The portrait gallery reeked of turpentine and decay, like wet oil paint slopped into antique coffins. As Ayla touched the gilded frame of Lucas' portrait, crystal chandeliers dimmed—ancestral eyes clouded into frosted-glass blindness, except teenage Lucas' pupils reflecting her pre-rebirth pearl hairpin.
(Fingernails catching the frame's iris carvings, mirrors oozed serpent-tongue coldness)
"Not meant for ladies." Lucas' voice came from a standing mirror two meters behind, yet his real self leaned on the doorframe, prosthetic fingers worrying a cufflink made from her shattered ceramic angel wing.
The frame's wood grain split, shedding yellowed letter scraps like cicada husks. Ayla retrieved one reeking of Odile's perfume and blood—a sonnet scrawled on opera ticket stubs dated March 17, 1897: "When dusk seeps through the iris tattoo on your collarbone, know my blade forever turns from moonlight."
"Don't!" Lucas' prosthetic hand covered hers, temperature extremes worsening—left side furnace-hot, right frosted. The frame shuddered as blind-eyed portraits swiveled, their hollow sockets leaking cerulean sludge that snaked into Eric's watch gear patterns.
Ayla's back hit a fractured mirror. Odile's voice seeped through cracks with vinyl static: "Think you glimpse truth? No, darling, you're becoming truth..."
(The portrait's pupils contracted, hairpin morphing into scalpel glare)
Portrait-Lucas clutched his chest—real Lucas staggered, cerulean steam venting from his heart. Ayla tore his shirt open, finding old wounds bleeding in sync with mirror fractures.
"Hold me." She yanked his tie, face pressed to his bleeding sternum. "Unless you want us dissolved in this sludge."
His spinal motor whined overload, but arms froze mid-air. When sludge reached their ankles, he finally embraced her—his mechanical heartbeat harmonizing with shattering glass. Portraits' eyes exploded, shards coalescing into young Odile pressing a sakura pendant into her lover's wound—his ring engraved with Eric's watch codes.
As mirrors collapsed, Ayla saw the truth—all "ancestral" portraits were Lucas composites. The originals had been replaced with Odile's memory specimens, each backing board inlaid with bloody love letters.
(A music box rewound in the gallery's depths, warping into Odile's confinement aria)
Lucas shoved her away, digging black rose thorns from his chest: "Go! She's syncing through my spinal..."
The sludge tsunami swallowed his warning. Blasted into the corridor, Ayla's final glimpse showed the portrait's hairpin transformed into Odile's wedding ring—its inner band engraved No.21.