Not a ghost. Not a dream. Sebastián, flesh and blood, with the same storm-silver eyes and the same cruel, beautiful mouth. He wore a velvet coat stained with what looked like wine but smelled of copper.

When I opened my eyes, he was standing before me.

"What are you doing?" he asked, alarmed.

I fell in love with a memory .

His name was Sebastián. He had died in 1689, a century before my birth. I found his portrait in a hidden crypt beneath the chapel: a young man with eyes the color of stormy mercury and a mouth that seemed to whisper secrets even in oil paint. On the frame, an inscription was carved in Latin: "Qui amat, peribit." He who loves, perishes.

One night, I found him standing before a mirror. He was not looking at his own reflection. He was looking through it, at something on the other side.

I have written this as a short gothic romance story, followed by an analysis of the theme. Part I: The Vow of the Raven In the heart of the Sierra Negra, where the pines grow twisted like arthritic fingers, there stood a monastery that had not heard a prayer in three hundred years. They called it Santa Mónica del Olvido — Saint Monica of the Forgotten. It was there that I, Elara de Montrío, made my fatal error.

I was wrong.

On the night of the full moon, I did not tell him I loved him. Instead, I held a small hand mirror to his face and forced him to look at his own reflection.

"You called me," he said. His voice was the sound of a blade sliding from a sheath.

He did not become mortal. He did not become a ghost. He became something else: free .

"I love you," I replied.

"The first what?"

But he never said "te quiero" without my saying it first. He never reached for me in his sleep. He never asked about my childhood, my fears, my dreams. He consumed my adoration like a fire consumes a forest, and he gave back only smoke.