moment she sank onto the velvet chaise.

Sleep came like a curtain drop.

She was standing on the stage of the Théâtre des Ombres, but not the theater she knew. The paint was fresh, the gilding bright, the velvet seats un-faded. Gaslight flickered from sconces that had been converted to electricity years before her birth. The audience was a blur of dark suits and pearl necklaces, their faces indistinct, their applause a distant roar that seemed to come from underwater.

Céleste stood at center stage.

Élodie recognized her instantly—not from photographs, but from something deeper, something bone-deep. The diva wore a gown of deep crimson, her dark hair piled high and threaded with pearls. She was younger than the faded images in Julien’s scrapbook, perhaps twenty-five, radiant with a beauty that made the very air around her shimmer.

And she was singing.

The melody rose from some place beyond the vocal cords, a lament so pure that Élodie felt her own throat constrict in sympathy. The words were French, but older French, the kind that rolled off the tongue like honey and vinegar.

*“Mon amour, mon ombre, mon tombeau—”*

My love, my shadow, my tomb.

The aria built, climbing note by note toward a pinnacle Élodie knew was coming, felt it in her chest like a second heartbeat. Céleste’s eyes swept the audience, searching for one face, one person. Her gaze passed over the orchestra, the balconies, the boxes—

Box One.

The man sat in shadow, but Élodie could see the shape of him. Tall. Broad-shouldered. A mask of black velvet covering the upper half of his face, leaving only a jaw that could have been carved from marble. He did not applaud. He did not move. He simply watched, like a predator studying its prey.

Céleste’s voice cracked on the final note.

Not from strain—from emotion. Her eyes had found the masked man, and whatever she saw there made her falter. The orchestra continued, oblivious, but the diva’s voice dropped to a whisper, a private message meant only for him.

*“Vous êtes venu. Je savais que vous viendriez.”*

You came. I knew you would come.

The masked man rose. His movements were fluid, almost dancer-like, as he stepped from the box and disappeared into the shadows of the corridor beyond. Céleste finished her aria to thunderous applause, but her eyes never left the place where he had vanished.

The scene shifted without transition, the way dreams do.

Élodie was backstage now, watching from behind a rack of costumes. Céleste stood before a mirror, her face a mask of controlled terror. She was removing her pearl earrings with trembling fingers, placing them carefully in a small velvet case.

“You’re certain this is what you want?” The voice came from nowhere, everywhere. An older woman’s voice, cracked with age and worry.

Céleste turned. “I have no choice, Maman. He knows about the letters. He’ll ruin us—ruin Papa. This is the only way.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Not for me.” Céleste’s smile was heartbreaking. “I chose this life. Now I must choose this end.”

The door opened. A silhouette filled the frame—the masked man, his face still hidden, a long dark coat draped over his shoulders.

“Are you ready, mademoiselle?”

Céleste nodded, but her hands betrayed her, twisting the velvet case until her knuckles went white. She walked toward him with the gait of a prisoner approaching the gallows. When she reached the door, she paused and looked back—directly at Élodie.

Their eyes met across a century of dust and silence.

Céleste’s lips moved, but the words came not from the dream-Céleste but from somewhere else. From beneath. From a place of damp earth and patient darkness.

*“Find me before the house falls silent. He is waiting. We are both waiting.”*

The masked man took her arm. Together they stepped through the doorway into absolute black—

Élodie woke gasping.

Her hand flew to her throat, her heart slamming against her ribs. The dressing room was dim, lit only by the single bulb above the mirror. The air was cold, impossibly cold for late spring, and her breath fogged in front of her face.

The locket.

It burned against her collarbone. She pulled it from beneath her blouse, the silver so hot it almost scalded her palm. The tiny portrait of Céleste seemed to glow from within, the painted eyes alive with silent pleading.

Élodie fumbled for her phone. 11:12 PM.

She’d come to the dressing room after the afternoon rehearsal. She remembered sitting down at—she checked the timestamp on a text from Julien—4:47 PM.

Six hours. She’d been unconscious for over six hours. But it had felt like minutes. Seconds, even.

The clock on the wall told a different story. The cheap battery-operated clock that hung above the mirror, the one she’d watched tick forward during countless boring rehearsals, showed 11:12 as well—the same time as her phone. But the second hand was frozen. Stuck at the twelve, quivering against an invisible barrier, as if time itself refused to move forward in this room.

A sound drifted through the walls.

Humming. Faint, female, melodic.

Élodie stood, her legs unsteady beneath her. She pressed her ear to the wall, but the sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was the tune from her dream—Céleste’s final aria, the lament, reduced to a ghost of itself, a whisper of melody that threaded through the plaster and the pipes.

*“Mon amour, mon ombre, mon tombeau—”*

The hum stopped.

The clock on the wall gave a shudder, and the second hand jumped forward, resuming its steady march. The cold air lifted, replaced by the familiar staleness of the old theater.

Élodie looked down at the locket. The warmth was fading, but she could still feel it, a lingering heat against her skin. She opened it with trembling fingers. Céleste’s portrait stared back at her, unchanged.

But in the reflection of the glass over the portrait—

A shadow moved behind her.

She spun, but the dressing room was empty. The mirror showed only her own pale face, her hair wild from sleep, her eyes wide with a fear she couldn’t quite name.

On the vanity table, arranged with deliberate precision, lay a single white rose.

No—not white. Its petals were stained at the edges, rusty brown like dried blood. It hadn’t been there when she’d entered the room. She was certain of it.

She reached for it, and her fingers brushed something hard beneath the stem. A small rectangle of card stock, yellowed with age, the ink faded but still legible:

*He walks the halls when midnight nears. The key you seek lies beneath the tears. Ask the one who watched us fall—she knows the name behind the wall.*

Élodie read it three times, her heart hammering. When she looked up at the mirror, a figure stood behind her.

Not Céleste.

A man. Tall. Broad-shouldered. A mask of black velvet covering the upper half of his face.

Then he was gone, and the mirror showed only her own reflection, pale and shaking.

Her phone buzzed. Julien: *At the café downstairs. Found something in my grandmother’s diary. Need you. Now.*

She grabbed the card and the rose, stuffing both into her bag. The sound of the ghost’s hum followed her down the corridor, fading as she reached the stairs, replaced by the distant thud of bass from the café below.

The clock on the dressing room wall ticked past midnight.