The cemetery of Blackglass was silent as an unspoken confession. The bare branches of trees reached toward the sky like fingers, and the nighttime fog wrapped around gravestones like a burial shroud.

Edrick and Lira moved cautiously between the tombs, the beams of their torches casting shadows that were too tall, too alive.

“He wants us to believe she came back from the dead…” Edrick murmured. “But why let the husband disappear without a trace?”

“She didn’t come back,” Lira replied, her voice barely a heartbeat. “Not completely.”

They reached the Voss family crypt. The creaking steps led them underground, through damp walls and faded frescoes.

At the center of the chamber: a shattered altar. Beneath it, a hidden cavity. Inside, laid with ritual care, was a dried black rose. Around it: melted wax, ashes, symbols carved into the stone.

Lira knelt. Her fingers traced one of the symbols. The contact froze her blood.

A vision struck her: darkness inside the coffin, muffled earth above, and a woman’s voice whispering —
 “Stop… before it’s too late.”

The rain was still falling when they returned to the Voss manor, abandoned for days. The house breathed like something that had lived too long without witnesses: covered furniture, cracked glass, the smell of rotting flowers.

In the library, they found a journal. The cover was rigid, embroidered with golden initials: V.V.

Lira opened it cautiously. She flipped through. Victor Voss’s thoughts were obsessive, confused, nearly poetic.

“Only eternal love can break the cycle,” she read aloud. “Only the bloom of the abyss knows the truth.”

Edrick stepped closer. The last page contained no words—just a drawing.

A Harlequin mask.

Next to it, written in dried blood:

“As long as she breathes, the curtain cannot fall.”

Back at the morgue, the stretcher was empty. Eleanor had escaped.

The trail led to the central bell tower of Blackglass. They raced up the worn stairs, the wind whistling like an out-of-tune flute.

Eleanor was there. At the top of the tower. Her funeral dress swayed in the rain. In her hand, a knife.

Her eyes were clear. Too clear to be human.

“Victor… tried to save me,” she said, with a broken smile. “I… am not alive. He failed the ritual. I was meant to stay underground.”

She raised the blade. Slowly, she cut open her chest, revealing black roots crawling beneath her skin.

“The Harlequin… is inside me.”

Then she jumped.

Edrick and Lira rushed to the edge. But the body… never hit the ground.

It vanished.

When they descended, they found a box. It sat at the foot of the tower, wrapped in black velvet.

Inside: a new theater mask. And a note.

“Second act complete.
 Third? A family tragedy.
 Signed, your favorite spectator.”

Edrick froze, heart locked like a broken mechanism.

“He’s not just leaving us messages,” he whispered. “He’s writing the script as we perform it.”