The Stranger in the Halls

Location: Rosehall Palace — East Wing Corridor

Footsteps.

Not mine. Not the puppet's.

They rang through the corridor beyond the Forbidden Archive — deliberate, slow, echoing louder than they should in a place so long sealed by silence.

I didn't speak. I simply looked at the puppet.

It nodded once and stepped back into the shadows of the room, vanishing between rows of dusted shelves like it had never been there at all.

I was alone. At least, I was supposed to be.

But now there was someone walking these halls.

The corridor that led from the archive was long and narrow — framed by crumbling arches, their stone bones heavy with the weight of years and silence. Time didn't move here. It lingered.

And yet… someone was here.

I moved carefully, the hem of my gown brushing against the cracked tiles. A breeze kissed my cheek — cold and sweet and wrong. It carried a scent I hadn't smelled in over a hundred years.

Smoke. Ash. Snow.

And then — voice.

"I expected you to look older."

I froze.

A figure stood at the far end of the hallway, shrouded in shadows cast by the broken stained glass above. The light that filtered through was colorless — the world drained of every hue except grey and crimson.

I stepped forward once. "Who are you?"

The stranger tilted his head. "I could ask the same. But I already know."

He took a step into the light.

He wasn't old — not in body. But there was a weight to him. His eyes were tired, like a man who'd seen too many things that couldn't be explained and had stopped trying. A long coat, ash-dark, fluttered behind him like wings. His boots were caked in frozen mud.

There was a scar across his neck — thin as a thread, deep as a secret.

I frowned. "Are you… real?"

He smiled, thin and crooked. "I ask myself that often."

I didn't smile back. "You shouldn't be here. This palace is under a curse."

He looked past me — to the corridor behind, to the mirror I had just fled.

"Is it?" he murmured. "Or is it waking up?"

I said nothing.

He took another step, slow and unthreatening. "You slept for a hundred years. I watched your kingdom rot under snow and ivy. I watched the vines curl around the towers like veins. No one came. No one dared. Until me."

"Why now?" I asked. My voice didn't tremble. But my heart did.

He paused. "Because the dreams began bleeding."

"What dreams?"

"Yours."

The corridor was too quiet.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I've seen them." His voice dropped. "The nightmares spreading like rot across the Eastern kingdoms. People screaming in their sleep. Dying in their beds with their eyes wide open. They whisper your name before they die."

I felt the words like ice in my lungs.

"Liar."

He shrugged. "Truth and terror are twins, Princess. You just never learned which one was older."

I stepped closer now — the need to understand stronger than the fear trying to claw up my spine.

"What's your name?"

"Call me Elias."

That wasn't a name I knew. But it felt like one I should've.

He walked past me then, slow and deliberate, as if he owned this crumbling ruin. His fingers brushed the stone walls — almost reverent.

"Rosehall," he murmured. "I remember when it was alive."

"You… knew this place?"

"I knew the people who built it. The ones who cursed it."

I turned. "Then you know how to end it."

He looked at me, then — really looked. His eyes were the color of stormwater, and they didn't blink often.

"End it? Princess, this is just the beginning."

There was something in his coat — a glimmer of glass.

"A shard?" I asked.

He drew it out — carefully.

A sliver of mirror.

But unlike the cursed ones, this one shimmered with shifting shapes — impossible to follow, impossible to name. It hummed in the air like it wanted to speak, like it knew me.

He held it out.

"This came from your dream. You broke it when you screamed."

I didn't remember screaming.

But I took it anyway.

The shard was warm.

Elias lowered his hand. "You're the key, Aurora. But you're also the door."

"To what?"

He didn't answer right away.

Instead, he stepped away, turning down the next hall, boots echoing like clock hands counting down.

He paused at the end and looked back.

"When the mirrors begin to sing, don't listen. That's how they open."

Then he vanished down the corridor, his shadow flickering out like a candle in wind.

I stood there for a long time, shard in hand, heartbeat loud.

The mirror in the archive had shown me a part of myself left behind.

But Elias?

He carried a shard of something deeper.

And he said the dreams were bleeding.

Which meant something darker than sleep was coming for me.

And this time, I might not wake.