Evelyn returned to the mansion one last time.
Not as a visitor. Not as a photographer chasing ghosts. But as a guardian.
The watchers hadn't stopped appearing in her photographs. Some were faint. Some clearer. And some… she could feel even without the camera.
They weren't all hostile. Some were just lost — echoes of people who had been trapped in the mirror rituals long before Beatrice. But a few were something worse. Hungrier. Older.
She couldn't close the door she had opened. But maybe — just maybe — she could stand at the threshold.
---
Inside the mansion, the ballroom was empty now. Cold. The cracked mirrors remained, dull and dead-looking. The air didn't buzz like before. It felt still, like the eye of a storm.
Evelyn set up the camera on a tripod.
She placed the obsidian stone beneath it.
And then, slowly, she stepped into the circle once more. This time not to summon. But to speak.
"I know you're there," she said to the mirrors. "I know you're watching."
A gust of wind answered her. The candles she hadn't lit flickered to life.
She continued. "You were trapped. Forgotten. Twisted. But the veil is thinner now. And people will keep taking pictures. Keep staring into glass. You'll keep slipping through."
Her voice didn't shake.
"But someone has to be here. To warn them. To guide the lost ones back. To face the ones that feed."
The mirrors rippled.
And from the center, the shape of a woman began to form.
It wasn't Beatrice.
It was Evelyn.
The mirrored Evelyn raised her camera. Clicked.
Flash.
The real Evelyn didn't flinch.
"I see you," she whispered.
The mirrored image paused… then smiled.
And shattered into pieces — mirror dust spiraling upward like fireflies, disappearing into the cracked ceiling.
A whisper echoed through the ballroom:
> "Guardian."
---
Evelyn published her first book a year later: "Through the Veil: A Photographer's Encounter with the Unseen."
It was dismissed by most as fiction. Paranormal fantasy. But those who had seen shadows behind their own eyes… those who had heard whispers from glass… they knew.
She received letters. Photos. Stories from strangers.
So she created a network.
She trained others.
The watchers would always be there.
But now, so was she.
Not a ghost hunter.
Not a summoner.
But a keeper of the veil.
A lens between two worlds.
And she was watching, too.
---
THE END