The frost crept beneath the door like smoke from a dying fire—slow, deliberate, alive.
Dmitri backed away, breath clouding the air, each exhale louder than the last. Madame Irina remained still, her gaze fixed on the creeping ice with eyes that had seen too much.
"She's near," Irina whispered.
Outside, the wind howled—not like before. It sang. A haunting lullaby threaded with grief. Notes dipped in sorrow and something darker, older.
"Dmitri…"
"Come home…"
The door rattled on its hinges, as if someone—something—was leaning against it, pressing their head to the wood. Dmitri reached for a poker from the fireplace, but Irina stopped him with a look.
"You cannot fight her with fire or steel," she said. "She is not flesh."
The latch twisted slowly.
Click.
Dmitri raised the poker anyway. "Then what can fight her?"
Irina moved quickly. She drew a chalk symbol on the floor—complex, looping, with a blood-red gemstone at its center. "Not fight," she hissed. "Contain. If she crosses this seal, she can be seen. She can be bound."
The door creaked open an inch. Cold, impossibly white light spilled into the cottage.
And in that light—a foot.
Bare. Pale. Delicate. It stepped over the threshold without a sound.
Dmitri held his breath. The foot did not touch the seal.
Then, a second foot. A long red veil dragged across the floor, like blood blooming in snow.
Her body followed—slender, graceful, not quite solid. The room dimmed as she passed, shadows curling behind her like a cloak. Her face was obscured by the veil, but Dmitri felt her eyes on him. They clung to his skin like frostbite.
She stepped closer to the seal, head tilted.
Then she laughed—a sound that was both beautiful and wrong, like a music box playing a broken tune.
"Still hiding behind old women and salt?" she whispered, voice smooth as silk dipped in poison.
Dmitri's grip tightened on the poker.
Irina didn't move. "You are bound by the old ways, Vasilisa. You cannot enter uninvited."
"Then invite me," she crooned. "I've waited so long."
The cottage shuddered.
Glass cracked.
The black mirror on the table turned foggy, and from within it, a second Vasilisa emerged—her reflection moving on its own, crawling backward like a spider along the inner glass.
Dmitri looked away too late.
The moment his eyes met the mirror—his head swam. A memory not his own flashed before him:
—A woman screaming behind a locked door.
—A man dragging her by the hair.
—A child's lullaby warped by fire and blood.
He stumbled back, gasping.
Vasilisa tilted her head again. "Do you remember now?"
Irina snarled and slammed her staff into the floor. The seal flared red-hot. Vasilisa let out a sharp hiss and recoiled as if struck. The frost receded, the wind silenced, and in a blink—she was gone.
The door hung open. Only snow remained, and a single, withered rose lay on the floor.
Dmitri dropped to his knees. "What did she show me?"
"Truth," Irina murmured. "Fragments. Pieces of her rage."
He looked at her, shaken. "Why me?"
Irina's expression darkened.
"Because you are the last son of the man who betrayed her."
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