"Some truths aren't hidden. They're buried. Because they were too alive to forget, and too dangerous to remember."
***
Clara sat hunched in the farthest corner of the university library, her laptop open but forgotten, glowing faintly in the low light of the history archives. Her eyes were fixed on a crumbling leather-bound volume dated 1624, its spine nearly disintegrated, its pages scented with decay and secrets.
She turned another fragile page, fingers trembling. A full paragraph was dedicated to Erzsébet Báthory. The infamous Countess. But something caught her eye—a Latin phrase scribbled in the margin by a shaky, ink-stained hand:
Clarae... memini te ante noctem rubram.
Clara whispered aloud, translating softly. "Clara... I remember you before the red night."
She froze.
"No way."
She pulled her phone from her pocket and snapped a picture of the page. Then another. And another, just to be sure. But the moment she looked back—the words were gone.
Literally.
The marginalia was no longer there. Just clean parchment. Faded Latin text, no notes.
"Am I hallucinating?"
A voice interrupted her spiral.
"Late night studying?" Professor Gustav leaned against a nearby bookshelf, arms folded. The soft light from the reading lamp carved his face into half-shadow.
Clara jumped slightly. "You always appear out of nowhere."
"Libraries do that to people. We become... part of the silence."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you ever heard of someone named Clarae? Spelled with an 'e' at the end?"
He blinked once. "Clarae B. was one of the names used in Eastern folklore. A variation of Bathory herself in some obscure texts. But also... possibly an alias. Why?"
Clara hesitated. "I saw it. In the margins. It was written like a message. To me. But now it's gone."
Gustav walked closer, peering at the book. "You're not the first to say that. Students and researchers have claimed this archive plays tricks on them. Records here aren't always... compliant."
Clara laughed nervously. "That's comforting."
He tilted his head, studying her. "What are you really looking for?"
She leaned back. "I don't know. Answers, maybe. Why this mirror seems tied to me. Why I keep dreaming of things I've never lived."
"You ever wonder if maybe you're not dreaming?" he said softly. "Just... remembering."
She opened her mouth to reply, but something caught her attention. A loose paper had slipped from the book's end. Not a page. A letter.
Yellowed. Handwritten.
Clara picked it up and read:
If you read this, then you know. The mirror is not a reflection. It's a prison. One I created to save her. Or myself. Maybe both.
Her heartbeat surged.
You must choose: shatter it and lose her forever, or step inside and risk everything. There is no middle ground. Only memory and desire.
At the bottom was a name.
Clarae.
Clara stared at the name for a long time, then pulled out her notebook from her bag. She scribbled a sentence quickly—then compared the two. Her handwriting. Nearly identical.
She showed it to Gustav.
He looked at both pieces of paper closely. Once. Then again. Then again, slower.
"That's... your handwriting. Or extremely close to it."
"But I didn't write this. I swear I—"
"Not now," he said quietly. "Maybe before."
She looked up at him. "Do you believe in reincarnation?"
He smiled faintly. "That's the second time you've asked me that, Clara."
"Did I?" Clara frowned, genuinely bewildered. "I truly don't remember asking it before. Is... is this part of the 'tricks' too?"
"Not everyone asks the same question twice unless they're looking for a different answer." Gustav's eyes held a deep, unreadable sadness. "Or perhaps, some questions are simply too important for the mind to let go of easily, even if it tries to forget the asking."
She folded the letter and tucked it into her coat. "I need to know more. Real information. Not dreams. Not whispers. Something grounded."
Gustav nodded. "Then we visit the restricted wing."
***
The basement level of the university archives wasn't on any public tour. It was musty, sealed behind two iron gates, and accessible only to professors with clearance.
Gustav typed in a code.
Click.
The gate groaned open.
He turned to her. "What you see here, you don't talk about."
She nodded.
They descended into a room of silence and shadow.
Scrolls. Binders. Locked display cases. All of them arranged around a long central table. Gustav moved with purpose.
"This," he said, unlocking one cabinet, "is from a monastery near Cachtice Castle. The last place Bathory was seen alive."
Inside was a thick, red-stitched journal.
Clara opened it slowly. The drawings inside were vivid. Ritual circles. Cursed symbols. A woman drawn again and again—always with her back to the viewer, always staring into a mirror.
And one page. Torn. Only half left. But the writing still clear:
She said her name was Clarae, and she came from the future. She had eyes like forgotten stars. And she wept when I died.
Clara swallowed. Hard.
"This is real?" she asked.
Gustav nodded. "Written by a monk who was executed for witchcraft. They say he fell in love with a spirit trapped in a relic. A mirror."
Clara looked down at the text. The ink had bled into the paper over time, but the emotion was raw. Desperate.
"He loved her." Clara's voice was barely a whisper. "Did he know who she really was? This 'Clarae'?"
Gustav said, "Or thought he did. Sometimes longing wears familiar faces." He paused, his gaze distant. "The lines between love and obsession, between past and present, can blur when the heart clings too fiercely to what it thinks it knows."
She turned toward him, suddenly furious. "You keep saying things like you already know how this ends."
He looked away. "Because I've seen it before."
"What do you mean?" Clara felt a chill creep up her spine, colder than the archive air. "Are you saying other people have… gone through this? Like me?"
He exhaled. "Every generation... someone finds the mirror. Every time, they vanish. Leave behind drawings. Blood. Letters that shouldn't exist. I was told about this pattern years ago. And now here you are."
Clara felt the floor tilt beneath her. "So this isn't about Bathory. It's about... me."
He stepped closer. "It always was."
The air between them thickened. Not romantic. Not entirely. But charged. Like two magnets on the brink of memory.
"If I go deeper," she whispered, "I might not come back."
"But if you don't," he said, "you'll never leave."
She nodded slowly.
"Then show me everything."
He opened another cabinet.
And the lights flickered.
The mirror in the center of the room—a relic encased in glass—suddenly showed two figures:
Bathory.
And Clara.
Standing face to face.
Both smiling.
***