In the grand ballroom of the desolate manor, she stood as a silent sentinel, bearing witness to the tragic spectacle unfolding before her eyes. The room was a sepulchral chamber of faded elegance, where the echoes of long-silenced laughter resided in the dust-laden corners. The grand piano, a monument of polished ebony, gathered cobwebs in the shadowed alcove, its strings muted and lifeless.

At the center of the cavernous space, illuminated by the pallid glow of a solitary chandelier, Yujin moved with a mechanical grace. Her silk gown, the color of a stormy twilight, draped over her lithe frame like a second skin, its velvet folds whispering a haunting tune as she pirouetted across the polished marble. Her raven locks, adorned with a circlet of wilted roses, cascaded down her back in glossy waves, concealing the cruel adornment that protruded from the small of her back—a grotesque parody of the key that once secured the love she so desperately sought.

Yujin's eyes, those lidded windows to her tormented soul, held the vacant stare of a mare led to the slaughter. Her gaze was distant, as if she beheld a horizon beyond the mortal realm, where the chains that bound her spirit could not encumber her. With each delicate step she took, her heels clicked against the unyielding floor in a staccato rhythm that echoed the ticking of a clock—a broken appendage in its velvet prison.

As she watched, transfixed by her lover's tortured ballet, she felt her heart constrict within her chest, each beat an artisan's hammer striking a taut drumskin. She saw herself reflected in Yujin's ebony eyes, her own image warped and twisted like a face reflected in a shattered mirror. The same specter of despair, the same ghost of a love long lost, haunted them both.