"Art remembers what time forgets. Even when the hands that drew it don't."
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It started with a sound—soft, brittle, like pages turning themselves in an empty room. Clara stood alone in the attic archive of the Albrecht Museum, a key Gustav had pressed into her palm hours earlier still warm in her pocket. He hadn't said much, only:
"Whatever you find here... it might not belong to just one version of you."
The air was thinner here, heavy with the scent of dust, old paper, and secrets. A single beam of light filtered through the round attic window, landing on a wooden trunk wedged between a marble bust and a stack of broken frames. She approached it with a quiet ache in her chest—a weight she couldn't name.
The trunk opened easily. Inside, wrapped in yellowing muslin, were dozens of sketchbooks. Each one bore the initials "C.E." carved on the covers in painstaking detail.
She fell to her knees.
Every page was Gustav. His face—at different ages, dressed in different clothes, with eyes she had memorized long before she'd met him. One sketch showed him bleeding from the chest. Another, kneeling beside a shattered mirror. In one, he wore a crown and kissed her hand as she wept.
Not all were signed "C.E." Some were signed Clarae of Nadasdy in elegant, almost defiant strokes.
Her heart thudded. She'd always drawn him. She'd told herself it was childhood fantasy. But these weren't imagined figures. They were echoes. Memories. Timelines bleeding through art.
She turned another page.
Gustav in red velvet, his eyes dark with sorrow. Another drawing—he stood beside her, holding her hand in a circle of salt and silver. The lines were confident. Remembered, not invented.
At the bottom of the trunk lay a folded letter sealed in black wax. She broke it open.
"To the one who remembers with her hands."
The rest was in Latin—but she could understand it. Not from study, but instinct. Like she'd read it once, long ago, when the ink was still fresh and her hands still trembled with love or fear—or both.
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Gustav found her hours later, sitting in a circle of old sketches.
He crouched beside her, picking up one drawing—a version of himself in knight's armor—and traced the faded lines.
"I've dreamed this place," he whispered.
"Me too," she replied. "But I thought I made it up. Like I was lonely, so I invented someone."
"You drew this ten years before we met, Clara."
She didn't respond. The realization pressed on her ribs like a weight too heavy to name.
He looked at her, eyes dark and searching.
"So I've always been in your life, haven't I? A constant shadow."
"You were the only one who stayed," she whispered. "Even when I forgot myself. I remembered you. In pencil. In charcoal. In dreams."
She reached for another sketchbook. Her hand trembled—not with fear, but recognition.
"It wasn't obsession," she said. "It was memory trying to claw its way back."
Gustav pressed his fingers to his temple.
"I remember a fire," he said slowly. "Not in this life. A ballroom made of black glass and velvet. You were in red."
"I've dreamed that. Masked dancers. Blood on the floor."
"It wasn't a dream. We danced there. Before the mirrors cracked. Before everything broke."
She gripped his sleeve.
"This is the seventh time, right? The seventh Clara?"
"Yes," he said. "But it's never been this vivid."
"Maybe the mirror's tired of reruns. Maybe it wants an ending."
He smiled faintly, though the exhaustion in his eyes betrayed him.
"If so... maybe this time we can end it."
She tilted her head.
"You sound like you've tried before."
He didn't deny it.
"Sometimes I see myself breaking the mirror. Sometimes I guard it. And once... I handed it to her."
"To Bathory?"
He nodded.
"She wasn't born a monster. Once, she bled too."
Clara looked away.
"She keeps dragging us back. Why?"
"Because she remembers love as possession," he said. "And believes we betrayed her. Over and over."
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Clara dug deeper into the trunk and found a canvas wrapped in black velvet. She unwrapped it slowly.
It was oil-painted. Varnished. A full scene. Not a sketch.
A woman in red—half Clara, half something monstrous—stood in a storm of fire and glass. Beside her, a man with Gustav's face. His eyes were sewn shut with black thread.
"I didn't paint this," Clara whispered.
"Neither did I," Gustav said. "But I've seen it. So many times."
Words were etched at the bottom in Latin:
Amor mihi factus est speculum; damnatio mea in te.
Love became my mirror; my damnation lives in you.
The canvas pulsed—warm, then ice-cold.
"I think this was painted from inside," Gustav muttered.
"Inside what?"
"The mirror."
They sat frozen, surrounded by sketches. One portrait caught her attention. A face—hers—but the eyes had been scraped off the page.
"I never erase the eyes," Clara said. "They're the soul."
"Then who did?" Gustav asked.
As if in answer, the air turned cold. The mirror across the room—still covered in canvas—fogged up. No breath had touched it.
Clara rose. She approached the mirror like a thread being pulled through time. Her reflection waited.
It wasn't quite her.
Its eyes were older. Lips redder. Movements... deliberate.
It raised its hand. Clara did too.
Then the reflection smiled. Just a little.
Not her smile.
A predator's.
Gustav stood behind her.
"That's not a reflection," he said. "That's one of the seven."
"Which one?"
No answer. Only a breath on glass.
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They spread the drawings like tarot cards. Gustav kissing her in rain. Her walking away. Her bleeding in a ritual circle. Him screaming behind bars.
She touched one—the binding circle of silver, their palms open, blood dripping.
The mirror hummed.
Then it spoke. Not one voice. All of them.
> "One heart remembered. One hand recorded. But whose soul will stay?"
The glass cracked across the attic floor like frost. Light dimmed. The mirror brightened, feeding on everything.
Seven Claras appeared inside. Watching.
Behind them—seven Gustavs. One burning. One smiling. One broken.
Clara turned, her voice raw.
> "Which version of us was real?"
Gustav said nothing.
His reflection answered.
> "I am."
And it smiled—with too many teeth.
—------