The Bargain Spoken

November 18, 1871

He offered me a choice.

The stranger stood behind me in the mirror again, though I hadn’t uncovered it. His voice was a breath against my ear — soft as prayer, steady as a promise.

“You called me,” he said. “Now let me finish what you began.”

I told him I wanted freedom. He smiled. My reflection smiled too, but hers lingered longer, the corners of her mouth curving as if she pitied me.

“Then give me what keeps you from it.”

The book’s last page is changing. I see my own handwriting where there should be none, scrawled across the paper in frantic lines that twist and overlap like veins beneath skin:

“Blood for breath. Flesh for light. Open and be whole again.”

The ink gleams faintly red when the candlelight touches it. I’ve tried to tear the page out, but the parchment seals itself shut each time — the fibers weaving back together before my eyes.

I think I understand now.

Freedom and surrender might be the same thing.