The room was silent, but Larissa's breath came in shallow bursts. The diary lay open on the bed, the last words glowing faintly before they faded into the page:
> The Ice King's throne has always been empty. Now the Queen arrives.
She didn't know what it meant exactly—not yet. But something inside her stirred, ancient and restless, like her soul recognized the message before her mind could grasp it.
The candles flickered violently.
Then the mirror whispered her name.
She turned toward it slowly. Her reflection shimmered—not mimicking her movements, but moving of its own volition.
"Larissa…" the voice crooned, like ice wind through a hollow cave. "Come and see…"
Her fingers curled around the diary as if it could anchor her to reality. But the air in the room bent, the walls seeming to stretch, and before she could stop herself, she stepped forward.
The surface of the mirror rippled like water.
And swallowed her whole.
---
She fell.
Not through space, but through memory. Flashes of things she'd forgotten—or never lived—spun around her: her mother's voice humming a lullaby… snow falling indoors… hands reaching for her from a cradle of frost.
Then—
She landed on stone.
The world was gray and white—like the manor, but dead. Empty. Echoing.
She stood in what looked like a mirrored version of the grand ballroom. The chandeliers were skeletal, the windows rimmed with black frost.
And in the center of the room sat a woman in a gown of ice.
Her eyes were blue, endless, and cold. Her lips were crimson as blood spilled on snow.
"Welcome home," the woman said.
Larissa's legs nearly buckled. "Who are you?"
"I am what's left of Anya Volkov," she replied. "And soon, you will be too."
....
Lukyan felt it the moment Larissa vanished.
The house groaned in protest. Doors slammed themselves shut. Wind howled through sealed corridors.
And her presence—the one warmth left in the manor—was gone.
He ran to her room. The diary lay open, the candles extinguished.
The mirror was still rippling.
"No," he breathed. "Not her. Not now."
But it was too late.
She had entered the trial.
---
Inside the mirror realm, Anya circled Larissa like a wolf.
"You think this house came alive for no reason?" Anya asked, her voice echoing across the frozen walls. "It was you, girl. You are the spark."
"I didn't ask for this," Larissa said, trembling.
"No. You were born for this."
With a flick of her fingers, the room shifted. Larissa stood in a burned-out cottage now—her childhood home. Flames licked the walls.
Her parents' voices screamed in the distance.
"Stop it!" she shouted.
"Face it," Anya hissed. "They made a deal. To keep you alive, they gave you to the manor. You've been its property since you were a child."
Larissa sank to her knees, tears freezing on her cheeks.
"You must choose," Anya said coldly. "Embrace your role… or lose yourself entirely."
The mark on Larissa's wrist pulsed like a heartbeat.
She looked up, eyes blazing.
"I am not your replacement."
The walls cracked. Ice shattered.
"I am the first of my kind."
---
Outside, in the real world, Lukyan placed his palm to the mirror.
"Bring her back," he whispered. "Bring her back, and take me instead."
But the mirror didn't listen.
And the house... growled.
A low, rumbling sound pulsed through the walls, like an animal warning a trespasser. The mirror flared with cold light, then went dark again. Lukyan backed away slightly, chest heaving.
He turned, only to find Dimitri watching him from the doorway.
"You knew she'd go in eventually," Dimitri said.
"I thought I had more time," Lukyan growled. "I thought I could protect her."
Dimitri stepped forward, arms crossed. "You can't protect someone from their blood, Lukyan. You of all people should know that."
"She's not like us."
"No," Dimitri said. "She's worse. She was chosen. You and I? We were cursed. Bound by someone else's sin. But Larissa? She's the key to unmaking or remaking the entire house. You don't just protect someone like that, you either kneel or destroy them."
Lukyan grabbed his brother by the collar, shoving him hard into the wall. "If you try to harm her—"
Dimitri smiled coolly, unfazed. "Relax, big brother. I want to see what she becomes. Don't you?"
---
Inside the Mirror Realm
Larissa stood tall now, knees no longer buckling under the weight of truth.
The trial was breaking her—but it was also remaking her.
The version of her childhood home burned around her, but she no longer flinched at the fire. She walked through the smoke, her body unaffected. The heat kissed her skin like memory, not pain.
Anya's ghostly figure hovered nearby, watching.
"You think you're immune," she said softly. "You think because the house bends to you now, it won't consume you. That's how I started too."
"No," Larissa murmured, her voice calm but cutting. "You wanted power. You became the curse."
"You think you're better than me?"
"I think I have a choice. And I choose to end this."
The trial responded.
The flames vanished.
The snow returned—whirling upward in a spiral, forming a staircase of ice that led into the sky.
Anya hissed. "You don't know what you're doing. That staircase leads to the heart of the house. You go there—you'll never return the same."
"Good," Larissa said. "Because the girl I was before I entered the mirror… she's already gone."
With a final glance behind her, Larissa climbed.
---
In the Manor – Later that Night
Lukyan sat at the foot of Larissa's bed, her absence like a wound stitched open. He held the music box in his hands, the same one he'd hidden in the attic for years.
He opened it.
The familiar lullaby played, but this time, the melody shifted near the end—softening into something sadder. More intimate.
A piece she hadn't heard before.
A memory hidden in music.
He remembered the night he found her, as a child, unconscious near the broken gate. Her parents dead. The storm unnatural. The snow had whispered her name even then.
She wasn't a stranger to this house.
She was its beginning.
And maybe… its end.
"I'll find you," he whispered to the mirror. "No matter what I have to become."
Then he stood—and walked straight into the glass.
The mirror accepted him without hesitation.
---