One might imagine that my traumatizing experience, I should have been reluctant to return to the estate of Lady Eizenstrauss. And to you I would say that I was sorely tempted, which deprived me of several hours of sleep that same evening.

  However, my principles would eventually win out, and I would return, though this time managed to slip in and out without so much as catching a glimpse of the ominous warden who guarded estate grounds. In fact, several more days came and went in much the same manner, till eventually, I vaguely started to wonder if I really had seen him after all.

  I would like to think that I am not one so easily given to illusions of the mind. My personal mantra has ever been the idea that 'a cool head prevails where a mutinous one slits the sails'. It was a quote from my father, though with a touch of articulation, and one that makes a remarkable amount of sense when considered carefully.

  Reason and good sense have ever been my closest allies, and while I never shy away from a good book, ever do I bear in mind that the stories I read are simply that: stories. Fiction.

  Similarly, much the same can be said of how I view my reality. Though I've heard a number of stories about magic in the world beyond the Veiling mountains, aside from the parlor tricks of street performers and the occasional mage visiting from foreign lands, I take ought else with at least a spoonful of salt, or a healthy dose of wine.

  Thus I can only blame what happened next on a momentary of weakness, albeit one that would invariably push me ever closer to the edge of my own ethics.

  It was evening, just a few hours after returning from my latest delivery, and I'd since decided to spend some time in front of the neglected canvas in my living room. Painting was a personal pastime, one meant as more of a therapeutic exercise than any real attempt at professional artistry. It had been well over half a year since I'd employed the paints, however, and I felt the need to justify an old, but expensive purchase.

  Much as I often do, I began by simply putting the brush to the page, drawing shapes until a design started to form in my mind. It was, to me, an effort to give form to the scattered thoughts in my mind and sift through them one at a time. I won't claim that it often worked, but it was enough to ease me for a time, at the very least.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  In this particular instance, however, I began to notice a pattern from the beginning, and a quickly identified a distinctly human-looking shape. Yet as I directed conscious effort into honing the form and marking the details, the more unsettled I became.

  One stroke of the brush followed the former, and soon I was slashing across the canvas with what almost felt like a cruel sense of purpose.

  The angular features were the first to show, then the dark, black-brown hair, followed by the cleft jaw.

  At times, I could feel my lips drying, but I couldn't so much as be bothered to stop and wet them. Doing so would require that I cease my fury, and by then, I was far too invested in it.

  A wild slash, a sudden flick, a pecking gouge. Like a fencer's blade, my blush danced and flourished through the air. That I should have ever painted so…viciously…in all of my life…

  At length, my shoulders sank, my hands fell to my sides, and I heaved out a labored breath, only to quickly draw it right back in.

  There, staring at me from the canvas just as he had been from the window on that fateful day, was the strange man from the Eizenstrauss manner. And in the greatest of detail, as if I had been examining his feature point blank, peering at every sculpted portion of his rough demeanor. I'd even somehow manage to capture the intensity of his gaze, and how his bushy brows knitted together as he peered from his far-away vantage.

  That self-same chill ran through me again, and I stared in utter disbelief.

  It did not seem possible that I could have recalled such minute detail. No would could. The distance between he and I had been so great that I could not even make out the features of the widow he looked through.

  Yet as I gawked at what I had made, I once again felt absolutely certain of its accuracy.

  I studied the man in the painting, attempting to conjure a befitting personality for what I saw. He struct me as dutiful, yet melancholy. Pragmatic and sensible, but with a deep undertone of loss, like that of one who has lost the will to live for anyone but himself.

  Ere long, the distant sound of the eleven o' clock bell returned me to the present.

  I looked away towards the window and then up into the cloud-speckle night sky, ruminating.

  What was it about this regal, yet doleful individual that so dominated the darkest recess of my thoughts? Was it that I was enamored with the idea that I could recall him so clearly, even though that shouldn't be possible? Or was it the man himself? Or perhaps the gentle mystique of his figure? He, who seemed so very alone in that gigantic mansion, locked away like a prison in a solitary cell.

  Who was he? What was he to Lady Eizenstrauss? And moreover, what of her? What drove her to conduct her business in such a clandestine fashion? And why did I have this nagging feeling deep inside that I had forgotten something about such a once-prominent noble house?

  I had to know. I had to understand.