"Put on this dress, and I will marry you." Julian Vance spoke the words not with tender romance, but with the cold, absolute authority of a king offering a binding decree.

Julian lunged forward with terrifying speed.

Anna ducked to the left as Julian’s blade sliced through the air, carving a sharp tear into the sleeve of her silk dress. She threw Clara’s heavy leather diary straight at his face. The hard corner of the book hit Julian squarely across the bridge of his nose, causing him to stumble back with a curse, blood leaking from his nostrils.

"Grab her!" Julian snarled at his two guards.

The first guard grabbed Anna by her upper arms, pinning her back against the mossy brick pillar. Anna kicked out wildly, her heavy boot slamming into the second guard's knee with a sharp crack. He collapsed to the floor, groaning in pain.

Julian wiped the blood from his nose, his gray eyes burning with murderous fury. He stepped close to Anna, raising the silver dagger above her chest.

"You should have worn the dress and stayed silent, Anna," Julian hissed, pressing the tip of the blade against the white silk directly over her heart. "You would have had a painless death."

"Julian! Look behind you!" Anna screamed.

Julian sneered. "A pathetic trick—"

Suddenly, the air in the basement dropped thirty degrees in a single second. The water droplets on the stone ceiling turned to instant frost. The flashlight beams held by the guards began to flicker wildly and die out.

From inside the grand oak mirror behind Julian, a deep, deafening cracking sound reverberated through the stone chamber.

Julian froze. He turned his head slowly.

The glass surface of the mirror was no longer reflecting the room. It had turned into a dark, swirling vortex of freezing ocean water.

And stepping through the glass—her body solidifying into the physical world—was Clara.

Her wet hair clung to her pale shoulders, her dress dripping thick, dark sea water onto the stone floor. Her eyes burned with a blinding, terrifying white light.

The guard holding Anna shrieked in terror, letting go of her arms as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees.

"Impossible..." Julian stammered, his face draining of all color as he backed away from the spectral figure. "The blood debt bound you! You cannot leave the glass!"

Clara’s ghost raised her pale hand, pointing her finger directly at the brass lock mechanism set into the floor foundation.

Anna didn't hesitate. She threw herself onto the ground, grabbed the fallen silver dagger that Julian had dropped in his shock, and slammed the sharp blade straight into the brass keyhole beneath the mirror.

"No!" Julian screamed, lunging toward her.

Anna used all her strength to twist the silver blade inside the ancient lock.

A sickening, deep metallic SNAP echoed through the entire foundation of Blackwood Manor.