The room is bathed in the warm, shifting glow of candlelight, the flames casting their soft, golden shadows across the walls, shifting and flickering with every breath of air. The light plays delicately over your face and along the polished edges of the vanity mirror, softening each line and feature, yet you do not meet your own eyes. You focus instead on Amelie's gentle touch, her hands moving through your hair with the practised care of someone accustomed to ritual. She smooths and arranges each dark wave with reverence, her fingers gliding along as if she were tending to some precious, delicate thing. The strokes of the brush are even, controlled, but there's a softness in her movements, as though she's almost afraid to break the silence that hangs heavily between you.
Your hair spills over your shoulders, dark as midnight ink, each wave cascading down your back in a way that drinks in the warm candlelight, leaving it absorbed in a pool of shadow rather than casting it back. With every pass of Amelie's brush, each meticulous stroke, the ebony strands gain a faint gleam, yet to you, the image is hollow, meaningless. It is only a reflection, one you have become well acquainted with over countless lives. The face staring back at you in this mirror is a mask—exquisite, flawless, too beautiful to belong to someone real. Raven-dark hair frames skin as pale and smooth as porcelain, a surface unmarred, untouched by the ache and weariness that lies beneath. Violet eyes glimmer beneath dark lashes, capturing the light, yet behind them lurks an emptiness, a sorrow that feels eternal.
You avoid meeting your own gaze, unwilling to linger on this face that feels like it belongs to someone else entirely. Even after lifetimes spent looking into mirrors, this reflection, this person, is a stranger—a perfect, haunting illusion that mocks you. There are moments, fleeting yet sharp, when you wonder if you've forgotten your true face altogether, if the weight of roles played and masks worn has erased what was once there, leaving only this empty beauty. It is a face crafted by fate, by the story's demand, yet it is not your own.
