France – Langley Estate / Children's Room – 3:12 A.M.
Rain whispered against the windows in the deep of night.
Somewhere in the house,
like a breath trapped for decades,
a sound drifted in.
The old wall clock gave a single, sharp tick—
and stopped.
Celeste's eyes opened.
Something was wrong.
She almost never woke this way,
from a silence that wasn't quite silence.
Barefoot, she crossed the hall.
The door to the children's room was slightly ajar.
From inside, a low voice hummed—
soft, steady, with an odd little rhythm.
Like an old nursery rhyme.
Like something she had heard before.
She held her breath and peered through the narrow gap.
Lumi was awake.
Under the dim glow of the bedside lamp,
she knelt between her sleeping brothers,
tracing their faces one by one with a small, deliberate finger.
"Eeny… meeny… miny… moe."
First, the youngest—
fast asleep, a tiny snore fluttering from his four-year-old chest.
"Catch a tiger by the toe…"
Then the middle child, hair sticking up in uneven tufts.
"If he hollers, let him go…"
And last—her eldest brother, still deep in dreams.
"My mother told me… to pick… this… one…"
She was smiling.
But it wasn't the smile of a ten-year-old girl.
It was too knowing.
Too measured.
The gaze in her eyes wasn't that of a child at all—
but of someone who had lived… and remembered.
Celeste's body went still.
No… it can't be.
Her heart split quietly,
like paper tearing.
Before she could speak,
Lumi turned her head.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
As if she had known all along that Celeste was watching.
Her black eyes locked onto Celeste's through the gap in the door.
She lifted one small hand and wiggled her fingers in a slow,
mocking wave.
And in a voice as soft as it was certain, she said—
"…Hello, Princess."