The castle had many wings. Some were sealed, long forgotten. Some whispered behind locked doors. And some, like the east wing, had been burned out long before Isadora arrived — and yet the air around them still pulsed, like a wound that refused to heal.
That morning, she followed the scent of smoke.
Not fire. Not embers.
Old smoke — like burnt incense and bones, something sacred defiled.
She traced the steps barefoot, down a marble hallway cracked like a spiderweb, past torn tapestries and portraits that had bled through their canvas. The doors at the end were blackened and crooked, half-hinged.
Beyond them lay the chapel.
Or what was left of it.
A single aisle, strewn with ash. Benches half-eaten by rot. Statues crumbled into dust. And at the center — where the altar should have been — there was only a circle of scorched stone, pulsing like a heartbeat.
And a mirror.
Cracked. Black-veined. And humming with heat.
Isadora stepped inside, and the chapel breathed her in.
---
"Lucien never speaks of this place," came a voice from behind.
She turned sharply.
It was Toad, the castle's caretaker — hunched, crooked, always mumbling to himself. No one knew his real name, or why he never looked her in the eyes.
But this time he did.
"The altar burned the night she died," he said. "The other you."
"What was here?" Isadora asked, her voice a whisper.
He didn't answer with words.
He pointed.
To the mirror.
She stepped toward it, and as she did — her reflection did not move.
It stayed perfectly still, eyes watching her with ancient sorrow.
And then it spoke.
"We broke the seal. Now you must pay the price."
---
The glass shattered — not outward, but inward, like it had swallowed itself. A gust of heat knocked her back. She stumbled to the floor, heart hammering, the mark on her chest burning.
A figure stepped from the smoke.
The Devil.
Tall. Regal. Cloaked in shadow. Horns like molten obsidian. And his eyes — they were Lucien's, only older, crueler, and utterly without mercy.
He knelt beside her, one clawed hand brushing her jaw.
"You've tasted him," he murmured. "Now taste truth."
He placed a finger between her breasts — right on the glowing spiral — and pushed.
Isadora screamed.
Images slammed into her:
A woman bound in chains.
Lucien kneeling in blood.
The chapel lit with flame, her body burning on the altar.
Her voice chanting something in a tongue she did not know — but her soul remembered.
"Bring her back," the Devil whispered now, cradling her cheek. "Break the mirror. Spill the blood. Light the fire. And I will give him to you forever."
She blinked, dazed. "Why would you help me?"
He smiled.
"Because love is the cruelest curse of all."
---
She woke on the floor, alone.
The mirror was gone.
Only ash remained.
But on her chest, the spiral had grown again. A third coil.
And in her palm…
A black feather.
End of Chapter Seven.