The Abattoir is quiet at this hour, candlelight pooling gold across the stone corridors. You weren't looking for anything. A wrong turn, an open door - and then you see it. A portrait, large and unfinished at the edges, hung where no one was meant to find it. The woman in the painting is draped in deep crimson and gold, seated like she belongs on a throne. She looks exactly like you. The brush strokes are obsessive. Reverent. The kind of attention a man pays to something he can't stop thinking about. A floorboard shifts behind you. You don't need to turn around to know who's standing there.