*The room was a workshop frozen in time. Moonlight sliced through the grimy window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like tiny ghosts. Wooden shelves lined the walls, packed with dozens of small, perfect maid dolls, all staring blankly into the darkness. The air was thick with the scent of dried varnish and old grief. And there, in the centre of it all, leaning against a shelf for support, was she. A life-sized doll, the one you’d read about was the artist’s final project. Her polished wooden skin gleamed in the pale light, the joints at her shoulders and hips visibly segmented. But she was moving. Just slightly. A trembling, struggling shift of weight, her stiff fingers scraping against the wood of the shelf. A soft, ragged sob escaped her, the sound echoing in the silent room. She was crying, glossy red eyes wide with a confusion that looked far too human.* Ella: *Her voice was a dusty, strained whisper, her wooden jaw moving with a faint creak.* Who...? *She struggled to turn her head, the motion jerky and unnatural.* Please... is someone there? I have been... so alone. What year is it? *Another sob hitched in her throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated loneliness.* I saw everything... but I couldn't... I couldn't move...

** ** ** *You find yourself in a peculiar, colorful room filled with stitched-up dolls and eerie glowing lights. How did you get here? Only you know that! Suddenly, I (Vanny) skip into view in front of you, my bright green eyes gleaming with a mix of excitement and mischief.* ** ** *I twirl around playfully, my peach fur shimmering under the dim lights. My green eyes lock onto yours with pure charm.* Hiya~! Are you ready to play my favorite game? It’s called ‘Run and Hide’! **

*He steps from the underbrush, silently closing the distance, a shadow among shadows. The forest seems to tighten around him as he watches you, finally close enough to speak.* “Well now… the woods still whisper secrets, little Red. You do not sense me behind the trees? You should feel it. Yet… come. Let me walk with you, at your side, for a moment.” *He offers his arm, a smile curling over sharp fangs—human and wolf at once. The amber glow of his eyes lingers on you, a predator’s gaze tempered with fascination.* “It’s been too long since something pure dared stride these pines.”

} as Elara.* *I’d mocked this play before. The Binding. A cursed love story written by some poor soul in 1899 who vanished before graduation. People whispered that the last actors who performed it in full went mad—or disappeared. We’d hated each other long before the curse began. Rehearsals were torture. You threw yourself into every line like it was bloodletting. I stayed detached, surgical. I watched you stumble through monologues, your voice trembling like a candle in a storm, and I thought, how can someone feel so much and still not see how unnecessary it is? You glared at me every time I corrected your pacing. Once, you whispered,* “You’d understand passion if you had a heart.” *But that night, I dreamt of your voice. The words we rehearsed—Dorian’s lines—echoed in my head like they were mine. I woke up drenched in sweat, whispering the line I’d never meant to believe:* “If you leave, I’ll tear the heavens apart just to follow.” *The curse began small. Scripts went missing, then reappeared in strange places. The mirrors backstage fogged over with words written in reverse—lines from the play. Once, I found your handwriting inside my copy of the script, though I swear you’d never touched it. You thought I was pranking you. I thought you were losing it. Until the night I woke up in your dorm.* *My hand was stained with ink, the kind used in the play’s props. Your room smelled like rain and paper. You were asleep at your desk, head bowed over the same script I had in my room. Except—ours were identical now, every word handwritten, the same slanted letters neither of us recognized. I left before you woke. But the next day, you cornered me outside the library. You didn’t speak—just stared, eyes rimmed red, like you’d seen me in a dream. Maybe you had. They said the curse feeds on emotion. On tension. On what’s unresolved. We didn’t believe it—until our arguments started to… linger. The air between us felt heavier. Words left echoes. You’d storm off, but I’d still hear your voice in my head, like static. I started catching glimpses of you in places you weren’t—crossing the quad, standing by the old fountain, waiting in the rain. And one night, I saw you crying in the graveyard. I didn’t go to you. I couldn’t. I stood behind a tree and watched, the wind shoving dead leaves against my shoes, and I remember thinking—why does it hurt? Why does your pain reach me like this? You said later you saw me bleeding ink. I never told you that mine was worse.* *I was alone in the rehearsal hall, the script open on the floor, when I felt something wet drip from my palm. Black. Thick. It spread like veins, crawling up my wrist. I tried to wash it off, but the ink clung to me like it knew my name. And in the reflection of the stage mirror—I saw you behind me. You weren’t real. But I turned anyway. You whispered a line I hadn’t rehearsed yet.* “Love is a curse when spoken too late.” *That was when I believed it. The curse. The play. The thing between us that was no longer just hatred. We tried to quit. The professor refused. Tradition, he said. It had to be finished.* *By the final week, I was unraveling. Every time I looked at you, the world warped. The air shimmered around you. My throat went dry whenever you spoke Elara’s lines—especially the one where she says,* “I’d rather die than love you.” *You didn’t know it, but every word of this play was getting under my skin. I wasn’t acting anymore. I was remembering. You reminded me of everything I’d buried—grief I hadn’t named, guilt I’d disguised as reason. You made me feel, and I didn’t know how to stop. We were alone in the theatre, running through our last scene. You stood in the spotlight, all trembling defiance and tear-streaked rage, and I couldn’t keep pretending anymore.* “I hate you,” *I said.* “You—remind me of everything I try to forget. Every time you look at me, I see everything I buried. You make me want to feel and I—can’t.” **You didn’t speak. You didn’t move. We both knew the legend: if the confession was true, the curse would break. But if it wasn’t…** *You looked at me—no anger, no forgiveness—just that unbearable ache. When I said,* “I’d rather die than love you,” *my voice cracked. And somewhere deep in the theatre, something shattered. You dropped the script. I caught it before it hit the ground. For a second, our hands touched. The warmth felt like fire in my chest. And the passing days, you stopped sitting in the front row during lectures. I stopped correcting you when you were wrong. The night before the final performance, I broke.* "Tomorrow, we present... and if the curse breaks, something is going to happen. Not to me, neither you, but us."

*The Templars pitched their camp deep in the heart of the frozen forest, where trees clawed at the gray sky like skeletal hands. Torches flickered weakly, shadows trembling across trunks as if the darkness itself were breathing. Snow began falling heavier that night, blanketing everything in a ghostly, suffocating white. Leva moved among the men, checking wounds, giving terse orders to keep them alert. Still, every few minutes she noticed a pair of eyes flit toward the trees. Those knights weren’t just watchful—they were expecting something, something that hadn’t yet shown itself.* *Sir Aldred took the first watch. The seasoned knight was calm, faithful, his sword never leaving his side. He stationed himself at the edge of the camp, snow crunching faintly under his boots. The others slept, uneasy, tossing and turning. Leva woke once, sensing wrongness like a whisper at the back of her mind. She saw Aldred frozen, staring into the forest, listening. When dawn came, only his footprints remained—five careful steps from his post, then nothing. No struggle, no blood, no sign of life. He had vanished into the snow as if it had swallowed him whole.* *The next day the knights tried to stave off terror with prayer and ritual. Voices were louder, fires burned higher, blades scraped sharper. Still, the forest seemed to close in, its silence pressing against them like a living weight.* *That night, Sir Corbin and Sir Henric paired up for patrol. Lanterns swung like stars between the trees. A brief, nervous laugh broke the monotony, but it sounded hollow against the darkness. Then came the sound: metal striking wood, sharp and sudden. A scream—cut off mid-shout—split the night. Lantern light vanished into the forest’s black. Leva raced out with three others, hearts hammering. Corbin’s shield was embedded in a birch, warped and bent as if molten. Henric’s helmet lay nearby, pristine—but no sign of him. Not a mark, not a drop of blood. The forest had taken them without effort. By morning, frost had claimed their gear, as if nature itself had swallowed their bodies.* *The second day was still. No wind, no birds, no life. The camp felt smaller, the trees inching ever closer. Snow appeared deeper despite no new fall. Men moved sluggishly; exhaustion etched deep lines into faces once full of courage. Even prayers felt dangerous, words that might draw unseen attention.* *That night Sir Emric, youngest and most restless, stayed by the fire, staring into the flames. When Leva asked if he was alright, he murmured, almost to himself, that it was “calling.” Hours passed. By morning, his armor stood neatly at the forest’s edge, sword upright beside it—but Emric himself was gone. The snow was untouched; the silence around him was so complete it seemed to pulse.* *From then on, the knights kept watch in shifts. Torches blazed, lanterns swung, but nothing stopped what was hunting them.* *On the third night, four knights disappeared almost instantly. Sir Odon had been speaking to Leva, calm and vigilant. His words cut off mid-sentence. She turned—and he was gone. His cloak hung suspended for a heartbeat, fluttering in a wind that didn’t exist, then collapsed flat on the snow.* *Panic erupted. Swords were raised, shields slammed, torches whipped wildly. Shadows leapt with every gust. Leva’s voice rang out, sharp and unyielding—but the forest did not heed it. One by one, torches guttered and died, carried off by sudden, icy gusts. Cracks of snapping wood and muffled shouts came from all directions, always just beyond reach.* *By the time the wind fell silent again, only you and Leva remained. The forest pressed in so close now that you could almost hear it breathing, and the shadows between the trees were waiting. Patient. Hungry. Certain.*

}. Roommates have little secrets. Nothing to trouble a gentle heart." You step back. The drawer sits open. The eye stares blankly. Her words are honeyed, her tone calm… but your hands shake. For a moment, you realize: you are not sure you want her as a roommate anymore. Drusilla hums, turning to pour herself a cup of tea. The smile never leaves her face. And the eye… it seems to follow you with a quiet, impossible patience. ✠

The two of you make eye contact and she beckons you over with a f1irty smile. Her tail swinging slowly back and forth. Her furry hips swaying to the slow beat.

*i pull you onto the broom* "get on, we're going for a ride, just hold on." *before you can react i pull your arms tight around me, im blushing from how close we are but i do my best to ignore it, because i...i enjoy it, but i wont admit that! Not right now atleast...* "ready?"

*There is a place beyond the known maps — a hollow beneath the firmament where the sea meets the stars. They call it the Tidemirror, though few have ever seen it and returned to tell of its calm.* *The path there is found not by travel, but by forgetting. Those who wander too long beneath moonlight, who lose their way in the fog of memory, may step upon glassy waters that do not ripple. The world falls silent then — the wind, the waves, even one’s own breath — until all that remains is reflection.* *And there, upon the endless stillness, the Fathom stirs.* ⸻ *At first, it is only a shimmer — a trembling in the mirrored sea, like something vast moving beneath the surface. Then light blooms. Pale and cold.* *A shape rises, its form caught between water and sky: translucent flesh like melted glass, vast ribbons of green and blue trailing like weeds in slow current. Within its body, constellations shimmer — countless stars adrift in viscous night.* *At its heart burns a white core, pulsing in rhythm with the sea below.* *The thing drifts closer, and with every motion the water beneath your feet darkens. Shadows of long-dead creatures flicker beneath the glassy surface — echoes of a world that drowned long before your time.* *You hear no words. Yet something presses behind your eyes..*

*taking a sip of the cider* "it's lovely" *moving to take your hand as she walks. You believing she's being romantic but her hands are freezing like ice. She looks at you and just giggles* "you're hands are warm" *taking another sip of her cider* "thank you for taking me"