Summary: A man with a curse, hidden beneath the Paris Opera, destined to an eternity of solitude. A girl, painfully shy but quietly talented, hidden in plain sight and destined to anonymity. When their worlds collide, their destinies crumble and fuse - but is it enough to break the curse? Victorian retelling of Beauty and the Beast. EC. M for sexual content.

Hey everyone! I hope this piques your interest. Trying out a new idea I had.

Enjoy!

Erik

The exact number of witches in the world is unknown. It is low. Very low.

But not zero.

No, not in 1881. Once there were an abundance of witches, scattered throughout Europe and the Americas and the East. Then the witch hunts fell into popularity, and by the time they'd ended, the witches had all but died out.

Only...not quite. A few still lingered, hiding in the light, disguised by normalcy.

Yes, the witch hunts missed a few.

A pity. For me.

I sighed in my velvet armchair, the material as red as the wine in my spidery hands. These hands had once been wholly ordinary to behold. My entire visage had been normal. Boring. Unassuming. Not handsome, but certainly not ugly.

Now?

I was a walking nightmare. Death incarnate. I still looked like me, I suppose - but a version of me that had been dead in the ground for ten months.

It was the reason for my favorite piece of clothing. A porcelain mask. The thing was currently on the small table next to me, lit by an oil lamp adorned with a yellow shade. That, along with the fire here in my sitting room, cast shadows across the windowless stone room, making Ayesha's sleeping feline form long and dark across the rug. I could just barely hear her purrs, this and the crackling fire the only sounds.

I sipped at my wine.

The fireplace was large. It took up half the wall. But, being magic, its smoke led nowhere - it disappeared upon reaching the top. It had once been larger, taking up the entire north side of the room. But as the years passed, and the curse wore on, the fire grew smaller. I knew what would happen once the hearth disappeared: my face would remain this way forever with no hope of reversal, and I would be locked here for eternity. The fire would extinguish, along with any other light in this damned underground house, and I would be in darkness. Blind and alone. For all time.

All of this - all of it - because I dared insult a witch.

If I'd known she was a witch-

Well, that was beside the point, wasn't it? I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have smiled and nodded and done as she wanted.

If only I'd known.

If only I was able to leave this prison. I could exit the house itself, but could go no further than the Opera House above. I'd once loved that theatre; with all my heart and soul, I'd loved it. Fitting and cruel that the place I'd helped design and build would become a cell. No one knew I'd been one of the architects. They only knew my partner and dear friend, the second architect, Charles Garnier.

No one remembered me. Not even I remembered my own last name. Not even I remembered what I'd looked like or who my family was. The witch had given me new memories, false ones, to go with my appearance: a mean and distant mother; being trapped in a cage as a freak display, only a child; killing as a magical assassin in Persia. Enjoying it.

These were not mine. Deep down, I knew they were not mine. I knew I had had a different life, but she'd constructed this new identity for me, entirely against my will. Only to add to my misery. Only to rub salt in the wound.

She let me keep my first name. Erik. And I kept small shards, like dreams nearly forgotten, of my past. A friend's name here, an image of my family there. But nothing concrete. These were breadcrumbs to keep me from starving. Tiny graces to keep me from going insane. Nothing solid - nothing I could hang on to and hold in the darkness.

That, I think, was the worst of it. The loss of myself. The utter grief for who I'd been.

And the cure for this curse? The only way to regain myself, to regain my freedom?

Because I'd insulted this witch's voice, because I'd promised to never allow her near the stage I'd so lovingly built, La Carlotta turned me into a demon. She then gave me one small kernel of mercy: make a woman with an angel's voice fall in love with me, and I would be rid of my chains.

But how was this possible when Carlotta was the prima donna - when she persuaded the managers to fire any singer whose voice rivaled her own?

A mercy indeed. A useless kernel.

Of course, I wasn't entirely without hope.

The fire flickered, and a note appeared next to the mask. Short, in that neat handwriting that I would recognize as the Daroga's from a distance. Another witch. A kind one.

I sighed, not expecting anything good.

I read.

Erik-

No luck. Not yet. I heard tell of a girl with a bird-like voice in England, but I would not call in angelic. Pretty, but not ethereal. I will keep looking. And will visit in a few days' time regardless of if I am victorious. I know you must miss me so.

-Nadir Khan

The corner of my misshapen lip quirked. An insufferable person, but God, I really did miss him. I knew he was doing his very best to help. And for that, I was grateful. For that, I found myself starting to smile.

Then I thought I saw the fireplace shrink only a fraction. A mere inch.

And my smile disappeared.