The case arrived by letter.Yes, a paper letter — delivered by an unknown messenger and left at the police station's front desk with the name "Lucas Yamazaki" handwritten in fine, slanted calligraphy.
Inside the envelope:
A single photograph printed on matte paper
A note folded twice
The photo showed the interior of an old house.At the center of the image, a framed painting — a portrait of a woman sitting before a lake, her hair braided and her eyes lacking pupils.
But what stood out the most… was the nearly imperceptible detail:the woman's veil was moving.As if caught by wind at the exact moment of the photo.
But there was no wind in the house.No curtain.No movable elements in the painting.
Lucas unfolded the note.No signature, only the phrase:
"She started breathing.And we don't know what she's waiting for to get up."
The address followed below:Rua Frei Antunes, nº 42 — Beco do Moinho — Ouro Preto (MG)
—
Three days later, Lucas arrived in the historic town.His presence was discreet by nature, but there, among colonial stones and narrow alleys, he seemed even more invisible.The old houses carried memories too heavy to echo modern voices.
He was greeted by a restorer named Elena Maia, the one who had requested help without revealing her name.
"I thought it was just... an optical illusion," she said as she opened the house. "But everyone who comes in here… feels it. She breathes."
Lucas stepped into the entrance hall.And stopped before the painting.Yes.It was like the one in the photo.But more alive.The fabric of the woman's dress looked damp, as if she had just stepped out of the lake.Her face was painted with perfection, but her eyes reflected no light.They remained opaque, like windows into a place without sun.
He approached.And heard it.A breath.Long.Empty.Coming from behind the canvas.
Lucas spent the afternoon investigating the origin of the painting.The house's records were incomplete. Part of the documents had been lost in a fire decades ago. Still, a few old letters were stored in a wall safe, forgotten behind a false wooden panel in the office.
Among burnt papers and faded ink, he found what he was looking for.A note dated 1894, signed by one Augusto Venâncio, bearing the crest of an extinct society: three parallel lines crossed by a broken arc.
He recognized the symbol.It was an obsolete variation of the Order of the Veiled Shroud — a mystical order known only in fragments and which, according to the records of the Watch of the Pale Flame, had been forcibly dissolved in the 19th century after rituals that began to "awaken" artistic objects.
Lucas copied the content of the letter:
"She hasn't spoken yet, but she listens.The surface breaks from within.The veil vibrates.When the breathing becomes steady,she will rise — and the painting will no longer be a painting."
Below, a single name painted in dark red:Amália V. de Moura.
Lucas returned to the painting room.Elena was waiting, nervous.
"Did you find anything?""Yes," he replied. "This isn't just a painting. It's an anchor.""Anchor?""A ritual container. They used to do this in the 19th century. Stored entities... in surfaces."
She stepped back."You're saying there's something… alive in there?"Lucas nodded."More than that. Something in transition."
He pulled out his ritual lens — a Fifth Degree observation artifact — and pointed it at the woman's face in the painting.Behind the paint…there was movement.As if a second face… younger… older… was hidden beneath the upper layer.
He touched the corner of the frame.Felt warmth.And then… a sound.Three knocks.Like fists against wood.Coming from inside the canvas.
Lucas looked at Elena."I need to see the basement."
The basement was accessible by an uneven stone staircase behind the house's kitchen.Elena hesitated to go down. Lucas, however, already felt the presence below — not as a sound or smell, but as psychic pressure. Like something pushing into his skull with hands that weren't physical.
"Have you ever been here?" he asked."Never. Since we bought the house, this space has been locked. The key was inside a hollow book."
Upon opening the old wooden door, the smell of mold and burnt oil filled the air. Moisture climbed the walls. But more than that… there was an invisible vibration.The floor seemed to breathe.
Lucas turned on a flashlight.
The basement looked empty at first.Stacked boxes. Old iron parts. Moldy fabrics.
Then he saw it:at the center of the room, a section of the floor was covered with planks different from the others — freshly cut, lighter wood.
He knelt down.Touched it.And immediately felt the same energy as the painting above.
"This is a second anchor," he said. "But it's broken."
With effort, Lucas removed the planks.Beneath them… a second painting.
But this one was split in half.The frame was similar to the main painting's.But the image...Was of her too.
Amália.Younger. Direct gaze.No veil.No lake.
But with her mouth open.
And inside the torn portrait… a dark remnant — something between shadow and liquid — pulsed faintly like a dying heart.
Lucas touched the air around it.He felt that the painting was still alive.Wounded, but connected.
He lifted one of the fragments.On the back of the canvas, an inscription in red ink:
"The first body burns.The second learns.The third walks."
Lucas stepped back, pale.
"There's a third painting.""Third? Where?""I don't know yet. But this one... is looking for the other. They're trying to reunite."
The vibration intensified.The broken portrait let out a dry sound, like cracking glass.
Lucas kept the piece of the frame with the inscription.He knew he had to act quickly.If the three surfaces connected…Amália would return.Not as a painting.But as a body.
Lucas navigated the narrow alleys until he reached a discreet antique shop, mentioned in one of the documents he found in Elena's house.The place had no name on the façade — only a faded sign and a trembling bell hanging by a wire.
He was received by Dona Zulmira, a nearly eighty-year-old woman, her face lined and her opaque dark glasses hiding her eyes.
"I came about a painting," Lucas said."I know," she replied with a slight smile. "It's been waiting for you for many years."Lucas hesitated."How do you…?""I don't see with my eyes, detective. I see with the surfaces."
She pointed to a hallway in the back.Lucas followed her, alert.At the back of the house, behind a thick fabric curtain, was what he sought:The third painting.
This time, Amália was standing.Hair loose. Hands clasped over her chest.Her eyes still lacked pupils. But now… there was a shadow at her feet.As if someone stood behind her, ready to step in.
Lucas stepped forward.Felt the pressure rise.
"It's complete," he whispered.
Zulmira approached, slowly.Even without sight, she touched the frame's edge like one caresses the skin of a sleeping animal.
"This painting isn't like the others," she said. "It breathes inside, yes. But it also dreams. And when it dreams… it begins to mimic the living."
Lucas stared at the image."What happens if the three are united?""She will be whole again. But she won't be Amália.""What will she be?""A memory that learned to wear flesh."
Lucas took chalk and traced the symbol of the Triple Separation — a ritual to interrupt mystical connections between anchors.
But before he finished, the candle in the room extinguished on its own.The painting creaked.And a whisper came from it.
Clear. Crisp. Feminine.
"I remember you, Lucas.I remember when you were also just an image in someone's dream."
Lucas shuddered.Zulmira collapsed in the armchair, in a trance.He ran to her, holding her in his arms.
The elderly woman, eyes closed, whispered:"She's already between the frames. You can't stop her anymore.""Then what can I do?""Choose where she will be born."
Zulmira awoke hours later, exhausted.Lucas was preparing the containment ritual, drawing the seals in an inverted triangle on the antique shop's floor.
The three paintings were before him:
The first, still hanging in Elena's house, breathing.
The second, broken, now partially restored with arcane resin and ribbons.
And the third, in front of him, Amália's eyes clearer than any brush had ever painted.
He knew what he had to do.But he still hesitated.
"You can't destroy her completely," said Zulmira softly. "She was made to escape through art.""Then why does the ritual allow rupture?""Because sometimes the only safe place… is where pain was shaped by beauty.""What does that mean?""Bring her to the point of origin."
Lucas understood.He returned to Ouro Preto, to Elena's house.The next dawn, he positioned the three paintings in the central hall.Created a reversal field with Fifth Degree stones.And lit four candles in a spiral.
When the final seal was drawn on the floor, the air changed texture.The surfaces began to glow.
The house's painting breathed stronger.The broken frame let out a deep moan.The standing woman's painting… smiled.
"You brought me to my full image," said the voice — now present in every wall.
Amália's figure emerged.First, from the shadows of the third painting.Then, as a blurred reflection in the center of the room.And finally… a body formed.
Flesh? No.Condensed memory.
Amália walked.She stepped on the ground but made no sound.Lucas remained still.Holding the fragment of the broken painting with the inscription:
"The first body burns.The second learns.The third walks."
"You've already walked," he said.
She stopped before him.Her eyes now had pupils.
"I wasn't born of evil. I was born of forgetting.You painted me to hold what you no longer wanted to feel.Now I am what you left outside the frame."
Lucas dropped the fragment.The floor trembled.
"I don't want to erase you," he said. "But I can't let you continue."She smiled."Then give me a new place."
Lucas pointed to the mirror at the back of the room — the same he used in his observation rituals."If you need a surface, take mine.But accept the rules of reflection.You'll see the world, but won't touch it.Not until someone looks back… with truth."
Amália hesitated.Then…accepted.
She entered the mirror like smoke dissolving in water.Her form vanished.But the glass darkened.And Lucas's reflection… now had a feminine shadow behind his shoulders.
—
Today, when he looks in the mirror…Amália is there.Not always.But in the hours when he remembers what he never lived.
And on the quietest nights, he hears:
"Thank you… for giving me a place where I can exist… without needing to hurt."