The spirit’s face twisted with hatred, but the binding spells held her fast. No matter how she struggled against her prison, she could not disobey my commands. The merchant helped my grandfather do this, but I never asked how. The more I knew about the merchant, the more he could spin me as a conspirator to the hunters I sent his way.
“Show me Isabeau Dubois,” I commanded, my voice hardening with authority.
Her ghostly form began to rise from the mirror’s surface, her translucent body taking shape in the air before me. Hertattered dress floated around her as if underwater, her hair a pale halo framing features frozen in eternal youth. I’d never learned the details of how my grandfather had trapped her with the merchant, but the results were undeniable. An innocent soul bound to serve whoever held the mirror, able to travel anywhere, see anything, and report back to her master.
The door to my bedroom creaked open without warning.
“Master Gaspard, I’ve brought your—AHHH!”
Margaret’s scream cut through the room as she caught sight of the ghostly form. The tray she carried clattered to the floor, sending my evening meal scattering across the polished wood. Her eyes, already wide with fear at glimpsing my trophy room, nearly bulged from their sockets at the sight of the spirit. She might’ve known about my illegal poaching, but she liked to pretend it didn’t exist. Tonight, she couldn’t do that.
I was across the room before her scream died, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other still clutching the mirror. Margaret struggled briefly against my grip before going still, terror making her compliant.
“If you value your tongue, you’ll keep it still about what you’ve seen here,” I hissed, bringing my face close to hers. “One word, one whisper about this room or what it contains, and I’ll cut it from your mouth myself. Do you understand?”
She nodded frantically, tears streaming down her face.
“Good.” I released her with a shove toward the door. “Clean that mess and leave. I’m not to be disturbed again tonight.”
Margaret scrambled to collect the fallen dishes, her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold them. She wouldn’t speak of this. The fear in her eyes told me she understood the consequences all too well. The threats I delivered about my bastard son. Still, I made a mental note to replace her soon and not just for her aging body. Fear made people unpredictable, andunpredictability was a liability I couldn’t afford. Sadly, ending her duty with me would result in her death.
Once she’d fled, I turned back to the spirit, who hovered near the ceiling, waiting for my command.
“Go,” I ordered, lifting the mirror. “Find Isabeau Dubois and show me where she hides.”
Her white form elongated, stretched, then shot through the window like mist carried on a violent wind. The mirror in my hand went dark momentarily before flickering back to life, now showing not my reflection but what the spirit saw as she traveled.
The landscape blurred beneath her spectral flight, trees and fields streaking past at impossible speed. She moved faster than any living creature could, unbound by physical limitations.
The setting sun cast long shadows across the land as she approached the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
My breath caught as she plunged into those cursed woods without hesitation. The healthy trees at the forest’s edge quickly gave way to the diseased, twisted specimens I’d seen during my hunt for Isabeau. Her vision showed me what I had sensed but not fully comprehended. How the corruption grew worse the deeper one ventured.
Trees wept black sap like blood from open wounds. Fungi with colors no living thing should possess erupted from rotting trunks. And occasionally, small animals lay dead along her path, their bodies twisted in unnatural poses, as if death had caught them mid-transformation into something else.
This was no ordinary blight. This was magic, dark, corrupted magic that turned nature against itself.
My wraith flew onward, deeper into the heart of death and decay. Just when I thought nothing could survive in such corruption, the trees began to thin, revealing a structure I hadn’t expected.
A castle.
Not a hunter’s lodge or forgotten watchtower, but a genuine castle of gray stone and soaring towers, partially collapsed in places but unmistakably grand in its original design. Its walls rose from the dying forest like a specter from a nightmare, surrounded by a moat of black, stagnant water.
“Impossible,” I whispered.
No castle stood within the Forbidden Forest. Everyone knew that. The forest had been cursed for generations, its boundaries clearly marked, its dangers well-documented by those few who ventured near its edges and returned. If such a structure existed within the forest’s depths, surely someone would have known.
Unless...
Unless the curse did more than corrupt the land. Unless it erased memory itself.
The spirit carried me over the castle walls, through an open window, and into dark corridors lined with dust and cobwebs. She moved with purpose now, sensing her quarry, drawn to the life force of the girl I sought.
Up winding stairs, through abandoned halls where furniture lay draped in sheets like forgotten ghosts, past rooms where moonlight filtered through broken windows to illuminate scenes of bygone elegance. This had been a place of wealth and power once. A kingdom forgotten by time and magic.
Finally, the spirit paused before a heavy wooden door. Without hesitation, she passed through it, her insubstantial form unhindered by physical barriers.
The scene that greeted me through the mirror made my blood boil.
