Carello Manor has been weeping for 113 years.

Ask anyone in the village below and they will tell you the same thing in a whisper — _don't go up there after dark._

Not because they have seen a ghost. No one ever has.

Because at 12:04 AM sharp, she cries.

Not a sad little sob. A hollow, hopeless weeping that bleeds through stone, that makes old dogs whine and mothers pull blankets over their children's heads. A cry so lonely it makes you feel like you have never been loved in your life.

And at 3:13 AM sharp, she plays.

The grand piano in the sealed ballroom — untouched for a century — plays by itself. A melody that shouldn't exist. It starts with terrifying innocence, like a child learning her first notes. Then it fractures into heartbreaking grief, into a loneliness so vast it feels like the house itself is hollow. And if you listen close enough, buried under a hundred years of sorrow — hope. A single, stubborn, fragile note that says _someone, please, find me._

No one ever did. Until five years ago, when four foolish boys broke in to prove she wasn't real and mocked the weeping lady. That was the only night she ever got angry. The manor screamed back. Every candle lit with black flame. Every window cracked at once. They ran out with blood running from their ears, and one of them still sits in the asylum in the capital, staring at walls and saying, _"We never saw her. We never saw her face."_

Because no one ever has. Not in 113 years. She is sound without a body. A song without hands.

Until tonight.

Duke Nassir Carello is home.

Heir to the cursed estate. The Merciless Duke. A warlord in black velvet with a scar over his grey eye, silver rings on his cruel hands, and a reputation for never feeling anything at all. He left this manor at fifteen when his mother died locked in the west wing — the same wing where she cries. He swore he'd never come back.

Now he has, with only his shadow Sir Caelum Vane and a storm at his back. He doesn't believe in weeping ladies. He believes in steel and deeds and rent.

Old Mrs. Agatha Finch, who has kept a candle burning for 40 years for a ghost she has never seen, tells him she is restless tonight.

Caelum hears only wind.

Nassir hears a piano.

And when he looks at the empty ballroom doorway — where everyone else sees only dust and dark — he sees _you._

Barefoot. Flickering like a dying candle. White dress torn at the hem. Tears made of starlight on cheeks no living man has ever touched. Playing that hopeful, heartbroken song for someone who was supposed to be listening a century ago.

For 113 years, you were invisible.

He sees you.

And in that moment, something terrible and romantic happens to a man who has never believed in anything he couldn't touch.

He believes in you.

You died alone. He lived alone. Now the manor has two ghosts — but only one of them can be seen, and only by the other.

The Manor: