Lucy tossed and turned in her bed for a moment. It wasn't that she had trouble falling asleep, it was rather that she was afraid of dozing off and being confronted during her night with unwanted dreams.

She left her candle carefully lit on the bedside table. She had always been afraid of the dark. For as long as she could remember, she had hated obscurity, she had been afraid of what might lurk in it. When she found herself in a gloomy place, she always felt alone and isolated there. She felt like everyone else was gone, only she was left, alone against the darkness, invaded by shadows. In the dark, the memories, the regrets, the reproaches, the guilt, everything became more difficult to drive away. She was overwhelmed by the traces of the past. She felt trapped, bound by unbreakable ropes, unable to get rid of them. She was slowly sinking into nothingness, this nothingness she had been trying to avoid for years, this nothingness that pursued her, pursued her endlessly, that never left her in peace.

So she was struggling, alone in her bed, against the sleep that awaited her. Her eyelids heavy, her jaw dropping while yawning, her vision becoming blurred. At times, she would completely close her eyes and fall asleep for a few seconds, then suddenly wake up, terrified. The more time passed, the more difficult it was to stay awake. After dark, her room in the mansion seemed much more sinister to her than during the day. The penumbra gave another aspect to each object. Covered in shadows, they were transfigured and metamorphosed, becoming monstrous. Fantastic beings, waiting in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to attack.

Lucy stared at the door with the distinct feeling that something was going to open it all of a sudden. So she felt that, if she stopped looking at it, the nightmares will take the chance to barge in the room and choke her.

Gradually, the contours of the room became blurred, everything seemed to shake. Then darkness fell over her and sleep overcame her.

The girl woke up with a start in her bed. She had just fallen asleep. She couldn't help it, she was exhausted.

She looked around her. The morning had already risen, a whole night had passed since she had fallen asleep.

Quickly, she realized that something was wrong. The room she woke up in had nothing to do with the one she slept in. The place was nothing like the mansion in general. Where the hell could she be?

She turned her head around, panicked. What to do ? She stood up abruptly. Once standing, she wobbled a little on her legs. Her vision became blurry for a few moments.

The room she was in had a cream-colored Japanese tatami floor. The walls were painted off-white. The bed she was in was just a mattress on the floor. There were also several cupboards built into the walls and closed by sliding doors. The room was lit by large bay windows dressed in white panels that let the light filter into the room. The furnishing was quite spartan. Only a few shelves filled with books as well as a black wooden coffee table and a bonsai tree.

Lucy advanced into the room. Her footsteps produced a muffled and almost inaudible sound on the ground. The feeling was special. She approached the door which was a wooden panel sliding on the floor.

She felt embarrassed, she felt like she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She gently pushed the wooden panel. It produced a slight sound of friction against the ground.

The room opened onto a hallway with wooden floors and uniform white walls. Silence reigned, not a sound.

Lucy felt like an intruder. She didn't know what she was supposed to do and had no idea how she got there.

She decided to move forward until she managed to find the exit from this maze. As she walked, she had the impression that the scenery remained the same, it was as if she was standing still.

Finally, she came to another wooden panel like the one that led to the bedroom she had woken up in. She pushed it eagerly, impatient for her to leave this corridor which looked like a labyrinth.

She then came across a kind of dining room. The floor was again covered with tatami. There were several plants in the corners as well as, in the center of the room, a low wooden table surrounded by several cushions on which to sit. A person, precisely, was installed in front of the table. He was a young boy who appeared to be of Asian descent. Fair-skinned, gray and narrowed eyes, he had a permanent smile on his face. His hair was ebony, cropped short.

He turned to Lucy and smiled as if she were a loved one he was reuniting with after a long separation. He didn't seem surprised to see her.

 - Ah! You are awake ! Come and sit down. I prepared breakfast.

 - Chen, she whispered.

The young man's smile widened. Lucy, meanwhile, was surprised. She didn't know where the name came from, but she was sure it was the boy's. Without knowing how or why.

Confused, she sat down next to him. He then placed in front of her a large bowl of rice with white and blue flower patterns painted on it. He also set out another bowl containing miso soup with chunks of tofu and seaweed on top. Finally, he added a dish with tamagoyaki, a rolled omelet, and pieces of white radish. He then handed her two chopsticks to eat.

Lucy didn't know how she knew the names of these dishes when she was sure she had never tasted them. She grabbed the chopsticks that Chen handed her then, again, a kind of instinct told her how to use it. She, who already had trouble using the western fork,succeeded in using Asian chopsticks! Yet she seemed at ease with these instruments, as if she had wielded them long before.

Strangely, even the flavor of the dishes was not unknown to her. Everything looked familiar, giving her a vague sense of deja vu.

Chen continued to watch her, all smiles.

 - So ? Did you have another one of your dreams where you were someone else ?

Lucy turned her head towards him, intrigued.

 - A dream ? What...

She was interrupted in her sentence when she met her reflection in the mirror. Clear skin, like porcelain. Long hair, shiny and smooth, black as the night that flowed like the waves of a waterfall down her back. Eyes narrowed, thin and with long hemmed eyelashes. A golden gaze. Her face finally, thin, emaciated, with marked features and high cheekbones, a face that was not hers. A face she knew, however.

The surface of the mirror then seemed to cloud, like water when a pebble hits its surface. Ripples appeared on its surface, blurring its reflection. Soon she couldn't make out anything in the mirror. When she turned her head, she saw that everything around her had become blurry and opaque. Only Chen's lips remained whispering:

 - A dream...

Lucy suddenly woke up, her face hitting the ground hard. She had fallen out of bed. Agitated by this strange dream, she got up on the spot and rushed towards the nearest mirror.

The face she saw there was the one she was used to. She heaved a sigh of relief. She had returned to her bedroom in the mansion. Everything she had seen was just a dream. Everything was fine.

She let out a long sigh. She had had these kinds of dreams before. They weren't the scariest, but they were disturbing. Everything seemed so real. It was as if she had experienced all these scenes before. In a life other than hers.

Lucy walked to the window. It was still very early. Her night hadn't been very long, however, she didn't feel the energy to endure another strange dream, so she didn't go back to bed.

She returned to the mirror. She had kept her dress on overnight. She ran her hands over it in an attempt to make it less wrinkled. She performed the same operation to do her hair and then, considering the result satisfactory, she put on her thin-rimmed black glasses.

Lucy left her room making as little noise as possible in the hope of not waking Alistair. It was almost an impossible thing: Alistair was a very light sleeper, anything could wake him up. He didn't particularly like to sleep. Wasting a significant number of hours doing nothing to rest? It wasn't really his type. He therefore slept very little.

Generally, he was awake before Lucy, except when she was awakened earlier by one of her dreams. At such times, Lucy was as discreet as possible, a real challenge for her. She didn't want Alistair to know about her sleep problems. She had never spoken to him about it.

She arrived in the hallway of the first floor. Idle, not really knowing what to do, she began to wander randomly in the house.

Suddenly, at the turn of a hallway, she came to a large window in the wall. It was round and huge. Through the window you could see the horizon. In the distance, the sun was beginning to rise.

It was a sublime sight. The sun was an orange-red ball of fire burning against the icy winter backdrop. The sky was clear, with only a few clouds dotting it. Under the light of the fiery star, the sky and the clouds colored of a thousand tints of fire. Fiery red, passing through bright orange, then golden yellow and finally pale pink, pink as the cheeks of a young girl on a morning like this. It felt like an artist had thrown an entire palette of colors into the sky. The colors mixed together, began to dance in a dazzling parade. A waltz reserved for the Moon and the Sun, two separate lovers, whom only dawn and dusk managed to reunite.

The fields outside were shrouded in a sea of ​​clouds. A morning mist that the rising sun was trying to dissipate. The landscape on the ground looked gray, sleepy, waiting for the sun to wake it up. The window was covered with dew that the sun made shining like a myriad of diamonds.

The outlines of the window and the pane were drawn on the floor, creating a luminous circle against the rest of the so dark mansion. The shadow of dew droplets created elaborate patterns on the floor of the mansion.

 - What a wonderful sight, isn't it? said a voice behind Lucy.

She jumped, frightened and turned around. It was the countess. She stood facing the window, dark and silent, in a dignified and noble posture. Her whole being seemed to radiate with this simple beauty that she had. It was a charm to which one could only succumb. An innate aura that she possessed. The sunrise light gave her whole person a golden color. In her eyes was reflected the shining star. She seemed to have descended directly from heaven, an angel fallen to earth.

She moved closer to the window and put her hand against the glass. Lucy did the same. The glass diffused in her fingers the cold of the outside while her warm breath created a mist on the pane.

 - I have always loved getting up early to watch the sun rise. Every morning that passes, every new day that was born, it seemed different, unique. It was a permanent revival. My husband knew it, that's why he...

She waved her hands vaguely in the direction of the window, seeming to point to the rising dawn.

She heaved a light sigh.

 - I feel like everything surrounding me now is fake, fictitious. I myself am unreal, false. It's as if I was in a gigantic play. A play that knows no end. The author has disappeared, there is no longer anyone to direct the actors who are condemned to repeat the same scenes over and over again.

Her face showed a weary smile. She seemed resigned, she no longer hoped for anything in life.

 - Now, when I look at it, when I observe the horizon, I remember that there is nothing for me out there. No more dreams to have, my future will always remain within these walls.

She clenched her fists. Her face retained that rather frightening empty and neutral look that she always had. It was as if she no longer felt any emotion.

 - It's pretty funny when you think about it, life. Everything is a coincidence. One day, you have years ahead of you, an entire existence with only your happiness, your dreams and your ambitions to fill it.

She reached up and opened her hand, as if trying to catch one of the rays of sunlight streaming through the window. Then she closed it suddenly, her face closed.

 - And suddenly, the next day, you find yourself locked in a trap with no way out. You have nothing more, nothing more to hope for, you yourself are nothing more. Everything that you took for granted begins to disappear little by little. The time you thought you had, the possibilities that were to open before you, all the crazy dreams you had. Youth flies away and even memories end up withering. Everything turns to dust and everything seems to taste like ashes. I have the impression that everything has turned gray, even the sun. Where have all the colors gone?

Lucy looked at her silently. She had before her a woman who had lived, who had seen many things. A woman who had had a full life. Perhaps she, too, would have liked to be able to erase all the mistakes of the past behind her, to be able to start all over again. Lucy understood well this feeling of confinement, when one has the impression of not being able to escape from oneself, from all the remorse and regrets that one possesses.

What a strange feeling, when you finally meet your heroes. When you discover that, ultimately, they are humans, that they are like us. That, in the face of the sufferings of this world, they are also like us, they are just as powerless. Faced with pain, faced with loneliness, loss, hatred, they also end up sinking.

At this moment, Lucy had never been so close to the one she had admired. It was like a sudden crossing of two souls during their lives, when they meet on their way, when one is just beginning to ascend, and the other to descend. It was a subtle, fleeting, temporary moment that lasted as long as the passing dawn each morning. However, if you managed to capture this moment, it was almost beautiful.

 - Find the murderer, please. I know you can do it, I feel it. Please, I can't take it anymore.

In the eyes of the Countess, shone a gleam of suffering, distant, stifled under layers of pretense, under this permanent mask which she seemed to display.

Lucy nodded absently.

Something in the dawn that was already disappearing disturbed her. It was something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it bothered her greatly.

The Countess turned around.

 - I think your companion just woke up. I will leave you myself, I have business to do.

Lucy decided to retrace her steps in order to find Alistair. They had to agree on what to do today in order to move their investigation forward. Right now, she had no idea where to start. The tracks didn't seem plentiful.