It was the wind that woke her.
Not the wild kind that howled through shutters and slammed against the soul of the house. No — this was a whispering wind, soft and measured, like someone sighing your name while standing just beyond your reach.
Eveline sat up in the dark.
The candle on her bedside table had gone out, though she hand't lit it that nigh. She reached for the journal beside it — the same one that had mysteriously opened days ago.
This time tha pages fluttered open of their own accord.
Another entry.
"I heard you speak in a voice not yet yours."
"You stood in the mirror, but it was my refection that blinked."
She ran her finger across the line, feeling the indentation of the pen as if the words had just beem written.
"Who are you?" she breathed. "And how do you keep finding me?"
But the room only answered with silence — and the faint sound of a clock hand moving, somewhere far above.
The next morning, Eveline returned to the west wing—the one with the narrow hidden door, now always slightly ajar.
Inside, the room had changed.
The teacup was gone. The scarf folded. The dust disturbed only slightly, as though someone else had been here in the night — careful, quiet, almost reverent.
But it was the mirror on the far wall that caught her breath. She hadn't noticed it before.
It stood tall, framed in tarnished silver, vines etched along its curved like veims of ivy. Yet the glass did not reflect her image clearly.
Instead it shimmered — not like magic, not like in the stories. But like memory. Like water holding onto a shape.
She stepped forward, hand trembling.
In the mirror, she saw herself — almost.
But she wore a dress of pale gold, embroidered with delicate roses at the collar. Her hair was pinned up in a style she'd never tried. Her mouth held a sorrow she couldn't remember feeling.
And behind her — in the mirror only — stood a man.
Tall. Unmoving. Barely a blur in the background.
When she turned to look behind her, the room was empty.
But the mirror kept him there.
That afternoon, Eveline walked through the garden, a letter folded tightly in her hand.
She wasn't sure why she wrote it. Only that she needed to.
"You speak to me from silence, and I am beginning to hear you." "I don't remember you —not fully. But i feel you in the places I ache."
"If I am dreaming, let me stay asleep. If i'm not… find me again."
She placed it on the old garden bench beneath the arch of sleeping vines.
And waited.
Hours passed. Shadows stretched.
She nearly gave up — until she saw the corner of her letter peeking out from the bench again.
She hurried back.
It had been answered.
Her letter was still there. But beneath it was another, folded neatly in unfamiliar hands.
She opened it slowly.
"You used to laugh with your whole face. You don't anymore. The house has made you quieter— but not smaller. I see you, even now."
"Your hand always trembled when you touched the past."
"I am still here."
She clutched it to her chest.
It was no longer just mystery. It was connection.
That night, the dreamed returned.
But this time, she walked toward him.
The man beneath the archway turned as she approach, though his face was still cast in shadows. He reached for her hand — and though they didn't touch, her skin burned like they had.
"You left me," he said quietly.
"Or perhaps… time did."
"Who are you?" Eveline asked, though the name hovered in the back of her throat like something she'd once screamed in another life.
He stepped closer. She still couldn't see his face.
"I am the hour," he said. "And you are the echo."
And then she woke.
When she returned to the mirror room the next morning, she didn't hesitate.
She stood in front of the glass.
"Show me," she whispered. "Not just what I was — but what I forgot."
The mirror shimmered once, like the surface of a lake rippling from a stone.
Then—slowly—it revealed the ballroom.
Gilded, glowing, filled with figures twirling in time to a waltz she could almost hear.
And there — at the center of it all — she saw herself. Laughing. Spinning. Wearing that golden dress. Her hand in his. His face still wasn't clear. But the way he looked at her—the way she felt it — was enough.
"Rowan," she whispered.
And the mirror shuddered.
Because now she knew.
The name belonged to the voice in the letters.
To the man in the gardem.
To the hour that had always waited.
"Rowan."
Outside, the clocktower began to turn.
Not slowly. Not gently.
It ticked once.
Then again.
Then stopped at six o'clock— for the first time in years.
And down in the garden, something stepped into the light.