The air inside Room 613 thickened like velvet soaked in blood.
The flickering images on the projector screen cast shadows across the walls—ghosts of forgotten girls caught in loops of obedience. Each movement of their bodies felt rehearsed, learned. Like someone had taught them how to be victims before they could even choose.
Isabelle stood frozen. Not with fear.
With fury.
She forced her eyes away from the screen and back to the woman—the Archivist—who now leaned back in her chair with the poise of royalty and the hunger of a predator in silk.
"Turn it off," Isabelle said.
The Archivist didn't blink. "You turned it on the moment you walked into Lucian's world."
"I said turn it off."
A pause.
Then a small, calculated click.
Silence returned, but it didn't soothe.
Only made the horror echo louder.
The Archivist took a slow drag of her cigarette, exhaling smoke in a perfect ring.
"He always said you were too much fire," she mused. "Too much defiance. That you'd rather set yourself alight than be polished into beauty. And he hated that he loved it."
Isabelle stared her down. "You knew Lucian. You funded him?"
"Funded him? My dear girl…" The Archivist chuckled. "I invented him."
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
"I found Lucian when he was still painting apartment walls for rent. I gave him subjects. I gave him collectors. I taught him how to turn pain into permanence."
"You trafficked girls."
"I commissioned art."
Isabelle's hands balled into fists. "You're sick."
"I'm honest," the Archivist replied, unmoved. "The world loves suffering—as long as it's aesthetic. Look around. How many people adored your last show not because of your technique but because of what it cost you to paint it?"
Isabelle felt heat rise in her throat.
"I painted my truth."
"No," the Archivist corrected. "You performed it. For the audience. For redemption. For control."
She stubbed the cigarette out on a tray shaped like a bleeding heart.
"You're no different than Lucian," she added. "You just changed the frame."
Isabelle took a step closer. "So why bring me here? Why show me this?"
The Archivist stood now, slowly, with elegance that had the gravity of age and danger. Her voice dropped into something more precise.
"Because you broke the pattern."
She walked to a side table, opened a drawer, and retrieved a leather-bound book.
"La Mère Rouge," she said, placing it on the table. "The Red Mother. That's what they used to call the first of us. She was a courtesan. Then a muse. Then a curator of pain. She believed art was not about capturing beauty, but about making the viewer complicit in suffering."
She opened the book—ancient, handwritten, smeared with age and wax. Inside: sketches, signatures, dates.
"She began the network. Generations passed it down. Select artists were chosen. Select subjects procured. Stories rewritten through pigment and shadow."
She turned the book to show Isabelle the latest page.
Lucian's name. His collectors. His benefactors.
And beneath that—a space left blank.
"For the next," the Archivist said. "But then you happened."
Isabelle stared.
"I destroyed him."
"You made him immortal," the Archivist corrected. "You gave him what we never could. A martyr's death."
She stepped closer, voice a low hum.
"And now the network wants you."
There it was.
The real reason.
Not vengeance. Not warning.
Recruitment.
"You want me to join?" Isabelle scoffed.
"We want you to lead."
Isabelle recoiled. "Lead what? A cult of sadists?"
"A consortium of artists who refuse to lie," the Archivist said smoothly. "You want to dismantle what Lucian built? This is how. Control it. Shape it. Make it accountable. Truth has no power without the structure to carry it."
"You think I'd paint for you?"
"No," the Archivist said, "we'd never ask you to paint. We want you to curate."
She gestured to the room.
"To decide which stories deserve to survive."
Isabelle's mind spun. It felt like vertigo, like betrayal, like stepping inside a trap that didn't look like a trap until you were already locked inside.
"I'm not a goddamn gatekeeper," she said.
"No. But you are unforgettable," the Archivist replied, echoing Isabelle's own words from the Paris rooftop. "And we don't want to destroy you, Isabelle. We want to preserve you. Elevate you."
A pause.
"And if I say no?" Isabelle asked.
The Archivist smiled again. But this time, it didn't reach her eyes.
"We will erase you. And then we'll rebuild you in our image."
She clicked something behind her back.
A hidden panel in the wall opened.
Isabelle turned—and her breath stopped.
There, in a climate-controlled glass case, were portraits. Paintings. Sculptures. All women.
Some familiar.
Some… impossibly familiar.
One of them looked like Lia Marceau.
Another looked like a young Isabelle—too young. Hair longer. Eyes darker.
"These were never exhibited," the Archivist said. "These were collected. You don't kill the art. You cage it."
A beat.
"You want to destroy Lucian's legacy?" she continued. "This is where you start. Not with fire. But with curation."
Isabelle stared at the faces trapped in glass, history rewritten in oil and stone.
"You think this is legacy?" she whispered. "It's a mausoleum."
"A museum," the Archivist corrected.
"Of the unseen," Isabelle said, voice hardening.
She stepped forward. One of the cases wasn't locked. A small bust of a girl—carved in rose quartz. Tears frozen in crystal. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever hated.
"Where's Lia Marceau?" Isabelle asked quietly.
"Gone."
"You killed her."
"We archived her."
Rage burned behind Isabelle's ribs.
"You don't own her. Or me. Or any of them."
She turned sharply toward the Archivist.
"I won't be your curator."
"Then you'll be a footnote," the Archivist replied, unmoved. "Like all the others who refused to evolve."
---
That night, Isabelle didn't go home.
She didn't call Elijah.
She walked the dark streets of Paris until dawn, each footstep like a drumbeat in her chest.
There was no simple justice. No perfect revenge.
Only choices.
She could burn the museum.
Expose the network.
Let the world gawk and dissect and turn the story into another scandal.
Or she could do something else.
Something longer. Slower. Deadlier.
She could become what they feared most:
An insider who didn't stay loyal.
---
Back in her studio, she painted again.
But not with fire.
This time, she painted Lia Marceau.
Not as a victim.
As a sword.
Eyes sharp. Back straight. A crown made of shattered glass.
She titled it:
> "The One They Couldn't Archive."
And when she was done, she didn't post it online.
She printed twenty copies.
And mailed them to twenty names she had recognized in the Archivist's book.
Every last collector.
Every last curator.
Every last quiet god behind Lucian's rise.
No threats.
No demands.
Just the image.
And a quote on the back:
> "History belongs to the ones who survive long enough to rewrite it."
Then she poured herself a glass of wine.
Lit a cigarette she didn't smoke.
And waited.
Because now the real war had begun.
And this time, she wasn't their muse.
She was their reckoning.