Buried Letters

The night was a velvet shroud around the crumbling opera house, wrapping its broken arches and shattered windows in a ghostly stillness. Isabelle leaned against the iron gate for a moment, feeling the chill of the night seep through her coat. She shouldn't be here. Not alone. Not after what she had just witnessed at Lemoine's mansion — the grotesque image of gold choking a man who had built his life on illusions.

But instincts had drawn her here, a whisper at the back of her mind that refused to be silenced.

The golden leaves, the bells, the crumbling beauty of the opera house — it all connected somehow. And somewhere within these ruins was the next piece of the puzzle. Maybe even a piece of Vivienne herself.

With cautious steps, Isabelle pushed through the gate, the old metal creaking like a dying breath. The garden behind the opera house — if it could still be called a garden — was a forgotten place, overgrown and wild. Twisting ivy suffocated marble statues, weeds strangled the paths, and dead leaves carpeted the ground. Moonlight sifted through the broken treetops, casting long, skeletal shadows across the earth.

She remembered the photographs she had seen in the archives — how the garden had once been a place of music and laughter, a retreat for performers between acts. Now, it was a cemetery of forgotten dreams.

She moved carefully, her boots crunching against gravel and brittle twigs. Every step felt heavier than the last, as if the very earth resented her intrusion.

A glint caught her eye. Near the statue of an angel — its wings cracked and moss-streaked — something metallic protruded from the ground. Isabelle approached, heart pounding, and knelt down. It wasn't metal, she realized, but the corner of a small box, half-buried beneath layers of soil and time.

Instinct screamed at her to be cautious, but her hands moved anyway, scraping away the dirt with numb fingers until she unearthed it fully.

It was an old, weathered tin, the kind that might have once held opera programs or sheet music. A faded insignia — a cracked gold lyre — was still visible on its lid.

Hands trembling slightly, Isabelle pried it open.

Inside, wrapped in brittle oilcloth, was a single folded piece of paper, stained and crumbling at the edges. The ink had faded, but the handwriting was unmistakable — sharp, elegant, the kind Isabelle remembered from her childhood birthday cards, from notes Vivienne used to pass in class.

She unfolded the paper slowly, her heart hammering so loudly she could barely hear anything else.

It was a letter.

And it was addressed to her.

"Isabelle,

If you're reading this, it means you didn't give up. It means you're still looking for me. You have to know — I didn't leave by choice. They made me disappear. They told me lies, made promises they never intended to keep.

I don't know how much time I have left.

They are watching everything. Even now, even here.

There are things hidden in the walls, in the mirrors. Symbols, paths, clues they think only they can read. But I know you, Isabelle. You'll see what they want hidden. You always did.

Don't trust the beautiful faces. Don't trust those who offer kindness first.

Find the place where the crows gather.

Follow the music you can't hear.

I love you. I always have.

I am not dead.

They made me write this.

I am not dead."

The last words, underlined in a desperate, jagged scrawl, froze Isabelle where she knelt.

They made me write this.

I am not dead.

The letter shook in her hands. Her breath caught in her throat.

Vivienne was alive.

The realization hit her like a thunderclap. Alive. After all this time, after the masquerade masks and the blood-stained clues, the nightmarish opera house and the twisted games — Vivienne wasn't a ghost. She was a prisoner. Somewhere.

The crows... the music you can't hear...

It wasn't just metaphor. It was a trail, a coded map only someone who truly knew Vivienne could follow.

Isabelle shoved the letter inside her coat, standing abruptly. Every instinct screamed for her to run, to get this evidence back to Estelle, to Jean-Baptiste, to anyone who could help. But something held her there — a prickle at the back of her neck.

The night around her had shifted.

The silence was no longer empty. It was listening.

She backed away from the angel statue, eyes scanning the shadows between the trees. The iron gate still hung open. The decaying opera house loomed behind her, its broken windows like watchful eyes.

A soft sound drifted through the air.

A whisper.

At first, she thought it was the wind, sifting through dead leaves. But no — it was too deliberate, too human.

A word. A name.

Her name.

"Isabelle..."

It slithered through the garden like smoke, freezing her blood.

She spun around, searching the darkness.

Nothing. Only the ruins and the rustling trees.

Then she saw it.

Carved into the dirt at the base of the angel statue, fresh and crude, as if etched with a blade or clawed with bleeding fingers:

"THEY KNOW."

Her heart lurched into her throat. She stumbled back, nearly tripping over the uneven path. Somewhere above her, unseen among the broken arches of the opera house, a crow cried out—a dry, hoarse sound like laughter.

The letter burned against her chest like a brand. She had found a truth tonight — but in doing so, she had awakened something.

The opera house was not empty.

Vivienne's warning rang clearer now than ever before.

And Isabelle knew without question:

The hunters were no longer content to watch.

They were coming for her.

To be continued...