Cassian didn't tell Elián where he was going.
He just said, "I need to see someone," and left before the sun had fully risen.
Elián didn't press. But the silence he left behind was deafening.
The address was in the old quarter — a part of the city that had once been glamorous, now forgotten. The streets were cracked, the buildings leaning like tired ghosts. Cassian parked two blocks away and walked the rest, his breath fogging in the cold.
The theater stood like a mausoleum.
Its marquee was shattered, letters missing, the name unreadable.
But Cassian remembered it.
He had filmed Ava here once.
Before everything fell apart.
Inside, the air was thick with dust and memory.
The lobby was stripped bare — no posters, no velvet ropes, just peeling wallpaper and the faint scent of mildew.
He stepped through the double doors into the main hall.
Rows of broken seats faced a stage cloaked in shadow.
But one light was on.
A single bulb, swaying gently above center stage.
And beneath it: a mirror.
Seven feet tall. Gilded frame. Cracked down the middle like a wound.
Cassian approached slowly.
His reflection stared back.
But something was wrong.
The reflection blinked before he did.
He froze.
Behind him, a door creaked open.
He turned sharply.
No one.
But then — a sound.
The soft whir of a projector.
A reel began to spin.
The back wall lit up.
Footage flickered to life.
Ava.
Nineteen. Radiant. Alive.
Dancing barefoot across the stage, laughing, spinning, falling.
Then: a cut.
She was crying.
"Cass, please. I'm tired."
His voice — off-camera — replied, "Just one more take."
Another cut.
Ava on the floor.
Still.
The reel ended in silence.
Cassian dropped to his knees.
"I killed her," he whispered.
Outside, Elián stood across the street.
He hadn't meant to follow.
But something in Cassian's eyes had unsettled him — a kind of quiet unraveling.
He watched the theater.
Then noticed movement on the rooftop above.
A figure.
Still as stone.
Camera in hand.
Porcelain mask. Black teardrop.
Watching the theater.
Watching him.
Elián crossed the street.
The figure didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
Just kept filming.
Elián entered the theater.
The air swallowed him whole.
He found Cassian on the stage, kneeling before the mirror, face pale, eyes hollow.
The screen behind him was dark now.
But the silence was louder than any scream.
Elián stepped forward.
Saw the mirror.
Saw the crack.
Saw his own reflection — fractured.
He looked down at Cassian.
"What did you see?"
Cassian didn't look up. "The last time I filmed her. I didn't stop. Even when she begged me to."
Elián knelt beside him.
"You didn't kill her," he said. "You just didn't know how to let go."
Cassian turned to him.
"But what if I still don't?"
Outside, the masked figure lowered the camera.
And whispered into the lens:
"Now they both know."
"Let's see what they do with it."