My Daughter-in-Law Stole My Face With the Eclipse Mirror and Made Me Serve Her Feast — Now the Mirror Is Screaming My Name
Corinne Brooks, Seraphina’s chief cosmetics artisan, moved with practiced efficiency around the silk-draped dressing room. The air was thick with the scent of rare botanical oils, frankincense, and myrrh.
Her hands, usually steady, trembled slightly as she prepared the obsidian basin.
Seraphina lay on her chaise, a satin sheet pulled to her chin. Her face, once flawless, now showed a network of fine, silver cracks, spreading like shattered ice across her cheekbones.
The cracks were deeper than yesterday.
“Corinne,” Seraphina’s voice was strained, thin. “The Solstice is less than a lunar cycle away. It must not be seen.”
Corinne nodded, her gaze fixed on the imperfections. She had spent the last two hours applying a paste of crushed nightingale tears and powdered moonpetal, costing twelve thousand Imperial Credits for this single nightly application.
The paste did nothing. The cracks only deepened.
Each midnight, as the last silver of the moon vanished, Seraphina’s stolen visage aged visibly. Ten years, some nights, it seemed. The skin sagged, the lines etched deeper.
It was as if her human glamour flesh violently rejected the divine essence it had tried to capture.
Corinne carefully dabbed a new oil, derived from the elusive shadowbloom, onto Seraphina’s forehead. The skin beneath felt unnervingly cold.
“It will improve, Your Radiance,” Corinne lied, her voice flat. Her stomach twisted with a familiar dread.
Seraphina’s eyes, once bright with malice, now held a frantic, animal terror. She saw the truth reflected in Corinne’s own horrified gaze.
“You lie!” Seraphina shrieked, striking Corinne across the face with a surprisingly strong hand.
Corinne stumbled back, her cheek stinging. A faint red mark bloomed on her skin. She said nothing, just kept her eyes on the mirrored table.
Then, from the corner of the room, a low sound began. A deep hum, like a distant, mournful chord.
It vibrated through the floorboards. The Eclipse Mirror, shrouded in black velvet, began to weep. Not with tears, but with a low, unnatural moaning that seemed to come from its dark glass.
It was a sound like pure grief, echoing through the stone walls of the bedchamber.
Seraphina whimpered, pressing her hands to her ears, but the sound seemed to penetrate her very bones. Corinne watched, her own heart pounding, as the mirror’s weeping grew louder, a chilling symphony in the midnight hour.
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