The opera house had become a battlefield of shadows and echoes. My voice rang out through the darkness, taunting, challenging:

"Bravo, Monsieur! Such spirited words!"

Cal's gun followed the sound of my voice, his aristocratic composure crumbling with each empty shot. "More tricks, Monsieur?" he sneered, though fear had begun to crack his polished veneer.

"Let's see, Monsieur, how far you dare go!" I circled him like a phantom should, my voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Cal's next words froze the very air between us. "You think you can protect her? You don't even know what she is!" His voice dripped with venom as he recounted Rose's past – the arranged marriage, her obligations, her status. But when he mentioned Jack Dawson, I saw Rose flinch as if struck by an invisible hand.

Then Cal did strike her, his ring leaving a cruel mark on her cheek. Something snapped inside me – a darkness I hadn't felt since Christine. The Phantom emerged in full force.

"I'm here, Monsieur!" My voice thundered through the theater. "The Angel of Death! Come on, come on, don't stop, don't stop!"

Rose ran blindly through the darkness, colliding with me. We fell together, and I found myself holding her trembling form against my chest. The irony wasn't lost on me – this beautiful creature seeking shelter with a monster, clinging to my malformed existence as if I were her salvation. I pulled her deeper into the shadows, where my domain offered protection Cal could never penetrate.

"Where are you going?" Cal's voice echoed through the darkness. "To him? To be a whore to a gutter rat?"

Rose's reply cut through the air like a blade: "I'd rather be his whore than your wife!"

Cal lunged forward, but fate had another twist in store. A commanding voice – cultured, aristocratic, and coldly furious – stopped him in his tracks.

"Cal Hockley! How DARE you lay your hands on my daughter!"

The woman who stepped from the shadows could have been Rose in twenty years – same proud bearing, same fire in her eyes, though hers had been banked by years of social constraint.

"Mother?" Rose's voice carried equal measures of shock and venom. "What are you doing here?"

"Yes, darling, it's me." Ruth DeWitt Bukater's voice softened, though her spine remained steel-straight. "Please, let's be reasonable. Come home. This... this is no place for someone of your standing."

I felt Rose's fingers tighten on my arm, and in that simple gesture, I understood everything. This wasn't just about escape – it was about choice. About freedom. About becoming who you truly are, regardless of the mask society forces you to wear.

"No, Mother." Rose's voice carried the same power I'd heard in my own music. "I will never marry Cal, and that's final. I choose how to live – not Cal, and especially not you."

She remained beside me in the shadows, her hand finding mine. The touch sent electricity through my veins – not the desperate clutch of fear anymore, but something more deliberate. More defiant.

Ruth's face hardened. "You would choose this? This... darkness?"

I felt Rose straighten beside me, and when she spoke, her voice carried all the strength of an aria: "I choose the music of the night."

The words – my words – on her lips nearly brought me to my knees. In that moment, I understood that we were both phantoms in our own way, both hiding, both seeking something real in a world of elaborate pretense.

Cal's rage exploded. "You little—" He raised his gun again, the barrel gleaming in the dim light.

I moved instinctively, pulling the lever hidden in the shadows. "Time to disappear, mon ange!"

The trapdoor beneath us groaned open with theatrical precision – after all, I had designed it myself. Rose gasped as we plunged into darkness, her arms wrapping tightly around my neck. The last thing we saw was Cal and Ruth's shocked faces framed in the rectangle of light above us, growing smaller as we descended.

"Hold tight!" I commanded, my cape wrapping around us both as we fell through the mechanism's carefully orchestrated path. The air rushed past us, carrying the echoes of Rose's exhilarated laugh – a sound of pure freedom that reminded me of the opera's brightest days.

We landed on the cushioned platform I'd prepared for such escapes, Rose still clutched in my arms, her red hair wild around her face. In the dim light of the underground tunnel, her eyes shone with an emotion I hadn't seen since Christine – but this was different. This wasn't the wide-eyed fear of a girl facing the unknown. This was the fierce joy of a woman embracing it.

"That," she said breathlessly, making no move to leave my embrace, "was much more exciting than jumping off the back of a ship."

Above us, we could hear Cal's muffled curses and Ruth's protests growing fainter as they searched in vain. But here in the darkness, in my domain, we were already ghosts – phantoms of their world, but perhaps something more real to each other.

"Come," I said, finally setting her on her feet but keeping her hand in mine. "I believe it's time I showed you my opera house properly. That is..." I hesitated, an old fear clutching at my heart, "if you're not afraid of what lies in the darkness."

Rose's fingers tightened around mine. "The darkness," she said with a smile that lit the shadows, "is exactly where I want to be."

And so we vanished into the labyrinth beneath the opera house, leaving the world above to its pretenses and masks, while we – the Phantom and his Rose – embraced the truth of who we really were.