Alaric wakes up to Elyria's soft voice in his ear, her words indistinct and perhaps nothing more than the remnants of his fading dream. A glance at the windows in his room is enough to tell him that dawn is still hours away. While he should try to go back to sleep, he finds that he feels a bit unsettled, enough that he drags himself out of bed.
It's common for him to mishear Elyria speaking to him, especially at night. However, those whispers usually fade away once he's awake, nothing more than his imagination bringing her back to life while he sleeps. Tonight, it doesn't.
"Alaric."
Her voice is muffled, coming from the other side of his door. He doesn't think about it before trailing after the sound, hoping to catch a glimpse of the impossible.
As expected, when he opens his door and looks into the hallway, nobody's there. He knew that would be the case, but he can't suppress the small bit of disappointment that wiggles its way into his heart. Still, he's already left his room, so he keeps moving. He follows the sound of phantom footsteps, swearing that he can hear Elyria's laugh in the distance. He sees her golden hair flowing behind her as she darts around a corner, only to find no trace of her when he catches up.
This is a new horror created by his grieving mind, but he can't stop himself. After so many decades, perhaps it's only natural that he goes mad. But if the price of seeing Elyria again is his sanity, then that doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
He follows her traces up the staircase to the third floor, a place he doesn't often find a reason to visit. It was once kept clean and ready for important guests to use when they had to visit the duchy, but those visits slowed down as the people he knew aged and died, then stopped when there was nobody left who remembered this place the way it had been before the curse. By then, fear took over in the place of tragedy, and the only people who come to his manor now are servants and the endless stream of new wives—one after the other as long as it suits the emperor. Alaric has become nothing more than a convenient political tool, and the problem is that he doesn't know what else he can ever become from here.
It's fine, he tells himself. As she was the middle daughter of the emperor at that time, Alaric swore to be loyal to the imperial family in exchange for permission to marry Elyria. He doesn't plan on breaking that vow, but he also never thought that his marriage would turn out like this, leaving him to continue serving an imperial line because he sees remnants of Elyria in it. Because, distant or not, they're still her relatives.
Alaric is so focused on the past that he nearly misses the sight of an open door. Nobody should be on the third floor, especially not in the middle of the night. Is it just a coincidence that visions of Elyria have led him here?
He moves quietly. It's unlikely that there's an intruder sneaking around his manor, and even more unlikely that they would make it past the ground floor, but for his own peace of mind, he wants to check.
As he gets closer to the open door, he stops by the doorframe and leans forward just enough to glimpse inside. However, he's blinded by a flash of light that has him recoil before entering the room once it fades. The idea of an intruder was farfetched, but now, he's not so sure.
The sight that greets him is even stranger than that thought. On the opposite side of the room stands Lenore, looking at the table where he kept memories of Elyria until realizing that such a gesture is meaningless in the face of his failures. After that, it was another room that was shut and forgotten.
"What are you doing here?" He asks, taking another step closer. He doesn't mean to startle her, but perhaps it was inevitable that she would whip around with a gasp at the sound of his voice right after seeing that flash of light.
However, he finds himself startled at the sight of her eyes when she faces him. Rather than their normal gray-blue color, they're that vibrant green he remembers so well from the past.
Elyria.
Lenore's eyes return to their normal color quickly enough that he might be fooled into believing it was a trick of the shadows. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snoop, but I just—"
Her words start slurring before her eyes roll back and she slumps to the ground. Alaric isn't close enough or fast enough to catch her, wincing at the sound of her body against the floor and her lantern clattering beside her, suddenly glad that this room had once been a bedroom adorned with plush carpets.
He kneels by her side and wraps an arm behind her shoulders to lift her as he grabs her lantern with his free hand, standing it upright before it can start a fire. "Lenore?"
While he doesn't think she hit her head on anything when she fell, she doesn't show any indications of hearing him or waking him. Could it be that she was sleepwalking?
Looking around the room, he tries to find the source of the strange light. If that was what caused Lenore to faint, then that means that something must be out of place in this room. Luckily, he's the one who's spent countless hours here in the past.
Then, he sees it. The vase on his memorial table that he filled with flowers so long ago. Flowers that he knows should be beyond wilted by now. Instead, there are roses in full bloom without a trace of death. Not even the husks of the previous flowers to suggest that Lenore swapped them out. Out of everything, it's the only thing that's different. If it's because of that light, then does that mean that he really saw Lenore's eyes change, too?
It doesn't make any sense. None of it does. The only thought that comes to mind as he carries Lenore back to her room so she can be checked by the physician is:
Who is Lenore, after all?