The strings hanging from the ceiling were harmless—until she imagined they could reach down.
Zareth didn't remember walking back to the theatre. Her notebook was clutched tight to her chest, fingers still stained in ink from that sentence she hadn't written.
The Lune Theatre loomed before her in twilight, its once-gilded doors warped and scorched. The lantern light cast long shadows through the cracked glass—like silhouettes waiting in the wings.
She stepped inside.
The air tasted like dust and applause.
At the center of the ruined stage lay a single file, the kind used by investigators—clean, precise, out of place in the rot.
Her pulse twisted with unease. She reached for it—
A gloved hand got there first.
Zareth flinched back.
The man standing before her looked as though he had always been there, simply waiting for her to notice him. Dark coat, posture regal yet exhausted—like a performer taking a bow no one clapped for.
He didn't look at her. His attention remained on the file.
"You're holding it wrong," he said quietly.
His voice sounded like velvet over broken glass—soft, but something beneath was sharp.
Zareth blinked. "Excuse me?"
He didn't sigh, but something in his manner felt like it.
"She preferred her story read aloud," he said, adjusting the file in her grasp with gloved fingers. "Otherwise, she said... people forget too quickly."
His hand lingered just a heartbeat too long.
She hadn't told him whose file this was.
He stepped away without a sound.
No creak of wood.
No shift of air.
Like a shadow remembering how to walk.
Zareth stared after him. "Wait—who are you?"
He paused at the edge of the stage, bathed in fractured light.
"Names are for spotlights," he murmured. "And I am long past applause."
Then he was gone.
Not vanished.
He exited.
Like an actor leaving through a stage cue only he could hear.
Her notebook lay open in her hand. She didn't remember flipping to a new page, but ink was already settledd in.
A silhouette had been drawn in the corner—broad-shouldered, elegant posture.
Underneath it:
He didn't leave footprints.
She hadn't written that, either.
The ceiling above her groaned.
Strings shifted.
Tightening.
YOU ARE READING
𝔒𝔡𝔢 𝔗𝔬 𝔅𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔢
Mystery / Thriller"I celebrate the day you changed my history." In the fog-choked streets of Veldenmere, stories never die. There was a dancer, radiant and adored, and a puppeteer, quiet and clever, who longed for the light A single night entwined their fates, leavin...
