Maria awoke as if from drowning. Her chest rose sharply, breath dragged in ragged gulps, and for a moment she could not remember if this was life or its parody. The room was pale, her body still thin from coma's famine, her veins weak. But the first thing she noticed was not her own body—no. It was the ceiling.
The ceiling was alive.
Hundreds of dolls, porcelain and hollow-eyed, marched in silent processions. They were dressed in mourning clothes, black veils and violet ribbons, their hands clasped in miniature prayers. Their heads bobbed gently, as though in agreement with some unheard sermon. The sound was worse than silence: little shoes tapping on wood that was not there, a rhythm meant for the dead.
Maria's lips cracked, but words came—words against her own reason:
"Are you my funeral guests?"
No reply. The dolls bowed their tiny heads, and for an instant she thought one of them was her mother, reduced, shrunk, with the same sorrowful tilt of chin. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the vision collapsed. The ceiling was blank plaster again.
Maria pressed her palms into her eyes, whispering to herself:
It is only nerves. Only the blindness of sugar, the cruelty of the blood. Nothing more.
But when she lowered her hands, he was there.
Case 33.
Sitting quietly at the edge of her bed, the smile still stretched too far across his face. But his posture was different now: not the mockery of a predator, but the patience of a confessor. His voice, if it was a voice, curled into her skull without air:
"Thank you, Maria. For the knife. For the mercy."
Maria froze. She remembered it vividly—the blade, the green ichor, his last words. She had killed him. She had.
Her throat closed. "You are not real," she said, her voice shaking but deliberate. "You are a mistake in my brain, an error in the nerves behind my eyes. That's all. That's all."
Case 33 bowed, as though acknowledging her verdict. Yet the grin never broke.
"Then why do you weep for me?"
Maria's hand leapt to her face. Indeed, a tear had fallen, uninvited, gleaming like a diamond. She cursed herself, cursed the body that betrayed the mind.
At that moment the door creaked. Edward entered, hunched, his face bruised with fatigue and grief. In his hands, absurdly sacred, an Arduino box—the last gift of their father. He looked at her with a tremor in his lips, a brother searching for a sister already half in the grave.
"Maria…" His voice cracked on her name.
Relief surged in her. He was real. He had to be real. She turned toward him—only to see them.
The Shadows.
They were seated at the dining table, black suits, black dresses, polite as noble guests at supper. Their hands folded neatly, their heads tilted, smiles painted too wide. They said nothing, moved nothing, only watched Edward with the serenity of saints carved from wax.
Maria's heart plunged into ice. Her words came out trembling, half-prayer, half-laughter:
"Edward… tell me. Do you see them too?"
Edward blinked, glanced around the room. Empty corners. Bare walls. Nothing but dust. His silence was answer enough.
Maria laughed, brittle, broken. It was the laugh of a woman mocking her own execution.
"Then it's true. My eyes have betrayed me. Father gave you courage, Mother gave you reason—and me? I was given only visions. What a cruel inheritance."
She fell back into her chair, hiding her face in her hands, whispering to herself like a penitent reciting secret prayers.
Edward placed the Arduino box on the table, his hands shaking. He wanted to speak—comfort, perhaps—but his tongue was paralyzed. He could only stand, watching his sister converse with phantoms.
From the doorway, Matilda lingered. She had heard enough. She knew the name of this curse: Charles Bonnet Syndrome, cruel child of blindness, a sickness of the eyes where the mind paints horrors on blank walls. But as she listened—her daughter speaking as though chosen, as though conversing with spirits—Matilda's certainty wavered.
Inside, Maria straightened suddenly. Her eyes widened, reflecting not the room, but something deeper.
The Shadows had risen from their chairs. They walked in perfect unison toward Edward, still smiling. Maria's hand flew out.
"Stay back!" she cried, though her brother saw nothing. "Stay away from him! He has not sinned! Take me instead!"
Edward stumbled backward. His lips parted in fear—not of the unseen enemies, but of his sister's madness. Yet even in terror, he saw something unshakable in her. She believed. She believed utterly, and that belief itself had weight, more real than dust.
Case 33's voice returned, threading through her skull:
"You love too fiercely, Maria. You would offer yourself to shadows. Is that not the truest faith?"
Maria's body shook. She answered him—not aloud, but within:
"I would rather be devoured than see my brother touched. Even if you are illusion, even if you are sin."
Her hands clawed at her temples. The dolls on the ceiling returned. They crawled down the walls now, faceless nuns, whispering prayers in languages she did not know. The whispers turned into screams, but still perfectly measured, like choirs rehearsed for centuries.
Edward's hands gripped her shoulders. "Maria! Maria, look at me! There's nothing there!"
But she was gone, her eyes wide and unblinking, her voice low and terrible:
"They are all here for me, Edward. My funeral never ended. I walk in a world where the dead have seats at my table. And still—you bring me gifts, as though I were a child. Do you not see? Even your gift is a coffin."
Edward recoiled, as though struck. His mouth quivered, but no words formed.
Matilda could not contain herself. She entered, her hands outstretched, her voice trembling: "Maria, my love—it is sickness. Nothing more. Nerves, hallucinations. You must not trust them!"
Maria's laughter cut her. High, sharp, crystalline:
"Sickness? Then let me be sick forever! For what I see is truer than your sight. You live in emptiness, Mother—in silence. But I see the banquet. I see the guests. I see the truth that smiles at us all!"
Her voice cracked. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Then—silence.
From the corner, the Shadows bent their heads in unison, as though agreeing. Then they faded, melting into the dark. Case 33 was last to go. He placed a phantom hand upon her shoulder. She felt nothing—but she wept.
When he vanished, she fell limp.
The scream that tore from her throat moments later was not entirely her own.