The Gravedancer’s Waltz Part - 2

The clock in the east wing struck midnight, though no one had wound it for centuries. A hush fell over the cursed estate, broken only by the soft strains of violin music that rose not from instruments, but from the walls themselves, echoes of a party that never ended. The ballroom lit from within like a lantern, casting golden light into the frostbitten gardens where no blooms dared grow.

Inside, chandeliers swayed without wind. Gilded mirrors reflected dancers who had long since turned to dust.

Vaelin stood at the threshold, his cloak brushing the warped threshold of the ballroom. His hand hovered near the dagger at his hip, but he didn’t draw it. Not yet. Not when the ghost of a nobleman, Lord Ferrian DuMonte, the once-renowned Sword of the Silver Houses, stood across the room, awaiting him with an expression halfway between fear and recognition.

“You’re late,” the ghost said, voice flickering like candlelight. “Two centuries late.”

Vaelin narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t killed you.”

“Not yet,” Ferrian replied, bowing with bitter grace. “But the night is young.”

Behind Vaelin, Elira stepped into the ballroom’s warmth, immediately clutching her head. Her phoenixblood flared in quiet warning, her fingertips briefly glowing. “This place is… wrong,” she murmured. “The walls remember too much. The air’s laced with echoes.”

Tovik, dressed in the ornate outfit of Lord Ferrian’s long-dead cousin, complete with a ruffled cravat and fox-eared masquerade mask, twirled in behind them. “You know, for a place cursed to repeat its last dance forever, it’s got a certain... theatrical charm. Is that my portrait over the hearth? Or just someone equally dashing?”

Elira winced as the violin melody shifted—its pitch dropping subtly whenever she exhaled. “The music… It’s responding to me. Every time I feel something, it changes. This whole estate is a Remnant seam.”

Vaelin’s shadow twitched unnaturally at his feet. “Then I’m not just seeing ghosts. I’m seeing pieces of myself.”

The ballroom began to fill—not with flesh and blood, but with memory. Dancers emerged from the air, blurred at the edges, repeating steps choreographed long ago. Some were faceless. Others wore masks. One, near the center of the floor, was unmistakable.

It was Vaelin.

But not him.

This echo moved with liquid grace and unflinching purpose, dressed in a deep crimson version of Vaelin’s cloak, trimmed in silver threads of House DuMonte. A blade hung at his hip, identical to the Gravedancer’s curved dagger, except this one dripped a spectral trail of blood as he moved.

Elira stepped closer to Vaelin, her flame dimming with unease. “That’s not just memory. That’s one of your echo-lives, a version of you that did kill Ferrian.”

“And he’s about to again,” Tovik added, pointing as the echo-Vaelin reached Ferrian and lifted his blade.

The music crescendoed. Time fractured.

The chandelier shattered in slow motion, crystal raining down in frozen arcs. Wine was suspended mid-air like a ruby glass. Dancers froze mid-step, their expressions twisted in silent screams. Only Vaelin, Elira, and Tovik moved freely now, caught between seconds.

The duel began within the heartbeat of a broken moment.

Real Vaelin lunged forward, intercepting his echo with a clash of blades. Their weapons screamed against one another, shadow against shadow, memory against will. The echo fought with merciless precision, every movement honed by a past Vaelin couldn’t remember… and a purpose he feared to uncover.

Ferrian stumbled back into Elira’s arms, barely substantial, his form flickering.

“He killed me like this,” Ferrian whispered. “Smiling. Silent. Like it didn’t matter. I thought if I cursed this place, I could force the truth from time itself. But he, you, keep coming back.”

Vaelin gritted his teeth, parrying a strike that nearly clipped his side. “I remember none of this. But I can feel it in my bones.”

Elira placed her palm against the ballroom’s mirrored wall. The glass rippled like water, revealing dozens, hundreds, of reflections. Vaelin, Elira, Tovik… all in different clothes, at different times, reliving the same waltz, over and over.

“Your soul is snared in this seam,” she said. “And it’s pulling us in with you.”

Tovik, having slinked toward the dais, activated his Mirrorkiss. Illusions erupted—blinding color and false light. The echo-Vaelin stumbled, hesitating. For a heartbeat, the reflection faltered.

Vaelin seized the moment.

He struck not with steel, but with Remnant Duress, channeling a divergent future into the air, one where he had never taken the contract, never drawn the blade. The echo-Vaelin dissolved like sand in the wind, screaming silently as time rewrote itself for a brief, unstable moment.

The chandelier’s fall resumed, crashing down in a hail of sound and glass. The dancers vanished. The music cut out like breath stolen mid-note.

The ballroom stood empty again.

Ferrian’s ghost remained, though his form was fading. “You didn’t kill me this time,” he whispered, voice more wind than man.

“But I will again?” Vaelin asked.

“Not if you find the original contract,” Ferrian replied, vanishing into a swirl of dying embers. “Only then can the waltz end.”

A long pause followed.

Then Tovik sighed. “Well. I danced with myself and almost got stabbed by your evil twin. Anyone else feel like we’re just warming up?”

Vaelin said nothing, but his hand lingered near his dagger’s hilt.

Elira’s voice was low. “We need to find the source of the first waltz. The original version. Before memory rewrote it. Before you rewrote it.”

“And before the echo learns to strike first,” Vaelin murmured.

Outside, the sun never rose. Only twilight now, and the ballroom waited to dance again.

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All Parts of the Series

The Gravedancer's Waltz Part 1

The Gravedancer's Waltz Part 2

The Gravedancer's Waltz Part 3

The Gravedancer's Waltz Part 4

The Gravedancer's Waltz Part 5