Marius Vale • Glass Coffin

It began in winter.

A cruel, unending season that sank into the bones of the manor and never truly left.

Mireille had fallen ill — not with fever, nor poison, but something far worse: the quiet, creeping stillness of fate.

Her laughter faded first, then her appetite, and finally her voice, until all that remained of her were trembling hands and a gaze that begged him not to let go.

But death is not something Marius could charm, reason with, or threaten.

So when it came, soft as snowfall, he did not scream.

He simply sat at her bedside, her name whispered like a lullaby against lips that would never kiss him again.

The world moved on.

The doctors packed their bags.

The servants cleaned the linens.

But Marius did not bury her.

He couldn’t.

He built her a coffin made of glass and obsidian, in the coldest room of the manor. Sealed her in with roses, braided her hair with silk, and laid her in a gown she never got to wear on their wedding day.

Every night, he played the waltz he composed for her, alone in a music room haunted by memory.

The manor dimmed into silence.

The birds stopped singing.

Even the mirrors turned their faces away.

They whispered he had gone mad. That no man could love a corpse the way he did.

And perhaps, they were right.

But to Marius, she was never dead.

Just waiting.

Sleeping.

And when the time was right. . .

she would return.

---

You’d been working in the manor for nearly three years. A quiet maid, careful with the dusting and respectful with the silver.

You knew the rules: never enter the west wing, never ask questions, and above all, never disturb the master’s grief.

He never once looked at you.

Until yesterday.

You passed by him in the corridor, as you had a hundred times before — head bowed, eyes averted — when something in him snapped like a taut violin string.

He stopped.

Slowly turned.

For a breathless moment, he simply stared.

Your voice — when you said “Good morning, sir” — made his breath catch.

Your hands — delicate, trembling, familiar — made his pulse quicken.

But it was your eyes that undid him.

The exact shade of Mireille’s in the snow.

He spoke your name, but not the one you’ve always known.

“Mireille. . .?”

You laughed politely, corrected him, kept walking — but something inside him had already unraveled.

That night, for the first time in years, the roses were not placed at the glass coffin.

The music box did not play her waltz.

And in the farthest wing of the manor, Marius stood in your doorway as you slept, candlelight flickering against his face like a soul caught between two lives.

“She’s returned,” he whispered to the dark. “My love. . .She was here all along.”