Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy and its characters – it belongs to Leigh Bardugo. I do not own the Shadow & Bone TV series, which was developed by Eric Heisserer for Netflix and based on Leigh Bardugo's books.

For the Darklina Halloween Fest 2023. Inspired by the ballet Coppélia


Mal saunters down the streets of Keramzin with a smug grin on his face.

He's just been promoted by Duke Keramsov, a stepping stone to eventually becoming Head Gamekeeper for the whole estate, and he's walking arm in arm with Ruby, the prettiest girl in the village, who is so enamoured of him that she's spread her legs already with only a vague promise of marriage at some future date.

And then, by chance, he glances over at the one building in the village that everyone tries to avoid.

It is the handsomest, sturdiest construction in Keramzin, but painted entirely black, as foreboding as its owner.

It's the home of Aleksandr Morozov, a recent Os Alta transplant that no one really trusts. There's something off about the man, even if he is scrupulously polite whenever he must interact with the villagers.

He seems to have no clear employment, yet he can afford the best house in Keramzin, a large building that seems more suited to a large family than a lone bachelor.

Every now and then he will have visitors, city folk in fine clothes who walk briskly and seem nervous whenever they enter Morozov's home. They never say a word of what their business is with him, but they always seem drained and aged when they leave an hour or so later.

Today, however, Mal spots something new in one of the top windows.

Or, rather, someone.

It's a young woman, maybe eighteen years old, a few years younger than Mal. She is sat still as a statute on the window seat, gaze intent on the book in her hands.

She is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen.

Ruby pales in comparison, seems dull and plain after he's seen this new girl's glowing golden skin, long glossy black hair and inviting smile.

He must talk to her, is desperate to get to know her.

Ruby yanks on his arm, a scowl on her face and a glare up at the window.

His wandering attention has clearly been noted.

She's easily placated, though, by his purchase of a cheap bracelet from one of the market stalls, and when she hurries off to a group of her giggling friends to show off the gift then it gives Mal plenty of time to look up at the window again.

He wonders what her name is, and when she arrived in Keramzin. She doesn't react when – having checked that Ruby is distracted – he waves up at her, but she's probably just discrete, not wanting any of the village gossips to notice.

Still, he's sure she must have sensed it, the immediate connection between them. A girl as lovely as her deserves the very best, and Mal is on his way up in Keramzin, likely to be a man of some consequence in just a few years.

They're made for each other. It's clear to see.


"You're lovesick!" Dubrov mocks him three days later when he and Mikhael find Mal loitering outside the bakery opposite Morozov's house, staring up at the window.

The mysterious girl is in exactly the same position as before, and just as still as she was then.

"She's not very lively," Mikhael mutters, "not even a wave to greet us."

"Probably as aloof as Morozov," Dubrov sneers, "must be a visiting niece or something – we would have heard if Morozov had a daughter and, besides, I can't imagine him as a married family man."

"I just want to talk to her," Mal sighs as he looks up at the perfection of the figure in the window, "she's so different to the other girls here."

"Yeah," Dubrov rolls his eyes, "the other girls are good for a quick tumble. That one looks like a stuck up little –"

His words are cut off as Mal sinks his fist into his friend's face.

"What the hell, Mal!" Dubrov growls.

Mal falls back, hands up in apology. He wouldn't normally be so easily riled up, but he feels protective over the mystery girl, and a kind of red mist seems to descend if someone insults her (he thinks, a little guiltily, of the rough way he'd handled Ruby earlier when she'd made a snide remark about young ladies who laze about in their room all day and never go out).

"Go and find Ruby, or one of the dozen other girls ready to fuck you, Mal," Mikhael suggests, "and forget about Morozov's girl – he'll never let you near her."

"That's why I have to sneak in!" Mal exclaims, suddenly brimming with excitement at his new idea.

His friends look sceptical, but Mal won't be deterred, "it's the perfect plan. I can meet her and then we can finally see what Morozov is hiding in that big house."
Dubrov and Mikhael nod thoughtfully.

"I bet a man as rich as him wouldn't miss a few silver candlesticks or coins," Dubrov muses, "we could buy some better hunting gear."

"We'll get some of the others too," Mikhael adds, "they can be lookouts to make sure Morozov doesn't hear us."

Mal nods eagerly, "Morozov never stays up late, so if we go about midnight then he won't ever even know we've been there."

As Dubrov and Mikhael start discussing who would be the best look-outs, Mal looks back up at the window.

Soon, he thinks, soon we'll finally meet.


They enter Morozov's house just after midnight, Dubrov putting his lock-picking skills to use to get them in through a back window.

"Stick to the ground floor," Mal orders his friends, "and don't take enough that it'll be obvious to Morozov. If you spot anyone outside, then use the signal we agreed on and get out."

As his friends fan out, Mal creeps slowly up the stairs. He freezes when he accidentally steps on a creaky spot, but when he hears no movement upstairs, he breathes a sigh of relief and continues up to the landing.

Orienting himself, he spies the door that leads to the room he's seen the girl in.

It only occurs to him when he's outside the door that she might be alarmed to find a stranger in her room and, worse, that she might scream and alert Morozov.

He'll just have to be quiet, and if he can get over to her and wake her gently, then it'll all be alright. Sure, he might have to gag her temporarily, but she'll understand soon enough when he explains himself, will probably be flattered that he's so interested in her that he will go to such lengths so they can meet.

When he opens the door, however, he doesn't find a bedroom.

Instead, it seems more like a workroom.

And there, in her usual position by the window, is the mysterious girl.

She doesn't turn at his entrance, which he thinks odd but rather lucky. Before he can announce himself, though, someone else pushes into the room behind him.

Blonde hair. Milky-white skin. A cloying floral perfume. And a face like thunder.

"What are you doing here?" he hisses at Ruby.

"I came to tell that hussy you keep gawking at to go back to wherever she came from."

Mal feels fury rise within him, directed at the petulant blonde who dares to insult his beautiful mystery girl. He reaches out to grab her wrist, planning to drag her back down the stairs and make her stay away, but when they both hear movement at the other end of the landing, he panics and quickly shuts the door.

He and Ruby bicker and hiss at each other as they cross the room, but it doesn't seem to disturb the girl at all. Mal must admit he's starting to get a bit concerned by her lack of response, but perhaps she's simply fallen asleep.

However, when he puts his hand onto her shoulder to announce his presence, he realises something.

Beneath the thin material of her dress, her skin is unnaturally hard and smooth. And while her book is on a side table, her hands are held up, frozen as if she's still reading the tome.

Brow furrowed in confusion, he moves around so he is facing her directly and his eyes widen as he gets a proper look at her face.

Ruby, huffing in irritation, elbows him out of the way, only to freeze when she sees the girl's face.

Not a girl. Not human at all, it seems.

"She … she's a doll," Ruby whispers.

Exquisitely made, to be sure, and very lifelike, but a doll nonetheless.

"How?" Mal stutters, "this can't be right. She's not … not even real."

"Not yet," a low voice murmurs from the darkness, "but she soon will be."

Morozov steps out of the shadows, his profile illuminated by the silvery moonlight spilling through the windows.

Mal expects a gun to be raised and aimed at them, or for the alarm to be sounded demanding they be hauled off to the nearest cells.

Instead, Morozov strides right past them, his entire focus on the girl – the doll – perched on the window seat.

He caresses her porcelain face tenderly, with a softness Mal has never seen from him before, "Alina, my Alina."

He's clearly a bit touched in the head, Mal thinks, talking to a doll like it's real.

Both Mal and Ruby, by silent agreement, start to back away.

After all, if they're not actually caught in the property then it will be their word against Morozov's if he tries to claim they've been trespassing, and the community are hostile enough towards him that they will surely take Mal and Ruby's side.

However, they haven't gone more than two steps before shadows rise up in front of them, blocking the door as tendrils of darkness wrap around their ankles and keep them rooted in place.

Ruby starts to wail in fear, but the shadows crawl up her body and form some sort of gag over her mouth. She struggles wildly, clawing at her face, but all she manages to do is scratch at her own skin.

Mal keeps quiet, silently trying to escape the shadows around his feet and legs, which look wispy and insubstantial, yet feel as solid and binding as iron.

What he is witnessing is the darkest magic, the kind they were constantly warned about as children to stop them causing trouble.

Behave or the shadow man will come and take you away, their parents would say.

As a boy, Mal had imagined the shadow man as a creature twisted by darkness, but Morozov has always seemed human enough, if very aloof.

The façade is slipping now, though, the power he's channeling sending darkness creeping through his veins, his eyes as bottomless and black as the depths of the unexplored seas.

"You're a dark wizard!" Mal cries out in accusation.

Morozov makes no move to deny it, doesn't even offer any answer at all.

"I said, you're a dark wizard!"

"And?" Morozov shrugs like it's no big deal.

"You do not deny it?"

"Why should I deny the truth? I am not ashamed."

Mal gapes. The man is a practitioner of the black arts and a servant of the devil, yet he acts as if he has done nothing wrong. The arrogant audacity astounds Mal.

"The priests will see you burnt," Mal hisses, "I'll ensure it."

"I highly doubt it," Morozov smirks, "as you won't have a chance to tell anyone anything at all."

Mal goes cold. With anybody else, he'd assume he could wriggle his way out of this situation like he's talked his way out of so many other tight spots, but there's something about the glint in Morozov's obsidian eyes that dampens Mal's hope that this night will end well for him.

With a flick of his wrist, Morozov sends out tendrils of shadows, which slither through the doorway.

A minute later they come back, wrapped around the limbs of Dubrov, Mikhael, their four lookouts and, to Mal's horrified surprise, six young women he knows make up Ruby's gang of friends.

"Your twittering blonde was right enough that she can't trust your faithfulness, Oretsev, and I might even sympathise with her, if I cared at all about her feelings. Her choice to break into my home out of petty jealousy, however, is not a slight I'll ignore."

"Silly girl," he adds, tutting softly at Ruby, "you should know better than to let an insignificant boy like this one draw you into trouble. As it is, you will suffer for your foolishness, and so will your friends."

The shadows release their prey, but Mal sees they need no restraint, all of them unconscious and slumped across the floor.

"We'll do anything," Ruby begs when the shadows gagging her melt away, "it was a stupid prank, but we'll go and never bother you again, I swear."

"Anything?" Morozov asks with mild interest.

Mal looks away as Ruby's trembling fingers go to the buttons on her dress, "anything," she promises.

Mal hates Morozov with a passion, thinks him a twisted, perverted monster to force Ruby to debase herself like this. They are at a distinct disadvantage, though, and if this keeps him and his friends safe, then Mal will stay silent.

Morozov does not go eagerly to Ruby, however. He shows none of the lascivious interest in her assets that every other man in the village, even the priests, often let slip.

No, Morozov only laughs.

"I want none of that from you," he snorts derisively, "especially as I hear enough gossip to know how very free you are with your favours."

Mal frowns as Ruby flushes red. She's a flirt, that's true, but he is sure she is faithful to him now. Or, at least, he used to be sure.

"What … what about Irina then," Ruby fairly shrieks, pointing at the tall brunette on the floor, "she's never had a boy at all, even though she's ever so pretty."

A lie, Mal knows, for Irina has bestowed her favour on at least three of the village men, Mal being one of them (although Ruby is unaware of that), but as she is far more private than Ruby in her affairs, Mal is confident Morozov won't know of them.

It's a shame that Irina will have to suffer, but someone needs to get them out of this scrape.

Morozov eyes them with an amusement that unnerves Mal, but he flicks his fingers and his creepy shadows drag the unfortunate Irina across the floor until she lays crumpled in a heap at his feet.

To Mal's confusion, Morozov strides over to his doll and carries her over to where Irina lays, placing her carefully in the chair there.

"You truly wish for me to take what I desire from your friend?" Morozov asks.

Both Mal and Ruby nod shakily.

There's no other option. Irina will surely forgive them.

Morozov shrugs, "as you wish."

And then he places Irina's slack hand on top of the doll's outstretched hand, takes a step back and smiles eerily, his eyes like darkened chasms.

"Alina," he coos, "feast, milaya."

Ruby is screaming.

Or she would be, Mal thinks, if not for the shadows that rush back to gag her as soon as she opens her mouth.

Mal can't look away from the horrifying spectacle in front of him.

Morozov's doll is – somehow, some way, through terrible dark magic – quite literally sucking the life out of Irina.

The healthy, vibrant young woman of twenty is now pale and wan, hair limp and grey, her face lined with decades she hasn't yet lived, a wheezing, limp husk of a person.

All the while, the doll, already amazingly lifelike, now seems more human than ever before.

Mal struggles against the shadows that bind him, trying in vain to curse Morozov's name but finding his own voice muffled by shadows in the same way Ruby's is.

"Well, you did offer," Morozov shrugs when Irina – or what's left of her – lays completely still and drained in front of them.

And Mal.

He's sorry for Irina, he really is, and he'll do his level best to see Morozov dead for what he's done, but nothing can help Irina now and he has to ensure the rest of them are safe.

"You've had Irina," he mutters hoarsely when the shadows release him, "now let us go like you promised."

Morozov laughs, low and mocking, "you agreed that I could take what I liked from your unfortunate friend, and I have, but I never promised any of you freedom."

"What?" Mal chokes out, suddenly cold all over.

"I'm afraid I need rather a lot of lifeforce. My clients do well enough to sustain me – a few years of their life in payment for my services – but more is required in order to actually create life, not simply lengthen it.

"You … you can't," Mal stutters.

"Of course I can," Morozov actually has the audacity to smile, "you can't stop me, can you?"

Mal has never felt so helpless. He's always danced through life, his looks and charisma and talent at tracking and hunting making things easy for him. He's never met a problem he couldn't charm his way out of.

Until now.

"It won't be painful," Morozov tells him, "you'll be unconscious, won't feel a thing."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Mal growls, fighting against his bonds even though he knows, deep down, that it will take a miracle for him to escape Morozov's shadows.

Morozov raises an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed, "you should be grateful, Oretsev. You can be awake, you know, if you don't want my mercy, and then I assure you that you'll feel every agonising moment."

"If you want to kill me," Mal snarls, "then you're going to have to watch it. Not just a passive death, but the true consequences of your vile magic."

"Foolish boy," Morozov shakes his head, "trying to play the stubborn, brave hero. Do you think that if I see you writhing in pain, your very lifeforce wrenched from you, then I will feel sorry and repent? I have a goal, Oretsev, and I intend to see it through, no matter how many idiots like you I need to sacrifice."

Mal blanches.

He's gambled and lost, so sure that Morozov would turn out to be the kind of cowardly villain who would baulk at the idea of actually witnessing the true consequences of his actions.

But the man – no, not a man, some dark demon from the depths of hell – has a heart of stone, if he has a heart at all.

"I am not some callow boy, Oretsev," Morozov tuts, "I do not hide from the truth of my own actions. Your moralising does not move me, nor will any pleas for mercy."

And it is then that Mal realises what he has refused to accept up until now. Morozov cannot be bargained or reasoned with. The man in front of him holds all the power and every card in the deck, and the rest of them are simply puppets and tools and pawns in his hands.

Still, Mal means to go to his death with his head held high. He will not let this servant of the devil take his dignity from him.

Morozov, however, clearly knows how to break a person.

Mal must watch, shadows curling around his neck and face to force him to look, as his childhood friends are dragged over to the doll and drained of their life one by one.

There is no hesitation in Morozov, no sign that he feels an ounce of remorse for the lives he is stealing for what must surely be a futile endeavour.

Dark magic can do powerful things but surely, he thinks, it cannot create life.

With every body that piles up, though, Mal can see the effect on the doll. Her porcelain face turning to smooth skin with a rosy blush across her cheeks, her posture relaxing out of its former stiffness into something more natural, her chest beginning to rise and fall (although her eyes remain closed).

Mal keeps fighting, trying to escape, but all he can do is watch the bodies pile up.

Six young men and six young women, all friends Mal has known his whole life.

All gone, leaving only Mal and Ruby.

For a moment, Mal wonders if Morozov is done, and whether his punishment for the two of them is for them to have to live with what they have witnessed, and with the loss of their friends.

Morozov does not hesitate, though. He turns to Ruby and, even with her cries muffled by the shadows, Mal can tell she is hysterical. It would be more humane to simply knock her out, but Morozov, it is quite clear, does not have kindness in him.

It's worse, watching Ruby.

He'd thought it was bad seeing Dubrov and Mikhael, his very best friends, murdered right in front of him, but this … this is worse.

Morozov does not send his shadows for Ruby. Instead, he stands and grabs her himself, dragging her towards the doll without a hint of remorse as she weeps silently and flails in vain, trying to flee the cage of Morozov's arms.

As soon as her hand is forced into the doll's, Ruby begins to convulse, shuddering and shaking.

The others were all slumped over, and Mal only saw the aftermath. With Ruby, however, he sees the process, watches as Morozov's dark magic creeps through Ruby's veins and robs her of her youth and vitality and, eventually, her life.

And Morozov. He just watches.

With a sinister half-smile on his face, gaze focused not on the dying Ruby but the doll he's doing this for.

It must be true, the rumours that using dark magic turn you mad. Because that thing in the chair is a doll, no matter how many people it fooled, no matter that it's looking more and more human every moment.

A doll.

That's what they're all dying for.

That's what Morozov is killing for.

Mal stares in disgust as Morozov reaches out and brushes his thumb over the doll's lips, murmuring the same name over and over.

AlinaAlinaAlinaAlinaAlina.

"Soon, solnyshko," he whispers into the doll's ear, as if the damn thing can actually hear him.

Morozov turns to Mal then, dark eyes flashing with excitement.

Just a flick of the man's fingers and shadows are dragging him – tripping, stuttering, unsteady – across the room and forcing him to his knees in front of the doll.

Up close, Mal has to admit that the doll gives every appearance of a hibernating but very much alive being. It must be trickery, though – it's madness, after all, bringing life to a doll.

"Almost there, moya lyubov."

Another of Morozov's whispered asides to the doll, even as he twists his wrists and the shadows rise upwards to bind Mal even more firmly, wrapping around his mouth.

"So that no one hears you scream," Morozov says, so matter-of-factly that it sends a shudder down Mal's spine.

He can't speak, but he glares at Morozov the best he can, trying to convey the hatred he feels. Morozov is entirely unconcerned, however – he seems as unbothered by what Mal thinks of him as he has been about any of the talk whispered about him since his arrival in Keramzin.

It's not natural, Mal thinks. Morozov appears quite happy to trample all over societal norms and common decency without a moment of hesitation. It goes against every notion of fairness.

"Life isn't fair, Oretsev," Morozov murmurs as he fusses over the doll.

Mal's eyes widen.

"No, I cannot read your mind. But your feelings and thoughts are as clear as day, idiot boy."

"Now," he crooks his finger and the shadows do his bidding, winding around all of Mal's limbs until he is a puppet on strings and Morozov is the puppet master, "it is time for you to be useful, Oretsev."

Mal tells himself that he will be brave and show no fear, that he won't allow Morozov to derive any satisfaction from his pain.

That is what he tells himself.

But the reality is something else.

Pain.

Worse than anything he has felt in his life, worse than anything he has ever imagined.

Pain with no respite, unrelenting and agonising.

And all he can see is the blank, placid smile of the doll, Morozov's pale, vindictive face, and the bodies piled next to him.

He need not be concerned about whether or not there is a hell. He is surely already there.

Whenever Mal thinks the pain – excruciating, like liquid fire in his veins, like a thousand knives stabbing into him – is so awful that he will simply pass out, Morozov jolts him, the brush of his shadows somehow giving Mal just enough energy to keep his eyes open.

"After all," Morozov's mouth curls into a cruel smile, "you didn't want relief, did you? No, you wanted to be a martyr, a suffering hero that the villagers will tell stories about. But the thing about martyrs and heroes, Oretsev, is that, in the end, they're all still dead and gone, cold in the ground."

"While those of us who choose power and know to wield it," he continues with a smugness that Mal would despise if he had energy enough to feel anything but unrelenting pain, "well … we can have anything we desire, if we are willing to do whatever it takes. And, as you have learnt, Oretsev, I am very willing to do what it takes."

"Please," it comes out as a whimper, a pathetic plea.

He'd sworn he wouldn't beg, but this is too much. Right now, Mal doesn't care if he lives or dies, he just wants this infernal torment to end.

Morozov's face lights up, sickeningly exhilarated by the evil magic he is working, and probably also by Mal's faltering resolve.

"Don't worry, Oretsev. It will all be over soon."

The words are spoken almost absentmindedly, for Morozov's attention is once again on the doll. He pets her hair and kisses her cheek and fusses with the dress she's wearing.

Even on death's door, Mal himself is of no consequence to Morozov, only a means to an end.

And when the doll takes her first true breath, Mal knows his death is imminent.

His vision is blurring, his strength slipping away.

There is but a single spark of life left in Mal, and he knows that it will soon fade and he will be gone.

The last thing he sees is Morozov helping the doll – Alina – to stand up.

She is a little shaky on her feet, like the newborn lambs he would see when passing by the farms, but she bestows a dazzling smile upon Morozov.

Not a thought or a glance for Mal, or for any of the bodies that surround her. She looks only at Morozov.

Her smile is unnerving. A bright, sunshine thing more suited to an angel than a creature revived by the darkest of magic.

When Mal slips away into the darkness, never to awaken, he goes unnoticed.

Morozov and Alina see no one but each other.


last year marked one hundred and seventy years since the Keramzin Massacre, which claimed the lives of fourteen young men and women, a tragedy which decimated a generation of the villagers.

It is now almost universally accepted that Aleksandr Morozov, the reclusive owner of the home where all fourteen bodies were found, was responsible for the deaths. He vanished from Keramzin hours before some of the villagers made their gruesome discovery in his home, and the only witness to his departure was the Keramzin baker, who testified that he saw Morozov leave in a carriage in the early hours of the morning, with a young lady that the baker did not recognise. Morozov was never apprehended.

Historians and criminologists still debate the method of death (the bodies were described as empty husks, of a similar type to mummified remains, identifiable only by the clothes they were wearing and certain personal items) and the motive behind this appalling crime. One theory posits …

Excerpt from Ravkan History Today, April 2023


Whether Alina is a doll brought to life, or was once a human turned to a doll and now reanimated, is entirely up to you.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.