After Alaric left, the bedroom fell into a deathly silence. The bite mark on the back of my neck throbbed with a cold, ghostly fire.
Sleep was impossible. Moonlight filtered through the arched gothic windows, stretching grotesque shadows across the floorboards. For some reason, my gaze kept drifting toward the end of the hallway—the place he had explicitly forbidden me to go.
A compulsion I couldn't resist urged me forward. Barefoot, I crept across the freezing hallway until I stood before the massive antique mirror. The clock had just struck midnight.
I looked into the glass. At first, there was only my own pale, terror-stricken face.
Then, the reflection warped.
In the mirror, a tall shadow materialized behind me. It was Alaric. His porcelain-cold hands were slowly snaking around my throat from behind, his head buried in the crook of my neck as if hungrily inhaling the scent of my blood.
I gasped and spun around—but the space behind me was empty. There was nothing but the vacant hallway and the sterile moonlight.
Trembling, I looked back at the glass. The image grew more horrific. My reflection began to wither; my skin peeled away like scorched rose petals, revealing gray bone beneath. It was as if our contract was literally draining the life out of me.
"No..." I stepped back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Suddenly, the surface of the mirror rippled like water. The scene shifted into a roaring inferno. Amidst the leaping flames, I saw Alaric as he was ten years ago. He wasn't the pale specter he was now; he was a handsome, vibrant young man.
He was screaming in the fire, his skin charring, yet his eyes remained fixed on me through the glass, burning with a terrifying resentment.
"Help me..." he pleaded silently, or perhaps, it was a curse.
"What are you doing?!!"
A cold voice sliced through the reality, right against my ear. I jolted around. Alaric was standing there, his eyes piercing through the dark, sharper than the flames in the mirror.
His long fingers brushed the ornate frame of the mirror, his voice a low, devilish whisper. "Didn't I tell you never to look into the mirror after midnight, Evangeline?"